Chapter 13 Monique
Monique climbed into the van that would take them an hour away to a bioluminescent bay for a moonlit boat ride and dinner. This time tomorrow, Tommie and Lanie would have said their I Do’s and Monique could return to her life, her routine.
Her phone buzzed with more texts from her girls and her kids, all demanding that she have fun, take more pictures, “uncomplicate things with Mo.” She was gonna have to check some folks when she got home.
The Aunties took up the van’s center row, heads together, whispering to Mr. and Mrs. Turner in the back row. They weren’t slick. None of them were.
“How you doing, sweetheart?” Mrs. Turner asked, giggling with Don and Deb.
“Good,” Monique said. She lied.
Don leaned forward and pressed her hand onto Monique’s shoulder. “I know you’re looking forward to this boat ride. Got your camera out already.”
Monique smiled and turned to the older woman. “You know it. And don’t you dare complain. You encouraged this.”
“I’m trying to encourage something else,” Don fake-whispered toward Deb.
“Whatever, old crazy ladies.” Monique’s sass and eye roll couldn’t stop the heat rising in her cheeks.
The Aunties giggled like middle schoolers, and Monique laughed too.
The van door slid closed, sealing them in, and Maurice settled in behind the wheel. The van went quiet. All conversations suddenly silenced.
Maurice glanced around the van and then adjusted the mirrors. “Did I interrupt something?”
The old people erupted in laughter.
Maurice gave Monique a puzzled look.
She shook her head. “Let’s go,” she said, and he navigated the van into the steady flow of traffic.
The van wound through the dark, winding roads. The landscape blurred outside her window. Monique’s mind drifted. Counting costs was an unavoidable task, but God did she want to procrastinate.
Maurice’s phone buzzed at every mile marker as if on cue.
“You need to get that?” she asked quietly, while the elders chatted.
Deb cleared her throat and Maurice stiffened as he looked in the rearview mirror.
“Work stuff?” Monique asked, not necessarily to Maurice.
“Probably.”
“You must be an important man back in Jersey.” Her words burned with contempt she didn’t know she held. Last night he’d promised surface, but he’d also promised later.
Later came quickly and surface proved to be tissue-paper thin.
The road continued to curve along the coast. The ocean went from blue to black the longer they traveled.
“Excuse me, driver,” Don called. “Pull over up there. I want to get a picture of that sunset.”
“Aiight.” Maurice maneuvered the van onto a small cutout along the side of the road as the sky painted itself in pinks and oranges and purples.
Everyone piled out of the van. Monique stepped forward with her camera, but Aunt Don waved her off and hustled the group toward the low stone wall marking the edge of a cliff.
“They’re not subtle,” Monique said, leaning against the van, Maurice standing nearby but not too close.
“Not at all.” His voice was tight, quiet. Seeking.
She was grateful for the distance. These accidental reveals—the messages, the shitty attempts at deflection, the photograph—were beginning to feel like omissions and starting to feel bigger and more ominous than they probably should.
It shouldn’t have mattered, that picture of Maurice with Deb and a class of her reentry program graduates.
Monique knew how passionate her aunt was about the program.
Growing Returning Home was turning out to be Deborah Fairbanks’ life’s work.
So, why were both of their mouths closed about it?
Monique had developed the practice of half-listening once the kids started picking their favorite family members.
So when Deb started calling Justin instead of her, she’d been grateful for the care and excused herself from most future conversations.
There’d been snatches of things here and there about Chicago cabinetmakers and reentry programs. But until somebody told her directly, Monique let it pass.
Willful ignorance might not have been the best strategy.
“What was so hard about telling me you work for Fairbanks and Returning Home?” she asked quietly, knowing he heard her over the crash of waves against the rocks just a few feet away.
The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he cut the distance between them. Still, he said nothing.
“I’ll talk to Deb too, eventually. But Maurice, you gotta understand that this just doesn’t feel good.”
“It’s complicated.”
“What isn’t?” She blew out a breath. Patience and interest, Monique was learning on this trip, went hand in hand.
Her limit was nearly reached. “You’re so close to them,” she said, waving her hand in her family’s direction.
Family that Maurice apparently knew better than she did.
“Did they tell you about me? About my cancer? You didn’t flinch when I told you. ”
Maurice shook his head. “Everything I know about you, you’ve shown me yourself. Like how you talk, how you move… the way your eyes change in the light… how your skin catches the sun and just sparkles like billions of stars.”
She looked up at him, and his face was full of equal parts earnestness and fear, and she couldn’t find any words.
The winds whipped around them, making Aunt Don shriek with laughter as her skirt billowed. Deb wrapped her in her arms from behind, resting her chin on Don’s head.
Mr. Turner brought his bride to his side and kissed her temple. They melted into each other against the purple and gold of the darkening horizon.
Monique brought her camera to her eye and snapped a picture. One that she would share with them later.
Generational love was what her aunts and the Turners had.
A love that was so steady, so constant that nobody thought to write books about them because it was simply always there.
There had never been a moment in all of time when their love didn’t exist. That was the kind of love her mom’s folks had too.
She’d watched it sustain them, even after illness and death tried to keep them apart.
Their love was bigger, stronger than time.
Monique drew in a shuddering breath and rubbed at her hip.
“Are you cold?” Maurice asked, stepping even closer and radiating warmth and sincerity.
“No. Just thinking.”
“About?”
“About if I should be pissed at you or not.”
Realization spread across his face and was quickly replaced with shame. “I’m sorry.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed tight.
“Sorry for what?” Monique glanced around.
The old folks were making their way back to the van.
“Everybody’s got their own shit to work through.
You’re a weird dude, Mo, and apparently, I’m into that,” she said, giving his hand another squeeze before climbing back into the van.
“You didn’t have to do that to the man,” Auntie Deb said, chuckling as Monique buckled her seat belt.
“What did I do?” she asked, looking out the window at Maurice who stood with his face lifted toward the rising stars.
“That boy is so out of his depth,” Aunt Don said, more to her partner than to Monique.
“Monie, you broke him.” Oh, Mrs. Turner had jokes too?
The dock was a constellation of hanging lanterns. An oasis of light in the enveloping darkness of mountains and sea.
Monique adjusted the iris and frame rate on her camera, reluctant to use a flash and disrupt the little big-eyed frog she spotted on a thick leaf. The trees sang with rhythmic high-pitched tones and buzzes. She’d heard it in the city, but in the rainforest, it was in full surround sound.
“That is the coquí,” a tour guide said, coming up beside her. “They sing the song of Puerto Rico.”
“Little frogs like that make all this noise?” Maurice said, the frog leaping away as he approached. “I thought those were crickets.”
She sucked her teeth. “And here I thought you’d done your research.” Monique followed the guide toward the landing with Maurice on her heels.
“I did!” He flailed his arms for a split second before raking a hand through his beard. “Books and articles don’t do any of this justice.”
She turned to face him. “You know I’m messing with you, right?” She pulled his hand from his face. “Right?”
“Nothing on this trip is going like I expected.”
His words weren’t something to brush over. After last night, Monique was learning to listen to what he didn’t say.
The family filed past, loudly discussing whether the bioluminescence was God or evolution. Tommie said something about ooze and mutant shrimp that nobody laughed at except Monique, who wasn’t even in the conversation.
“Y’all coming?” Sunny said to them, bringing up the rear and hustling to catch up to the rest of the group.
Monique turned to follow, wanting a good spot on the boat for the best view.
“Hold up,” Maurice said, catching her hand in his. His touch was gentle, shy, exploratory. He pulled out his phone and held it up. “Can I?”
Did he want to take a picture with her? She shrugged and smiled, angling herself near him.
“I mean, I want to take a picture of you.” Even in the dim lighting, she could see the color spread over his face.
She smiled softly and tipped her head to the left. “Sure. Where do you want me?”
It was clumsy and cute, him telling her where to stand. The moment was over almost as soon as it had begun.
“Send it to me?” she asked as they walked toward the boat launch.
“Okay.”
Her phone pinged a moment later with two photos: one a full-body shot of Monique in her blue T-shirt and white maxi skirt, minuscule against the expanse of sky and sea behind her; the other a head-and-shoulders shot of her and the lamplight reflecting golden in her eyes and moonbeams swirling in her hair.
She gasped. “Wow.”
Maurice walked in silence beside her, one hand in his pocket and the other carrying her bag. Awareness of him, of how he was aware of her, pulsed through her body.
Her phone buzzed with another check-in from home. His phone, she realized, had been silent for a while.