15
Okay, I can’t cook.
Not even in dreams.
The pancakes are flat, gelatinous, wriggly frisbees that have the consistency of squid and the taste of wet socks. You’d think the bananas would’ve rescued the breakfast, but apparently I was supposed to cook them and not just peel them. So I mashed them up and put them in a pan, and I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly they were black and burned and bitter.
I chew a bit of the banana, and a crispy chunk of charcoaled fruit crunches between my teeth. It’s bitter and burnt, but sadly it tastes better than the pancake.
The acrid scent of burned banana curls through the air and the only sound at the little table is the slow scrape of forks across ceramic plates. Aaron hasn’t looked up from his plate. He’s hunched over it like a soldier wading through a battle he’s not sure he’ll win.
The teenager is stabbing at the pancake, cutting it into smaller and smaller bits, then scraping them around her plate like she’s creating abstract art.
Even the toddler is quiet. He’s currently staring at a clump of pancake he’s squeezing like Play-Doh between his fingers. He gums at it and then wrinkles his nose in disgust and drops the ball of goop to the wood floor.
The toddler is maybe eighteen months. He has wispy copper-penny hair, blue eyes, and a chubby baby belly, chubby cheeks, and even chubby fingers. He has the habit of smashing food in his fist and then watching it squirt out between his fingers. If it makes a squishy noise he chortles with glee.
When he first saw me he lifted his arms and said, “Mamamamama.”
There were tears at the corners of his eyes and his little button nose was red. I pulled him into my arms and he dropped his head to my chest and sighed as if to say, “Where have you been?”
I kept him close as I dried off and changed, letting him toddle around me dressed only in a nappy, dragging a raggedy-eared bunny over the wood floor behind him.
I set down my fork and lean back in the old wooden chair, its joints swollen in the humidity. It creaks and moans as I do. The only delicious part of the meal is the coffee. I make good coffee.
I take a sip of it now, cradling the chipped orange mug in my hands. The heat of it spreads through me and a drop of sweat drips down my back. I set the mug back on the table.
“It’s so gross. I can’t eat it?—”
“Amy,” McCormick says, shaking his head.
“It is! Even Sean won’t eat it, and he chews on flip-flops if you don’t stop him.” She smacks her fork to the table and Sean squeals at the noise.
“Mom isn’t feeling great?—”
“Neither am I! Mom.” She focuses on me, leaning across the table. “I want to go to New York this Christmas, and I want?—”
“You’re not going to New York.” McCormick glances at me—a look that tells me this isn’t the first time he’s had this conversation with his daughter.
“But why not? I’ve never left the island. Never. I feel like I’m in a prison. I’m fourteen years old and I’ve never been anywhere. I’m stranded at sea like Robinson Crusoe, except he eventually gets to leave.”
“Maybe next year?—”
“You say that every year! Yet here I am, stuck on four square miles of rock in the middle of the ocean. Forever. I hate it here. I want to go to New York. I want to meet people. I want to explore. I want to live!”
I’m caught up in her passionate plea. Her dark hair is wildly curly and bounces around her cheeks with every word. She’s so animated. Her hands flash through the air, darting like the silver fish that swam below us in the ocean. She flings herself forward and back in time with her argument. She’s red-cheeked and impassioned, extolling all the reasons she should be allowed to break through the bars of her prison and fly to New York City for Christmas.
Watching her, I wonder, was I ever that passionate? Did I ever want something so badly that I nearly vibrated from the desire?
Once, maybe.
But then that potion turned out to be poison, so I haven’t trusted that impassioned feeling since.
“Amy—”
“Dad! You don’t understand.” She picks up the paperback book on the table next to her plate. It’s a tattered, yellow-paged copy of “Robinson Crusoe.” “The fictional people in this book are more alive than I am. They’ve lived more in three hundred pages than I’ve lived in my entire life! Sometimes I feel as if I’m going to die here, never having left, and no one is going to notice and no one is going to care. How can I live if I’m not allowed to leave this island? Am I even alive if I’m not living? What’s the point?”
Well.
I’ve never had a dream where the people in it are having an existential crisis. It’s actually somewhat disconcerting. She’s so earnest, so vehement in her desire, that I reach over and press my hand to her arm.
She isn’t alive. Not at all. She doesn’t exist in the world, but she seems alive, so I tell her exactly what I’d tell Mila. “The point of living isn’t where you go or what you do. You can live in a small place, you can live a small life, and it has as much value as any other. The point of living is loving, and you can do that anywhere.”
Amy stares at me, her eyes unblinking. “Oh my gosh. Mom. You literally just got back from New York. You and Robert were there for two weeks. You lived in Miami for a year, and Dad, he’s been all over the world. And so not letting me go is like, like?—”
Who’s Robert?
I glance over at McCormick as Amy searches for a metaphor to end her plea.
He winks at me and the wink settles over me, prickly warm and happy. I flash a surprised grin and he hides a smile, burying it in his coffee mug.
I notice he made a valiant effort to eat the charred banana and gelatinous pancake.
“Hypocritical!” Amy shouts, slamming her hands to the table, ecstatic at finding a word to fit her situation.
McCormick stands then and says, “You can go to New York when you’re eighteen.”
Amy deflates, sighs like a balloon losing its air, and slumps back in her chair. “Four more years trapped on the rock. Super. Thanks, Dad.”
He gives his daughter a salute and then grabs the plates from the table.
“I think,” he says, nodding at the stack of pancakes in the center of the wooden table, “we’ll not share with the others. I liked these so much I’ll eat them later.”
Amy snorts.
Sean, who was content to watch his sister’s woes, finally decides to throw the squishy banana leaking from his fingers. He flings it, and the banana arcs toward me and then smacks me in the cheek. It sticks for a moment, then it plops to the table. There’s a cool, goopy mess on my face.
Sean squeals with delight and claps his hands, little chunks of banana spraying in the air.
I wipe at the banana, smearing the goo from my cheek. It’s sweet-smelling with a tint of smoke. I pop my finger in my mouth and the baby laughs. It’s not too bad. It tastes like a campfire-charred banana marshmallow.
“Gross, Mom,” Amy says as Sean squeals and claps his squishy hands.
I smile. Then there’s a knock on the front door and the copper-haired man who was helping with the setup steps inside. Light floats in, spearing the room, as he stands in the entry.
He’s tall, built like a long-distance bicyclist, with hair cropped close to his head and high cheekbones. He’s in dark jeans and a flax-colored linen shirt buttoned to the collar. He stands out compared to the other men on the island, all in shorts and T-shirts.
He holds himself in a way that’s earnest, with an intelligence that seems to be purposely mixed with naivety. He’s the type of man I would never trust in business negotiations because he’d say one thing to your face and behind his back he’d be moving a dozen machinations against you. I’ve met his type before and successfully left them bleeding (metaphorically) from the encounter.
This is why Daniel always lets me lead negotiations.
“Hey, Becca. We need advice on the music list for the party. You got a minute?”
Gosh, he’s so puppylike. There’s definitely a wolf underneath.
I glance back at McCormick. He’s at the sink, the plates forgotten in his hands.
“Okay?” I ask.
He blinks at me as if he’s surprised I’m asking.
There’s a tension here. A strange tension curling through the room like smoke from a fire, burning, raging, its flames unseen.
“Robert,” Amy says from where she’s perched upside-down on the couch, her book in her hands. “Please tell my dad it’s necessary for my mental health that I go to New York for Christmas.”
Oh.
So he’s Robert.
The man I supposedly went with to New York for two weeks.
He chuckles then, a deep, scraping sound, and runs a hand through his short hair. “No can do, kid. Your dad knows best.”
“But you’re his best friend. You can change his mind. You go to New York. Mom goes to New York.”
I watch the muscles in McCormick’s jaw tense.
So does Robert. His gaze flicks to him and then away.
Robert doesn’t seem to note the tension, because he gestures to the door, an innocent, puppylike smile on his face. “The music?”
“Sure,” I say, glancing at McCormick. He’s moved on to scraping the pancake bits from Amy’s plate into a plastic tub. “Be right back.”
He nods without looking up.
Robert smiles at me then, a warm light in his eyes.
I follow him out the front door into the afternoon sun, the humidity closing around us. The perfume of the sea and the scent of fat tropical leaves broiling in the sun blankets me.
The yard is filled with six long tables and about fifty folding chairs, a white marquee tent providing a sliver of shade. There are four three-foot-tall black speakers on the porch and the bloody “Congrats” sign hangs from the eaves.
The three chickens peck drunkenly at the remains of the cake splotched over the grass. It’s nearly gone, and soon I think they’ll have gorged themselves into a sugar coma.
The old women have migrated from the shade of the tree and moved to the shade of a porch at a sunset-pink cottage two doors down. The three men sit on the porch steps, drinking from tall, ice-filled glasses. A porch fan spins lazily over their heads.
“Over here,” Robert says, his voice low.
He strides around the cottage, his movements deceptively casual. I frown, glancing back at the closed front door of the house.
Then I shrug and hurry down the steps, sticking to the cooler shade of the eaves, and make my way through the grass. It prickles against my bare feet.
The rooster, seeing me, raises his chest and lets out a long, cake-filled, “Ah uh ah uh oooo.”
I laugh at the glutton as I round the corner of the cottage.
Then Robert grabs my wrist and swings me around into the deep shade of the roof and the tall, wide hedge filled with fuchsia flowers. Their scent is floral and cloying and heavy.
I spin around, stumbling as Robert pulls me further into the deep shade, the grass cool and prickly under my feet.
“Finally,” Robert growls.
Then he thrusts me against the wood of the cottage. My back knocks against the slats and they dig into my spine. The breath whooshes from my lungs as he presses against me, capturing me between him and the cool, sea-weathered wood of the cottage.
“What the hell,” he says, as he bends his head down, eyes hungry on my mouth, “were you doing kissing him?”
Then, before I can respond, before I can shove him away, his mouth crashes to mine in a hot, claiming, possessive kiss.