Bliss (11 page)

"You used to get carsick all the time when you were growing up," her father said, bringing Sinclair back to the present.
"We couldn't take you on any long-distance drives. One time
we were on a bus heading for Kingston and you threw up all
over the back windows. Some woman didn't have her window closed."

Sinclair winced.

He laughed. "You forced your mama and me to toughen
up. ,)

Nikki walked into the room. "Where should I put this?"
She held up a tray heavy with steaming mugs and hot buttered toast. A soft laugh bubbled out of her when both
Xavier and Victor rushed up to lend a hand with the tray.
With their help, she put the heavy tray on the low coffee
table, then sat back on the couch with a sigh. Sinclair shifted
to make room for Nikki and Victor took her feet and put
them in his lap.

"How are you doing in America, Sinclair?" her father
asked around a mouthful of bread.

"I'm doing all right. Volk hasn't fired me yet. In a few
years I can afford to take off for a year and travel. Maybe
even start my own business with the money I have saved up."
Sinclair tasted her cup of hot chocolate, surprised at its thick
and creamy taste. The flavor, hinting of spices that she couldn't
name, wasn't like any she remembered having in America. It
was good.

Nikki looked up. "So you're rich."

"No. Not really."

"You're skinny though," Xavier said, pointing at Sinclair's
bare knees, his cheeks bulging with toast.

"It's called being `fashionably thin."' She stuck her tongue
out at her brother but pulled her skirt down anyway.

"Fata-fash?" His long-lashed brown eyes questioned her.

"It means that it's OK for me to be skinny." Sinclair bit
into her toast with gusto as if to prove that she really did eat
and eat a lot. "Really."

"Xavie." Nikki touched his head, her voice softly chiding.

Victor laughed and shook his head at his young son.
"Anyway, as long as you didn't suffer because of the money
you sent down here to us." Victor lifted his mug to her. "It
really came in handy, especially when I lost my job at the factory a few years ago. Now that foreigners are moving to the
island and want their houses built in grand style, I'm not so
bad off as I used to be."

"I was relieved to hear that things worked out." Sinclair
picked up another slice of the thick toasted bread. "All the
money did was sit in the bank anyway. I figured that I might
as well send it to someone who could put it to good use."

Victor laughed and raised his mug again. "Here's to practical daughters."

That night Sinclair lay in bed staring out at the stars and
remembering. Seeing Nikki's closeness to Xavier reminded
her of her childhood; of Beverly Sinclair's soft voice and the
way she used to tuck in Sinclair with whispered stories of faroff lands. If Sinclair closed her eyes and took a careful breath
she could almost smell the Soft Sheen spray that had clung to
her mother's hair. Sinclair and her mother had been as close
as Nikki and Xavier were now. Only her mother died in a
freak bus accident and left Sinclair to her grandmother. It
could have been worse.

From down the hall, she heard faint sounds of lovemaking. A talkative bedspring, sumptuous sighs. Xavier, whose room
she'd taken over, had long ago fallen asleep on the pullout sofa
in the living room, lulled by the flickering gray light from the
television. Outside her window, crickets trilled, frogs croaked,
the moon burned. All in a clear Caribbean sky. No police sirens,
no smog, no Regina.

Hours later, the sun's flame began to replace the moon's
softer glow, creeping into the window like a clumsy thief.
Only then did she sleep.

Sinclair woke to a knock on the door. She tried her voice
several times before it actually worked. "Come in."

Her father poked his head in. "Want to come eat with us?"

Sinclair rubbed her eyes and sat up. "Sure. Give me two
minutes."

For a moment, she watched the spot from where Victor
just disappeared. Then shook her head. As she fumbled in
her suitcase for clothes, barely paying attention to her actions, delicate tendrils of memory began to unfurl in her
mind. Twenty years ago, she had loved this man, worshipped
him, and thought him the sun that revolved around her
mother's earth.

She remembered now that he had been more crippled by
Beverly's death than even she was, often staring down at his
daughter as if he had no idea who she was, at times leaving
her in the middle of a conversation about a torn button or a
hemmed skirt. His eyes were so sad. Her grandmother's arrival four months later was a welcome distraction for them
both. Mavis-a woman who before that had always sent
cards on birthdays and holidays, who visited every Christmas
and seemed so exotic with her foreign accent, flowing
dresses, and sandalwood-scented hugs-fell into their lives
like healing rain.

When Gram suggested taking Sinclair to America with her,
her father only nodded as if he had been expecting it. He
asked her how she would feel about living with her grandmother in America. Sinclair, mesmerized by Mavis's smell and distracted from her own pain by the woman's complete
devotion to her, said yes, she would like that very much. At
the airport Victor took her hand and squeezed it, warning
her to dress well for the cold weather in her new city.

Sinclair reluctantly pulled herself from the past and shuffled to the bathroom where she washed her face and teeth.
Light from the sun-filled kitchen assaulted her eyes as she
walked in. Saturday morning reggae oldies played from a tiny
radio on the windowsill, competing with the frantic singing
of the birds outside the window. Everyone was already seated
at the small kitchen table with full plates and cups in front of
them. An empty chair waited for her next to Xavier.

"Good morning," Sinclair said, her voice still low from
sleep.

"Callalloo, saltfish, and dumpling," her father said, gesturing to her plate. "I hope you still eat Jamaican food."

"Why would I stop?" She smiled as she sat down. "Gram
raised me on it."

"Your hair looks nice like that," Nikki said shyly. Sinclair
realized that she'd left her hair in its usual nighttime plaits
the same moment that she noticed that her father's young
wife wore her hair in a similar style.

"Thank you. Yours looks nice, too."

With her hair in fat, sectioned plaits and the tiny gold
hoops in her ears, Nikki looked even younger than she had
the day before. She blushed at Sinclair's compliment and
broke open her dumpling.

Sinclair eyed her plate with its two fat, round breakfast
dumplings and the respectably sized heap of callalloo with
bits of salt-cured codfish. She hadn't tried to eat this much in
a long time. But she would now. The smell of her breakfastfreshly risen fried dough and the earthy spiced scent of
greens-reminded Sinclair sharply of her grandmother.

"Did you cook?" she asked Nikki, breaking open the crisp,
tongue-melting dough with its soft and steaming insides.

"No, Victor did." She smiled over at her husband.

Xavier smacked happily at his meal, his cheeks bulging
like a chipmunk's. Under the table, his bare feet swung blissfully back and forth to the music from the radio.

"It's very good," Sinclair said after she swallowed her own
mouthful. Almost as good as her grandmother's.

"Good. You'll get the chance to practice your cooking,
too, while you're here." He winked.

"Hmm. I'm not sure if you want that." Her mouth
quirked up around her food. "But I'll give it a try."

"You can't cook?" Nikki asked, eyes wide with surprise.

Victor chuckled. "She left us and became a modern
American woman."

"What do you know about modern American women aside
from the stuff they show on foreign television?" she said,
pointing her food-heavy fork at her father. "All that stuff is
made up, you know."

Nikki paused her chewing. "Even Cops?"

"Especially Cops."

"But you still can't cook?"

Sinclair chuckled ruefully at her father's question. "I don't
cook. My boyfriend used to do all the cooking when we were
together."

"And when he didn't cook, what did you do?"

"I'd get some takeout, frozen food, or just eat out."

"What did I tell you?" her father laughed, touching
Nikki's arm. "A modern woman. Just as efficient as one of
her frozen foods."

"I think I resent that."

"Don't take offense, daughter. We're people from different
times, different cultures, and I'm just having a bit of fun." He
pushed his chair away from the table. "I enjoy reading about
Americans on the Web and in the papers, but unlike many of
my countrymen, I don't envy you the lifestyle."

"Can you make American popcorn?" Xavier looked up
from his nearly empty plate.

Sinclair nodded. "If I have the right corn, I can."

"Tomorrow?"

"OK. Tomorrow."

Despite protests from both Nikki and her father, Sinclair
washed the breakfast dishes and pots, before disappearing
into the bathroom to shower and wash her hair. Later, with
her wet hair fluffed out to dry, she wandered out into the
backyard and found her father watering the plants. The
house was conspicuously empty.

"Where is everybody?"

"Nikki and Xavier went up the street for some groceries.
They'll be back in an hour or two." He swept the spray of
water along the length of a tall banana tree. "You lonely already?"

"Not while I have you here to keep me company."

"She's a sweet talker, just like her mother," he said to the
air above his head, laughing.

Sinclair grinned and thought for the second time in as
many days that this man was nothing like she'd expected.
Her childhood memories of him were few, limited only to the
ones that had resurfaced earlier that day and mental snapshots of him smiling down at her from a great height, his
voice telling her not to forget him as she waited for a plane to
take her off to America with her grandmother.

After her mother died, it was hard to see him and not
think of her, and of her absence that was a constant flinching
pain. Sinclair cried when Gram took her away. She didn't remember if it was with relief or sadness. The distance between
her and her father made things better, so did Gram's unwavering love. Before she knew it, a year went by in America, then
two, then twenty. When the reason for not seeing him faded
it just seemed natural to stay away.

"Give me a hand tying back this sorrel tree," her father
said, "then we can go on the verandah for a beer."

"All right."

The backyard was easily as large as the house, lined with
thick green grass, banana trees loaded down with fruit, gungu pea trees with their delicate branches and leaves dotted by
small purple flowers, plus at least a half a dozen other types
of trees that Sinclair knew nothing about. The sorrel tree was
short, the tallest branch barely reached her father's six-foot
height, but its branches spread wide, spilling over and beyond the waist-high fence that separated the jungle of fruit
and bean trees from the rest of the grassy backyard. Heartshaped burgundy fruit dusted with fuzz hung from its drooping branches.

"What do I do?"

"It's easy. Just hold the branches back while I tie them up
with string."

Easy. Right. Forty-five minutes later Sinclair was covered
in the tiny white bugs that she didn't realize lived in the sorrel tree and her skirt was dirty from where she had crouched
on its hem in the mud. Her bare arms itched.

"You're a cruel man," she said to her father as she disappeared into the house to take another shower.

"Do you still want that beer?" he asked.

"You better still be offering it."

She closed the door on his laughter.

victor walked out to the verandah with two beers in his
hand. He closed the door behind him and approached
Sinclair.

"Is Guinness all right?"

"Yes, thank you."

He offered his daughter a sweating bottle of the dark beer
and sat down in the rocker next to hers. With a low sigh of
contentment he arranged his long legs in front of him,
cradling the beer in his cupped hands.

"Do you have a good life in America?" he asked, staring
out into the sun-baked front yard,

"It's all right. Things have been a little hard since Gram
died five years ago." She took a long sip of her beer, wincing
at its bitterness. This was the first time she'd admitted to anyone that she'd been more than a little affected by her grandmother's death. "How about you? How is married life
treating you the second time around?"

"Things are good. Nikki is a good woman. I feel like I'm
finally doing things right this time."

Sinclair looked at him with a question in her eyes. As she
opened her mouth to ask it, a pale blue jeep Wrangler pulled
up to the gate. Its doors and roof had been taken off, leaving
the driver and passenger unprotected from the midmorning sun.