Cross Current (22 page)

“Sure, I know what you’re saying,” Mike said.

My elbows were propped up on the bar, and I rested my forehead against the heels of my hands. I began to shake my head. “No way. I don’t buy it.” I lifted my head and turned to face Joe. “Red did not knowingly get on a boat that was smuggling drugs up from Colombia.” I swung my head back and forth, looking first at Mike, then Joe. Neither would look at me.

No one said anything for several seconds. Mike’s hand rested on my shoulder, massaging the flesh in a little circling motion. I wanted to reach over and smack his hand away.

Finally, Joe said, “Listen, honey, I know you don’t want to think of your daddy—”

I stood up. I wanted to break something. I wanted him to stop calling me “honey.” 

“Red didn’t know,” I said. “He couldn’t have.” I could hear that my voice sounded whiny, and it made me even angrier. I slid off my stool and stomped out of the room.

Celeste was standing in the hall, just outside the doorway. As I passed her I asked, “Bathroom?” She motioned for me to follow her.

I sat down on the closed toilet lid and gave myself about three minutes to just let my emotions go. It wasn’t long enough to turn my eyes and face all red and puffy, but it was just enough of a little
pffft
, like a pressure cooker’s jiggle, to make sure I wouldn’t blow when I went back into that room with those guys. They were undoubtedly talking about me right now—some “poor kid” scenario, where they were painting themselves as the big tough cops who knew how bad folks could be.

But Red was different, and they weren’t used to people like Red. He was a man whose morality was absolute. He would not bend, nor did he ever struggle over a moral issue, much to the chagrin of his teenage daughter. Red would never have willingly smuggled drugs—not even to finish
Gorda
. That was a truth. I felt it in my gut. I was not sure whether Joe was floating this tale out of ignorance or deceit, but I intended to find out.

After splashing some cold water on my face and relishing the soft, Egyptian cotton towels, I unlocked the door and ventured out. The men’s voices and loud laughter carried from their end of the hall, but I turned in the opposite direction. I decided to explore a little before returning to the boys’ club.

I saw three doors down the hall. The guest bedroom was located diagonally across from the bathroom. The furnishings were expensive and tasteful, but the room had all the personality of a model home. The next door led to the master bedroom, a huge room, nearly twenty by twenty, with French doors that opened onto the pool deck. When I came to the last door, I nearly collided with Celeste.

“Oh, pardon,” she said, looking startled and then lowering her eyes.

“No, I should be saying that.”

Over her shoulder I saw a room that was small and spartan, containing a twin bed, a dresser with a small mirror, and a single chair. Unlike the other two rooms, this one had personal items, a lovely brush-and-comb set on the dresser, a hand-stitched quilt on the bed, a small bright painting on the wall.

“Really, I’m sorry. I was just being nosy. I wanted to have a look at the house. Is this your room?”

She nodded and lowered her eyes.

I pointed back down the hall. “I kinda got in an argument with those guys back there. Do you mind if I just sit here for a while? I could use some female company.”

She smiled and stepped into the room, offering me the chair. After we’d settled ourselves, neither of us quite knew what to say. I could sense her awkwardness. After a while, she began to hum a tune.

“That sounds very pretty. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a song we used to sing in Haiti. To make children go to sleep.”

“Can you sing it for me?”

She smiled shyly and began to sing softly, but in a strong and pleasant voice.

Dodo ti pitit manman’l 

Do-o-do-o-do ti pitit manman’l

Si li pas dodo 

Krab la va manje’l

Her voice cracked, and she stopped singing. She stood suddenly, then crossed the room and stared out the window.

“You miss Haiti, don’t you?” She did not move to respond to my question, so I tried a different one. “How long have you worked for Joe?”

“Five years,” she said, so softly I could barely hear her. “That’s when you came from Haiti?”

She nodded and spoke without turning around. “Mister D’Angelo brought me over, and he sent me to school to learn English.”

“Your English is very good.”

She turned around and smiled, then crossed to the bed and sat next to me. “Thank you,” she said. “I cannot read yet, but I will learn.” She sat with her head down, her fingers tracing the floral design on her dress. I had never seen such a beautiful woman behave so modestly. Was it possible, I wondered, she didn’t know how lovely she was?

“So you met him in Haiti?”

She nodded without looking up.

“What was he doing there?”

“He was a drug policeman. There were lots of drugs in Haiti. He help the Haitian people.”

“Hmmm. I’ve met so many Haitian people lately. I didn’t realize there were so many Haitians in Florida.”

She smiled. “Yes, this is true. Haitians are in the supermarket, restaurants, shopping malls. Every year more and more. It is because it is so bad at home.”

“Do you still have family there?”

She frowned and appeared to struggle with her reply. “No,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “All dead.”

“I’m so sorry.” I looked at the top of her bowed head. She looked so young to have known such loss. “How old are you, Celeste?”

“I am twenty-three.”

“Joe brought you here when you were only eighteen?” She looked up quickly. “Yes. I love my country, Haiti, but it was bad there for me. There are many beautiful things in Haiti, many wonderful people. But this is my new country. There is nothing in Haiti for me now.”

Joe appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing back here?” There was something in his voice, some undercurrent of threat that made me feel like a kid who had been caught rifling through her parents’ belongings.

“We were just visiting.” I patted Celeste’s hand. “It was nice talking to you.”

Joe walked us out to the dock, where Mike untied the dinghy line while I prepared to climb down the dock. “Seychelle, I want you to know—” Joe said.

“Joe, stop.” I held up my hand like a traffic cop. “I came here looking for some answers about my dad, about who he was. And you know what? I found out that I’ve known that all along. I’ve always known who Red was. Nothing you say can change that.”

“I’m glad. I hope you understand that I would never intentionally say or do anything to hurt you. Are we still friends?” I nodded once and he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

Mike and I didn’t talk much on the ride back. As we cruised through the heart of the city, the late evening sunlight was turning the downtown buildings into golden towers. I sat up on the bow of the inflatable and tried to enjoy the beauty of the river, but my mind kept spinning images: Red, Gil, and Joe dockside in Cartagena; Perry waiting for someone in Flossie’s Bar; Gil’s photo on Perry’s Italian tow; new cell phones and radios. Joe had given me one version of what had happened down there over twenty years before. I needed to hear Gil’s version.

By the time we secured the dinghy and I’d turned down Mike’s dinner invite, it was approaching five o’clock. I drove straight to Jeannie’s to pick up Solange.

XVI

When I pulled Lightnin’ into Jeannie’s yard, I saw B.J.’s black El Camino parked on the far side of her van. I had hoped to just grab Solange and take off for Mambo Racine’s, so this was an unwelcome complication.

I saw him through the screen door when I reached the top of the landing. He was sitting on the couch talking to Jeannie, and in the few seconds before I knocked, when neither of them knew I was there, I watched him. He still gave me that shivery feeling—the way his biceps stretched the fabric of his white T-shirt as he raised his arm, his brown thighs showing beneath his khaki cargo shorts. His back was angled toward the door, and I could see his sleek black ponytail and his neck hairs pulled up into that rubber band. I had a sudden urge to kiss him right there, on his neck, just behind his ear.

I shook my head and knocked.

He was smiling when he unlocked the screen door. “We were just talking about you,” he said.

“Great,” I said as I walked through the door. “Hi, Jeannie. I came to pick up Solange.”

“Hey. I think taking that girl up to some Voodoo lady is nuts, but I can see you’ve got your stubborn heart set on it.” She rocked back and forth a couple of times to build momentum and then lifted her bulk up into a standing position. “I’ll go get her ready. It’ll take me fifteen minutes or so. She’s not dressed.”

I had the distinct feeling that she was giving B.J. time to talk to me.

“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I felt bad about the way we left things yesterday.”

“Listen, B.J., I really don’t have time to get into this now. I’m supposed to have this kid at Racine’s by seven, and I’ve just been on this ridiculous dinghy trip with Mike.” I was still in a bad mood from the conversation with Joe.

“What dinghy trip?”

“I was trying to find out something about my dad. It’s hard to explain. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

We sat in silence for a while then, the only sounds in the room those of the wall clock ticking and, through the screen, the city sounds of traffic and sirens and the far-off music of an ice cream truck.

B.J. took a deep breath. “Sey, I know what it’s like to hear stories about your father. Stories are all I’ve ever had about my dad.”

I knew that B.J. had been raised by a single mother in Southern California and that he had absolutely adored her. She’d died when he was only a few years out of graduate school. It was then that he abandoned the corporate lifestyle, moved to Florida, and started working as a boat carpenter. He rarely talked about his life before Florida, only occasionally letting loose with little tidbits.

“Even though I never met my dad, by his very absence, he played a part in my life. I would imagine he was this very powerful man, and it was the people around him who were preventing him from ever coming to visit his son. When I was in high school, my mother told me that he came from a wealthy Hawaiian family. He had been slumming in Southern California before going back to school up at Berkeley. She was seventeen and dancing in a Polynesian restaurant, and when he found out she was pregnant, he offered her fifty thousand dollars to get an abortion. She refused, he left, and that was the last she ever heard of him.”

“I’m sorry, B.J.”

“Don’t be. I had the greatest mom. No complaints. I just know that I want the chance to do the fatherhood thing right. Sey, being a family doesn’t have to mean polyester clothes and a minivan. Look at me. I was raised in women’s dressing rooms in a handful of Polynesian restaurants.”

I rolled my eyes. “That explains a lot.”

His mouth spread wide, showing his incredibly white teeth. “So I love women. But Sey, of all the women I have known, I’ve never felt like this. I miss you when you’re not there. I’ve never ever missed anyone before.” He took my hand.

Jeannie appeared in the hallway with Solange at her side, and she clutched at her chest and gasped. “Oh, my God. He didn’t propose to you, did he?”

I pulled my hand back and stood up. “Of course not, Jeannie. B.J.? Propose? You’ve got to be kidding. The man loves women. Plural. He’ll probably have a new girlfriend by the end of the week.”

The street where Max and Racine lived looked even less inviting in the dark than it had in the daylight. I was acutely aware of how little protection the Jeep’s soft top afforded us as I rounded the corner and began peering down the unlit street, trying to recognize the cinder-block house that was set so far back from the street.

Jeannie and I had argued before I’d climbed into the Jeep, after B.J. had smiled sadly and left the house. I hadn’t been nice to him. He deserved better than that. Jeannie told me all that and then some, and I knew she was right. Then she called me irresponsible for taking a child into Collier City after dark to see some kind of Voodoo priestess. When she put it that way, it did become difficult to defend. Then I thought of B.J.’s words on the topic, how he had explained it to me the other night, and I tried to tell Jeannie that she needed to step out of her middle-class American point of view and accept the fact that there were alternative religions, alternative ways of healing. She looked like she wanted to slap some sense into me. It had all sounded so much more convincing when B.J. said it.

It wasn’t the house I spotted finally, but rather the number of cars parked in front of the house. What had been a wide, empty dirt yard was now covered with a varied collection of cars, everything from huge sport utility vehicles with dark tinted windows to older-model sedans and shiny new imports.

I parked the Jeep close to the street, so as not to get blocked in by any late arrivals. Solange was sitting up, her eyes open, but she took no more interest in these surroundings than she had taken in me or anything back at Jeannie’s house. She simply stared ahead as though she had retreated to some place deep inside. I helped her out of the car and held her hand as we walked to the door.

Still a few feet from the front door, I hesitated. The front porch was dark, but colored lights behind the house illuminated the branches of the huge strangler fig tree. Loud island drumming and the sound of people laughing and talking drifted over the top of the house, intensifying the stillness in the front yard. I felt like a voyeur about to peep through a window.

I leaned down, closer to Solange’s face, concentrating, trying to see her features in the darkness. “Solange, I wish you’d help me out here, kid. Is this right? I’ve got to find somebody who can help you.” As usual, she showed no reaction. “Do you want to go in? I want to help you, but you probably know more about what’s going on here than I do.”