Seamless Sky

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

That was how it began—much to the delight of Señor. Oh, he feigned outrage, knowing full well that nothing threw two lovers into each other’s arms more swiftly than the knowledge that their love was opposed by a patriarchal figure.

Secretly, however—so secretly that he barely allowed himself to savor the experience for fear of breaking the spell—Señor thrilled to the idea of the proud, accomplished daughter of his archrival hurling herself at the illegitimate child of his faithless mistress—a backward boy who would never amount to anything and so would bind her to his mediocrity—weighing her down, wearing her out, wasting her life.

Señor relished every morsel about the couple’s cozy dinners at the inn and long walks down the winding gravel paths of the sculpture gardens. If only there had been so much as a whiff of sweaty, scandalous s*x amid the twining figures there. But alas, Señor knew a haughty, close-legged virgin when he saw one and, anyway, he surmised that John Virgil was just as awkward in such matters. God, how he loathed that stupid boy and all stupid people.

“More people have been killed by stupidity than by guns. There really ought to be the death penalty for dumbness.”

“How do you figure that?”

Señor had forgotten Paris was with him in the living room, a profusion of chintz.

“Well, since guns are merely a subset of stupidity, more people would have to have died from stupidity—that’s all I meant.”

“So the person who forgets to pay a parking ticket, stupidly, deserves to fry as much as the person who picks up a gun and shoots someone in the head.”

“He does if in forgetting to pay the parking ticket, he causes someone else to rush out to pay it, and that person is killed in an accident. Dead is dead, Paris.”

“So why you do something doesn’t factor into what you do?”

“It does if you’re soft in the head. Oh, now, don’t get your crumpets in an uproar and take off. Why don’t you pour us some of my Port?”

“Your Port? All the years I’ve been slaving for you, old man—changing you, bathing you—and you never offered me so much so much as a thimble of water that I didn’t have to take myself. And now you want me to drink with you? Could the sudden desire to share your fine wine have something to do with the elopement of a certain young couple? I know you, old man. I know you don’t wish them no good. But I tell you what: I’ll get your wine, and I’ll pour it out, and we will drink—you to your devil and me to my God and the health, happiness and long life of that darling boy and his new bride.”

Miles south, just over the border, John Virgil lay in the arms of his wife, untouched by the opposing wishes of others, attuned only to the pounding surf outside the motel and inside his own heart. At last he understood what Adam meant when, speaking for all husbands, he said, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And soul of my soul, John Virgil thought, kissing his snuggling wife on the forehead. Dear heart, I will love you till the day I die. And only more. Ever after.

Ten months later, Isabelle Didier-Cabral, as she now called herself, gave birth to their first child, though not without great struggle. Late at night on what would be the hottest day in the hottest summer of the century, John Virgil went up to the Manor House in a highly agitated state.

“Paris, please come quickly,” he called outside her window. “Isa’s going to have the baby.”

“All right, all right. We’ll get her to the hospital.”

“No, it’s too late. The baby’s coming now. You have to hurry.”

“Where’s the doctor?”

“He’s been called away on an emergency. I left word with the service. I’ve been to the inn. They’re looking for a doctor among the guests.”

“Paris, what’s the meaning of this?” John Virgil could hear Señor’s voice in the background.

“John Virgil’s baby is coming. I have to go.”

“You’ll do no such thing. I don’t pay you to tend other people. They should have a doctor.”

“They have one. He has an emergency. They’re checking the inn for another.”

“And disturbing my guests?”

“Go back to your room, old man. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“And who’s going to put me to bed and get me ready in the morning?”

“Tereza and Ramon can tuck you in and get you up. I should be back by then.”

“Those ignorant Spics. They run the house, and they barely know how to do that. Besides, I’m sick and tired of trying to understand their no speaka da Englaise.”

“Then try speaking to them in Portuguese. Between the two languages, you three should be able to communicate.”

“But I’m your responsibility, Paris. You walk out that door, and you better not come back.”

“That’s what you said the last hundred times you fired me. When are you gonna get a new line or someone else to take care of you for the money and s**t you dish out to me?”

“Maybe I’d pay more if you were better at your job.”

“Maybe I’d be better, you cheap old Portugee, if you paid me more. Old man, I got no more time for this. John Virgil, let’s go.”

At home, John Virgil thought he’d rather be back up at the Manor House, listening to Señor bellowing and cursing at poor Tereza and Ramon than watch his wife cling to the bed and his arm, like a spooked cat, eyes wide in pain and fear.

“Honey, honey,” Paris said. “You got to let go. You got to let go of your husband and your fear and let that baby come. You’re a strong girl, Isa, and I know you’re gonna have a strong child. It’s time to set him free in the world.”

After that, Isa relaxed somewhat and shortly before midnight—with her husband, Paris and a Dr. Van Allen, an inn guest, attending—gave birth to a black-haired, green-eyed boy that everyone agreed was the most arresting baby they had ever seen.

“Oh, everyone says all babies are beautiful,” Isa said, immediately returning to her confident, opinionated form.

After Paris had sponged her off and changed the sheets, Isa drifted off to sleep, and John Virgil took his infant son out to the modest porch of their Victorian cottage. He sat on the old white wicker rocker, with its holes and faded seat cushions, and, encircling the tightly swathed baby with his arms, marveled at this gift.

Soon Paris joined him with a tray of iced tea and sandwiches, and John Virgil shot her a sheepish grin.

“You,” she said, taking his head in both of her large, caramel-colored hands and kissing his blond curls.

When he offered the baby to her, she was tempted but waved him off.

“No, he’s yours. You bond with your son first.”

John Virgil sank back in the rocker, wondering at the flickering movement of the sleeping baby’s eyelids—like the beating of tiny wings—the cherub’s curve of his upper lip, the open O-shaped mouth and the fingers wrapped around the index finger of the father he didn’t yet know but somehow already loved.

“Paris?”

“Mm.”

“Do you think it’s possible for God to reward you, not for what you’ve done, but for what you lack?”

She grasped his meaning instantly and knelt beside him, taking his face in her hands.

“John Virgil, live your life. Enjoy your life and your family. And thank God every day for that life and your wife and son.”

From then on, no matter what happened, or how hellish Señor made his life, John Virgil never went to sleep or got out of bed without thanking God for the life he shared with Isa and, eventually, their four children. There were the twins, Alizé Eugenie and Jean-Achille, called Allie and Ash, with their thick copper curls, tawny freckles, and secret twin language; and the baby, a blond-haired, blue-eyed heartbreaker named Isabelle Alexandra, after her mother, but whom her doting father nicknamed Belle.

It was, however, the firstborn who remained the star in the family, the one his parents had christened John Dylan, which was shortened to J.D., then to “Jady,” and finally to Jade—a nickname that everyone agreed suited the color of his stormy eyes.

Those eyes, the blacker-than-sin hair, and the creamy skin were his mother’s. The long, straight nose, the full lips, and high cheekbones were his father’s. But the unrelenting gaze and the singular self-possession were all his own and, coupled with his looks, transformed him into a photographic negative of his sunny father. Indeed, people who met Jade, or rather survived the experience, almost always had the same reaction—delighted by his beauty, daunted by his personality. Which was a shame, Jade thought, since it missed the point. Personality wasn’t the same as character, he realized at an early age, any more than being nice was the same as being good.

Nice was, well, nice. It made life easier. Good made things better. Personality—in the sense of a pleasant personality—was fine as far as it went. But it couldn’t match character. And Jade had character in spades—as well as brains and talent—the total package.

“Our golden boy,” Ash would say with ironic affection.

“The thing about my brother Jade,” Belle would later remind her lusty-eyed girlfriends with a mix of pride and jealous resentment, “is that everyone falls in love with him.”

Well, not quite everyone.

“He looks like a girl,” Señor said the first time John Virgil brought Jade up to the house when the boy was three. “You should get him a haircut.”

“He does not look like a girl,” John Virgil protested. “And anyway, long hair is the fashion nowadays. Isa trims it herself.”

“Oh, she does, does she?” Señor said, smiling with glee. “Poor Isa. To think of all the Harvard swains she might’ve had. And here she is forced to trim her boy’s hair. Is that what you are, a mama’s boy? Huh? What’s the matter, your parents didn’t teach you any manners?”

“Old man,” Paris said, coming out on the porch behind him. “I don’t know who is more of a child—that boy, or you for expecting a three-year-old to talk like an adult. Jade, would you like a homemade biscuit, honey?”

“No thank you, ma’am,” Jade said, wrapping himself around his father’s leg.

“Well, nothing wrong with those manners,” Paris said, gloating.

“So you’re a Daddy’s boy,” Señor said, giving Jade his coldest fisheye.

“He’s not a Daddy’s or a Mama’s boy, Señor,” John Virgil said, patting his son on the head. “He’s his own boy, a good boy.”

“A good boy,” Señor sneered. “A weak boy, like his father.”

But even as he uttered those words, Señor knew they were a lie. He could see what John Virgil could not, that Jade had coiled himself around his father’s leg not in childlike fear but out of an instinctive, serpentine desire to protect his father from Señor, whom he stared at with hard green eyes.

“Jade, you do not have to go with Daddy to see that old man, do you understand?” his mother said one day when he was eight.

She was hanging the wash on the line in the backyard, and he was shuffling along behind her with a wicker basket that was two-thirds his size.

“Yes’m,” he said, preferring to conserve his energy in case he had to do battle with the basket later.

“Any more than you have to follow me around doing chores, though it is much appreciated. Why don’t you go watch your brother and sister?”

But the twins, though only toddlers, were already locked in their twin world, their curly, coppery heads touching as they watched with breathless stillness as a tiny white butterfly alighted on the back of Allie’s hand.

No, Jade relished helping his mother, which gave him the best vantage to observe the perfection of the moment—the garden; the soft-scented air; the twins in their matching green and yellow play clothes; the sun-dappled white linens on the line; his mother’s bare, lightly tanned arms and cloud of dark hair. He would always remember that day, an ordinary day. But it was the ordinary days and not the momentous occasions that ultimately marked life. Years later, on a horrifically extraordinary day, he would flash back to that time, and the garden of his childhood innocence that was now lost. There was paradise. And he was lucky, for he had recognized it for what it was then while he was living it and not, as so many did, only after with regret.

“Mama, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, you may ask me something,” Isa corrected, ever the English teacher.

“Why does Daddy go running every time Señor hollers?”

Isa sighed. “That, Jade, is the $64,000 question, isn’t it? I mean, if we knew the answer to that, we would win the lottery and maybe even understand the mystery of life itself, wouldn’t we?”

Jade traced a finger around the braided rim of the laundry basket. Isa could see her eldest was confused, struggling, and she crouched down beside him.

“Jade, I want to tell you something, and I want you to remember this always: Your father is a wonderful man, the finest there is. But even good people have weaknesses, maybe more than bad people, because they see only good in others, and so they’re more likely to be used and hurt. Your daddy is waiting for Señor to love him and acknowledge him as his son and heir. Believe me, Jade, we’ll see the second coming of Jesus before we see that mean-spirited, miserly son of a b-gun welcome us into his home.”

“But it could happen, Mama, couldn’t it? You said anything’s possible if you work hard and believe in yourself.”

Isa paused. She wanted to tell her beloved firstborn that sometimes even noble sentiments were nothing but a bunch of greeting-card crap. But she could see he had already figured that out. A smart cookie, this one. And deep, too. He’ll never let on how deep. And that will cost him.

“Some things in life are not to be wished for. But yes, I supposed anything’s possible, although it would take either a miracle or a terrible tragedy. I’ve stopped praying for the first, and I dread the second.”

Isa took her boy in her arms. His skin was soft and sweet-smelling, and he was so slender that she seemed to be hugging the air. She liked to think that Jade was what John Virgil was or might have been, had Señor and Vietnam never happened to him.

“Promise me that no matter what, you will always look after your father and your brother and sisters.”

“What’s going to happen, Mama? What?”

Suddenly Jade was filled with foreboding.

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m not going anywhere. That’s it, isn’t it? Your father won’t leave Señor, and I won’t leave your father. So we’ll always be right here. Funny, the things that bind people to a place. I won’t let that happen to you, though. You’re going to go far and wide in this world, Jade, and do great things. Just promise me that—”

“You don’t have to worry, Mama. He’ll never hurt us as long as I live.”

The next time Jade accompanied his father to the Manor House, he felt a change in himself, and he knew Señor could sense it, too. He stood somewhat apart from his father and looked directly into Señor’s eyes, the smile on his face as glittering as a vampire’s. Yes, old man, he thought. You and I are enemies and always will be. And I vow here and now that one day I will make enough money to buy this place and turn you out like the Cain you are.