by Shani Mootoo
“Well, the woman got out of the cab and disappeared down by the red railing, leaving the man rummaging through his pockets for the fare. Before I could think, I turned to face him in the backseat. ‘How much do you want for it?’ I asked.”
Kay releases herself from the counter and covers her mouth with one hand. “Oh shit! You did not!”
Harry ignores her shock to good effect and continues.
“‘What? Sorry, what did you say?’ he asked. ‘How much you want for your house?’ I said again. The man collapsed in the seat and stared ahead. And then, words were tumbling out of my mouth. ‘I couldn’t help but hear. It is a small car. I am in the market. How much are you asking for it?’
“‘You know, I was having a private conversation with my wife. I find this offensive. Do you make a practice of minding your customers’ business?’ ‘Well, I am sorry, sir,’ I replied, ‘but it is a small car, you know.’ The man began talking very softly, with a calculated hiss, you know, like this …” and Harry did an imitation: “‘Why don’t you just mind your own friggin’ business and get the hell out of here?’ And I said back to him, in a really steady voice, ‘I, sir, am not being idle. If your house is a good price, I will buy it from you this minute.’
“The man was slumped in the backseat, quiet for a long time. His wife reappeared to see what had kept him. He held up his hand to indicate that he would be along shortly. She waited a few seconds and dropped out of view again. ‘For yourself?’ the pathetic fellow whispered, becoming pensive. He muttered, ‘But …’ and trailed off.
“I said, ‘You’re wondering what? I am making you a serious offer. You have a house to sell. I am in the market.’”
Suddenly the telephone rings on the kitchen counter behind Kay. Harry leaps forward but then halts, startled. Could it be Rose? He is surprised to find that he hopes it will not be Rose.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Kay asks. He reluctantly picks up the receiver and hears not the expected voice but his good friend Anil shouting above a joyful noise—Indian music, chatter, reckless laughter, and the excited squeals of children. Anil is calling to wish him a Happy New Year. Kay turns to leave the room. Harry puts his hand over the receiver to conceal his voice from Anil and tells Kay there is no need, he will be only a minute. Anil realizes he has company and says he won’t keep him long, but Partap is going to Fiji in a week for three months. He wants to get together before leaving. Partap comes on the phone. He is intoxicated and jovial. “Happy New Year. Happy New Year, man. Season’s greetings.” Why doesn’t Harry come down to Anil’s house right now. He hears Anil telling him that Harry has guests. Partap says, “Bring all the guests—leave now.” Partap lets up only after Harry stops responding except for laughter. “All right, all right,” but he insists on seeing Harry before leaving Canada. Wine tasting and general tomfoolery, how about it?
They decide on a date within the coming week.
Off the phone, Harry tells Kay the wine club is meeting soon. It sounds far more serious, the way he tells her, than it really is.
“‘It’s worth a hundred and sixty thousand,’ the man said.”
Kay interjects, “Whoa. In the early seventies, that was a lot of money for a house. As lovely as this is, that was a fair bit of money, Harry. What did you do?”
“A hundred and sixty thousand, a lot of money, in truth! Not the kind of money I stash under my mattress. I wanted to ask the man if he was quoting Canadian or Guanagasparian currency. I didn’t have that kind of money. But I couldn’t bear to look foolish in front of this fellow, even though I knew that I would probably never see him again. You know, being dark-skinned and all of that, I thought the joker would just think that every black person is a bluffer and an upstart, and I felt this responsibility to play my hand.”
“And that would be the activist in you, I suppose?” says Kay slyly.
“You’re right. Anyway, I had to tell myself it’s a game, just a game. Take it easy and play the game. ‘Well, I’m not sure it’s worth a hundred and sixty,’ I countered. ‘Besides, do you think you’d get that today? I mean, you need a sale today, don’t you?’ to which he replied in a subdued way, ‘You really were minding my business, weren’t you.’ I ignored him and continued, ‘If you can get that much for it right away, all the best to you, man. All the best. I am in the market, but I am looking for a deal. One hundred and sixty thousand dollars ain’t no deal.’ And I turned to face the front of the car again. Now, where that kind of courage came from, I couldn’t tell you. I never played any such game before, but I suppose that was the activist in me, eh! Anyway, I touched the meter, tapped it nervously. He still hadn’t given me any money for the fare. ‘I’ll take seventy-five,’ he said in a hushed voice.”
“Seventy-five,” squeals Kay. “Is that what you paid for this house?”
“Wait. Not so fast. How often would the likes of me hit upon such an opportunity, eh?”
Harry remembers the defining image that had flown into his head in the moment. He had imagined Rose descending the precipice, looking directly at him. He hadn’t really believed then that she would ever have the chance to see that he, Harry St. George, was living in a fine seaside house in a respectable part of the world. He was ready to commit himself and all of his savings, which were well below seventy-five thousand dollars.
“‘Cash?’ I asked the man. ‘Cash,’ he said bluntly. ‘When do you need it by?’ I asked him. He said, ‘The bank is supposed to call in everything in a day or two,’ and was silent again. I waited and he breathed a low long sentence. ‘In a day or two the effing bank will effing repossess my effing house—is that what you want to hear me say?’ I didn’t answer. He took out a pen and pad from the inside pocket of his jacket and scribbled. ‘How soon can you come through with cash?’ he asked. Realizing I had power in the situation, I became what even I would call perverse, so I said, ‘Sixty-five, eh?’”
“Harry,” Kay exclaims in mocking disapproval.
“I could feel his eyes pierce the back of my head. I wondered what he saw. I looked at him in the rearview mirror. ‘I am not going below seventy-five. I would rather declare bankruptcy.’ He was running his tongue around the inside of his mouth, distending his cheek and upper lips. He flung a twenty-dollar bill on the front seat and stormed out of the cab. ‘Don’t effing play with me. If you don’t have that kind of money, what are you trying to—’
“‘Cash,’ I said firmly. ‘Sixty-five thousand. Cash.’
“The man slammed a fist on the roof of the car. ‘Take the damn thing for sixty-five, then. Sixty-five frigging thousand dollars.’ I remember his words like it was yesterday. ‘Sixty-five frigging thousand dollars.’”
“So, of course I asked if there was anything I should know about it. ‘Is there a lien on it or anything? A body buried in the yard?’ He said there was no lien on it. In fact, he said, ‘There’s not a damn thing wrong with this house or its title. And there is no body buried anywhere. I am no criminal, you jackass. I am just a man who takes risks, and usually they pay off, but I just took one too many—not for me but for my wife, who, if she is not careful, may not bear that distinction for much longer. I am going through a rough period. Is that a crime? Come. I suppose we have some things to figure out. I suppose you want to see it?’”
Harry remembers that he was thinking about all the people back home, how they would all be so impressed that Harry St. George was living in a seaside house that he himself owned—and in such a “good” neighborhood in Canada. He does not mention this, but he does tell Kay that his mother, long dead, would have loved this seaside home, and that he imagines his stepfather, if he were alive, taking walks down the roadway Harry and his workers would eventually construct, watching the neighbors’ houses, and gloating.
“Harry, you were heartless.” Kay grins mischievously. They watch each other, smiling. He marvels at how easy it is to speak with this woman. He remembers Rose asking him about the house in the summer, but he avoided imparting to
her the circumstances under which he bought it.
Breaking the loaded silence that has ensued, Kay asks where the bathroom is. He leans back against the counter and points in its direction. For the first time, Harry notices that Kay is beautiful. He has the urge to follow her. Eleven thirty-five. He goes instead to the refrigerator, takes one of the champagne bottles from its paper bag, unties the wire net covering the cork. As he works the cork, he recalls that the man and he walked down the wet stairs to the side of the house. It was low tide. The man pointed to the bag in Harry’s hand. Harry held the bag up. The man reached in and pulled out a ring of apple, popped it in his mouth.
“So, what was that you were listening to—or rather, not listening to—on the radio?” Harry remembers him changing the subject.
“Cricket.”
“God. Are the commentators always so lethargic?”
Harry had the sense that the man had already moved out of the house and into some future he alone could see. He was probably accustomed to living on the edge of his pocket, to taking risks, losing some, gaining on others.
Harry had yet to look directly at the house. “It’s a slow game,” he told the man, feeling oddly defensive.
“Do you know hockey?”
He remembers rounding the side of the house on slabs of concrete embedded in the lawn grass. He got his first view of the garden: low retaining wall and tall unkempt grasses merging with a pebbly beach. Some boulders at the edges, an uprooted tree with cauterized roots facing the sky, rows of washed-ashore logs, then the sea. The man’s wife stood on the lawn, facing the water, surrounded by beds of tall lime-green ferns. Hugging herself. She heard them and turned. Harry saw Rose again, imagined it was she standing there, and even without seeing the interior of the house, he knew that he definitely wanted it.
But this woman here with him tonight, listening to his every word and so ready to grin and laugh—he had the impression that she wouldn’t care if he lived in a studio apartment. She didn’t even seem to notice that he was rather incompetent in the recreational outdoor world that she so loved.
Freshly sprayed marigold scent announces her return. Her hair is neatened, fluffed up, her lipstick reapplied thickly. Harry hands her a glass of champagne. The bubbles rise swiftly to the top, jumping out of the glass, diving through the air like minute meteors. She sniffs the contents and, with the tips of her fingers, brushes her upper lip and her nose where bubbles have spat. Her preening flatters him.
She suggests going into the garden. Harry blows out the candles in the dining room and checks that the oven is turned off. They wrap themselves in coats, muffle their necks in scarves. He takes the open bottle swathed in a towel, closes the door behind them, and they carry their glasses of champagne across the front lawn to the water’s edge.
From somewhere in the distance, over the water, comes music, and here and there the excitement of a high-pitched stray voice is dispersed by the whims of the night’s brisk breezes. The air is dry. Clean and crisp, as if in readiness for a New Year that is just minutes away.
The tide is as far out as it ever gets. Harry extends his hand and helps Kay down the steps that lead from his property to the sliver of pebbled shore. The pebbles glimmer in the light of the bright sky. They step over a row of dead logs and amble, side by side. A black shape, a silhouette against the silver-black water, moves on a rock. It turns toward them. Closer, they see that it is a bald eagle. It remains firmly on the rock, not unduly perturbed by their presence. Kay raises her glass. He raises his, tips it toward hers.
She says in a quiet voice, “If there is one thing you could do all over again, what would that be, Harry? Do you have any regrets?”
He ponders having left Guanagaspar. He doesn’t regret that. But it has been made clear tonight, by the light of this woman with whom he is spending this New Year’s Eve, that he has spent a lifetime haunted by the desire to be a part of a particular Guanagasparian world in which he would, more than likely, never have achieved the status of insider, and this is the fuel under any fire that might have burned in him. He says only, “My mother. I might wish that I had left Guanagaspar sooner than I did, while my mother was alive. I would have brought her here with me. She would have come. She wasn’t afraid of change. Yes, she would have liked living in this house. She and me, by the sea, just as we once had.” Harry’s halfhearted chuckle does little to belie the emotion washing over him. “But she died before it even crossed my mind to leave the island. She had a way of saying exactly what was on her mind, but she was never unkind.” He feels certain that his mother would have been comfortable in Kay’s presence.
A whizzing sound arches across the sky, though they see nothing. Ahead, far in the distance, coming from the direction of the city, flares shoot into the sky and quietly explode. Faint sounds of whistles, rattles, shouts of “Happy New Year” float across the water. Kay slips her hand under his arm and takes his elbow. He unhooks his arm, pulls her to him, and whispers in her hair, “Happy New Year.” She returns the wish solemnly: “Happy New Year, Harry.” She closes her eyes and lifts her face to kiss his lips. In the fleeting half second it takes for him to catch his breath, she has touched his lips with hers and already stepped back from him. She looks overhead at the sky as a wanton firecracker explodes.
“Everything and anything always seems so possible in these first few hours of a New Year. Don’t you think so, Harry?”
He pulls her to him and kisses her again. A squeal of laughter and an isolated, drunken shriek sail across the water.
RIPTIDE
How long the telephone has been ringing he cannot tell. Harry tries to sit up, but his head is heavy. The bedside clock’s red digital numbers glow: 5:00. Who would call so early on a holiday morning? In an instant he bolts into wakefulness: he should not have let Kay drive home. They had certainly consumed a great deal of wine. He did want her to stay, but once they reentered the house, her mood seemed to change. She gathered up and shoved her dishes, dirty, from the sink, counter, and refrigerator into the bags she had brought. When Harry urged her to stay, citing for his case drunk drivers on the highway, moving toward the spare room to clear the bed there for her, she held him back, announcing, “I’m not ready, Harry. I’ll stay when I’m sure.”
Unprepared to handle bad news, he grabs the receiver, hesitates before putting it to his ear. “Harry? Is that you?” the caller tentatively utters. He sits upright and squeezes the telephone as he blurts, “Yes. This is Harry. Who is this?”
“It’s Cassie, Harry. Cassie Bihar.” The pitch of her voice is exactly that of her mother’s. He is perplexed: why is Cassie calling him at five o’clock in the morning?
“I know it’s early. I’m sorry to wake you.”
Kay’s cologne, still permeating his house, has made its way into his bedroom. He can see little in the darkness of the room. Had Cassie called half a day ago, he would have been delighted to hear from her, from anyone with connections to Rose. He closes his eyes. “What’s up, Cassie?”
“Harry, I should have called you yesterday.” She hesitates before continuing. “I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m at the airport.”
In the few words she has spoken, he hears not Cassie but Rose. Even Rose’s daughter’s voice can cause him to feel skinless and raw. He notices that they have not exchanged New Year’s greetings.
“I’m going home, Harry. Something has happened.”
His head spins. He rubs the open palm of his free hand against his cheek and lethargically moves his feet off the bed. He shuffles about in an effort to find his bedroom slippers. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. My father telephoned last night. Something about my mother. He won’t say, exactly. Except that I need to come home.”
Harry switches on the reading lamp beside his bed and stands unsteadily. A fleece shirt hangs on one post of the bed’s footboard. He pulls it on, the motion seeming overblown and weighted down.
“I called Jeevan. But he, too, says don’t ask questions
, that they all need me, and that I must return, and everything will be clear then. I don’t really know why I’m calling you. I’m sorry. But I’m kind of scared.”
Harry’s heart races. During the summer Cassie wordlessly acknowledged her mother’s and his affair; she had lied to her father several times when he telephoned wanting to speak with Rose, saying on one occasion that she had gone to the library, on another to a quilt-making session at the community center.
He thinks of the night just passed, of Kay. In the instant of a Bihar’s voice in his ear, that evening’s contentment, his closeness to Kay, is diminished. The entire evening suddenly seems irresponsible, an act of disloyalty.
In response to Harry’s silence, she mutters, “Well, I just thought I should let you know.” In the background he hears the public-address system announcing the boarding of a flight. Feeling a little stunned, he tells her to call him when she arrives, and feebly wishes her a good flight before she hangs up.
Unsettled, he is fully awake, his head feeling one minute like a lump of lead, and then the next weightless. He walks to the window and parts the curtain. Elderberry Bay is asleep in darkness. He makes his way down the dark hallway to the kitchen. By the light of the opened refrigerator door, he whisks a raw egg into a glass of tomato juice. He sips the reviver and contemplates.
New Year’s Day, full of unanswered questions, seems interminable. Restless in the living room, he cradles the telephone in his lap, all but prepared to ring the Bihars’ house and risk being answered by Shem. But he holds back. It is, too, with some difficulty that he resists contacting Kay.