place.
But Phyllis would see at once that it wasn’t a house at all and wouldn’t be amused by the idea of not having to go to the office because you’d woken up there. She would think how, through the years, Mark and Jean had chosen to drag their little daughter all over the third world, boiling water as they went, luggage heavy with diarrhea blockers and fruit-flavored ion-packed powders, and then he’d voluntarily taken a pay cut in order to live here, in this office. What was the point of being in advertising if it wasn’t to make money?
Her mother hadn’t told her why she was coming, and Jean, not wanting to admit she thought there might be a dreadful reason, didn’t ask. Instead, she cleaned. She knew Phyllis would find something to be disappointed about. Still, for three days she scrubbed—emptying the dead bugs from light fittings, sponging down the woodwork, beating the rag rugs, washing the pale blue slipcovers. She gave the guest bed the only unpatched mosquito net, wrenching her back with the hanging, and wondered if Phyllis would be seduced by the fairy cloud of white gauze or worried by what the net foretold. She must make Mark promise not to mention the scorpions.
And then, in the last hour of her manic making ready, she gave herself some fine stigmata: standing on a wobbly stool, attempting to rehang a cupboard door that had come unhinged, she knocked herself in the eye and it immediately pooled with blood. She made things much worse by daubing it with that “magic” seaweed that Aminata had pressed on her, filmy green strips used on the island for everything from wound cleaner to omelette filler (thank goodness her readers couldn’t get hold of any). The eye became so goopy and inflamed that she had to wear a makeshift patch—a cosmetic pad under a rakishly angled bandanna that kept slipping like a badly tied blindfold.
Yet with all her cleaning, she couldn’t scrape away the bad feeling that she carried inside her and that became more acutely disagreeable as Phyllis’s visit approached. She got up early and immediately sought the shower, soaping and scrubbing herself in the hottest water she could stand. In the past, morning had been the Hubbards’ time for sex. The ingrained impulse alone accounted for her unease as she woke, even when Mark wasn’t there, and for her unclean feeling, if only because it led her each day, before she’d even washed her face, to thoughts of Giovana. And the day after he returned, only four before Phyllis was due, the same difficulty followed her to the next trial—of breakfast.
Regarding Mark across the table, all she could see was his decline, and travel fatigue didn’t account for it. He looked gray, pouchy along the jawline. His jokes were reflexive, also old. As he fiddled with the tea strainer, his bottom lip slid out a fraction—once sexy, suddenly irritating, elderly. His habit of constantly fingercombing his hair seemed vain and faggy, and of course the egg and jam at the corner of his mouth were positively enraging. (She felt sure they wouldn’t be there with Giovana across the table.) She could manage this surfeit of hostility only by avoiding him, walking outside when he came in, pretending to be asleep when he ambled into the bedroom, drunk, more often than not. But it wasn’t just Mark. Even the birds—perhaps the thing she loved most on St. Jacques—looked tainted.
Gangs of parrots ruled the tall eucalyptus trees behind the house, their piercing screech echoing through the valley. At first she’d been thrilled to see them, with their paint-box colors. Now she felt there was something delinquent about them, likeworkers on a building site, with their steady stream of indecent whistles. On that last day of her preparations, Jean with her sweaty eye patch was convinced she could feel their ridicule sweeping down at her on that mentholated breeze, heckling her efforts. Head bowed, she just kept on sweeping, like a crazy pirate trying to
But Phyllis would see at once that it wasn’t a house at all and wouldn’t be amused by the idea of not having to go to the office because you’d woken up there. She would think how, through the years, Mark and Jean had chosen to drag their little daughter all over the third world, boiling water as they went, luggage heavy with diarrhea blockers and fruit-flavored ion-packed powders, and then he’d voluntarily taken a pay cut in order to live here, in this office. What was the point of being in advertising if it wasn’t to make money?
Her mother hadn’t told her why she was coming, and Jean, not wanting to admit she thought there might be a dreadful reason, didn’t ask. Instead, she cleaned. She knew Phyllis would find something to be disappointed about. Still, for three days she scrubbed—emptying the dead bugs from light fittings, sponging down the woodwork, beating the rag rugs, washing the pale blue slipcovers. She gave the guest bed the only unpatched mosquito net, wrenching her back with the hanging, and wondered if Phyllis would be seduced by the fairy cloud of white gauze or worried by what the net foretold. She must make Mark promise not to mention the scorpions.
And then, in the last hour of her manic making ready, she gave herself some fine stigmata: standing on a wobbly stool, attempting to rehang a cupboard door that had come unhinged, she knocked herself in the eye and it immediately pooled with blood. She made things much worse by daubing it with that “magic” seaweed that Aminata had pressed on her, filmy green strips used on the island for everything from wound cleaner to omelette filler (thank goodness her readers couldn’t get hold of any). The eye became so goopy and inflamed that she had to wear a makeshift patch—a cosmetic pad under a rakishly angled bandanna that kept slipping like a badly tied blindfold.
Yet with all her cleaning, she couldn’t scrape away the bad feeling that she carried inside her and that became more acutely disagreeable as Phyllis’s visit approached. She got up early and immediately sought the shower, soaping and scrubbing herself in the hottest water she could stand. In the past, morning had been the Hubbards’ time for sex. The ingrained impulse alone accounted for her unease as she woke, even when Mark wasn’t there, and for her unclean feeling, if only because it led her each day, before she’d even washed her face, to thoughts of Giovana. And the day after he returned, only four before Phyllis was due, the same difficulty followed her to the next trial—of breakfast.
Regarding Mark across the table, all she could see was his decline, and travel fatigue didn’t account for it. He looked gray, pouchy along the jawline. His jokes were reflexive, also old. As he fiddled with the tea strainer, his bottom lip slid out a fraction—once sexy, suddenly irritating, elderly. His habit of constantly fingercombing his hair seemed vain and faggy, and of course the egg and jam at the corner of his mouth were positively enraging. (She felt sure they wouldn’t be there with Giovana across the table.) She could manage this surfeit of hostility only by avoiding him, walking outside when he came in, pretending to be asleep when he ambled into the bedroom, drunk, more often than not. But it wasn’t just Mark. Even the birds—perhaps the thing she loved most on St. Jacques—looked tainted.
Gangs of parrots ruled the tall eucalyptus trees behind the house, their piercing screech echoing through the valley. At first she’d been thrilled to see them, with their paint-box colors. Now she felt there was something delinquent about them, likeworkers on a building site, with their steady stream of indecent whistles. On that last day of her preparations, Jean with her sweaty eye patch was convinced she could feel their ridicule sweeping down at her on that mentholated breeze, heckling her efforts. Head bowed, she just kept on sweeping, like a crazy pirate trying to
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