When he came around to open the door for her, she reminded him to pick her up in two hours and then, without prelude, pulled out a check from the front pocket of her purse and handed it to him.
“Let’s keep this between ourselves, okay?” she whispered, moving her mouth close to his ear. “I don’t want people thinking I’m in the habit of giving out money to help their families.”
“Oh, Papa God, madam!”
“You can go cash it and send it to your brother while I’m eating. I’d hate to see those poor children miss another day of school because of a little money.”
“I … I do not even know what to say, madam! Thank you so much! I just … I’m so … I’m just very … My brother, my whole family, we thank you so much, madam!”
She smiled and walked away, leaving him on the curb with his mouth half open. After she’d climbed the steps and entered the restaurant, he opened the check and looked at the sum. Five hundred dollars. He reentered the car and looked at the sum again. Five hundred dollars? May God bless Mrs. Edwards! But his brother had asked for three hundred. Was he to send the whole check because Mrs. Edwards had demanded so? He called Neni, to tell her the story and get her opinion, but she didn’t pick up—she was probably in her school library with her phone on silent, studying for her finals. He didn’t want to wait until he got home to discuss it with her because Mrs. Edwards had asked him to send the money today, and he had to do as he’d been told. His years on earth had taught him that good things happen to those who honor the kindheartedness of others. So, after parking the car, instead of going to Central Park, he half-ran to a Chase branch across from Lincoln Center, cashed the check, and began walking north along Broadway. He stayed on the east side of the street, rushing and sweating under the immaculate sky, forgetting to enjoy his favorite kind of weather because he was too focused on finding a Western Union and getting back to Mrs. Edwards on time. Somewhere in the mid-Seventies, he found one and sent his brother the three hundred dollars the children needed. He’d debated the right thing to do as he filled out the Western Union form, and decided it wouldn’t be right to send the full sum Mrs. Edwards had given. He knew his brother too well. He knew Tanga was most likely going to spend the balance on either gifts for a new girlfriend or new pairs of leather shoes for himself, this while his children went to school with rubber shoes held together with twine. Enabling his brother to do such a thing would never be fair to Mrs. Edwards. Besides, it was better he saved the two hundred dollars, because, in another month or two, a brother or cousin or in-law or friend was going to call saying that money was needed for hospital bills or new school uniforms or baptism clothes or private French classes, since every child in Limbe had to be bilingual now that the government had declared that the next generation of Cameroonians had to be fluent in both English and French. Someone back home would always need something from him; a month never went by without at least one phone call asking him for money.
As he sat in the car with the two hundred dollars in his pocket, he fervently hoped Cindy wouldn’t ask if he’d sent all the money because he would either have to tell her a half-truth or give her a long explanation of how this business of sending money to relatives back home worked and how some relatives had no consideration for those who sent them money because they thought the streets of America were paved with dollar bills.
Cindy reentered the car twenty minutes later and immediately got on her phone.
“I’m still speechless, Cheri,” she said. “Completely speechless … My gosh! Mike? Of all people? … Oh, God, I feel so awful for her … Of course she’s in a daze! I’m in a daze. I thought she looked a bit down when I walked in, but to hear this … She doesn’t deserve it! … No! … She’s been nothing but wonderful to him. Thirty years of marriage, and you wake up one day and say you’re in love with someone else? I’d die … Yes, I’d die! … Okay, maybe I wouldn’t die, but I certainly wouldn’t be getting out of bed the next day to meet up with you guys for lunch … Oh my God! Of course! Oh, gosh, that could be me … I feel like it’s going to be me one day, Cher. I’ll wake up one day and Clark will tell me he’s found someone younger and prettier, oh, God! … Yeah, out with the old, in with the new … I don’t care if she’s forty-five, she can’t be more beautiful than June … Me, neither. I’ve never met even one of those skanks who was anything worth writing home about … I mean, some of them … It’s never about the looks. We went to dinner last night with the Steins, and the waitress, she was definitely not that pretty except for a cute accent from some Eastern European place. But you should have seen how Clark was looking at her … Maybe early thirties … Every time she came over, Cher … No, I’m not kidding you … Of course he still does it, right in front of me … Subtle? Not last night; I had to go to the bathroom to gather myself … Yeah, that’s how bad it was. Humiliating … Maybe it was all in my head because I didn’t want to be there, but the way he was talking to her, smiling at her, curious about her tattoo … It was! A big reminder to me, you know … I just don’t know …”
Fourteen
PEOPLE HANGING OUT IN BARS MADE NO SENSE TO NENI. WHY WOULD anyone want to stand in a crowded place for hours, screaming at the top of their voice to chat with a friend, when they could sit comfortably in their own home and talk to their friend in a calm voice? Why would they choose to sit in a dark space, consuming drinks that sold at the grocery store for a quarter of the bar’s price? It was an odd way of spending time and money, and a decision like Winston’s was even odder. Winston lived alone in a seven-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartment in a doorman building, and yet he was going to celebrate his birthday with some friends in a bar at the Hudson Hotel, across the street from his apartment building.
“But your apartment can fit at least thirty people,” Neni said to him when he came over and invited her and Jende to join in. “I can come and cook the food for the party.”
“And who’s going to clean the next morning?” Winston asked her.
“You have a cleaning lady!”
“No, I’m not dealing with all that,” he said. “And why are you making all this sisa about going to a bar? Didn’t you like going to drinking spots in Limbe?”
“Yes, I like drinking spots. So?”
“So, isn’t it the same thing?”
“Same thing? Wait, you want to compare American bars to drinking spots in Limbe?”
“Why not? You go to the place, you order your drink, you find somewhere to sit down and enjoy it—”
“Please, don’t make me laugh, Winston,” Neni said, laughing. “There’s no comparison, okay? In Limbe you sit outside, it’s warm and sunny. You’re enjoying a nice breeze, listening to makossa in the background, watching people go up and down the street. That is real enjoyment. Not these places where—”
“How many American bars have you been to?”
“Why do I have to go to any of them? I see them on TV—that’s enough for me. People act as if things in America have to be better than things everywhere else. America doesn’t have the best of everything, and when it comes to where you can go and enjoy a nice drink, it can never compete with Cameroon. Even if someone wants—”
“Neni, I’m begging, enough with the too many arguments,” Jende said. “Let’s just go, okay?”
“Maybe,” she said, pursing her lips.