“No, no, nothing—it’s just—” Now he feels uncertain—is it even worth mentioning that strange girl? “Have you heard this singer on the radio? I think her name is Nelly? I noticed this. Is it that there are two Nellys and one is a rapper and one is a regular singer?”
“Dad—” Stanley breaks off; there’s some scuffling and a thin stream of voices in the background.
“Are they singing? Is that considered singing?” Suddenly he wants to know. Stanley is the authority on all such matters by virtue of being young: musicians give steel drum demonstrations in his parking lot; he has a sale bin at the front of the store, Music of Indigenous Uprising.
“I don’t know, Dad.” Another pause in which Stanley might be muttering instructions to someone. “Sure, yeah, it’s singing, why not?”
“Oh.” Brian falls silent. Even though Brian’s son is often remote and very busy, he’s also dutiful: the child they could count on. Brian presses, angling to keep his son on a little longer: “It just sounds like a mess.”
“It’s protest—like reggae,” Stanley says peevishly. “They’re angry. It’s a sign of sanity.”
“Yeah. Probably.” Brian sighs.
“Dad, is—are you okay?” More voices blur in the background, a small shuffling crash and distant laughter. Always this mesh of noise at the market.
“No, no, yeah. I’m fine,” Brian waves one hand in his empty office. “Um. Your mother was—she was going to meet with Felice today.”
“Oh.”
Brian rubs at the underside of his jaw for a moment: mistake.
Stan asks, “Why does she bother?”
“I’m sorry?” Brian massages his knuckles into an aching spot between his ribs. At four, Stanley was smitten, practically in tears at the sight of his newborn sister. Even in those first hours, before Felice’s beauty was apparent—her iridescent eyes, the numina of her skin—Stanley was devoted. He held his sister in his lap, her tiny hands fused into fists, her face purplish with crying. He kissed her head and murmured into her damp hair.
“No, nothing.”
“Yeah. Well, hey son, I got this call . . .” Staring out the window, he sees a rope of lightning flash over the skyline.
“You got what?”
“This girl—” Brian chuckles, embarrassed. “She called my cell and said she’s your girlfriend?” He chuckles again, wishing he could stop. “She told me not to worry.”
“Shit.”
“Stan?” Brian presses the phone to his right ear. “What’s the deal?”
“Gimme a minute here. Fuck.” He hears his son’s voice muffled, away from the phone, shouting something like Nevis! Then, “Fuck.”
“Stanley, what the hell is going on?”
“It’s just—she’s my goddamn girlfriend.”
Brian lifts an eyebrow—the last girl Stanley was seeing was not someone that a person would apply the word “goddamn” to in a million years. “What happened to—”
“Nieves!” Stanley is shouting, away from the phone again. He returns. “I’m sorry about that, Dad. I can’t control her.”
“So you know her?”
A long hot sigh. “Yeah. She must’ve gotten your number from my cell phone. She does stuff like that.”
“Stan. This is someone—you’re seeing? You’re involved with?”
Pause. “Dad, listen. Can you just sort of—can you pretend like you never got that call?”
“Stan—really. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just. We’ve had some money issues.”
“Money issues.”
“Nothing really. Goddamn Citizen’s finally denied our claim for the refrigerated cases.”
“Oh, jeez.” Last summer, Hurricane Charley took out the electricity—both mainframe and backup generator—at Freshly Grown, and three of their industrial freezers were ruined, along with extensive wind damage to the exterior of the building. The case investigator, a crimson-faced woman, kept dropping in at the store, writing reports and gazing at Stan. Brian knew his son had encouraged her—inviting her to wine and cheese tastings and baking sessions at the store; he’d given her an “appreciation basket” filled with organic pears and apples and chocolates from Vermont. Stanley can be a bit obtuse that way, Brian thinks—so focused on business that he never realizes there are other motives at work. She’d strung the investigation out for months, continually remembering some new piece of “evidence” she needed to collect or some bit of damage that needed to be photographed. She’d been encouraging about their chances, but then Stan demurred from her invitation to a home-cooked dinner.
“I had a bad feeling about that one.” Brian tips the remote at the office climate controls.
“Yeah, so did we all,” Stanley says morosely. He’d refused to let his father intercede in the case: Brian swallows the impulse to point that out. “And then there was all that water damage. And we’ve been dealing with the shoplifting thing.”
“It’s the local kids, isn’t it?” Brian thinks but does not say, Those Mexicans.
“Actually, it seems to be in-house. One—or more—of my trusty staff—someone with access to the books, inventory sheets.”
“Oh, Stan.” Brian rubs his temples, then lifts his head. “Does that girl—that—Neeva? She have access?”
“Dad, no. It’s not Nieves.”
“How do you know? You said she was crazy. She sounded—”
“Dad, trust me.”
“Why was she calling me in the first place? She made it sound like there’s something—”
“What?” Stanley’s tone is abrupt—tinged with the anger Brian remembers from Stanley’s high school years.
Brian inhales, considers pushing back, asserting his paternal rights. “Well.”
“Nieves just has some issues right now,” Stanley says. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Really.”
“Hey—whatever you say.” He feels an ache at the back of his throat. The desire to set things right. The inability to do so. He can’t get his mind to clear: the old bits of memory are there: a fog of late days at work, entire months where he didn’t cross paths with his son, saw his wife only when she lay across the bed, released into a long twist of sleep. They were living in a state of hibernation—that’s what it’d felt like at the time. Outside of work, every encounter and every conversation felt like a swipe of sandpaper. Now Brian suspects that what he did was worse than neglect—it was abandonment—precisely when his son needed him most. He’d thought he was gently leaving him alone—that it was what he assumed adolescence required. Brian’s hand lingers a moment after he’s hung up; he sits very still, his body humming with the frequency of far-off traffic.
BRIAN AND STANLEY NEVER found their way back to that early closeness, the time of the gingerbread house. Felice was born, a Miami angel: it was as if the perfumed air and sifting fronds had pervaded his and Avis’s genes and given them this unbearably lovely, worthless child. Is that what he really believes? Brian rubs at his jaw. Yes: worthless. His son’s presence had a heaviness, an unasked question. There was usually a dusting of flour in Stanley’s hair, along the ridges of his knuckles. If Brian offered to take him fishing, Stanley was always game. They went on day excursions to Key Largo,
Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. But he’d head right back to the kitchen when they got home, saying, “I’d better check on the starter,” or slap on the hot water and start loading the heap of pots and pans into the washer.
Neither of them had interest in organized sports. Brian grieved over this: sports gave men a way to talk to one another: a language to smooth one’s path through life. Brian had suffered without that language. He’d imagined taking his son to soccer practice, baseball tryouts; he’d planned to cultivate an interest in whatever activity his son took up. He hadn’t counted on the son he got. After Felice left home, Stanley moved outdoors as well. He started an herb garden, then expanded, building raised beds with clean blond planks of wood, planting stringbeans, eggplant, and Brussels sprouts. He
dug up swathes of the backyard for leafy greens and purples and reds, and grew a type of lettuce that was filigreed in blood-red, as if a circulatory system ran through it.
He rarely spoke to his parents—perhaps he’d blamed them for Felice’s disappearance. Brian recalls one early evening, home from work, when he’d gone to the kitchen for a snack (they no longer ate together) and he found Stanley with his arms immersed in suds, the air smudged with mist. Stanley looked almost beatific, his eyes like glass, as if he’d been at prayer. Brian hesitated just as Stanley turned.
“Hey—uh—just thought I’d grab myself something.”
“Let me.” Stanley withdrew from the sink, shaking off his hands. “I haven’t been to the store yet—there isn’t much.” By the time he was seventeen, Stanley had taken on the grocery shopping and food preparation. He made them stews, pastas, salads filled with the crisp vegetables from his garden. Brian was surprised that such tomatoes and onions grew in the dirt behind his house—that his son would know what to do with them. Stanley heated some refried beans, dropped a scoop of butter into a skillet and let it foam. He cracked eggs into a bowl, whisked in a dollop of heavy cream. “So, Dad.” Stanley spilled the eggs into the sizzling butter. “Something I’d wanted to talk to you about.”
Brian pulled up one of the tall stools by the counter. “All ears. What’s up?”
Stanley gave him a bright, alert glance. “Nothing bad. It’s just—you know I got into UM, right?”
Brian nodded, avoiding Stanley’s eyes. Brian had attended Brown and Cornell Law. As had his own father. But Stanley’s grades were mediocre, his attendance sporadic. And Avis wanted to keep him close; neither Brian nor Avis had encouraged Stanley to apply out of state or given him advice on other schools. It was this—the lack of ambition for his son—that deviled Brian even more than their lack of time together. “Yeah—it’s great, Stan. I’m proud of you,” Brian said. “That’s a very solid school.”
“Well, I hope you’ll still be—because the thing is, I decided I don’t actually want to go to college.”
Brian stiffened. “Oh?”
“I mean—I think I really want to start a business.” Stanley stirred the eggs, the wooden spoon tilted in his hand, a steady oval of motion. “I don’t need school.”
Brian’s eyes ticked up at the kitchen: Brazilian hardwood floors, counters reflecting tiny, embedded ceiling lights, sleek white porcelain cake pedestals with thick glass covers. They’d poured nearly $200,000 into the remodel, retrofitting Avis’s kitchen to professional grade. Stanley thinks this is what it means—what running a business is. “The grocery store?” Brian tried to sound sincere and neutral.
“I know I want to start a business.” Stanley’s voice grew hotter as he stirred. “I’ve got investors lined up. My friend Jason Perez says he’s in—and Mrs. Gregerson, my old boss at Winn Dixie? She’s very interested.”
“Well, you know, the business school at UM—”
“Dad, wait—just listen. The whole organic lifestyle thing is everywhere these days, right? There are entire stores that are just organic food and vegetarian. Really committed to natural, alternative approaches.”
Brian’s eyes were now trained on the stirring. They’d had this conversation—in pieces—over the years. Stanley took a class in History and Deconstruction in ninth grade—the stuff they taught in schools! He’d started reading Noam Chomsky, Theodor Adorno, Ralph Nader for crying out loud. Stuff Brian didn’t even want to read in college. The more Stanley read, the more intense he became. Brian tried to reassure himself it was just part of the evolution of adolescence. When Stanley started on Diet for a Small Planet, he became insufferable—quoting statistics on the environmental damage caused by a meat-based diet, giving diatribes on the imperialist legacy of the big-food industry, the plight of grape pickers in California, coffee growers in Sumatra, sugarcane haulers in Cuba. At seventeen, Stanley was fired from his job as a bag boy at Milam’s for smuggling discarded cheeses, crackers past their sell-by dates, and dented cans to homeless shelters and missions. Brian had been mortified. He drove to the store and told the manager that Stanley’s sister had disappeared a few months earlier and that Stanley had been struggling. The man watched Brian with a doubtful, grave frown, straightening the tie under his apron. Finally he agreed not to press charges as long as Stanley never reentered the store. Brian found himself repeatedly offering the same explanation to a series of teachers and employers.
The eggs looked molten, ivory-yellow wavelets closing behind the sharp lines of the spoon. “I don’t like school, Dad. It’s never been right for me—you know that. I’m not like you that way.”
Meaning what? Intellectual? Cold? Out of touch? Brian drew a slow, tense breath.
“I mean, I wish I were, but I’m not—I don’t get the school thing. But I do know business.”
“I thought businesses were all part of the corporate hegemony,” Brian said softly, trying to stave off the sharpness he felt. Stanley gave him another of his bright looks: Brian realized his son was terribly anxious.
“Well—yeah, usually they are. But my deal would be different. The employees would all be part-owners. It’s basically the co-op model but grown up. With better food and more variety. You don’t have to be a member or volunteer or buy, like, the spotted, moth-eaten fruit. The co-op sells this vegan cheese that tastes like tires. Forget it. You just pay the money and our produce will be just as pretty as the stuff at Publix. There’s nothing even close to it around here, Dad!” he said in a passionate burst, his eyes shining with the kitchen lights. “I’ve researched this. Tons of people want to eat clean and healthy but they don’t want to go into places like co-ops—they’re too small . . .”
“And grubby, and depressing.” Brian crossed his arms, his suit jacket pleating into the inner creases of his elbows.
“Sure, yeah. I guess they can be.”
“So . . .” Brian felt the archness enter his voice—the way he’d circle in a summary statement at a hearing. “All these Miami doctors and attorneys, driving their Lexuses and Maseratis—they’ll have a place to buy the nice healthy food they’ve always wanted.”
“Yeah, exactly. We’ll go mainstream with it.” Stanley looked so pleased, his smile so wide and bright, Brian almost didn’t have the heart to keep going. But he had to—there was a crucial point to be made. “So you’re identifying a need and positioning yourself to fill it?”
“That’s right.”
“But if you do that . . .” Brian brought his fingertips together, let them slide the length of his fingers, interlacing. “Don’t you, of necessity, end up hurting the majority of people? Meaning the poor and lower middle classes? The ones who couldn’t afford the beautiful, clean food in a nice store like yours—and who’d be too anxious—too intimidated—to go into a place like that in the first place?”
Stanley lifted the pan from the stove. “Well, it wouldn’t be that nice.”
“Then you wouldn’t get the deep pockets—all those dressed-up big spenders! Because people like that do want a gorgeous environment. Which is it, son? Steal from the rich or give to the poor? Because you can’t have both at the same time—not legally. Remember Milam’s?”
“It’s not stealing or giving, it’s—it’s all legit, it’s—” Distracted, Stanley scraped the eggs onto a plate beside the beans. They sent up a plume of butter steam. He slipped the plate before Brian with a spoonful of homemade salsa. “It’s a whole other idea of things, Dad. It’s a community.”
“You mean a commune, I think. It’s a beautiful idea, communism—for saints and angels.”
“No—I mean community.” Stanley dropped the pan and spatula into the sink. “Same idea as family—or a neighborhood. I know you must get it. Community has to come first, or there’s nothing.”
Brian picked up his fork. “Listen, Stan, Jesus. Just get your degree. College gives you a chance to live a little, think things over, meet people. You think you don’t need it, but you’ll always
regret it if you don’t, believe me.”
“Dad, I can tell you right now exactly how I’m going to feel about this later—I don’t want it and I don’t need it.”
“You do.” Brian’s tone was preemptory. Irritated, he forked up some eggs. At first he didn’t taste them, but gradually he did: the curds were light, bearing traces of salt, pepper, and butter. He felt almost, but not exactly, as if he were sad. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. He stopped talking for a moment and ate. His son had made this. Even then, seven years ago, Brian was beginning to sense the size of his debt to Stanley—the permanence of it. Even before Felice was all they could think or talk about, he’d given up spending time with Stanley. It was easier to let Avis raise the children and Brian would bring home money—just as it was done in all sorts of families for generations.
Why couldn’t he soften toward his son then? Instead he finished eating and put his fork on his plate and said, “You’re going to college, Stan. You’re too young to make this decision, so I’m making it for you. Case closed.”
The sun in his window is flat and pitiless. There’s an ache at the center of his chest that seems to have to do with both of his children. We were watching the wrong child, he thinks, a sensation of some vital organ deep within dragged across a grater.
WAITING FOR THE ELEVATOR Brian catches the flutter of Spanish just before the door opens: Esmeralda is there, speaking with Hector, the mailroom boy. “Mandale saludos a tu madre de parte mia.” They glance at Brian.
“Thanks, I will,” Hector says as he wheels out his mail cart. “Hello, Mr. Muir.”
Esmeralda checks her watch. “Brian—you’re leaving at a decent hour for once?”
Brian feels a streak of mild irritation: Javier sometimes intimates that deals take place in these corridors in Spanish. So Brian tries to act unconcerned—as if he almost understands. Could speak if he so desired. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
Birds of Paradise Page 12
