Jamaica

I smile at Gabby where she’s splashing in the pool, her floats keeping her in place while Consuela the cook sits on the step and kicks her feet, splashing water and making Gabby squeal and giggle.

I’m not swimming yet because I’m just starting to fulfil the obligation I made to Halifax and I have a lot of work to do if I want to get through it before Gabby has to go back to school.

It’s been two weeks since she came home with us without a fuss and I have to say…it was not easy at first. Santiago was so awkward around the poor kid, I’d have to be around whenever they saw each other.

Nona, well, she’s Nona, what can I say. She gives Gabby candy on the sly and barks at her to stand up straight when she slouches and just generally sticks to my ass like a boil, on most days.

Yesterday, she spent all day with us in the garden, teaching Gabby about flowers and planting schedules that went over the top of my head. The girl is smart though, I’ll give her that.

She showed true interest, bent down to get anything if Nona dropped it and made the day another pleasant surprise for us all. She’s literally adjusted to living with us as if she’d been born here and not missing for the last five years of her life.

I am enjoying her. A lot. I bathe her, dress her, feed her, read to her, just do all the stuff I know other parents do for their kids that mine never did. It’s exhausting though! I dare anyone with a kid under twelve - generally when I assume they start morphing into preteen nightmares - to say that having a child isn’t a fulltime job.

She runs around all the time, is hardly ever still for more than two minutes at a stretch and asks me questions constantly to the point that I just admit I don’t know everything.

Confidence killer, that admission, since I want her to think I’m the smartest mom ever.

Santiago…he’s…been weird. I understand that having a little girl in the house, one he doesn’t really know isn’t easy for him to adjust to, but the man is…

He works. A lot. He rises with the sun, takes a swim - with trunks now that the villa is PG - and then has breakfast with me before going to work. He’s in the middle of a big campaign for the wine he’s most recently created, a new red that I enjoyed while he tried to explain about top notes and…you get the idea.

I don’t need a biology lesson to enjoy the booze.

He’s always busy, sometimes only coming in way after dinner when most of the house is asleep and I’m just getting ready to give up for the night. He makes love to me though, that I can’t deny. All the time. There isn’t a night that he doesn’t make love to me - except when I got my period and almost scalped him for daring to breathe near the bloated mass that was my water filled body.

We have a family, something I always wanted with him but the more I try to bring us together, the more distant he becomes. With me alone he’s great. With Gabby, alone, he’s great. But the minute it’s both of us together he slits like a banana and flies like a fart on the wind.

In short…I’m pretty stumped about what’s going on.

I thought that our having Gabby and me staying to try our marriage would have settled him. That’s what he told me he wanted after all. Instead, it’s only made things between us worse.

I have no idea how to fix it, even if there is a fix or if I want to put myself out there so far on the ledge but I do know that I cannot go on being a single parent and bed partner only.

“Jamaica! Look, I can swim,” she yells and I look up to see her kicking her little legs vigorously.

“I see, Gabby. You’re a fast learner,” I yell back, laughing when she kicks water all over Consuela and darts away.

Dropping my pen and gathering up my papers I put everything away and pull off my cover up. Gabby laughs when I jump in, splashing her and I grin, waving Consuela off with a wink.

We swim for another half hour and get out when the sun reaches its zenith, the heat of the day blazing down dangerously. Gabby yawns when I dry her off and take her inside to change into a cotton tee and shorts so I put her down for a nap, stalling lunch for later until she wakes up or else I’ll be forced to eat twice.

It’s quiet in the house with her asleep so I take advantage and dive back into work, pouring over old evidence of a missing person’s report and mapping out a timeline.

My phone rings while I’m looking into a possible foul play scenario and I answer with a smile.

“Sue, you sex beast.”

“Oh you!” she huffs making me smile and wish I could see her.

I miss the old broad something fierce and wonder what it would take for her to come out here for a week or two to catch up.

“What’s up old lady? Been seeing any geriatrics that would make your heart tick?” I tease getting her customary aggrieved sigh before she giggles and probably rolls her eyes.

“Oh, Jamaica, honey, what on earth will I do with you, huh?”

“Love me?” I drawl.

“If I must!”

“What’s up, Aunt Sue?”

“Well, honey, I didn’t want to call until you and that little one were settled so I held out but I need to let you know that your folks have been calling again and I don’t know what to say no more.”

“Aunt Sue, they’re dead.”

“Oh hell, just ‘cause you tell people that story and have yourself convinced it’s true don’t make it so, little girl! They’re still alive and kicking and you know it, now stop being silly and listen.”

I roll my eyes, annoyed with her for messing with my neatly ordered story that those cretins are dead and in hell where they belong, grimacing when it hits me that everyone I know believes they’re dead, my husband included.

That’s gonna be an awkward conversation!

“What the hell do they want now? Didn’t you tell them I died in a fiery car crash?” I ask, getting a curse from my usually saintly aunt.

“Don’t joke, Jamaica! It isn’t amusing to me. You almost did die in a fiery car crash,” she cries, making me laugh because that’s what makes it so believable!

“Oh Aunt Sue stop being such a party pooper.”

“Well, excuse me for caring, Jamaica, I’m just the woman who loves you like a daughter,” she says, making me fall for her guilt trips.

“Fiiiine. I’ll stop telling people they died.”

“At least stop telling people they were killed by a deranged junkie who ate their faces, Jamaica, that one gives me the willies.”

I try not to laugh, I really do, but that one’s my favorite and I think I’ll use it on Nona, see if she remembers what I said when we first met.

“I just need to tell one more person that story and it’s off my bucket list, girl scout’s honor,” I say, crossing my fingers on the lie.

Aunt Sue snorts and I can practically see her disbelief before she continues.

“They been by to make amends again, trying to complete the program. You should call them, lamb, let them say their peace and move on,” she says softly.

I’d agree, really I would, but I’ve been caught by the twelve fucking steps from hell no less than three times! And all three times, just as soon as I started believing them, they hit me up for money.

Twelve steps to sobriety, my ass. More like twelve steps to robbing relatives blind. The last time I spoke to those assholes, they tried to hit me up for two grand and gave me some story about wanting to go and live a subsistence lifestyle in a cabin in the Oklahoma wilds.

I almost believed them that time, would have paid them monthly to live in the wilds and leave me alone, but see, my mother can’t even fry a steak without retching and she wanted me to believe she’d skin a deer?

Puhlease.

“Sure, just as soon as I get that check in the mail they promised to pay me back for the last time you convinced me they had met Jesus,” I say sarcastically.

The only time my parents met Jesus was when they fled to San Juan to hide for skipping bail. I bet those idiots thought he was the real deal instead of a Mexican, I think, snorting at my own humor.

“Isabella Arian ‘Jamaica’ Roberts, I thought I taught you to be more forgiving girl.”

“I do forgive, Sue! I forgave Brian for trying to kill me, didn’t I?”

“Oh, screw Brian! I hope that baby murdering ass boil rots in hell where he belongs.” She rages, dropping the innocent act fast, just like I knew she would. “I hope he burns for hurting you and that precious little baby.”

Note, my Aunt Sue goes to church three times a week and if you ask anyone who knows her, they’ll say she is the soul of kindness and forgiveness. Ask her how she feels about pro-choice or anyone who ever hurt a child and she goes demonic presence so fast you’ll feel whiplash.

She also hates Brian with an all abiding passion that makes me grateful he died in that car or she’d likely still have him strung up in her basement attached to electricity.

She’s a vengeful woman, my Aunt Sue. Just the way I like her.

“Sue, I love you, you know that, but I would rather drink piss from a hobo with kidney failure than call those two maggots,” I say honestly, hating that I can’t just be what she wants me to be.

“Oh lamb, it’s not right you hating them so much. I told you before, you can’t change the past only the future.”

“And my future happens to be dingleberry free, Sue, thanks.” I quip, getting a shock when I look up to see Santiago leaning in the doorway, watching me intently.

“Jamaica! They need forgiveness. Now you just sit and think on that for a bit and I know you’ll come to the right decision. Now that that’s done with, how’s my great niece?” she trills, getting excited because she already adores Gabby even if she hasn’t met her yet.

“Good,” I say, smiling when he comes in and flops down on the couch, his head in my lap.

“She swimming yet?”

“Just about. Do floaties count?”

“No! You stop being lazy and teach her to swim. She’ll be handy when you have more babies.”

I don’t say anything, just choke back a gasp and swallow the bile in my throat.

“I gotta go, Sue. Say hi to Em for me and tell her I said it doesn’t count if it didn’t go in. She’ll know what I mean.”

Sue calls me a heathen and hangs up after I laugh, leaving me alone with Santiago who is staring up at me while I stroke his hair.

“Sue?”

“Yeah. She says we have to teach Gabby to swim,” I say, keeping out the whole brothers and sisters part and my still kicking parents.

He grins and rolls over to shove his face into my stomach, breathing deeply as if he’s tired. Yeah, I get that. I’d also be running on dregs if I woke up at daybreak to avoid…whatever he’s avoiding.

“So, Nona said she’s arranging a picnic tomorrow for all of us. I hope you’re okay with that because she already told Gab we are going. I’m actually looking forward to it. Nona’s making some special wine and fruit thing that Consuela says it all the rage.”

He tenses slightly and then relaxes just as quickly but I feel it and look down at him with a frown.

“What is it?” I demand because my patience is done.

Here I am busting my ass to be a part of the family he asked me to join and he’s acting as if being with us is some hardship. I have a job to do, a kid to raise and keep happy, and in that mix is my marriage, which…don’t even get me started okay!

I’m working here! And all he does is fuck, run and dodge family situations. I’d have thought it was all me but when we’re alone he’s just fine. If it was Gabby he’d avoid her completely, which is not the case.

I’ve spied on them, I see how much he loves that kid.

I just don’t get it. We’re supposed to be happy, he promised me that we’d be happy even if his selfish ass doesn’t ‘do love’. I am not happy. In fact, after that phone call with Aunt Sue I am more than a little sad and pissed off and if Santiago’s going to be an asshole then he should take the heat.

“What is what, querida?” he asks, snuggling back down and nudging my hand to get me stroking again.

I grab his hair instead and make him look at me, my limit so passed reached I want to scream.

“What is it with you? Every single time we try to do things together, you bail. I ask you to swim with me and Gabby and you’re suddenly swamped with work even though Don told Consuela you were just sitting in your office brooding. And now this. Whenever I mention being a family and doing family thing you go cold. Would you even show up tomorrow?” I ask, truly stupefied by this.

I just can’t understand and when I don’t understand things I get itchy, real fucking itchy.

“What are you talking about, Isabella?” he huffs, pulling away to sit up and shift so he can see me.

“You! You avoid any family type thing. You swim with Gabby and Nona but the minute I show up, you’ve forgotten to do something and you split. You spend time with me but I mention getting Gabby and you leave. Why don’t you want to be together as a family? I know, maybe it’s not easy fitting into the role of father and husband so soon, Santiago, but you asked me to stay. You said we’d be a family and now it’s just me and Gabby.”

He snorts, rolling his eyes and stands to throw his hands in the air.

“You’re imagining things, Isabella. Of course we are a family. Do I not come home and have supper?” he asks.

“Hardly ever! It doesn’t count if I hold supper and let Gabby eat early just so I can wait to eat with you. Another thing, you don’t like me and Nona being close.”

“Close? You call that close? The two of you are engaged in a Mexican standoff with guns drawn, Isabella, can you blame me for not wanting the two of you to kill each other?” he asks, looking genuinely perplexed.

I want to rage at him that he’s not answering me, but then what? I have absolutely no proof to backup my claims, just suspicions and the freaking odd behavior he’s displaying.

It’s not like I can really say anything that will prove my theory, so I don’t even bother to continue just shrug and gather up my work to leave the room.

He stops me before I can step around him, taking my shoulders to hold me in place.

“Bella, this is ridiculous. Everything is fine, is it not? You are happy, you have me, Gabby and your work, even if you still glare at Nona. We have a good life no?” he asks, looking lost and uncertain.

Just a few days ago I’d have rushed to reassure him, and myself that everything is fine, now I don’t have it in me to be the good little wife he thinks I am.

I have sex, conversation and yeah, we aren’t exactly fighting but that’s not enough if he wants us to be a family. I have so much I need to tell him but how can I do that, trust in him enough to talk to him when he doesn’t trust me enough to tell me what’s on his mind.

I agreed to be his wife without his love, not without his confidence and definitely not as a part timer who only sees him when the mommy bit is done for the day.

“I am happy, with Gabby and work and sometimes you, but I am not happy as a wife and mother who would like to make this a family. We’re all at cross purposes here, Santi, you have to see it and until you trust me enough to talk to me…I’m going to stay in the guestroom okay?”

I pull away, ignoring his intake of breath and leave quietly while he looks after me. It’s only when I’m in a guest room closest to Gabby’s room that I remember I never told him about my parents.

Oh well, I guess if he’s keeping things close to the vest, so am I.