The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  “I leave Peanut by the snackette with Josie,” Eulia said. “She say to tell you howdy and mus’ get well soon.”

  Els leaned in to kiss Vivian’s cheek. “I feel dreadful about all this,” she said.

  “The world has guilt enough,” Vivian said.

  Eulia smoothed her mother’s hair. “Let me do this up for you.”

  “Leave it,” Finney said. “She wear it that way when we first meet. Make her look twenty-two all over again.”

  “Foolishness,” Vivian said. “Never mind. I’m past caring if my hair’s not combed.”

  “You not sounding like yourself, My Beauty,” he said.

  “I’ll be myself again when I get out of here.”

  A doctor entered the ward, said something that made the pregnant girl laugh, and came to Vivian’s bedside. After checking her pulse and listening to her lungs, he looped his stethoscope around his neck. “I was worried all this might trigger that infection again. I’ve given her an antibiotic as a precaution.” He extended his hand to Els. “Andre Lytton,” he said. “Vivian tells me you’ve rescued Jack’s. I called him friend long before he became my patient.” He slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket. “Finney, either help me convince Viv to go to Tavie’s for a few weeks or get her to accept that I have to keep her here.”

  Vivian squeezed her eyes shut. “Home,” she whispered.

  “Daddy and me can care for she just fine,” Eulia said.

  Lytton looked at her. His smile was tired. Eulia looked away.

  Els touched the doctor’s elbow. “May I have a word?”

  The corridor smelled of bleach and curry. “I blame myself for Vivian’s injury,” Els said. “I’d be honored if she recuperated in my cottage as long as necessary. We can even roll the wheelchair right into the shower.”

  “It’s a war of attrition, fighting diabetes in someone as indomitable as Viv,” Lytton said. “She fights to bounce back, but each bounce is lower than the last. You might be committing to shelter her for far longer than you think.”

  Els looked out the windows to a chain-link fence entwined in coralita vine. “I stand advised, Doctor.”

  The only home touches Finney and Vivian brought to Toad Hall were the appliquéd coverlet and a blue glass vase Vivian filled with the zinnias Finney grew for her in his provision ground. Seeing this, Els painted splashy flower images and hung them on the walls.

  Over the weeks, while everyone made efforts to respect each other’s privacy, Els’s eagerness to break her isolation with whatever companionship her guests could provide only grew. As her solitary routine included swimming vigorous cross-harbor laps at Oualie every morning, never venturing beyond the turquoise shallows, she took to walking there with Finney when he left to fish. One Sunday they bundled Vivian into Wilma and made the trip to Oualie, where Finney and Barrett Cobb carried her, wearing a shift dress, shower cap, and plastic sack taped over her stump, into the water for her first leisure swim in years. The freedom of her buoyancy made her weep.

  Eulia, delighted to have the Westbury house to herself and Peanut for the first time, came daily to Jack’s to care for her mother, see to the house, and cook for them all. Els happily paid her a salary and provided everyone’s groceries. At least once a week she took Vivian along to the farmers’ market, where the vendors crowded around the Jeep to tout their wares, calling Vivian “Miss Fleming” or “Teacher Vivian,” and Els “darlin’.” At the house, she lingered in the kitchen while Vivian and Eulia cooked and laughed, Eulia fusing her mother’s specialties with Resort dishes and herbs from Miranda into a culinary language all her own. The chatty lunches they all shared became the high point of Els’s day and erased her wraith look.

  When Vivian asked for rides to church, Els found herself tugged into the community, and though she considered Reverend Stillman’s sermons overwrought, she enjoyed her weekly glimpses into the island’s social currents and politics. Vivian’s company bestowed a certain standing on Els, as if the parishioners didn’t find it necessary to hold back in her presence, and she treasured the fragments she could understand of “dem say”—local gossip. But she found no comfort in Vivian’s God.

  She made a mission of restoring some of the life Vivian’s near blindness had stolen from her. Serving as her chauffeur and going along to doctor’s appointments, sewing circle, and ladies’ meetings gave Els purpose and nascent feelings of belonging.

  In the privacy of the Jeep, the women tiptoed into more intimate topics. Vivian confessed her fears of the dangers Finney faced daily at sea, her frustration at being unable to supplement his earnings, and her sadness at Jack’s despair and Eulia’s bitterness. Delicately, she drew Els out about Mallo, as well as her confused emotions about her father and what might have been had she known about her mother’s paintings.

  One day, as they were driving through Gingerland, Els said, “I wrote my mother after Father died. She replied that she was sorry she couldn’t be the mother I wanted. It’s made me wonder what a mother is supposed to be.” She didn’t admit that she studied Vivian and Eulia, trying to understand how a mother and daughter might bond, hold each other separate, or compete with one another.

  Vivian pointed out a house, the highest and most elaborate on the hill, with ranks of concrete balusters painted two shades of salmon. “There was government reparation for families who owned homes in Newcastle that were demolished for the new airport. Finney and I got nothing because we were only renting, but my mother put all of her reparation and most of her savings into building that ostentatious thing so she can look down on everyone.” She looked away, toward the sweep of grassland and the sea beyond. “Some rifts don’t heal.”

  They rode in silence almost to Coconut Walk.

  “Beware of romanticizing maternal love,” Vivian finally said. “It’s not always guaranteed, and it’s often complicated. Mamma expected me to marry smart. Continue the family’s upward trend toward prosperity and light skin. She never forgave me for falling in love with a fisherman, not to mention one as dark as Finney. From Anguilla, in the wrong party, and a secessionist to boot. Eulia’s shame, as Mamma sees our Peanut, is purely my fault.” She laughed her girlish laugh. “My sins are legion and I repent none of them.”

  “At least you know what sins she might hold against you.”

  Vivian touched Els’s arm. “Write again,” she said. “Give her a way to imagine you now, your home and life here. Help her think of you as any mother would want—safe and happy.”

  “Safe, perhaps.” Els stopped to allow three cows trailing their lead ropes to file across the road.

  “Happiness and sorrow are jealous siblings, always vying for attention,” Vivian said. “We need to be on the lookout for happiness, though. Sorrow can find us on its own.”

  A pair of cattle egrets crossed after the cows with their beaky struts. One flew up, landed on a cow’s haunch, and pecked.

  “The world is full of relationships we might not predict, just like those cows and egrets. Finney calls them ‘gawlins,’ ” Vivian said. “You just don’t know who’ll want to peck the bugs you can’t reach off your hide until they step up and volunteer.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Els returned from grocery shopping one mid-March afternoon to find Jason’s truck in the court, Vivian crocheting and Finney playing dominoes with Liz and Boney on the shaded patio.

  Liz jumped up and strutted toward her. “Dinner’s on me,” he said. “I bought enough of Finney’s lobsters for all of us.”

  Els shook her head. “I don’t see you for two months, and suddenly you commandeer my dinner plans?”

  “It’s high time I gave you that lesson in cooking them,” Vivian said.

  “Fair Lady,” Boney said. “Knowing your dislike of surprise visitors, we decided you needed an improvement over Ol’ Bessie.” He stood up and hurried toward the north end of the house.

  “What, a starter’s pistol?”

  “No noise this time,” Liz said, already pulling her aft
er Boney. Whenever he took her hand, her life shifted.

  He stood behind her and put his palms over her eyes, his calluses against her cheekbones. She smelled something like oil, metal.

  “Ta-da!” He removed his hands.

  Boney was standing under the shower platform, grinning. A metal flagpole lashed to the shower railing poked high above the roof. He hurried to where they stood and held out a flag folded into a tight triangle.

  “Cor,” she said, and took a step back. A dove pursued another across the court. The gliricidia tree, still naked of foliage, was raining its pink blossoms onto the grass.

  Liz steadied her against his chest. “Something the matter?”

  The sight of the flag sent her back to Cairnoch’s graveyard and Jerry Grimes presenting the folded Saltire to Burtie while Els stared into the rectangular hole next to Mallo’s coffin.

  “Think of flying it as an engraved invitation,” Boney was saying. When she made no move to take the bundle, he flapped open a handmade rendition of the Nevis flag. On the green triangle was an appliquéd image of Jack smoking a cigar, his face encircled by a horseshoe; on the red triangle, an image of crossed darts.

  “I especially like the little skulls and crossbones we put on all the stars,” Boney said.

  “We copied the face from a photo I found on Iguana,” Liz said.

  The handwork was worthy of Vivian in her prime; Els wondered if she’d had any role in this.

  “When you want company, you just hoist ’er up there,” Boney said. “You can see ’er from the dock at Oualie. We checked. I’ll rig you up a spotlight so you can send a signal after dark. Come on, I’ll show you how she works.” Boney slung the flag over his shoulder and sprinted up the steps and through the front door, Liz close behind.

  By the time Els reached the bathroom, they were both on the shower platform. She’d stopped in the door of each room on the way there, looking at what they must have seen on their trips through her private space: a black negligee tossed on the bedroom chair, her unmade bed with the lacy pillows askew, a flowered bra and matching panties hanging on a towel rack, a streak of makeup in the sink, a box of tampons on the bathroom chair.

  She stepped over the muddy footprints crisscrossing the floor and climbed out the window onto the shower platform. The flagpole looked salvaged, a little bashed up, maybe tossed about by Hurricane Lenny, but had a new cleat, pulleys, and rope. Yellow nylon cord, the ends wrapped and tied off, secured it in the corner of the railing. The flag hung limp from the halyard. Her bathing suit, left to dry on the railing, was in the ferns below.

  Boney held out the halyard. “Here, give ’er a yank.”

  “I know how to hoist a fucking flag, assuming I’d ever want to,” she said. “What gave you guys the idea you could barge in and rig up anything you want?”

  “I thought you’d be tickled,” Boney said.

  “Get off of here, both of you, and out of my bathroom.”

  Boney looked at Liz. “What did we do?”

  “Out.”

  Boney slid through the window and stood with his cap in his hands. “It’s just the sort of thing Jack would have loved. I’m surprised he didn’t think of it himself.”

  “He had that bloody cannon,” she said.

  “Do you want us to take it down?” he asked.

  “I said get out.”

  Boney flipped on his cap and hurried down the hall. He looked back once before clumping down the stairs.

  Liz’s eyes had darkened to Prussian blue. “We won’t disturb your privacy again,” he said. He climbed over the railing and shimmied down the support, strode to where Boney was standing in the drive, and whacked him on the shoulder. They exchanged words Els couldn’t hear and then got into Jason’s truck, and Liz slammed the door and drove out of the court with a spray of gravel.

  She sagged into a seat at the domino table opposite Finney and put her hands on the tiles, seeking steadiness in their antiquity. They were real ivory—Finney said they’d belonged to Jack’s grandfather—and were as yellowed and shot with brown as old teeth, the pips stained with India ink, a tiny brass stud in the center. Their clack was richer, deeper, than the plastic bones available now, as if they held the stories of every sweaty hand that had cradled them, and all the banter and foolishness of generations of men bragging about boats and fish and revolution and women and more women.

  Finney squeezed a double six in his palm. “Wha’appen?”

  “Those presumptuous fucking guys,” she said. She stood up and began circling the table and Vivian’s wheelchair, hugging her arms tightly to keep herself from flying apart.

  “Such language,” Vivian said. She extended her arm to stopped Els’s pacing.

  “Best not to let Liz get vex,” Finney said. “He doan recover quickly.”

  “Go after him,” Vivian said. “Once he cools down, he’ll want to apologize, but he’ll need some encouragement.”

  “Tell him we need help eatin’ all a’ them lobsters,” Finney said.

  Iguana, riding on her distant mooring, looked deserted. Els spread the flag on the dock, lay down on it, propped her chin on her arms, and stared at a school of fish swirling between the pilings. Calm flowed through her, as it often had at the Crag when she’d run there as a child to recoup after a tantrum.

  An osprey raked up a fish and flew to the masthead of a sloop to rip at it. These are the eagles of this land, she thought, and beware the little creatures below—but she could not bring herself to feel sorry for the fish, as she often had for the hare.

  She felt footsteps on the dock and turned to see Liz and Boney approaching. Boney elbowed Liz, said something, and doubled back toward the bar. She stood up and draped the flag over her arm. Liz leaned against a nearby piling.

  “What is he, chicken to face me?” she asked.

  “Cut him a little slack,” he said. “He was just hoping there could be fun and carousing again.”

  “Where does he get off thinking I want Jack’s friends making free with my home? Why do you hang out with him and Jason if you have to apologize for them all the time?”

  “They can do their own apologizing.”

  “I’ll wager neither of them feels a pinprick of contrition,” she said. “What about you?”

  He looked across the harbor. “We should have asked first. Boney would take the rap, but I wanted you to have that flag at least as much as he did.”

  “What makes you think I’ll ever use it?”

  “Jack’s place needs people. Maybe sometime you will too.”

  Over their heads, two least terns screeched, one carrying a fish, the other harrying. As was often the case after one of her rages, Els felt disoriented, unsure where to place blame, as if everyone involved had held a match and it was unclear whose had set off the conflagration.

  She draped the flag over her arm. “You guys really know how to trip my switch.”

  “Not pretty,” he said. “But I’m no stranger to anger.”

  “People have warned me about that.”

  He looked at her. “So neither of us is exactly a picnic.”

  Standing like a pole, she held the flag by two corners and let the breeze belly it. “You could redeem yourselves a little by helping us eat the lobsters.”

  His eyes remained a cloudy blue. “Least we can do.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Wearing one of Jack’s shirts, caught by only two buttons, Els lit the candles on the refectory table and sheltered them with hurricane globes. Liz, Finney, and Boney had cajoled her into joining their after-dinner dominoes, a competitive game with much slapping of tiles. The contest between Els and Liz had edged toward playful by the end, but his leave-taking had still been wary.

  She restarted the Bob Marley CD Liz had played during the domino game and danced around the shadowy lounge, singing along about getting together and feeling all right. When Marley launched into “Don’t Rock My Boat,” she went to the gallery, where the frogs were chirping a counterpoint to the r
eggae beat. Candle glow spilled through the front door and a fingernail moon hung in the western sky, its horns pointing away from the satellite that always appeared first and blazed brightest, a man-made star that never budged or wavered.

  “So which is it, sweet?” Jack asked from among the heliconia below the gallery. “Get together and feel something, or leave your little boat unrocked?” He stepped onto the court.

  She went to the railing. “Mother of God.”

  He was naked, the dark hair on his torso descending like a braid to his crotch, which was lost in shadow. He held a pirate stance, fists on his hips. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “Dive in and get wet.” He swiveled his hips. “Or float around above it all, missing the fun.” He looked about her age—fit, tanned, bearded, and ponytailed.

  “I refuse to have a conversation with you in that condition.”

  “You’ll talk with a jumbie, but not a naked jumbie?” he said. “Don’t go all prissy on me.” He walked into the garden, his buttocks a pale stripe between his bronzed back and legs, and disappeared among the sago palms. After some thrashing and cursing, he reappeared holding the pleated leaf of a blue latania palm, big enough to cover him from chest to knees. “I hope my fig leaf satisfies you, Miss Priss. No—I hope my leaf does the trick, and I wish my fig could satisfy you.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “I guess I shouldn’t say ‘trick,’ either.”

  “What’s this, Adam in the Garden?”

  He held out his hand. “Come be my Eve.”

  “You’re not my type.”

  “And what type would be?” he said. “I thought you liked ’em dead.”

  Far away, a dog barked.

  “How dare you,” she said.

  He began to pace, his gait a little wobbly. “We dead guys have a lot going for us,” he said. “Frozen in our prime, all our manly splendor intact.” He looked down, held the leaf away from his body, then swept it back into place. “A lot of women—I mean, really a lot of women—came flocking to get a taste of this manly splendor. But not you. Oh no, you’re immune from mine or any man’s charms, because you’re married to a memory, a figment.”