Walking on Sunshine

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “My mother died when I was two,” she said in triumph. “I had a nurse twenty-four-seven.”

  I stopped trying to argue with her and listened. I’d wondered what kind of life she led. Now she was telling me.

  As she described it, she’d had a cold childhood indeed. When I saw her father in the restaurant, I’d sensed his drive, his blindness to humanity, including his own. Sophie was not a little black mistake to be hidden away, but she was a girl in a family that didn’t know what to do with girls, except to raise them to be chaste and marry them well. Sophie had no brothers. She would inherit control of the family’s assets, a fact that horrified her father. But her father’s first marriage had ended early, and his second had been unfruitful of male heirs.

  She shrugged. “So he gave up trying to unseat me from my rightful place.”

  Those words rightful place sent a gong clanging through me.

  She said that she came home often enough to feel the heart tear out of her, loving the estate for its peace and beauty, and my own heart tore with hers.

  I was listening closely now. Unlike me, she still hoped for her father’s approval. She had excelled at everything she attempted, and she attempted much. Fencing, rock climbing, six or seven languages, dancing, computer networks, obscure forms of needlecraft, ultralight aircraft and helicopter piloting, dressage, photography, art history.

  “I even made a tapestry for the great hall. It was never hung there, of course, but it was perfect to the thread and stitches. I knew I could never please him, but that time he seemed—not displeased.”

  Me, I knew that ever-so-faint form of approval. It was true. We were both of Montmorency.

  She brooded a moment. “The one thing he didn’t want me to learn was anything to do with business. But I cheated! When he was away, I took classes on my own. I met with our own bankers and lawyers. Certain things I have a legal right to know, so they could not refuse me. He punished me, but not before I learned a few things.”

  She’d been braver than I. I always did what I was told.

  “So why,” she said, her thoughts turning to my past, too, “did you keep in touch with the family? Do you intend to claim your position someday? The title?”

  Always the hard questions. She worked at me the way a cook kneads bread.

  “That’s something else Jake didn’t understand, though he asked often enough.” I frowned. “I couldn’t give it up. It’s not easy to imagine seizing one’s position when one’s family is hostile. I suppose you understand that.”

  She made a small sound in her throat.

  “My mother’s family welcomed me. They gave me affection and respect. Best of all, my color didn’t matter, although some of them were as white as you. That bag is very mixed.”

  “But?”

  “But it was as you heard, what I told the mambo. The changes Samedi put upon me terrified me.” I admitted, “I’ve told Mme Vulcaine more than I told Jake. We didn’t speak of uncomfortable things. That wasn’t Jake.”

  But maybe Jake hadn’t asked because Jake already knew. He was Samedi’s serviteur, first and last. Slowly I was beginning to grasp how deeply that fact had shaped all our years together.

  “But why did you write to the family all those times? You signed the papers to make yourself vicomte, when they sent them to you. All those adventures,” she said enviously, as if adventure was so valuable. “And yet you clung to the title.”

  “I couldn’t change,” I said helplessly. “I know, it sounds insane. To their disappointment and mine, I found I couldn’t imagine practicing vodou with my mother’s family. I was still a French aristocrat, dipped in pitch and unpresentable, but trapped in my role. I could live without my mother’s family, but I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Montmorency again.”

  Suddenly I knew that that was the real reason I had clung to my title.

  I wanted to walk that maze and crawl into that cave and eat pilfered cakes and spit cherry stones over the hedge and fish the canals and steal rides on the cattle barges. I wanted to sink my bare feet in that rich green grass. I wanted to hear the frogs and warblers singing in the marsh, the croaking herons, the night choruses of toads and insects. I wanted to smell its mud.

  Montmorency was my home.

  I wanted it back.

  Certainty flooded me.

  I wanted the freedom to live in it and love it without hiding myself.

  I wanted it badly enough to look Sophie’s father in the eye. Or so I thought in that moment.

  In the next moment I heard a sound from outside the bedroom.

  Sophie put her hand over my mouth. “My papa is back!”

  SOPHIE

  I jumped out of bed and began to dress. “Here,” I hissed, tossing Veek his trousers. “It is best to confront my father wearing armor.”

  “And a disguise,” Veek agreed. Before my eyes he aged, sagged, and his lovely linen shirt and trousers became shabby, his shoes laceless and scuffed, his face pleated, his hands rough.

  Old checkers guy threw young scary tattooed guy’s condom in the waste basket.

  With a silent shake of my head, I fished it out, knotted the opening, and slipped it in my pocket. Spending time with the vodou lady had my imagination working in terms of hexes and hoodoos. I could easily imagine my father using that condom against Veek, if he knew how.

  With my finger to my lips, I tiptoed to the door and listened.

  Papa banged about in the suite’s great room for a minute or two. Then there was silence.

  I eased my bedroom door open a crack and put my eye to it.

  Across the great room, my papa was going into his own room and closing the door.

  “Let’s go,” Veek mouthed to me.

  We sneaked across the great room toward the door. Silently, Veek got the door open.

  Then I saw my father’s briefcase on the low table.

  I stopped. This might be my last chance to steal a look inside that briefcase.

  Veek tugged on my arm. “We go! Now!” he mouthed soundlessly.

  I pulled away and knelt quickly before the table, opening the briefcase latches with care. I set a furled black umbrella on the table and leafed quickly through the folders inside. Veek picked up the umbrella.

  I was swiftly scanning the documents in the top folder when Veek made a sound.

  He had unfurled the black umbrella. Tucked inside it was a slim envelope with French stamps and many postal markings. He drew it out of the umbrella. As he turned it over, I saw a thing like a brown twig taped to the back of the envelope.

  A crack of laughter made us both leap with fear.

  My papa stood in the doorway of his bedroom. His hand was thrust into his coat pocket. He leaned forward, eyes bulging, a creepy grin of incredulous delight on his face. “I had it? I had the letter all this time?” His voice rose to a squeak.

  Veek backed away, putting the envelope behind him.

  My papa barked, “Stop!” He looked completely mad.

  I wanted to run, but I couldn’t leave Veek.

  As I stood there, panicking, I remembered. In the past ten days, I had bought three umbrellas: two pretty ones, and one black folding umbrella. Had I left it with Jake at any time? Yes, to fetch a glass of water, the night he died. Then I’d brought the umbrella back to the hotel and left it lying about, and my father had taken it.

  With this letter inside.

  Papa pointed at Veek. His other hand worked in his pocket. “Give that to me.”

  “He has a gun,” I said quietly. Veek and I exchanged glances. Veek seemed paralyzed. I couldn’t leave him here. I took the envelope from him and threw it at my papa.

  My papa’s eyes widened in a creepy way as he turned the envelope over and looked at the thing taped to it.

  With a terrible premonition, I blurted, “Oh, mon Dieu, it’s your navel string!” I started forward, but Papa pointed a finger at me and I stopped dead. Would he shoot his own daughter?

  “So that’s what this
is!” My father cackled. “Another relic. And do you claim to be the vicomte, then?” he said, the whites of his eyes showing as he surveyed Veek. “Too bad it’s not your foreskin!”

  I wanted to run and snatch it from him, but Veek’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

  And something else held me back, like an electrical current rooting me to the spot. Once before, I had experienced this. My feet tingled. I looked over my shoulder at Veek.

  He too seemed to be struggling to step forward. His hand fell from my shoulder. Both his fists clenched, and sweat came out on his old, wrinkled brow.

  Papa shrieked, “It’s all mine, now. I command you to stay still, impostor!” He sounded crazier and crazier. My papa’s once-orderly hair stood on end. His eyes were wild. His hand moved inside his pocket.

  Please, please don’t let him shoot my Veek! I prayed.

  I murmured, “Disappear. Vanish. I will distract him. Then you can take it from him.”

  “Who is this really, daughter?”

  I raised my chin. “This is the true vicomte. You will lose your lawsuit, Papa. He has decided to reclaim us.”

  My father jeered. “Both of you are cowards.” He looked lovingly at the letter Jake had put inside my umbrella. “It takes more than childish plots to run this family.”

  “What’s that?” I demanded. Then I realized. “Oh! It’s the summons to the Ministère de la Justice!” My jaw dropped. “That’s why you came. Not to find the vicomte. You came to steal that letter before he could receive it! That’s a serious legal offense!”

  “Take it, then.” Papa flicked the letter at Veek. It bounced off Veek’s arm. “It won’t do you any good now.” He beckoned. “Come here, daughter. You,” he said to Veek, “stay. I’ll have you arrested for trespassing in my hotel room, and then we can end this farce.”

  I looked from Veek to my father. “He can’t make you,” I said, hoping it was true.

  “But I can,” my father said. “And what could this be?” He held up the little brown twig in his fingers. He pretended to study it, but all the time his other hand twitched in his pocket. “Is this the umbilical cord of the last true Vicomte Montmorency? Bon. If it is, then that,” he pointed the twig at Veek, “can’t move a step without my permission. I command him in his own name! Clarence de Turbin, stay,” he said, as if to a dog.

  Veek trembled and grunted as if he were trying to lift a great weight.

  My heart stuttered. With it, you could kill me, Veek had said of his navel string. Did Papa know how? I feared that he did. The thought terrified me.

  “Come, Sophie,” Papa commanded.

  I looked behind me. Veek was covered with sweat. His fists shook at his sides, as at Jake’s deathbed. I knew now that the schoolboy I had perceived then was indeed my ancestor, fighting the discipline that made a hell of both our childhoods. I realized too that he looked younger. It was as if, in his struggle, he couldn’t maintain his disguise.

  “Come, daughter,” Papa said.

  My feet shuffled forward against my will. “No!” I shrieked. My chest squeezed. I struggled for breath. I fell to my hands and knees.

  “Crawl to me,” Papa said cruelly.

  Now I was crawling toward Papa. Tears leaked from my eyes. “Veek! Do something!”

  But Veek only stood there, sweating and grimacing. He now looked as I knew him best, a gangsta in his twenties.

  When I had crawled to my papa’s feet, he made me bump my face on his shoes. Then he let me stand.

  It wasn’t the first time he had humiliated me to control me. I had screamed with rage then. This time, I was afraid.

  “How do you look so young, if you’re old? You must teach me that trick sometime.” My father cackled. With his hand gripping my arm, he hissed to me, “You see the artistry of the trap. If he is in truth Clarence de Turbin, I can command him, and he’s powerless. He must wait here for the police to take him away. If he’s not Clarence de Turbin, he can run away as soon as we leave. But if he isn’t under arrest when we return, you’ll know he’s just a fraud, my daughter. And you would never care for that.”

  Veek glared holes in my father. I glared back at Veek, my throat and chest burning with anguish. I wanted to scream. Had a sex demon no wiles to fight this?

  I snarled at my father, “How will you prove anything with the umbilical cord? You can’t bring that into court and try to control him with it.”

  “No? It would be instructive to try. But I have more potent weapons even than that.” To my incredulous glare, he said, “DNA, my dear.”

  Veek grunted.

  “But you need two samples to compare!” I said.

  My father smiled. “I have other resources.”

  I looked from one to the other. How could Papa prove anything without a certified DNA sample from Veek as a boy?

  “Be reasonable, child. Look at him. Is this man nearly a century old? The other one, the one who just died, he may have been the real vicomte.”

  Papa was moving faster than I had expected.

  My insides were turning upside down, then upright, over and over. I was angry with both of them suddenly. Papa was playing on my emotions, treating me like a baby, never telling me anything.

  But Veek—Veek did nothing! What was wrong with him? Where was my badass vodou sex demon? Had he lost his nerve? Or was the navel string so powerful? I turned away. I feared that if I kept looking at Veek, he would change again, this time into someone I didn’t know.

  Papa said quietly, “He’s a fraud, mignon. I promise you. Come with me to the laboratory and we will prove it together.”

  I trembled. “You can’t prove what is a lie.”

  “Come to the laboratory. Proof will arrive. Don’t be sad. You will come home and be my good daughter again.”

  I heard a note almost of tenderness in my papa’s voice. How much did he want me? My insides were all twisted up.

  I turned on Veek. He still stood there, frozen, his face a mask of hostility and confusion, his arms rigid at his sides, beads of sweat on his shaved head and his face. He was straining without moving a muscle.

  My papa laughed. “You’re a good actor, monsieur. I’ll relieve you now of the need to perform for my daughter. You may not leave this room, however. I forbid it. Wait here for the police.” He waved that little brown twig in the air, then pocketed it, and pulled out his cell phone to make a call. “This is Vicomte Montmorency,” he told the phone. “You have another opportunity to earn your fee. Come to my hotel. I will leave word at the desk. You will find a man in my suite who must be arrested for trespassing. Search him before you call the police. What French lawyer?” Then I knew he was talking to his detectives, who had tried to kidnap me a few days ago. “When? Yes, perhaps, that could be he.” He said angrily, “What do you mean, you refuse?” Papa glared at Veek. “Cowards! Be damned to you then! You will not be paid!” He snapped the phone shut. “Come, Sophie.”

  He held out his hand to me.

  My feet stopped tingling. I found myself going to him, but I refused to touch him. I looked back. “Veek!”

  I saw pain in Veek’s eyes.

  I had to free him somehow.

  I had an inspiration. I took my father’s hand. If he could command with the power of the umbilical cord, so could I. Papa led me to the suite door. As I left the suite, I looked back and shaped silent words with my lips: By the power of your leash, I free you.

  And Veek vanished!

  My father didn’t see.

  “Sophie, come.” He yanked me through the doorway and slammed the door behind us.

  In the lobby downstairs, Papa told hotel security to go up to our suite and arrest Veek.

  My mind thrashed with questions. How could my father have such powers? Would the navel string prove Veek’s claim? And why was Papa so crazy? He seemed feverish, maddened by his triumph over Veek.

  o0o

  We took a taxi to a laboratory. Soon we were meeting with one of the lab technicians.

  Papa s
aid, “I have two very old tissue samples that I want compared. They are supposed to be from the same individual. How soon can you prove it or disprove it?” He looked at his watch.

  The technician, a white-coated South Asian man with a round face, shook his head. “Two, three weeks?”

  “How much to do it today? This afternoon? Now?”

  Here we go, I thought. My father throws money at the clock.

  The technician shook his head. “Very unlikely.”

  Papa thrust his hand into his suit coat pocket. He swelled. His face turned red. “You will do it today. Now. You will be handsomely paid.”

  The technician blinked.

  Papa said all that again, word for word, looking into the man’s eyes as if trying to mesmerize him.

  The technician stared back, expressionless.

  I remembered how Papa had dragged me across the room to his feet.

  My flesh crawled.

  After a moment, the technician nodded.

  For the first time in what seemed like weeks, my papa took his left hand out of his coat pocket. He put two things on the table. “Guard these very carefully. They’re worth millions.”

  One was the brown twig of Veek’s navel string. The other was not a gun. It was as repulsive-looking as the navel string, like a dusty, crumpled sheet of freeze-dried tripe.

  The technician looked over the tripe with interest. “Birth caul?”

  My father showed his teeth. “Precisely. I see I have come to the right place.”

  The technician sighed. “All right. It will be hours, maybe days. You can wait here.”

  “Begin with that,” my father said, poking the navel string.

  Rolling his eyes, the technician left with the two samples.

  “What is a caul, please?” I demanded when we were alone in the waiting room.

  My father paced the small waiting room fiercely, pleasurably, as if he were measuring a grave for his enemy.

  “It appears like a veil on the face of a newborn—a child, or any mammal. It’s an extra sheet of placental material. Folk wisdom says it marks the infant as special—gifted.” He spat accurately into the pot of a plastic palm tree in a corner of the waiting room. “Our revered ancestor,” he sneered, “was born with one. It was preserved all this time like a sacred relic. It will utterly betray this impostor.” He spat again—still into the palm pot. Our family’s training for neatness ran deep.