What Happens in Paradise

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Ellen stops by with a goodbye present, a Rawlings alloy baseball bat for his new coaching duties.

  “You won’t hit the ball if you don’t swing,” she says.

  Baker books tickets for Wednesday. Debbie drives a minivan; she’s going to take Baker and Floyd to the airport after she drops Eleanor and Gale at school.

  Monday after school, Baker and Floyd sit in the kitchen eating pizza because Baker doesn’t want to dirty any dishes. It’s ironic that they’re eating pizza, Anna’s favorite meal, when Anna is so far away.

  Baker decides to reach out to Anna. He snaps a selfie of himself and Floyd and the sausage and pepperoni pie from Brother’s and texts it to her with the words Miss you, Mom!

  She’ll probably respond to the text sometime next week, Baker thinks.

  A few minutes later, Baker’s phone beeps and he checks it, expecting Anna’s response to be Okay or Sounds good or maybe even Miss you 2.

  The text isn’t from Anna, however. It’s from Cash. Baker reads it, then drops his phone.

  Rosie

  July 31, 2006

  I should have known that telling Mama and Huck had gone too easily.

  Mama read my diary and found out about Russell and found out about Irene—and one night after work, I walked in the door expecting to find her asleep or, possibly, waiting up with a plate of chicken, beans, and rice—she was concerned that I wasn’t eating enough for two—but instead she was in the doorway, my diary in her hand, her eyes popping.

  “A married man?” she said. “Have you no shame, Rosie?”

  I grabbed the diary from her. “Have you no shame?” I asked. I went into my room and slammed the door behind me, my heart cowering in my chest because I had left it exposed and my mother had found it.

  I’m going to set the diary on fire, I thought. And if the whole house goes up in smoke, so be it.

  There was a light knock on the door and I figured it was Huck, there to try and fix what my mother had broken. But when I opened the door, it was Mama herself. I tried to slam the door in her face but she pushed back—for a second, our eyes locked, and it was a test of strength. I was younger but pregnant; Mama was Mama. Then she put a finger to her lips and I relented.

  She entered, closed the door quietly behind her, sat on my bed, and patted the spot next to her.

  I shook my head, lips closed in anger.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to be sure.”

  What she meant was that she had to be sure the baby wasn’t Oscar’s.

  I wasn’t naive. I knew there was talk across the island. Who is the father of Rosie Small’s baby? The odds were on Oscar. It was possible that Oscar had even claimed it was his, though we hadn’t been together since he’d been out of jail.

  “My word isn’t good enough?” I said.

  “It’s not,” Mama said. I gave her a look, which she brushed off. “You’re young, you’re afraid, you might have said anything to keep a roof over your head.”

  “I don’t need this roof,” I said. “I have money saved.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “The ten thousand dollars. Where is it?”

  She knew about the ten thousand dollars, of course. She knew everything now: Vie’s Beach, the sex, the room service, the wife and sons in Iowa, the name of the boat—Bluebeard.

  “I kept a thousand in cash,” I said. “The other nine I deposited a little at a time along with my paychecks.”

  She nodded like she approved. “Good.”

  “I haven’t contacted him,” I said. “I have no intention of ever seeing him again, Mama. Like I said, it was a mistake.”

  “Your voice is saying it was a mistake but your face is telling a different story.”

  I almost broke then. I almost said that it wasn’t a mistake, that I didn’t regret being with Russ, that there had been something between us and that something was real. But my mother was Catholic; she believed in the sanctity of marriage. A married white man having a baby with an island girl was no good. I could tell, however, by her mere presence in my bedroom that it was far, far better than me being pregnant by Oscar.

  “What does Huck think?” I asked. I wondered if he might be more sympathetic to my situation. He had been married, then divorced. He, maybe, understood that relationships didn’t always fit into neat boxes—though it would be very unusual for him to battle Mama.

  “Huck doesn’t know.”

  “You didn’t tell him?” I said. It was even more unusual for my mother to keep a secret from Huck.

  “I told him the man was white. A pirate.”

  Pirate had been the word I used in my diary.

  “That’s the story from here on out,” Mama said. “Pirate came in on his yacht, you had relations, then he left, never to be seen again.” She clasped my hand. “Do you understand me, Rosie? Never to be seen again. You see this man again, I phone the wife. Irene Steele from Iowa City. I called Information. I have the number.”

  Hearing Irene’s name come out of my mother’s mouth gave me chills. I knew she was serious. I could never see Russ again, even if he did someday return.

  August 22, 2006

  It was as though we’d conjured him. Three weeks after my mother confronted me, I was at work—still cocktail waitressing, even though my belly was enormous and my ankles swollen—when Estella tapped me on the shoulder and said, “There’s a man at the bar who wants an order of the conch fritters.”

  “Isn’t Purcell on the bar?” I asked.

  “He is, child, but this gentleman asked for you.”

  I was punching in an order and I had a table with food up and a table still waiting to order drinks and Tessie was taking a leisurely cigarette break as always and I was about to snap. The restaurant was closing September first for two and a half months—hurricane season—so I only had to make it through another week. I gathered my wits, delivered one table their meals, took the drink order, ran quickly to the ladies’ room, and then, feeling relieved and refreshed, I lumbered over to the bar to see which gentleman at the bar wanted the conch fritters.

  Honestly, I didn’t even think.

  Russ was sitting at the corner seat.

  I was torn between running straight into his arms and running for the parking lot.

  His eyes became round as plates when he saw my belly. He knew, Todd Croft must have told him, but maybe he didn’t believe it or maybe he was overwhelmed to see evidence of his child with his own eyes.

  “Mona Lisa,” he said.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Mine?” he said.

  “Don’t insult me,” I said. I turned and gazed out at the water in front of Caneel, but I didn’t see the yacht.

  “Bluebeard is on Necker Island today,” he said. “I came over in a helicopter. We have…a client…with a helicopter.” He seemed proud to be telling me this, like I would care about a helicopter, of all things.

  “Must be nice,” I said. My voice was stony, nearly icy, but my insides were molten. He came back. He was here. As discreetly as I could, I checked his left hand—ring still in place. At least today he was dressed appropriately. He wore stone-white shorts and a navy gingham shirt, crisp and expensive-looking, turned back at the cuffs. A new watch, a Breitling. He had a tan, a fresh haircut; he had lost twenty pounds. He looked great; there was very little trace of the sweet, bumbling man I had known. I was even more drawn to this sleeker, more confident version.

  “What time are you off?” he asked. He nodded down the beach. “I got our room.”

  Our room, 718. I had avoided going anywhere near the hotel rooms since he left.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  Why not. I thought about telling him that my mother had read my diary and was threatening to call Irene, but I didn’t want him to know how much control my mother had over me. I thought he’d be angry that I’d written about our relationship and been stupid enough to leave the diary in a place where Mama could find it. I thought he’d t
hink poorly of my mother for blackmailing me—and I couldn’t bear that. Mama was looking out for me.

  “You’re married,” I said. “To Irene. You have children already. I’m not going to disrespect that. You can’t ask me to. It’s not fair.”

  “Rosie…” he said.

  “It happened,” I said. “But it can’t continue.”

  He nodded at my midsection. “Except it is continuing. You’re having my baby.”

  I nearly surrendered to him right then and there. My baby. Here he was, willing to claim the child so that I wasn’t alone in all of this. And in the months since he’d left I had felt very, very alone. Mama and Huck would help me. I would live with them and bank the money that Todd Croft had given me to get me through the first year.

  “I have to get back to work,” I said. I left Russ and put in an order for conch fritters.

  He stayed until service ended. His mere presence at the bar—he was watching the Braves-Phillies game—made my pulse quicken and my breathing get shallow and I feared this reaction would affect the baby so I tried to stop and rest, drink plenty of ice water, and get to the ladies’ room often to splash my face.

  Finally, I was finished. It was time for me to leave. I walked over to him.

  “I’m going home,” I said. “It was nice to see you again.”

  “Please, Rosie,” he said. “Just come to the room.”

  I wanted to, if only for the air-conditioning and because I knew he would order me whatever I wanted from room service. But then it occurred to me that Russ might have been after sex and sex alone; maybe he saw me as a girl in a port, an island wife. I was nobody’s island wife.

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re married.”

  He nodded. “That I am.”

  It pained me to hear him say it, but it also gave me resolve.

  “Please don’t come back here,” I said. “Unless you get divorced and you have bona fide legal documents to prove it. It’s difficult for me to see you.” I spread my hands across my stomach. “I had feelings for you.”

  “Had?”

  “Had, have, it doesn’t matter because you don’t live here and you aren’t mine.”

  “I’d like to support the baby,” he said.

  “I received money already,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this would come as news to him or not.

  He said, “Todd showed me your e-mail last week. He told me he sent you money back in May. He told me he came down to Carnival in July and that he checked in on you and that his hunch was correct: you were pregnant. The instant he told me, I made plans to come down here. I’m here only to see you, Rosie.”

  Todd Croft had come during St. John’s Carnival and had spied on me? I didn’t like that one bit.

  Russ had found out only last week?

  “I have everything I need,” I said. “But thank you.”

  “You don’t have to forgive me but you do have to let me support that child,” Russ said.

  “I don’t, though,” I said, and I walked out of the restaurant, past the Sugar Mill, and into the parking lot, where I climbed in my car and cried.

  The following week, a package arrived containing five thousand dollars in cash. An identical package came the week after that. And the week after that.

  October 29, 2006

  Today at 5:09 a.m., Maia Rosalie Small entered the world weighing six pounds and fourteen ounces and measuring twenty inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on.

  The nurse brought me a form to fill out so she could make the birth certificate. On the line where it asked for the father’s name, I wrote Unknown.

  November 1, 2006

  Maia is three days old. Today, I sent an e-mail to Todd Croft at Ascension letting him know that I’d had a baby girl and that her name was Maia Small.

  September 4, 2012

  Today is Maia’s first day at the Gifft Hill School. She marched into the classroom, head held high, shoulders back, with barely a wave to me and Mama and Huck, all of us standing in the doorway, watching her go.

  Huck had a charter and Mama was due at the health center and I thought, What am I going to do now? Then I realized this was the perfect time to start journaling again. Because if you don’t write down what happens in a day, you forget—and that day becomes a blur and that blur becomes your life.

  If I had to describe what has happened in the past six years, what would I say?

  I quit my job cocktail waitressing at Caneel and got a job waiting tables at La Tapa, but only four nights a week because of Maia.

  I have a best friend named Ayers Wilson, who’s another waitress at La Tapa. She’s like a sister to me and an auntie to Maia. She dates Mick, the manager at the Beach Bar, so we stop by there after our shift and sometimes there are cute guys and a live band and sometimes I dance and a date comes out of it—but there has been no one special because the first thing I say is that I have a daughter but the father isn’t in the picture and the second thing I say is that I was born and raised on the island and will never leave.

  This scares everyone away. Everyone.

  On the first day of each month, cash arrives in a package and I put it in the bank for Maia. It’s how I can pay for Gifft Hill. I won’t say I’m not grateful, but receiving the packages also fills me with anger, shame…and longing.

  Unbelievably, after all this time, I still think about Russ. I wonder how he’s doing. I can only assume he’s still married to Irene, trying in earnest to make the marriage work.

  I hope he’s happy—because if he’s not happy, then what’s the point of staying with her?

  February 9, 2013

  Journaling is like exercise; it’s hard to keep it up. You have to make yourself do it, and ultimately, I don’t see the point of Went to work, played Tooth Fairy, went to bed.

  Tooth Fairy because Maia lost her first tooth, bottom front left. It popped out when she bit down on a piece of breakfast toast, then it skittered across the floor and Huck found it.

  I sometimes wish I had an e-mail or a cell phone number for Russ. I would tell him: Your daughter lost her first tooth. What would he do with that news? I wonder. He has no one to share it with.

  February 13, 2014

  Two things happened today, almost at the same time. One, I was on Salomon Beach, finally reading Eat, Pray, Love, the book that Ayers holds above all others. (She has been to Italy, India, and Bali, so it resonates with her.) Anyway, I was in the midst of the India section when I looked up and saw that yacht, Bluebeard, sailing past Salomon toward Caneel.

  No, I thought. But then I remembered that it was this time eight years ago that I met Russ.

  I stood up. I was wearing a white bikini, just like I had been when I met Russ at Hansen Bay. I wondered if Russ was on the boat and, if so, whether he could see me. I was tempted to drive to Caneel to check if Bluebeard had anchored out front, but while I was in my car, debating, my phone rang and it was Huck.

  It was midafternoon. This was very unusual.

  “It’s your mother,” he said. “She’s sick and I’m taking her over to Schneider.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. My mother didn’t get sick. My mother was a nurse practitioner who, after years of treating everything from head colds to herpes, had developed a force field around her. Nothing got through.

  “She’s being admitted,” he said. “It’s her heart. It’s failing. You and Maia should plan to come over and see her after school lets out. I’ll handle today, get her settled, talk to the doctors, see if it’s better for us to go to Puerto Rico or the States.”

  I could have told Huck then and there that Mama would never agree to be treated in the States, but I didn’t want to start a health-care debate.

  Her heart failing? It seemed impossible. My mother had the strongest constitution of anyone I knew, and that didn’t even take into account her iron will.

  For years I would have said it was impossible for my mother’s heart to fail—because she didn’t hav
e a heart.

  March 3, 2014

  My mother, LeeAnn Small Powers, died at home with Huck and me by her side. We’d let Maia have her first sleepover, an overnight with her little friend Joanie. We explained the situation to Joanie’s parents and they were very kind.

  We’ll tell Maia in the morning.

  March 10, 2014

  My mother is dead and, now, buried in the Catholic cemetery. We had a service, led by Father Abrams, my mother’s favorite, followed by an enormous reception on Oppenheimer Beach. The community center was open, everyone brought a dish to share, the men got the grill going, my mother’s friends sang some gospel hymns followed by some Bob Marley. There were children running in and out of the water and down the beach. It was as much a celebration of life as it was a memorial.

  When the sun set, the rum came out and a steel band set up, and once I made sure Maia was safe, under the watchful eyes of her aunties, I found Huck and he poured some Flor de Caña and we did a shot together.

  “We’re going to make it,” he said.

  “Are we?” I said. I knew it was the right time for me to find a home of my own. I had plenty of money in the bank to rent a nice place, maybe even buy, but I knew that if I moved out, my heart would break and so would Huck’s. My mother was gone. We needed to stick together.

  I found Ayers and Mick sitting on the beach together and I joined them and Mick’s dog, Gordon. We were such good friends that we didn’t have to speak; we could just be.

  Mick whistled, snapping me out of my daydream. “Would you look at that,” he said. “Bluebeard.”

  I made a sound, words trying to escape that I caught at the last second. Bluebeard? I stood up and, sure enough, there was the yacht, cruising across the horizon in front of us. Headed away from Tortola, it looked like, and toward…well, toward Caneel. Where else?

  I stayed on Oppenheimer until the very end, helping to clean up until every trace of the celebration was swept away. Ayers and Mick offered to take Huck and Maia home. I wanted to stay there and hang out by myself for a while. They hugged me. They said they understood.