Элин Хильдебранд - What Happens in Paradise

“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.