I just didn’t look one iota like my mother Edda or my father Wilbur. “It’s just that, well, Edda dear, she doesn’t look a bit like you or Wilbur,” he told her.
“Doesn’t she?” Edda laughed. “But she’s so small, daddy, how can you tell?”
What’s more, I looked very much like someone else on Oh. “She doesn’t remind you of anyone?” Raoul persisted.
“Daddy, don’t be silly.” Edda rubbed her thumb over my cheeks, one of which was nearly completely covered by a mole. It was (and still is) dark brown, an upside-down teardrop covered in soft blond down.
“Edda, you can tell me. I won’t be mad. All I want is to know the truth—and to know you’re happy of course—and I can see that you are. Do you have anything to tell me? I won’t breathe a word to Wilbur. You can trust me.”
“Look at this birthmark, Daddy. It’s like a broken heart, like only half of a heart. Do you know who has the other half ?”
Oh, thank God! Raoul thought, jerking his body and nearly sending the cup, saucer, and prognosticative cookie crumbs to the floor. An answer at last. “Who? Who has it? How did this happen?”
“I do. Her heart and mine will always be connected, Daddy. I’ll always be with her, for as long as she lives.”
Raoul’s muscles relaxed and he fell back into the sofa. His own heart felt broken just then, for he knew that Edda wanted to be for me what her own mother hadn’t been for her.
Poor Raoul. He had always done his best to fill the void that Edda’s mother—my grandmother—left behind: he taught Edda to cook and to sew (after teaching himself with books he got at the library); he taught her manners and good posture (they spent hours in the garden with his library books on their heads); he even taught her to braid her hair (he and Bang stole a horse for a whole afternoon once so they could practice on its tail); she had three of the most doting uncles a young girl on Oh could want, too. And Edda loved all of them dearly for it. But it hadn’t been enough. That was the truth Raoul finally saw, and the realization of it pained him.
My grandmother, Emma Patrice, disappeared when Edda was less than three. The family was on their first real holiday, a ski holiday in Switzerland, and Raoul and Emma Patrice had decided to descend the tallest slope at the resort. Raoul skied with Edda in a pack on his back, and Emma Patrice skied alone. They all descended the hill together, but Emma Patrice soon picked up speed and gained an advantage over Raoul. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t see her in front of him at all, and when he got to the bottom there was no sign of her either. He searched for hours with the help of a dozen skiers and a handful of Saint Bernards with barrels of brandy around their necks, but no one ever found a trace of Emma Patrice. Perhaps she picked up so much speed she lost control of her skis and crashed deep in the snow. Or perhaps she picked up just enough, enough to elude Raoul and Edda and a lifetime of laundry and pineapple preserves. Either way, Raoul returned to the resort with Edda, fed her mugfuls of steaming hot chocolate, and told her her mother was gone.
It was a long time before Raoul could stop looking for Emma Patrice in his line at the airport, stop hoping for her handwriting when he picked up the day’s mail. And it was a very long time before Edda could drink hot chocolate again, a sweet reminder of her bitter past.
Your eyes are like the sea, full of mystery.
Edda sang to me. My eyes were full of mystery, indeed. They were a purple shade of red, and there was only one man on Oh with the same red eyes. One man with red eyes and white skin marred by a broken-hearted mole. But Edda seemed not to notice the way my skin paled against her own. Raoul watched her and felt re-open in his heart the lacerations from so many years before, when instead of letters from Emma Patrice that he could give to his daughter, he received only catalogues and electricity bills and coupons for free shampoos at the Stairway to Beauty salon. Poor Edda, he thought. Starved for a maternal bond and blinded by maternal love. But even starved and blinded, his daughter wouldn’t lie. This, Raoul knew for certain.
“Edda.” He looked to the cookie crumbs again. “Edda this isn’t easy for me to say, but tell me, please. I won’t be angry. Have you shared your bed with anybody besides Wilbur?” he asked.
“Daddy, I most certainly have not.”
“And no one has touched you besides Wilbur?”
“No one.”
Raoul believed Edda had told him the truth, which made him all the more confused and frustrated. He put his teacup on the coffee table and stood. He paced in front of her, his hands flat on his lower back, his elbows out behind him. “Then how do you explain the mole?”
“I told you what it means, Daddy.”
“And the eyes?”
“What about them? They’re endless. Like looking into the sea.”
Raoul looked at the floor and at the ceiling and at the floor again, trying to come up with an answer to the riddle. Maybe she just thought she hadn’t slept with anybody else, Raoul reasoned. Maybe she thought she was with Wilbur, but it was really him. He must have tricked her—tricked all of them. Bastard.
“He’s the one I should be talking to,” Raoul muttered, while Edda sang.
When I look in your eyes so blue and so green,
Back at the Belly, Cougar snapped his fingers in front of Raoul’s face three times. “Raoul! You want a cigar or not? Hey, man!”
“What? Yeah. Thanks.” Raoul took the cigar and leaned into Cougar’s lighter.
“So now Gustave’s in it knee-deep,” Nat was saying, “Puymute’s out a boatload of money, and the pickers are scared to death.” He blew smoke out of his mouth and looked at the cigar between his fingers, as if trying to understand how the one came from the other.
“What does Gustave say about the pineapples?” Cougar wanted to know. “How did he lose two acres’ worth overnight?”
“Shh! Keep your voice down. He’s right over there.” Nat motioned with his hand in the direction of the bar. He looked like he was swatting a fly. “Gustave says he’s cursed. Says he has no idea what happened to two acres of fruit and that someone put a spell on him.”
I can’t believe I’ve seen what I’ve seen.
“I think he put a spell on himself,” Nat went on. “The guy’s creepy.”
“When I was a kid Grandpa used to tell me all kinds of stories about Gustave’s family. Nobody really knows where they came from, or even when exactly they came to Oh. I can’t believe Puymute ever hired him to run the place,” Cougar said.
“And the best part is the government wants export duty on the missing goods,” Nat added.
“Yeah, I saw that in the newspaper. That’s where our mildmannered friend here comes in. He’ll get back at Gustave now.” Cougar reached across the table and patted Raoul’s upper arm. From under the table Nat gave Cougar a kick.
“Hey! The jacket, man! You almost spilled my drink! Raoul knows he’s on the case. It’s all over the papers.”
You are the one who’s meant for me.
Cougar took Raoul’s newspaper back from him again and read aloud. “‘Customs and Excise officer Raoul Orlean will head up the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of the Puymute pineapples.’”
“I know he knows. That’s not what I meant.” Nat said to Cougar, under his breath.
“Would you two stop?” Raoul reclaimed his newspaper again. “I’m going to Puymute’s in the morning to get this straightened out.”
“Good luck getting answers out there. Everyone’s afraid to talk about it. Afraid the curse will get them next,” Nat said.
“Might have two more acres missing by tomorrow.”
Raoul pointed his cigar at Cougar. “I don’t know what your grandpa told you, or what Gustave told you…” (He turned to Nat.) “…but there’s no magic on Oh. There’s an explanation for everything, for pineapples and for…for everything. And I’ll find it.”
Cougar looked at Nat and shrugged. “Just be careful. Like I said, you don’t know what old Red Eyes is capable of.”
You
and your eyes as deep as the sea.
A hollow, uneven applause clucked inside the Belly, reflective in no way of the audience’s scant appreciation of the performance, but of the locals’ embarrassment in the face of such formal displays.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Short break and we’ll be right back. Good time for a refill,” he winked. “See you at the bar!” Bang pointed an affectionate index finger at the crowd, then bounced down the two steps that led off the stage. He filched a tumbler of water from the tray a passing waitress held up over her head and joined his circle of friends. He seemed unable or unwilling to stand still, like a boxer ready to spring from his corner. “Coug! Great call on those sea songs!” Bang set down the water and showed Cougar two thumbs up. “So what are we talking about?”
“What else? Black magical manifestation,” Nat mocked, hand motions and all.
“Says the man who was shaking when he got back from Puymute’s this morning,” Bang countered. “You two should have seen him at the airport—‘curses’ this and ‘creepy’ that. So when’s the investigation start?”
“I’m going over in the morning,” Raoul announced.
“Here.” Bang reached into his pocket. “Take my lucky harmonica. Just keep it on you.”
“What am I? Jack and the bloody beanstalk?” Raoul was serious, but Cougar and Nat sniggered.
“What makes it so lucky?” Cougar asked, chuckling.
“A traveling musician gave it to Granddad about sixty years ago, told him to play it when he got in trouble. So one day Granddad’s out in his boat and he falls asleep. When he wakes up, he’s so far from shore he has no idea where he is. He starts playing.” (Bang blew into the harmonica for effect.) “And you know what? A pair of dolphins appear.”
“Dolphins? Not right out of the sea! Did they say anything to him?” Nat interrupted. Cougar laughed and even Raoul was amused.
Bang was unshaken: “So Granddad keeps playing, and the two dolphins gently nudge the boat, all the way back home. Saved his life. Not only is it good luck, I think it might be magic, too. Take it.” He slid the harmonica toward Raoul.
“I don’t play.”
“You blow on that thing, Raoul, and the dolphins will capsize you to shut you up,” Cougar roared.
“Don’t you have a lucky tambourine you can give him, Bang?” Nat suggested, and snapped his fingers in the air. “Rum!”
“Laugh if you will, but humor me.” Bang slipped the harmonica into Raoul’s shirt pocket and patted him on the chest. “Showtime.” And he was gone.
There’s an old story that I want to tell.
Raoul let the conversation between Cougar and Nat fade into the distance and looked at the paper again.
PARANORMAL PILFERING OF PUYMUTE PINEAPPLES
Why was Oh so quick to jump to alchemical conclusions? So prone to believe in charms? They just can’t be bothered to look for the truth, that’s all, he thought. Not a mystery anywhere on the island that couldn’t be explained by a book from the Pritchard T. Lullo Public Library. The people of Oh were hungry for magic, always had been. Hungry for something to hope for, something to blame, something to make them feel like they weren’t so alone after all, like they weren’t just a floating pineapple patch forsaken by anyone who mattered.
The moon on the water cast a spell
Gustave? He was clever. Knew they’d buy right into it, didn’t he? He might fool Puymute and the Morning Crier, but he wouldn’t fool Raoul.
Like it knows how to do so well.
Called out the devil straight from hell.
Gustave sat at the bar. He faced forward and watched his liquid reflection in the glass he held. He could feel people staring at him, could almost hear their whispers. His pineapples the talk of Oh and now this! He needed a baby to worry about like he needed, well, a baby. It got everybody talking again, stirred up the old dusty stories he thought were long buried and forgotten, the legends he’d tried to shake since he was a boy. It was a curse alright. A real chip-your-tooth-on-it curse. And Gustave didn’t know what to do next. His elbow on the bar, he leaned into his fist and let his thumb caress the talisman he had carried his whole life, like you or I might rub a rabbit’s foot or a lucky penny, or a wise man his long white beard. In downward strokes he smoothed the soft blond down that blanketed the blotch on his cheek.
Called out the devil straight from hell.
“How the hell should I know how Edda Orlean got pregnant,” Gustave muttered. And Bang sang.
3
Every leaf has two sides. One shiny and smooth. One faded, rough. The existence of one defines the other, though that they exist at all depends on the life-giving veins they share, the convex and the concave conjoined.
On Oh, the leaves sing. You can hear them when the wind is up, a shhhhhhh shh! of sides knocking against sides. Bang has a bamboo cylinder with soft chips in it that mimics their song. The leaves’ violent lullabies coax the butterfly jasmine and the pineapple fruit. Their sides’ coupled hum, the little almond.
My father Wilbur used to listen to the leaves for hours, a fascination he instilled in me from the time I was just a toddler. When I visit him now—not nearly as often as I should—we still spend our evenings on the verandah at home, where the leaves tell their very best stories. My favorite is one about a school-aged Wilbur, who fell in love to their shiver and tremble.
Wilbur’s fascination with leafy melodies began when he was a boy. He would hide, cross-legged, under a mango tree in the soft green brush a stone’s throw from the edge of the sea, and lose himself in the leaves’ sighs. It wasn’t just their sighs, however, that drew him to his favorite hiding spot one particular warm and windy afternoon when his school day was done. What drew him that day was a simple—soundless—white ribbon. A white ribbon that danced entangled in what he knew must be the softest black hair that ever was.
It was draped around a petite, plain face adorned with eyes equally as black—eyes unremarkable on Oh, where everyone’s eyes are as black as his (or her) skin. But to Wilbur they shone like the gelatinous bulbs of the iguana that slunk around his front porch every morning and in which he had once seen his whole face reflected. Below the eyes a similarly unremarkable nose was positioned some inch or so above duly pinkish lips and a perfectly average chin.
The column on which this capital sat was narrow and smooth under flared cotton dresses that anticipated curves but revealed in the meantime two straight sticks of leg. Edda’s legs. Wilbur watched her with her friends as they threw shoes, socks, grammar books and pencil cases into a pile in the sand and ran parallel to the slippery tide, careful not to get their school clothes wet. Not so wet, at least, that they wouldn’t dry before the girls reached their homes and began their adverb exercises to the accompaniment of sweetened goat’s milk and pineapple tartlets. Wilbur fingered the corner of his own grammar book, mauve with black gridlines on the front, “GRAMMAR IS FUN” mathematically distributed in block letters between them, and imagined it there, on the pile, where hers was, mingled with her thin knee-socks, or pressed against shoe buckles that had touched her fingers.
Sometimes the girls would just sit and draw pictures in the sand, and talk. On those occasions Wilbur would strain to hear their words over the leaves’ rhythms. (Usually he was forced to content himself with little more than mumbles and rustling.) At first Wilbur didn’t know why he watched Edda after school, just that he wanted to—and for as long as he could remember. So watch her he did, from the time she wore empty cotton dresses to the time her body began pressing itself against her taut clothing. From the time he didn’t know why he watched, to the time he sensed it had something to do with what was under Edda’s tightening skirts and blouses.
Before we go any further with my father’s story, though, you should know something more about the infamous Gustave Vilder. For me, the lives of these two men go hand in hand—ever since one moonlit night, close to that very spot where we leave Wilbur to contemplate his Edda.
While
Wilbur stumbled dumbly through adolescence from his hiding place under the mango near the beach, and Edda tiptoed through hers to keep her schoolclothes dry, Gustave Vilder just tried to grow up. It wasn’t easy being a Vilder on Oh, especially not a small one. Like all children, Gustave just wanted to fit in. He wanted invitations to birthday parties and someone to swap sandwich halves with him at lunchtime on the wooden benches outside the school, his fresh purpled octopus for slices of wild pig, or his mother’s peanut butter and pineapple jam for papaya and soft cheese. Ambrose Jou made a trade every day. But then Ambrose Jou was dark, like all the natives of Oh: dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes. And more than that, there wasn’t a magical hair to be found on his head. (I too would have liked invitations, and my Ambrose Jou was an ebony Olinda Berch, who collected balls of bubble gum from every boy in class.)
Gustave, on the other hand, was as pale as the goat cheese on a papaya sandwich. His whole family was. And though you’d be sorely pressed to find a group of elementary-schoolers requiring more than that to alienate a classmate, imagine what the likes of a young Gustave must have endured: stuck in his doughy face were two Vilder eyes of an otherworldly red and the very same distinctive hairy birthmark that branded every Vilder cheek. Gustave tried a slew of remedies to get rid of the mark, so desperately did he wish to narrow the gap that separated him from the others. He scrubbed it with seawater and steel-wool pads. He shaved it and plucked it. For a while he even covered it with a bandage. But he couldn’t hide who he was. No one can, especially not here.
I still don’t know exactly how or when the Vilders came to Oh, how many of them there were, or why so few were left right about the time that Gustave was scrubbing his birthmark and eating octopus sandwiches alone. I don’t think anybody does. The rumors are rampant and purport such actors as a lost Nordic fishing god with forty fairy wives, and such theories as inbreeding and devil worship. I can tell you some of them later, if you want, but they don’t change anything. What life isn’t a composite of the deaths and sins that preceded it, of tales twisted by time? For now, just know that the stories, perpetuated through island lore and island lay, entangled to create a hazy legend of evildoing and distrust that the Vilders’ frightening appearance only served to cement.
Left at the Mango Tree Page 3
