A Bit of Difference (20 page)

He keys in a message and sends it. “Nope.”

“Did you tell her?” Deola asks.

“She's on her way.”

Deola sees Eno walking toward the chalet. Her brother is like a criminal on the run.

“Is it worth the
wahala
?” she asks.

“What
wahala
?”

“Your wife is always keeping tabs on you.”

“Is that my fault?”

“You're texting some other woman.”

“She sent me a text. What am I supposed to do?”

“Ignore it!”

They begin to quarrel. Lanre raises his voice, having lost his composure.

“Why do you and Jaiye keep harassing me?”

“Who is harassing you?”

“I support you!”

“When? When?”

“Didn't I just? Didn't I just?”

“Okay, okay, what would you say if someone treats your sister badly? What will you say when Funsho treats Jaiye badly?”

“I've never cheated on my wife!”

“You did! Before you got married!”

He laughs involuntarily. “All of you are crazy. How old was I when I met her? Boys play around. That's what they do. Eno stayed. She decided to. Now she keeps going back to what I did over five hundred years ago.”

Eno is closer, so Deola lowers her voice and so does he.

“You had shows until you married her. Yes, you did. Yes, you did.”

“So she shouldn't trust me again for life?”

“Why should she trust you when you're texting another woman?”

“What is wrong with that?”

“Nothing, unless you're betraying her.”

“Who's betraying anyone here?”

Deola wriggles her fingers. “You and your little disappearing acts.”

“I'm working! What are you talking about?”

“Please,” she says.

Lanre used to tell her that men couldn't help but have shows and the sooner she accepted the fact, the less complicated her life would be.

“I'm a busy man, you know,” he says, lifting a brow to remind her that he has another side to him, a mature, controlled side, where he makes important decisions and is respected by his subordinates.

“How come you have time to text that woman, then?” Deola asks.

“Would my wife trust me if I don't?”

“So why do it?”

He hisses. “All of you are crazy, I swear, and you contradict yourselves. You support Jaiye and she treats her husband like shit.”

“Funsho treats Jaiye badly.”

“Jaiye is a brat.”

“My sister is not a brat.”

“You don't say a word about Ivie and she's sugary.”

“My cousin is not sugary.”

“She and that shady senator she is with.”

“She's been with him for years! She loves him!”

“Would she love him if he were poor?”

“Why should she love a poor man?”

“What is it? What more do you want? I go to work and come back home. ”

“You should. Your father did.”

“Oh, so he never had another family before ours?”

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“How do you know he was faithful anyway?”

“That has nothing to do with what we are talking about here.”

“Every bad habit I have, I picked up in this house.”

“Don't give me that. Not today. Not today.”

“Why not? You see? As usual, you started what you couldn't finish.”

She is tearful. Perhaps her father wasn't always working late, but her father would not lower himself to sneak around as Lanre does.

“Set an example for your sons,” she says. “It's a different world they have come into.”

Lanre's voice is loud enough for Eno to hear. “Is your life perfect?”

Eno approaches them laughing. “Why are you two always fighting?”

No one fights in her family. They are huggers and kissers. Her brother cried at her wedding.

“Don't mind this one,” Lanre says. “She has nothing better to do.”

He takes out another cigarette and lights up as Deola mopes.

“What happened?” Eno asks.

Deola mumbles, “I was just getting on his case for not talking sense into Funsho's head.”

“He can't,” Eno says with a smile. “That would be like the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Hey,” Lanre says. “Don't start.”

Eno pushes his shoulder. She often comes up with twee English expressions she picked up from her mother like, “I'll have your guts for garters” or “Bob's your uncle,” and Lanre might say to her, “You're not having any guts for any garters” or “Bob is not my uncle.”

z

Deola leaves them at the chalet when she can no longer stand Lanre's cigarette fumes. She does sympathize with him. She would find it impossible to stay married to someone who doesn't trust her, and Lanre had a difficult time in his teens. He didn't just get his knees dashed; Seyi's death was a plummet. His experimentation with drugs would have followed regardless. So many boys at Ikoyi Club were doing that. They were drinking too much as well and learning they could get away with mistreating girls. They had highly esteemed fathers of dubious morality and were expected to follow in their father's footsteps. How many of them discovered they had
half-siblings they were not aware of? How many saw their mothers get beaten up? Didn't someone once run into his father and a slutty newsreader in the game room? Wasn't someone else's father, a high court judge, sacked for taking bribes?

She walks over to Ivie's table, her heels sinking into the grass. Ivie is on her own drinking beer and watching other guests. Ivie enjoys a beer, but she won't drink in the presence of her elders. She won't walk around on the grass in her shoes either. They might get ruined.

“How now?” Ivie says, without smiling.

Ivie is withdrawn at family functions, almost as if they take her back to when she was regarded as the bad girl of the family. Her poise ages her.

It is cool under the canopy. Someone has knocked a wine glass over and left a purple stain on the white tablecloth. Deola scratches it. She is worried about Lanre. She is worried about Jaiye, Ivie and everyone. If the statistics on HIV in Africa are applicable here, Ikoyi ought to be a cluster. Everyone in the garden ought to be dead.

“Where's Omorege?” she asks.

Ivie nods in his direction. Omorege is at the relatives' table with his brother Henry. Henry, too, is separated from his wife. He publishes a newspaper that defends the incumbent party, People's Democratic Party, against its numerous critics. He is unobtrusive and quite the opposite of Omorege. Omorege has the connections and Henry gives him the publicity he needs. They live in Ikoyi with a sense of accomplishment, rather than trepidation, and revel in their children's ignorance of adversity.

“Did you call Wale?” Ivie asks.

“I did,” Deola says.

“What happened?”

“We met.”

“So?”

“He's not for me.”

“Why not?”

“He's not interested in anything serious.”

Ivie rolls her eyes. “Trap the man. He doesn't know what he is talking about.”

Deola laughs. She would rather be alone for the rest of her life than resort to trapping any man into marriage. She resists checking her phone to see if Wale has called. She could easily fall in love with him under different circumstances and only if he would love her back. It is a choice to love a man, she thinks. Only after the choice has been made does love become hard to control.

“When are you leaving?” Ivie asks.

“At four-thirty.”

“Who is taking you?”

“Lanre's driver.”

“I envy you.”

“Why?”

“Over there, you can manage on your salary. You get your paycheck and take care of your bills and live comfortably. Over here, it's one thing after another.”

“But you get together here. We hardly get together over there. I can go for days without seeing anyone in London.”

“That's exactly what I want, peace and quiet. There are days I don't want to see anyone in Lagos.”

Ivie's corporate relations work often lands her in the newspapers, whenever she is launching a new foundation or a charity project. Omorege's political career puts her right in the tabloids, with women who are identified by the men they sleep with. They are too old to be called sugar babies, but they once were. Now they seem to have an insight into what prolongs relationships: sex and money. The rest, to them, is histrionic.

“It's true,” Deola says.

In London, she doesn't have peace, but she does have quiet.

She sits with Ivie for a while, and later Ivie's mother waylays her. Ivie's mother has lived in Port Harcourt for so long her pidgin English is perfect and she is not capable of subtlety.

“You,” she says. “You never born
pikin
?”

Deola laughs. She loves her aunt, but she can't take her seriously.

“Aunty, Aunty,” she says.

“No ‘Aunty, Aunty,' me nothing,” Ivie's mother says. “Make you just hurry up and born
pikin.
All this book
wey
you
dey
learn for London.”

“I'm working,” Deola says, hugging her. “Not schooling.”

Ivie's mother makes no distinction between schooling and working, and anywhere overseas is London to her.

“Working, schooling,” she says, “at least born
pikin
if you no want marry.
Wetin?
Your junior sister, Jaiye, has born
pikin
. Your cousin, Ndidi, has born
pikin
. It's you and Ivie we're waiting for now. Let us see our successors before we die. I've told Ivie, ‘All this career, career will get you nowhere as a woman.'”

Ivie's mother is a retired seamstress. She didn't progress beyond secondary school. Deola has often wondered what would have become of her had she gone to university, as her father and Ndidi's mother had. Ivie's mother was the eldest in the family. Their father did not believe in higher education for girls when she was ready for it. Ndidi's mother was the youngest daughter. She graduated from University of Ibadan, worked for Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and wrote children's books for a while. She has retired from UNESCO, but she still lives in Paris with her second husband, a Cameroonian professor. She hasn't visited Nigeria in years. Ivie's mother calls her “
Français
” and regards her with the sympathy she reserves for intellectuals.

She advises Deola to forget about her career and focus on having a child.

“You hear?” she says, tugging her ear.

“I hear, Aunty,” Deola says.

Her mother's family is more educated than her father's. Her mother's father was a headmaster, so everyone in their family had to go beyond secondary school. Besides her mother and Aunty Bisi, there was Uncle Akin, an economist who was killed in a car crash a year after Deola was born, and Uncle Bolaji, a historian, who thrilled Deola with stories about Echo and Narcissus, Prometheus and Pandora's box. He drank a lot and died of cirrhosis of the liver. As usual, the men went further than the women, who ended up surviving them, so perhaps the advice Ivie's mother gave her is practical for continuity, if nothing else.

z

She is packed and ready to leave when the rain begins to fall. Most of the guests have gone home or to other functions. She says goodbye to Aunty Bisi and Brother Dotun. Ivie and Omorege have to make an appearance at a wedding reception. Ivie's mother is staying in the chalet and she retires there. Her mother's entourage moves to the sitting room, except Aunty Simi, who has a night party to attend. Aunty Yinka sprawls out on the sofa.

“I want my cup,” she says. “Get me my cup.”

She sounds like a toddler. Comfort is handing out commemorative blue plastic cups as keepsakes. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are singing “Pennies From Heaven.” The air conditioner is on. Deola is aware of the grown-up party smell as she hugs and kisses her aunts. “Safe journey, my dear,” they say. “God bless you, darling.” Perhaps they are not remiss. Perhaps they know that this is all people can depend on, coming together to break bread. Aunty Fadeke stands up and secures her
iro
.

“Okay, everybody, I have a speech to make.”

The others make attempts to be quiet, but they fidget. Aunty Fadeke continues, still looking as if she is smiling.

“I have known this family, the Bello family, for… for many, many years now. Yes, and I am proud to say that I was there in… in…”

“Get on with it,” Aunty Theresa says.

“I was there in England when Remi met Sam. Yes, and to us, he was fondly known as Sammy Boy. That was what we called him, but he was born Idris. His family was a prominent agrarian family in Kwara State.”

“Fadeke,” Deola's mother says. “Keep it short.”

“She's not even coherent,” Aunty Theresa says. “She keeps hopping from one decade to another.”

“They married on that blessed day in… in…”

Aunty Theresa raises her eyes. “Santa Maria.”

She is Catholic and finds this type of Protestant talk undignified.

Aunty Fadeke rounds on her. “Patience is a virtue. We're not all as we used to be.” She faces her audience of three again. “Now, sadly, Sam was called to the Land of Canaan.”

“Fadeke,” Deola's mother says, raising her hand. “Deola has a flight to catch here. Save your speech for later.”

“What?”

“Save your speech for later. Deola has a plane to catch.
Oya,
Miss Adeola, say your goodbyes before it gets too dark outside. There are armed robbers around.”

Deola hugs Aunty Fadeke and her mother. They both smell of wine. She goes to the dining room. Lanre, Eno and Jaiye are there. The children are upstairs. There is more laughter from the sitting room.