Without a Grave (7 page)

‘When Bahamians need another bedroom, they don't build a room on to their house. They build a cottage nearby and call it a snore box.'

‘I thought you said I could sleep in the bunk house.'

‘It is a bunk house, but because people sleep in it, they call it a snore box.'

‘I don't snore, Grandma.'

I decided to shift gears myself before this conversation with my just-the-facts-ma'am granddaughter started running in circles. ‘Can I talk to your mother, Chloe?'

Chloe ignored the question. Something else was weighing heavily on her mind. ‘Where's Timmy going to sleep?'

‘Timmy can sleep in a bedroom with your mother.'

‘Good,' she said, clearly satisfied. ‘Well, bye!'

The line went silent for a few seconds, and then Chloe belted out ‘Mommy!' so close to the mouthpiece that I feared it would rupture the teeny-tiny speakers on my iPhone. They were still working fine, though, when Emily came on the line a minute later. She told me she'd arranged two weeks off from work, their e-tickets were already purchased, and all she needed was the ferry schedule. I gave her the URL for Albury's.

‘We can't wait to share this magical place with you,' I told my daughter.

‘It's going to be the best Christmas ever. You're terrific, Mom.'

‘I may be aces in the Mom department, but I'm a failure as a housewife,' I confessed to Paul a few minutes later as we sat at the table having lunch, a couscous vegetable sauté with bits of his favorite spicy sausage thrown in.

Paul shoveled a forkful into his mouth. ‘You could have fooled me,' he said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘This is delicious.'

I'd planned macaroni and cheese, but mac and cheese was a challenge without milk. We'd barbecued the last of the steaks the night before and, in a weak moment, I'd fed Dickie the remaining can of tuna. Water-packed white albacore, too. I hope the greedy cat was grateful.

Tip for island living: Never run out of something on a Saturday night because the stores don't open again 'til Monday morning. Or, Tuesday, if Monday's a holiday. I was once caught for three days without eggs before becoming familiar with Bahamian holidays. Labor Day is the first Friday in June, Independence Day is celebrated on the tenth of July and Whit Monday, a moveable feast like Easter, can slide around and sneak up on you in May or even June. Hawksbill Cay residents took Sundays and their holidays seriously.

‘Nothing in the cupboard for dinner, though,' I told him as I got up to clear my plate. ‘Unless you want to go all caveman on me and club some protein to death.'

‘Bahamian ground squirrels?' he suggested.

I snapped him with the dish towel. ‘You could try fishing,' I suggested sweetly.

‘I have a better idea. Let's go to dinner at the Cruise Inn and Conch Out. My treat.'

‘Brilliant!' I kissed his cheek. ‘I think I've tried everything except Cassie's curried crayfish.' I paused for a moment. ‘Lobster's in season, isn't it?'

‘August through March,' said my husband, trotting out his nautical knowledge once again. ‘So unless she's got some frozen, you're out of luck.'

I folded my arms and pouted.

‘Poor Hannah,' Paul said, rising from his chair with his plate in hand. It was his turn to do the dishes. ‘You better call Cassie, though, to make sure they're serving tonight.'

While Paul squirted dish liquid into the sink and started the hot water going, I went to the radio, picked up the microphone and pressed the talk button. ‘Cruise Inn, Cruise Inn, this is
Windswept
. Come in.'

‘
Windswept
, this is Cruise Inn. Up one?'

‘Roger.' I turned the dial to Channel 69 and pressed the talk button again. ‘
Windswept
on six nine.'

‘Go ahead,
Windswept
.'

‘Cassie, this is Hannah Ives. Just wanted to see if you were open tonight.'

‘Sure thing. Just you and Paul?'

‘Right. No visitors as yet, but I'm expecting our family over the holidays.'

‘That'll be nice.' I could hear the clinking of crockery in the background, then white noise as Cassie released her finger from the talk button while she consulted the notebook in which she kept track of reservations. Several seconds later, she was back. ‘See you tonight, then. Six OK?'

‘Perfect. Thanks.
Windswept
, out.'

‘Out.'

I slipped the microphone back in its slot, then turned to my husband. ‘Five hours until dinner. What do you want to do in the meantime?'

Paul had been wiping the countertops down. He tossed the sponge he'd been using into the sink and crooked his finger at me. ‘I have an idea.'

I walked into his open arms.

He cupped my chin, lifting it for a kiss.

As the bananaquits squabbled outside the window, I drew away and looked into his eyes. ‘Uh, let me guess. Hunt for sand dollars?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘Hike around the island?'

‘Nope.'

‘I guess you'll just have to show me, then.'

So he did.

The sun was still high and the Sea of Abaco smooth as glass when we set out for Hawksbill Cay that evening in
Pro Bono
, dressed in our Sunday best: chinos fresh off the clothesline and long-sleeved T-shirts.

After crossing the channel and entering the harbor, Paul aimed
Pro Bono
straight for the government dock. Just as it seemed he would crash into a piling head-on, Paul shoved the tiller all the way to the right causing the boat to drift sideways where it came to rest neatly against the foot of the ladder, starboard side to. ‘Show-off,' I said, as I clambered up the ladder with the painter in hand and tied the boat off. Paul followed, grinning hugely, carrying a tote of white wine.

Hawksbill Cay was dry, and you couldn't buy cigarettes there, either. There was no law against it. In this conservative, deeply religious community, it simply wasn't done. At the Cruise Inn and Conch Out, thank goodness, it was BYOB, and almost everyone except the locals did.

At the restaurant, we stepped into a blast of welcome air conditioning to find Albert standing behind the counter, drying glasses with a clean white towel. ‘Hey, Al.'

‘Hey!' A mountain of a man in any case, Al's ever-expanding waistline bore silent testimony to his wife's culinary talents. He wore his trademark tropical shirt tucked into Bermuda shorts belted low around his hips, Teva thongs on his feet. A diamond stud decorated his left ear.

The restaurant was already crowded, but I could see a few free tables. ‘Where shall we sit?'

Al eased his bulk from behind the counter and escorted us to a table for eight near the door with a plastic ‘Reserved' card propped up against the salt, pepper and D'Vanya's Junkanoo hot sauce caddy. As the popular restaurant filled up we knew we'd probably end up sharing a table with other diners, family-style, but that was sometimes half the fun.

Paul and I took seats across from one another at the end of the table farthest from the door. By the time we got settled, Al had returned with the menu, hand printed on a tall, narrow chalkboard with ‘Cruise Inn and Conch Out' painted across the top in pink and orange script. He propped the chalkboard up on a chair and gave us time to study the selections while he went to fetch iced tea and glasses for our wine.

Around these parts, there are usually only four entrées: mahi-mahi, grouper, conch and lobster. It's how they're prepared that makes all the difference, and Cassie was a genius. No lobster, alas, but that night the mahi-mahi came broiled with a Parmesan cream sauce, and Al must have made a visit to the grocery in Marsh Harbour because there was a special – prime rib – heading up the menu.

No need to specify sides. I knew everything would be accompanied by coleslaw and by a rice and bean combination Bahamians called ‘peas-and-rice.' Fried plantains, too, if we were lucky.

While Paul made up his mind, I looked around, checking out the other diners and admiring the décor. Plantation shutters covered the windows, with valences made of Androsia, a colorful batik woven and hand dyed on the Bahamian island of Andros, many miles to the south. Matching fabric covered the tables, which were protected from stains and splatters by paper place mats printed with a fanciful, not-to-scale drawing of Hawksbill Cay and the neighboring islands. Numbers on the map were keyed to local businesses whose ads framed the place mat.

One of Andy Albury's ship models hung on the wall over the salad bar, and paintings by other local artists decorated the remaining walls. One image in particular caught my eye, a huge satellite photo of Hurricane Floyd.

I excused myself for a moment to use the restroom, stopping on my way to take a closer look at the photo. At the moment it was taken, in September 1999, Floyd was a dense white donut almost six hundred miles in diameter, and the hole of the donut – the eye of the storm – was smack dab over Abaco. Floyd looked surprisingly benign from that altitude, yet underneath that snow-white swirl I knew that from the Abacos to Key West to Cape Fear, homes and lives were being devastated.

I found the restroom – a small room with two stalls – clean, as usual, and pleasantly pine-scented. Curtains made of patchwork Androsia covered the single window and hid the spare rolls of toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning supplies Cassie kept under the sink.

I did what I had to do and was washing my hands when the door to the other stall creaked open. In the mirror, I saw the reflection of a young woman wearing white shorts, a blue T-shirt, and a pair of oversized Jackie-O sunglasses. In spite of the sunglasses, I recognized her right away. I turned around. ‘Alice!'

The girl smiled when she recognized me. ‘Hi, Hannah.'

‘You eating here tonight? I didn't see Jaime.'

Alice stepped up to the sink and twisted the hot-water tap. ‘Nah. I was out taking a walk. Just stopped in to use the bathroom.' She put a finger to her lips. ‘Don't tell.'

I laughed. ‘I'm sure nobody minds.' Meanwhile, I wondered why Alice kept her sunglasses on indoors; the sun wasn't exactly blinding inside the Cruise Inn and Conch Out ladies room at six fifteen in the evening. Then I noticed a stain on her fair face, a purple discoloration that began at the corner of her eye, mutating into shades of green and yellow as it merged into the hairline at her left temple.

‘Ooh,' I gasped before I could stop myself. ‘What happened to your eye?'

‘It's awful, isn't it?' Alice tipped the sunglasses up to her forehead so I could admire the damage. ‘Jaime's got this sailboat and I didn't duck in time.' She waggled her fingers. ‘There's this thingy that holds the sail.' She demonstrated by holding her arm out stiffly in front of her.

‘The boom.'

‘Boom. Yeah. It clipped me one.' She snatched a couple of paper towels out of the dispenser, dried her hands, chucked the used towels into the waste-paper basket and chirped, ‘Well, gotta go. Nice talking to you.'

Leaving me with my mouth hanging open. And wet hands.

When dinner arrived at our table, Cassie served it herself.

People used to seeing Cassie standing behind a counter were often surprised by how slim her legs were, how trim her ankles. The heavy thighs and ultra-wide hips those delicate limbs supported had nothing to do with calories and everything with genetics. The islanders had been intermarrying for two centuries. Until recently, hereditary blindness had not been uncommon. After a study by the Baltimore Geographic Society early in the last century (which
still
makes the locals froth at the mouth!), the islanders had been encouraged to marry off-island, or to adopt. Cassie and Al – who were quadruple cousins – had taken this on board. Their daughters who charged around the restaurant when Cassie's mother wasn't available to rein the little girls in, were Korean, about as far off-island as you can get.

I was halfway through my mahi-mahi and Paul was making headway on his steak when Al appeared at our table with a stranger in tow. ‘Here's someone I'd like you to meet. Henry Allen, warden of the Out Island Land and Sea Park. You'll be snorkeling over there soon, I hear.'

I grinned. ‘No secrets on Hawksbill, are there?'

Al grinned back. ‘Henry, this is Paul and Hannah Ives staying at
Windswept
over on Bonefish. Paul's a professor at the Naval Academy in the States.'

I sighed. How about me? Did I have no identity? Not so long ago I was head of records management at a major Washington DC accounting firm. Considering the current financial climate, however, I had to confess my relief at being riffed
before
the company went belly up. So what was I now? Ex-records manager? Wife, mother, grandmother, sister, sister-in-law, friend? All these, yes, and survivor, too. But not exactly suitable abbreviations to follow my name on a business card.

‘Join us, please,' said Paul while I was sitting there like a lump, feeling sorry for myself.

‘What will you have to eat, Henry?' Al pointed to the chalkboard.

Henry didn't even consult it. ‘The dolphin, if you've got it, Al. Broiled.'

When we first hit the Bahamas, seeing ‘dolphin' on the menu had me worried. I quickly learned that ‘dolphin' is dolphin fish. Mahi-mahi. Dorado. Weighs from ten to thirty pounds, with a flat, protruding forehead. A dazzling golden, blue and green when pulled from the water, not a gray, bottle-nosed mammal like its namesake. Not Flipper, thank heaven.

‘Broiled dolphin, coming up.' Al disappeared into the kitchen to turn in Henry's order.

Henry snatched off his ball cap to reveal a full head of densely curled auburn hair. He laid the cap on the chair next to him. ‘There's a meeting over in Hope Town week from Wednesday,' he announced without preamble. ‘A consortium of local citizens and second-home owners have banded together to try and stop Mueller's development.'