The Sea Grape Tree

by Gillian Royes

  “When I was little,” Sarah said, “my father took me to this village where my uncle had a church—he was an Anglican minister—just south of Scotland. We went walking on a country road one night, and I remember being all bundled up and my father pointing out the stars. They were so bright, just amazing.”

  “That’s a great memory.”

  “Funnily enough, I don’t have a lot of memories from childhood.” She laughed. “There are these great blocks of time that are blank, for some reason. Maybe that comes from living a pretty monotonous life.”

  Ford had lots of memories. He talked of watching the night sky in the summer. He would sit on his aunt’s dock in South Carolina in the evening with his cousins, and they would see how many stars they could count. “When we gave up, we’d count the shooting stars.”

  Listening to Ford, seeing one half of his face dimly lit by the living room lights, Sarah guessed that he was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. There were no wrinkles on his face, despite the late nights he kept, so he might have been younger rather than older. There was something likable about his mouth with its raised outer edges, something refined about his nose. And while he spoke nostalgically, she began to suspect they’d been left alone on purpose by Sonja and Roper.

  Her companion now talked about playing the trumpet in the South, and how much he enjoyed jamming with musicians from New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and she noticed for the first time a diamond on one side of his long nose that glimmered when he turned toward her. And while he spoke, she wondered how it would feel to run her hand over his close-cropped head, if it would feel coarse or smooth, although there was no chance of them becoming lovers even if she wanted to—which she didn’t. His wounds were too fresh.

  It was only later, while she was changing into her pajamas, that she knew that the real reason she wouldn’t sleep with Ford, or even flirt with him, was more about the fact that she’d never found a black man appealing. She’d had a few high school and art school classmates who were first-generation West Indians or Africans, but no close friends who were anything other than white. Penny, of course, had all kinds of friends, including Zoey, a Barbadian TV producer who dropped in at least once a month, and her roommate’s circle often included a black boyfriend.

  “I was telling my mother,” Penny had commented after starting an affair with a Nigerian engineer, “that it’s a different time and place. People are just people, for God’s sake.”

  Sarah had nodded but hadn’t been sure how she felt about it herself. She had nothing against black men per se, but they didn’t start the adrenaline rushing for her. At the bottom of it, she thought, was the awkwardness of cultural differences, even if it was a new day. It was enough of a nuisance meshing with any boyfriend, much less one who ate strange food and had a mother you couldn’t understand.

  Somewhere between pounding her pillow and laying her head on it, Sarah decided that part of the reason she’d accepted Roper’s invitation was that Naomi had confirmed that he had a lovely home and a live-in girlfriend. He was middle class and she was safe. No, she was not having a relationship with anyone in Jamaica. It was definitely not in the cards.

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  It was no secret that Daniel Caines had become a tourist, had gone to see the lagoon at Blue Hole, had shopped in the Ocho Rios craft market and gone into the underground caves in St. Ann, according to his reports to Eric. It was also no secret that he was having a nightly romp with Janet. By way of announcing it, the seamstress was now hanging on to his arm wherever he went, and Eric had more than once imagined the woman’s rounded buttocks pounding up and down on Caines.

  When the investor and his girlfriend had come into the bar one night, the man almost luminescent, like he’d just had a monstrous orgasm followed by a hot shower, Eric had decided that he better move things along at a faster clip, since Caines clearly had too much free time. The next morning he’d called Horace MacKenzie to set up their meeting.

  The meeting with Lambert Delgado the week before had gone well. Eric and Caines had walked up the Delgados’ driveway to that meeting, between the mango and grapefruit trees, with Eric again describing his swim across when the eye of the hurricane was passing over and dragging himself up onto Lambert’s verandah, “naked as a baby,” and pounding on the door. Caines had only murmured, “Hmm,” his eyes roaming over the modern, plantation-style house before them.

  They’d finally arrived, with a fair amount of panting on Eric’s part, at two minutes after eleven, the appointed time. Lambert, large and beige, had come through the elegant living room with arms extended to his visitors, welcoming them. He apologized for not making it to the party. He’d been in Kingston buying lumber, he said.

  The middle-aged contractor was Eric’s best friend. Apart from sheltering the homeless hotel owner during the hurricane, Lambert had given him a room to live in for a year after, before the bar and apartment were built. He’d let Eric’s son, Joseph, use an office in the house when he came to write the business proposal. And now he was giving his services as contractor for the new hotel at a major discount—as a gift to Largo, he said.

  After the introductions, Eric, Lambert, and Danny had moved to the long verandah and its white rocking chairs and were served Red Stripe beers by Miss Bertha, the chunky housekeeper whose hips just fit into her plaid uniform.

  “You don’t come up here for a long time,” she’d teased Eric. “Now that your son is gone, you scarce as good gold.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Bertha, you going to have plenty chance to see me,” Eric had answered in his American patois. “When we start building, you see me every day.”

  An easy icebreaker came up at the start of the meeting: the city of New York. All three men had lived there at some point. And although Lambert and Danny had lived there in different decades, they acted like they shared something that Eric didn’t, and he knew it was that they had both been Caribbean men struggling through college in a big white city. Eric had joined in the discussion about living in Manhattan in the seventies and eighties, referring to the Village as if he’d gone there often, careful not to mention that he’d never attended university and had lived a very different life from theirs.

  Having warmed up to the matter at hand, Lambert had run his fingers across his handlebar mustache. “How long are you planning to be here?” he’d said, nodding to Caines.

  “It’s kind of a working holiday, so I’d say another couple weeks. I want to get to know Jamaica better if I’m going to make an investment here, you know. I’ve been visiting places, reading up about stuff—about the economy, the recent election.”

  “And you know we have political confusion, right?” Lambert joked, winking at Eric. “But I bet you never read about the time it takes to get government approvals—”

  “I heard about that.”

  “Then you’d better plan to stay another month, my friend, because we need to get permits from the Parish Council here, and we have to attend several meetings to justify the construction. I really think you should be here for that. The Council will want to ask you about your businesses overseas.”

  “I don’t know—it’s been difficult connecting with my business, what with poor cell phone coverage here and Miss Mac not being on the Internet. My mother is handling everything back home, but I like to stay in touch. I may have to come and go.”

  “I’m telling you,” Lambert had assured him, “it takes the patience of Job to do business here, just bear that in mind.” By the time the meeting ended, Caines and Lambert were calling each other my man, had made a date to go out on the golf course, and were sounding more and more like black Americans.

  In contrast to the visit with Lambert, the meeting with Horace went poorly from the beginning. Eric had forgotten to warn Caines that Horace had never been on time since he’d known him and, one hour after they’d arrived at Horace’s office above
a Port Antonio bread shop, they were still waiting. Caines kept looking at his watch and recrossing his legs. The stale Lawyers Today magazines displayed on the side table remained untouched. On several occasions, Danny paced to the open window and looked down at the lane outside.

  “What time was our appointment?” he asked the elderly receptionist on one of his trips. She assured him that Mr. MacKenzie knew he was to meet with them but had to go to court. She was expecting him momentarily, she said, frowning at his American petulance.

  When the slender lawyer appeared two hours after the scheduled time, his black robe thrown over his arm, Caines appeared to be in no mood to be civil, but he held his tongue, his thin lips thinner than usual. Eric got the conversation rolling with a question about the campsite. In answer and without asking for their approval, Horace lit a cigarette with his graceful mocha fingers and exhaled a cone of smoke that was quickly dispersed by the overhead fan.

  “I’ve spoken to some guys, friends of mine, and we’re ready to lease the island once you get the hotel construction started.”

  “Everything is going well so far,” Eric said. “Your mother has agreed to sell the land—Danny spoke with her—so that’s okay. We’ve started the construction discussions with Lambert Delgado, no problem there. And we’re on board about leasing you the island. But there’s one thing, the electricity and water—”

  “We had a thought,” Caines interjected. “Since there aren’t any working utilities on the island, of course, since the hurricane, we were wondering if your group would want to install solar panels and cisterns for electricity and water. Make the place self-sustaining, you know, cheaper than paying utility bills. You could design and build just the way you want, in the locations you want. And it would be the kind of eco-friendly stuff your tourists would go for.”

  Horace scrutinized them, his cigarette at a right angle with his fingers, and his bony chin jutting toward them. “Are you telling me that you’re expecting us to put in the infrastructure for you, to pay for it ourselves, is that what you’re saying?”

  Caines stretched his neck to one side. “We thought you might be open to working with us—”

  “You’re joking, right? That was never mentioned before.”

  “If you construct, we can deduct it from the lease, month by month, you know.”

  Horace sat back, shrugging the shoulders of his cream linen jacket. “We already have to install tents and a kitchen and bathrooms. Now we’re talking basic infrastructure.” His eyes narrowed. “How much more is that going to cost?”

  “Not much, probably twenty, twenty-five thousand US, mostly for the purchase of solar panels and the construction of an underground cistern and plumbing. The installation of the roofs should be fairly cheap if you use zinc sheets and gutters.” Horace glowered, Caines wouldn’t budge, and things seemed to have reached an impasse until Eric asked about the necessary documents to form a company.

  An hour later in the afternoon-empty bar, the bar owner poured himself a scotch, a rare indulgence, and sat down at his table with the newspaper.

  “Didn’t go well,” he complained to Shad, who was leaving for his lunch break.

  “What happen?”

  “We had to tell Horace there were no utilities and—”

  “Danny didn’t tell him that if he did it, we would deduct the cost from the rent?”

  “How’d you know?” Eric said. He finished the scotch in one swig and grimaced. “Horace didn’t like the idea one bit. I can’t imagine where Caines got it from.”

  “I give it to him,” Shad said, to which Eric stared at him—his trusted employee, whom he’d insisted should be a minority partner in the new hotel, giving advice to his business partner behind his back. The bartender disappeared with an apologetic shrugging of shoulders, while his boss poured himself another shot and opened the Gleaner.

  Unaccustomed to drinking hard liquor, Eric soon had trouble making sense of the words in front of him. He put down the paper and looked across at Simone Island, baking in the two o’clock sunlight. Six months earlier, he would have rowed out to see her, would have told her about the meeting with Horace, and she would have said something he needed to hear. He poured a third shot and swallowed it quickly, rebuking himself at the same time. A tingling started in his groin, the scotch going to places he’d almost forgotten, places that made him think of her, and of Caines and his after-sex glow. He stood up with inebriated determination, went searching in the drawer where he kept his ledger book and odd notes, and found a pink Post-it note with an Atlanta phone number. She answered right away.

  “How you doing, Simone?” He was trying not to slur, holding his tongue and teeth apart.

  “Great! How is the hotel coming along?”

  “Danny Caines is here, your brother’s client.”

  “How is that going?” She sounded like she was eating something.

  “So far, so good, you know, long way to go. Do you know him, Caines, I mean?”

  “No, but Cameron seems to like him a lot.”

  “I think he’s on board, but you know how it is here. He’s finding some things hard to accept, and then other things”—thinking of the man’s shining face—“he seems to like a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  Eric cleared his throat. “He loves the ocean, kind of like you. He runs every morning on the beach, swims, that kind of thing.”

  “Like a Jamerican.” She laughed. It was a term she’d used to describe herself once. They’d been eating June plums, he remembered, the juice dripping down her chin.

  “He’s from St. Croix.”

  “Cameron hadn’t mentioned that.”

  “So,” he said, and looked up at a car pulling into the parking lot, “what have you been doing? Still not working?”

  She paused, either to chew or think. “I’m working on Celeste’s room, deciding what to keep and what to store. I’m still working that through, you know. I’ve joined a group for parents who’ve—it helps a lot—knowing that other people have . . .” Her voice faded away, then got stronger when she started speaking again. “And I’ve been applying for jobs with nonprofits, working with troubled youth, that kind of thing. I’m not going back to corporate, like I told you. My head just isn’t into the whole advertising thing anymore.”

  “I mish you.” It had come out wrong, his lips and teeth getting lazy. The customer, a man in jeans, was locking his car door, would soon want a drink.

  “What was that?”

  Eric licked his lips. “I miss you.”

  “You miss me? That’s very sweet, Eric.”

  “I was thinking about you all of a sudden, looking at the island. Shumtimes—”

  “Are you okay, Eric?” She almost sounded like Claire, his ex, her concern laced with criticism.

  “I had a drink. Hard day today, you know.”

  “Maybe you should call back another time and we can talk about it. I was just going out, anyway. What about tomorrow?”

  “Okay, I’ll call you.”

  Eric replaced the phone and nodded to the man approaching the counter.

  “A beer? Coming right up, shir.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  Leaning into the full-length mirror, Sarah layered on a coat of bright red lipstick. Her lips were not too bad, the bottom one almost pouty.

  “Blessed from birth,” Penny had pronounced while making Sarah up for an exhibition. “The celebs would pay a fortune for them.”

  After dabbing on face powder (geisha white, Penny called it) and some blush, Sarah swished mascara on her lashes. Her skimpy eyebrows she left natural, hating penciled brows like her mother’s, and pulled a few strands of hair over the eyebrows. The smile on her lips ended with a shake of the head. The image reflected back to her was undoubtedly the tallest, palest woman on the island, swan neck and all. To make matters wors
e, the lavender dress looked like a dowdy country cousin to her wild urban hair, which had frizzed into a red dandelion. By tomorrow she’d be the laughingstock of the village.

  The Friday-night expedition had been announced at dinner by Roper the evening before. They were to go to the Largo Bay Bar for a drink before sunset.

  “They have an excellent cook,” he’d added, “so maybe we’ll stay for a bite.”

  After moussing her hair one last time, Sarah ascended the stairs to the living room, and she and Ford waited for the others on the deck. To Ford’s delight, a hummingbird was poking its beak into the hibiscus flowers in a large pot. Her fellow guest, she’d discovered, was a member of the Audubon Society, a wildlife organization in the States.

  “I’m usually the only black guy on the trips,” he’d said once with a sad smile. “It takes the other birders a while to get used to it.”

  Over the five days since he’d arrived, she had become friends with the quiet trumpeter. They’d walked on two afternoons along the main road, she under her floppy hat and he in a Panama hat he’d bought in Ecuador. While he scouted the trees for birds, pointing out a woodpecker to her once, they talked about her life in London—tame compared to his in New York—and described Harlem and Camden to each other. On a few occasions, he’d referred to Jewel by automatically saying “we,” but he never brought up the miscarriage or the breakup, which was fine with Sarah.

  Roper joined them on the deck, followed in a few minutes by Sonja in a long cotton dress, her hair held back by a scarf with an African print. Carthena came out of the kitchen as they were preparing to leave.