Briskly wheeling her stack of suitcases toward the dozens of boys hustling by the exit, she scanned the crowd for Hubbards.
She’d left a message, clearly unreceived, saying she’d make the early flight. All around her there were scenes of joyful family reunion. Never mind; she’d get a taxi and sleep on the way.
Outside, the heat cloaked her like a wet poncho. And there was Mark at the far end of the parking lot, hunched over the driver’s door, fussing with the key. By now she was looking forward to the transition period of the cab ride… Jean waved but he didn’t notice, tucking in his shirt and blindly striding toward the low terminal.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called as he drew near, not overjoyed but affectionate; there was something very dear in that long-bodied lope. His smile when he saw her made her feel better at once; and for perhaps the thousandth time during their life together, she wondered if he was late primarily to witness her visible relief upon his eventual appearance. Mark assumed charge of her luggage, and Jean settled in the passenger seat with her canvas tote and, sticking out the top, Larry’s book. As the planting of yellow Post-its indicated, she was three-quarters of the way through, and it was thrilling. The arguments, but also Jean using her mind—she was out of shape here too. She wondered if she could be bothered to go back to the gym, and those toned women, still climbing the stairway to nowhere. She couldn’t wait to discuss A Theory of Equality with Victoria.
She was too tired to read more now. Instead, Jean reviewed the Larry gossip she’d had from Marianne before leaving for the airport. According to Doug, the Monds were splitting up. Certainly, Melanie never seemed to be around, not even in conversation. It had made Jean uneasy to hear this from anyone but Larry—still, if it was true, she was impressed. All that time in New York he must have been churning with it; yet he’d said nothing and instead he’d comforted her.
As she waited what seemed an age for Mark to stow her suitcases—through the back window she saw him unfurl a tarp like a sail, then a series of flying cables—Jean watched a convoy of gussied-up well-wishers pull over at departures. Many of the leavers, she knew, weren’t going on holiday. They were emigrating, with their jumbo waist-high suitcases banded in duct tape and rope. Life’s most stirring dramas unfolded here at the little airport—soon the Hubbards would be back themselves, waving Victoria off on her grand tour. Jean bottled her childish wish that Vic had come to meet her. Of course she should stay home at the hottest hour of the day.
“How was your flight?” Mark asked, wiping his brow, settling at last into the driver’s seat.
This, from him, was never a perfunctory question. Intolerant of so many ostensibly more interesting topics, he nevertheless always wanted the details of weather and travel—what the food was like, which film, the offenses of the worst fellow passenger. Life as usual: after six weeks of strained hospital vigilance, she’d almost forgotten how it was done. He then filled her in on the local news, such as the transfer entire, this past week, of Christian’s affections to Victoria. Jean delighted in the thought, and in the knowledge that Mark would find satisfaction in this disloyalty.
The familiar savagery of the landscape, where nothing was quartered, tilled, or fenced in, was restful on her eyes, despite the tropical brightness, and on her spirit. But she was startled afresh by the poverty—the scrap and cardboard shacks, the collage yards, the three-legged dogs and bony horses, the distended bellies on the children along the road—that she knew she’d stop noticing in a few weeks.
As they turned onto the coastal road, Mark gave her the bad news. Victoria and Vikram had left two days before. Not allowing her even a moment to be understanding, he rushed to defend the decision. It was leave then or wait another week for connections to Indonesia; besides, all their flights were fixed and prepaid, on top of which their classes began again in the third week of September. Jean felt harassed. She wasn’t interested in painstaking consideration. She was desolate, choking. It was like falling down in a crowd—you didn’t want people rushing in with their concern and commitment to seeing you upright. A month and a half had passed since their family weekend in London, and now, through no fault of her own, she’d missed Victoria by two days. And tomorrow was Jean’s birthday.
“We didn’t know when you’d be coming back. It might well have been another week, and of course no one wanted to rush you. It was right that you took the time you needed.”
Jean struggled to suppress her misery, her irritation at Mark’s giving her permission. She felt utterly punished—and more so for her expectation of praise and celebration, her great return from care. “What a shame” was all she could manage. She turned to look out the window, for the rest of the trip offering Mark the back of her head.
Inside the office-house she was sad all over again. She wandered through the rooms, on the trail of her absent daughter. Vic had stacked the big pillows for sitting on the living room floor. In the guest room, her wildflowers wilted in wine bottles and tumblers; a fat candle was welded to the edge of the bathtub. On the covered veranda, twin hammocks hung side by side like a droopy double bed.
Mark was in the kitchen, practically bustling. He’d made her a good omelette, finished with sprigs of coriander and a drizzle of some juniper elixir from his well-stocked bar, and now he’d done the dishes. Everything except the skillet; he always left the pots and pans: for the unseen cleaner-upper—his mother, Jean—the someone behind. Still, he was trying, and she knew she also had to try harder, even if the mere thought filled her with fatigue.
“I think I’ll have a little nap,” she said. “Early start tomorrow. I feel all emotional, as if I’m going to Bud’s graduation ceremony—which I guess I am.” Inside the bedroom, glancing across at the open closet door, she could tell at once that her clothes had been used by Victoria. She pulled out a sarong and sniffed an alien coconut suntan lotion. Jean had planned to give her these for her trip, pass them on—these and so much else, the silver beads. She’d wanted to give Vic everything, but she hadn’t gotten here in time. She fell asleep facedown on the bed.
Happy birthday!” Mark was almost singing. It was late afternoon, and the sun was still blazing.
“It’s not till tomorrow,” Jean said, stepping into the garden, sleepy. She was wearing a small pink T-shirt, Victoria’s, and a coconut-scented sarong.
“What’s to stop us celebrating now—no time like the present.”
“Not sure there’s anything to celebrate,” Jean said, taking in the festivities already advanced. She’d wanted to collect her thoughts about the kestrel project, not work on a hangover for the launch.
“Well then, how about your glorious return? I’m so pleased you’re back. Come on, darling. Have a glass.”
“Actually, what I’d really like is a cup of tea.”
Mark was holding up a half-empty bottle of French champagne—an even greater luxury on this island than at home, almost inconceivably expensive. Jean had read that, before it became lust, the sin was known as luxuria: extravagance. Mark’s sudden slump told her he felt her different track as a kind of rebuke, and he was right about that. He should have waited.
“All right then, tea and champagne. As I’m pouring. Though I intend to go on pouring throughout this and the great day itself and on into the great beyond, Mrs. H. So long as supplies last.”
Ass, Jean thought. She hated the way he pushed when he wanted someone to drink with; hated even more his already being high without needing her high alongside him. He was a bully when he was drinking, a bully cloaked in amiability, a bully and a bore. She wondered if Mark had been drinking this much without the excuse of her birthday, when Victoria was here. Maybe not. He tended to let himself go when he was alone, more drinking and less bathing, and this she felt as a rebuke. As he expected and wanted her to—his sloppy dramatization of her neglect.
Most of the expats they’d met here were drunks. “Escaping the rat race” was the way people generally described their year-round binge. Like the old guy from Wisconsi
n who ran the Bamboo Bar. He’d told his captive audience, as they downed first an Old Pal and then a Sundowner (both his own secret recipe), “One day, out on the freeway, the cars, the rain, the snow, and I said to myself, Who needs this shit?” And he’d been buzzing on St. Jacques ever since.
Jean accepted the flute of champagne from Mark, not ready to make any great point of her own. And anyway, what the hell. It was always easier to join Mark. This was another thing that made her angry—with herself, with him.
Mark emptied his glass and stood with his hands on his hips squinting at the view. Trying, Jean could easily imagine, to remember who he was. She knew it would take time to reestablish a rhythm after the long separation, but she still didn’t particularly want to be alone with him. When she mentioned once again the bad luck of Victoria having left only two days before, he snapped.
“Honestly, Jean—the world cannot, and dare I say should not, stand still because you are called away.”
“Called away, huh? Actually, it was Dad who was nearly ‘called away’—the rest of us were just standing by—the hardest job I know. Called away. You know I really don’t get you. Thanks, anyway, for the support.”
Mark looked momentarily abashed. “I offered to come out. You declined. Clearly not needed.”
“Ah, back to you then. No—not needed when you call completely bombed at three-thirty in the morning.”
“Silly me. And I thought I was staying up to ring you at a civilized hour, when I’d find you back from hospital—what time was it there when I rang? Seven-thirty p.m., no? I’m very sorry if my tone was insufficiently solemn.”
“It’s not about you. And Victoria? She hardly called at all. You might have reminded her. He is her grandfather, you know—her only grandfather, and perhaps not for very much longer.”
“I don’t honestly see any great gain in blaming Victoria for your father’s angina.”
“Aneurysm,” she barked, furious he hadn’t troubled himself to absorb this basic fact, the origin of the entire calamity, that he acted as Victoria’s defender, when it was him she was mad at.
“Of course I don’t blame her. I just wanted to see her. I don’t know why I rushed back here. I’m the one who’s clearly not needed. And you clearly have no real concept of the hell we’ve been through. He’s not out of the woods yet, you know. And here you are, exactly as if nothing’s happened.”
Jean, circling the terrace with her arms crossed, was beginning to think how to get out of this conversation, recover some common ground, scratch for peace. She was not so far gone she couldn’t see regret on the horizon. Birthdays, she reminded herself, were always a bit of a downer—the mortality bulletin. But it was Mark who spoke, in an unexpectedly sober tone.
“Then perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly what did happen in New York.”
“Can you possibly be serious?”
Mark fingercombed his hair. “Oh, yes—never more so.”
Dirty hair, Jean noted. In fact, he was looking downright seedy, after a mere two days on his own. For no good reason she felt that, since she had never confronted him about Giovana, he, in return, should be impeccable: gracious, generous, grateful, and, at the very least, clean.
“What are you talking about? You know perfectly well what happened—and what’s still happening in New York. If you’re going to persist in this tedious vein I’m going to have to lie down.” Instead, she collapsed into a director’s chair. Now Jean was annoyed there wasn’t more champagne. What was the point of offering someone half a glass of champagne? Seedy and greedy. “Any more of this stuff?” She twirled her glass in the air by the stem, smiling like a clown, with her eyebrows raised, the kind of expression she knew he hated.
He went to get another bottle from the fridge and, tugging at the cork, he said right on the pop, “Larry called.”
“Any news on Dad?” Her neck and back burned with renewed heat.
“No, nothing about your father, or nothing he cared to share with me, at any rate. Just wanted you to know he called. Who is this Larry, Jean?” Mark was standing before her, pouring. He paused to look at her.
“What are you trying to say? You know very well who Larry is—Larry Mond. My old teacher. My old boss.”
“What I mean is, who is he to you? Are you seeing this Larry, Larry ‘Mond’?”
“I saw Larry, yes. And? Never mind the outrageous suggestion, but how can I be seeing Larry? You weren’t there. Is that what the problem is? Feeling left out? Neglected? Did I spend too much time in intensive care?”
“Sounds like you spent rather a lot of time with ‘Larry’ in New York.”
“No need to wiggle your imaginary fingers. Save your quote marks for someone who finds a perfectly ordinary name funny—the soul of wit, aren’t you? Yes, I saw Larry. We all did.” She put her glass down on the marble tabletop a touch too firmly. “He was very helpful, in fact.” It was clear enough Jean meant unlike you, but she enumerated all the same. “He lent us his car—you don’t realize, the hospital was a hundred blocks away, hardly in New York at all. Larry saved our lives in the blackout—you do remember there was a massive outage in New York?”
“Saved our lives, now, is it?”
Mark was standing with his hands on his hips, pompous, Jean thought, and foolish, too, with his big bleach-white feet pointing outward.
“Listen to me. In our time of need, Larry was a friend—to Mom, and Dad in particular. A sober, serious, grown-up friend—what they call a rock. How else can I put it? He was there.”
“Yes, I should say he was. Rock around the clock.”
“Where is your sense of decency? Your trust? Or has your long vacation from reality—and from this marriage—made these concepts hazy? A basic duty of trust has been trampled. And over so vast a period of time. That, I think for me, is the hardest thing.” The moment had come, and Jean found she felt calm, even energized, as if from great lungfuls of mountain air. Why had she waited so long? “We can talk about Larry, sure. What else—or who else—should we talk about? Maybe you’d like to begin.”
“Well, yes, if you’ll not insist on changing the subject. I shall begin, or begin again, because, you see, Larry—is that even short for Lawrence, or was he actually christened ‘Larry’? Larry P. Mond. You see, I think it’s rather odd, Dr. Mond at the ready with his miracle car in New York—how marvelously handy in a blackout. How exactly did Larry Mond save your life, Jean, do you want to tell me that? I see you’re studying his latest tome.”
Jean’s voice was low and controlled. “It’s a great book. Not that you’d be remotely interested. What are you interested in, Mark? Do you even realize you haven’t asked a single thing about Dad? Or Phyllis, for that matter—your great chum. I think that’s mighty odd. You want odd? How about your funloving gal pal, with one n and at least two of everything else—”
In the kitchen, the phone rang. Mark, no doubt suppressing cartwheels of joy at this interruption, answered with such hysterical ferocity that Jean could hear every word through the window.
“Yes, Dan?…No, I’m afraid I cannot oblige. Not in front of me at the minute, you see… No, Daniel, I cannot at this precise moment give you the fine print, the skinny, the mode d’emploi on the coolant apparati, are you with me? And would you dispense instantly with the ‘Brunhilda,’ you fucking yob, it’s driving me up the wall. Is there some purpose to this call other than my telling you how to do your job or are we merely rallying for the gaiety of nations?…Correctly surmised, my dear Watson, this is not the ideal moment for a ‘natter.’” She heard Mark toss the phone onto the kitchen table as he strode out of the house, the screen door banging shut behind him. “I’m going to get a fish for dinner,” he yelled back from the truck, apparently not wanting to appear entirely buffoonish, childlike, and guilty, as he scuttled off, she’d wager, to the Bamboo Bar.
Jean worried about Mark’s driving on all that champagne—a worry mixed with rage, because he knew her terror of drunk driving. Her head throbbing, sh
e went into the kitchen. She picked the phone up from the table to put it back in its cradle and was alarmed to hear a familiar laugh—Dan’s. Mark hadn’t switched the phone off. “Mark, Mark—keep your hair on, mate. We do really need that copy. Today, in fact. Helloooo—Boss?”
“He’s gone out now,” Jean said, stepping back outside, trying to keep all emotion out of her voice. “He’ll call you back later.”
“Jean!” Dan said. “Are you all right? The boss man’s a bit of a dark cloud this afternoon. Trouble in paradise?”
“Everything’s fine. Sorry about that.”
“Not to worry. In fact, Jean, I’m really glad you picked up because I’ve been wanting to speak to you. You see, I’ll be off very soon and…are you sure you’re all right there?”
“I’m sure, thanks. Listen, don’t let me keep you.” His familiarity made her cringe; she really couldn’t be bothered to ask him where he was going for his vacation. “I’ll be sure Mark gets back to you this afternoon.”
“That’s grand, but wait just a second. Can you talk? I just wanted to say, well, a big thanks.”
“For what? Oh, God. Well, look, I’ll let you run…”
“Don’t go. I know I must’ve disappointed you—but it’s just that you were so good. I didn’t realize for ages that they were from you all along, that—”
“That what were from me?”
“Come on, you don’t have to pretend. Please. I don’t myself feel that it’s anything to be ashamed of—quite the reverse. You are talent, Thing. Better than Mark. So good, in fact, that I didn’t twig it was you until we spent the—”
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