Anna In-Between (18 page)

Neil places his hand lightly on her mother’s shoulder. “Beatrice, I must say you look lovely this morning.” He does not kiss her. Like most of Beatrice’s friends, Neil knows her mother does not like to be kissed. She squirms when she is kissed and will often offer her hand instead of her cheek before you can get too close to her.

“Ready to face the fire,” she says.

“It’s not going to be that bad, Beatrice.” As usual, Neil is impeccably dressed: white golf shirt, tan pants, fashionable brown leather belt, and matching loafers. He looks more like an aging fashion model this morning than the doctor he is.

“Well, however it is, I am ready to face it,” Beatrice says. “Come, sit down. Join us for breakfast.”

The Sinclairs are having smoked herring and hard-boiled eggs. The platter is a carnival of colors. Lydia has stripped the brown herring into small pieces, drizzled olive oil over them, and added chopped raw onions and cubed bright red tomatoes. She has sliced the hardboiled eggs so that they make perfect rounded shapes, the yellow enclosed in glistening white. She has placed thick slices of yellow and green avocado around the herring and the eggs.

“What a beautiful arrangement,” Neil says, and takes the chair next to Beatrice.

Beatrice is pleased with the compliment. She passes the platter to him. “Would you like some bake too?”

Lydia has also made a bake, with flour, yeast, sugar, margarine, and freshly grated coconut. She put the dough in the oven while the Sinclairs were dressing for breakfast, timing it so it would be piping hot when the Sinclairs came out of their room. She knows John Sin-clair likes his butter to melt in the bake. They have been eating for ten minutes now and the bake has cooled.

“Lydia,” Beatrice Sinclair calls out to her, “warm up the bake for Dr. Lee Pak.”

Neil puts up his hand and stops Lydia just as she is about to take a step toward the table. “That’s kind of you, Beatrice, but the bake is fine for me the way it is. You are a lucky man, John. You have this every morning?”

“You should get married,” John says. “If you had a wife, you’d have this every morning.”

“You mean a wife like Beatrice,” Neil says.

Anna can’t help thinking:
You mean a maid like Lydia
.

“He means a wife,” Beatrice says to Neil.

Neil’s compliment should have been directed to Lydia, but her mother has accepted it as hers, rightfully earned. How many times has she explained to Anna that had she not trained Lydia, Lydia would not be as skilled at cooking and baking as she is now?

“Isn’t it time you got married, Neil?” Beatrice asks.

“Marriage is not for everyone,” Anna says, thinking to spare Neil, but she realizes too that she has opened a space she has been careful to keep closed from her mother. Her mother will undoubtedly pounce on it. She will say something about her daughter’s spinsterhood, her inadequacy, her failure to keep a husband. They have not talked about Tony since her arrival on the island. Surely her mother will make a remark that will let it be known she does not approve of her daughter’s single status. Men may have a choice, but women need to marry. A single woman living alone sends the wrong message to a predatory man. That is what Anna thinks her mother will say.

But Beatrice does not go through the door Anna has foolishly and carelessly opened. She is preoccupied with fears of her own. She must face the fire. She cannot back down now. It has all been arranged. In a few hours, needles will be stuck in her veins. She will be hooked to tubes. Poisonous chemicals will course through her body. If she is lucky, the poison will find the malignant cells, kill them before they can send out tentacles. If she is lucky, the healthy cells will get out of the way while the battle wages.

“Well, marriage is for me,” John Sinclair says and beams at his wife.

Beatrice flushes. Addressing Neil, she says, “I wouldn’t know what I would do without John if I had to face this alone.”

After breakfast, the two men retreat to the fishpond to give Anna and her mother time to freshen up.
Freshen
up
, her father says, as if they are off to some merry event, a visit to a friend or to one of the endless cocktail parties John Sinclair’s former corporate clients continue to invite him to in the hope—which John insists is futile— that he will change his mind and help them sort out the many complaints they get from both workers and the newly formed independent government.

She is not being fair. Anna realizes just how unfair she has been when she looks across the fishpond and sees her father, his back bent as though a great weight is pushing against him, his forehead cupped in his hands. Neil Lee Pak is speaking to him. Neil’s hands are drawn behind his back; his lips move rapidly. Her father shakes his head. Neil speaks again. Finally her father lowers his hands; he looks up. From where she stands, Anna can see the deep ravines between her father’s eyebrows.

Anna goes to her room to freshen up. Almost immediately her mother knocks on the door and enters the room without waiting to be invited.

Anna is shocked by the drawn pallor of her mother’s skin. The lipstick and rouge she has applied to her face look clownish. “Mummy, Mummy,” she croons. Her heart swells with pity. “It’ll be all right. Dr. Ramdoolal says it’ll be all right.”

Her mother shuts the door. “I don’t want you to come with me, Anna,” she says. Her voice is firm, belying her pale exterior.

Anna is taken aback. “But why?” In the bathroom, in Dr. Ramdoolal’s office, her mother confided in her. In the examining room, she needed her.

“I don’t want you to be there.” Her mother’s lips are set in a determined line.

“But I want to be with you.”

“No!” Her mother’s resolve is indisputable.

She’s still afraid, Anna thinks. The pink dress, the casual greeting to Neil Lee Pak, the banter at breakfast about marriage, all a pretense.

Anna comes closer to her. “You don’t have to be so brave, Mummy.”

Her mother backs away.

“The chemo won’t be painful,” Anna says.

The line along her mother’s lips cracks, her bottom lip trembles. “I’m not afraid of pain.”

“Then what?”

“What could happen.”

“Nothing will happen,” Anna says.

“If this does not work …”

“It will work,” Anna says.

Her mother leans against the closed door. She shuts her eyes. “I don’t want you to be there.”

“But …”

“Your father will be with me.”

“I will be with you too,” Anna says.

“You are my daughter.” Her mother opens her eyes. “Mothers take care of daughters. Daughters don’t take care of mothers.”

“It’s my turn now,” Anna says.

“No!” Anna is startled by the firmness of her mother’s voice. “No. I want your father to help me. We will drive behind Neil and then Neil will go to his home. I want only your father to be with me. This is between the two of us. Between your father and me.”

Once, a long time ago, when she was in pain, a different sort of pain, not a pain to the body, a pain to the spirit, for her heart was broken, her mother said these same words. “This is between your father and me,” she said, and she shut Anna out.

Her father and Neil Lee Pak are waiting for them in the driveway. Her mother comes out alone. Through the kitchen window, Anna can hear Neil Lee Pak ask, “Where’s Anna? Isn’t Anna coming too?”

“No,” her mother says.

Anna cannot see their faces. She does not know if her father has made a sign to Neil Lee Pak to say no more. Whether he put his finger to his lips or shook his head. She knows only that he says nothing. That he does not try to persuade her mother otherwise. The next sound she hears is the car engines accelerating.

It is almost teatime when her parents return. Her mother’s face is drained, her skin gray, her eyes dull. She feels weak, she says. She wants to rest.

Dr. Ramdoolal has warned them that her mother will be ill after the procedure.
The procedure,
he said, as if the methodically timed invasion of her mother’s body with poisonous drugs is no more than the steps to be taken to solve a management problem.

Your mother may be nauseous, he said. Give her lots to drink. Nothing to eat except crackers until her stomach has settled.

But her mother is not nauseous. She asks Anna for a glass of water and goes to her bedroom with her husband. When Anna brings the water, her mother is stretched out on the bed. Her eyes are closed. Her father is sitting on the chair next to her mother reading the newspaper. Anna hands her mother the water. She takes two sips and gives the glass to her husband. He puts it down on the bedside table. “Go,” she says to him. “I want to stay,” he says. “No,” she says. “Go. You too, Anna. Go.” They try in vain to persuade her to allow them to stay, but she tells them she wants to sleep. “Keep Anna company,” she says to her husband. John Sinclair picks up his newspaper and tucks it under his arm. He signals Anna to follow him, but as Anna is about to leave, her mother calls her back. “Anna. A minute.” John Sinclair hesitates; he looks inquiringly at his wife. “I just want a minute with Anna,” Beatrice says to him. He closes the door behind him.

Anna approaches the bed. Her mother’s eyes flutter open, close, and then, with effort, they open again. “Your father was wonderful,” she breathes. “He sat next to me all through the chemo.”

“I knew he would,” Anna says.

“He prayed for me.”

“Yes.”

“He has his own way of praying, your father.”

Anna nods.

“I saw him,” her mother says.

The bed cover has slipped off her mother’s shoulders. Anna pulls it up. “I did, Anna,” her mother says when Anna does not respond.

“Daddy loves you.”

Her mother takes a deep breath. “I didn’t mean it that way, Anna,” she says softly.

“What?” Anna leans over the bed, closer to her. “What?”

“When I said I didn’t want you to come.”

“Ahh.” Anna straightens up. “Put that out of your mind, Mummy. Rest. You need to sleep.”

“It’s just that I wanted him with me.
For better or for
worse.”
Her lips part into a weak smile.

And not knowing what else to say, Anna repeats what her father said earlier,
“Till death do us part,
Beatrice.”

“I am lucky,” her mother says, and drifts to sleep.

Anna finds her father in the garden in the back of the house. He is examining the two orchid plants Singh has left in a corner, near the fence. He has taken off the tan slacks and blue shirt he wore for her mother’s sake when they went to the doctor’s. Now he has on shorts that end at his knees and a blue knit shirt stained with brown spots, most likely coconut juice.

“Singh brought them for Mummy last night,” Anna says, walking toward him.

“He was here?”

“He came to drop them off.”

“I guess your mother ordered them.”

“No. Singh said they are a gift. From his wife and him.”

“Oh.” Her father bends down and picks up the bundle of plants. Singh has covered the roots with burlap.

The thick dark green leaves of the orchids spread elegantly above the burlap. There are buds on the stalks that Singh has propped up with thin bamboo sticks. On one of the stalks, an orchid is flowering. The petals are bright white, rare even for the Caribbean. Her father strokes a leaf on the flowering orchid and says, his voice brimming with wonder, “He brought this? He came just to drop this off?”

“He was concerned about Mummy.”

Her father sighs. “I complain she’s bossy with Singh and Lydia, but you know, Anna, she is also kind to them.”

“I’m sure she is, Daddy.” She wants to please him. He is worried about his wife. She will not upset him. She will allow him the fantasy he seems to need.

“When Singh got married again, your mother made me give him a month’s salary as a wedding present.”

Anna is not impressed. “That was good of her.”

“Do you know Lydia has a granddaughter?”

“Yes, I know that Lydia has a granddaughter.”

“Your mother makes me pay her school fees and buy her school books.”

“Mummy?” Anna is unprepared for this new information.

“Every year, for four years now,” her father says.

“Four years?”

“Lydia’s granddaughter … What’s her name?”

“Jennifer.”

“I keep an account for her at Zanzibar Books and at that clothing store, Murray’s. She goes there and purchases what she needs. It’s put on my account.”

“Four years? Mummy’s never said a word. And Lydia …”

“Your mother has forbidden Lydia to tell anyone what she has done for her.”

“Forbidden?”

“Your mother says if she gets her reward here, she will not get it in heaven.”

Her father says this in all seriousness. There is not a hint of mockery in his tone. He converted to Catholicism for her mother. The priest had refused to marry them otherwise. There was the question about their children. The children had to be Catholic and the priest wanted more than a commitment in intentions. He would believe her father’s intentions to raise his children as Catholics if he himself became one. Her father loved her mother; he did what the priest asked.