“You remembered,” Taiwo says. “Eighth grade. The muses.”
“Hey!” Sadie turns to Kehinde. “She gets nine paintings and I get a card?”
“They’re not finished,” he mumbles, hurrying over to the canvases. Beginning with Erato, he turns them around.
“Stop. What’re you doing?” says Taiwo.
“They’re not finished.”
“Stop,” she says quietly, touches his arm.
And leaves it, her hand on his forearm, turned upward. He looks at her, tensing, too startled to speak. “He’s dead, K. He died. That’s the bad part. In Ghana. A heart attack. Yesterday morning, I think.” He is thinking of the question when she answers, “We’re going. Olu bought tickets. Tomorrow at six.” He looks at her hand on his arm. She squeezes harder. His shirt has slipped back from the scars on his wrist. He starts to pull back, but she holds even harder, stares harder, demanding his eyes with her gaze. He looks at his sister. She looks at his forearm. She drops her hand quickly now, seeing the scars. “I’m sorry,” they say in such similar voices that neither is sure that the other one spoke.
7
Ling is rapping gently on the bathroom door. “Olu?”
He has fallen asleep with his head on his knees. He opens his eyes and coughs roughly, disoriented. “Yes?”
“Are you in there? Can I come in?”
“Yes.”
She opens the door and peers in. “Hello, sleepy. I thought you left.”
“No.”
“You were here all this time then?”
“Yes.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.” He stares at her blankly.
“You smell like smoke.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Yes, dear, I know.”
“A woman at the hospital had just lost her husband,” he says, and, as flatly, “My father is dead.”
“Baby.” She covers her mouth. “I’m so sorry.” She enters the bathroom and kneels on the floor. She places her hands on his kneecaps and rubs them. She hugs his legs, resting her head in his lap. “I’m so sorry. What happened?” She looks at him. “Tell me.”
“A heart attack.”
“When?”
“Their time, morning. I guess.” He speaks in a monotone, entirely without feeling. He shakes his head, squinting, trying to break from the fog. Still, there is nothing but dull, heavy numbness. He stares down at Ling, trying to see her, to feel. “We’re going to Ghana. Tomorrow. My family.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Too quickly, “You can’t.”
Both of them start, at the clip of this answer. Ling stands up, tensing. He straightens his back. As in fire at will. “Meaning what?” she shoots quickly. He shakes his head, presses his palms to his eyes. “I have the week off. I’ll come with you.”
“I know that. And thank you for thinking to offer to come.”
“Offer to come? You’re my husband, remember? It’s kind of a thing a wife offers to do.”
“Don’t, Ling. Don’t do that.”
“Do what, please?” Reloading.
“We said nothing changes. No name change, no rings.” He rubs his head, frowning. Has not meant to say this, and tries to explain it, “We’re still who we were. You said ‘you’re my husband’—”
“You are.”
“No, I know that. But we said it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t change things with us. Those words, husband, wife, they’re just words, they’re not mandates—” He stops, grabs his head. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“I think you do, Olu.” She shakes her head quickly. “I won’t come to Ghana.”
He looks at her, pained. “I should go with my family.”
“I thought I was your family.”
“No,” he says, desperate, “you’re better than that.” He squeezes his eyes shut to bid back the tearfall. He feels her small hands on the sides of his face. Her lips on his lips, then the taste of her toothpaste. The smell of her, Jergens, Chanel No. 5. “Ling,” he says, breaking. He still does not touch her. She holds his head gently and he doesn’t resist. “I don’t want to be a family,” he says to her, anguished, as a child says, exhausted, I don’t want to go to bed. “I don’t believe in family. I didn’t want a family. I wanted us to be something better than that.”
The phone in his scrubs pocket rings now, abruptly. For a moment he ignores it, not wanting to move. He wishes to stay here forever, in this posture, his head on her breastbone, her hands on his cheeks, in a space very small and contained, like a bathroom.
“Should you answer,” she says gently. Without the question mark.
He pulls out the phone without looking and answers. “Hello, this is Olu.”
“It’s Kehinde.”
“…” with shock.
“Kehinde. Your brother.”
“I know who you are.” He is smiling. He is lying. He doesn’t, never has. Has never known Kehinde, never really comprehended how he moves through things so loosely, never straining. That he’s somehow in this manner become a remarkably successful artist only confuses Olu further. Still, he’s smiling. “There you are.” The sound of his brother’s soft voice and soft laughter, the same as their mother’s, is soothing somehow. “Where are you?”
“In Brooklyn. With Sadie and Taiwo.”
“…” More shock.
“Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Olu says. He blinks, trying to process. “You said you’re all there, right?”
Here, Kehinde’s voice catches. After a moment, “We’re all here.”
“So, tomorrow,” says Olu. “We’ll meet you at the consulate. We’ll get our rush visas, eat lunch, and go straight.”
“Who’s we?”
“Ling and I. We’re both coming,” he says, as she kisses his forehead, her tears on his face.
“I’m glad.”
“I’ll call Mom, let her know we’re all coming.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“’Til tomorrow.”
“Take care.”
8
Fola sits smoking at the edge of the lawn in a beach chair she’s lodged by a palm in the shade. She knows that she shouldn’t — she was married to a doctor and raised one; she knows that it’s foolish at best — but she puffs with great relish, as an act of defiance, or acceptance, complicit with the riddle of death. To do or not do this or that to live longer, as if longevity might be purchased with exemplary health, this is foolish, she thinks. Surely vegan nonsmokers get struck by stray bullets and cars all the time?
The house staff is working, pretending to ignore her, Mr. Ghartey at his post by the thick metal gate and the housegirl Amina washing clothes in a bucket, the houseboy little Mustafah, the car in the drive. When she arrived there was a driver, a Brother Joshua, very awkward, a Christian fanatic with a thing for the brake, who had ferried her about in sudden violent lurches forward, blasting Ghanaian gospel music without respite. He is gone. When she ran into Benson at MaxMart last Thursday she mentioned the need and he said he would help, but she rather enjoys getting lost, driving, aimless, windows down, zipping along the ocean. Alone. She’ll coast down La-Teshie Road past the black targets, the training site, gallows of Ghana’s last coup, with the maudlin Atlantic lapping languidly at the seaweed and plastic debris on the poorly kept beach. It could be quite scenic if anyone cleaned it, if anyone cared that an ocean was there. It could be as gorgeous as Togo, Cap Skiring. Instead, it is Ghana, indifferent and blessed.