Forgive Me (14 page)

Thirty

“H
ave you seen
Endless Summer
?” George asked.

“What?” Nadine sat up, blinking. It was stifling in the car, and her legs were glued to the seat. Outside the window, glittering waves crashed over brightly dressed surfers.

“This is J-Bay, Jeffreys Bay, as featured in surf movies. As featured on T-shirts worldwide: Supertubes, the best break in the world.”

“Oh,” Nadine said. “I’m sorry. I was—”

“I need some food,” said George shortly. “How about a curry?”

“Sure.”

He pulled the car into a waterfront restaurant called The Mermaid. Men in wet suits ate scrambled eggs on the porch and squinted into the sun. George strode from the car to the door of the restaurant. His arms were strong and tanned. Nadine touched the pattern the car seat had made across the left side of her face. She had left her lipstick in the hotel, and without it she felt naked.

“As I said,” said George, when they were seated, “the curry’s great.”

“Okay,” Nadine said. The waitress arrived, and Nadine ordered buttered toast.

They ate in silence. Afterward, George disappeared, telling Nadine he was going for a swim. Nadine sat in the car, breathing in sand and suntan lotion, the fragrance of Cape Cod in the summer.

She saw an image from her childhood: Jim, making coffee one warm Saturday morning. Nadine stood in the kitchen in her pajamas. “Can’t you stay home today?” she asked. Jim turned to her. She saw his face soften. “We could go to Toby’s Island,” said Nadine. Jim’s shoulders caved inward, but then his face went cold and he stood straight.

“Nope,” he said, steel in his voice. “Got to work, dearie, you know that.”

He patted her head and shut her out, walking briskly down the path to the car, opening the door, sliding in, and starting the engine. He turned right onto Surf Drive. Nadine watched until he was out of sight, and then climbed the stairs to the turret, where she would spend a lonely day paging through books. She wished she were the one heading down the road, the one with somewhere to go.

G
eorge came back, his hair wet, his jeans and button-down shirt dry. “Had a skinny-dip,” he explained.

Nadine offered to drive, but George shook his head. He stretched his shoulders and neck before starting the car. “I don’t feel old,” he said, “but my body does.”

Nadine laughed. “Frightening, isn’t it?” she said, “My back is all in knots, and my shoulders…all the typing, I guess. Plane rides.”

“I hear you,” said George. “It’s my knees, bending down to get shots.” They headed toward Port Elizabeth, George staring fixedly ahead. “I never thought about getting old,” he mused. “I don’t like to think about it. This sort of life…it lends itself to a sad old age. I mean, how long can you keep it up? Even now, I’m fucking tired. And it’s harder to sleep.”

Nadine thought of her violent dreams, the way the images stayed with her even when she was awake. “I know,” she said.

“I never thought I’d be single, still,” said George. Nadine could see the fine wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Despite the air-conditioning, the car felt stuffy.

Nadine dreaded the answer, but asked anyway. Quietly, she said, “What happened to Thola?”

“I should have loved you,” said George. He did not look at Nadine, and spoke matter-of-factly, as if to himself. “What would have happened if I loved you?”

“George,” said Nadine. Irritation washed over her, and she rolled down the window.

“The AC’s on.”

“I know,” said Nadine shortly. “I just need to breathe for a minute.” She sipped the searing air, then rolled the window back up. She turned to George. “You had Thola,” she said.

“I never did, not really,” said George. He sighed. “I was ten years old, and somehow I picked the one person I could never have.”

“Did she leave you for someone else?” said Nadine, casting wildly for a different ending to Thola’s story.

“Oh God,” said George. “I wish she had.” He sighed. “When you arrived, Thola and I were trying to find a way to be together. We were happy, I guess.”

“You seemed happy.”

“I spent all those afternoons at the Waterfront, waiting for Thola to get home from work. You remember the Waterfront.”

“Of course,” said Nadine. It was a tin box of a bar in Sunshine, facing not the water but a filthy street. The outside of the
shebeen
was painted with a beach and pastel umbrellas. Inside, plastic tables were covered with oilcloth advertising Carling Black Label. Local men and boys, clad in bright sneakers and zip-up tracksuits, drank from enormous bottles. There was a pool table, a radio, a red metal lockbox for cigarettes, and a banner that read,
CASTLE BEER
:
PERFECTLY BALANCED TO SATISFY SOUTH AFRICA’S THIRST FOR SPORT
. “So I’d buy drinks for Thola’s neighbors, some guys who became my friends. Eddie, who…” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, Thola would get home from work, change, and come get me. Sometimes she’d have a beer, but usually we hung out on those chairs outside her house. They had an old table. We’d make a fire and talk.”

“That ratty patch behind the house. That’s where I finally convinced Thola to let me interview her. Her mom was so sweet to me,” said Nadine, remembering Fikile’s smile, her apple cheeks. George stopped talking, and Nadine’s mind wandered.

Nadine had been wearing shorts that afternoon; she could still feel the way the hot metal chair seared the skin on the back of her thighs. Fikile had placed a pitcher of water on the table, and Nadine drank from a cloudy glass.

“I think I can bring a unique angle to the story,” Nadine began. “I’ll write about Evelina from her family’s viewpoint, try to make readers see her as a confused child. I was a confused child myself.”

“George told me about your mother,” said Thola. “I’m sorry about that, but what does it have to do with my sister?”

Fikile watched them carefully. She couldn’t translate their words, but picked up on the tension. Clearly, appealing for sympathy wasn’t going to cut it with Thola.

“It hasn’t always been easy for me,” said Nadine. “I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“Ach,” said Thola. “You think you can compare your life…to this?” She waved an elegant hand, indicating the garbage, the skeletal dog nosing the ground at her feet.

“No,” said Nadine, “I don’t—”

“I walked down the street today,” said Thola, “in the city. I was shopping, hoping to find a book for George. Some novel he wanted…
The Portrait of a Lady
? He thinks he is this Henry James. So I buy the book, and I leave the store. I get a nice ice cream, a mango ice cream. Then I see this Boer man and his Boer girlfriend. They are walking on the sidewalk, and I am walking the other way. As he passes me, the man punches me in the stomach.” Her eyes flashed. “He punches me, do you hear? I dropped my ice cream. And he kept walking. What would you do, Nadine?”

“Was there a policeman? Are you all right?”

“A policeman,” said Thola. She rested her elbows on the table in front of her and bent her neck, running her hand along her hair. She took a deep breath, and then she looked up. “A policeman,” she said, “would put
me
in jail for causing trouble. If I said anything—one thing—to the man, he could have me arrested. The man punched me, Nadine, and I bent over in pain. His girlfriend looked away. The man laughed at me, and I did nothing.”

“He laughed?”

“I did nothing,” said Thola. “And this is just today. Every day, I do nothing, and the anger gets bigger.”

Nadine was silent. Fikile looked nervous as her daughter’s voice escalated.

“That is why my sister raised the rock,” said Thola. “That is why she brought it down.” She stared at Nadine. “It was something,” said Thola, “and Evelina was tired of doing nothing.”

Nadine met Thola’s eyes. She remembered a summer afternoon when her mother was sick from the chemotherapy. The sound of her vomiting woke Nadine from a nap. She walked into her parents’ bedroom and pushed open the bathroom door. Her mother retched, kneeling in front of the toilet in khaki pants and a bra, her hands on either side of the bowl. Nadine stood behind her mother, powerless. For a moment, her mother sat back, and there was silence. Nadine thought the worst was over, but then her mother started to heave again.

Nadine ran from the room and into the kitchen. Her beloved guppy, Table, swam in the Mason jar that was his home. The jar was filled with rocks and shells Nadine had collected on the beach. Nadine could still hear her mother’s awful gagging. She picked up the jar and hurled it to the floor. It was better than doing nothing. The jar shattered, and Table jumped and flipped, trying to find water. Nadine watched the fish, its gills opening wide, she watched it die.

Nadine told Thola the story, and Thola listened. When Nadine was finished, Thola slipped cigarettes from her jeans: Marlboros, George’s brand. Fikile reached for one and they smoked while Thola translated the exchange for her mother. At one point, Fikile let out a staccato laugh. “A policeman,” she said to Nadine in English, shaking her head. Later, Fikile put her hand on Nadine’s and squeezed. Then she spoke in Xhosa.

“My mother wants me to tell you about my name,” said Thola.

“Your name? What about it?”

Thola sighed, drew in on her cigarette. Fikile met Nadine’s eyes as Thola spoke. “My mother could not have a child,” said Thola. “This was before her husband left. She prayed to God and she went to a
sangoma,
a witch doctor. The
sangoma
told my mother to be patient. One day, the
sangoma
brought a baby to my mother, wrapped in a flannel shirt. I had been abandoned, and my name means this, abandoned and then found. Not long afterward, my mother grew fat with Evelina and gave her a Christian name. My mother always wanted more children, but no more came. She says we may share her.”

“What?”

“She can be your mother, too,” said Thola. “If you want her!”

Fikile smiled, and Nadine felt teary.

“What,” said Thola, “you don’t want her?”

Nadine swallowed. “Yes,” she said, “yes, yes, I want her.”

Thola put her hand on Nadine’s. “It’s done,” she said, her voice warming. “She is yours, and we are sisters.”

Nadine nodded. Thola’s hand was soft.

Thola drew again on her cigarette. “I will give you an official interview for your newspaper,” she said. “But I want you to buy me lunch. And my mother. At a nice restaurant.”

“Thank you,” said Nadine.

Fikile spoke, and Thola laughed. “If you are her daughter now,” said Thola, “she will insist you buy new shoes.”

Nadine looked down at her stained flip-flops, and then at Fikile’s clean pumps and Thola’s pink ballet flats.

“Done,” said Nadine. A week later, Thola left a present from Fikile on Nadine’s bed: ballet flats, the same as Thola’s. Nadine stared at the shoes. She knew Fikile hardly had the money for such luxuries. Nadine picked them up in trembling hands and slipped them on her feet.

T
he following week, Nadine picked up Thola and Fikile and drove them to Brendan’s Café, a restaurant near her house in Observatory. Maxim was friends with Brendan, an up-and-coming chef who was happy to welcome both blacks and whites for lunch. Fikile giggled as they entered the restaurant and were led to a table.

“Hm,” said Thola. “This tablecloth is not straight.”

“Excuse me!” Nadine called to the boy with a brown moustache who hovered nearby. “Can you straighten the cloth, please?”

“Of course,” said the waiter, bowing.

“I am getting used to this,” said Thola regally. Fikile looked uncomfortable, her hands swimming above the table as if she did not know where to rest them. She had painted her nails bright pink.

“Mother,” said Thola, opening her mother’s laminated menu, “what will you choose?”

Fikile spoke in Xhosa, and Thola smiled. When the waiter approached, Thola said, “A beer for my mother, and one for me as well.”

They ate prawns and potato samosas to start, and Nadine opened her notebook. “I grew up in Sunshine township, Cape Town, South Africa,” said Thola. “My first word was
molo,
which means ‘good morning.’ I was always very beautiful and an excellent dancer with abundant grace.”

Nadine smiled, taking it all down. Clearly, Thola had planned for this interview. Thola recounted her childhood, her trip to America, meeting George. “Now, where is Evelina’s father?” asked Nadine, eyeing the last prawn on the appetizer plate.

“Next question,” said Thola, taking the prawn for herself.

They ordered: steak for Thola and Fikile, a salad for Nadine. As she sipped her second beer, Fikile’s cheeks grew rosy, and she swayed in her seat to the country music playing in the background. Brendan brought the entrées out himself, and offered salt and pepper from large silver mills. Fikile clapped when Brendan pulled out Parmesan to grate over her potatoes.

“Evelina was born with a crazy eye,” continued Thola. “It was hard for her to be the sister of a famous ballerina, to be sure. The boys called us ‘Beauty and the Beast.’” Fikile shook her head and nodded, cutting her steak primly.