When in Vanuatu

by Nicki Chen

  “What a deal!” Marshall let Elizabeth go and turned to his buddies standing behind him. “In the McIntosh house, the maid gets the upstairs suite and the master sleeps downstairs.”

  “Downstairs in the master suite,” Diana said, raising her voice above the cackles of Marshall’s faithful trio: McCurdy, Fabrizio, and Siole.

  “I tell you, McIntosh.” Marshall clasped Jay’s arm. “You’ll never get anywhere until you learn to assert your authority. You’re such a hippie,” he said, shaking his head.

  “You mean drugs and free love?” Jay raised his eyebrows and clamped his hand around Marshall’s wrist. “No such luck.”

  “I’d settle for another whisky.” Marshall looked at his wrist and waited for Jay to let go.

  “Who was that?” Jennifer Carson asked when Jay and Marshall were gone.

  Diana glanced at the bald spot on the back of Marshall’s head. “That was Jay’s boss.”

  Jennifer gave her husband a knowing look. “Reminds me of a boss I had once.”

  There was an awkward silence, and then Elizabeth turned to Diana. “I think I should go now,” she said. “Your party was delightful. It was kind of you to invite me.” She turned away and made a zigzagging exit, keeping as far as possible from both Carole Anne and Marshall. On her way out the door, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder before hurrying across the veranda and down the stairs.

  That’s right, girl, Diana thought. Keep your distance. That man is trouble. Especially when he’s had a few drinks under his belt. Despite Marshall’s tendency to stray, he was usually careful around his wife. Tonight, though, he and Carole Anne had come to the party separately, Marshall arriving a good hour before her. And when Carole Anne showed up, she looked as brittle as a sunbaked crab shell.

  Jumpy as a sand flea, Diana thought a little later as she carried an empty dessert tray into the kitchen. “You know,” she said to Clarita, setting the tray on the counter. “Mrs. Charbonneau doesn’t look well tonight.”

  “No, ma’am.” Clarita peeled aluminum foil off the nearest apple pie. “Pilar says sir and ma’am fighting every day.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Charbonneau?”

  “Very bad fights. So much shouting. It hurts Pilar’s ears.”

  “Mmm.” It was tempting to use Clarita’s friendship with the Charbonneaus’ maid to tap into their secret lives, but she restrained herself. Everyone deserved some privacy at home, even Marshall Charbonneau.

  With forty-five guests to entertain, Diana had little time that evening to think about the Charbonneaus’ marital problems. But every so often she would notice Carole Anne across the room. She seemed such a lonely figure—that prim blue-and-white dress, those wrinkles etched at the corners of her mouth. An aging woman with no children and a philandering husband.

  It was no surprise that she chose to leave early and without Marshall. “Thank you so much,” she said with a flash of southern charm. “It was a fabulous party.” Diana was out on the veranda taking a quiet moment with Abby and Suling. Suddenly Carole Anne’s smile faded. “Oh, my goodness! Just look at that.” She pointed down the hill, beyond their yard. “Y’all can see the Radisson from here, the lobby and all those taxis lined up on the driveway. Oh, lordy.” She swallowed. “I hope to god your bedroom curtains are lined.”

  Normally, Diana would have bristled at Carole Anne’s coercive fearfulness. Tonight she simply reached out and squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I ordered the thickest curtains in the shop.”

  “I could give you some fast-growing shrubs to plant in front of the window,” Carole Anne added. “If you want them, that is.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  “That was nice of her,” Abby said as Carole Anne’s white Toyota rolled down the driveway. “But that woman is obsessed with privacy. Contrariwise, her husband doesn’t give a fig. Just listen to him.” On cue, Marshall’s voice rose above the sociable rumble inside the house. “And McCurdy.” Abby snorted. “Cackling like a goose in a henhouse. Trying to keep up with the boss when Marshall could easily drink him under the table.”

  Suling crossed her arms over her pregnant belly and scowled. “He drinks so much, I don’t know why he doesn’t fall on his face.”

  Abby patted her shoulder. “Alcoholics, my dear, don’t feel the effects like you and me.”

  Diana took her friends’ hands. Here they were on the veranda, looking out on this tremendous view—the jewel in the crown of Diana’s new house—and they were talking about Marshall. “Enough about Marshall,” she said. “Now tell me, what did you think of my apple pies? I made them a couple days ago. The New Zealand apples weren’t tart enough, but . . .”

  “They were scrumptious,” Abby said, squeezing her hand.

  By midnight, most of the guests had said their good-byes. The secretaries and all the TAs except Siole were gone. Siole had been buzzing around Marshall all night, matching him drink for drink. At close to three hundred pounds, Diana supposed, the Samoan could easily handle as much liquor as his boss.

  She glanced across the room to where Peg McCurdy and Greta Fabrizio sat with their purses on their laps, crossing and recrossing their legs and shooting time-to-leave messages at their husbands. Marshall was still making jokes, McCurdy and Fabrizio still laughing, their chuckles half-hearted at best. Only Siole was still capable of a belly laugh.

  Diana stifled a yawn. She was ready for the party to be over. Already her mind had jumped ahead to the pregnancy test waiting for her in the back of a drawer. The bottom drawer beside the bathroom sink.

  40

  As soon as they said good-bye to their last guest, Diana dashed away. “Sorry,” she said without explanation as she rushed off, leaving Jay and Clarita to put the leftover food away and clean up the spills and dirty dishes. She had a good reason, though—a very good reason.

  Her heart was pounding as she slipped into the bathroom. She closed the door behind her and turned on the light. The bottom drawer on the left side of the sink was her drawer, filled with sanitary napkins and tampons, hair curlers, and an extra jar of her favorite moisturizer. The sack filled with pregnancy tests was in the back, hidden, the way you might hide a diary or a bloody knife. An object of shame—which, until now, is what the tests had been.

  Until now.

  Her certainty thrilled her, and it terrified her.

  She pulled out a test kit and fished inside for the instruction sheet. She’d read the instructions dozens of times, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Unfolding the paper, she read the precautions and contraindications—the medical-eze that drained away the romance even before you peed on a stick. Then she sat on the toilet and read it all again. If diligence and hard work were the main requirements, she would have succeeded in getting pregnant a long time ago.

  Pulling open the shiny silver packaging, she removed the test stick. The test was said to be most accurate first thing in the morning, but she couldn’t stand to wait any longer. She held it between her legs and urinated. For five seconds, the instructions said. Afterwards she had to wait for five minutes to see the results. She held the wand in the air and concentrated on the slender rod of the second hand jerking its way around the face of her watch. A minute passed. Two minutes. Two minutes forty-five seconds, forty-six seconds, forty-seven.

  She was almost certain she was pregnant this time. Her period was fifteen days late. Besides, she was feeling strange. Her breasts were a little tender, and she was almost sure that the flutters she’d been feeling the last two mornings were nausea.

  Four minutes forty seconds, Fifty. Fifty-five.

  Five minutes. She took a deep breath, her heart beating like a race horse. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. Hungry to look and shaking with fear, she closed her eyes for a second. Then she opened them and looked at the wand.

  There it was, in front of her eyes: two pink lines.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, she blinked hard. And they were still there—the two beautiful brig
ht pink lines. She was pregnant! She, Diana Harris McIntosh, was pregnant at last.

  For years she’d been imagining what she would do when this day came. In one scenario, she ran to Jay screaming and twirled him around in a circle. In another, she played coy. She held the wand behind her back and asked him to guess what she had. Or, better yet, she waited until they were in bed, climbed on top of him, and whispered in his ear.

  Now, though, when the time came, she was in a daze. She made her way to him down the hall and into the dining room. When Jay proposed, he’d dropped down on one knee and opened the little box that contained an engagement ring. He hadn’t needed to speak. But an announcement of pregnancy has no script, no agreed-upon posture, no ring. Only the words.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. Two simple words, but to her ears, they were a trumpet blast that reached to the ceiling and bounced off the walls.

  He stopped sweeping. “You’re what?”

  For a moment she couldn’t tell whether he was confused or simply caught off guard. She couldn’t tell whether he was pleased. “I’m pregnant,” she said again.

  He dropped the broom and threw his arms around her, kissing her and hugging her so fiercely that she couldn’t possibly doubt his happiness.

  Clarita, who must have wondered what all the commotion was, peeked out of the kitchen.

  “It’s all right,” Diana said, laughing. “We’re fine.”

  “Ma’am is going to have a baby,” Jay blurted with a big goofy grin.

  That night, Diana hadn’t been concerned that Jay told Clarita she was pregnant. In fact, she’d wanted the world to know. For days, she was caught up in her happiness and in Jay’s. She’d never seen him smile and laugh so much, never known him to touch her as often and as . . . well, reverently as he did now. But there had to be a reason that women traditionally kept their pregnancies secret for the first couple of months. They must know—and why didn’t she realize it?—that lots of pregnancies just didn’t “take.” Lots of women lost their babies early while they were still not much more than a cluster of cells.

  It worried her that she didn’t feel more pregnant. Even the small flutters she felt in her stomach early on hadn’t returned. She wasn’t nauseated; she didn’t vomit; she had no craving for pickles and ice cream or anything else. And yet, when she took out another pregnancy test and tried again, the register still showed two pink lines.

  Three weeks after her missed period she called Dr. Granville‘s office and made an appointment for that afternoon. Even though Port Vila lacked an obstetrician, the two doctors favored by the town’s expats, Dr. Granville and Dr. Garae, handled everything. Diana and Jay had gone to Dr. Granville’s office when they were new in town to ask about medicine for malaria control. He’d surprised them by advising that they should simply avoid mosquitoes and find a house in a breezy part of town.

  Now, as she was about to open the door to his office, she wondered about that advice. At the time she’d thought it was sensible. Now she wondered if he might turn out to be too casual in the way he approached her pregnancy. Oh, well. She took a deep breath and opened the door. When you move to a casual, relaxed country, you can expect to find casual, relaxed doctors.

  She remembered the receptionist, a perky dark-haired woman with enormous brown eyes made even more prominent today with eyeliner, mascara, and sparkling coppery eye shadow. The sly, knowing smile she flashed when Diana identified herself reminded her of Abby’s warning. “He’s a good doctor,” she’d said, “if you’re not particular about privacy. The receptionist knows everything that’s worth knowing about his patients.” Her name was Gwendolyn, Abby said, adding that she was Dr. Granville‘s fourth and youngest wife. Oh well, Diana told herself for the second time in two minutes. Thanks to Jay and Clarita, everyone already knew she was pregnant. She filled out the exceedingly brief form Gwendolyn handed her and waited for Dr. Granville to call her in.

  He was a charming older man, which made it even harder for her to undress from the waist down and arrange her feet on the stirrups.

  Afterwards, when she picked Jay up from work, she skipped the details of the exam and jumped ahead to the bottom line. “He confirmed that I’m pregnant,” she said. And Jay smiled his new silly smile and leaned across the gearshift to kiss her. Then the happy, not-so-young couple drove home to their idyllic house overlooking two shimmering South Pacific lagoons.

  41

  The Scrabble games were Suling’s idea. Or rather her request. She’d asked if Diana and Abby would help her build her English vocabulary, and they’d decided the best way would be over the Scrabble board. They’d been playing weekly now for three and a half months, almost as long as Diana had been pregnant.

  It was hard to believe that Diana had completed the first trimester of her pregnancy, that so-called dangerous period, the time when many women—other women—suffered from morning sickness, fatigue, and headaches. Diana’s only symptom, even now, partway through the second trimester, was tender breasts, and—she was proud to say—her weight gain was right on track: three pounds, one pound each month. “You were made for this,” Jay told her. And she had to agree. She felt just fine. Better than fine.

  Today the three women were playing at Abby’s house. As they sat around the whitewood table on her lanai, Diana scanned the board looking for a place to use her x while Suling made little kittenish sounds and frowned at her tiles.

  Suddenly Suling laughed in high-toned triumph as she slapped her tiles onto the board. Piano. She’d spelled it down from the p in escape, leaving a perfect opening for Diana. If Abby didn’t spoil things, when it was Diana’s turn, she could get some good numbers by spelling pox across Suling’s o.

  “Before we start our batik classes next week,” Abby said without taking her eyes off the board, “I want to learn to draw.” She shuffled some tiles on her tray. “I’ve been entertaining the thought that my artistic friend here might help me out.” She raised her head and smiled at Diana.

  “Sure. Why don’t we do a sketching trip together tomorrow? I’ll drive. Suling, do you want to join us?”

  “No, thank you. My students come tomorrow. Chinese song and dance.”

  “Cha-cha-cha,” Abby crowed, snapping down the tiles for samba at the top of the board, a move that earned her a double word score but left the o in piano wide open for Diana.

  When they quit for the day, Abby had the high score. Again. They were getting used to it. Not only did she have a wide-ranging vocabulary, she had a fantastically quick mind that saw all the angles.

  The next afternoon, as soon as Diana pulled into her friend’s driveway, the front door swung open, and Abby stepped out, bangles jingling, curls escaping from her baseball cap. “What do I need to bring?” she asked.

  Diana opened the car door and stepped halfway out. “Just yourself,” she said. “I have our art pencils and sketch books in the trunk along with a couple of folding chairs and some snacks.”

  “Oh, you.”

  “Come on. Hop in.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Abby said it like a joke, and yet she hesitated outside the car, her hand clutching the door handle.

  Diana had been thinking of a spot out by Black Sand Beach. On a whim, though, she changed her mind. “The road to Montmartre,” she said, feeling that the road would be okay for them as long as they went together.

  “Montmartre?” Abby bit her lip as she slid in beside Diana. “You don’t expect me to draw schoolboys on my very first sketching trip, do you?”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t drive all the way up to the school. We can stop along the way and sketch the flora.”

  Montmartre was on the other side of town from Abby and Saudur’s house in Malapoa. Before she was pregnant, Diana had walked a mile or so up the lonely road, but she’d never been all the way to the top where the Catholic mission and boarding school were located. The quiet and isolation of the road had made her uneasy that day. And these past few months, with Jay constantly advising caution,
she’d become more timid. Right from the start, he’d made her promise she wouldn’t go to the beach unless he was with her. When they went together, he didn’t let her out of his sight. His fear was annoying sometimes. She understood and respected it, but at the same time she was frustrated that the ghost of Celeste’s death was still haunting them.

  “You know,” Abby said, “I stopped drawing when I was in grammar school.” She gazed out the car window at the tennis club and then Cercle Sportif. “I figured I was better with my mouth than with my hand.”

  “Everyone can draw. It just takes patience.”

  Abby snorted. “That’s not me.”

  “Drawing ability or patience?”

  “Both. Anyway . . .” She lifted her baseball cap and ran her fingers through her curls. “Here I am, ready to learn.”

  They were passing the prison now, a squat concrete block building set back from the road, too large for a racquetball court, too small for a gym. “Strange,” Diana said, “that they’d build the prison right next to the town stadium.”

  Abby chuckled. “A lucky stroke for the prisoners, that. Last year during the playoff with Fiji, their minders let them climb on the roof and watch the game.”

  “You’re kidding! Didn’t any of the prisoners run away?”

  “And miss the football match? Not on your life.”

  Diana smiled. Port Vila was nothing like Manila, where people constantly worried about crime. They expected it. Their houses had walls, some of them with broken glass on top. Armed guards were stationed at the entrances to residential villages. Port Vila, on the other hand, was a tourist mecca that billed itself as a paradise on Earth. Its not-so-distant history of cannibalism was celebrated on T-shirts sold to tourists. The crime stories people passed around were the quirky ones.

  One of the best, told over and over, was the one about the ni-Vanuatu thief who broke into the house of the British woman whose husband was traveling. No one remembers what he took, or if he stole anything at all. The notable fact was that he was naked except for his black hooded mask.