“Is morning time already, Barrington.” She is using the three-syllable version of my name . . .
“You know how time does pass, dear?” Statement, not a question.
“Does it?” Threat, not a question.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep, dear?” Instruction, not a question.
“Oh, I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when the Good Lord comes for me, and that won’t be long now, I am sure.” Emotional blackmail—pure and simple.
“In which case, I hope He comes for me before He comes for you, dear.” A lie—pure and simple.
“Unless that one with horns and a pitchfork catch you first.”
I try and concentrate on the job at hand, but when I sneak a glance at Carmel I see she getting ready to invade Poland.
I take off my three rings and pop them into the bowl. My ruby beauty is like a thimbleful of blood that’s been poured into an oval mold of gold. Bought it for myself when my first rental property went into profit. The golden truck tire was given to me by that German construction worker in 1977. Bit of a knuckle-duster, he was, “rough trade.” My favorite is a coiled serpent with diamond scales and glinting sapphire eyes, its head poised, ready to take a bite of the apple.
As for my wedding ring? Only a pair of metal cutters could get it off of my fingers. Many times I have resisted a trip to the hardware store.
“Bringing the stink of cigars into my bedroom again.”
“I sorry.”
“And that renk rum narsiness.”
“I sorry.”
“When you goin’ mend your ways?”
“I sorry.”
“You could-a called, at least.”
“I know, I . . . am . . . sorry.”
“I told you to get a mobile phone years ago.”
Am I truly bonkers? A mobile phone so the ole girl can track me down any time of day or night?
Carmel been playing this game a long, long time. Sometimes she let it drop for a few months or even years, like in the 1980s, when she seemed quite content, enjoyed her work, made more of an effort with her appearance, started socializing with her work friends. Me and she settled into a détente. Then, out of the flaming blue, she decides to get the hump, when all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep.
Far as she’s concerned, her husband is a womanizer. Out sowing his seed with all those imaginary Hyacinths, Merediths, and Daffodils. On what evidence? Alien perfume? Lipstick on my collar? Ladies panties in mi jacket pocket?
I can honestly say to my wife, “Dear, I ain’t never slept with another woman.”
She chooses not to believe me.
Her big eyes are almost popping out of her head. If she don’t watch out, I goin’ make a grab and play ping-pong with them one of these days.
What Carmel should be grateful for, what Carmel should realize, is that her man here is one of the good ones, because he been coming home to her bed for fifty years. All right, all right, sometimes it’s the next morning, maybe the afternoon, occasionally a day or two might pass . . .
“Yes, my dear. I go get a mobile phone if it make you happy.” My face said, Don’t you go breaking our Nonaggression Pact, dear.
I release my big brass belt. The one with the buffalo-head buckle that splits into two.
We have come to the point in the proceedings where I drop my trousers. For the first time this night. (Un-for-tu-nate-ly.)
I got to get my socks off somehow, but I don’t feel like bending over, because I might just throw up all over the molting shag-pile carpet Carmel bought thirty years ago for her knees when she’s praying morning, noon, and night, and even out loud in her sleep. Nonetheless, if I dare sully it, she’ll get a rifle from wherever she keeps her arsenal of metaphorical weapons and blast me out the window.
I cross one leg over the other and, wobbling like an out-of-practice yogi (and feeling Carmel willing me to fall over), I manage to whip them off.
We have reached an impasse.
She is the Sphinx guarding the city of Thebes. Head of a woman, body of a lioness, wings of an eagle, memory of an elephant, bite of a saltwater crocodile with two thousand pounds per square inch of pressure, ready to snap my head off.
In order for me to get into bed, I got to give the right answer to the riddle she not even asking, because she think she know the answer.
On the wall opposite is the damned wallpaper she loves so much. It has a certain theme: garish flowers, jungle vegetation, tropical animals. It begins to sway, and I steel myself for the herd of elephants that’s about to stampede all over me.
I’m so tired I could sleep standing up in my white Y-fronts and string vest.
That’s when I realize I still have my hat on. I take it off and bow with grandiose hat-waving flourishes, like an eighteenth-century gentleman being presented at court. When we first married this would-a been enough to send Wifey into forgiving giggles.
She used to tell me I was the funniest man alive.
Now her heart is so cold you can snap off a frozen shard and cut a diamond with it.
When did I last make that woman laugh? What decade was that exactly? What century? What millennium?
She staring at me like I am a complete imbecile.
What I supposed to do? Walk toward the bed and risk the wrath of her forkin’ fury? Curl up on the floor? Sleep in another bedroom? Put on my Derek Rose silk monogrammed pajamas and go downstairs? The very same pair I have to hand-wash, otherwise she’ll ruin them as she did my new cashmere dressing gown that was made from wool sheared from the Golden Fleece. Lady-Wife managed to shrink it three sizes in the washing machine before the month was out.
Just what the flaming heck am I supposed to do when I is too tired and blasted drunk to do anything except sleep?
Carmel rolls out of bed in that blue nylon nightie with ruffles at the cleavage that sticks to her various body parts when she walks. (Un-for-tu-nate-ly.)
She slips into her foamy orange slippers with bobbles on the toes and halts right up in-a my face. “I just heard today that my papi’s had a second stroke and is in hospital and I been thinking how I should-a never let you turn me against him.”
Whaaaat? That was only when we first married; rest of the time she did it herself. Past thirty years I been begging her to take extended trips back home.
“Pray, isn’t this the man who pummeled your mother so often there was a bed with her name on it at the hospital?”
Morris is not the only one showing signs of dementia, clearly. For long as I known Carmel, the words bastard and daddy been hyphenated; just as husband and bastard been similarly conjoined. She’s a revisionist, like those Holocaust deniers.
“That was a long time ago . . . I sure my mother has forgiven him now she’s up there with the Good Lord . . . otherwise they wouldn’t-a . . . let her in.”
Definitely dementia.
“He nearly a hundred years old and I’ve not seen him for nearly thirty of them. He asking for his little girl.”
Man had good innings, considering.
He was a big man over there, but soon as I started work for him I saw how small he really was. Broke practically every bone in her mother’s body. I begged her to leave the brute, but what she tell me? “Barry, this don’t concern you.”
Too many women was like that: no matter how much beats they got, they feel say they gotta put up with it. And when they dare go to the police, the police tell them a-go back to their husbands.
My own mother’s mother got chopped up by her second husband so bad with a billhook she ended up in surgery at Holberton, and thereafter never walked again. She died from internal injuries before I born. My mother always drummed it into me, “Treat women good, yuh hear?” And that’s what I been doing: never once laying a finger on my wife, and staying around to raise my children. No way was I goin’ create space in my wife’s bed for some shady stepdaddy character to sleep in the same house as Donna and Maxine.
No sah, my girls was protected.
Anyways, Carmel better hotfoot it over there to secure that big house she grew up in before the will-contesters change the locks. Her father’s had over eighty years to spread his seed.
She still standing up in my face with her morning breath. “Listen to me good, Barrington. I flying home to see my father on Monday, and when I return, things is goin’ change round here. I am not putting up with you putting your thing about with those trampy cows no more.”
I cut my eye at her, but she don’t flinch.
Give me some freeness, woman. I am so fed up with having to face your miserable face after a night of conviviality.
“Let me tell you something, Carmel. The only cow I know is the one giving me blasted cheek when I don’t deser—”
Before I can finish my sentence, she delivers a bone-crushing ba-daow across my chops.
Oh Laaard, we have come to this, ehn? We have come to this again?
“God will damn you,” she says, shouldering past me.
I spin around, remembering those heavy potion jars on the dressing table are now within reach of her paws.
“You and your narsiness,” she says, plucking her yellowy flannelette dressing gown from the hook and wrapping herself up in it, flinging open the door.
I step out after her, repressing the overwhelming desire to help her hooves down those very steep stairs, all twenty-three of them.
Calm yourself, Barry. You better than that.
I go to open my mouth instead, but it feels like I goin’ retch: a projectile vomit of fifty years of deception, disillusionment, and self-destruction hurtling down the stairs onto her back.
A bouillabaisse of vomit.
A banquet of sick.
A bucketful of shit.
Carmel . . . Carmel, dear, you know what? I tell you what? You right. Yes, you right. God a-damn me a-ready. Never you mind yourself, I was fast-tracked down into the Eternal Flames a long time ago. God a-damn me the day I chose to enter this hellish so-called marriage instead of following my Morris-loving, sweet-loving, full-blooded, hot-blooded, pumping-rumping, throbbing organ of an uncontainable, unrestrainable, undetainable man-loving heart.
2
The Song of Sweetness
1960
. . . there you are, Carmel, swaying on the white Hollywood-style swing-seat on Papi’s veranda
rocking back and forth while everybody inside sleeps off the wedding feast of
pepper pot and conch fritters, fungee and tamarind stew, papaya pie, ducana, yummy sugarcake and butterflaps
their bodies weighed down while their rum-soaked minds take flight into the night
relatives are crammed into the two spare rooms, tanties—Eudora, Beth, Mary, Ivy—the uncles—Aldwyn and Alvin—numerous spouses and cousins—Augusta, Obediah, Trevor, Adelaide, Neville, Barbara, who came from up-country for your special day
although nobody could afford to come back from foreign—Brooklyn, Toronto, London
Mommy and Papi are in their bedrooms, east, west, so Mommy don’t have to hear the maid Loreene fornicating with Papi before sneaking back to her hut at dawn and then emerging like she all pure and innocent to cook breakfast for everyone, and not a man-eating marriage-wrecker
you could kick that girl to kingdom come—him too
you catch a whiff of the honeysuckle in the hedgerows just below the veranda and inhale it deep, hoping its heady loveliness will make you drowsy
come morning, you goin’ be smelling the yellow bell-flower just outside your bedroom
but you’ve hardly slept these past forty-eight hours because your mind won’t stop replaying the last twelve of them when
although it was a certain Miss Carmelita Miller who walked down the aisle trying hard not to trip up on your beaded, ivory gown, it was a certain Mrs. Barrington Walker who did the return trip
all grown up and sophisticated on the arm of your handsome consort, when all you really wanted to do was a volley of cartwheels up the aisle and a little jig when you got showered with genuine pink and white confetti on the church steps, not that rice-substitute rubbish
you a real woman now, Carmel
yes, a bona fide lady conjoined in holy matrimony which no man can put asunder, in accordance with the instructions of the Good Lord, praise Him, amen, got the ring to show for it too, gold, perfect fit on your dainty finger, goin’ enjoy flashing it hither and thither to let everyone know you got a husband
you spoken for
you not goin’ end up spinster now
plenty woman round here don’t get husbands
they just get babies
your husband—who is at this very minute spending his first night in your childhood bed, his legs dangling over the end, because he so tall and sprawling
your husband—who drank so much rum punch he couldn’t stand straight to do any dancing and he the best male dancer in St. John’s, same as you the best female dancer
you don’t mind: Barry’s even funnier when he’s drunk, you lucky to have him
all of your life Mommy’s been plaiting up your hair between her knees and moaning about how
Carmel, when the day comes, you gotta find a husband who likes your inner nature. Your father picked me for my prettiness, which don’t last
and she’d tug your hair so hard you’d yell and she’d dig her knuckles into your scalp to drive the point home
soon as prettiness start to fade, he was out roaming the garden, picking flowers still in full bloom
Mommy, you said when your day finally had come and you and Barry was engaged
don’t worry about me, because Barry is a wonderful human being who makes me laugh more than anybody in the whole world and he thinks I’m the sweetest girl on the whole island. You see how we get on? It’s called compatibility, Mommy. Way marriages supposed to be
she shut up after that, just plaited your hair like she was a red Indian scalping you
nobody can treat you like a child no more now you’re married, not even Papi, who lost his rights over you once your husband inherited them
you goin’ be a good, deserving wife too, Carmel, isn’t it? you been studying the home economics manual from your schooldays in preparation
when your husband gets back from work, home will be a haven of rest and order
you goin’ touch up your makeup and put a ribbon in your hair and have dinner ready in the oven
and if he late and it gets burnt, you not goin’ start hectoring him like some of those low-class, bad-mouthed women out there who can’t keep man and end up lonely ole hag
no, you goin’ ask him questions about his day in a soft and soothing voice and listen to his news and complaints with a pleasant smile
you not goin’ blow it like Mommy, who should-a kept her lip buttoned instead of backchatting Papi, not that you exonerate his badness, and though you feel sorry for her, Mommy tests the patience of a saint, as Papi keeps telling her
no, you had a plan to catch man, and as soon as Barry started working for Papi you was ecstatic, started sneaking him the looks you’d been practicing in the mirror, waiting for the right boy to come along, and then, soon as he saw you, you’d turn away with an enigmatic smile
it worked
because he started to escort you to school, standing at the end of the drive in his khaki trousers ironed like a soldier’s, crisp white shirt all smart, smoothly shaven face, and always teasing you
Carmel, you’d look simply goy-geous and simply mah-vellous if it wasn’t for that simply gi-normous purple pimple at the end of your nose or those two camel eyes of yours that are so crossed the only thing they can see is each other
or he’d grab your satchel and throw it in a wide, slow-motion arc into a sun-hazy field of damp tomato and cucumber plants, forcing you to chase him to get it or he’d only throw it again, or he’d do a really exaggerated Charlie Chaplin walk with a tree branch like he wasn’t eight years older than you but still a schoolboy pranking around
then there was that one time when
you was genuinely annoyed with his antics, because this wasn’t exactly your idea of a romantic courtship, and you tossed your head at him and shouted, Go sling your hook, boy
he stopped jiving around and stood still by the side of the road, head cocked, all serious, and said nothing while
Ole Pomeroy’s horse-and-cart passed carrying a cargo of straw-hatted farmworkers and black pineapples and
Andrina rode past on her big black bicycle, balancing her small daughter on the handlebars and a basket of yams on her head
Dr. Carter’s terminally ill Chevrolet juddered past so noisily it should be given its last rites and
you heard the sound of the Bagshaw tractor droning in the distance and schoolchildren’s voices coming up behind you
and there was flies buzzing everywhere because of the manure in the field, but you didn’t even bother wave off the one that landed on your face, watching Barry watching
you, and there he was, standing there in the rising morning heat, his sandals all dusty now, sweaty patches spreading under his arms, the sun glinting on him, and then he spoke in a tone you not heard before, Carmel, sniffing up his lips and nose like you stank as bad as the manure out there
Carmel . . . I know you ain’t no sourpuss, really
and even though tears filled up your eyes and you tried to hold them back, you couldn’t
Barry came over, looking a bit regretful, steered you to the rocky outcrop on the other side of the road by prodding you gently on the back with his hand, and you sat down, arms up against each other’s, and you could feel the heat coming through his side, and he slow-punched you in the arm
But I know you a sweet girl deep down inside. Yuh see, Carmel, I am an archaeologist of the human character and I hereby declare I go help you excavate all of your sweetness
Sweet Girl became his pet name for you, and once you knew that you was sweet deep down inside, you couldn’t backchat him no more, you had to be sweet all of the time or you’d disappoint him
oh to swing higher and higher until you reach the top, because what you got?
what you got, Sweet Girl?
you got the cream of the crop, that’s what
no man on this island more better-looking or got a more attractive personality than your husband, you swear it, clever too, like you used to be
Mr. Loverman Page 2