Now a steady trickle of customers began and, as if they believed they were back inside the walls of the Beauty Queen, people talked more freely. I was surprised at their candour, though they kept their voices low when they discussed the rally. The day had gone well in the main, but there had been trouble from a few of the marchers, men that no one had recognised. Constabulary men in civilian clothes, or thugs hired to discredit the protesters. I listened, looking around me every now and then, alert for new faces.
When Eddie’s Mercedes pulled up at the kerb, the conversation stilled and everyone turned to watch him get out of the car. Behind him, I could see Cesar. I slipped through the crowd to return to the boarding house, still too stiff and slow to run properly. Aunt Mary was waiting in the sala, her handbag ready by her feet. She left with me immediately.
When we arrived, Eddie was sitting in one of the salon chairs, his legs crossed, his hands clasped in his lap. He was smiling. Cesar stood beside him, glaring at Lady Jessica, who leaned in towards the lawyer, her hands on her hips, her breathing harsh and rapid. Jaynie reached forward and touched her friend’s shoulder lightly. Lady Jessica folded her arms and took a step back. ‘We don’t want to move across town,’ Jaynie said calmly. ‘We live here. Our customers live here.’
‘Here,’ said Eddie, ‘is going to change.’ His voice was affable, dismissive, as if he were making a humorous observation over dinner. A murmur of displeasure snaked through the crowd. Aunt Mary pushed her way through and slid into the chair next to Eddie. Without a word she opened her purse, pushed some notes into Jaynie’s hand and said, ‘I’ll leave it up to you this time, Jaynie.’ Eddie looked surprised and then amused. He greeted her and though Aunt Mary nodded in his direction, she didn’t turn to meet his eye. Then, as everyone looked on, Mary Morelos’ hair was combed and pinned and measured and cut. Eddie looked around at the sea of faces, becoming aware perhaps of the temperature change that Aunt Mary, in her own small, calculated way, had caused. He got to his feet and, with Cesar a few steps behind him, started back to the car. There was nothing to be done about it; despite not having her family’s money, despite the years of taking paying strangers into her home, round here Aunt Mary was still somebody.
The new haircut made her look younger and even the boys complimented her when we returned home, after the salon furniture had been carried away piece by piece to the apartments and garages and storage rooms of friends and neighbours, after it had been stacked and dismantled, and the Beauty Queen parlour had finally closed for business.
Cockroaches
My father stood in the doorway of Jonah’s office, cap in hand, eyeing the line of outriggers that bobbed in the surf. The boats were light, the boatmen already asleep under their canopies, legs striped with sunlight. Inside the office, Jonah sat with his feet up on a crate, rubbing his hands back and forth across the top of his head. He was red in the face, his eyes and lips pressed tightly shut, his breathing deliberate. In front of him, his ex-wife Margie paced up and down looking in scarcely better humour. In her pale suit — the jacket still on despite the heat, the line of the skirt tapering towards matching shoes — she looked like she belonged in a skyscraper, behind a glass desk. As I approached, my father said gratefully, ‘My boy’s here.’
But Jonah beckoned me in and said, ‘Joseph! A beautiful day, eh?’
‘You never listened to reason, not once in your life,’ Margie said, dismissing me with a glance. Jonah frowned at me; like my father, my presence had proved to be no deterrent at all.
‘I keep telling you — it’s not just about me. What about my boys?’ he said.
‘I didn’t marry your boys.’
‘You didn’t marry me for very long,’ said Jonah. He looked away, avoided looking back, aware immediately of his mistake. Margie turned round to glare at me and my father. My father took my arm and, darting an apologetic look at Jonah, pulled me away. He kept hold of my arm until we reached the sea wall.
The jetty was quieter than usual and beyond it an empty blue sea fell away. Two of the jetty boys were shifting the last sacks from the sand up to the road; the rest were smoking and playing cards or shooting hoops, but they seemed more listless than usual, even Subong. From the sea wall I could still make out the sound of Margie and Jonah arguing in between the rush of waves against sand and stone. I felt bad about abandoning Jonah when everyone knew there was little that upset him more than Margie. My father must have been thinking the same thing, for he said softly, ‘Got no business coming between a man and his wife.’ In any case, Jonah didn’t have to face her for long. Shortly, we heard the door of his office fly open and Margie’s voice say, ‘Fine!’ We turned to see her snatch her handbag from a chair. The bag was the same colour as her suit and shoes. She stalked to a waiting car, climbed into the back and was driven away.
Jonah came to the door and watched her go, watched until the car had disappeared entirely. Then he walked over to where we sat. He looked weary. ‘Construction’s started down the road,’ he said. ‘She figures this place won’t be around for much longer. She wants me to go work for her family.’
‘A job’s a job,’ my father said. ‘Why not just take it? She’s just trying to look out for you. She’s still your wife.’ He sounded impatient, a tone I hadn’t heard him use with Jonah before.
Jonah clapped him on the back. ‘I’m not built to sit behind a desk, Dante,’ he said. He patted his pregnancy. My father raised his hands in defeat; Jonah always escaped into humour if a matter got too serious for his liking. ‘Maybe I should ask her to find you a job,’ Jonah added. ‘Now that you’ve taken on the trouble of a second family.’
My father looked shaken. He evaded my eye. ‘What could I do?’ he said. ‘I never finished high school. You at least started college.’
‘Started, never finished,’ Jonah sounded almost proud. I’d never known this about him, that he’d come so close to a different life. I opened my mouth to ask him about it but my father said, ‘As many endings as beginnings,’ and in the time it took me to think about this the moment was lost.
The sight of another of Margie’s departures seemed to deflate Jonah and he retreated to his office, closing the door behind him. When he was gone, more for want of something to say than because I was interested, I asked my father about Lorna and the baby. Even as I asked, it irked me that this girl and her child had become the main currency of conversation between us. Lately, when I looked at my father, he seemed more tired to me, older, and I was stung by his willingness to take up the fight again for her, when she was little more than a stranger, and at a time in his own life when he might otherwise have rested. ‘She’s doing well,’ he said. ‘Missy visits and the child is gaining weight.’
‘Great,’ I said.
‘She went through all the names beginning with L and then decided on Marisol.’ He laughed at this and then added, gravely, ‘I think she misses her mother.’
There had been no word from the House-on-Wheels since the day after the birth, when the broken cart had rolled off along the coast road towards Little Laguna. My father stared now into the distance, southwards — the direction in which the cart had gone — and I saw that he was worried. I thought it unlikely he was concerned for their safety; Lottie and Lando were street people, wily, alert to every opportunity for survival. Lando had likened his family to cockroaches, able to survive even a nuclear bomb, he’d said. I suspected, rather, that my father believed their return would stamp some final seal of approval on Lorna’s entry into his household and he was anxious to show that she and the child were thriving, that he hadn’t harmed her in any way.