All the Finest Girls (7 page)

I followed Philip back to the car, where we found a man in bare feet squatting down, inspecting the fender. Half of his ass was exposed above the top of his ripped denim shorts, and his chest was bare. Philip caught my eye and, trying to make me laugh, stuck out his tongue and waggled it obscenely. The tow truck, a rusty jalopy, was fitted with a winch made of recycled metal and old rope.

“Hey, boss,” Philip said, eyeing the hook suspiciously.

“Yah, boss,” replied the mechanic, standing up and stroking the scraggly hairs on his chin.

“What yah say?”

“Mmm. Yah needing a new headlight, leastways,” he said, showing as he spoke a broad hole where his four front teeth should have been. “And a fender. Gonna need some front end work too. Big job, boss.”

“Well, can you get it running again or can’t you?” asked Philip, anxiety creeping into his tone.

“Me try.”

“You call up by the Alfred house and let me know.”

Clifton gave a toothless smile.

“Got no phone, Bakra Man.”

Philip sighed, took a wad of cash from his back pocket, and peeled off a few bills. I pulled out my own wallet, but Philip waved me away.

“Do what you can, then,” he said to Clifton. “I’ll check you later.”

When we got down the street a ways, I asked Philip the meaning of what the mechanic had called him.

“Nothing,” he said, stiffening.

“Come on.”

“It’s what slaves used to call plantation owners. It means well-endowed white guy. A jerk, basically.”

It was my turn to laugh, discovering too late that Philip’s sense of humor failed when he himself was the subject. We returned to the scene of the accident and I helped him wrap the sail, securing it across the boat’s little open hull. Philip walked around to her stern. Running his hand over a row of dislodged, chewed-up nails, he looked bereft for the first time since we’d met.

“They met in a movie house,” Philip said quietly.

“In the summer, we used to go nearly every night,” I told him, remembering the evenings at my grandmother’s beach house.

“Guess he wasn’t seeing her too clearly, in the dark,” he said, his mouth turned up in a smirk. His mind was a long way from the sidewalk where we stood.

Philip and I walked a circular route back through town and he gave me a bit of St. Clair history, a thumbnail sketch of its passage through Dutch, French, and English hands. He impressed me with the breadth of his knowledge. When I told him so, he shrugged.

“I was prelaw in college. Thought I’d come home and shake my fist, become president of St. Clair!”

“So what happened?”

Philip laughed.

“President of St. Clair? Please. I mean, who gives a shit? Anyway, I had other things to do. Family business to run. I’ll leave the show-boating to my papa.”

Errol, his son told me, was once an entertainer. He’d also been a politician, a taxi driver, a doorman at the Hotel Caribe, and a restaurateur whose famous charm had made him a minor Windward celebrity. All that was gone now, replaced by age and grief. Errol had probably earned his unhappiness, Philip conceded, though he really wasn’t a bad man. He had just, over a lifetime, let a lot of people down. Not the least being, of course, the woman he loved the most.

In 1964, when Errol Hodge met Louise Alfred, he was already a couple of years into a gig that seemed to suit him perfectly. Three nights a week, he headlined at Foxy’s Palace, thrilling to the attention and making enough money to spend the remainder of his time in other, more idle pursuits. “Back then, Foxy’s was the number one,” said Philip, with a touch of pride. A swank watering hole, it was the kind of place where tourists and locals mamboed and cha-chaed under the stars, and big-name performers regularly stopped in on their way back from Havana. With a limited vocal range and a couple of enormous feet suited to only the simplest of steps, Errol wasn’t exactly Harry Belafonte. But no matter. His light skin and devastating smile had a mesmerizing effect on the ladies. And Foxy, who discovered the young man wasting his looks as a shoe shine, paid him an enviable wage to headline when the big bands weren’t in town.

On his nights off, Errol invariably went to the movies. Down at the Eldertown Cinema, the only movie house on St. Clair, first-run American pictures played on a wide screen just weeks after their stateside debut. “Everybody got together there,” said Philip. “Catch the picture and then just hang around outside, liming, chatting each other up, till it was time to go home.” Errol loved the movies, but he loved people more. As popular offstage as on, he was at the center of any group and the very last one to depart when Bobsled began turning out the lights. “Like I said,” Philip reported with an ironic chuckle, “he was an entertainer.” Errol was thirty years old, with no inclination to change, till the evening when an argument with Bobsled Terry turned his life upside down.

Friday night was always a double bill. Not, as Bobsled would grouse, to be confused with a two-for-one. “If yah staying, yah paying,” he’d warn each and every customer as he ripped their stubs. Unfortunately, the man had a couple of enforcement problems. “Bobsled was cheap
and
he was nearly blind,” recounted Philip. “They say he had a old piece of cane, for getting around. And he would throw up the lights between shows, then go down each aisle, knocking it back and forth, sweeping the place for cheaters. Then everybody’d go hiding in the bathroom or crawling up this ladder he had and hanging all in the beams of the place. Everyone cheated Bobsled.”

Except Errol. Errol liked Bobsled. Their fathers had been friends, and the men had known one another since grade school. For years, Errol maintained that on the night in question a jealous boyfriend must have given Bobsled some bad information. When Bobsled shined his flashlight on Errol halfway through
Viva Las Vegas,
he stared into the spotlight in disbelief. Bobsled tapped his knee with the cane and told him to pay up. Errol swore he already had. Their argument became a shouting match and, with the rest of the house hissing its complaint, Errol flew up the aisle after Bobsled. He was well inside the tiny office behind the projector, still cursing Bobsled a wicked mile, before he saw the young woman bent over the accounting books. She wore a simple gray blouse buttoned high, and at her left elbow was a Bible. When she looked up at him with her enormous eyes, he felt as strange and new as if he’d just been born.

“‘That girl
saw
me, for true.’ That’s what Papa always said. Like he thought no one had ever actually seen him before. Like
everyone
was blind but her.”

Despite his way with women, Errol’s powers failed him when he met Louise. Miraculously, she wasn’t interested in him. Not in the least. This, however, didn’t deter Errol; it emboldened him. “They both of them stubborn as mules.” Errol had never really been in love before, and the effort required to catch Louise’s eye served only to convince him this was It.

“So Papa got religion,” Philip said, laughing, as we drew up to the footpath I’d taken down the hill.

In the twenty minutes since we’d begun our walk, a canopy of clouds had draped the sky, portly and gray.

“Mumma, I’m told, did her best to ignore him. She was living down with my uncle Michael and studying to be a teacher. Going to be the first in the family to go to college. In Jamaica. My grandmother had it all planned. But Papa followed her home. Every night for two weeks, professing his love. Mumma just smiled at him, barely said a word, ducking inside quicklike when they made it to the door. He wasn’t getting
anywhere.
Until he started studying the Bible. He got the spirit, you could say, quoting scripture to her, preaching the virtues of humility, the works. I suspect he was hard to resist, even for someone serious as my mumma. She finally invited him in for tea and introduced him to Michael. After that, Papa asked her and Michael to come to Foxy’s and hear him sing. That’s when Michael decided
for
Mumma. I think my uncle Michael had plans for Papa from the very beginning.”

With rain threatening, Philip picked up the pace, moving ahead of me as we wound uphill. Listening carefully to his story, I took my eyes off the steep path and several times stumbled on rocks and old roots. At one point, Philip reached back to help me over a particularly steep embankment. I thrilled at the warmth of his hand, surprised by my reluctance to let go. I was entranced, by him, by the story, so much so that we were a good way up the hill before I realized how difficult a hike it was for me. I stopped, sweating and out of breath.

“You ain’t much of an athlete, are you?” asked Philip jovially.

“What makes you say that?” I responded, bent over, hands braced on my knees. We probably hadn’t climbed more than fifty yards.

“A hunch is all.”

“I’m not a billy goat. But I get by. What did Michael think?”

“Michael thought he’d caught himself a big fish. My uncle was agitating for independence. Needed a front man, someone to sponsor for Parliament. Soon as he saw the way everyone fell all over Errol, he figured he’d found his man.”

I was still working for breath.

“You need stamina,” Philip said, touching his chest. “You got kids?”

The question jarred, and returned me to a self I’d momentarily left behind.

“Why does everyone ask that around here?” I snapped.

“Don’t know,” he replied. “Everybody’s got someone.”

“It’s rude, I think.”

“Sorry. I just figured.”

“Figured what?”

“I don’t know. That you did. Sorry.”

“No. I don’t. OK?”

Philip stopped and let me catch up, then touched my arm.

“Christ,” he said, his voice soft. “Lighten up, will you? Your pretty face gettin’ all pruney.”

I felt myself blush violently.

“Hmm. Lighten up?” I replied. “OK. Yeah.”

Feeling dumb, out of line and awkward too, I tried to be funny. Flapping my arms, putting on a face. We rose to the top of the hill and, though I was still short of breath, I took his hand and did a goofy kind of jig. I’m not sure what had gotten into me. Philip appraised my moves.

“Now you’re in business. Look out, don’t give yourself a heart attack!”

I was aware suddenly of my body and how shapeless it appeared in the oversized clothes and hat I was wearing. Philip caught me looking down at myself.

“Did you meet Floria?” he asked, gesturing toward the Alfreds’. “She’s big as a house and she’s still foxy as hell.”

“Floria?”

“My wife. Due in two weeks.” He held out his arms from his stomach. “Now that girl’s got stamina!”

The rain, which had been out over the water, edged closer to us. I watched the fast-moving clouds while Philip kept talking, about what I’m not sure. The sound of my own voice inside my head was too loud. Just before we got to the Alfreds’ backyard, Philip asked me a question, bringing me around.

“Hey, Connecticut. Let me ask you something. Is it true you were … sort of crazy? When you were little?”

His words stabbed the woolly fuzz of my thoughts, but I couldn’t focus on them. I wanted to be alone.

“Yeah,” I answered vaguely. “Sort of, I guess.”

“’Cause I was expecting, well, sorry, but a real cuckoo kind of girl.”

I pretended to laugh as, just then, the skies broke open with fat, slow drops of rain. Philip pulled on my sleeve, but I stopped by the back door and told him I’d be right in. The downpour began in earnest, and I took shelter under the house’s metal eaves, sitting down to rest on Lou’s rattan chair. Way out on the horizon, it was again a fair day, the setting sun fanning out in a citrusy pool.

It hadn’t been much. No more than a minute of, what? The most casual flirtation? But I began to burn, sitting there, set upon by a rash of anger and embarrassment. My feelings crept up my neck like an allergic reaction, making me want to remove my own skin. Fuck you, I thought, blood throbbing in my head. I don’t need your charity. And I don’t want your friendship, either.

Eventually my childish temper gave way to something else, more closely resembling fear. A lack of control seemed to be dogging me, overtaking my usual equilibrium with way too much frequency. I’d just barely pulled myself back together — it had been less than a month since my sickness — and here I was threatening to fall apart all over again. Was I still feverish? Or was this some bigger calamity?

The story of Lou and Errol, of their courtship, arose again and played over my dismal concerns. I rubbed my thumb along a smooth spot on Lou’s armrest, where the same repetitive motion from her must have worn thin the veneer. I wished she were there, to calm me. Closing my eyes, I could just about feel the whisper of Lou’s skin against mine.
Lickle Miss Shirley Temple, you so baaad.
I sat and breathed, listening to the rain taper as the clouds moved through.

8

I
T’S SUNDAY MORNING
and Louise is taking me to church. She tells me which kind, but I can’t get the word off my tongue.

“Apixilan,” I say while she stands above me and holds open the waist of my tights so that I can step into them. I lean back and she braces me between her arms.

“It’s jes’ a certain kind of Christian. And yah got it here like we do at home.”

Spring has begun to surface in the weeks since Louise arrived. Daffodils are showing their buttery bonnets out on the lawn, and the tree outside my window blossomed overnight into cotton candy. The soft petals brush against the window screen, disappearing behind a blue veil as Louise pulls a jumper over my head. My clothes are fresh and smell of morning.

I’ve never been to church before. June told Louise that my family doesn’t practice religion. And when I asked my father what we are, he raised an eyebrow and laughed.

“Cynics,” he said, turning back to his newspaper, in a voice that made me decide not to tell Louise the answer. The word sounded wicked and echoes grimly in my head.

Louise keeps a Bible by her bed. Some nights after dinner she leaves me alone in front of the television while she goes upstairs to read. If I follow her she lets me stay, rubbing my back while she keeps her head bent, slowly turning the delicate pages. The book’s leather binding is soft and dark, like Louise’s hand. Its gold-edged paper catches the light. When Louise reads, I’m inside a warm hollow, like a giant’s palm, and the ceiling is raked with stars. I have had a wish, one I made and then buried, that my mother would go away.