When in Vanuatu

by Nicki Chen

  A wail escaped from his throat followed by more shaking.

  “Honey. What’s wrong?” She rubbed up and down his back. His muscles felt tight enough to snap. She ran her fingers through his hair, massaging the back of his head until he stopped panting. His breathing was still ragged though. Now and then little high sounds escaped from his throat. She continued massaging his shoulders and waited.

  Finally he was still, his elbows resting on his pale white knees. He raised his head and wiped his eyes and nose on his T-shirt.

  She pulled up a chair, and they sat together side by side, looking out at the starry sky and the crescent moon. The occasional fruit bat flitting from tree to tree. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  He wiped his nose again. Then he stood up and walked away, stopping at the far end of the veranda, his back to Diana. “I can’t stop thinking about her,” he said finally, turning to face her. “I held her in my hand—our child . . . not quite a child. And now she’s gone.” He wiped his eye. “Touching her,” he said, “she seemed so real. She was real.”

  Diana nodded. She walked toward him, and they stood looking out at the lagoons, Jay’s arm on her shoulders, her arm around his waist.

  “He might have been a boy,” she said.

  “No,” he said. She thought she heard the hint of a smile in his voice. “I think she was a girl.”

  47

  Their papaya surplus reminded Diana of tomato season back home when you had so many tomatoes coming ripe all at once that you had to give them away to friends and neighbors. The main difference was that papayas grow and ripen all year long. Diana and Jay figured their embarrassment of papaya riches was due to the lunch habits of Henri’s workers. They must have grabbed papayas on the way to work, sliced them open for lunch, and then tossed the seeds into the yard. By the time Diana and Jay moved in, small papaya trees were growing everywhere. They’d pulled many of them out, leaving only those trees that grew at the edge of the yard. Now they were all bearing fruit—big juicy papayas, some as fat as your head; others as long as a celery stalk.

  Jay’s solution to the oversupply was to take a couple baskets of papayas to work every Friday morning and share them with the secretaries and officers. And today was Friday.

  Diana left her coffee on the table, slipped into her sandals, and hurried outside to help. Peeking into the open trunk of the car, she saw that he’d already filled the first basket.

  It didn’t take long for her to find a long, fat papaya blushing orange through the green. Such amazing trees, she thought as she carried the papaya over to the car. She did love the trees’ exuberant rush to life, even though—she had to admit it—at times she’d resented their effortless fertility. You couldn’t be jealous of trees, though.

  She smiled at herself and placed the papaya in the second basket.

  Jay was making his way up from the front yard now, his arms overloaded with fruit. “Let me help,” she called, hurrying down the still uneven surface of their side yard. As she reached for the big papaya he was balancing precariously in his arms, she felt the urge to hug him instead. Something about seeing him cry the night before had made her love him more than ever. Men should cry more often, she thought as they walked side by side to the car.

  “It must be hard,” she said.

  “What?” Jay stowed his papayas and straightened up.

  “I mean, men don’t give themselves permission to cry. That must be hard.”

  He shrugged. “I never thought of it that way.” He closed the trunk and fished in his pocket for the keys. “Do you need the car today?”

  “Yeah. Abby and I are going to discuss Suling’s baby shower over lunch at La Terrasse.”

  Jay gave her a good-for-you smile and squeezed her shoulder.

  She smiled back. It felt as though they were starting to heal. Seeing him cry last night had changed things, made her realize the miscarriage wasn’t just hers to bear; it was theirs. They were in this together.

  “Ready?”

  “Just let me grab my purse.”

  It was a lovely morning, blue sky, fluffy white clouds. Diana commented on it as she drove down their driveway. And Jay agreed, even though most mornings in Vanuatu were every bit as nice as this one.

  As they started up the hill, he rested his hand on her bare knee. “Shall we try again?” he asked.

  She knew what he meant, but something about the phrase “try again” hit her wrong. “I don’t want to think about it like that. Try.” She scrunched up her face. “It’s such a brittle, weak word. Why the hell do people talk about it that way? It’s like saying I’ll try to climb Mt. Everest when you don’t believe you can do it. Like making tight fists and gritting your teeth.”

  “Wow! Sounds like I hit a nerve.”

  “Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I guess so.”

  “So how shall we talk about it?”

  “I don’t know, honey.” She sucked her breath in through her teeth. “Suddenly I just hate that word. Try.” She spit it out as though it were poison. They were coming over the crest of the hill now, looking down on the town and the bay. Soon they’d be at Jay’s office. She wanted to answer him before they arrived. “How shall we talk about it? Well . . . let’s just say we’re going to live our lives. There’s nothing physically wrong with either of us. Right? So let’s just assume that we’ll eventually have children. Or not.” It wasn’t lost on her that this was what Jay had been saying for a long time. She hadn’t been able to accept it, though. Hadn’t been able to give up control, a control she never actually had.

  He squeezed her knee. “And not worry about it? Sounds good to me.”

  She turned onto the side street and pulled up to the curb behind a midnight blue Toyota.

  “The new office car,” Jay said.

  Diana smiled. “Yeah. I heard Carole Anne refused to ride in the old white Toyota. Said Lincoln Toms sullied it by his ‘dirty, criminal’ presence.”

  Jay leaned over for a kiss-the-wife-good-bye peck. His lips were soft and warm, and they lingered longer than usual before he hopped out and disappeared into the building.

  Back to work, she thought, remembering how alone she’d felt and, yes, resentful when he went back so soon after the miscarriage. She hadn’t stopped to think how hard it might have been for him. She knew the people he worked with. Except for the secretaries and a couple of technical assistants, they were all men, and none of them would have approved of him taking time off to grieve for his wife’s miscarriage. Men don’t cry, and miscarriages are women’s business. They might have said a word or two of sympathy, and then it was back to work.

  As she pulled out onto the street, Diana felt a wave of compassion for him. He’d had to stuff it all down, as though losing the promise of a child meant nothing to him.

  Stiff upper lip, she thought as she backed away from the midnight blue Toyota. It wasn’t only men, though. After the carjacking, Carole Anne had given rein to her emotions, but she was the only one. The rest of them, men and women alike, were smirking inside, thinking her reaction was way over the top. Even Diana and Abby were imagining themselves braver and tougher than Carole Anne was.

  Everyone wants to be macho, she thought as she drove up the hill and around the bend. Starting down the other side, the road curved and quickly fell into shadow. The steep hillside on her left and the huge overhanging trees from the jungle on her right combined to block out the light.

  Moments later, she was out of the shadows, looking down on their Tassiriki house and the lagoons, the prospect of another day stretching out before her.

  Seattle

  1996

  48

  The crowd was beginning to thin out. Finally, Diana could catch her breath and look around. Mom seemed pleased with the turnout, and the gallery owner had sidled up to Diana a couple of times to whisper that sales were going well. She hadn’t had a chance to see for herself, though.

  She was headed toward a wall of her favorite paint
ings when a waiter swooped in beside her, an ironic smile on his lips. He raised one eyebrow and offered her the last flute of champagne on his tray. Returning his ironic smile, she couldn’t resist a tiny head shake at his perfection as she took the champagne. He was so quintessentially artsy—hair smoothed back in a ponytail, features chiseled to reflect subtleties of light, and a practiced manner that was simultaneously flirty and reserved. Mom sure knew how to pick them. But then, Mom knew all there was to know about arranging an art exhibit.

  She’d been planning this one ever since Diana first let it slip in one of her Sunday letters that someone at the University of Washington was talking to Jay about a job prospect. Even before he accepted the offer, Mom had started talking to gallery owners, showing them samples of Diana’s art, inquiring about how far out each of them were scheduled. She ignored Diana’s objections about jumping the gun. By then, they all knew that if Jay didn’t accept this offer, he’d accept the next one or the next. He still liked his work with D-TAP, but in the past seven years he’d experienced international development in every corner of Asia. He’d done it all. Besides, now things were different for them.

  Wandering over to a quiet spot along the wall, Diana stopped in front of Firewood Parade. It had been her first serious painting. Until then, she’d only been fooling around with art, considering it more of a hobby. After her miscarriage it was a good distraction.

  Then one morning, coming back from her usual walk down to the Radisson and around the golf course island, she happened upon a stunning sight: three ni-Vanuatu women and two girls cutting across the field carrying firewood on their heads—enormous headdresses of tangled branches. Their feet were hidden by tall grass, so they seemed to be sailing across the landscape. She’d stood there, open-mouthed, struck by the way the thin morning light outlined their faces and the graceful curves of their necks and shoulders, turning them into a painting. It was, she realized, a painting she needed to create.

  She’d worked on that painting for two weeks and still wasn’t satisfied with the results. She knew how to sketch, but she didn’t yet have the technical ability to create a work of art that did justice to the image of those three women and two girls that she carried around in her head. What she needed was a crash course in painting techniques—several courses, in fact. And she needed to create the course of study for herself.

  That realization, she remembered, had thrown her into a whirlwind of activity. She’d signed up for an intensive watercolor class in Suva, and she’d traveled to Sydney to study oil painting. Thanks to a letter of recommendation from her mom, she’d been accepted into a small class taught by a well-known Australian artist.

  And it all started with the graceful parade of these three women and two girls with firewood on their heads. They’d changed her life. She smiled at them, these ladies who’d helped her find something she really cared about and, with hard work, was able to make happen.

  She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice Jay coming up behind her until she felt his arm around her waist.

  “Congratulations, honey,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Looks like your exhibit is a huge success.” He pointed at the red sticker on the card below Firewood Parade. “Another sale, I see.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Uh huh? That’s all? You don’t sound sufficiently pleased.”

  She sucked in her breath and let it out in a big whoosh. “I know. I’m glad it sold. It’s just that . . .” She pressed her lips together. “I hate to let go of this painting.”

  “That’s the nature of the business, honey.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs. “So when did you become such a businessman?” She was still getting used to his new role as a professor—still an international development expert, but now he taught at the University of Washington and lectured around the country.

  He grinned. “I was trying to convince myself not to shed a tear over the Samoan band painting. It has a red dot, too.”

  She wasn’t surprised that that one sold. It was a real crowd-pleaser. Taken from a sketch she made in Apia Western Samoa when she accompanied Jay on one of his missions, it depicted a parade band that had passed below their balcony at Aggie Gray’s. All men and all husky, the band members wore white military jackets, black sandals, and lava lavas, those ubiquitous wraparound skirts that leave the men’s muscular brown legs bare. As the band passed, she remembered, they’d been playing “Semper Fidelis.” It seemed that all around the world people love a John Philip Sousa march.

  She felt a light tap on her shoulder and turned to see a tall slim young woman in a sophisticated black dress trying not to teeter on her spiky high heels. Beside her stood a definitely-ready-to-leave young man in faded jeans and a T-shirt.

  “I adore your paintings,” the woman gushed. “Absolutely adore them. The way you capture light is so masterful. And such exotic subjects.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wish I could afford this one.” She made sad eyes at Firewood Parade.

  “It’s already sold,” the young man said, jabbing his finger at the red sticker. “Thanks for inviting us.” And with that, he clamped onto his girlfriend’s arm and led her away.

  Diana smiled and glanced around the room. She was about to ask about Noelle when she saw her and Mom heading their way.

  “Somebody’s sleepy,” Mom said. It was an understatement. Even though Noelle’s Cinderella dress was perky as ever, her eyes were only a millimeter above closed for the night.

  “Poor baby.” Diana knelt and opened her arms to the little girl. “Come here, kitten.”

  “I’ll take her home.” Jay said. “You and your mom can wrap things up and meet us there.”

  Diana kissed Noelle’s cheek. “Okay,” she said, hugging her tight for a long minute before letting go so Jay could put their darling sleepy daughter to bed.

  End

  Acknowledgments

  My husband, Eugene, died twenty-one years ago, and yet I still find myself thanking him—this time for all the adventures, trials, and delights of our life together. As a young woman, I was determined not to marry someone who was dull and boring. Eugene turned out to be the perfect choice.

  For this novel, I needed only a smattering of internet research. For the most part, I relied on my journals to fill in the many details about life in the Philippines during the December 1989 coup attempt and in Vanuatu during the early 1990s.

  Throughout the long process of writing the book, I had the support, advice, and friendship of my critique group. Over coffee (and if we stayed long enough, baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon, and cheese), we read and critiqued our work. The suggestions I received from these talented ladies were invaluable. Thank you Gretchen Houser, Katie Johnson, Dianne Forth, and Maureen Rogers. Thank you also to Paddy Eger, Emily Hill, and Sandra Walker who helped me earlier in the process.

  Finding Susan Meyer, my developmental editor, was a lucky break. I loved working with her.

  She Writes Press was another lucky find. Thank you to Brooke Warner, the publisher, Shannon Green, my editorial manager, Jennifer Caven, and to everyone at She Writes Press who helped to make the publication of my novel possible.

  A big thank you to Lucinda Dyer and Bryan Azorsky of Nodebud for guiding me through the creation of my magnificent new website. I wouldn’t have had the patience or skill to do all the work required without their cheerful coaching and expertise. And finally, I’m indebted to Caitlin Hamilton Summie and Rick Summie, my publicists, for helping me get the word out. Caitlin has been unfailingly kind and understanding, and her background and hard work have been invaluable.

  About the Author

  Author photo © Lifetouch

  Nicki Chen is the author of the award-winning novel Tiger Tail Soup. She was born in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and spent nearly twenty years abroad, in the Philippines and then Vanuatu. While living in Vanuatu, she earned her MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She now lives in Edmonds, W
ashington.

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere.

  Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.

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