She doesn’t know, Stanley thinks. Even now, he can’t stop checking on Felice, looking toward the door which he’s left open, allowing no one their privacy. And he will probably get up several times in the night to make sure that he hadn’t dreamed it. At this point, years after the fact, he realizes that it’s as if Felice’s departure has become an essential piece of her — the price his family had to pay for his sister, for having her at all.
THE STORM HAD GROWN exponentially louder, thrashing windows, the nylon curtains lifting inside the apartment. The clock radio had died at 3:35 a.m. The rattling AC fell silent, ceiling fans stopped rotating, and the constant electric drone — not only of their apartment but of the market below them — ceased. Outside, wind rose in eminence, pounding the building in an oceanic surge. Half asleep, Nieves curled against his side and they listened to the roar as if they were trapped inside a small boat, whipped by rising seas. He wondered at one point if the unprotected windows would hold: something outside seemed to burst and there was a furious pounding racket against the building like that of a madman with a hammer.
When he wakes again at 6:28, according to his wristwatch, the storm has abated, rotating north and east toward the beaches. The apartment is stultifying; Stanley gets up and cranks open the windows, the blue porthole in the bathroom, and more tropical humidity swims into the place. His eyes ache with sleeplessness. The sky is scoured-out and bright; the heat will be terrible. Nieves rises and makes sandwiches for breakfast — tahini, organic banana, and local wildflower honey on whole wheat — her manner so surly and ferocious that no one attempts to talk to her. Felice and Emerson look, if possible, even more stunned and white-faced than they had the day before. Emerson studies the first section of the Herald with an impressive thoroughness, turning a page, then turning it back again to reread something. Stanley makes them coffee with the good Jamaican beans and dollops of unpasteurized cream (soon to spoil if power doesn’t come right back). Then they go outside to survey the damage.
Remarkably, none of the store windows broke; but there are drifts of plant debris and enormous palm fronds strewn across the parking lot like wreckage, their ends curling and gray. Power lines dangle from a pole at the corner, a child’s pink shoe lies on its side in the middle of the parking lot. The generator roars, loud as a jet engine against the west wall. Blinking, shielding their eyes, the four of them wander, moving around fallen branches, the stump of an upended ficus tree. They are quiet, startled shipwreck survivors. Abruptly Emerson grabs the stump. “Where do you want this stuff?”
Stanley and Emerson designate a plant trash heap beside the dumpster and begin the tedious, oddly exhausting work of clearing and hauling. Emerson — Stanley notes — is a good worker, moving easily: the more he works, the more relaxed he seems. Felice and Nieves clear the doors, mop up the entrance, and sweep the store’s concrete perimeter. Then they carry out aluminum lawn chairs from the storage room and a thermos of passion fruit tea and settle in to watch the men work. Stanley is still waiting for the moment Felice will stand and stretch, put her hands on her hips, pace a bit as if rehearsing her exit. He’d dreaded it when they were younger — the preamble before she’d go out at night. But Felice seems content to be just where she is, reclining in an old chair, feet propped on an overturned grocery cart.
“This is a great setup,” Emerson says. He and Stanley are at opposite ends of a black walnut branch, lugging it to the heap — now piled high with branches and coconuts. “Your market — it’s awesome. Like a community-service-type place, but also a great store.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about the great part.” Stanley and Emerson swing the branch into the debris pile where it lands with a thump. “What we’re shooting for, just basically, is to make good food available. Like, affordable. Talk about a magic act. Dole and General Mills getting these major subsidies, and we’re telling the local growers we don’t want to charge more than the chains do for their conventional and processed crap. We do what we can — take food stamps, all that. We offer barter and volunteer discounts, whatever we can think of. Keep overhead low.”
Emerson squints at the store, hands resting on his hips. “Well, you’re still standing, right?”
“Barely.” Stanley uses the thumb of his leather work glove to push hair off his face. “I used to work at a co-op — everyone kept squabbling and leaving — couldn’t hang on to customers. Of course, when I bought this place the old hippie contingent said I was turning ‘establishment.’ ” He sighs. “Anyway, yeah, with this place the employees can own shares in the business — they run their own sections. Decent benefits, vacations, workshops. Blah, blah. And we’re always behind on the bills. This place has been smoking money since the second I opened it.” He smacks the dust off his gloves and surveys his storefront. “Maybe it’s not losing money as fast as it used to. I guess that’s something.”
“Sounds good to me.” Emerson looks at Stanley, then at his own feet. Stanley realizes then that Emerson wants Stanley to like him.
They sweat through their clothes and have to take breaks at shorter intervals. Stanley drinks iced tea until he can feel it sloshing in his stomach. He and Emerson clutch the wet glasses, pressing them against their faces. By noon, the sun roasts the air and a vaporous steam shimmers everywhere. Stanley suggests they break until sundown. But Emerson pulls off his T-shirt (Stanley marvels at the fan of muscle radiating from his neck and back), soaks it with a garden hose, and wraps it around his head. “I’ll just go for a little longer, if that’s okay.” His innate politeness catching Stanley off-guard.
Retreating, Stanley discovers both Felice and Nieves inside the apartment sprawled on the leftover bedding and pillows on the floor, watching cartoons. They’re eating the “all-natural” toaster tarts Nieves persuaded him to carry.
“Hey, sweat monster.” Nieves kisses him, a drift of sugary blueberries on her breath. “Electricity’s back on. Yay.”
Felice looks at him mildly, almost vacantly, and once again there is the unreal sensation: Can she truly be here? He goes to shower and as the cool water spills over him, he considers unhappily that he’s no longer as angry as he used to be. It was so difficult — almost impossible, really — to put her away emotionally, to stop wondering where she was or if she’d return — he doesn’t want to relinquish all that hard work. And think of what she’d done to their mother! His stomach tightens like a fist beneath his rib cage. As he’s rinsing off the layers of soap, a thought creeps into his mind: She’s going to slip out while I’m in the shower.
He forces himself to not rush: he taps up the warm and shaves in the shower, then lingers a few seconds under the spray. He towels off thoroughly, combs his hair, his pulse rising in his throat, breath. Is she gone yet? He tells himself that he isn’t being quite rational. Finally he wraps a towel around his waist and emerges from the bathroom: the TV is off; the bedding has been folded and stacked on an armchair. Something like a dense, dark pressure settles over him. It is resonant with old emotional weight — the loneliness of his old bedroom, the backseat of his parents’ car, staring out the window, eternally searching — no matter if they were just going to the store, to school, to the movies. He tugs himself away from the feeling. No, I won’t. Even if his hands tremble as he pulls on his pants. Because she will not do that to him, or to anyone he loves, again. He is not that boy who drove through the neighborhoods, imagining the worst things in the world, his chest filled with a sagging emptiness, looking for a sister who, he believed, had to be injured or dead.