What Happens in Paradise(89)

“The bigger news is that we’re doing more business down here. In both the USVIs and the BVIs. Maybe we could even go to the BVIs together.”

“You mean…Jost?” Jost Van Dyke was a party island. That was true when I was growing up but it’s even more so now. Everyone loved Foxy’s and the Soggy Dollar.

“I mean Anegada,” he said. “Have you ever been?”

I had been to Anegada once, long ago. Before Mama met Huck, she had briefly dated a lobsterman who took us to Anegada for the day on his fishing boat. Anegada is the most remote of the British Virgin Islands and unlike any of the others in that it’s just a spit of flat white sand. There are a few businesses, a few bars, a few homes, hundreds of flamingos, thousands of lobsters, and not much else. I hadn’t been impressed with it at thirteen, but now, as a lovers’ getaway, it held enormous appeal.

“When can we go?” I asked.



December 18, 2015

Russ and I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s rolled into one during our three days on Anegada. We went over on Bluebeard on Monday and the captain said he’d be back for us on Thursday. We stayed in a simple white clapboard cottage on the most pristine beach imaginable. I thought the sand on St. John was white but it looks positively dingy compared to Anegada’s. The cottage had a big white bed and a tiny kitchen that Russ had arranged to have stocked with provisions. Our mornings consisted of sleeping in, followed by coffee, fruit, and toast on the balcony overlooking the sea. Unlike on St. John, there were no other islands on the horizon. It was a bizarre feeling, even for me, to stare out at nothing but water. At least on St. John, I felt connected to a larger whole, seeing St. Thomas, Water Island, Little St. James, and St. Croix in the distance. Here, we might have been perched on the edge of the world.

We made love, we walked on the beach, we fell asleep in the sun. In the late afternoons, our supper was delivered: lobster fritters; lobster bisque; baked, stuffed, or boiled lobster with butter. We drank champagne with our lobster; it seemed only fitting, and there were a dozen bottles of Krug in the refrigerator.

I used to drink champagne with Oscar and I had forgotten how tipsy it made me.

“Now that you’ve bought the villa in Little Cinnamon,” I said, “will Irene come down?” This was my biggest fear. I could handle the idea of Irene but I could not handle the reality of Irene coming to stay on my island.

“No,” he said. He went on to tell me a story about an ill-fated trip to Jamaica when the boys were young. They had wandered off, gotten lost in a shantytown near the hotel. Irene had been frantic; the trip left her scarred. She hated the Caribbean.

“Besides, she’s consumed with our project at home,” Russ said. He cleared his throat. He knew I disliked it when he used words like we and our to describe him and Irene. The project he was referring to is a Victorian fixer-upper that Irene had begged him to buy; she was desperate to restore it “to period.”

I sipped my champagne and thought about Irene immersed in a home-renovation project in Iowa City. How vastly different that life was from my own. I suppose that’s part of the appeal for Russ, part of the point. He has a wife and a mistress—I’m not sure what else to call myself—and I suppose that we nourish different parts of him. I’m sex and lobster and champagne-drinking under a blanket of stars. Irene is home and hearth, mother of the boys, keeper of the traditions that make a family.

Can I lure Russ away from her? Can I make him feel his family is here? I can try.

In the new year, I decided, I’m going to introduce him to Maia.



February 11, 2016

I told Maia she was going to meet a friend of mine but that it was a secret and she wasn’t to talk about this friend to anyone, including Huck.

Then I hated myself.

But I can’t have it both ways. I can let Maia meet Russ and make sure she keeps it quiet, or I can not introduce them at all.

Maia said she understood. She looked at me with her wise-child eyes and repeated what I’d told her: Russ was a friend of mine but I didn’t want the whole island talking about it and I didn’t want Huck to know because he wouldn’t like it.

Why wouldn’t he like it? Maia wanted to know. I could see her backing away from any situation that Huck might not approve of. Maia is devoted to Huck. He is God, Santa Claus, and Justin Bieber rolled into one.

“He would like it,” I said. “He wants me to be happy. But I’m not ready to tell Huck about it, only you. Russ is a person for just you and me, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

We visited Russ at the villa in Little Cinnamon. When he shook Maia’s hand, he slipped her a cherry lollipop, which she accepted only after I said it was okay. He asked her if she wanted to play Chutes and Ladders. She said yes, then added, “But just so you know, I always win.”

I won’t go so far as to say it was an instant success. Maia didn’t care about any old white guy except for Huck. But I will say they got along fine. Russ was charmed, maybe even smitten, and as I watched them play their game—Maia won handily, landing on only ladders while Russ’s rolls put him on only chutes—it struck me how much they looked alike, how their mannerisms were similar, their earnest, goofy enthusiasm matched.

She is his daughter. No doubt about it.



April 8, 2016

Maia and I went back to the villa in Little Cinnamon last week.