“I’m glad you mentioned his name—” Petal the Matriarch suddenly solidified, ten times denser. Her voice softened. That was a rawhide whip in it.
“Listen to me. If you have something to say about my son, remember this. He loves you so much, it even makes me — his mother! — jealous. Imagine that! When I love you like if you were my own daughter! Vikram is a very loving boy, but he is not perfect. I don’t know what kind of men you had when you were abroad, or how many, and don’t tell me — I don’t care for you to tell me. I know you feel you are modern young people with a modern marriage. All I know is that you are the apple of Vikram’s eye. You hear me, sweetheart? You believe that? The apple of his eye.” Petal the Matriarch was satisfied with the ensuing silence during which her daughter-in-law’s mouth had closed again after opening in a way that it had never quite opened before.
That was then.
“And you know,” sings Requisite Woman to herself, “Petal is the ideal mother-in-law. She would do anything for the grandchildren. We are family. She is right.”
The glass arcs. Maureen drinks to women’s solidarity. Nice girls don’t snarl in the throat. Let that sound be a sob from the womb. Quick, not the glass too! So many things smashed up, he will notice! Sa-a-a-ve it. A couple of tries before Maureen gets a grip, then the Murano is upright on the—
“But who the hell put the table there?” The glass is saved. It’s the footing that goes. Muscular bottom, aflower with bruises, makes slinky-clad contact with marble. And — just like that — she sees it.
Candlelight and fairy lights shine into the pool, but the shining snake has the starring role. Neat, how the tail thrashes. The head’s elevated on that segment of body — so long, would you call it a neck? It’s no bad swimmer. Still doesn’t look pleased to be in the water.
“You, too, in at the deep end! Poor thing. I wonder what you did in your pas’ life to end up in our pool in all that stink-stink chlorine. But you’re a mapipire. A poisonous one. Death in what, twenty minutes? The hospital people would never find the way up this hill in time. And my mobile might cut out and I forgot again to pay the damned blasted bill for the land line. What would Vikram say in this situation? Do not fear, snake, Maureen is here. If you do something bad, it’s not your fault. Nobody meant you to be in the water.”
Flat of the hand on the marble, she pushes herself up, small of the back against the table. The fall has doubled the old pain. For a split second, woman faced with snake is filled with a rare sense of mastery. Lord of creation! But a semi-Hindu lord, animated by a sense of identity with the creature. “Snake,” says the woman, “you are lucky. I know. I am like you. I am not going to hurt you. Listen to me, snake. I did not grow up in Port-of-Spain.” The snake’s eyes flash. It’s going somewhere fast, though not out of the water. “I am a country girl from Sangre Grande, snake, who did well at school and went abroad to university. I fell in love. Now here we are at home. You cannot know what it is to love, snake. Count yourself fortunate.”
The snake’s flat head reminds the woman of her long-dead, beloved Sangre Grande old ladies, their oiled hair flat under the orhni, their English hissing and thudding, moved by an older, more complicated language translated from but not spoken. The flash of the eyes.
“Should I save you, snake? If I were my uncles, I would take a long stick and crush your head fast-fast right there where the neck gets thick. That is where you have your li’l reptile brain and reptile soul, snake. You would not twine up the stick and sting me. See, I have a long stick. But you don’t have to swim so fast. Take a rest, snake. You take a rest though I cannot.”
Vikram rounds the corner of the house soundlessly, navy on navy, evening on denim. A drunken wife is disgusting. There had been no whiff of drunkenness about Maureen the student. A good girl to present to the family and marry, yet more able than a home-kept virgin to appreciate a steady man. Vikram considers himself no drinker. He began during the engagement. There was so much to reconcile. He hates the idea of himself as the athlete who’s started drinking. Early swimming sessions almost abolish the night, and day, before. If only he could make sure that day would always break on him in the blue water.
And does his wife feel his eyes on her? Of course not. How long will she harangue this freestyle mapipire? Even a snake can hold her attention more than her husband. He knows he cannot make her pay. His beautiful wife is an emotional bankruptcy. Give her a chance, a minute or two. Hasn’t she promised to notice him first and forever? Beautiful Things, if they are male, do well with a touch of cruelty in their good looks. Vikram is no exception. If Petal the Matriarch could have seen her son, she’d have had cause to insist on just how handsome he is.
“It is not good for me to have a drink, snake, and it is not good for you to be in that pool. I do not give satisfaction as a wife and mother. I know that. But you, snake, I can save you and I can tidy you. Let me tidy you up now.” Maureen totters toward the long pole, the one with the net on the end that the yard boy uses for fishing out dead leaves, belly-up lizards, and whatever unwelcome floating objects you don’t care to have your cocoa-buttered shoulder brush up against in the predawn chill. Those are crazy steps the high-heeled Spanish sandals are making. The Clinique nails press lustrous on the white-painted wood pole. Holding it, the arms swing the body out of balance.
“MAUREEN!” One foot in the air, mouth open, she skids and lunges to a stop. “MAUREEN!”
“Hello, darling.” Graceless, she scatters the fire that alcohol stitches to the edge of a sexy voice. She topples onto her bottom and giggles.
“What the hell you doing, woman?”
His wife gets up surprisingly fast. Her grip on the stick appears martial. “You want this?”
“No. No...”
“Here, you want this? Port-of-Spain man, Fatima Boys’ School athlete, you want to take the snake out of your own pool?” She nears at a prowling crouch. The stick lashes across his shins. “Hold onto it, man! I am giving it to you! You can’t take it? Hold onto it!”
What should be clear tumbles dark. Somewhere in the same pool is the snake, thrashing. Water is bitter on his corneas, bitter bile runs in his gullet. Maureen is not visible through the splinters of water and night light, and the sense of the unwanted thing nearing.
It is she crying out. “Let me help you...”
She is on her knees, wetting the slinky and stinking of chlorine, trying to scoop a snake into her net. Her ears are filling with husband-voiced curses. She is on her knees screaming as the pole is snatched from her hands by a dripping hero. The snake is on the tiles among the ruby glass splinters. He is beating the snake on the back of the neck with the pole. He is beating her with the same pole. One kick and she’s in the pool. Then they are in the water together. A million bubbles blueing out her brain, the kissing is beginning.
The Northern Range is green no longer. Much of the rain forest burned down in the last dry season. The police and the army were busy all day and the water trucks exhausted just taking water to people who complained on television that they did not have any. You could study the deforestation and the erosion and everything else, but who listens? What to do? It’s better not to worry your head and beat yourself up about that. Petal the Matriarch watched the burning mountains. “The colors real pretty, you don’t find so? Like sunset all through the day.”
At the edge of the Port-of-Spain Swim Club pool, Vikram stands. Rain or shine, every day that there is not thunder and lightning, he likes to stand as he is standing now, on the diving board. He must have bought that swimsuit in the States — skintight peacock-blue. His cousins wouldn’t be seen dead in anything except baggy swimshorts of a nondescript color. But from the neck down, it is so obvious that Vikram is no pretty boy. Suave, yes, but not a sof’ man. He real macho.