But seen from her beach chair, the house has some promise: a bungalow built on a half-acre lot, quite a rare thing to find here, she’s told, a full parcel; now developers pack cookie-cutter homes on such plots. The problem is the light flow. There aren’t enough windows, and the windows aren’t big enough and face the wrong way. Instead of a view of the garden, for instance, the den boasts a view of the barbed border wall; the windows in the bedroom are long, skinny rectangles with views of the shrubs at the side of the house. The whole thing looks huddled up against its surroundings, making do, hunkered down, with its eyes tightly shut, as if dreaming of its natural habitat (Aspen), some mountainside wood and not luscious Accra.
Still, the bones are redeemable, she thinks, dragging slowly and squinting her eyes as she blows out the smoke. If she knocked down some walls and inserted some windows, big sliding-door windows, the place might just sing. Kweku would love it, she thinks, without warning, and sits up, alarmed by the visceral pain. He is gone now comes next, with another tsunami, subsuming, washing over and rising within. A bit like contractions. A thing that comes, passes. She bends at the waist, waiting, closing her eyes.
“Madame, are you fine?” Mr. Ghartey is calling.
Amina rushes over with suds on her hands. “Madame, can we help?”
Fola looks at the woman, much prettier than she’d realized when seen this close up. Amina peers down at her, genuinely worried. Fola feels the worry and smiles, nodding, “Yes. Would you mix me a drink in the kitchen, Amina? One quarter cup of vodka from the freezer, not the bar. Three quarter cups of tonic water, four solid ice cubes. A single slice of lemon, no seeds in. All right?”
Amina nods. “Yes, Madame.”
“Thank you, Amina.”
Amina frowns. “Yes, Madame.” Hurries inside.
Fola leans back with her hand on her pelvis. A newly found “quadrant,” the lower-down fifth. A strange and deep longing here, throbbing, almost sexual — in fact, only sexual, she notes with some shock. And why on earth not? she thinks, laughing, now crying, when he was her lover for all of those years, and damn good, if she’s honest, it was that which convinced her, the sheer desperation with which he made love, as if all that he wanted for all of those hours (and hours: he was careful, and thorough, and slow) was to get to the bottom of it, all of the longing and wanting and striving through which they had lived, was to plunge to the depths of it, all the way into it, naked and sweating, afloat in the void.
She still couldn’t say if he ever touched the bottom, ever felt his big toe bump against the pool floor, but he’d drift down all night and she’d hold him, go with him, go find him if ever he stayed down too long. As the one night, in Boston, in the small house, Mr. Chalé’s, when she found him by the pull-out watching Taiwo asleep. She had touched him very gently, but startled him badly. He was still breathing heavily when they went back to bed. When he pulled her, not roughly, toward him, from behind her, and lifted her nightdress with one fluid move, and then entered, heart throbbing, her back to his stomach, his hand on her face, then her breast, then her thigh. His chest was still heaving against her, an hour, two hours. Moving slowly, and deeply, a dive. Downward and downward, until she was aching. “Enough,” she said softly. He came, then he wept.
This was a man, she had felt, one could live with, build a life with, whatever “a life” might yet mean: who gave all to the living, with deep, trembling breathing, his life to protecting the living from death. Though he knew it was futile. The way he made love, as if now were forever, gone deaf to the rest, as if breathing were music and hovels were ballrooms and all that they needed to do was to dance. It was this that convinced her despite his low wages for nearly two decades and everything else, that her husband made love like a man who loved life. That he put up a fight where she conceded defeat.
Now she is laughing and crying in her beach chair. Mr. Ghartey is watching, alarmed, from his perch. Mustafah abandons the car and just stares with his mouth hanging open, the hose on the loose. Amina hurries back with an earthenware tray, with the glass and the drink in a measuring jug. Fola laughs harder, says, “Thank you, Amina,” and swigs from the jug.
Amina stares at her, shocked. “Madame, but, the glass.”
“This is perfect,” says Fola. She takes off her sunglasses, wipes off her eyes. “Thank you, Amina.” The telephone is ringing. Amina goes to get it, comes back, still aghast.
“The telephone, Madame.”
“Who is it, Amina?” She takes another swig from the measuring jug.
“A sir, Madame.”
“Is it? A sir with a name?”
“No, Madame.”
“Very well. To the sir with no name.” She gets up, still laughing, and crosses the garden. Through the doors, to the foyer. She picks up the phone. “Benson,” she says.
“Mom, it’s Olu.”
She straightens. “Olu, my darling, how are you?”
“We’re fine. We’re coming tomorrow. The five of us.”
“Lovely.” For a moment it doesn’t strike her that the number is off. The five of them. Olu and Taiwo and Kehinde and Sadie. And Kweku. She bends at the waist. Another wave passes. She whispers, “Four, darling. The four of you.”
“Ling’s coming also.”
“Of course.” She wipes her eyes quickly. “I’ll make up the guest rooms. I fired my driver so I’ll be there myself.”
“Of course.” Olu laughs. “It’s the Delta.”
“I know it.” They laugh again, together, and, presently, hang up.
• • •
She stands at the table in the mountainside foyer with her hand on the telephone, catching her breath. Olu and Taiwo and Kehinde and Sadie. All four, her whole oeuvre, her body of work. All here, in this house, with its retro wood furniture. And Ling, she thinks, smiling; at last he brings Ling. Her tall, guarded son who feels, more than the rest of them, frightened of loving, uncertain of love. And her baby, whom she hasn’t called once since October, since that day in the kitchen, that horrid exchange. She’d heard Sadie sitting just outside of the bathroom, had heard her “I’m leaving,” but couldn’t reply. Had just sat, staring blankly at the trees out the window, the light in the leaves at that hour like oil, like the light on that evening in the autumn in Brookline when Kehinde came in and she knew one was gone. And they. Her ibeji, whom she hasn’t seen in decades, since watching them walk to their gate in their coats, airline escort beside them, Kehinde turning to face her, to wave and to smile, Taiwo not, marching on. The children who returned to Logan Airport, months later, now fourteen years old with their skin tanned to clay and their eyes — her mother’s eyes, which she’d found so disturbing — were not the same children. Not children at all. All of them. Coming. Together. Tomorrow. She wants to tell someone, to shout of her joy. But looks at her hand on the old Slimline phone and thinks, letting it go, There is no one to call. “Amina!” she calls. “Let’s go make up the bedrooms.”
Amina comes running. “Yes, Madame.”
Part III. GO
1
Mr. Lamptey sleeps balanced at the edge of the ocean, a foot from the foam line, legs crossed and eyes closed, palms on kneecaps, back upright, the stray waiting, patient, its eyes on the water, its chin on its paws. The ocean moves, lazily, forward and backward, advancing to a point near the paws and then not, a few inches, no more, of net movement, indecisive, redrawing its borders then rolling them back. Does the water not wish to come further, in conquest, own more beachfront property? Subdue more damp sand? Apparently not. Forward, backward, net change a few inches, while bored with this, watching, the clouds start to yawn.