The Rhythm of the August Rain (3 page)

“I think he's in his office with somebody,” Sonja answered. Her ear-to-ear smile usually made Eric feel all was right with the world, but not this evening.

After helping himself to tonic water at the bar, Eric leaned on a column, staying out of the way of small talk. Romantic violins drifted from the speakers above him. He wasn't in the mood for a party, and he wouldn't have come if he'd had his druthers, wouldn't have shaved and pulled his hair back in a ponytail if he hadn't needed to talk to Lambert.

“At last—you're here,” came the hostess's voice. Wearing a halter dress that showed off her toned arms and flat stomach, despite being a mother of two, Jennifer advanced toward him. Lambert's second wife (twenty years too young for him, Eric teased him) had always been good at making everyone feel he or she were the one guest she'd been waiting for. A transplanted interior designer from Florida, she'd been even better at enjoying life with her well-to-do Jamaican husband.

She kissed Eric on both cheeks, a habit she'd adopted after a trip to France a few years before. “You're late.”

“Stuff happens.”

With a bracelet-clanking hand, she pushed her blond hair back. “You're not allowed to have a long face at my parties. What's up with that?”

“Just tired, I guess.” Eric swung his eyes to the corridor leading to Lambert's office. “I wonder when Lam is going to be free?”

“Why don't you ask him?”

Eric crossed the room to the corridor, shaking hands on the way with a man, an accountant, he remembered, whom Lambert had advised Eric to use and whom he'd never called. An outburst of laughter from a group of guests ricocheted off the rafters of the big room, drowning out the music.

“Hey, man, come on in,” Lambert called when Eric appeared at the office door. “I was showing Doug here the plans for the Andersons' new house, the solar-powered one in St. Mary I was telling you about.”

Lambert Delgado was an engineer and a product of Kingston's professional stock. A decade and a half before and newly remarried, the large mulatto had left the capital and built his home on a hill overlooking Largo. Since Eric's hotel had been the only place in the area to dine out, the Delgados had befriended the owner and they'd remained close through the years. But while Eric's fortunes had declined, Lambert's had risen, and he now handled most of the large construction jobs in eastern Portland, public and private, everyone respecting him as much for his confident authority as for his bushy mustache.

The contractor had proven to be the one person in the world—other than Shad—whom Eric would have trusted with his life. To his dying day, he'd remember how Lambert had wrapped him in a blanket when he was naked and shivering after escaping his flooded hotel during the hurricane. And he'd forever be indebted to his friend for putting him up in his home, at no cost and without complaint, for the year before the bar had been built. These favors alone made Eric beholden to the big man with the booming voice, but they didn't end there. Lambert had agreed—suggesting it himself—to build the new hotel at cost. There'd be no charge for his services.

“Largo needs it and I can afford it,” he'd said, stroking one side of his mustache without blinking.

Lambert introduced him now to the man beside him, a rotund fellow who thanked the contractor for showing him the plans and departed to rejoin his wife.

“Have a seat, man,” Lam said, nodding to Eric as he sat down in his desk chair. “Did you get a drink—good. How are things going?”

The leather creaked under Eric as he lowered to an armchair. “Can't complain—not too much, anyway.”

“The construction permits for the hotel are all signed, and Danny sent us the first payment. We're going to start hiring the skilled laborers right after the groundbreaking. But I told you that already, didn't I?”

“Yeah, you told me, along with a million other things, none of which I can remember, of course. What do I need to do next?”

“Close on the property and sign your life away,” Lambert said with the guffawing laugh that sounded like a hybrid of a Kipling character and a thumping seal, Eric had always thought. “Is Danny coming out for the closing?”

“No, Shad and I are going to be there, but they're going to courier the papers to Danny. He's coming for the groundbreaking, though. He says it'll be his first time wearing a hard hat and he's not going to miss it.”

“Who's handling the groundbreaking, by the way? You'll be needing shovels and—”

“I hadn't even thought about it.”

“Jennifer likes doing stuff like that. I'll ask her to do it as a gift to you guys.”

“That would be great.”

“How many people are you going to invite?”

Eric shrugged. “Don't ask me. Never had a groundbreaking for my old place, just started working.”

“Let's see.” Lambert looked at the wooden fan spinning overhead. “I'll make sure that the dozer goes in the day before—the bush will be all gone by that time, but he can make a nice flat spot for the tent. Then on the day, you or Danny can say a few words, and we'll try to get Donovan Bailey, the local member of Parliament, although it's hard to get him now that he's minister of housing. And you should have a pastor bless the project—you know Jamaicans, nothing happens without a prayer. Then after the speeches, we turn the soil: you, me, Shad, Danny, the MP. Get some photographers out there and about twenty to thirty people for refreshments after, I'd guess. Come to think of it, with free food—let's make that forty people.”

“Plus two,” Eric said, tightening his buttocks as he shifted in the chair. “Shannon might be here.”

Lambert leaned over the mahogany desk, bushy brows high. “You're joking!”

“She has a job down here, some article to research.”

“Did you tell Jen?”

“Not yet. Only one problem, though. She asked me to book her into Miss Mac's boardinghouse, but, of course, Miss Mac would have sold over to us and be gone by then.”

The contractor leaned back and grinned. “And she can't stay with you.”

“In fact,” Eric said, cracking his neck to one side, “she suggested that she could stay here. She hates the big hotels, and she wants to be based in Largo, she says.”

“She doesn't even have to ask. Jennifer would love catching up with her. Remember how they would go off shopping and swimming together? I think she even helped out once or twice in the art gallery Jennifer used to have in Ocho Rios. That was before the babies came, of course, a lot of water under the bridge since then. How long will she be here?”

“A couple of weeks, I think. She arrives on—what did she tell me?—July sixth, seventh, I think. She has a freelance contract with a magazine.”

The contractor ran a hand over his wiry, gray hair. “Is she bringing Eve? It would make sense, summer holidays and everything.”

“Yup.”

“Splendid, splendid! Casey will be home from boarding school. They can hang out together, do the girlie thing, you know.”

Eric tried to picture his daughter in Casey's bedroom with its four-poster twin beds and their pink canopies. “I guess so.”

Lambert narrowed his eyes. “Why am I getting the impression that there's something—”

Eric got up and walked to the window. The sunset had been swallowed by the tropical blackness. “Everything is wrong with this visit, Lam.” Eric turned abruptly. “I almost feel as if Shannon is pulling a fast one on me, the way she did when she got pregnant. Even though she swore it was an accident, I always felt that she planned it. And of course, she never forgave me for not proposing afterward.”

“That's all in the past.”

“Sometimes the past collides with the present, with Simone coming down at the same time. I don't know what's going to happen, man. It's almost as if Shannon knew—”

“She'll be with us, and Simone will be with you, right? We'll keep them apart.”

“This could get really—I mean, I've moved on with my life.”

“I'm sure she's done the same.”

“She hated me like pus—”

“Pus?”

“My mother's expression, you know what I mean.” Eric sat down again and let out a hard breath. “Even when I went up to see her after she'd had Eve, it was like she'd put up a wall between us. She was living in this town house in Toronto. It had a blue door, I'll never forget, and she seemed so distant, so—different. Instead of the pretty, skinny gal dashing around taking pictures, she'd suddenly become this chubby, anxious
mother
.

“She was breast-feeding and talking to the baby the whole time. You wouldn't have thought I was the child's father, the way she was going on. She didn't even invite me to stay with her, so I took the bus from Ohio for the day because I couldn't afford a hotel. I could only stay a couple hours, but, man, were they uncomfortable. She let me hold the baby once, but the second Eve started whimpering, she snatched her out of my arms, like she didn't trust me. She didn't even ask me about my trip or anything, and I'd come all the way from Jamaica to see them.”

“But you went up again, didn't you?”

“A couple of times, once a year later. The last time was after my mother's funeral. Eve was about five at the time. I remember Shannon meeting me at the door and calling Eve to come quickly. No invitation to have a drink, nothing, like I was persona non grata or something. I took Eve to the zoo and dropped her back. Not even a cup of coffee. Why she's coming back to Largo, I have no idea. I don't get it.”

“Maybe she wants you to connect with Eve.”

Eric straightened his shirtsleeves. “She knows I'm no good with children, I didn't want another child. I told her plain and straight. I don't know why women don't believe you when you tell them something. Claire didn't believe me either. Even before we got married, I told her and she agreed, but then she,
oops
, slipped and got pregnant with Joseph. I think when their girlfriends are having babies, it triggers their clocks to start ticking.”

“You've tried your best.”

“Yeah, right.” Eric snorted and studied the scaly skin on the back of his hands. “Joseph straightened me out in February when he was here. He said I only put him through college because I felt guilty.”

“Young people say things, you know.”

“It's not like I've been a deadbeat dad or anything. I've sent money every month, and I remember to call at birthdays.” Eric looked up sharply. “What are you laughing at? Most of the time, anyway, you know what I mean.”

“So what's the problem?”

“It's not only Shannon—I think we could get through that—it's Eve. Apparently, Shannon was going to leave her with her mother, but now she says her mother can't
handle
Eve. She needs her father right now. I'm supposed to be the tough guy, all of a sudden.”

“You're making her sound like a monster.”

“I don't know anything about eleven-year-old girls, Lam—”

“Twelve, she's twelve now. In fact, I think her birthday is in July, right? She's going to be thirteen. I remember she was born a few months after Casey.”

“The point is I have no earthly idea how to handle an adolescent, especially one as difficult as she sounds.”

“What do you mean,
difficult
?”

Eric took a deep breath—it had to be straight up with Lam. “She was caught shoplifting a couple days ago, man.” Eric examined his ragged fingernails. “Stealing cigarettes from a convenience store. My daughter's a fucking criminal.”

T
he tomato vine was doing well, better than the lettuce and cucumbers. It had liked the spring warmth this year and seemed to enjoy the summer heat even better. Shannon trained the hose on the large pots of vegetables, making a mental note to remind her next-door neighbor Chantrelle to water them while she was away. Behind her, the door in the wooden fence clicked open.

“Hey there,” she called without turning around. “How was the—?”

The back door to the house opened and shut. Shannon's stomach tightened into the knot that seldom unraveled these days. She moved the spray to the basil plant, kicking a branch aside, debris from last week's storm. Strands of her straight brown hair swung up and clung to her cheek and she brushed them away.

After coiling up the hose, the tall, sturdy woman walked into the kitchen, basil leaves in hand to give to her mother. Her daughter's tousled hair sprouted above the back of the sofa, in front of which the television displayed a group of loud, prancing singers.

“I was trying to ask you,” her mother called, willing herself to be patient, “how your art class went.”

When no answer came, Shannon entered the living room and sat on the arm of the sofa.

“I
said
, how did your art class go?”

Eve looked up from her iPad and removed her earbuds. “I didn't hear you.”

“Your art class?”

The girl shrugged, eyes fixed on the screen. One shoulder of her cotton T-shirt slipped down and she tugged it up. “It was okay. We did a still life.”

“Thank you.” Shannon stood up and squared her shoulders. “We're going to eat soon.”

Halfway through dinner, Shannon broke the silence. “Did you remember to tell the counselor you're going away in a few days?” She waited as Eve chewed her mouthful of burger to the last swallow.

“I'm not going.”

“Of course you're going. We've been planning this for weeks. I've already started packing your stuff.”

Her daughter looked up, sudden fire in her eyes. “And I've told you that I want to stay with Grandma.”

“You're going to visit your father.”

“Like he comes to visit us?” The hormones shifted again, the wounded kitten appearing as she stuffed lettuce into her mouth. “I don't even know him.”