by Danyel Smith
He said, “I’m no villain. Just like I’m no musketeer. You think I took from you? Took advantage? If I took, I only took what I needed.”
“You’re not supposed to take without giving back.”
“You’re not supposed to give with the expectation of receiving.” He paused. “What all did you give, anyway?”
“I gave myself, asshole.”
“I’m not capable of all what I thought.”
“You’re capable. You just don’t want to be.”
He sucked on that. Like maybe it tasted right. But “You need more” was his final answer.
“Than what?
“You know I want only the best for you. For you and for—”
“Mention this baby and I will maim you,” Eva said, channeling Tupac the gangsta, half real and half fake. All wound only half healing. “I’ll do my best to hurt you.” Hutch from Above The Law says, ‘Cause see, once in a lifetime/Everybody did some dirt. Can’t nothing change those four times. Not even this baby in me right now can change those four times. I’m never going to be all right with that. Never. That’s just what the deal is. I did my dirt. I gotta live with that shit. But try to really live with it. Actually live.
“You’re going to be alone.” It was as if bugles preceded Dart’s statement. Like he was delivering a proclamation from some distant, shrewd king. “Even with the baby, you’re always going to be by yourself and unhappy. I’ll be by myself, but I’ll be free.”
“I’ve been free, dick. Free is cheap and breezy.”
He took off on a bicycle, Eva guessed to the dock.
Tired of this goddamned island. Tired of being one.
CHAPTER 20
The next afternoon, Pritz jumped waves in the salty blue. From the shore Eva watched her, and then watched as Audrey came out in a bulky orange one-piece and joined in. A crusty iguana stood near Audrey’s starfish and Eva stared it down. Eva wanted to see Jeeter before she left Cat Island, wished he would just appear, so she could make a request, but instead Édouard walked onto the beach, Temptations music leaking from his headphones. Eva was surprised, and glad to see him. She wasn’t coughing. The area around her leg wound was tender, but it didn’t ache. Édouard looked at her like she had a ticket to ride.
“How come you’re not on the boat?” Eva said, “You didn’t take Dart to Nassau?”
“Skip took him. I came to see how you are, Miss Eva.”
“Getting it together.” She pushed hair back from her face. “Inch by inch.”
“Yes you are.”
“I liked that song. It’s good.”
“It can be better. Dart told me about your job, that you work with Sunny. That Sunny is his sister.”
“Not like it was a secret.”
“Not that you ever said it.” Édouard pulled his headphones down to his neck. “Dart said you make people into stars. You know how big he said it. That you made Sunny, Sunny. Sunny is everywhere.”
“Ha. I guess it’s about time for me to get back to it.”
“And leave your fairy-tale place.”
“It’s not a fairy tale to me.”
“You see us, this island. We’re like you here. If we’re smart or fortunate, we get out. At least to Nassau.”
“Édouard, if you want to leave,” Eva said, “you should.”
For the first time since she met him, Édouard’s voice was dark. “Don’t have me think different of you. Don’t act like the Rowes that live here.”
“Éd—”
“My sister and I—Haitian,” he said ferociously. “What they say here, she and me aren’t legal, shouldn’t be here. Her and Ben-the-native, not married by what they call the Commonwealth. Where am I going but waiting on Skip to die so I can take over the boat and even then they won’t recognize it as mine. What’s Audrey for but to take care of you and the Rowes. Don’t say stupid shit.”
“It’s not fair,” Eva said and knew it sounded foolish as she said it.
Édouard loosed his mammoth laugh, and this time it was twisted and hard as the ropes he always handled. “Come over by my sister’s, Miss Eva. There’s a surprise for you.”
Eva hadn’t seen that much anger and sour desire and pity in a man’s face since she’d been at Ripples pool watching a husband attend to his wife’s bird hand. Eva met Édouard’s gaze. Then she walked across the burning sands to Audrey and Benjamin’s small patch of lawn.
“Édouard,” Eva said, hesitant about imposing, but dead-set about her mission. “Can you tell me how to find Jeeter? Or I guess I could ask Audrey. I wanted to—”
You could have tipped Eva over with a feather when she saw Sunny, in overalls and sneakers, chatting with Audrey at the clothes-line. And Ron beside her.
So whatcha gonna do? Feel free? Or be free?
—“FREE AGAIN,” words and music by Soul II Soul
As Ron saw Eva, he walked toward the road, and Édouard trudged after him. Eva was overwhelmed. She was confused, and hated to hope. There were no lyrics or labels to fall back on.
She and Sunny hugged tightly, and for Eva, Sun was all the fragrance and familiarity of a home. Sun looked almost exactly like she had in Monterey, when Eva heard her for the first time. Sunny’s hair was in a puffy ponytail and her face was plain and tanned and frankly concerned. Sun’s speaking voice sounded like a song.
“Pritz called me,” Sunny said. She had a half-dozen of Audrey’s batik creations thrown over one shoulder. “So, yeah, stupid. I came over here for you.” They stood there for a moment. Eva still had a hand on Sunny’s arm, and Sunny put her own on top of Eva’s. “I heard your mother passed.”
Eva dropped her hand to her belly.
“I’m sorry for your loss. She’s in a better place.”
Eva thought that maybe her mother was in a better place, and that maybe she needed her mother to be truly gone—so she could stop wondering and lying. “You know I lied, Sunny.”
“Negress, I felt you weren’t telling the truth at the time. In Carmel. Not specifically about your mom. But the thing with the bracelet … I dunno. It was just—”
“Convenient.”
“And Hawk and Ron had already told me—”
“That I’d do anything.”
Hawk and Ron.
Ron.
“Yeah. I was new, Evey. Not dumb.”
“So you signed with me, why?”
“I liked you. What you represented. I figured, the way you handled me was the way you’d handle my business. Men get points for being slick. Even get points for lying. You can’t win in this business without doing that. It’s a simple fact.”
“I lied about everything but business.”
“Go to confession or beat your own ass if you want, but I also saw in your face two things that day in Carmel. I never stopped seeing them, even to right now. You love my music, and you care about my brother.”
“I don’t give a shit about him right now. And what about this cover album? You hate it.”
“I still hate it. But—”
“It’s good for you to have done.”
“I’ll lie and say I never said it if you tell anyone I admitted it, but yes, it’s good for me. Make us both a lot of dough. Let me live how I want for a long time. Make some more of the kind of music I want to, later. Not that you’re thinking about the last part.”
“I am now.”
“Pritz told me you look like shit and you do.”
“She told you the rest.”
“Yeah.”
Eva nodded slowly. Hand to her belly again.
“Ron’s here.”
“I see him.”
“He flew over here with me.”
“You hate Ron.”
“Yeah. But he was calling me, calling me, about you. And then when I heard from Pritz last night, I called him, and Lil’ John was like, Come on, we’re going over there. He said he had to look on a goddamn map. I don’t know why that won me over, but it did. Picturing him looking for you on a map of the world
.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Over at Audrey’s?” It was weird to hear Sunny saying Audrey’s name. Weird that Sunny and Ron knew Audrey. Made Eva feel like things in her life could interweave and even interlock and be all right.
“My brother needs somebody like you,” Sunny said. “Dart needs a leader. You like to lead. That’s what I wanted. And it wasn’t my business to want anything for him. To push it. And anyway, no one said you and Ron were getting married. Jesus. But he’s the father of the baby you’re over here looking like you can’t even carry. Your collarbones are sticking out. Your face is fading away. And aren’t your boobs supposed to get bigger when you’re pregnant?”
“I don’t need Ron to be here. Not now. Some big rescue mission.”
“Nobody said you need him.” Sunny handed Eva her rainbow, and bent down to untie and kick off her shoes. She straightened, and then curled her toes in the pebbly grass. “But would it kill you? If you did?”
Eva stood ankle deep in the ocean, thirty feet of water behind her, crystal sea before her. She walked out farther, but the water got deeper in increments so infinitesimal, she couldn’t feel it. It was the way shame had encroached upon her, the way her infamy in the music business had also. From the water, Eva spied a baby gull. Then a human mother and daughter, playing Scrabble, speaking French.
Eva walked parallel with the shore, past Audrey’s and farther still, until she saw anchored catamarans, and small boats blue and green. Palm trees with green hair blowing identically in the breeze.
“So I get no points on this, huh?”
Eva stood still in the water. Ron was knee deep in it. Saggy cargo pants rolled up, he was barefoot. She walked toward him and he reached out his hand. Eva reached out and shook once, then let him go. She backed up a step. And felt like her feet were sinking with every tiny lap of the sea.
“I been here since early,” he said. “Sun was still in Miami but I was in VA with … you don’t care who with. Me and Sun are over at a hotel called Fernandez Bay, or it’s on Fernandez Bay, or—”
“You came to be my knight.”
“Here it comes—”
“My white knight.”
“There it is. Least you ain’t changed.”
“I was supposed to change in a week?”
There was nothing, for a moment, either of them knew to say.
“How’s the baby?”
It’s his responsibility, too. Talk. “I didn’t have an abortion. I’m not having one.” Eva didn’t know what to do with her hands. She uncurled and curled them into fists. “Feel safe about that.”
“Are you glad?”
“I’m getting used to being glad about it.” Eva looked directly at Ron.
“What’s with Dart?” Ron hitched up his pants. His forehead was getting pink. “You and him.”
“We’re asking questions about other people now?”
“You were doing so good. Answer the question.”
“Whatever it was, it ain’t no more.”
Eva sat down in the sand. The water lapped at her. The salt felt good in her wounds.
“I brought the rest of your stuff with me,” Ron said.
Eva could barely remember what he could have. What selection of shorts and dresses and sandals, curling irons, tweezers, and nail polish removers.
He stepped toward her and crouched down. There was still a yard between them.
“Why are you lugging my stuff around?”
“You’re carrying something of mine.” Ron paused. “It is ours?”
Eva nodded. It was just that word. Ours.
“Can you answer me?”
“It’s ours.” I need to go see Jeeter.
“So can we get you to a doctor?”
“Yeah.” Eva’s hand went to her belly. “They told you my mom died.”
“I heard.” Ron was beside himself. He wanted to grab her. Make her feel better. He wanted to let her cry. He wanted to see her cry. He wanted her to chide him and tease him. Curse him about the Tampa MC, ask him about his points and how his money was, ask him about Hawk and Myra. He wanted her to demand that he marry her. Wanted her to take the towel from around her waist and pull him into the water. Wanted her to come back to his room at Fernandez Bay, put on one of the short dresses and a pair of the four-inch heels he’d brought over, and fuck him until he passed out. He wanted her back in NYC and L.A., plump and telling all her wack friends and jealous rivals that she was having his baby. He wanted her to feel all right about everything. He wanted them to build something together, and he was confident he could have it all just like this. He thought that their personalities matched, and that whatever happened, with work, with a kid, that they could maybe work it out. He’d been waiting on her, in his way, for a long time.
“She’s never going to see the baby. Never going to see me.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Eva had to think about that. It was a rare thing for her, feeling tentative. Feeling like she would ask somebody for something. It was hard for Eva to ask Ron. She made herself. For the baby’s sake, and for her own. “Will you come with me to see my dad?” Then Eva Glenn braced herself.
“Where’s he at?” Ron said without blinking.
“Near Vegas.”
“So let’s go.
Addendum
GROOVE magazine
July 2005
(cover story)
SUNNY DAYS
Celebrating her tenth year in the recording business, the legendary Sunny Addison chats with DANYEL SMITH about love and life, and finally breaks her silence about her brother, the mysteries of “The Rain Song,” and her secret weapon.
SHE’S LIKE A SUN—a source of light and heat at which the world is awed at every dawn. She moves like our sun, too—slowly around her world, shining through even when the air is cold. Sunny Addison remains a mystery, a star on high sending down miraculous rays we dance in, make love in, and—when she sings about pain—we burn in. At her best, she’s a place in which to find comfort from a bitter world.
Fittingly, it’s a warm day in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a shoreline community in Encinitas, California, about ninety miles south of Los Angeles, and a hop-skip-jump from Deirdre “Sunny” Addison’s hometown of San Diego. The breeze is light around her oval pool, and even in April, the view from Sunny’s three-story palace overlooking the surf is like something out of a dream.
“Hell, yeah! It is a dream come true. I’m from the SD, got my true, professional start in Monterey, and Carmel-by-the-Sea—but it gets too cold up there for me. Cardiff is warm almost year-round. Perfect for my hot blood.”
Sunny—long estranged from her father, and “in long-distance therapy,” she says, with her mother, Lt. Thelma Lynn Addison (USN, Ret.)—is stretched out on a chaise (“My favorite position,” she says, laughing) gulping a shot of pulverized wheatgrass. There’s music on the stereo—old A Tribe Called Quest and older Full Force, Randy Crawford, some Tupac Shakur, Tamia, Carole King, Usher, Mary J. Blige, some Digital Underground. The superstar is in a bopping, sunny mood as she reflects on her tenth anniversary as a singer-songwriter. “Really, I’ve been writing songs since I was kid, so this whole tenth anniversary thing is hilarious to me.” Her sixth album is already platinum after a month in the stores, and critics, with few exceptions, have given On Recollection thumbs up across the board. Entertainment Weekly said, “Sunny Addison remains aglow … is still a force to be reckoned with.” Vibe, “Sunny is at the height of her powers … the only singer out there who’s skill as a songwriter matches the power and soulfulness of her voice.” And Hip Hop Soul calls Recollection “as mature and kick-ass as that bottle of Cristal you lifted from Puffy’s ‘97 white linen birthday set—so tilt it back, turn it up and feel the cool sunlight.”
Sun is also relaxing in the glow of being honored as Songwriter of the Year by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). “Now the award is a big deal,” she says, getting stern. “I
love to sing. Love to sing. But to be acknowledged for my song-writing, especially after all the different kinds of albums I’ve done, well, it just feels important. Like folks really listen when I tell my stories.”
The main hallway of Sunny’s home is lined with platinum album plaques, and she has a small room off her cluttered office with cases of trophies and keys to various cities in the United States and around the world. She has guitars on stands in about every room, though she says “her” guitar is locked away “someplace safe, soaking up the world’s best energy, and waiting on me to pick it up and do some writing.” She has the requisite living room-size closet full of rare shoes and a breathtaking quantity of clothes. She has a boyfriend (rumored to be, over the last year, music mogul Hakeem Watkins) whose name she won’t mention. “If you want to call him ‘boyfriend,’ “she says with a wry grin. “He’s too old for that, really, and he’s on the other coast so much we can’t even get it together to get pregnant.” She’s happy, she says, that she’s got money in the bank, that she’s stretching herself by delving into acting, and that she has people around her that she can trust. “It’s the key in this business,” she says, motioning toward the kitchen for some refreshment, “knowing which bridges to burn, and which bridges to cross.”
And you know the difference?
“With a little help from my friends, I do. But then, you gotta know who your friends are.”
So you do know who your friends are.
“I know who my friend is,” she says. “I’m exaggerating, but I basically have the same people around me that I always have. We have our ups and downs, but we rarely have our outs.”
Addison’s career has been filled with mostly ups, but has surely has its share of downs. Seven years ago, her career was in the outer stratosphere. After only two albums (her strong 1996 debut, Poems on Various Subjects, and the wondrous 1997 Bliss Unknown) she had Grammys, MTV and BET awards, and even an Oscar. “It was unreal when Bliss came out,” she says. “Everybody was worried about the sophomore jinx, but I was confident. The spirit of Phillis Wheatley was on my side.”