Claire of the Sea Light

  He escorted her to the kitchen, and they divided a half pitcher of lemonade between two glasses. Surprisingly, he thought, unlike a lot of returning dyasporas, she was skinny and wasn’t reeking of bug spray. He asked her why she hadn’t come to the party the night before, and she said that her cousin’s car had broken down and she was unable to find a ride in time. Why hadn’t she called his son? he asked. She said her phone wasn’t working. Couldn’t she have borrowed someone else’s phone? he asked. Then she confessed that she thought it was better for his son to see everyone for the first time on his own.

  He wasn’t sure why her explanations mattered so much to him, yet they did. He offered her some leftover codfish patties from the party. She declined. His cook was nowhere to be found and he was afraid to call out for her. He could accept neither pity nor further scorn from his employees.

  He decided he wouldn’t stay inside the house and hide. He would eventually have to face all of this head-on, at the school, and in any number of places in town. The girl followed him back to the porch. If the whole town wanted to parade by his open gate and condemn him, they could. He and his ex-wife had done what most parents he knew would have done. They’d tried to protect their son. And by providing the money for what had become the beauty parlor, they’d tried to protect Flore’s child the best way they knew how. Should they have demanded a shotgun marriage? Should he have sent Flore off to Miami with their son? It was clear that something other than love had been made in that room that night. And perhaps that night was not the only time it had happened either. But what do you do when your misguided child, in some stupid effort to distract you from who he really is, commits a horrible act? Do you have the police come over and arrest him? Do you have him paraded on the street and humiliated on the radio? Your child. This boy. This man, who had once been a good, simple, and innocent boy. Just like this boy he had violently made. So if Flore wanted to keep this boy for herself, let her. She might have a better chance of turning him into a decent man. Good luck to her, though. He hoped she would succeed. Let her try to raise a boy and help him become a man. Let her teach him how to tie his shoes, to shake hands properly. Let her show him how to swim, how to fly a kite. Let her show him how to sharpen a blade, to shave or otherwise, how to defend himself when attacked. Let her teach him to read and write and tell him all kinds of stories, the true meaning of which he never seemed to understand. Let her feel proud, then ashamed of him, then proud again. Let her long for him when he is gone and despise him when he’s in her presence. Let her wish for him to be another kind of son and for her to be another kind of mother. Let her see what it’s like to protect him from even his worst desires, to keep them from tainting his life forever. Let her try to show him the difference between right and wrong. Let her guide him to adulthood unscathed in a society where people are always looking for the next person to tear down. Let her school him on legacy, how one should honor and respect it and defend it at all cost. Let her learn one day how to forgive him and eventually to forgive herself.

  Flore’s own mother had certainly tried to do her best for her. It must have felt like success when her daughter had landed in his house. A particular detail in Flore’s story wounded him even more than the rest. The morning after the hailstorm, he had picked up his son’s wet flashlight outside Flore’s door and had handed it back to him.

  “I forgot it there,” Junior had said. He had not questioned him further.

  He had even seen Flore leave the house while he and his son were in the garden.

  He had known none of the details until now, hearing what she was telling the world through the radio. He regretted not hearing anything but the storm that night. In the end, he was Max Junior’s father and not hers. If he had to choose between anyone and his son, his son would always come first.

  Better Louise’s kind of talk, he’d thought, than others. Better that kind of shame than an even worse kind. Sleeping with the house servant was not an uncommon rite of passage for young men in houses like his. “Droit du seigneur,” his own father had called it. Though Max Senior himself had never taken part. But wasn’t even the girl expecting it? The faultiness of his logic seemed obvious now in being exposed. Could he go on Louise’s show next week and use that dreadful explanation to absolve his son?

  Jessamine was still respectfully silent, watching the calabash trees on the street along with him until his son pulled up in front of the house in the car he had lent him to take Flore and the boy home. When had Flore found the time to record this monstrosity of an hour? Max Senior wondered. But now his attention was on his son. His son, his brilliant scholar son, who was now cowering inside his car, hiding from him and this girl. His son, the lover of stories as a boy. Quick, he wanted to think of a story to tell him now, a story of dangerous mistakes made by both fathers and sons. Jessamine was looking at the Jeep, at his son, her eyes dancing between them and Max Senior’s face. He was now seeing her in full, carving out of her dark face another impossible grandchild for himself. Even though he was with a school full of children all day long, what did he even know of young people these days? At the school and elsewhere in town, he had seen several groups go from matènèl, prekindergarten, to close to his son’s age. Not many lived out their early promise. Some of this you could blame, as his ex-wife often did, on the town, its lack of opportunities, its rigid social hierarchies. But his son, with all his opportunities and contacts, had done no better.

  There was something tragic about a generation whose hopes had been raised, then dashed over and over again. Had they been poisoned by disappointment? Their leaders and elders—including himself—had made them so many promises that they’d been, for whatever reason, unable to keep. Idealists had been killed to make room for gangsters. Life had become so cheap that you could give anyone a few dollars to snuff it out. When had they entered, he wondered, what Rimbaud, in his time, had called “le temps des assassins,” the age of assassins? Maybe his generation was the problem. They’d built a society that was useless to their children. Still, these children seemed to lack the will to sacrifice and build their own. He had been willing to at least try to make this right. He had been looking forward to turning his school over to his son, to the next generation, to see if he—they—could or would do any better. But now he might never get the chance.

  He was surprised that Jessamine did not rush into his son’s arms when she saw him. His son, in turn, was looking down the road, then looking back at them. Maybe the radio was on in the car and his son too was listening to the program or he was overhearing snippets from the street. Maybe he didn’t even realize the program was on. Being a subject of Louise’s so-called show was like getting a scarlet letter. One that at times was only temporary. You were hounded by murmurs and whispers, but only until the following week, when it was someone else’s turn.

  Max Senior wanted to rush to explain that to his son, to reassure him, but he hoped that Jessamine would make a move before him. Jessamine did not. Was she shell-shocked? He didn’t know, but he could see in his son’s face that he felt he had no choice but to quickly drive away.

  Where would he go but to the beach? Aside from the lighthouse, it was his favorite place. Weighted down by more important concerns, the people at the beach might not even be listening to the show.

  “Shouldn’t we go after him?’ the girl was asking him now. And it seemed the kind of simple question that might be asked by someone who did not fully understand that there was nothing simple about a situation.

  “Yes, we could go after him,” he replied. “But I suspect if he wanted to be with us, he would have stayed.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do?” she asked. Both of them were staring out at the front gate, at the calabash trees on the road, their branches stagnant in the heat.

  “We wait,” Max Senior said, which was the usual course when it came to his son. He was always waiting for him: waiting for him to come to his senses, waiting for him to understand his duties, waiting for him to take up
his responsibilities, waiting for him to return home.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?” asked the girl.

  “He will,” Max Senior said, fully certain of this, if nothing else. “He always does.” The girl shook her studded face and grimaced, now allowing her frustration to show. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse and dialed it. She was trying to call his son, Max Senior assumed. But hadn’t she just told him that her phone wasn’t working? He wanted to remind her of this, but said nothing. She held the phone up to her ear for a while and when there was no answer, she threw it back in her purse. She kept watching the front gate, the road, leaning forward as if to better see each passerby. She remained sitting there next to him, long after the show ended and the station switched to a music program, and the neighbor’s maid finally lowered the volume.

  “We’re not going to take it sitting down,” Max Senior said, then he realized how ridiculous that sounded because they were actually sitting down.

  “I’ll find Flore and Pamaxime again,” he continued, “and I will go to the radio station myself and denounce Louise on her own airwaves.” He was rambling now, he realized. “Nothing will change, not with the school, not with my son. All of this will be forgotten.” But what about Pamaxime? he wondered. What would become of Pamaxime?

  “Byen. Okay,” the girl said.

  He thought of her few words, in her heavy English accent, as banalities of the kind people say when they are feeling the opposite. He had been young once and might have said something like this, but never to one of his friends’ parents. But this girl was saying this to him now, because in some way she considered herself equal to him. She might even consider herself wiser than him, her apparent lack of condemnation, her friendship with his son a sign—or so she probably thought—that she possessed a kind of compassion that surpassed everyone else’s, that even surpassed his.

  Just then, thankfully, his friend Albert walked through the front gate and on the path toward them. Jessamine jumped up as if she thought it was his son returning, or maybe she was just grateful to have someone else there.

  “I’m not dead, am I?” Max Senior shouted to his friend.

  Albert laughed, then walked faster, shifting his hat from one hand to the other when he reached them. Albert bowed his head in Jessamine’s direction while tapping his hat against his thigh. Jessamine looked up at him and returned his greeting with a nod. Then, as if she could restrain herself no longer, she reached into her bag and pulled out a lighter and a cigarette. Walking to the end of the gallery, she sat on the edge of the railing and lit it. Max Senior was curious to see if smoke would come out of the side of her face through the studs in her dimples. (It didn’t.) He was also horrified to see her dropping her cigarette ashes, then the cigarette butt itself, on the African violets around the porch. Some of the flowers were already withering from the increasingly hot temperatures. He had planted them around the front gallery in corners where there was neither too much light nor too much shade. He had made sure that there was the right balance of perlite and soil, and now she was using his flowers as an ashtray. He wanted to shout at her to move away from them, but before he could say anything, she started walking back toward him and his friend. She walked, he realized, as though she were doing an upright backstroke, rotating her arms with every step.

  Albert was watching her too, as he had sat in her place on the bench, leaving her with no choice but either to squeeze in next to them or to remain standing. She chose to remain standing.

  Had she not been there, Max Senior would have gone inside and picked up his dominoes and card table, and he and Albert would have talked nonsense and played a long game late into the night. But she was standing there looking at them, and they could not ignore her.

  Max Senior could see that his friend was doing his best to take a break now and then from staring at her face. Because of his work as an undertaker, Albert was naturally intrigued by body modifications, amputations as well as embellishments, especially rare markings or piercings. His friend had probably never seen piercings like the ones on the girl’s cheeks. What would one call them, Max Senior wondered, earrings, but not on ears, zanno machwa, cheek rings? His friend, he was certain, was probably imagining his own son and daughter in the United States with these cheek rings, or worse.

  “Are you here because of that program?” Max Senior asked Albert, in part to divert his friend’s attention from the young lady.

  “Am I only allowed to come here when you have parties?” he asked.

  “You can also come when we have tragedies,” Max Senior said.

  “I can’t stay long,” Albert said, his eyes returning to Jessamine. She wrapped her arms around one of the porch’s pillars while looking at the trees on the road.

  Max Senior could imagine how much his friend would taunt him at the next marathon domino game about having a girl like this—striking, as slender as a dancer, studded, tattooed—as his daughter-in-law.

  “Where is your wife?” Max Senior asked his friend.

  “She’s already left,” he said.

  Max Senior thought how sad it had been that his friend’s wife and children had not even come home for his swearing-in as mayor, because the twins were in some kind of swimming tournament. That day Max Senior had been grateful for his own divorce. How can some people not fully understand their ability to shatter hearts?

  Jessamine walked back over to the far end of the porch and stared down at the same African violets she’d doubtless singed with her cigarette.

  “What are these flowers?” she called out.

  “Violets,” he told her.

  “They grow here?” she asked.

  They are growing, aren’t they? he wanted to say. At least they were trying to, before your cigarette.

  “Everything can grow here,” he replied instead.

  Max Senior then wished that his friend had not come so soon, that it was still just him and the girl talking in this new way about things, about his son being okay and about African violets. Max Senior then realized that he hadn’t properly introduced her to his friend.

  “Albert, this is Jessamine,” he said. “Remember, we were waiting for her last night. Jessamine, this is Albert Vincent, an old friend.”

  “Old only in the length of my friendship with Max,” Albert said.

  “I see.” The girl did smile this time.

  “And where is Junior now?” Albert asked.

  Max Senior shrugged. “Most likely at the beach. Or at the lighthouse,” he added.

  “Let him be,” Albert advised. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. Let’s just let him be.”

  “That’s what I told Jessamine here,” Max Senior said.

  It was getting dark, and Max Senior’s hope that his son would return grew stronger. Otherwise, it would be up to him to decide where to put the girl for the night. She had somehow reached his house on a camion that her relatives had put her in from the capital. The driver had been kind enough to drop her off at the gate, but she had no sure way of going back to Port-au-Prince, at least not tonight.

  “I suppose you heard the program,” Max Senior said, keeping his eyes on the few people walking by on the road, looking, he thought, with new interest at his house.

  “Part of it,” Albert said, resting his head on the wall behind him. “I heard it after meeting with the mother of a young man who got a machete in his gut from a land dispute, so I had some perspective.”

  Jessamine raised an eyebrow, looking curious in a way that seemed to flatter his friend.

  “You’re Oncle Albert,” she said. “Maxime told me about you.”

  “Did he?” Albert said. “I thought he had forgotten about all of us.”

  “Seems like no one here forgot him, though,” the girl said.

  “Did he want us to forget him?” Max Senior asked, ashamed when he heard how forlorn his own voice sounded.

  “Of course, as Louise constantly reminds us, there are things we should never forget,” Albe
rt said, as though lecturing his friend.

  “Kolangèt manman Louise, screw her!” Max Senior shouted, finally allowing himself to blurt out the full extent of his anger: at himself, at his son, at Flore, but most especially at Louise George.

  Jessamine shrank back a little, hugging the porch pillar tighter, as if to give him room. Looking at her face, her high brow, her tattoo, and her pierced cheeks, Max could sense some deeper story there, some story he would probably never know. Albert said nothing, letting his friend stew for a moment. Instead he placed his hat on his lap, allowing his hands to shake openly for her to see.

  It was growing even darker now, so dark that on Max Senior’s street one could already see lights through the windows of a few houses. The silence among the three of them now bothered Max Senior so much that he did not feel as timid as he might have asking what he did next.

  “Are you and my son in love?” he asked. “Nou renmen?”

  Once the words crossed his lips, he realized that they sounded more like a plea than a question. Please, please, love my son was really what he was saying. And for once he was grateful that Albert restrained himself from jumping in and facetiously asking, for example, “Who, me? Am I in love with your son?” Instead it was the girl who asked, “Me?” and Max Senior said, “Since we’re neither on the radio nor on television, I’m going to both nod and say yes.”

  Max Senior nodded and Jessamine frowned her disapproval at his poking fun at the show and at Flore.

  “Your son is my friend,” she said, her eyes following the fireflies lighting up, then disappearing around them. “He is my very terrible and imperfect and dear friend.”

  Max Senior thought this an accurate description, one of many he might have used himself.

  “I fell in love with your son when I met him and knew nothing about him,” she continued.