Primitive People (7 page)

Geoffrey said, “What
I’d
like is serious breakfast.”

George and Maisie said, “Yay!”

Simone stepped back, but Geoffrey said, “Please. Come with us, Simone.” He tossed George the car keys, and after a few blank moments, George grinned at his father and rushed out, clumping down the stairs. Maisie clung to Geoffrey’s hand and chafed her arm against his.

“The Tepee Diner,” Geoffrey told Simone. “George and Maisie’s favorite. The oldest downscale dining institution in the Hudson Valley. It was my favorite diner when I was George and Maisie’s age. Dad and I would sneak off there when Mummy was otherwise engaged.”

George and Maisie scrambled into the back seat of the shiny red Land Rover and, unasked, fastened their seat belts. They all sat for a moment in almost prayerful silence, inhaling the spicy, optimistic, new-car polymer smell.

The silvery diner caught the sun and flashed it back like the ocean. Inside, a counter ran the length of one mirrored wall and across the aisle were two rows of booths upholstered in tangerine vinyl. In the booths sat young couples in expensive hunt clothes and peevish states of annoyance, suggesting they’d lost the scent of the fox and settled grudgingly for this diner. Every party of two or less was reading
The New York Times.

The waitress wore black leggings and a tight flowered miniskirt. Protruding from the pocket of her oversize man’s shirt was an antique pack of cigarettes.

“Thirty-year-old Luckeys?” Geoffrey said. “That’s pushing the envelope, healthwise.”

“Purely decorative,” said the waitress. “Your lungs would vaporize if you smoked one.”

Geoffrey consulting with the children about what they wanted to eat was such a touching sight that even the tough little waitress registered and approved.

“French toast all around,” Geoffrey said. “Fresh-squeezed orange juice. Coffee.” To Simone he said, “I know it’s not called French toast in French. Do they have French toast in Haiti?”

“In Haiti,” said George, “they eat rice and beans and the children are lucky to get it.”

The waitress turned and walked away. “That’s my boy!” said Geoffrey.

The French toast was made from crusty baguettes, diagonally sliced, encircled by banana and strawberry slices suggesting flower sexual parts. Simone lowered her head and ate, grateful for the taste of the food and for its power to distract and free her from the steamy curtain of intensity that seemed to encircle their table. She wondered where it had come from, this pressure and isolation, as if the four of them were taking a shower instead of just eating breakfast.

Only slowly did the fog clear enough for Simone to notice an obese couple, two beach balls with heads and legs, in a nearby booth. The man was involved in complicated negotiation with the waitress, who finally removed their plates—untouched stacks of pancakes. Soon she returned with new plates, new pancakes, new negotiations, these apparently about syrups and pour-jars of fruit toppings. The couple moped in silence, then took a few resentful bites.

“It’s a diet,” Geoffrey whispered. “I’ve seen them do this before. A good fight with the waitress not only delays gratification but cuts down on their calorie intake and gives them an adrenaline rush so they metabolize faster. Listen to me. I sound so cruel. It’s all those years with Rosemary. She wore off on me, I suppose. I keep trying to locate some vein of sympathy for all of us poor souls in hell, fat people included.

“But finally I can’t do it, it’s basically so disgusting. I can just imagine how that little scene must look to someone from Haiti, someone from the country with the world’s lowest per capita income.” Geoffrey paused for credit for knowing this fact about Haiti, then looked to see if George or Maisie needed help cutting their French toast. Maisie didn’t and George did. Wisely, Geoffrey left them both alone.

“What I
can
sympathize with,” he said, “is how every second of a fat man’s life can turn into a test, a major battle between self-control and the power of desire. Every minor temptation is a crossroads with a traffic cop holding up his hand. Every chance to be bad seems like a decision: give up or break on through. And eventually you see the cop’s a skull and bones, he’s wearing your own death—death’s scaring you and at the same time mocking you for being scared. Well, there’s no longer any choice. It’s your
duty
to get into trouble.”

Geoffrey’s tone made it clear that what he meant by trouble was not what the fat couple meant. Simone hadn’t known many men very well, but a high percentage, it seemed, talked as if women were a disease from which they had or hadn’t recovered. Geoffrey was the only one who talked about running roadblocks when what he meant, or what she thought he meant, was going to bed with women. Several times, in Inez’s car, they had run into roadblocks. Simone remembered peering into the dark to see how many men were around, and if they looked as if they would torch your car, just because they could. Not even these painful memories could dampen Simone’s pleasure in Geoffrey’s having chosen to confide in her his very private and personal thoughts. Not every man would talk this way to his children’s caregiver.

Geoffrey said, “That skull and bones always seemed to me to be saying: Last chance. In a blink of an eye you’ll be dead or old, with all the leisure in the world to regret what you didn’t do, getting up twenty times a night just to take a piss, and every time you wake up you see the face of a different woman you didn’t sleep with. The pressure got unbearable. It’s a wonder I didn’t snap. For six months now I’ve been celibate, totally sworn off women. It’s a kind of trial period—a dry-out time, so to speak.”

This was welcome news to Simone; it would keep things between them simpler. But how exactly did it fit in with his flirting with the waitress? “The point of the experiment,” Geoffrey said, “is to stop thinking with my dick.”

Simone glanced at the children, sawing obliviously at their toast. Simone took a gummy bite that required some time to chew.

After another few mouthfuls she asked, “When should I come for the children tomorrow?” though Rosemary had specifically instructed her that George and Maisie were to be home no later than three. What would she do now if Geoffrey said six-thirty?

Geoffrey said, “I’m sure that Rosemary has an opinion on this.” Gratefully, Simone told him what Rosemary’s opinion was.

“Three is early,” Geoffrey said, “but I’ll do anything to keep the peace.”

“Should I pick them up at your house?” Simone held her breath, awaiting his answer. Tomorrow, Sunday afternoon—it was unlikely he’d be at his office. If he wanted her to go to his house, Simone would have to agree, though it made her nervous to find a new place without the children along for guidance.

A funny spark passed between them—Simone caught it right away. Geoffrey said, “No no no! The office would be fine.”

He didn’t want her to come to his house. He didn’t want any discussion. A pinpoint chill scratched up Simone’s spine and she hunched her shoulders and shivered.

On the beach near the village where Simone’s grandmother lived, there was a ruined stone castle in which a pirate was said to have stacked the corpses of nine wives. People said this was why the water temperature dropped in that part of the cove. When Simone was a little girl she’d been afraid to swim near there, and now, as she looked at Geoffrey, she remembered why. the castle watching you from the shore, the icy shock of the water.

I
N SEVERAL OF HER
magazines Simone had read warnings: Women driving alone should always check the front and back seats before entering a vehicle. But where could an intruder have found room to hide in Rosemary’s Volvo? Simone’s anxiety filled the whole car—and ambushed her when she got in.

Leaving Geoffrey’s office, she missed the children intensely and felt barely capable of making her way home alone. She reminded herself of how long and how well she had functioned before she knew them, traveled from Port-au-Prince to New York without George and Maisie’s support. But rage and pain were great navigators, and besides, she hadn’t been driving.

Simone’s heart began to thrum like a moth in ajar. Luckily she had to stay on the road and couldn’t afford to panic, and after a moment the fluttering stopped, leaving her giddy and weak. She squinted against the flickering sun that jumped out from behind the black trees in the huge locker full of dead sheep pretending to be a forest.

Simone told herself, This is peaceful. In Haiti there was war, bursts of automatic fire and bodies in the street. On the night of the last election she’d lain in bed, waiting for Joseph. Everyone expected violence, she’d heard shots from every direction, but she wasn’t worried that Joseph might be hurt—she was afraid he was with someone else. Probably he was with Inez; probably she knew that. What a small, selfish person she’d been in that vast sea of trouble and pain. So it followed that her motives for leaving Haiti seemed, from this distance, small and pathetic. She would have felt better about her life if she had left for political reasons; the victims of history were heroic in ways that the victims of heartbreak were not. But perhaps it had all worked out for the best; for the moment she was safe, and after the turmoil she’d left behind, a moment of safety was fine.

Here people got in line and took turns. Cars crawled through drive-in banks. No one stumbled by the road beneath impossible burdens, the bent real-life versions of the happy laundresses Joseph painted. No wonder Americans loved the sight of people with laundry on their heads! They all had washing machines and a car to carry their clothes. This was life like clockwork. This was peace, not war. And yet it didn’t seem peaceful, though Simone could not have said why.

Simone got back to Rosemary’s with no idea how she’d got there. She stood in the foyer, listening for music or for the squeal of Rosemary’s air compressor. The house was eerily quiet. Was Rosemary asleep upstairs? Simone had the Volvo. Rosemary never walked. Had Shelly taken her somewhere? How much time would Simone have to pass until she could go get the children?

Then Simone heard a rustling like the dry scratch of a mouse and tracked the noise to the living room, where she found Rosemary on the couch, extending one limp hand to Simone from her shroud of a navy blanket.

“Oh, Simone, you’re here,” she gasped. “Oh thank God. Thank God you’ve come.” Rosemary pushed the covers down a few inches. Her forehead glistened with sweat.

“I can’t breathe,” she whispered. “I’m having some kind of attack.” Simone could tell it was not a habitual thing Rosemary knew how to handle. In Port-au-Prince she had seen a woman have a seizure on the street. The woman was alone when she fell and no one came to help; people watched, keeping their distance, until the woman stopped twitching.

“We’ll have to try the Instacare Clinic,” Rosemary managed to pant. “Shapiro will be out running some dismal marathon and his answering service is so deaf you just call and scream and hang up.”

A look of concentration—of listening—came over Rosemary’s face. “Shit,” she said, “here it comes again,” and her chest swelled and collapsed with a harsh rhythmic croak. An unwilled thought came to Simone—the frogs on George’s computer—and its giddy inappropriateness made her realize how scared she was. What if Rosemary died and Simone was left here alone, an illegal alien with a dead employer? What did it mean that, on the drive here, her own heart had acted up, too? Was it weather, air pressure, some contagious disease? Wasn’t it human to take on the feelings of those with whom you lived closely? Simone had come to share Miss McCaffrey’s pleasure when a dance performance went well, and Joseph’s political angers and Inez’s twitchy boredom.

On the way to the clinic Rosemary said, “Turn right. No, I meant left.” Emergency seemed to have oiled the wheels so Simone could make tricky U-turns.

At last they found the red brick building. “Fast-food medical care,” Rosemary said. “The last wrinkle they have yet to iron out is the drive-in appendectomy.”

A woman behind a window took Rosemary’s credit card. Simone was relieved that Rosemary seemed able to manage without her help. Rosemary said, “This is going to sound hypochondriacal, but I’m in acute respiratory failure.”

“Don’t worry, dear.” The receptionist smiled. “Leave the diagnosis to Doctor.”

“Come this way,” she said, and Rosemary shot a wild look at Simone. Both of them followed the woman into a curtained-off cubicle.

“Hop on the table,” said the woman. “You’ll want to take off that fur coat. Doctor won’t hear a heartbeat, and then where will we be?”

On her way out the woman drew the curtain. They could hear her and the doctor yelling back and forth.

“How was I supposed to know he’s her nephew?” the doctor said. “The worst kind of teenage shithead, the absolute scum of the earth. I don’t ask, I don’t want to ask how he broke the arm. Okay, I’m not as gentle as I might be, seeing if I can set it. He keeps screaming, ‘Aunt Suzie! Aunt Suzie!’ How am I supposed to know Aunt Suzie is Susan, my goddamn nurse?”

A white-haired man yanked open the curtain and told Rosemary and Simone, “What we have around here is what they call organized chaos. Know anyone who wants a job?”

Simone looked at Rosemary. Were they expected to answer?

“I’m Dr. Worms,” he told them. “Believe me, I’ve heard every possible joke about my name. What’s the problem, young lady?”

Rosemary burst into tears and in a strangled voice managed to convey the fact that she couldn’t breathe.

“There, there.” The doctor patted her shoulder. “I know how it is. You’re the one who can’t get sick. The hubby can get sick and the kids can get sick but you can’t let up for a minute.”

He felt the glands under Rosemary’s neck and put a stethoscope to her heart. He said, “You know, there
is
one thing women do better …” and waited till Rosemary asked, “What?”

“Everything!” The doctor grinned. “I think you’ll be fine. Short of hooking you up to a million bucks’ worth of electronics better suited to an auto shop than a human, I have to go with my hunch, which is that physically you’re shipshape. Something’s just getting to you. How many kids do you have?”