Victoria Falls

by James Hornor

  “Can you hand me the shampoo? I think it may have slid under the tub.”

  Averting his eyes, Charlie got down on his hands and knees and began feeling under the tub for the shampoo. After several tries, he extended his arm as far as it would go and grasped the elusive bottle.

  “My father washed my hair when I was young. It’s one of the things I remember from my childhood.”

  Charlie was amazed that Jenny was completely comfortable with him being so near to her in such an intimate setting, and for a moment he considered asking her if she wanted him to wash her hair. Instead, using the side of the tub as leverage, he pulled himself up and took a step towards the door. It suddenly occurred to him that Jenny might simply exit the bathroom and go right to bed.

  “I’ll be downstairs. Maybe we could have another cognac in front of the fire.”

  As Charlie descended the stairs, he thought of Heather’s reaction if she knew he had been so close to Jenny in the bathroom and thinking about washing her hair.

  “But,” he reasoned, “she is my sister, which is different than just some other woman.”

  When Jenny reappeared a few minutes later, she had on her Chinese robe and her hair was wrapped in a towel. Charlie poured both of them the last of the cognac, and Jenny sat down across from him, enjoying the warmth of the fire on her bare legs and feet.

  “Jenny, I need to tell you something.”

  She had already removed the towel from her head and was attempting to dry sections of her hair by vigorously rubbing them in both directions.

  “Oh, by the way,” Jenny interrupted, “Thanks for doing the dishes. I end up doing the dishes every evening whether Papa is here or not. So nice to have a break!”

  “Jenny, we both have the same father.”

  She allowed her wet hair to fall in a tangle around her face.

  “What?”

  “My mother and your father slept together in Africa. That’s why I’m here. I came to meet my biological father.”

  The phrase “biological father” seemed to catch Jenny off guard. Her father was her rock. He was even her soulmate. She was stunned Charlie had referred to him as “biological”—as if her father had been reduced to a chance romantic encounter in Africa.

  “That’s impossible. I am my father’s only child. He doesn’t have a son.”

  “I am your father’s son. My mother told me on her deathbed. Her exact words were ‘Your real father is a man named James Monroe who I slept with in Africa.’”

  “There must be a hundred men named James Monroe who have been to Africa.”

  “True. And that is why I need to talk to him to be sure.”

  “To be sure about what?”

  “That he remembers sleeping with my mother.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then I will continue to look.”

  At that, Jenny pushed away her cognac, as if to say that she was done with the conversation, that she was done with the evening.

  “I’m sorry, Jenny. I knew that this would be hard for you to take in after all these years.”

  “You think we are brother and sister?”

  “I think we both have the same father, but of course, different mothers.”

  “Why did you come here?” Suddenly she was agitated and losing patience.

  “A man wants to meet his real father.”

  “It’s presumptuous of you to just show up here. It was crazy of me to allow you to stay here.”

  “If I could meet your father, we could resolve all of this in a few minutes.”

  Jenny walked across the room and sat down at the table. Just one hour before Charlie had been seated across from her having dinner. Now he felt like an outsider and an intruder.

  “The earliest Papa will be home is Saturday.”

  “Is there a number where we can call him?”

  “It’s not the sort of thing you can settle over the phone or by email. You can stay here this evening, but you need to leave first thing in the morning. I can’t help you find your father, and I suggest that you don’t try to contact Papa. It will just upset him.”

  At that, Jenny locked the front door and turned out the lights.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Benjamin. I suppose we’ll see each other in the morning before you leave.”

  As Jenny headed up the stairs, Charlie sat gazing into the fire. “Maybe she’s right,” he thought. Maybe this whole idea of finding his real father was a misguided quest that he thought up to address his own sense of ennui. “I may have only done this to get away from Heather for a few days—to break the routine, to find a reprieve.”

  Charlie fell asleep in the chair, awakened about forty-five minutes later, and headed up to bed. It was one of those evenings when sleep would be his only escape—a brief interlude from a plan that had taken a sudden turn for the worse.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I AWAKENED AROUND 3:00 TO THE SOUND OF RAIN ON the roof. I had fallen asleep in the large ottoman chair, and the only light was from a small lamp in the bathroom. Melissa stirred a little as I turned out the light and returned to the ottoman. The room was now pitch black. The sound of the rain and the distant falls seemed more soothing than I had remembered since my arrival.

  About an hour later I awakened again to the sound of Melissa whispering in her sleep. At first, whatever she was saying was garbled and incomprehensible, but as she continued, she began to speak in a language I had never heard before. It sounded like Arabic or ancient Hebrew. At intervals she sat straight up and lengthened her arms out to her sides, allowing her hands to rotate so that her palms seemed to be in adoration or in obeisance to a person or an object.

  Engulfed in darkness and separated by the mosquito netting, I listened as she participated in an ancient ritual, her soft voice fluctuating between speech and song, as if she were reciting a liturgy that she knew from memory. As she continued to sing softly from within the confines of the netting, I began to sense again that I was in the presence of sacred beauty, its fragility already beginning to disappear in the early morning light. I thought of my marriage to Catherine and how desperately both of us had tried to find that nexus of something greater than ourselves, greater than even our children that would restore beauty to our relationship. The tragedy was that we both sensed its absence, but the chemistry of our marriage seemed incapable of bringing us both to that sacred space that for some couples is a timeless sincerity unfolding in layers of intimacy that are beyond words.

  That was what Melissa had awakened within me. The strange, exotic intimations of Hebrew or Arabic somehow touched the center of my being that had been waiting patiently for years to be unlocked by the mystery of her voice. As dawn began to fill the room, I sat on the floor next to the bed allowing myself to breathe deeply, to be drawn into her ritual of adoration. With her lovely fingers, Melissa was carefully shaping the air around her as if she was suspended in water. It was as if she was actually touching a presence that was both sensory and religious.

  Years later I learned that when those rare moments occur in our lives, when the veil of eternity is lifted even for a moment, our response should be to simply exist in that moment without attempting to prolong it with the hope of even greater insight. More importantly, I later came to realize that all life is sacred, from the fantastic to the mundane.

  But I was not yet at that place. Instead my mind was racing ahead, attempting to remember meditation techniques that I learned in a class ten years earlier. As a result, I remained prostrate on the floor until I eventually fell asleep, awakened finally by the sound of Melissa in the shower and the bright rays of sun dancing on the wall opposite the bed.

  I picked up the phone and ordered room service: soft boiled eggs, wheat toast with butter, and café au lait. When Melissa emerged from the bathroom she was fully dressed, and she looked incredibly rested and refreshed.

  “You really didn’t have to sleep on the floor. You must have been eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

  She was b
rushing out her long curly hair, and I watched as her fingers untangled a few of the stubborn knots. What I had witnessed hours earlier was beginning to seem like a dream. Over breakfast, Melissa seemed preoccupied with getting a message to her sister and brother-in-law who were staying in Livingstone on the Zambia side.

  “They knew I was coming to The Victoria Falls Hotel for a drink; I should have called them last night. Trevor will be especially concerned.”

  “Call them from my phone.”

  “And say that I spent the night in your room?”

  “Tell them you have decided to go with me by train to Harare.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m heading to Cape Town tomorrow morning with Trevor and Kate. We’ll be there for a week.”

  “Tell them you’ll meet them in Cape Town next Saturday. That you’ve met an American businessman who has invited you on safari.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Going on safari?”

  “We’re going on an adventure. Besides, I want you to meet some of my diplomatic acquaintances in Harare. There’s a reception on Wednesday evening.”

  As I mentioned the diplomatic reception I could tell that Melissa was suddenly interested.

  “How did you know that I’m looking for a job?”

  “I didn’t know that until this very moment.”

  “I used to work at the French Embassy in Sydney arranging special events.”

  “Didn’t know they celebrated Bastille Day in Australia.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I had to leave for my brother. He is in a messy situation in Bombay.”

  “What kind of messy situation?”

  Melissa was staring at her half-eaten piece of toast. She was suddenly much more serious. Our conversation shifted from a playful romp to almost a dirge.

  “He was arrested for smuggling drugs into India. For the last thirty-six months, he’s been in jail and awaiting trial.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  The rain had stopped and the room had that “leaving day” feel. It was the first awkward moment I had spent with Melissa, and I was searching for a way to change the subject, to restore the lightheartedness that had now exited the room.

  “I’ve only spoken to Jonathan once since he was imprisoned. He called when he was first incarcerated, and our mother spoke to him last Christmas.”

  “Is your plan to go to Bombay?”

  “My plan is to get the money we need to get him out.”

  I hesitated for a moment at her use of the plural pronoun. By “we” she must have meant her family or maybe just Kate and Trevor. I wondered how much they knew about the plight of Jonathan. As I knew from my own circumstances, sometimes families suppress embarrassing information, preferring avoidance over transparency. But aside from the family issue I was surprised by her directness: “My plan is to get the money.” For a split second, the yellow caution lights came on, but I quickly dismissed them in favor of spending the next several hours with her as she began to rearrange her original plans.

  By mid-morning, she had called her sister and Trevor, and they all agreed to meet the following Saturday in Cape Town. I spent the better part of the morning on the hotel terrace, reading Melissa’s copy of Camus and sipping coffee while she had her luggage brought by car from the hotel in Livingstone. We spent an hour after lunch talking about philosophy and the first part of our itinerary to Harare—the overnight train from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo. Mostly, I wanted at all costs to avoid Teresa, even though I thought I owed her at least a cordial goodbye.

  At 2:00 P.M. I hired a porter to take our bags from the hotel lobby to the train station, and of course while we were standing in the lobby, Teresa and Richard arrived at the main entrance to the hotel. Melissa must have noticed that I was visibly shaken at the sight of their arrival, and she instinctively slipped her arm through mine just as they appeared—now only twenty feet away. Richard looked mildly disgusted as Melissa and I stood directly in their path. He brought his right hand to his forehead as if to dismiss us with a tip of his hat, despite the fact that he was not wearing one. He wasn’t going to speak to us, so the hat tip gesture served as a way for him to redirect to the other side of the lobby without having to address us in any way.

  Teresa could have easily followed him and that would have been the end of it, but instead she chose to continue walking towards us. It has always amazed me how some women manage to keep their composure even in a sea of emotional conflict.

  “Hello, Miss Samuel. James, how are you?”

  The tone of Teresa’s voice was almost identical to the “recalcitrant child” tone she had used almost exactly forty-eight hours earlier, and for a moment I thought she might try to convince both of us to check back into the hotel.

  “Why don’t the two of you join Richard and me and the children for dinner?”

  Knowing almost nothing about my entanglement with Teresa, Melissa spoke up before I had a chance to respond.

  “James and I are on the three o’clock train to Bulawayo, so dinner at the hotel is out of the question.”

  I didn’t even want to look at Teresa to register her response, so instead I looked at Melissa, as if I were somewhat surprised to hear of our immediate departure.

  “Are you walking to the station? If so, I’ll walk with you. There are a few things I wanted to discuss with James before the two of you leave.”

  The three of us clumsily headed for the exit, and there was confusion at the front entrance about who should hold doors and who should go first. In the end we walked the short distance to the station with Teresa on my right and Melissa on my left. I felt like I was being escorted to the guillotine.

  When we reached the station platform, Teresa did one of her faultless pivots and was directly in front of me.

  “If Miss Samuel could just give us a moment, I wanted to say a heartfelt goodbye.”

  At that, Melissa continued walking down the platform and Teresa and I moved a few steps closer to the station house.

  “Listen to me, James. To be kind I will only say that I am confused by your sudden alliance with Miss Samuel. And apparently you were hoping to avoid me all together before leaving Victoria Falls.”

  Neither of us spoke. I was waiting for the next segment, which would undoubtedly be the guilt and condemnation that I probably deserved.

  Instead, Teresa took out a small piece of paper and talked as she wrote.

  “Here’s my private number at home in the States. You can call me at any time. I will always be there for you. Goodbye, James. I don’t need to tell you that you’re charming and attractive. But someday soon you’ll have to stop being the great American boy-man and become the grownup you were actually meant to be.”

  Coming from Teresa, it was an incredibly gracious and profound goodbye, and as I followed her silhouette back up the hill, I could see the plumes of mist—the “smoke”—rising above the falls. As I paused, I had a quick flash of being reunited with her in this life or perhaps in the next. What I did not know, what I could not see until much later, was that I had chosen the wrong woman at Victoria Falls, and that choice would change the course of my life forever.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHARLIE HEARD A KNOCK ON THE DOOR. FOR A MOMENT he thought it was Saturday morning and Ryan was knocking on their bedroom door. As the door opened, Charlie realized he was in Lake Louise, and the person entering the room was not Ryan, but Jenny.

  “I brought you some coffee.”

  Jenny pulled up a chair and placed the coffee on the small bedside table.

  “I need to apologize for last night. I completely overreacted.”

  Charlie reached for the coffee and sat up as the memory of Jenny’s anger from the night before came rushing back.

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “But I was rude to you. Something that Papa would never be … especially to a stranger.”

  Jenny’s quiet equilibrium had returned,
and as Charlie sipped his coffee, he noticed that her left eyebrow had almost the exact peaked curvature of his own. It was at least one physical similarity that they shared, and he surmised that her remarkable green eyes must have been inherited from her mother.

  “I already have a call in to Papa. I want to be sure he can come home tomorrow instead of Sunday. That way you could leave Sunday instead of today, and you two could meet and have a chance to talk.”

  Charlie’s immediate thought was how could he possibly explain this newest delay to Heather. If he stayed until Sunday, he wouldn’t be home until Monday evening at the earliest. Since he told her that he had already connected with James Monroe, what possible reason could he concoct for the delay?

  “I’ll need to call Heather and my office. No one will be happy, except for me, since I will have completed my Canadian mission.”

  “It’s settled then. I’ll convince Papa to return a day early, and we can all have dinner together tomorrow evening. Come down when you’re ready.”

  After breakfast, Jenny continued to reassure Charlie that she could convince their father to return a day early. Charlie began to formulate how he would begin the conversation with Heather. Somehow he needed to convince her that his delayed return would be helpful to her, but every scenario he considered could not reconcile the reality that he would not be home by Sunday.

  “We should go cross-country skiing.”

  Jenny had broken Charlie’s silence, and they sat sipping coffee and looking at the streams of sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window.

  “What’s that?”

  They both heard a vehicle out in the driveway and Charlie went to the window. A man was getting out of a large truck and inspecting Jenny’s car.

  “That must be the car guy from Banff who has already been here twice. I have had major electrical problems. No one seems to know how to fix it. I’d better go out there and find out if he is making any progress.”