Instead: “The flowers are big, big as your outspread hand.”
“Oh,” Claire said, pleased.
Marie hated her those moments, felt cold inside, like seducing a man one didn’t love. “Oh, Agatha, you’re just wanting to be charmed, aren’t you?”
“‘Agatha’? Why are you calling me that?”
Marie frowned, not about to tell her that renaming took away one’s soul. “Don’t you remember, doudou? The patron saint of breasts? I’m giving you her powers.”
“I don’t like it.”
“They only mention Rhys’s marriages in the biographies. They don’t tell how she abandoned her children. No one wants to hear the less than pretty details. What if my great-grandmother lost her husband when she was still a young wife? Very hush-hush. And she goes to hide on the other side of the island? What if she is killed? The baby left alone to be raised by distant family. Doesn’t make a very good story, does it?”
“No.” Claire seemed disappointed. The bitter of the world too much for her.
“The biographies don’t tell that she was a selfish woman, that she never looked back, never thought of her baby girl again. That she wasn’t mother material. They want to make her all romantic-seeming. Poor, dreaming Agatha. In love with a ghost.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“What if my grandmother married a black man, and my father married a black woman. Only a small bit of Rhys blood left. But in your eyes, I’m all her.”
Marie could tell Claire didn’t like these answers. And just like that, the truth urge went stillborn. Marie would not disappoint again. The habit of story was stronger in her. She was used to begging for her supper this way.
“But you have your great-grandmother’s eyes. And the same set of the mouth,” Claire said. Stubborn, like a child. “I looked at her pictures.”
“I wish I had her money, too.”
Claire laughed, both of them relieved.
* * *
They were sweeping up the ash from the fires off the back patio when a fireman in yellow gear walked around the side of the house, startling them. He looked like the man on the moon, squeaking rubber with each step, arms angled forty-five degrees out from the bulky trunk of body. For a moment, all three froze at the unexpected sight of each other.
“Excuse me,” he said finally. “We’re checking fire hazard at all the area homes.”
Marie wore a crocheted tank top, bare underneath. His eyes hovered at her bulging middle, not daring to look up, not trying to look away.
“We weren’t hoping for visitors,” she said.
“The place looks boarded up from the road,” he said. “Abandoned.”
Claire coughed, and he slowly moved his glance from Marie’s stomach to Claire’s face.
“We were worried about looters,” she said. “We belong here.”
“Incendiary. You have a lot of burned trees that need to be removed.”
“That’s true.”
He kept staring at Claire as if she might be in need of rescue. She did look pale and sweat-soaked in the harsh light. “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you okay?”
“I have cancer.” Claire was thinking that was now a lie; the cancer now an excuse. She was cured.
“Oh, I’m sorry—” His reddish skin turned a dark brick shade.
“That was a good one,” Marie said. “Real smooth.”
“It’s my job,” he mumbled.
“Agatha and I are just fine,” Marie said, watching Claire flinch just the smallest bit, as if she had been pinched in secret. “Snug as bugs in a rug.”
“No offense taken, Officer,” Claire said. “My name is—”
“Baumsarg it says here. Agatha?”
“No!”
“Can we offer you a glass of water,” Marie interrupted as she pulled a T-shirt over her head.
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“A crew will clear the trees next week,” Claire said.
He nodded and pulled out a notebook. “I’ll mark that down so no one bothers you again. Lots of fire danger this year. Can’t be too careful.”
“The smoke was bothering me. Me and my baby.” Marie stroked the small bulge of belly. She gave that up to keep Claire quiet.
“A baby? You’re pregnant?” Claire said.
He scratched away on his notepad, retreating even further into his officialdom. “Well, I’ve marked you down. Good luck to you both. Stay safe.”
* * *
After he was gone, Claire sat on the diving board, giggling. “He thinks we are in need of rescue.”
“It’s hot.”
“A baby! So many plans to make.”
Marie sat on the diving board and took Claire’s hand in her own, pecked the bony back of it with a kiss. “I don’t like them snooping.”
“My secretive Minna. I need my drink. Now we need to bring all the old baby stuff from the attic — cribs, bassinets.”
Marie obliged and went into the kitchen, making up the tonic that Claire was now convinced brought her health. In truth, it was no more than the spice shelf at the local supermarket — ginger, cilantro, basil, mint — steeped like tea. Then Marie added cinnamon and star anise and ground-up aspirin. Claire drank it down as if it were elixir, hungrily and with such ardor that Marie herself almost believed there might be something healing in it. The mind is an ever-hoping thing, leaning toward faith like a plant toward the sun.
* * *
“Tell me more about your family.”
Marie sighed and for a reluctant moment she considered it. “My mother used to take me to town, to Ravine Froide, every Saturday, for coconut ice.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“Sometimes we went to Massacre.”
Claire’s face lit up. “I know it! Massacre. That’s where Rochester and Antoinette stopped on their way to the honeymoon house.”
Marie shrugged. Claire spoke about imagined events taking place over a hundred years ago, things that took place only in an author’s head. A made-up love and a made-up madness. Marie could not understand Claire’s childlike preoccupation with make-believe. On the island, it was different — dread reality outstripped any kind of fantasy. One couldn’t afford to dream of anything except escape.
“I don’t remember that part of the book,” Marie said. “It must have been only a small part.”
“I pictured it so clearly.” Claire jumped up with more energy than she’d shown in weeks and rifled through the living room till she found her book, sway-backed on the chair. “Here it is.” She frowned, squinting. “Get my glasses.”
Since the chemo, she had become more forgetful and impatient when she misplaced things, so Marie solved the problem by buying multiple pairs of reading glasses at the drugstore. They were scattered all around the house, tending to migrate into a pile on Claire’s bedroom nightstand, from where Marie then redistributed them. Marie hesitated when she found a pair placed on the pine cabinet in the entry hall. Was it a sly signal from Claire? But, no, she was oblivious, and when she had the glasses on her nose, her face relaxed, and her voice grew strong and confident as she read the words: “‘I looked at the sad leaning coconut palms, the fishing boats drawn up on the shingly beach, the uneven row of white washed huts, and asked the name of the village.’”
Claire frowned and flipped the page. “Here’s more: ‘The rain fell more heavily, huge drops sounded like hail on the leaves of the tree, and the sea crept stealthily forwards and backwards.’”