When in Vanuatu

by Nicki Chen

  Wasn’t it just like him, blind to the cloud earlier when it was poised to pierce the moon and seeing it now as the visor on a baseball cap? You’d think they lived in two different worlds. Maybe they did.

  She couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to be so negative at a time like this when they should have been celebrating. And why the hell had he chosen this evening to accuse her of being obsessive? As soon as he’d paid the bill, she pressed her lips together and hurried to the car—which only meant she had to wait for him to open her door.

  Once inside the car, he just sat in the driver’s seat, key in the ignition, staring straight ahead. Then he let go of the key and rested his hands on the steering wheel like someone waiting for the light to change. “All I want,” he said finally, “is for you to be happy. For both of us to be happy.”

  At that point, she still wasn’t ready to look at him.

  “I dream of us having our own child,” he said, as though he were repeating someone else’s lines. “I really do. It would be the most wonderful thing in the world. But, sweetheart . . .”

  Although she could feel him turning toward her, though she was aware of the pleading in his voice, she continued staring at the windshield, noting in detail the evidence of the earlier rain and the demise of one tiny, unfortunate bug.

  And still he kept at it. “I can only do my part,” he argued. “And I can hope, and I can pray. But that’s all I can do.” He paused as though waiting for her to say something. When she wouldn’t even nod, he kept going. “This island and the Tassiriki house might be just what we need to tip the scales. And it might not. That’s what I’m afraid of, that we’ll care too much about something we can’t control.”

  She opened her mouth to object, to tell him she hadn’t said the house would change everything. That’s just how invested she was in her version of things.

  Before she could plead her case, though, he knocked the air out of her anger. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he said. “When you talked about the house and how it was going to change everything, I overreacted. I spoiled our evening. I’m really sorry.” He laid his hand on the seat next to her, palm up. “We have each other,” he said. “The way I look at it, we’re already a family.”

  He seemed to be asking her to go along with the idea of the family they could be for each other, and she wanted to say yes. But there was still a hard edge on her heart that wasn’t satisfied. She laid her hand on his, but only loosely without squeezing it.

  He must not have noticed the message she thought she was conveying, though, because he lifted her hand and kissed it. “You’re the one I love,” he said. “And you’re enough for me.”

  She tried to speak, to tell him she loved him. Instead she swallowed and let the tears flow.

  Vanuatu

  1991

  38

  She unwrapped another wine glass and held it up to the light. Twirling it between her fingers, she watched sunlight dance across the facets. This house was all space and light—the ceiling over the living and dining room, so high; the floor as cool and shiny as an ice-skating rink. From where she stood in the dining room, the sparkling white tile stretched all the way across the living room and out the sliding glass doors onto the veranda.

  But it didn’t end there. The space—the sense of possibility—swept out across the lawn and the low picket fence and the treetops down the hill at the Radisson. It skimmed the surfaces of both lagoons and just kept going, over the green hills and into the boundless blue sky.

  Diana smiled at the extravagance of her thoughts. And yet, that was exactly the way the house made her feel—extravagantly sheltered and thoroughly free. A woman finally, at the age of thirty-five, poised to find her place in the world.

  She reached into the packing box for another glass. Who could say why one place and not another could make a person feel good? She thought about the fight she and Jay had a few months earlier at Le Pandanus. Maybe if she’d made a better case for why she was so convinced the house would help her relax, maybe that would have been the end of it.

  At the thought of her anger that night, she felt a chill up her spine. If he hadn’t talked to her in the car, who could tell how long she’d have held onto it, or what dark paths it would have led her down. She’d been prepared to let her anger simmer all the way back to their apartment and with no end in sight.

  “Ma’am.” It was Clarita, flip-flops slapping down the three steps from the back entry. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Diana quickly wiped away a lonely tear. It pleased her that Clarita was so enthusiastic about the new house. But then, who wouldn’t be? Especially after being given her own bedroom suite at the top of the stairs.

  “Look, ma’am.” Clarita hefted a crowbar over her head. “Mr. Nguyen give it.”

  “Good.” Diana frowned trying to imagine why Clarita might need a crowbar.

  “For the wooden box,” Clarita said, pointing with the screwdriver and hammer in her left hand toward a flat wooden crate tucked under the coffee table.

  “Why don’t you ask one of Mr. Nguyen’s men to help?” Diana, Jay, and Clarita had moved in three days ago, and yet the workers were still there. Each morning as Jay was about to leave for work, Henri Nguyen and his men would appear at the back door, tools in hand. “Always a few details to finish,” Henri explained the first day in his trademark combination of French, English, Vietnamese, and Bislama. At least that’s what Diana thought he said.

  “I don’t need no man to help.” Clarita straightened her back at the thought. “I can open that box myself.” She squatted and tugged on the heavy box, grunting as she pulled it, scraping across the tile, out from under the coffee table.

  “Wait,” Diana said. “Let me help.”

  “No, ma’am. I can do it.”

  Diana grabbed a cloth the painter had left. “Here. We can set the box on this. Then you can slide it.”

  Clarita didn’t object. She pulled the box across the floor, and when she reached the doorway, she gave Diana a quick look of triumph. Then she dragged it out onto the veranda and set to work.

  Diana went back to unpacking glasses, crumpling sheets of wrapping paper, and tossing them into an empty box. Behind her, a worker whistled as he pressed putty into screw holes on the banister. Down the hall, a handsaw scraped, a hammer tapped. Outside, men who were pushing another wheelbarrow filled with wet concrete up the steep driveway hooted and hollered like teenagers at a basketball game. She’d have thought the constant presence of workmen these past few days would have driven her crazy. On the contrary, she found she liked having them around. They made the house hum with a kind of cheerful, relaxed industry.

  She pulled another wine glass from its padded nest and was starting to unwrap it when she heard tires crunching up the driveway. A car stopped. A door closed, and a woman’s voice—spirited, loud and decidedly British—shouted, “Hey-ho! Where’s the mistress of the house?” Diana set the wine glass on the table and ran outside and down the veranda steps. Abby, her freckled arms showing under an orange-and-pink tie-dyed T-shirt, lifted a large plastic bag brimming with leaves from her trunk and plunked it on the sidewalk. “Your future garden.”

  Suling picked up a smaller bag. “Plants from our yards,” she said. “This one is jasmine.” She sniffed the small white blossoms before placing her bundle on the grass. As she straightened up, a breeze pressed the filmy apricot fabric of her dress flat against the curve of her belly.

  “Oh, Suling,” Diana said, touching her arm. “You look lovelier every day.” Suling’s skin had always been smooth and beautiful, but today it glowed.

  “Thank you.” Suling squeezed Diana’s hand until it hurt. “I’m so happy,” she said, resting one hand on her tiny tummy bulge. “And I wish the same thing for you.”

  Diana hugged her—a gentle hug that wouldn’t squeeze too hard on the baby.

  Abby’s Toyota was a jungle packed with bougainvillea, hibiscus, yellow bell, gloriosa lilies, and a half-grown
banana plant. “Thank you,” Diana said when they’d finished unloading everything from the trunk and back seat. “Thank you so much. Now, come on in. I’ll show you around.”

  The house was large—three bedrooms and two bathrooms plus Clarita’s room, an upstairs suite that had been designed for Henri’s son and girlfriend. “See,” Diana said after they’d toured the house. “It’s roomy, but not as big as it looks from the road.”

  Abby chuckled. “Big enough to make Marshall jealous.”

  For the next few weeks Diana concentrated on setting up the new house. She finished unpacking and ordered curtains and a table for the kitchen. She hung pictures, mirrors, and clocks; she bought furniture for the veranda and seeds for a vegetable garden.

  Then, as the house began to take shape, she fell into a pleasant routine of morning walks or outings to the market and afternoons sketching or painting or walking along the beach. She taught Clarita some favorite recipes and drove Jay to work and back. When she and Jay sat on the veranda, looking down on the ever more familiar landscape, when they walked around the yard at night, smelling the damp earth and gazing up at the swarms of stars, she felt the most comforting sense of belonging—not in Tassiriki or Port Vila or Vanuatu, but on the Earth.

  Everything was coming together for them. She had the feeling that it wouldn’t be long now.

  By the first week of February, the house was basically ready for its formal presentation. At Henri’s urging, they’d arranged to have a house-blessing party on Saturday morning. Their house-warming party, a larger affair, would follow on Sunday night. In preparation for both events, Henri sent his men over to slash brush around the perimeter, mow the grass, and hang the new chandelier-fan from the impossibly high living room ceiling.

  It was raining early Saturday morning when Henri’s wife delivered her favorite tablecloths and some Vietnamese finger-food. By the time the guests arrived at eleven, the grass was dry and the blue sky speckled with a mere handful of benign little white clouds.

  Henri picked up Father Jean Pierre, a French-speaking ni-Vanuatu priest, and drove him to the house. Meeting them at the back door, Diana and Jay guided the priest into the kitchen—his makeshift sacristy. He poured the holy water he brought into a silver bucket and draped his shoulders with a white stole. Then he stepped out onto the raised platform of the entry and raised his arms.

  A hush fell over the crowd gathered in the dining room below. Even the children stood with heads bowed and hands clasped. They were all Catholics—people Jay and Diana knew from the little English-language church and a larger group of Vietnamese invited by Henri and his wife. This house had been Henri’s most ambitious project to date, his crowning glory, and it was obvious he wanted his friends and extended family to see and admire it.

  “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” the priest intoned, making the sign of the cross.

  “Amen,” the people answered.

  “Seigneur Jesus.” The young priest’s brown skin and pink-tipped fingers glistened as he spread his arms to encompass both house and people in his plea.

  His prayer began in French and ended in Bislama, and though much of it was lost on Diana, the meaning was clear. The priest was praying for her house, hers and Jay’s. And all these friendly people were praying for them, too. She squeezed Jay’s hand, and for a moment she felt overcome by the kindness directed their way, by the sense that their fortunes were just beginning to change.

  The priest finished, and everyone made the sign of the cross. Then they looked around, smiling at each other and checking out the spring rolls and open-face sandwiches displayed on a row of folding tables. The children ran out through the open doors, giggling, their feet pattering across the veranda and down the stairs as they raced each other to the trampoline Diana had borrowed from Abby.

  Then all eyes turned back to the priest who was gathering up his stainless steel sprinkler and bucket of holy water. This was what the adults had been waiting for—the actual sprinkling of holy water. Henri’s nephew, a handsome Melanesian-Vietnamese, held the bucket as the priest dipped the sprinkler. Flicking his wrist to gain more distance, he tossed holy water high up the wall. Those standing closest felt the cool sacred drops on their arms and later on their ankles as he dipped the sprinkler again and sprayed water across the floor.

  Blessing the living room and dining room, the kitchen cabinets, the back porch and carport, he was a baseball pitcher, a thrower of Frisbees. The Vietnamese contingent followed him to the laundry room and all the bedrooms and bathrooms, even up to Clarita’s room and onto her balcony. They nodded their heads and commented in hushed tones. Their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had come to Vanuatu to work as laborers on the copra plantations, and now, finally, this generation of Vietnamese was making good.

  A day later, taking a break from housewarming preparations, Diana and Jay stepped onto the veranda. Behind them, stacks of bowls, plates, and napkins were already set out on the buffet, glasses lined up on the bar. Satay was marinating in the fridge, and the chili was ready to warm. They sank onto a couple of deck chairs and breathed the fresh, grassy air.

  “You know,” Diana said, “I really liked the house blessing.”

  “Me, too.” Jay put his feet up on the planter and closed his eyes. “Well,” he said, “now that the house is officially blessed, are you ready for a wild housewarming party tonight?”

  “I’d settle for something more along the lines of a cordial gathering.” Diana stood up. “We still have salads to put together,” she said. “Pies, cupcakes, and corn bread for Clarita and me to bake. And you’ve gotta take that trampoline back. We don’t want any drunken revelers breaking their legs on it.”

  A dragonfly dipped low over the tissue-thin bougainvillea petals, its luminous aqua body shimmering in the sunlight. Diana smiled. Her skin tingled with the news she had for him . . . the possible news. Fifteen days late. That had to mean something. “Jay,” she said, “I’m . . .”

  He opened his eyes. “Hm?”

  “I’m . . .” No, not yet. Better to wait until this evening after she had time to do the test. “I’m . . . ah . . . really glad Henri insisted on having the house blessed.”

  Before Dr. Feliciano and the fertility tests, when Diana still assumed that conceiving a baby would be easy, she’d used up pregnancy tests like bags of candy, ripping one open every time she was two or three days late, setting herself up over and over again for the inevitable letdown. These days she waited longer.

  Tonight after the housewarming she’d find out for sure. She pressed her lips together. This time she wouldn’t be disappointed. This time the test stick would change color.

  39

  “I love your house.” Jennifer Carson nodded at Jay and Diana and then, tilting her head back, grimaced at the cathedral ceiling. “I’d be lost with all this space, though.”

  “Jen likes the wide-open spaces of the ocean,” her husband Keith said. “But when it comes to living quarters . . .”

  “Yeah. I prefer our boat.”

  Diana gave her a skeptical look. She couldn’t imagine living in such a small space. “You must be incredibly neat and organized.”

  “Obsessive is more like it.” Keith winked at his wife.

  Diana had met the Carsons just a few weeks earlier at a garden party Abby’d thrown for the twins’ sixth birthday. Jennifer was their teacher. Keith worked at one of Port Vila’s off-shore investment houses. It intrigued Diana that they’d sailed all the way from Alaska to Vanuatu and that, two years later, here they were, still living on that same small boat.

  Port Vila’s expat community was small and sociable. It didn’t take long to meet interesting people. Tonight, even though Jay’s co-workers made up the bulk of the guest list for the housewarming, they’d also invited a colorful hodgepodge of shopkeepers, farmers, artists, and diplomats. Altogether, it was the largest party they’d ever given. And their new house was the perfect setting.

  “We eat out a lot,” Jennif
er was saying. “I blame it on our tiny stove.”

  Jay chuckled. “Having the Waterfront Bar and Grill only steps from the end of your dock could be a factor.”

  “Big time,” Keith said.

  Diana glanced around the room. Clarita was pouring fresh salad into a bowl on the buffet table. Alexi was behind the bar, mixing drinks so Jay could circulate among the guests. She was about to conclude that everyone was having a good time when she noticed Jay’s secretary. Elizabeth was standing with another D-TAP secretary, both of them looking small and lost.

  “Elizabeth, Grace,” Diana called, waving them over, “I want you to meet some friends.” Diana had never seen herself as the hostess-type. She still thought of herself as the career woman who entertained guests in a restaurant. Tonight, though, she was enjoying her role. She waved again, and when the two ni-Vanuatu women came over, she put her arms around their shoulders and introduced them to the Carsons. It was something her mother would have done.

  Soon they were talking about food, the salads and chicken satay Diana and Clarita had made that morning, the laplap they all liked, and the salad bar at the Waterfront Bar and Grill.

  “My mother’s chicken . . .” Grace started to say.

  “Hey, Jay.” Marshall elbowed his way into their circle. “Quite a shindig you have here.” He put his arm around Elizabeth and grinned down at her, his mustache twitching.

  The poor girl didn’t move a muscle, but it was clear to Diana that she wanted to swat his hand off her shoulder. Elizabeth was young and smart, but she had no natural defense against this big, obnoxious white man who was also her boss.

  “So,” Marshall said, “what’s up there?” He swung his glass toward the room at the top of the stairs, oblivious to the whiskey he was spilling on Elizabeth.

  “That’s our helper’s room,” Jay said.