How Stella Got Her Groove Back (29 page)

• • • •

Quincy is the first to jump off the cliff, of course, and it is befitting that my son, who is accustomed to begging, stands on the lower level of the lowest cliff, which is still some thirty feet above the water, and says, “Come on, Mom, don’t be such a wuss. Jump!”

Chantel is standing next to me and in her Minnie Mouse voice she says, “It’s really easy, Auntie Stell. Just jump!”

“I will in a minute, so don’t rush me!”

I find it difficult to do anything when I have an audience, and behind and above us are about a hundred tourists with camcorders and cameras just waiting for fools like us to jump off this concrete platform that was built years ago on top of the rock that it’s covering. Over to the left is the ledge where the real diehard fools jump down sixty or seventy feet. As I move out of the way for miniature human beings who are all under the age of ten to jump off this ledge I think fuck it and pinch my nose shut and then I simply jump.

Wow!

It feels like I’m flying and I have this feeling of nothingness and as soon as it registers I feel my feet legs thighs everything cut through the thick blue water and I go down down down then shoot back up to the surface where the warm wetness runs down my face and I feel so clean so healthy and refreshed and athletic and I want to do this again! Which I do at least ten more times with the kids. Side by side, we dive in. They swirl around in midair and though it doesn’t work for me, what a rush I get when I slip through that water. Now I think I know how those Olympic divers feel. Well, sort of.

“Mom,” Quincy says, standing next to me shivering. “Can I jump from up there?” He points to the sixty-footer, where a young girl has been standing off and on for the last half hour trying to conjure up the nerve to jump which she hasn’t been able to do and as a result she is constantly moving out of the way for others.

“You must be crazy,” I say.

“Mom,” he whines. “I’m a good swimmer and you know it! Please, Mom.”

“Quincy,” I groan. “It looks dangerous.”

“Mom,” he says, gesticulating with his arms as if he’s saying, Let’s get on with the show. “Look at all those people who’ve already jumped. Do they look dead? Did any of them die? No. Are any of them hurt? No. Come on, Mom, please? You’re always telling me to take chances. Now here’s my big chance to take one. Please?”

“Oh, go ahead, Quincy, but just once. I mean it. You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

He’s already on his way back up the thirty or forty cement steps we walked down to get to this level, and he’s yelling, “Thanks, Mom!”

Chantel walks over and puts her arms around my waist. “Don’t worry, Auntie Stell. I don’t want to jump off that one.”

“I wouldn’t let you anyway. No way. Because I could not go back to California and tell my sister that her daughter broke her neck jumping off a cliff in Jamaica. So no. You won’t be jumping. Quincy is a different species. He wants to jump, I’ve got to let him jump.”

I stand there, my heart pounding away, and I’m thinking that this is the smart thing to do because I don’t want my fears to become my child’s fears and if he isn’t afraid why should I make him afraid. And he’s right, a lot of people have jumped and will jump off this cliff and it is pretty safe. It’s just that it’s so far down. There he is. He has a wide grin on his face and he doesn’t even get his footing right before he is in flight and he looks like a human bird as he screams out something like everybody else has been doing and I look down and yes he makes it into the water and swims over to the side where he grabs onto the rusty railing and runs up the stairs to me.

“Mom, did you see me?”

“I saw you.”

“It is the coolest feeling. Can I go again?”

“Quincy, please. I just had a stroke standing here and you want me to have another one.”

“Don’t look. Mom, it was so cool. It was great. You should try it. Well, never mind, but Mom, please. I’m still alive. Touch me,” he says and grabs my hand and places it on his arm.

I snatch it back. “Oh, go ahead, boy!”

He jumps again and I can see he is having the time of his life and Chantel has made friends with some little blond girl from Switzerland and they are holding hands jumping off our little cliff together. After Quincy jumps about six or seven times, I think it’s time for him to stop, which is what I tell him.

“But Mom, don’t you understand? I was
born
to do this. Just three more times and I promise I won’t ask anymore.”

I’m pretty bored watching him at this point anyway because he keeps doing the same thing which is jumping since I told him not to even twist his mouth to ask me if he can dive.

We all dry off and the kids are in their zone I can see and they are already a shade darker. We have lobster and crab legs for dinner at Rick’s and get eaten alive by those invisible bugs and when we get back to the hotel room I do not have a message that Winston called. But it is okay. It is only Friday.

• • • •

My message light does not blink all day on Saturday no matter how many trips I make into the room pretending to need a different tape for my Walkman a different book a different kind of sunblock a different pair of sunglasses. I am offended for sure by dinnertime and think who the hell does he think he is anyway?

The kids have befriended two black boys who are from New Orleans and as I sit and watch them play tag and a trillion other games in the pool I realize that I am feeling like a fool, like an abandoned fool. I am wondering why he hasn’t called. I mean at least to say hello. Something. I mean I realize that he works fourteen hours a day which is downright shameful but normal procedure at all these resorts and everybody pretty much works six days a week which is also standard but very substandard if you ask me.

We get back to our villa around eight o’clock. My message light is blinking. I grab the phone and dial zero. “I’m calling for messages.”

“One moment, please.”

I am smiling already and when the operator comes back on she says, “Yes, Vanessa called and the message reads: ‘Is my daughter dead or alive? Please call.’ Do you need the number?”

“No,” I say. “Thank you.”

I am about to throw the phone across the room but I’m not going to go there. I am feeling like a child who cannot have her way. “Stop this, Stella,” I say out loud. “For real. Stop it. He’s a kid. He’s a fucking kid. You are tripping. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this,” I say and begin to dial Vanessa’s number but get her machine and I leave her a message apologizing for not calling after we arrived and I just tell her that the kids are having a ball and that we will check back with her in a day or so. And not to worry.

• • • •

On Sunday we snorkel at nine-thirty, Jet Ski at eleven, hang out on the beach all day, and the kids go snorkeling again at three. They like snorkeling and I like it when they are not within speaking range for at least a half hour to an hour at a time. I say hello to Frisco who is in his spot and I have read approximately eighty pages of
Laughing in the Dark
by this
Washington Post
writer named Patrice Gaines who used to use drugs and even went to jail and did all kinds of rough stuff and I realize that if she was able to pull herself up and get her act together then I should not be complaining one iota about the status of my life. But I resolve to try and give my life a little more scrutiny over the next few days while I sit out in this hot-ass sun and bake.

For starters, fuck Winston and fuck me for flipping over this handsome lanky Jamaican boy who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if he really had one. Let one of those teenyboppers try to turn you out, Winston. See if they rock your world to dust. See if they can make you soar. See how curious they are about how you feel what you think why you do what you do and how you do what you do. See if they can get under your skin inside the lining of your heart and grease it rub it warm it massage it and make it melt. See if they can do that for you, Winston, and next time some other woman comes from America who has an American Express card know that it does not mean she is an American Express and do not for a minute assume that because she is alone she is lonely and desperate because that is not was not the case. Nobody told you to bring your narrow ass over to my table. Nobody told you to flirt with me like a grown mature responsible adult man would do. Nobody told you to be so much man for your age and nobody for sure told you to kiss me and cause me all this anguish and stuff and I don’t even know your fucking middle name which is probably something like Plato or Socrates but it should be more like Caligula.

I hope he doesn’t call. That way I will be free of him. That way I can go back to my life the way it was before he entered it. I mean after all, I didn’t come here to start anything, to get involved. I merely came to Negril for a little R and R, I came here to simplify my life not complicate it, and look what I get. No. I have been fired from my fucking job and do not have a clue as to where I’m going from here. I have not spent too much time thinking about it either and it is all this young boy’s fault because he has messed things up so that I have expended most of my free mental energy thinking about him. Silly simple simpleton. What am I doing back here in Jamaica anyway? You didn’t come here to relax, admit it, Stella! You don’t know what you’re doing, go on and admit that to yourself, Stella. Your heart led you back here and you know it and you can’t stand the thought that you can’t control the situation. Well, just fuck it! Fuck you for being such an irresponsible woman, who acted without thinking. You’re forty-two, not twenty-two, girl!

Maybe I’m in the middle of a midlife crisis. That’s what’s happening to me. I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I should just pack up and go home.

• • • •

It is Monday morning and I hear a knock on the door. I look at my watch. It is only seven-thirty, so I know it’s not the housekeeper. The kids of course are still asleep as they partied hard last night with their friends and I will watch Chantel like a hawk until we leave because she has already picked out her man who happens to be thirteen-year old Tyrell and he is too old for her because she is only eleven and he is too tall and looks like he’s more like fifteen and her mama should not have let her come here with that skimpy little orange flowered bathing suit which is showing off those two little olives beginning to protrude on her hard little chest.

I walk out and answer the door and it is a hotel employee holding three yellow message slips in his hand. “We apologize for any inconvenience, ma’am, but apparently your phone has not been in consistent working order for two days and you have these messages here which the gentleman asked us to bring to you as he says you have not returned his calls and he was very upset about that and we here at the Frangipani do apologize greatly for this.”

I could hug him.

I tell him, “No problem, mon,” but ask if the telephone is working now and he says it is being dealt with this morning. I sit down on the couch and flip through the messages. Two days’ worth. I feel relieved and soft and a little girlish and I am happy. I am so very happy.

• • • •

I decide to go for my run which I do and then come back and shower and then I go to breakfast and eat a waffle. I know I’m stalling but prolonging is probably a better word even though I don’t know what I’m prolonging. When I get back to the room it’s nine-something and I dial Windswept’s number which for some reason I seem to know by heart. I am connected to Mr. Shakespeare’s room as apparently he is not scheduled to work today until two o’clock. His voice is raspy, two or three octaves deeper, and his accent is more pronounced than I’ve ever heard. “Good morning, Winston.”

“Stella,” he says. “I’ve been worried about you. Not hearing from you and all that. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. I was a little worried myself to be honest, Winston, because I hadn’t heard from you. . . .”

“I’ve been calling off and on for the last two days and you never returned my calls and I thought that since you were here and saw me again you had changed your mind about me.”

“No, I haven’t done that, I’m afraid.”

“What happened?”

“The phone was broken.”

“Oh, yes, mon! The phone was broken! And now it’s fixed. Stella. Stella. Stella.” He sighs, sounding relieved. “Sooo, have you and the kids been having a good time?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Can I meet you guys for lunch today? I’ll bring over a few dishes I made for you to sample. If you don’t have other plans.”

“That would be great, Winston. But the hotel operator said that you start work at two today.”

“Yes,” he moans. “I’m not as happy about this job as I was at first. It is really beginning to take its toll on me, but I’ll stick it out for what it’s worth.” Then he pauses. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound like a pouting child. So, how about twelve? I can only stay an hour and a half, if that’s okay.”

“That sounds good,” I say. “Sounds real good.”

• • • •

When he gets here he is wearing a different No Fear shirt minus the peace necklace and he has on his very own Birkenstocks and a pair of long purple shorts. His legs are so hairy and he looks so handsome in the sunlight that I am tempted to tell him to forget about lunch, let’s be lunch, but of course I don’t.

The children are difficult to find but he and I sit out on the balcony and I taste his pepper pot soup which has some green stuff that looks like spinach floating in it and it is delicious and then I taste this orange potato which is a cassava and it is sweet and then he gives me this fish dish called escovich and it is real vinegary and full of carrots and onions and some other vegetable and Winston says it is served mostly at breakfast but he wanted me to taste it and it is different and then he gives me what he calls “rundown” which is salted mackerel simmered in coconut milk with tomatoes and onions and I would like to eat more it is so good. And lastly he brings me some pan-fried plantains, which I kiss him for and I do not worry about flossing at all.