“Open invitation?” said Vivi now. “Well—so if they said that …”
Rebecca smiled at Vivi’s enthusiasm, at her unflappable belief in dramatic solutions. Inside, though, she was already mentally creating a checklist: vaccinations, sublet her apartment, find someone decent to cover her volunteer shift at the domestic-violence hotline, decide whether or not to let her father know …
“It’s funny about your parents. All this time and I’ve never seen them at home. I can’t quite picture them at home anywhere.”
Vivi shrugged. “They’re liminal creatures.”
Rebecca took the last delicious sip of her drink. “Maybe I am, too.”
“You?” asked Vivi. “I don’t think so. I think you like to be right in the juicy center. Right now you’re just not sure exactly which center.”
“That’s generous,” Rebecca said. And she meant it. “That’s a very generous read.” And right then—as if the news had taken exactly this long to sink in—she put her hand on Vivi’s belly.
“You’re going to be fine,” Vivi said.
Rebecca found that her breath was matched with Vivi’s, and for the first time all evening, she actually felt like talking. “My father’s going to jail.”
“You don’t know that yet,” Vivi said.
“I do,” whispered Rebecca. “I found out yesterday. He was sentenced to a year.”
She was grateful for Vivi’s silence. How she only put her hand on top of Rebecca’s and together they waited for movement, some simple proof of life.
“He’s not moving now,” said Vivi. “He’s a morning kind of guy.”
“A boy?”
Vivi nodded.
“You found out?”
She shook her head. “But I know.”
Rebecca did not say that she had only a fifty–fifty chance of being correct. And she also didn’t take her hand away.
Chapter Eighteen
Africa, April 2005
Hugh made his way slowly through the airport in Dar es Salaam. Past the lipstick-red chairs and the hand-painted signs, past Indian women in saris and African men in dashikis and tracksuits and baggy jeans, through a group of pale spotty teenagers—whom Rebecca pegged as missionaries—Hugh Shipley came forward. His face was as tanned and craggy and stubbornly handsome as ever, and his hair—though thinner in front—still reminded her of all those boarding school boys. He was wearing his uniform—white linen shirt, khaki pants—and looked as if he hadn’t changed clothes since the last time she’d seen him, ten years earlier with Vivi, when they’d all had an early dinner not far from campus, somewhere on Broadway.
His two fingers were still missing. The lack of those fingers was such an integral part of him; one could argue it was the most notable aspect of his appearance, and it amazed her not only that the lack was permanent but that she’d been the last person to see Hugh with ten fingers. No one was more entrenched with the story of that particular loss.
Now he kissed Rebecca’s cheek, and—when she briefly closed her eyes—she tricked herself into smelling not his ripe and unfamiliar stink but the mussels and French fries they’d all eaten together, the salt he’d sprinkled in his beer. Hugh needed a shower, yes, but there was also something unequivocally pleasing about this familiar greeting; they were friends, old family friends. She felt relieved and also—what? Apprehensive? Was she apprehensive? Because here was Hugh and she was still maddeningly attracted to him. All the alcohol and tropical maladies hadn’t claimed him, not yet. “Rebecca,” he said.
Hugh exchanged greetings—Jambo! Mambo! Habari!—with so many people as they continued through the airport that Rebecca began repeating Jambo or Mambo or Habari along with him. Two men and one woman separately said, Hello, sister, as she passed, which made her blush with ridiculous pleasure, even if this greeting was twice followed by offers to sell her bargain DVDs.
As they walked toward the baggage claim, Hugh calmly explained that there wasn’t any time for her to so much as say hello to Helen and spend one night with them. “In fact,” he said, finally stopping and glancing at his watch, “if you need to use the bathroom, now’s the time.”
“You mean we’re going this minute?” asked Rebecca. She’d been traveling for nearly twenty hours. Her mouth felt like a petri dish and her joints were aching; she could smell herself in this heat, and the scent was eau de airplane blanket, eau de airplane lasagna. She had counted on at least a shower and a meal at Hugh and Helen’s before heading into one of the world’s most remote regions, to a town that wasn’t listed on most Tanzanian maps.
Hugh nodded. “Helen is embarrassed that I’m not letting you rest. But the trucks are arriving tomorrow and we have to be there—if not to receive them, then right after—or the whole operation will be shot to hell.”
“Of course,” said Rebecca, not comprehending a thing.
Hugh took Rebecca’s bag, said something in Swahili to two men, and told Rebecca to follow him. What else would she do? She’d even explicitly agreed to this—to follow what he said—during the one brief phone conversation they’d had before she booked the ticket. She’d hoped to offer legal services—something specific—but he said she’d caught him at a moment when what he needed most was an extra set of hands and company he could stand. He’d offered her heat (and he wasn’t kidding; it must have been well over one hundred degrees) and the opportunity to visit Lake Tanganyika, where she could help distribute mosquito nets.
Sign me up, she’d said.
And though she knew that to some extent she wanted to do this in order to put off her own unpleasant personal decision-making, she also knew that she’d always had a healthy interest in Hugh’s career, quite apart from her debatably healthy interest in Hugh himself.
You’re sure you want to come? he’d asked, before hanging up.
I’m sure.
I have to tell you, I’m surprised. You have never struck me as that girl who’s always dreamed of an African adventure.
Well, I’m not, she’d said. Of course I’m not.
There was silence. And in that silence: worn rubber handlebars sloughed off onto her sweaty hands; Hugh leaned solidly onto her back; and there they were on an island road—blazing bright sun and dark-green shade—up into the hills.
But, she’d said, delivering mosquito nets to impoverished people hardly sounds like safari.
And she could picture his grin, his vodka sweating next to the phone in a place that she’d never seen. Okay, he said.
Okay, you want me to come?
Good ol’ Rebecca. You’ve always tried to be helpful.
Why does that sound insulting?
It isn’t. He cleared his throat. You want to help? You can come.
I do, she said. I want to. And I’ve seen pictures of the lake. I won’t lie—beauty doesn’t hurt.
It never does, he said.
On the runway, the light was painfully bright and their five-seater had ominous-looking red flames painted on the wings. Either way, she had vowed to herself not to express anything close to fear over flying. Or reptiles or insects: She’d mentally prepared herself for snakes coiled in corners and spiders crawling out of drains. Still, when Hugh pointed out the window to the shockingly blue expanse of water, she wished she could simply marvel, instead of imagining falling straight out into it—sky, lake, death. She stiffly gave Hugh a thumbs-up and was pleased that at least she got a laugh.
Two hours that felt like less and more all at once and then finally down, down on the ground. Oh, how she loved that moment. She could imagine forgetting the landing strip, the rocky brown earth and fat trees, but never the pitted dirt roads whose shocks she felt in her bowels, or the low huts, tall grasses, and three brown bulls stolidly blocking traffic. She would never forget the cluster of boys who emerged with the traffic and crowded the Land Rover, to whom Hugh gave pens and candy. They were wearing strikingly clean plaid button-down shirts, as if a bonanza of American Eagle overstock had come in just that week. With their oddly g
rown-up posturing and their wide warm smiles, they could have sold her anything. She’d never forget those boys. Or the one girl among all those boys, a yellow polyester cheongsam hanging down to her bony ankles.
Just before dusk, against a pink and purple backdrop of a sky straight out of the early days of Technicolor, they arrived at a series of conical huts built along the lakeshore. There was a main bar area in a larger hut with swept-clean floors, flowers in vases, and billowy white curtains. There were tea candles, tables set for dinner.
“Are you serious?” asked Rebecca, punch-drunk; her giddiness went beyond jet lag.
“What.”
“This is a bit more Isak Dinesen than I pictured.”
“It won’t all be like this,” Hugh said, somewhere between sheepish and proud. “See you in twenty minutes?” he asked, without exactly asking. “I prefer to sleep in a tent,” he said, wandering off. She had to roll her eyes—of course you do.
A young African man with round wire eyeglasses carried her bag and showed her to her room. He was tall and slender, and she could just as easily picture him walking a runway in Paris or nursing an espresso in a Brooklyn café, busy on a laptop.
“Now,” he said, pointing toward where a mosquito net was tied up but ready to envelop whomever lay down on the immaculate-looking white sheets. “Let me show you this,” he said. “This is the bed.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“This is your first time to Tanganyika?”
“It’s my first time to Africa.”
“Ah.” He nodded. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, but he took his time, embodying the rhythms of a much older person. “And how do you like our country?”
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, “of course.”
“Traffic very bad in Dar, very bad in Moshi. Very bad. This is better. This is very nice, very tranquil.”
She nodded. “It is.”
“Now, this,” he continued. “This is the bath.” The small room looked out over a vegetable garden. She recognized Swiss chard sprouting from soil-filled tires. “Now, this—let me show you—this is the soap for the body. This,” he said, “is a cup.”
“Thank you,” she managed, so grateful for it all that she wasn’t even tempted to giggle at his tender and absurd attention to detail. “Thank you so much,” she said.
After she’d showered (warmish water! decent pressure!), she changed into gauzy pants and a worn T-shirt, both of which were innocuous enough to give off the impression that she hadn’t given a thought to what she’d packed for this trip. This particular T-shirt and pants said: I am of the belief that there are far more important things to think about than clothes. They said this while still being mysteriously flattering to her figure. These garments were time-tested and had been peeled off her in East Hampton, Key West, and Fire Island over the last several summers.
Do I really think this way? she asked herself, half self-loathing, half amused.
Yes, seemed to be the answer, yes, it seems that you do.
She managed to resist lip gloss; she made her way to the bar.
There were candles and salads and wine and the stars. There were no other guests. The serious young man who’d showed Rebecca her room was also the waiter and bartender. The Dutch owners came out for a chat and then they disappeared. And then here was Hugh. Hugh Shipley, looking a shade more dapper after bathing or maybe even just dousing his hair with water. Here was Hugh, who made Robert Redford look like a total wuss. It was ridiculous, but she felt no urge to laugh.
They were looking out at a landscape so pure and at a sky so clear that to remark upon the beauty would be to taint it. She was sure—positive—that he thought this way, too.
Nobody was talking.
“How did you end up coming here?” she finally blurted.
He squinted, as if trying to recall. “I had an adventurer friend.”
“As one does.”
He grinned. “Oh, yes? And who’s your adventurer friend?”
“Vivi,” she said. “Of course.”
“Right,” he said warmly. “Of course.”
“So your friend?”
“His boat got stuck in a typhoon and he was stranded on the lake for days. This was before—you know—this place existed.” He gestured to the bar, and when he realized it had looked as if he was signaling for more wine, he didn’t bother to correct the young man’s assumption. “When he finally made it back to Dar, he said that while he was stuck, he realized that there were all these people living on the lake so completely cut off from the world, how there was no health care, absolutely none. There were a couple of clinics that were theoretically supposed to refer people to the national hospitals, but those clinics didn’t even have water or electricity—never mind that any access to the interior is severely limited because of the terrible roads. At any rate, he’d known most of this before, but it had taken his getting stuck to understand what it really meant. So he got stuck and then came to me.”
“Does that happen a lot? People coming to you and asking for help?”
“What—” He smiled. “You mean like you?”
“Ha. Well, yes, I guess. But I was talking about your field, your experience running clinics. The need is so great. And you’ve been here for such a long time.”
“That’s certainly relative.” He watched as the young man poured more wine. “Thank you, Omar.”
She smiled at the young man—Omar—who nodded and left. If Omar and the Dutch owners considered them at all, what did they think? Father and daughter? Doubtful.
“But,” she persisted, “people must come and go with all kinds of plans.”
“Oh yes. Lots of plans,” Hugh said tightly. “We all have lots of plans.”
“True,” she said, waiting for him to explain his sarcasm. “And?” Hugh visibly grimaced. She tried and failed not to take his expression personally. She waited for him to speak.
He didn’t.
“Are you all right?” she finally asked.
“Don’t pay attention to me right now,” he said. “It’s not productive.”
“I didn’t know we were being productive right this minute. I thought we were finishing dinner.”
“Vivi thinks I’m a depressive. Did you know that?”
She didn’t. But she wasn’t surprised to hear it. She neither nodded nor shook her head. She didn’t, she suddenly realized, want to talk about Vivi.
Hugh motioned toward the bar, and this time there was no mistaking his intent. Omar brought Hugh a different bottle, without a label, and two small glasses. “What was I saying?”
“Depression?”
“No, not that.”
“Then …” She hesitated; did she really want to have a conversation about Hugh’s mental health? “Then why did you mention it?” Evidently she did.
“I’m not depressed,” he said. And he smiled. “I’m not depressed right now.”
“What does Helen think?” she asked, both without planning to do so and instantly regretting it. “She’s always seemed—I don’t know—intuitive.” What was she doing? “I’ve always had the feeling she could somehow—this sounds strange—that if I were in trouble or something”—Stop talking, she told herself, to absolutely no avail—“or if I needed someone, she’s always seemed understanding. Not that I know her all that well, in a way. Not that I really have any idea, actually.” She finished her wine and waited for Hugh to put an end to this embarrassing ramble.
He did no such thing.
“She just seems like a really good person. And she’s so beautiful,” she said. “I mean, obviously.”
He nodded.
“Your friend,” said Rebecca. She wanted to leave the table and dive into the water. She wanted to go to her nice clean bed and read the copy of Vogue that she’d bought at JFK and already read cover to cover. “You were talking about your friend. How he was stuck.”
“Right,” said Hugh. He poured her the liquor from the mysterious bottle, and though
she thought she might very well pass out if she had more than a sip, she didn’t stop him. “Let’s just say this fellow knew me well.”
She took a sip and nearly retched from the poisonous chalk-acid taste. “Don’t laugh,” she sputtered at his bemused expression. “I’m not much of a drinker,” she lied. “Besides, anyone’s a lightweight compared to you.”
“True,” he said. “Bottoms up.”
She took another sip. It tasted marginally better this time, like the way she imagined moonshine would taste. And with only two sips, she felt her body simultaneously spring to life and revolt, much like how she felt when she dreamed about sex but woke with an intense need to pee. “Who coined the phrase moonshine?” she heard herself ask.
“No idea. How about white lightning?” He shrugged. “Or kill me quick.”
“Sorry?”
“Kill me quick. Kumi Kumi. That’s what they call it in Kenya.”
“Oh,” she said, “I like that. Cuts right to the chase.” She sipped some more. “So how,” she asked, “how did he—the adventurer friend—how did he know you well?”
“Oh, I guess he knew I’m always up for going farther and farther away.”
“Farther away from …”
He took a slow swallow. “There’s always another level of isolation.” He wasn’t smiling.
“Isolation.”
“Another spot.” His eyes were solid, not glittery, not dull. “Another place.”
“In the world? Or in your mind?”
Hugh shook his head. “I’m not talking about my goddamn psyche.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Four million people live directly on the lake. Eleven million live farther inland. And this is one of the only towns even accessible to the interior at all. If anyone needs to get out of here for real medical care—if anyone has the wherewithal to do so—there’s one ship.”
“A ship?”
“She was built in Germany and used here to control the lake during the First World War, before being scuttled by the Germans. Years later, the British Royal Navy salvaged her. And now … she’s a ferry,” he said, shaking his head with a certain incredulity that made her suspect his mind had ventured further than this history lesson.
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