I let my interest subside, and, for many years afterwards, as I went back to the rhythms and responsibilities of my days, the desire for a father with a history of his own receded, becoming in my memory nothing but a temporary distraction at one period of my life. One morning, I chanced upon the death notices in the newspaper and saw that Michael Duchamp had died. The notice continued “husband of Simone, father of Michael Jr. and Cecile, brother of Lennox, Philip, Rose and Merle, all deceased.” The finality of the announcement seeped into me. I thought for a while about what was entirely gone now. I consoled myself that what I had lost, what had been irretrievably erased, was just a mirage, something I had never quite grasped. Not even my mother’s written words had left any tangible trace.
For a long while after, when faced with a mirror, I would pick out the forehead and hairline from Thaïs and the eyebrows and nose too. The eyes, the mouth, the jaw came from elsewhere and I looked at those features in me that must have been his and tried to build in the missing forehead and hairline and eyebrows and nose as if assembling an identikit of a suspect in a crime. I began to ascribe my strange secretiveness, my love of books, my delight in solitude and joy in silence to him, as his contribution to who I am. With Thaïs gone, there is no one to ask if this is so. In any case, she knew him only when they were quite young, half the age I was when I first learned of him. Could she have known him any better than I do? Perhaps, at this, her first big disappointment in life, she had simply allowed a scab to grow over her raw wound and carried on with her life with the same determination and finality with which she had erased from the slate her story, my story, on our last day together.
TO-MAY-TO / TO-MAH-TO
You say to-may-to; I say to-mah-to… she sang along with Sinatra while they stood in his kitchen – she rinsing arugula at the sink, he at the stove doing things to fish and pasta. This new twist to her weekends – Saturday mornings she picked him up, they drove to get breakfast, anywhere where there would be sada roti and some filling (not channa, alloo, bhaji, pumpkin or tomato for him, not meat, saltfish nor smoke herring for her) – this new habit of breakfasting with someone in public brought her a feeling of awkwardness. They sat on a bench on the pitch walk and ate and drank – she coconut water, he bottled water – and, while his talk ran from the architecture that faced them across the road, through colonialism to post-colonial neglect of heritage, she looked at the dappled shade of the overhead poui, shape-shifting on the pavement at her feet, breathed in the green-sap scent of freshly cut Savannah grass – the cut pieces, drifting and settling in the pavement cracks and already beginning to parch to straw – at one with the brackish taste of the too young water nut she was sipping.
What did he want to do next? Did he think he could manage Central Market or maybe the Carenage fish depot, or what about just going to Woodbrook for some organic vegetables? Woodbrook it was for arugula and morai and Carenage for small red fish still jumping on the concrete slab. To the vendor, scaling and gutting, he gave terse instructions: leave the back fin on, take off the belly ones, slit right through the lower jaw. He then launched into a lecture on the skeletal anatomy of various species of fish and its relevance to different culinary styles. She cringed as she saw the looks of tolerant amusement the waiting customers exchanged with one another and with the vendor. She concentrated on rummaging through her handbag, feigning deep interest in its humdrum contents. When he had his catch in hand, she took him and his shopping back to his home, helped him unpack and store, then left.
As night was falling, she returned. It was to the place where he had spent all of his Trinidad years, from where he had left as a boy and had returned a man, back to his mother and grandmother, both now long gone. She knew that house as intimately as she knew her round-the-corner childhood home in their old urban neighbourhood. Until the hiatus of forty or so years she had been a daily visitor to his home, and now it seemed she had become so again. She was not sure about this move – she was not now the person she was then, of that she was certain. But, when she thought about him, about what he said, what he did, how he behaved, she decided that he was who he always was, only more so – it was as if the passage of years had served to concentrate him so that he had, in a sense, become his essence. Still, that he continued to live in the same house, the house of his childhood and hers, made her feel she had entered a former life, made her feel girlish again, full of newness and possibility. She could, and did, spring up the steps as if still seventeen, go through the rooms remembering who what where, remarking on the few changes, the many oh yesses of familiarity. The gallery was almost the same, save that a daybed had replaced the old couch; the two armchairs of the fifties – Danish vogue – occupied their original spaces. The long living space was now one of his main workspaces; every table, chair, surface bristled with his equipment and materials. Under these were stacks of acid-free cardboard boxes full of cleaned, sorted and filed negatives of his early work.
Books on art, history, philosophy, photography filled four bookcases and spilled in multiple awkwardly balanced piles on to the round centre table that she recognised from his mother’s Morris set. At first she had thought it was chaotic, but he would mention some idea in a conversation and dart inside and bring out a reference book, plucked from some place that he alone could find. It seemed to her that he had filed in his head every book he owned, and where it was and who had borrowed it and who had returned it, or not. Do you know the work of so-and-so? he would ask. Almost invariably, her lips would form into a moue of regret and he would dash to a bookshelf, push along the exposed spines, snatch out one or two volumes of some person’s work, hurry back to her while leafing through them and drop them on her lap, which she would idly flick through to gather a fleeting impression of whatever forceful point he was making about selectivity of subject, subtlety of light, Barthes and Foucault on state-imposed punishment, the ubiquity of Shakespeare in the quotidian, Victorian cooking techniques, pornography versus eroticism.
These forays into the world of the intellect made her feel that she was on the cusp of adulthood once more, with a world to learn about, and privileged to have such erudite access to it. And how he seemed to enjoy being her guide – she was the one with the paper qualifications, he was the one with knowledge. He never tired of showing her this. He had never gone to a university, he proclaimed with pride, dismissing her years at such institutions, so everything he knew he’d learned the hard way. He’d had to ask questions about everything and find the answers for himself, so what he knew, he knew. He knew its mother and father and grandparents and godparents too.
She walked through room after room with the reverence reserved for art galleries or museums. Mounted and framed photos and paintings of his and of fellow artists covered every wall. As in any gallery, the exhibits were changed and rearranged – a work in progress, ha-ha – he declared, with a wide sweep of his arms. Two fish photos of his complemented the fish by a well-known watercolourist friend; cricket of his, the cricket of two other artists; rolling landscapes redolent with history and promise, dancers, carnival masqueraders, steelbandsmen, a rippling muscular male back, an enigmatic child, a self-assured fashion model, a swirling skirt, the back of a head, an embracing couple, flying dreadlocks, blurred fingers percussing on drum skins – in room after room after room. There’d be disconcerting eyes in the bathroom one week, a luscious Cupid’s bow pair of parted red lips the next. She would pause respectfully at each in turn while he stood nearby. She felt uneasy, she sensed he was waiting to measure and judge the erudition of her comments, so she made few. Better to be silent and thought stupid, than to speak and remove any doubt. Lovely, lovely, she thought to herself, but where are the pictures of real people – snapshots of friends and family?
The first time she revisited his kitchen she was struck by how little she recognised it. No longer would his mother’s mundane pelaus, sancoche and souse come from there. Now, heavy cast-iron skillets and cooking pots hung from angled nails driven into the woo
dwork. Strainers, pot spoons, spatulas, graters, chef’s knives and a sharpening steel framed the Demerara window, on the outside of which rested the stainless steel kitchen sink with its heaped-high draining board of jumbled mugs, plates, bowls, cutlery, pots, storage containers. An old wooden table supported a marble slab with down-turned whisky and wine glasses, a bottle of Campari, several tonic and club soda bottles, a bottle of Talisker. Oh woe – he exclaimed in camp distress one evening – I can’t get Lagavulin. An old-time vendor’s sloping-sided wooden tray, formerly home to aniseed, mauby bark, cinnamon scrolls, nutmeg, mace and cloves, now overflowed with packets of pills, opened boxes of medications and half-folded sheets of drug manufacturers’ crimp. Stacked bowls and plates, bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar elbowed cooking wine, salt, pepper mills; below was stowed a bag of Whiskas. If they didn’t get that brand they preferred to starve, he confided. Then, bending to place his hands along the backs of the two ultra-discerning felines slithering round his ankles, he addressed them, Don’t you my lovelies?
In his mother’s mahogany, glass-fronted cabinet, the relics of her once-precious dishes and glasses mingled with his own collection of curios and artefacts of silver and china of different ages, provenance and styles, picked up at random flea markets, second-hand shops, sales, bazaars. Had she ever seen anything as beautifully crafted as this – holding up for her inspection a little silver salt & pepper shaker – late eighteenth century, when people had breakfast in bed with valet, butler and all in attendance. This said with a smile, as if it were a personal reminiscence.
She did not invite him to her home. He spoke so disparagingly about people, like herself, who had fled confined urban spaces for suburbs in other valleys, to estates of identikit “houses built of ticky-tacky”. But though she shied away from returning his hospitality, she knew the security of anonymity of place could only be short-lived in such a small country. One day he called to say he was in the neighbourhood and asked if he could drop by. It would have been churlish to make an excuse and refuse. When he got there she could not offer, as he could in his home, “yerba mate from Argentina, jasmine from China or black Russian”. Her eyes followed his mute appraisal of her space. The neat row of jars – Lipton’s Yellow Label, Twining’s Earl Grey, the tin of Svelty powdered milk, the canister of sugar – stowed neatly by size on a shelf under the cupboards did not escape his sweeping eye. She saw him glance at the crowded display of framed snapshots of people he didn’t know – multiple pictures of ages and stages of her three children, their spouses, the grandchildren; and single pictures of two he knew – her husband, her mother.
With her eyes downcast, she saw his flicker without comment over the only display that would speak to him of her creativity: hand-assembled mobiles of beach stones collected from Baracoa, Rampanalgas, and Macqueripe in shades of grey – slate to ash – coarse to smooth, flattened to rounded, strung together and suspended on fishing wire against a white textured wall hanging. The clay handprints and footprints of her babies, her vases, her straw place mats, her stack of matching tea trays, her little uniform hanging wire baskets vivid with bougainvillaea, her pair of flanking pots overflowing with yellow allamanda, and the stiffly vertical white frangipani bred for suburban gardens came under his silent scrutiny. She could see him assessing how unsophisticated her taste must be. Although he said nothing then, she could see that everything, all that was dear to her, was dwarfed in his eyes when set against his consciously eclectic blue half drum fecund with mixed basils or the coal pot of periwinkle, the mossy clay pots of michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, the conch shell of mint which, in his front yard, rested on a strip of rescued fretwork atop an old rusted Singer sewing machine found abandoned in a winding Belmont cul-de-sac. In her own gallery sat the cast-iron frame of her mother’s Singer, which she had had carefully cleaned, painted matt black and newly surfaced with plate glass topped by a glazed pot of maidenhair fern. Such cliché middle-class taste.
When she cooked at home, it was usually partially husked brown rice and curried vegetables – basic, frugal sustenance. In his kitchen, he dropped farfalle into boiling salted water with a running commentary – the packet says eight minutes, I prefer seven and a half… You can’t get proper rock salt anywhere here… Look what I have to resort to – he indicated a blue canister of what in her kitchen would be special-occasion sea salt. In a deep blue and white authentic Delft dish – one dollar fifty cents in a Toronto flea market, said in a confidential whisper as if the vendor was nearby and could inflate the asking price on learning of his delight at it – he combined butter, olive oil, full-cream milk, crumbled goats cheese. Hmm – he rhapsodised as he decanted the drained, perfectly al dente pasta into the sauce – I’ve had feta in three continents, even the artisanal product in Greece and, as I was telling my friend Lindy in Austria when we Skyped last week, none is better than the one from Tobago. He stirred in raw chopped arugula, chive, chadon bene and basil. He pan-grilled whole fish – You must sear for four minutes and a half each side… The inside flesh should still be translucent when it is put on the warmed plate… it will continue cooking. She insisted that hers be opaque. Overcooked! A travesty! was his verdict. Only once did she offer him something she had prepared – her signature dip of aubergine and yogurt. He had a spoonful on a Crix in her presence. I would have made it slightly less acid, he pronounced. A week later, she rescued from his fridge her tiny blue and white Corningware dish, still full – bar that single spoonful – of now crusted, weeping baba ganoush. She didn’t tell him.
He served the meal at the stove, on his mother’s floral decorated, gilt-edged Royal Doulton plates. In the gallery, they feasted royally. I cook simply, just ordinary things – brushing aside her compliments – this is how I live; hmmm, it can do with a little of this – shaving Romano from the block over her plate and his. He taught her how to inhale the Talisker and let it vaporise in her mouth – you must chew it! He winced when she said she preferred Campari and coconut water.
After dinner, he insisted that the dishes be left lying just where they were. To clear up now, he declared, would change the mood from enjoyment to work. So she reclined on the daybed surrounded by the remains of the meal while he stretched out there too, his head in her lap. She undid the elastic around his ponytail and released his fine hair, as soft as it ever was, though then, all those decades ago, she hadn’t known, hadn’t thought to describe in her head, the feel of his hair. She moved her fingers from scalp through the silver cascade, right to the curling tips and back again. He hugged her round her hips and sighed.
– Why won’t you make an honest man of me?
She didn’t answer – the question was merely self-indulgent, a chance to turn a fine phrase, no more. He was counting on her to note the quality of the question and not put a literal interpretation on it. He continued.
– I was thinking about your house…
He moved his arms from around her and folded them across his chest.
– It’s so… suburban… so… sterile...
Her hands slowed their movement through his hair as she waited for him to say more.
– Like… how to put it?… It’s like a shrine to your dead husband’s ghost.
She did not stop the stroking. It helped her mind to drift away, into a far space where his voice seemed remote. He tilted his head back so that she could see his upside down face.
– You’re not answering… You’re not saying anything.
Still she didn’t answer and, resettling into his former position, he went on.
– If we were to get together, there would have to be some changes. The walls are all white. And those landscapes… those watercolours. You have only fiction on your bookshelves… endless prints of that architect’s cityscape sketches.
Here he paused and looked at her with his upside down face again. She did not meet his eyes as he went on.
– Don’t you find it static?
When he stopped, his words that she had allowed to
fade into the background came into sharper focus. He was talking about her home, her sanctuary, she realised, and not in a nice way. She suddenly felt a surge of longing to be there, with the familiar mundaneness of her bookshelves loaded with fiction and her suburban flowers and the snapshots of her ordinary life. Static security was what she craved, right at that moment. I must go now. She sat up, guiding his head off her lap. Sorry about not helping with the dishes. I don’t want to be out driving too late.
She was already opening her car door when his voice drifted down from the top of the gallery steps. Call me when you get home. She didn’t answer and when she got home, she didn’t call. She was propped up in bed, her own queen-sized bed with floral sheets and matching big pillows, reading, rereading, a short story collection, May We Borrow your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, an old favourite by a beloved old favourite and had just started the story, “Cheap in August”, when the phone shrilled in her ear. His number came up and she thought he might be calling to confirm she had got home safely. Her upbeat hello was met by a deep hiss from his end.
– Are you back in your smug, comfortable life?
She sat up straight. Where had that come from? What had prompted that? It was as if a gecko she was holding in her palm had morphed into a scorpion.
– Do you ever think about what you did to my life?
His voice was grating, low, as if it came from his deepest viscera. She pictured him lying in his bed, head sunk into his pyramid of pillows, comforter drawn up to his chin.
– You listening? Yes, I want you to listen. I want you to think about how I felt all those years, forty-four years! Catching glimpses of you with… with… that… person. A comfortable life, you say, a home and children and being Mistress So-and-so. That person who came from nowhere decided what kind of life I was to have. I had plans. We had plans. But that counted for nothing. In the end, I got nothing.
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