Arabella
She
draws nearer, nearer. I can feel her in
the air…a disturbance, a shiver…like how I know when rain is coming long before
it sweeps in from the sea beyond Headley Point.
She is coming, and we will speak.
We have a lot in common, we two, though she is alive and I am not.
Grace
The
heat body-slams me as I emerge from the plane; a heat like the island is on
fire, the flames around the corner, just out of sight. I don’t know how I will stand it but Julian
is waiting for me in the Arrivals area.
Back in Philly, his complexion was close to mine, but the Caribbean sun
has burnished his skin to a deep coffee.
He looks good. The smile on his
face broadens as he looks at me. He
raises his open arms.
I
drop my bags and run to him. I hold him
tight, and I breathe deeply, loving the musky man-smell of him.
“Is
this all your stuff?” he asks, looking at my two suitcases and my carry-on.
“They
will do until the container gets here.
The shipping company promised me three weeks.” I have not let go of him. I’ve not seen him in six months, and I’ve
missed him as much as I’d miss my eyes were a thief to take them from me in the
night. He kisses me, and I know he knows
everything I’m feeling. A little smile
plays around his mouth as if this knowledge is a secret sweet to him.
He
nods to a man in a red polo shirt who picks up the suitcases and follows us to
the car.
“Yo, Mr. Hylton.”
“How’s
it going, Mr. Hylton?”
People watch me and call out to him
as we walk over to the airport’s small parking lot. Julian waves to them, answering some by
name. Their expressions range from
calculating curiosity to mischievous lechery.
Foreign women are seen here either as status symbols or sexual
doormats. Julian blames it on tourism.
“Do you know everyone now?” I ask to
distract myself. I have never lived in a
city of less than a million people, and I think that will probably be the
hardest adjustment. St. Crescens’s thirty-two
thousand worry me.
Julian laughs. “Not everybody. Most, though.” His tone is super-confident. It is the way he sounds when he talks about
the new political party he has formed with his friends. I do not share his confidence but I’ve just
arrived and I’m an American. I’m
terrified he’s making a mistake. He’s
come back to St. Crescens to live after twenty-one years in the States and now I
have followed him here, playing the dutiful wife, but my thoughts are clouded
with doubts.
He points his remote at a shiny,
silver Land Cruiser which beeps a response as the porter takes my suitcases
around to the back. I finally release my
hold on my husband and walk around to climb in the passenger seat. The Land Cruiser is new, its leather interior
pristine, the dashboard daunting in its precise array of instruments. In the rear-view mirror, I see Julian peel a
couple of purple-colored dollars from his clip to pay the man. The St. Crescens dollar is worth half of the
American but St. Crescians, as they call themselves, are very proud of their
money.
“How’re Dad and Mother July?” he
asks, as he gets in and starts the car.
Mother July is his pet name for my mother, July Sommers.
“They’re fine. Mom went crazy at a rose sale a couple days
ago. She bought off probably their
entire stock of white ones so now she’s stumped about just where she’s going to
put them all. She wants to be able to
see them from the house.”
He nods. “Below the patio would be a great area.”
I visualize the stone patio with its
wide curving steps that lead down to a grassy area and the garden beyond.
“Along
the path, you mean?”
“No, right below the patio. Along the wall.”
He’s right. The dark gray of the wall’s stones would be
the perfect backdrop for the potent beauty of white roses.
“I’ll tell her you suggested
it. You know she respects your
taste.” It’s true. My mother often turns to Julian when making
decisions about the house. A graduate of
Stanford’s School of Architecture, design comes naturally to him. He has a gift for it. After he did Senator Langley’s home in Sag
Harbor Hills thirteen years ago, a whole new high-powered crowd sought out his
services, and his fees went through an already high roof. This is the reason why none of our friends
understand why he’s given everything up to return to a small island they only
heard about through him.
“You know, there’s been a lot of
development in the capital since you were here last,” Julian says.
He brought me here eleven years ago,
before we were married, and I haven’t been back since. Not because I didn’t like the island. I just found it hard to find the time and
coordinate my schedule with his. Now, I
stare out the window as we head up one of the island’s steep hills. The lush, direct beauty of the island, its
towering hills, the shining emerald growth, the aquamarine of the sea shading
to indigo as it deepens and disappears into the horizon; these are the things
of which my memories are formed.
