I’d never been to Shanksted Plantation. Actually, I’d never been to any plantation. I actively resisted it. Every time someone tried to lure me to Harper’s Alley or Carriageway for a day trip, I begged off. I’d lived in the City my whole life and swore that I would drink a cup of bubbling battery acid before I dipped my ladle in the polluted cultural springs of the hinterlands. In my thinking, the entire South beyond my hometown was just one sprawling countryside of ectoplasmic Colonel Sanderses on horseback chasing runaway spirits until the Rapture. Hardly my idea of a refreshing getaway.
Of course, I knew the basics from movies, books, and Joey Watson’s fifth-grade Gone with the Wind poster board, which I poured chocolate syrup all over before the start of class. (Joey still won best presentation. He hung a Mammy/golliwog/gorgon from the board. How could he not win?) However, none of my vicarious experiences prepped me for being on plantation soil. I’d never done a double-take at a gleaming white chateau with shadowy, Dracula-teeth columns. I’d never ridden up a rustic promenade, across the same twigs and pebbles over which somebody’s barefoot mom once hauled kindling. I’d never wondered if it was better for a pregnant woman to die from strangulation or a broken neck.
“What are those?” Nigel asked.
Penny squinted, her mouth agape. At first, I thought the wavering golden-brown shapes dangling from the branches were Spanish moss, but I’d heard that all the moss was eaten by pests years ago. The shapes were fabric, perhaps a tip of the hat to what the plantation had lost. Strange fruit indeed. Good Lord. The Shanksted trees were positively crawling with banshees.
“They look like strung-up people,” Nigel said.
“God,” Penny said. “I hate this place so much.”
I steered us toward a clearing in the distance. The mansion was only a front. Behind it, in the forest, was a complex of hotel buildings all done in an antebellum theme. The Big House, a building with covered galleries on each of its four floors, was where check-in awaited our arrival.
“I don’t know how this happened, sir,” the lanky brunette at the front desk said. “Your name is here, but somehow we don’t have a room for you.”
“We’ll take whatever you give us,” I said.
After a conversation with her supervisor, the lanky clerk returned from the hidden room behind the desk and said, “We’ve found a solution for you, sir.” She gave me a key card and beneficently pointed us to the narrow staircase at the back of the lobby.
Upstairs, we found our accommodations, a megaroom called the Planters Suite. The bellboy, a little guy who could have been an older cousin, brought our bags up. He could have been a cousin except for the work he’d had done to his face. His lips had been deplumped so that he seemed to grimace in pain as he pointed out the myriad gracious features of our quarters, the hot tub, the balconies overlooking the whole property, a basket full of complimentary chocolates—dark, milk, and premium white.
At the door, as I counted off his tip, the bellboy gave Nigel a strange look. In such situations, I had to figure out what the person found unsettling: Nigel’s face, my marital relationship, or the offspring of our union. These shadows followed us wherever we went. Sometimes I felt like we all had birthmarks.
The bellboy shook his head. I realized from the way his eyes swept over each of us that it was likely a combination of all three reasons. Penny didn’t notice. She was opening the curtains to let some daylight in. Nigel furrowed his brow. I sent him to his room. I was no stranger to such audacity.
Mixed-race couples were rare these days, having reached a climax during Sir’s youth, before the authorities overreacted to a protest by a black nationalist organization. As for the porter’s distraction by Nigel’s birthmark, that was just one more reason Nigel needed the procedure.
I pinned the money to the bellboy’s chest with my fingers. “That’s enough,” I said. He took the money and left.
I went to Nigel’s room, one of three bedrooms other than the master suite allotted to Penny and myself. The balcony doors were open, and a brisk wind swooped in. Nigel sat on his bed, flipping through a book of colorful sea creatures. He wasn’t looking at the pictures, just turning the pages absentmindedly. Nigel loved real books made of real paper. Bless him, the little weirdo. But occasionally he stroked the page as if trying to switch over to the next screen.
“This place is cool,” he said.
“It is, isn’t it?” I said.
Nigel glanced at me, then averted his eyes back to the book. I closed it. He lowered his chin.
“That man,” Nigel said. “I don’t like being looked at that way.”
“Some people lack all refinement,” I said.
“Would you speak English?” Nigel sat up. “It’s like he thought I was an alien or something.”
“Hey.” I grabbed Nigel’s chin and considered what Penny would say if she were in my position. “None of this is your fault,” I said. “Don’t let anyone else’s opinion cross you up. You’re exactly the way you were meant to be.”
“You sound like Mom.”
Such a smart boy. “She knows what she’s talking about.” I wanted to tell Nigel about temporary injustice and how everyone had to persist in difficult situations until things cleared up, but the strings in my chest were too tight. Words were only words after all. “You— Do you want a chocolate?”
He nodded.
I made a wrapped square of milk chocolate appear then disappear, using sleight-of-hand Sir taught me when I was around Nigel’s age.
“You’re going to show me how to do that,” Nigel said.
I reproduced the chocolate between my thumb and forefinger. “Maybe when you’re ready.” I dropped the chocolate into his palm.
“I’m ready.” He unwrapped the package and ate.
“Not quite.”
Nigel groaned.
“Do you have your comics?” I asked.
He gave a thumbs-up. I switched on the light because he’d read in the dimness if I didn’t.
“Look, Dad.” Nigel took a jar of Madame C.J.’s cream from his book sack. “I remembered the cream!”
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Penny wasn’t around and placed a finger over my lips. I’d forgotten that I’d stocked Nigel up with several jars of the stuff weeks earlier. Based on my promise to Penny, I should have taken the jar away and explained that he no longer needed it. But the bellboy’s gawking reminded me of reality. The cream was for Nigel’s own good. “But remember,” I said, “between us.” I kissed him on the forehead and went to the door. “Be sure to wear your big hat when we go out. It’s getting sunny.”
Then I closed his door. In the hallway, between his room and the master suite, I pulled a Plum from my shirt pocket. The pill slipped through my fingers and bounced across the carpet. I picked it up and, without checking it for debris, popped it into my mouth. My esophagus lit up as that little elevator descended into my basement.
Penny lay on our bed, a four-poster canopied special, like something out of Lady Chatterley.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Hakuna matata.” I locked our double doors and turned on the stereo. There’s a point where you’ve been married long enough that you can pluck hidden meanings from the ether. In the middle of our ongoing fight over Nigel’s skin cream and how best to handle his adjustment problems, Penny had chosen to join me on this expedition into the heart of darkness. During meaner times, she would have let me drive off without a word. Her singing in the Bug was another such sign. In a full-on argument, she would have grumpily turned off the stereo. The slight blush on her cheeks as the song ended, and that mischievous glint in the corner of her eye as the last note echoed against the glass. The subtle presence of feminine pheromone only detectable by the ever-so-slight itch at the back of my throat. Unspoken communication. Married-folk semaphore. An invitation to a truce. A man has only two options in circumstances like that: play it cool and risk the train chugging from the station without you, or climb into the engine cab, knock out the engineer, and toot that horn.
I tossed my fedora onto a wine rack by the fireplace and undid the first few buttons of my shirt. The overhead fan shook and the ferns around the room dipped in sympathy to those currents.
“You called for your Mandingo, Miss Penelope?” I asked.
“Oh, hush, boy,” she said, and flipped the smoke-gray sheets away from her naked body. I kissed the top of her foot and yanked her closer to the bottom of the bed. Once the sheets settled, we fucked a flame into being.