The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel

by Thea Goodman

Out of habit, she pressed a button on her phone to call Ines, who was always reachable on her cell lately, always staring at her phone, waiting for the fertility clinic to call and tell her when to sleep with Art. Veronica couldn’t ramble about disintegration to poor Ines, who remained trapped in a painful epic baby quest.

  “Good news!” Ines said as she answered. “I’m eleven weeks!”

  “Really?” Veronica sat down on the edge of her bed to absorb the news and bounced a little. Ines must have known for a long time without saying a word. They’d told each other everything since they’d met as Barnard freshmen more than fifteen years earlier. “When did you find out? Is Arthur excited?” Ines would now know this uncontainable, blowsy love.

  “He’s ecstatic.”

  “Amazing! My God, our kids will grow up together!” Clara might feel as if she had a sibling.

  “Anyway, how are you?” Ines asked. Veronica hesitated. Maybe, just this morning, with Ines’s good news and the extra sleep, she was integrating; Ines’s lie was one of omission only. It would be childish to complain.

  “Strange but good, I think. John let me sleep in this morning. That hasn’t happened in so long and, for once, he didn’t wake up Clara last night.”

  “That would drive me nuts. Can’t you stop him?”

  “I can’t! He goes in sometimes when I’m already asleep.” How Veronica wished she possessed Ines’s force of personality. Ines would never let Arthur get away with this. “Listen, this is the best news, but I should probably get going. Clara’s not back for her nap, and I need to find out where they are.”

  “No you don’t. They’re fine.” Ines could be clipped and sharp, but Veronica appreciated this; Ines brought her onto a single plane devoid of ambivalence.

  “You’re right,” she said, wanting to see Ines, to feel that solidity. “Do you want to meet tonight, to celebrate? I’m going to ask John to stay in with Clara.” She was so refreshed by the extra sleep, by the unexpected gift of that nap.

  “I’ll cook you dinner,” Ines said.

  “Or we could go out.” Veronica didn’t want dinner at Ines’s apartment; every time away from Clara was burdened with having to be a peak experience. But Ines remained free within her own home. And she had that blue ashtray and those neat joints she rolled expertly. Veronica wondered if she could smoke one, even though Ines couldn’t. Ines told her to come over at seven. “I can’t wait to see you … and congratulations.”

  When she left the building, the thin air sparkled with cold, wending its way into the hollows behind her knees, her scalp, and even her teeth. Her breath steamed. She paused when she saw a man pushing a stroller up the block. She wanted desperately for it to be Clara and John, and she fervently hoped it wouldn’t be. If she saw Clara now, she would have to pick her up and hug her. She would press her face onto those sublime smooth cheeks, inhale, and not want to let her go. But no; the man that passed was Asian, the stroller was black. She turned at the end of the block, a little worried, but with each step she was freer and freer.

  Soon she sat alone in the backseat of a cab speeding up Sixth Avenue. The driver wore a maroon turban and turned off the radio when she spoke. The prospect of the peaceful ten-minute ride with the sooty breeze blowing in her face soothed her. She lounged in the backseat. An ambulance startled her briefly with its foreboding blare. But when she looked out the window, the magic of sleep had applied a glimmer to the dirty snow, a sheen to the formerly gray sky, as if a window were opening within high walls.

  3

  Friday

  John

  The air was soft and warm and smelled of coconuts. John could feel it rolling down the aisle of the airplane when the doors were finally opened. Women exchanged their shoes for sandals. People peeled off their sweaters and put on their sunglasses. The winter dryness in his nasal passages, in his bones, melted away. Was it possible? John couldn’t quite believe it. Holding the sleeping, sticky baby to his chest, he stepped out the door and stood for a moment at the top of the landing. The largest sky hung above him, heavy with puffy white clouds. He could see the airport and beyond that a group of cows munching on grass beneath trees permanently bent by the trade winds. Around the edges of the airport there was cotton, white down growing out of scrappy brown thorns. He walked down the stairs and across the glare of the tarmac. Inside the open building, humid breezes caressed his face and arms. The customs officers were languid. Relaxation, or perhaps malaise, permeated the atmosphere. How could anyone work here, where it smelled like sugar, where standing in the breeze was so sensational that it felt like actually doing something?

  The pretty caramel-skinned woman behind the counter looked at the two passports then pursed her lips as she examined John’s face. “Just the two of you? Without her mum?”

  As John hesitated, the woman smirked. Or was she simply smiling? He recalled a Caribbean way of teasing, of being willfully indirect. “Without her mother, yes,” was all he could manage. The woman smiled. He’d been paranoid; she meant no harm. They had no baggage and moved quickly out to a line of taxis. The white tourists around him were donning wide-brimmed hats and visors and applying zinc to their noses. He liked to think that he and Clara were different, that they weren’t tourists but emissaries. He moved with the spirit of a mission; for what cause, he couldn’t say. His mood, the high from the morning, felt a lot like being in love: irrational and full of conviction. John felt he had to be here, that it was inevitable, and there was nowhere else he and Clara could have possibly gone.

  His driver spoke about the weather. “It’s been sunny, hot, for some time, and the rainy season is probably over.”

  “What about those big clouds over there?”

  “It rains a little bit every day—a shower,” he was told. “No big storm.”

  John was happy, exuberant. His heart pounded as if he’d done a line of coke. He had a few times, years ago, with Arthur, after pickup basketball games. Veronica claimed, then, to have never liked drugs. He’d felt so good on those nights, powerful and unconfined. That omnipotence was back; here he was, in the Caribbean, in the coldest stretch of a New York winter.

  Awake, Clara shimmered against him. He hadn’t spent much time with her lately and was surprised by her constant movement, the tight compression of energy buzzing within her, the dynamic play of muscles in her face. “See the cows?” he asked her, pointing out the window. She grinned widely and kicked in response.

  As tired as he was, he kept looking at her. As a child up way past his bedtime, he’d watched fireworks over the Hudson; his lids drooped with fatigue and then snapped open, in thrall to each colorful explosion. Clara’s kicks and coos were as compelling as those streams of fire exploding in the sky.

  They drove through miles of sugar cane. The pale-green stalks rose high above the chilly, air-conditioned white minivan. Veronica would have been appalled because there was no car seat. Instead, he’d pulled the seat belt over both of them as Clara bounced on his knees. The cane smelled sweet. Its walls created a green tunnel, with the back of the driver’s shaved chocolate-colored head in the foreground and the twisting road ahead. When the cane petered out, the road went uphill, grew craggy and littered with stones. Goats wandered by, crying, mama, mama. Clara twirled her wrists in delight.

  Her good nature had saved them. On the plane she had thrown up and then giggled. She had soaked through one diaper after another. When he’d carried her to the tiny bathroom to change her, she kicked constantly and flailed her hands about, grabbing hold of a stray piece of toilet paper with rapt fascination; an insatiable curiosity propelled her, as if on this very morning, after sleeping through her first night, the world was captivating. She traced her plump hand through the brown sludge that had migrated to her belly. John had to grab her fat wrist to stop her from tasting it. He’d been soiled and irritable, while she was amused and happy. “Hold still,” he’d said harshly. She’d merely cooed. She loved him automatically, gazing up at him with unsullied devotion. Wiping her han
d clean, he had looked forward to the moment when he could lay her down and take a shower. But, no. Who would hold her?

  As the plane descended, she’d pursued a cry that was jagged and ongoing, almost rhythmic. He felt keenly aware of the passenger next to him, a Caribbean woman in her early fifties with an air of competence. Was she laughing at him? He would show her, and indeed he had, producing a bottle at the right moment.

  He was righteous as Clara sucked silently. The woman covered her mouth with her hand, then removed it to say, “She have you tie roun’ her finger.” John nodded, while a surge of hostility rose in him: Sure she did—was there any other way?

  In the bumpy van, the landscape grew wilder. The green dissolved, and in its place low scrubby trees and rocks erupted. Children appeared by the side of the road in navy-blue school uniforms and white socks. They carried books in their arms, across their chests. Some peered into the car with interest. A tomato-faced white man clutching a baby was all they saw, and they turned away.

  The driver was headed to the east coast of the island, where the Atlantic hit the shore. The west coast, where he’d once stayed with Veronica, had the gentler Caribbean Sea, the rows of tourist hotels and attractions. It had golf, and the terrain was mellowed like green felt. The east coast, which he’d read about in the in-flight magazine, had the rougher Atlantic Ocean, surfers, rural villages in hills, wild billy goats, spindly wind-bent palm trees, pottery stands, and, apparently, just two hotels perched high on the cliffs overlooking the water. He’d chosen Lord Harrington’s Castle, described as the fancier of the two, and told the driver to go there. He liked the campy, aristocratic sound of the name, the implied raggedness and grandeur. It was the sort of place Veronica would find amusing, calling it seedy but charming. He’d briefly considered Turtle Cove, a small but new hotel with a good package. Screw packages. He and Clara would stay at the baroque, over-the-top Lord Harrington’s Castle amid billy goats and crashing waves. No doubt Veronica would find it too run down. But it was perfect!

  There would be a perfect concentration on the given tasks without endless negotiations. John could take care of the baby, and Veronica could get some sleep. When he returned, maybe she would be feeling better.

  Clara batted her little hands as they drove, as if compelled by an invisible mobile hanging before her. Her brain, her entire nervous system, had catapulted ahead in a day; her senses were clear portals opening onto a sensational world. She lunged forward as if to crawl away—she didn’t even know how to sit, let alone crawl—and John had to keep pulling her back. The car accelerated up the final hill to reveal the stucco crumble that was Lord Harrington’s Castle. Upon seeing it, John’s chest opened as if he were returning to someplace familiar.

  He’d have to call Veronica right away to let her know what had happened. One phone call and he’d be free from her new critical vision, and he’d free her from her own anxious mothering, at once overvigilant and distant. She could finally rest. Besides, he and Clara were doing fine.

  But when they pulled up beside the hotel, Clara took one look at the white behemoth and started to shriek. John offered her a bottle, then the precious lamb, but she swatted them away. He was sweating and wiped his brow as Clara became frantic and twisted in his arms. Five minutes passed as the driver patiently waited to be paid and the porter came and held his backpack. Without notice, the driver gently touched Clara’s back with a large hand. Startled, she stopped crying, turned to face him, then lunged for the silver hair of his beard and tugged it. Another person. A diversion. The driver took her easily into his arms and walked a few paces, leaving John both stunned and relieved. When Clara was calm, the driver placed her back in the baby carrier on John’s chest, and she began to doze.

  Looking around, John recognized the hotel from an old Parliament cigarette ad. The turquoise-blue sea deepened to azure behind the white pillars flanking the pool. On the beach, the impossibly tall palms bent over the powdery shore. In the foreground, two models had smoked miraculously white cigarettes. He paid the driver with dollars and gave him too large a tip. It was three P.M., and there was a strong breeze off the ocean that cooled his perspiration.

  The key to his room was attached to a palm-sized brass cricket player. It knocked against the wooden door as the bellman opened it. After the ongoing preliminaries—Would you like a beverage, sir? Do you know where is the safe?—he would be alone with the sleeping Clara, the glass louvers smeared with sea salt. The room was compact; two double beds dominated most of it, surrounded by a thin perimeter of floor. Twin seascapes in gilt frames were hung above each bed at slightly different heights. But there was no Veronica here to finagle a better room. It would be a relief not to have to switch.

  John pulled down the chenille cover on the bed and slowly placed Clara in the middle of the white sheets. Then he surrounded her with pillows. He went to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. He made a mental note: shower, call V. Yes. Then he left the bathroom and lay down beside the baby. He opened his eyes, reconsidering. He didn’t want to roll on top of her and possibly crush her, as Veronica always feared. She felt that co-sleeping was indulgent and didn’t want Clara to get used to it. He went and lay in the other bed. He jerked awake three times to call Veronica, but he hesitated. What exactly would he say? He had left a note. That was good. No, he had to get up. But his lids were heavy and he would give in to sleep for just a few minutes.

  He woke to the baby’s cry. She looked up at him beseechingly as he stood over her bed. He undid her wet diaper and put on a fresh one. The room had grown shadier, and insects were beginning to scream. Three hours had passed. It was six in the evening. Soon Veronica would be coming home from work; she’d be worried. Two chameleons danced on the windowsill. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a three-hour nap. He wanted a drink before he called her. He opened the mini-fridge (old money like Veronica and her family, he’d been surprised to find, never touched the mini-fridge—it was too extravagant) and took out a Banks, the local beer, which tasted like freezing pennies. He’d never tasted anything as delicious. The terrazzo floor was refreshing on his hot bare feet. He picked up the phone and dialed reception to get the international code, then hung up; he would take a bath first. In the bathroom, he ran a tub and took Clara in with him. She loved the little seashell-shaped soaps and tried to eat one of them. Finished, he stepped out and wrapped a fluffy white towel—the one luxury in the room—around them both. He was good at this, he was. She was happy with him. And he knew what to do next: What to do next was food; she needed food.

  He dressed and gave her the remainder of the goat-milk formula, which she chugged quickly. He would have to buy more the next day. Where would he get the herbs to go with it? The goat milk was mixed with a blend of herbs that Veronica insisted on. Regular formula she’d deemed too chemical. Clara was addicted. He wasn’t sure what was in it but thought it was anise, because sometimes her breath smelled like licorice. How the hell would he get anise here? He was getting light-headed and needed to eat, so he dressed her and they left for the dining room, Clara facing forward in the carrier, kicking her legs. The evening air was incredible, warm and silky around his bare arms and neck. He heard music as he approached the dining room—brass drums and cymbals vibrating—and he smelled curry from the buffet.

  He took a plate off a palm-leaf place mat and got in line with the few other people in the dining room. The hunger he felt was sharp and affirming, a proof of his vitality. He served himself some of everything, until his plate was overflowing. He was starving.

  As he was walking to a table, he saw a couple, arms entwined, waiting in line. The man had long simian hands, hands he somehow knew, and the woman, who was very short, smiled at him with recognition. Joss Saperstein raised his dark eyes to John’s and said, “Hey, man! What are you guys doing here?” Adele, his girlfriend, a blond Cuban, said, “Hey, I thought that was you. Veronica never told me!”

  “What are you doing here?” John asked. His brow soake
d with sweat as Joss and Adele spoke. They would tell. Joss was saying something like that now, how he couldn’t wait to tell Art—and Art would tell Ines. Joss Saperstein was a childhood friend of Art’s. John had known him for years; through Joss, Veronica had met Adele, and on occasion the two women went out. He didn’t think they spoke much these days but couldn’t be sure. Those were Joss’s giant hands spinning on a basketball. He’d last seen him a few months ago at Ines’s birthday party and enjoyed his company; John now hated Joss for being so infallibly nice and Adele for being so sociable.

  “Where’s Veronica?” Adele asked, her head tilted quizzically. “We should all have a drink together after dinner.”

  “She’s talking to the manager about switching rooms,” John said, staring straight through Adele’s creamy vanilla face to some distant star. “Ours is really small.” What had he done? He remembered telling Joss and Adele all about Barbados. Back at the party in the fall, it was he who had insisted that they come, extolling the island’s many virtues with the air of an old timer, an expert.

  “We’ll let you go, man,” Joss said, a wary but kind expression in his black brows.

  John took his plate to a small table against the back wall and unhooked Clara from his sticky chest when he sat down. Holy shit! Someone poured his water. Another person asked him if he’d like a high chair. “That would be great,” he said, eager to cool off. When the high chair came, it was not the plush upholstered vinyl Italian one they had at home but a stiff wooden boxy thing with a low back. He placed Clara in it briefly, and she slumped over the edge and began to suck on the railing. He looked around, hoping no one had seen; Clara couldn’t even sit up. He took her back onto his lap, smiling sheepishly when someone came and hesitantly removed the high chair. He ate fast, greedily, over her head, occasionally dropping little bits of food in her hair while she gummed a fried plantain.

  “Would you like a wine list?” a server asked, as he put two glasses on the table. “Your wife is joining you?”