The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “I gave my whole life to you!” she is screaming. “I gave my whole life to you and this is how you treat me. I am not letting you go!”

  “I not going anywhere, damn stupid woman, I am not going anywhere! But you would not have understood that I must do this. So I had to come alone.”

  Holly and I are pulling them apart. And I cannot meet Una’s eyes; I feel cheap, I feel used. I feel sad. For just in the action of pulling them apart, it seems that Holly and I are taking sides.

  Then they turn on us, demanding, screaming that we let them go. Father shoves me off and Holly is forced to release Una. Holly and I come quickly to an understanding on a glance across the space. Let them go. Maybe the relationship needs this. If it gets beyond the edge we will pull them back.

  So this is what it boils down to, this life thing, this love thing, this marriage thing: two old people fighting, making fools of themselves in the rain, shouting at each other, chasing each other around. One shouting, “Stop and talk to me, I am your wife!”

  The other: “Leave me alone, you too damn miserable, what the hell you doing down here?”

  Then: “I am your wife, and I am not letting you just run off like this with no damn woman!”

  “You don’t own me, woman!”

  “I am your wife! I have given my life to you for over thirty years.”

  “So who say I don’t love you for over thirty years?”

  “Stop and talk to me! Is how people show love?”

  So this is what it boils down to, people fighting, searching for answers, reaching back through the years to find the point where the road forked, hoping to correct something that has been formed and tempered by years, by time.

  She hammers him with her fists. He holds her arms and shakes her. She hammers him again. He lets her go and storms away.

  A desperation, a panic, a fear that time is running out—a fear of the future which looms ahead like a dark space with a precipice. A fear of being alone. A search for memories—collecting them like a child would collect peenie wallies in a bottle to help guide her through a dark country night.

  And what of me? What memories will I have of this fork, this place in my life? Am I making the right decisions? Have I made the wrong decisions? What decisions will I be reaching back to try to fix in thirty years or so? What mistakes will haunt me like a ghost?

  There is a yelp. I look over to see my father slipping and sliding, then falling to roll toward the slope where the old man disappeared with his donkey. Una screams as he disappears over the edge. Holly shouts loudly, jumps, and makes a dead run toward the slope. But I find myself reacting less quickly. It seems that I have chased after my father enough these past two weeks, that there are limits to chasing the fantasies of someone else, even if it is your father. It is time now for him to accept full responsibility, or at least for Holly and Una to take over. I have learned by all of this that there are things I must do, that there is someone I must see, memories I must make, decisions that will ensure that I do not chase fantasies thirty-five years down the road. But I am still concerned for him, so I trot over to see how far down the hill he has rolled and how Una and Holly are handling things.

  He is a mess of mud from head to toe, but Holly has him and Holly is a big man with huge muscles from working out constantly in the gym. Father’s right leg is bent at an awkward angle, but a muddy Una is supporting him from the other side. He still has his wits about him, though, yelling for Holly to take his time. I stand and watch them come slowly up.

  “How is he?” I ask as they get to the embankment.

  “He has broken his leg,” Holly says.

  “It doesn’t feel broke.”

  “Holly is a doctor, Daddy.”

  “Eye doctor!”

  “I did do general medicine before I specialized—plus, any blind man can see that it is at an angle.”

  “Listen,” I tell Holly as we near the vehicles. I cannot believe how easily the words are coming from me. “Listen, Holly, you will have to take it from here. There is something I have to do.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell you now, but get him to hospital and take care of things.”

  “We have to get back to town this evening.”

  “I know, but I have to be somewhere else right now.”

  “Like where?”

  I don’t respond and instead steer the three of them toward the brilliantly new gray Mercedes. Then I reach inside my car for his bags. As I lift them, I feel the weight and reach inside the biggest one to remove the last bottle of his pimento wine. He will not need this now.

  Father has already made an eternal mess of the upholstery of the Mercedes. It is too somber a mood to smile, so I silently place the bags on the floor next to him. Una is on the other side, fixing Father’s head in her lap.

  “I have to go, Holly,” I tell my brother.

  “You are just leaving like this?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Okay, whatever. If you have to go, I guess you must.”

  As I make to move away, he calls me back to say that Father wishes to speak to me.

  So I am forced to go over to Una’s side and look into the eyes of someone I feel I have betrayed. But she seems so happy to have him in her lap and so embarrassed for her own behavior that she is having trouble meeting my eyes.

  “Yes, old man?”

  “You goin’ back?”

  “There are things I must do.”

  “Mountains to climb?”

  “It is not the way you think it is.”

  “It never is. Both big and small mountains?”

  I ignore the comment. I know he means for me to check on that hotel with the same name down the road. I feel the need to kiss him on his forehead and I do.

  “Take care of that leg. Stop give your wife trouble. Your adventures done now.”

  I walk from the Benz to my van without looking back. There is a woman in Ballards Valley I must find. I have things to tell her about decisions I have made about life, about the future, about memories.

  THIRTY

  And she is there as if waiting for me, leaning against the gate, looking out, in a pair of shorts so skimpy they would probably disappear if I said a harsh hello. Her blouse is just as skimpy, with sleeves of string. It hangs upon her bare, firm breasts, but lies back down against her flat stomach as only the finest weighted silk can.

  She does not move while I park the Pathfinder, but watches me come with a look of infinite patience.

  I do not know what I will tell her, or rather, how I will express the feelings beating in my chest, but I am here. I disembark and walk slowly across the space.

  “You lost,” she greets me with a soft look.

  “Maybe I am found.” I stop with my hand on the gate. She still does not move, but receives me into her space, into her eyes—into a moment of charged silence.

  “Where your father?” she finally asks. As if to say: Let’s get the easy conversation out of the way.

  “Daddy is where Daddy should be. But this is not about my father.”

  “You sure?”

  “I . . . I want to talk to you. There are things I want to say to you.”

  “Things you couldn’t say yesterday.”

  “I really would like to talk to you.”

  “Things you can’t say right here so, ehh? Okay.” I think she will go to change, but all she does is push her head through the window to shout, “Mamma, me soon come!”

  I must have felt the familiar privacy of the Pathfinder’s cabin would make me more at home. But her sitting there like that brings a whole new dimension to it. And she knows, God knows she knows, and is enjoying what she is doing to me.

  “You well want to have sex with me, don’t it?”

  “Wha . . . What?” I am stammering now.

  “Talk the truth. You well want to have sex with me, don’t it?”

  “Listen, can I speak first? May I say what I have to say?” I know I sound foolish.
“Can I say what I have to say before we come to that?”

  “No, answer my question first. You go round too much corner. Answer the question first. Just talk the truth.”

  “Anybody would want to have sex with you,” I blurt. “Anybody.”

  “I ask ’bout you.”

  “Yes, yes, all right, yes, but not so, not just so.”

  “How many ways somebody can want to have sex with somebody? How many ways?”

  “I want more. I want more. Life is more than sex, relationship is more than sex. I can’t just want that.” I try to find my range, my voice, my control.

  “You don’t want me.” She gives a sad half-chuckle. “You don’t want me, I know that. You know that.”

  “Why you say that? I know what I want, I know now that you can be more to me. We can be more.”

  “No, Eva, you don’t want me, you just don’t want to make the same mistakes your father make.”

  And that is the heart of the matter, isn’t it? That is the heart of the matter, the fact that it could be so, that it may be so, but that I now know it is not so, for I have thought about it all the way driving here like a madman. It is not because of him but because of me. Not his memories, but mine. “I know me, I know myself. I know what I want,” I say.

  “Maybe you know what you want now. But what about tomorrow, when you want something else?”

  “You think I could just want someone else tomorrow? You think I am like that?”

  “Thing! Something else! You think me stupid? Something else. That is what man want. Things, not people. And time change things. And when things change, sometimes people don’t fit anymore. I never see anybody go out with a client and it work.”

  “Yes, but I am not a client. I did not meet you in a massage parlor.”

  “But you know, and with you that is enough.”

  “I know myself,” is all I can say.

  “Yes, but what happen when you go to a party and somebody point me out because they sleep with me or I massage them? What you goin’ do? You know what you would do? After a while you goin’ start ’fraid to go out with me because you won’t be sure who and who I sleep with.”

  “It would not matter.”

  She laughs kindly. “So you say now. But it would. I tell you, I know you. I really know you. You have men who can deal with it. But you not like that. You don’t make like that. That is why you come here today, ’cause you worry ’bout things—things bother you. You not like your father.”

  “I’m not comparing. I am trying to—”

  “That is why you not goin’ make the mistake them that your father make. Because him just do things. You have to think ’bout them first. Him just feel guilty now ’cause him make a mistake. But everybody make mistakes. Is just that him feel guilty now.”

  “How you so sure about everything?”

  “And you know that you know.”

  I don’t know what I know anymore.

  Now we are both staring through the windscreen. It’s evening, and evenings in Ballards Valley are a little different from those farther south where we were. The sun sets across the land here and not across the sea. And you get a chance to see how the land and the vegetation and the rooftops respond to the rays as they spread to gold. There is a soft reality to it too, for people are moving about and the space is more human.

  She turns to me. “I want to, you know, but you put too much meaning to everything.”

  “What? What you want?”

  She laughs again and shakes her head. “How you so fool sometimes? I want to have sex with you from the first time you hold me at Appleton, from the first time.”

  “It is just that . . . I . . .”

  “Talk the truth, man, Eva. You don’ have to explain everything.” She reaches for the door handle. “Well, since you don’t want to do it . . .”

  But I beat her to it and hold her hands softly. “Where you going?”

  “What?” Her smile reveals that she had just been joking.

  “I have somewhere to show you.”

  “Come then.” She reaches across and sticks her tongue into my ear. It is the morning of the massage all over again. She laughs loudly as I jump, leans back into her seat, and places her feet upon the dashboard. “Make we go up by Dorril,” she says. “I hear it have the best sunsets.”

  She is reading my mind.

  * * *

  We are but a few minutes away and the energy in my loins is heating. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a vehicle slots in behind me with its lights flashing. I pull close to the edge of the road to give him way but he stays on my bumper.

  “Is Willy,” Angela tells me. “Is Willy, him trying to stop you.”

  Every time I go to Dorril, Willy is there. I stop in a clearing where a young man sits beside a pile of melons. Through the rearview mirror, I see him rise to approach. But Willy is already out and explains to him that the stop is not about buying melons.

  “I see you have good company.” He gives a wolfish smile through the window.

  “Hi,” she greets him with a familiarity I do not like.

  “Everton, man, you know how long I looking for you? Where is your father?” He seems filled with both urgency and relief.

  “Father’s gone home. Why you looking for him?”

  “This old woman, man—this old woman my mother give me, man. I have this old woman—whole day she waiting for your father. Say they supposed to meet up at the land. We tell her onoo gone but she don’t believe. So I have her. I left the boys up on the land looking, to call me when you and your father come. All day them wait and don’t see onoo, man. Now she want me to take her up there to look around.”

  “Which old woman?” My stomach is about to turn.

  “The German woman, man, my mother’s cousin. She want to see your father about some business. Maybe some land business.”

  “She exists?”

  “How you mean?”

  “But we were in Montego Bay, where she . . . never mind. She is real? She exists?”

  “Come!” He literally pulls me from the van and I am in a daze as I head toward his vehicle, to find this woman, this fantasy of my father.

  She sits there with silver flowing hair, face plump, dimpled—eyes like ackee seed. Hope. “Hope?”

  “So you are Everton.”

  There is a quietness to her, a dignity too, and sophistication that comes with age no matter where we start. Also, there is a richness of life in her voice and a force common to those of some means who have still managed to maintain an earthiness.

  “You are so tall, just like your father. But say something.”

  I am overcome with unfamiliar emotions. I feel like there are tears welling up in me and if I speak they may overflow.

  “In living color.” Willy is standing beside me.

  But she is sensing that there is more to my standing there—understanding, it seems, my emotions, knowing just by a look that I cannot simply blurt things out, not now.

  “And Nigel?” She searches my eyes. “He could not make it?”

  “We went to Montego Bay. We were at Grand View.”

  “Ah. He was always like that, giving mixed messages and getting instructions wrong—stubborn.”

  “That’s my father.”

  “Grand View!”

  “He said it was the first place.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes cloud momentarily. “Ah, that first place!”

  I remain silent.

  “And he could not make it . . . here?”

  “And now he cannot.”

  Her eyes are so black and intense upon me—reading, knowing. “But you are here.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “By faith and coincidence.” She smiles. She has seen Angela and has put the pieces together. “How is he, how is your father?”

  “My father . . .” I hold her stare. “He won’t be coming.” There is a feeling that she understands. And there is more she will need to understand. Yet the things we must say cannot be
shared with the others. So we speak carefully—staring at each other like old allies in a spy movie.

  But then Willy solves the situation: “Why don’t you go with Everton, Aunt Hope? Is Everton own everything now, you know.” This he says to everyone.

  “Yes, Everton,” Angela says beside me, “yes.” She pulls my eyes away. She knows there are things to talk about with this woman. “Let Willy take me home.”

  In a minute Willy has helped Hope from the van and is making space for Angela to enter the vacated seat. He has seen an opening and is making his move. I remember how the first time I saw him I felt I would never introduce him to my woman. Now faith is handing her to him wearing almost nothing, taking her from me mere minutes from memories of a lifetime.

  We have swapped women.

  Willy pauses by me, smiles, and hugs me. “Just call when you coming. It was good to see you.”

  “Sure, Willy.”

  “And don’t worry ’bout nothing, man. I will take her home safe.” He punches my fist. “Everything is everything and everything is all right.”

  Sure, I am thinking, as he walks around the front of the van. “Sure.”

  As the van starts up and Hope and I step aside to allow it to pass, the door opens and Angela runs to me and throws herself into my arms.

  “You not telling me you gone.” She wraps herself tightly into me.

  “I thought you found a new boyfriend.”

  She presses her lips against my ear. “Him? Is long time me know him. Long time him trying.”

  “Make him try harder.”

  She laughs against my cheek. “Make haste and come back.”

  “Yes? This might take time.”

  She squeezes onto me. “It not goin’ run ’way. Anytime you ready, even if you go home and come back—just come. When you ready, just call . . . we’ll go down to Memories and spend a weekend. Whatever you want.”

  “Whatever I want? I may want things you cannot give.”

  “Whatever. If is even one time.”

  “One time?”

  “I could fall in love with you, you know. But we talk ’bout that already. We know how that would go. But make haste and come.”

  “I will.”

  “Just don’t take thirty-five years.”