What Happens in Paradise Read online

  I considered traveling to the States for the summer. Lots of people here do it. But Russ says that he has some meetings with clients in Grand Cayman and Miami and then he and Irene are spending two weeks in Door County, Wisconsin.

  I had never heard of Door County, Wisconsin, so I looked it up on my computer and what I found were photographs of lakes and barns and orchards and cute little towns with church steeples, ice cream parlors, and antiques stores. It looks like America in the 1950s. When I asked Russ what he and Irene did there, he said they hung out on the lake—fishing, water skiing, swimming. And then in the evenings they played cards, attended fish boils, listened to the loons.

  He asked me how I would spend the summer and I tried to explain about Carnival—it’s a week of music, food, and dancing when nobody sleeps—and then the entire island needs a week to recover. I explained that Huck fished for blue and white marlin in the summer, which brought in a different kind of fisherman. And then in September, Maia would go back to school and everyone would pray there were no storms.

  I told him four months was a long time to be apart. He said he knew that. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me and said that he realized our “arrangement” was unfair to me and he would understand if I wanted to find someone who could give me all the things I deserved—an engagement ring, a home, a future.

  I said, “Yes, I should find someone else.” But I knew I wouldn’t. Because I love Russ. I didn’t tell him that. I want him to say it first. He didn’t say it, however, and what could I think but that he only loved Irene?

  I kissed him goodbye and told him to have a wonderful summer. Enjoy the fish boils in Door County, Wisconsin, and the sound of the loons. I did slip another postcard into his duffel bag saying I would miss him. I didn’t warn him about it. If Irene happened to discover it, oh, well. Russ would have to explain or lie about who M.L. was.

  I’m glad I didn’t allow him to meet Maia. My heart is in danger, but at least hers is safe.

  November 9, 2015

  Russ came back and he had good news, such good news that I’m almost afraid to believe it. His company, Ascension, was looking for investment opportunities and they partnered with a “local real estate concern” (he wouldn’t tell me which one) to buy a hundred and forty acres in west Cinnamon, an area known as Little Cinnamon. They plan to develop the hillside, hire someone to build luxury villas. But the even better news was that the local real estate concern had built one home on spec and lost a lot of money on it, so Russ had bought the villa himself.

  I had questions. Why had Russ been the one to buy it and not Todd or Stephen?

  “They don’t want a house,” Russ said.

  “Really?” I said. Then I thought: Who doesn’t want a house?

  “Really,” Russ said. “They have homes elsewhere. They offered it to me because they know I have interests here.”

  “Interests?” I said. “You mean me.”

  “Yes.”

  “They know about us.”

  “They do.”

  “How?” I said. “Did you…tell them?”

  “No,” he said. “But they’re not naive, Rosie.”

  They weren’t naive; I’d never thought that. In fact, I’d always worried about it. This was a holdover from years earlier, the first time I laid eyes on the three of them, when it seemed like Russ was a sheep running around with a couple of wolves.

  “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.

  Russ asked Maia if there was anything he could add for her at the villa and she said a shuffleboard court.

  Russ said, “I will tell the architects tomorrow to add a shuffleboard court, as long as you promise to play with me.”

  Maia said, “I’ll play with you, but just so you know, I always win.”

  May 23, 2016

  Love is messy and complicated and unfair.

  Russ’s grandson, Floyd, is getting baptized in Iowa City, which is something of an issue because Baker’s wife, Anna, isn’t religious and has only grudgingly agreed to the ceremony.

  “Anna is a doctor,” Russ said. “A real smart cookie.”

  “Smart cookie?” I said. “Please promise me never to use that term in front of her.”

  “I already did,” he admitted. “It didn’t go over well.”

  I don’t know anything about the baptism except that it is happening. I imagine a church full of people with Russ and Irene sitting up front, holding hands. Everyone gazes on them with admiration, not one soul guessing that Russ has a mistress and a daughter in the Caribbean.

  Does he think about us? I wonder. Or does he have a vault in his brain where he locks us, and all the feelings he has for us, away?

  May 30, 2016

  The villa needs some sprucing up, and Russ asked me to make the decorating decisions.

  “I have no taste,” he said. “At home, Irene handles these things.” As soon as he said this, he knew it was a mistake.

  The at home bothered me more than Irene. His home is in Iowa. This is…well, I’m not even sure what to call it. His second place, I guess. I live in second place.

  I told Russ I want no part of any decorating decisions. It’s his villa, not mine. In truth, I don’t want to pick things and then have him compare my taste to Irene’s. Russ asks Paulette Vickers to handle the decorating. It’s Paulette and Douglas from Welcome to Paradise Real Estate who built the villa in the first place, and just as they were about to lose it to the bank, Todd Croft and Russ swung in on a vine; Russ bought the villa and Ascension the hillside. They asked Paulette and Douglas to stay on as property managers. I know them both but I’m not worried about Huck finding out because Paulette is a distant cousin of my father, Levi Small, and the Smalls did not speak to Mama, and they do not speak to Huck.

  I was concerned about what would happen once the other houses were built and sold and suddenly we had neighbors watching my car coming and going from the best villa.

  When I shared this concern with Russ, he said, “We won’t have any neighbors.”

  “We won’t?”

  He clammed up then, which is something he’s been doing more and more frequently, every time I ask him about his work. He’d told me early on that Irene didn’t have the first idea what his work entailed. She couldn’t care less, he said. All she cared about was the money.

  “She wouldn’t care if I were a paid assassin,” he said.

  To differentiate myself from Irene, I tried to understand what Russ does for work. He is executive vice president of customer relations for Ascension, which means, essentially, that he does exactly what he’d done in college when Todd Croft was selling beer in the dorms—he lends him his trustworthy face, his cheerful good-guy demeanor, and his sterling personal reputation. Ascension invests in “high-risk, high-yield” investment opportunities for very wealthy clients, many of them foreign.

  “Why won’t we have neighbors?” I asked. We were down on the private beach—I had decided to leave Maia with Huck so we could have some alone time—sitting together on one of the brand-new chaise longues that Pauline had bought. We were drinking champagne, the Krug. “Russ?”

  I was leaning back against Russ, tucked between his legs, and he murmured into my hair, “We sold those lots to fictional entities. Shell companies that we set up…”

  “So, wait,” I said. “Is that legal?”

  “People do it all the time down here,” Russ said. “To clean money, to hide money.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  Russ squeezed me tight. “This is the Caribbean, Rosie,” he said, as if it weren’t the only home I’d ever known.

  Russ is in the business of money-laundering and tax evasion. I said I didn’t believe him capable of it, and once I pried a little more, he admitted that he’d taken the position at Ascension thinking it was 100 percent aboveboard, but once he’d figured out it wasn’t (in addition to everything else it did, the company invested money for some bad people—bad both morally and politically), it was too late. He was in too deep to protest.

  “Then there’s the fact that both Todd and Stephen know about you,” he said.

  Without a word, I got to my feet and bent down to kiss Russ on the cheek. “Be right back,” I said. I ascended the eighty steps to the villa, got in my car, and drove home.

  I hate that I now know Russ is cheating the system—and yet, what did I expect? He’s cheating on his wife. I’m an integral part of the grand deception. I’m a lie. Maia is a lie. Mama was right, so right, to tell me to stay away from him. But had I listened? No. Three days after she was gone, I was back in his bed.

  It’s over, I’ve decided.

  When I kissed Maia as she lay sleeping, I thought, I am going to find a man who deserves to be your father.

  February 14, 2017

  The money still arrives in packages, only instead of depositing it in a bank account for Maia’s college, I’ve started stacking it neatly in the bottom drawer of my dresser. If the money is illegal, someone will trace it to my bank account eventually. Cash is safer.

  Then, this weekend a text came to my phone from a foreign number. It said: Please come to the villa. I want to see you. Things will change, I promise.

  I blinked, read the text again, read the text a third time. Russ had never texted me before. We’d both agreed cell phones weren’t safe.

  Things will change, I promise. It wasn’t a text saying he had left Irene, but I gave in anyway. I ached with missing him.

  March 2, 2017

  Love is messy, complicated, and unfair.

  Things have not changed in any way except that the villa is newly redone and Maia has been allowed to decorate one of the rooms as her own. Also, I finally came clean with Huck and Ayers and told them that, yes, there was a man—I even said his name out loud once—but my relationship was nobody’s business but my own.

  Huck and Ayers disagreed. Huck wants to meet the guy and so does Ayers; I’ve put them both off, saying that when the time is right, introductions will be made. When the time is right will be when Russ leaves Irene. He says he’s getting closer to making a clean break. They live separate lives. Baker and his family are happy in Houston, and Russ has just set his son Cash up in an outdoor-supply business in Colorado. Once Irene finishes working on the house in Iowa City—it still isn’t done—he’ll move down here full-time.

  He doesn’t talk about work and I know enough not to ask. He spends a lot of time in the Cayman Islands as well as the BVIs—in Anegada, specifically. He asked me if I wanted to go back to Anegada; it’s the one place he’s not afraid to be seen with me.

  “Maybe?” I said the last time he asked. I worry that he has business interests in Anegada, and I can’t r
isk getting mixed up in them.

  Huck calls Russ the Invisible Man, and I don’t object. That’s exactly what he is.

  November 3, 2018

  I haven’t written in ages, and usually when I take breaks like this it’s because too much is going on for me to stop and write about it. But life has been relatively placid, if also topsy-turvy. When Russ is away, I work at La Tapa, live with Huck, hang out with Ayers, and take care of Maia, who is growing into a very cool young person. When Russ is here, I live with him. Sometimes Maia comes with me; sometimes she decides that she would rather stay home.

  “It’s not that much fun watching you guys kiss all day,” she said. “Even if there is shuffleboard and SpaghettiOs.”

  We didn’t tell Maia that Russ was her father; she told us. One day when it was pouring rain and there was nothing else for Maia to do, she deigned to come to the villa with me, and while she and Russ were playing Scrabble (they had graduated from Chutes and Ladders), Maia looked up and said, “You’re my father, right?”

  Russ had searched my face in wild panic. “Uh…”

  “Right,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know?” Maia rounded the table and put her face cheek to cheek with Russ’s. “Come on, Mom. Really?”

  I’m writing now not because of any great upheaval in my life but because Ayers and Mick broke up. What happened was that Mick hired a girl named Brigid to work at Beach Bar and something about Brigid set off warning bells with Ayers. Sure enough, a couple nights ago, at three in the morning, Ayers drove into town and caught Mick and Brigid together. Mick was basically living at Ayers’s place in Fish Bay, but Ayers threw him and his dog, Gordon, out. For the past two days I’ve had to listen to what a disgusting liar and cheat Mick is and what an unforgivable harlot Brigid is because Brigid knew Mick was in a committed relationship and still she fooled around with him. While I do agree that Mick is weak and Brigid doesn’t deserve to have another female friend as long as she lives, this situation has also led me to some painful introspection.