A Simple Distance (21 page)

Wait! Mrs. Bruce? I know her husband. He has a bad eye, right?
Everything was something there. There are no loose threads in Baobique, I swear.

Yes. He cut it in a political riot some years back. But what does that have to do with anything?
She couldn’t follow my tracks.

I blurted,
They lost their first baby,
proud of my knowledge.

Yes … But not this one.
She rerouted me. Continued,
After the delivery, I was so angry I drove down to Bato to the new Prime Minister’s office and threatened to leave the clinic if we didn’t get proper funding after the next Assembly meeting.

Again,
Wow … What’d he say?

We set up a meeting for next week. I am one of only five physicians on the island. It would matter a great deal if I left. He’ll listen.

Mmmm,
I worried. I knew where we were headed.

My mom brought out some avocado and a sardine sandwich, brought a slow smile to the heavy lips through which Susan spoke.
I spent the rest of the day with Marcus.

I felt like such a child, spending the day there with my mom, drinking juice squeezed from the grip of someone else’s hand and digging in the dirt, while Susan battled Baobique’s most pressing matters, the razor edge of life itself.

But I did know how to behave as an adult. So I did my best to listen. I asked,
What did you and Marcus talk about?

She laughed a bit. He made her laugh.
Everything,
she answered.
Mrs. Bruce, the Prime Minister, the clinic, Baobique, and whether there is any hope left, any real chance of survival for our island …

That wasn’t really what I meant.

But she knew, continued,
Mostly we talked about how a person can be completely in love with two people at once. And if it’s possible, really, to keep both in one’s heart.

This was hard. This was really hard. She’d opened my heart and there was, it seemed, no closing it back. I wanted to help. I owed her that. And an open heart must be able to hurt. So I gathered up the kind of courage I’d only ever seen in Susan.

I asked,
The meeting next week about the clinic. Is there anything my uncles can do to help with the funding? I mean, the hospital’s Grampy’s namesake, after all …

She wouldn’t be following me back to Oakland. Susan belonged here. We both knew it. We’d just needed a little help reaching certainty.

She took my hand.

J
, she whispered.

Yes,
I followed.

How do I show you that I am with you for the long haul?
she asked.

Just like this …
I answered.
By showing me that what I need most isn’t always what I think.

We forced our smiles, swallowed back the lumps rising in our throats, kept whispering.

I love you, Jean.

I love you, too … Susan?

Yes, J.

Will you come to Granny’s funeral tomorrow?

Of course.

Susan?

Yes, J.

Invite Marcus.

Okay … Thank you … J?

Yes.

I’m too tired to drive home …

And we laughed, really; slept the night’s long hours tight together under the mosquito netting next door to my mom.

CHAPTER 31

Morning broke clear and wide through the open shutters in my mom’s second bedroom. She must have come in while Susan and I were still asleep and unlocked them.

At breakfast, though, she didn’t mention seeing us lying intertwined. Even though Susan and I had clung together rapt in something different than sex, my mom didn’t know that. As always, she averted her eyes from that part of my life.

It’s one thing for me to be gay, in theory, in San Francisco, another to bring it home to Baobique. Granted, it would have been easier to push back on the issue there in her dining room if I really
did
have a partner. It’s hard for me to criticize my mom for ignoring a life I’d yet to create.

I’d always assumed that I would come out to my extended family one day. But I’d assumed that day would be more volitional than it actually was: Uncle Martin, Mr. Williams, Susan, and myself, in the dirt out back, over aging roots.

Thing is, the kind of person I’ve been, I’m not too sure I ever would have gotten around to telling anyone there the truth about myself if I hadn’t been caught. I would have avoided the whole thing if I could have. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise, because it seemed to me, even with Uncle George and Granny gone, even with Susan’s decision to stay in Baobique with Marcus where she belongs, I felt my world had grown, not shrunk.

Maybe love is bigger than I thought; big as an ocean, not just a bathroom sink. And maybe it’s like my family: as big as I choose to make it.

Susan was in the kitchen staring out the window to the bright morning blue of the water far below, talking to my mom about her crotons, when the phone rang. Just Auntie Lil, checking in.

* * *

There was only one hitch with the right-of-way: it lacked specific reference to the plum tree. My mom didn’t want to sign without it, but she did because I pressed the issue. Two copies. I wanted one for safe keeping, and the closest photocopy machine was all the way in Port Commons.

* * *

They didn’t have to dig the hole too big this time, because Uncle Charles had Granny cremated in Bato while Uncle Martin and I were drafting up the right-of-way.

This way she’ll take up less space,
he’d explained. The plot is small, and no one was getting any younger. Soon enough there’d be another, and another, and another of us to join them.

He lowered her in, in the only bronze urn from the undertaker. Since Granny had no body anymore, just ash, it didn’t matter which way her feet faced. East. Or west. Uncle Charles could take comfort in that.

Granny lived as Grampy’s wife for less than thirty of her ninety-five years. A fraction of her life. But her marker would bear his name so that the future would remember her as his:
Mrs. William Pascal.

If a man and a woman are one, what happens when they create a family? How many does that make?

What about a woman and a woman? Must they always be two?

And which is better? One or two?

During the ceremony, it sprinkled. But not hard.
Just the sun washing himself.
Or God, maybe, tinkling.

Marcus came with orchids from the nursery near Milieu, but stood in back, present and patient. Messrs. Hill and Petion helped my uncles with the heavy work of the digging up and refilling of earth.

The birds sang. And a gentle breeze licked clean our gathering. Tired as I was from the week’s ordeal, part of me wanted to lie down with my grandparents and Uncle George—let the earth have me, too.

* * *

Before I left Godwyn for the airport, I picked four guavas off the tree in front; left one for Granny, one for Grampy, one for Uncle George, and kept one for myself.

While my uncles were busy with something else, I pressed an envelope into Mr. Hill’s palm; asked him and Mr. Petion to record the right-of-way at the registrar on their return to Bato that afternoon.
Just to keep Uncle Martin honest,
I whispered softly, winking myself into their confidence. They nodded back, co-conspirators who’d made their way into my heart.

I hugged them goodbye as I would old uncles, not new friends.

It was easier to say goodbye to my family—Uncle Charles, Uncle Martin, Auntie Clara, Granny, Grampy, Uncle George, and even my mom—than it was for me to leave Susan, return to the barren walls of my studio.

We’d planned a short sea bath at Tours beach on the way to Beckford Hall—my mom, Susan, and me—to relax before my long journey home.

We passed Granny’s house in mom’s jeep, Uncle Martin’s bright white button-downs on the clothesline, blowing in the wind.

We passed Polly and Eugene on their porch, waved them off without stopping.

My mom parked the jeep to the side of the road and we walked down the twisty red clay path to the beach as she explained something to us—urgent but of no immediate importance.

In the water, a school of silverfish.

* * *

At the airport, I asked my mom if she and I could say our goodbyes at the car. And we did, embracing for just the slightest moment longer than usual.

The salt from the sea at my family’s beach still white and chalky on my skin, Susan followed me in.

There was a bat, small, black, and fleshy, hanging by the air conditioner in the waiting area, simply fascinating all the American tourists. But Susan rolled her eyes at them, so I didn’t get to look at it quite as long as I would have liked.

I was ready to be somewhere else. She helped me with my backpack, all the way out to the tarmac, hugged me goodbye at the foot of the plane. Tighter ’round my ribs, though, was the loss, hewn to my chest, that stayed with me even after her release. There were no winds. Except for my crying, that last leg was as quiet as just after a hurricane, when the hermit crab crawls sideways out of its cave.

K.E. Silva was born and raised in the midwestern United States; her parents in the West Indies, where her mother returned over a decade ago. Ms. Silva lives and writes in Northern California. She also practices civil rights law. This is her first novel.