by Mbue, Imbolo
“She has her own kind of suffering that we can never understand,” Neni said, rising from the floor to sit next to Betty on the bed. “And she is trying her best to cover it, which is not easy—”
“Your father was a rapist, you don’t know his name, you don’t know his face. What kind of money is going to help you with that kind of problem? You don’t even know if he is black or white or Spanish.”
“Ah, Betty, don’t take it too far. Her father has to be a white man.”
“You’re saying that because you know the man?”
“The woman is a white woman!”
“That’s what you think, eh? I can take you to the Internet right now and show you on Google. All these white people, they all thought they were white, and then one day they find out that someone was black; their father, their grandfather—”
“Ah, whatever. I don’t think something like that is what’s going to bother her the most.”
“But it would bother me. If I find out one day that I’m not one hundred percent black …” Betty turned her lips downward, shook her head, and Neni laughed.
“You don’t have to ever worry about that,” Neni said. “With your charcoal skin and mountain buttocks, there’s no way there can be anything inside you except African blood.”
“Jealousy is going to kill you,” Betty shot back, laughing as she leaned sideways and tapped her buttocks to emphasize the beauty of their size. “But seriously,” she said, “I don’t know what I would do if my father—”
“I don’t know what I would do, too. I would be afraid that I’m a curse, because it’s a curse, right? You are a bastard, and on top of that, everyone knows your father was some rapist.”
“Kai! No wonder the woman drinks. Did you see her looking like that again?”
“Like that day? No, thank Papa God. But I saw an empty medicine bottle in the guest bathroom garbage. Same one like the one from that day.”
“It was for painkillers, right?”
Neni shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It had to be for painkillers. I was reading about it in my pharmacology class—”
“Eh, now that you’ve taken one little pharmacology class you think you know everything about drugs. Why don’t you just go ahead and open a pharmacy?”
“Ah, don’t be hating, girl,” Betty said in her fake American accent. “You can take the class when you’re ready. But I swear, it must have been something like that, some kind of painkiller.”
“Because why?”
“What do you mean, ‘Because why?’ Aren’t you the one who told me what she looked like when you found her with the medicine and the wine? I’ve taken painkillers, I know how those things can—”
“No,” Neni said, shaking her head. “I was thinking that, too, that maybe it was bad drugs, but—”
“But what?”
“But what if she was sick?”
“Sick of what? If she was only sick, why was she begging you not to tell anyone?”
“I don’t know; the whole thing about that woman just confuses me.”
“Then why are you arguing with me? I can show you the chapter in my textbook. She’s taking the painkiller, then adding the wine … These women, they start taking the pills for some pain in their body, and then it makes them feel good, so they take more, and then more—”
“But I’ve taken Tylenol,” Neni said with a laugh, “and I didn’t feel anything special.”
“Tylenol is not the same kind of thing, you country woman,” Betty said, laughing, too, and then instantly developing a somber tone. “I’m talking about prescription painkillers for some really bad pain, the kind I had when … They gave me some last year at Roosevelt. Vicodin and—”
“That was the name on the bottle! Vicodin. Wait, I’m not sure if it was—”
“It must have been,” Betty said, standing up to fold the Burberry scarf and Ralph Lauren maxi dress Neni had given her from Cindy’s things. “I felt better every time I took it. Even with everything I was feeling …”
“But you wouldn’t have eaten it like candy, the way it looks like Mrs. Edwards is swallowing them.”
“Is that what you think? Don’t be so sure, oh. The hospital only let me have a ten-day supply, but if I had a way, I would have gotten more. Maybe for another week. That thing made me feel so much better, but this country, doctors are too afraid of addiction. Mrs. Edwards, she must know someone who is giving it to her, maybe a friend who is a doctor, or a pharmacist. Or sometimes they buy it from other people … I just wonder how many she is taking a day.”
Twenty-three
EVERY TIME CLARK WAS IN THE CAR—MORNING, AFTERNOON, EVENING—he was shouting at someone, arguing about something, giving orders on what had to be done as soon as possible. He seemed angry, frustrated, confused, resigned. This place is a mess, Leah told Jende whenever they were on the phone. He’s going crazy, he’s yelling at me and making me crazy, they’re all going crazy, I swear it’s like some kind of crazy shit is eating everyone up. Jende told her he was truly sorry to hear how bad it was for her and assured her repeatedly that he knew nothing more than what she already knew from the memos Tom was sending to Lehman employees, memos in which he told them that the company was going through a bit of a tough stretch but they should be back on top in no time. Leah’s circumstances saddened Jende, the fact that she was clinging to a job that made her miserable because she was still five years away from receiving Social Security. It bothered him that she couldn’t quit her job even though her blood pressure was rising and her hair was falling out and she was getting only three hours of sleep a night, but it wasn’t his place to tell her anything about what Clark was saying. Or doing. He couldn’t tell her that Clark was sometimes sleeping in the office, or going to the Chelsea Hotel some evenings for appointments that often lasted no more than an hour. He couldn’t tell her that after these appointments he usually drove the boss back to the office, where Clark probably continued working for more hours, his stress having been eased. His duty, he always reminded himself, was to protect Clark, not Leah.
“Where are we going to, sir?” Jende asked on the last Thursday of August, holding the car door open in front of the Chelsea Hotel. Clark’s appointment that day had lasted exactly an hour, but he had returned to the car still seeming weary, his face tightly bound by perpetual exhaustion. It was as if his appointment had been only half-effective.
“Hudson River Park,” Clark said.
“Hudson River Park, sir?” Jende asked, surprised the answer wasn’t the office.
“Yes.”
“Anywhere in the park, sir?”
“Go close to Eleventh and Tenth. Or somewhere near the piers.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jende dropped Clark off at the end of Christopher Street and watched as he crossed the West Side Highway to the pier, his already slender shoulders sagging under the weight of the heat and the sun.
“Where are you?” he called to ask Jende ten minutes later.
“Around the same area, sir,” Jende replied. “I backed up into a good spot that opened up behind me.”
“Listen, why don’t you come join me? There’s no need for you to sit in the car.”
“At the pier, sir?”
“Yes, I’m sitting all the way at the front. Come and meet me here.”
Jende locked up the car and dashed across the highway toward the pier, where Clark was sitting on a bench, his jacket off, his face turned toward the sky. When Jende got to the bench, he realized Clark’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be finding respite in the bountiful breeze blowing toward them; for the first time in months, he looked relaxed as the wind tousled his hair and wiped his brow. Jende looked up at the empty sky, which bore no resemblance to the thick air below. In a couple of days, August would be over, and yet the humidity was still dense, though it felt good to him, the sultriness mingled with the wind blowing over the Atlantic-bound river.
On the bench, Clark breathed in. And out. And in, a
nd out. Again, and again. For five minutes. Jende stood next to him and waited, careful not to move and disturb him.
“You’re here,” Clark said when he finally opened his eyes. “Have a seat.”
Jende sat down beside him, took off his jacket, too.
“Beautiful, huh?” Clark said as they watched the Hudson, nowhere as long, but every inch as purposeful and assured, as the Nile and the Niger and the Limpopo and the Zambezi.
Jende nodded, though confused as to why he was there, sitting on a bench at a pier, gazing at a river with his boss. “It is very nice, sir.”
“Thought you might enjoy it, instead of just waiting on the street.”
“Thank you, sir, I am enjoying the fresh breeze. I did not even know there was a place like this in New York.”
“It’s a great park. If I could, I’d come here more often to watch the sunset.”
“You watch sunsets, sir?”
“Nothing relaxes me more.”
Jende nodded and said nothing, though he thought about how funny it was that both Clark and Vince loved sunsets—the only people he’d ever met who went out of their way to sit by a body of water and stare at the horizon. He wondered if Vince knew this about his father, and what difference it would make if he didn’t know and then discovered it by chance; how differently Vince would feel about his father if he realized that they shared a great love for something only a sliver of humans make a deliberate effort to see.
For a few minutes the men sat in silence, watching the river flowing leisurely, in no rush for its meeting with the ocean.
“I’m sure you know by now that Vince will be moving to India in two weeks,” Clark said.
“No, sir, I did not know. India?”
Clark nodded. “No more law school for him. He wants to wander the earth.”
“He is a good boy, sir. He will come back safely to America when he is ready.”
“Or he may not, for a long time. That’s fine. I’m not the first father to have a son who defied him and decided he wanted to live his life in an unorthodox manner.”
“I hope you are not too angry with him, sir.”
“Actually, Cindy thinks I’m not angry enough. And that makes her angry, like somehow I’m giving up on him because I don’t love him enough. But the thing is, I almost admire him.”
“He is not afraid.”
“No, and there’s something to be said for that. At his age, all I wanted was the life that I have right now. This exact life, this was what I wanted.”
“It is a good life, sir. A very good life.”
“Sometimes. But I can understand why Vince doesn’t want it. Because these days I don’t want it, either. All this shit going on at Lehman, all this stuff we would never have done twenty years ago because we stood for something more, and now really dirty shit is becoming the norm. All over the Street. But try to show good sense, talk of consequences, have a far-long-term outlook, and they look at you as if you’ve lost your marbles.”
Jende nodded.
“And I know Vince has got a point, but the problem is not some system. It is us. Each of us. We’ve got to fix ourselves before we can fix a whole damn country. That’s not happening on the Street. It’s not happening in Washington. It’s not happening anywhere! It’s not like what I’m saying is new, but it’s only getting worse, and one man or two men or three men cannot fix it.”
“No, sir.”
“But everything I have, I worked hard for, and I’m proud of, and I’ll fight to the end to preserve it. Because when this life’s good, it’s very good, and the price I pay, that’s just part of it.”
“Very true, sir,” Jende said, nodding. “When you become a husband and father, you pay a lot of prices.”
“It’s more than your duty as a husband and father. It’s your duty to your parents, too. Your siblings. When I went to Stanford I was going to study physics, become a professor like my dad. Then I saw what was possible on a professor’s salary and what was possible on an investment banker’s salary and I chose this path. I’m not going to sit here and be one of those self-righteous assholes, because my original reason for choosing this career was never noble. I can’t say I didn’t fantasize about the sports car and private jets. But it’s different now. Now it means the world to me how well I’m taking care of my family. No matter how bad it gets at work I know that at the end of the day I can send my parents on vacations to see the world, pay for every medical bill that comes up, make sure my sister doesn’t suffer because her husband’s dead, make sure my wife and sons have far more than what they need. That’s what Vince doesn’t understand. That you don’t only do what makes you happy. You think about your parents, too.”
“Vince doesn’t see this side of you, sir. He sees a father who works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides you do not see because you are their child. It is only now that I am old that I look at some things that my father did and I understand.”
“I told him. I said, I’m not asking you to stay in law school and become a lawyer so you can be like me. I’m asking you because I know what it takes to be successful in this country. You’ve got to separate yourself from the pack with a good education, a good-paying career. I read about folks who thought it was all fun and games when they were younger and look at them now, barely getting by, because unless you make a certain kind of money in this country, life can be brutal. And I don’t ever want that for him, you know? I don’t ever want that for my son.”
Jende nodded, looking afar.
For several minutes the men were silent, just as the sun was one third of the way below the low-rises of New Jersey. They watched as it went down ever so slowly, bidding them adieu, bidding the city adieu, until it rose again from behind the East River to bring a new day with its promises and heartbreaks.
“Wow,” Jende said, mesmerized by what he’d just witnessed. “I know the sun comes up and goes down, but I never knew that it does it so nicely.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Sir,” Jende said after a brief silence, “I think Vince will stay in India for a few months and run back to law school.”
“I won’t be surprised,” Clark said with a laugh.
“I don’t know how India is, Mr. Edwards, but if there is heat and mosquitoes there like we have in Cameroon, I will be picking him up at the airport before New Year.”
The men laughed together.
“I will not worry about Vince for one minute, sir. Even if he stays, he will be happy. Look at me, sir. I am in another country, and I am happy.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“A man can find a home anywhere, sir.”
“Funny, as I was thinking about Vince today, I wrote a poem about leaving home.”
“You write poems, sir?”
“Yeah, but I’m no Shakespeare or Frost.”
Jende scratched his head. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I have heard a little about Shakespeare, but I don’t know the other man. I did not make it that far in school.”
“They were both great poets. I’m just saying my poetry is pretty remedial, but it keeps me going on many days.”
Jende nodded, and he could see that Clark could tell he didn’t quite understand the last point, either. “You learn how to write poems in school, sir?” he asked.
“No, actually, I just started a few years ago. A colleague gave me this little book of poetry, which I thought was a rather odd gift—why would anyone think I could use a book of poetry? Maybe it was just one of those lazy gifts where people pull stuff off their shelves.”
“A Christmas gift, sir?”
“Yeah. Anyway, I kept it on my desk, picked it up one day, and loved the poems so much that I decided to try writing one. Feels real good to just write out lines about whatever you’re feeling. You should try it sometime.”
“It sounds very good, sir.”
“I wrote one for Cindy, but she didn’t like it much, so I just writ
e for myself now.”
“I will be glad to read one, sir.”
“Really? I can show you … Dammit,” Clark said, looking at his watch. “Didn’t realize it was getting this late.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, I should have kept my eyes open. I was just talking and talking without paying any attention to the time.”
“No, no, I’m glad we talked. Thanks for joining me; I really appreciate it. I hope I didn’t put you in an awkward position, throwing out my feelings about work and shit.”
“No, sir. Please, Mr. Edwards, thank you so much for inviting me here.”
“Well, thank you for listening,” Clark said, smiling. “And I’ll be glad to recite the poem to you. It’s called ‘Home,’ and if you don’t like it, I’d rather you don’t say anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Jende said, smiling, too. “I will not say anything whatsoever.”
“Okay, here goes:
Home will never go away
Home will be here when you come back
You may go to bring back fortune
You may go to escape misfortune
You may even go, just because you want to go
But when you come back
We hope you’ll come back
Home will still be here.”
Twenty-four
THE ONE THING SHE MISSED ABOUT THE HAMPTONS (BESIDES THE BOYS, Mighty especially) was the food—the scrumptious catered food served at the Edwardses’ cocktail parties. All her life she’d thought Cameroonians had the best food but, apparently, she was wrong: Rich American people knew something about good food, too. Despite having to work fifteen hours on the days when Cindy hosted the parties around the pool, she looked forward to them because the food was too good, so ridiculously good that she had called Fatou one evening and told her she was sure she’d died and gone to food heaven, to which Fatou had replied, how you gonno be sure the cook no piss inside food to make it good? Neni was sure the cook hadn’t done anything to the food, since the three chefs Cindy always hired for the parties prepared most of it in the kitchen, and their three servers, with her assistance, took it directly from the kitchen to the backyard. All kinds of foods were there, things she’d seen in magazines and wished she could taste just by looking at the perfectly lighted pictures, wickedly delectable creations like sesame seared tuna with lemon-wasabi vinaigrette; beef tenderloin and olives on garlic crostini with horseradish sauce; California caviar and chives on melba toast; mushroom caps stuffed with jumbo lump crabmeat; steak tartare with ginger and shallot, which she loved the most and devoured without restraint though she’d never once imagined she’d one day find herself eating raw meat like a beast in the forest.
