“You deserve better than that.”
What could she say? She knew he was right and wasn’t sure if knowing made her weak—for letting Spencer use her like that—or strong because she knew she’d never let it happen again.
“I’m really happy you came by when you did,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Bring some words Friday night,” he said, his voice fading into the night. “We got a lot of work to do.”
12.
Jules
Leslie was in a foul mood. Jules suspected it had everything to do with that awkward exchange at the party with Queen Veronica. Of course, Leslie had put on a good show until the very end, all smiles as they left, raising her flute of Champagne and slamming it against others amid a roar (Hear, hear!) punctuating one final toast. He suspected those people had enough money to replace a thousand shattered crystal glasses. She had kissed ladies goodbye—mwah! mwah!—but as soon as they’d stepped through the white pillars and into the hum of the caterpillars’ feast, she’d fallen silent. Refused to hold his hand on the long, dark walk home.
He stood behind the cottage smoking a clumsy joint he’d rolled in the dark with weed so old it burned fast and went to his head. He counted the trees edging the woods. Twelve. Sixteen. Twenty. Too many to count. And all his, he thought, knowing he was acting like a spoiled kid on Christmas morning.
Something rustled in the woods. Louder. Leaves and sticks crunching underfoot. He was sure it was some beast. They were everywhere. He’d caught a trio of bushy-tailed raccoons busting into the garbage cans even after he’d weighted the lids with bricks. He’d been surprised by a scaly-tailed opossum in the garden last week at dusk. Didelphimorphia. Now, there was a nasty creature with its pointy snout and beady black eyes. It had hissed at him, baring its sharp canines, and he’d shouted so loud it had carried all the way to the cottage. Leslie was still making fun of him for it. He lifted the heavy-duty flashlight, which could double as an opossum-skull-bashing weapon if need be.
Brooks walked out of the woods, backpack heavy and clanging. His skateboard under his arm.
Jules’s laughter startled the boy, who took a step back. Like he was ready to run the way he came.
“I thought you were a goddamn possum, son! What’re you doing in the woods?”
“Nothing,” Brooks said. His head was down and he tried to skirt past Jules toward the cottage front door.
“Whoa there. Hang out a bit. Talk to me.”
“I met a girl.”
“Yeah?” He didn’t want to push too much, make Brooks clam up.
“Yeah.”
“She must be a special girl. You going in there”—he waved at the woods—“with all those creeping critters. And the caterpillars.” He groaned. “Listen to them binge-eat my leaves.”
“She’s cool.”
Jules knew he was losing him. Right here and now. But also a little more every day. The chasm between father and son widening.
“Look up.”
Brooks started to protest.
“Just do it. For your old dad.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” Jules said.
They kept their heads tipped back and stared at the stars.
“I’ve never seen stardust before,” Brooks said.
“Me neither. Listen to us city boys gone all country.”
His son’s laugh suddenly sounded more like a man’s.
“What do you like about her?”
Just when Jules had given up on getting an answer, his neck starting to ache from looking up, Brooks spoke.
“She thinks I’m funny.”
He heard the smile in Brooks’s voice. His son, who, even as a toddler had wanted to be liked, waddling over to neighbors sitting on stoops, peering up into their faces with his wide grin.
“She like the way you smell?” He stuck his nose close to Brooks’s T-shirt, feeling his son’s new, solid chest. When did that happen? “’Cause you smell like an ashtray’s asshole.”
Brooks lunged back, his backpack falling to the ground with a clatter.
“Yo,” Brooks said. “You must be drunk. Mom would kill you if she heard you talk…”
“Mom isn’t here. You got a smoke?”
Brooks lit Jules’s cigarette. The boy’s hand shook.
“Camels no filter. No wonder you stink. You don’t want one?”
“I’m good,” Brooks said. “I only smoke ’em at parties and stuff so I got something to do.”
“Get yourself some breath mints if you want that girl to keep liking you.”
“Shut up,” Brooks said, then looked quickly at Jules to check if he was mad.
“Just sayin’ … Girls like it when you smell nice.”
“Yeah, well, Mom says your sweat smells like Parmesan cheese.”
“Oh, does she?”
More laughter. Maybe, Jules thought, this night wasn’t such a bust after all.
“You be careful with that girl. With all the girls on this island.”
Brooks yanked his backpack off the ground, mumbled, “’Night,” then headed around the cottage.
“Hold on there, buddy.”
“This isn’t the sixties, Dad,” Brooks said without looking back. “Things have changed.” He stopped for a moment and Jules hoped he’d turn around, come back to him. “And I’m not you.” He disappeared around the corner of the little white-shingled house and Jules heard the screen door click closed.
Well, he thought, at least the two of them had laughed together. Like they had before the island.
He remembered the lawn jockey. Should he warn Brooks? He’d leave it be, for now. Last thing he wanted was to become his father, his son’s only inheritance a fear that keeps him from living life, taking risks, seeing the world in all its spectrum, not just black and white. That line from his favorite Baldwin essay was in his head: You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger. Let’s hope James B was right about that, Jules thought as he walked through the maze, whispering the code—left, right, right, left. His chant in time with the thrumming haaa-haaa-haaa of the caterpillars.
An owl called from the woods and Jules smiled, hoping the horned bird was munching on a dozen squirming gypsies captured in one swoop. He was in fairy-tale land, thick with nocturnal sylvan beasts he’d only read about in textbooks and seen in documentaries on PBS. Horned owls and blind shrews. Bats circling the patio lamps. Last night, he’d heard the humanlike wail of a red fox.