Page 40 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
“Damn, I didn’t realize you were sappy like that.”
“Oh, you got jokes, huh?” Nasir slipped off his shoes, and Feyi followed suit. The foyer of the green house was narrow, filled with potted plants and jute rugs layered on the floor. Nasir called out to his sister as they walked through the house, and Feyi tried to seize as much of the house in her eyes as she could. The parlor was a glimpse through a door-way—more plants and a large sectional couch, dark orange and splattered with bright cushions. Nasir led her down a corridor and into the kitchen, where a skylight stretched the ceiling open. Lorraine was flipping a pancake, dressed in a linen robe almost identical to the one Alim had been wearing. Her hair was tied up in a silk scarf, and to Feyi’s surprise, she was wearing a pair of turquoise-rimmed glasses.
Lorraine pushed the glasses up and smiled at her brother. “Of course you’re on time when there’s food involved.”
Nasir kissed her cheek and plopped down on a kitchen chair. “First of all, it’s a miracle that there’s actual food involved. I was low-key expecting cereal.”
His sister rolled her eyes and gestured for Feyi to sit down. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. Feyi obeyed, wary at how much more relaxed Lorraine seemed, almost friendly even. Maybe it was because they were in her territory now, home turf, the place she’d lived all her life. Feyi looked around the kitchen, trying to imagine Alim in it, trying not to imagine him with Marisol. Copper pans hung above the massive stove, and open wooden shelves held stacks of plates and bowls and glasses. Herbs were growing in the windowsill, and French doors opened into a backyard with tall bamboo waving along the fence.
Nasir reached up to pull a picture frame off a shelf, then passed it to Feyi. “That’s us with our mom,” he said, pride coloring his voice.
Feyi took it from him, handling the carved bone of the frame gently. She was nervous looking at it, knowing she’d see another life there, another time, another version of Nasir and Alim that might be too real, too uncomfortable for the secrets she was holding. But Nasir was staring at her expectantly, so Feyi had no choice but to meet the faces in the photograph. She held her breath, but it still did nothing to soften the impact of Alim’s face, years and years before the gray and the lines and the cratered sorrow. He was laughing in the picture, his arm around a woman with short bright red locs wrapped in copper wire and a gap between her front teeth, a yellow sundress whipped around her thighs. Marisol. She was smiling down at a toddler holding on to her leg and Alim was holding a little boy’s hand.
“That’s you?” she said to Nasir, and he nodded.
“Mad adorable, right?” The little boy was staring right at the camera with a glower, his shirt tucked into khaki shorts.
“You look like a troublemaker,” Feyi replied, shaking her head.
“Like I said, mad adorable.”
Feyi stared at the picture, the way Marisol’s body was tilted toward Alim. “Your mom is gorgeous,” she said. “You look a lot like her, Lorraine.”
Lorraine threw a half smile over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “Daddy does say that, too.” She came over and put plates of pancakes and grapefruit in front of Feyi and Nasir. “You want syrup or honey?”
Nasir grabbed a fork. “Both?”
Lorraine cut her eyes at him. “Wow, rot yuh teeth, why don’t you?” She passed him both bottles anyway, then sat at the kitchen counter with her pancakes, her legs swinging off the stool. “Looking forward to your show, Feyi.”
It was perhaps the first time she’d ever called Feyi by name, and it took Feyi aback. She coughed, then swallowed the bite of pancake she’d been eating and smiled. “Thanks, Lorraine. Your pancakes are bomb, by the way.”
Nasir chimed in with his mouth full. “Yeah, when did you learn how to do this? I thought you were like Mom, couldn’t cook if they put a gun to your head.”
Lorraine made a face at him. “People can learn, you know!”
“Shit, has Dad tasted your food yet? He might cry in happiness just at the fact that it’s not fucking burnt.”
Lorraine grinned. “And why the hell I go tell him? So he could stop cooking for me? Yuh must be out your mind.”
Nasir choked out a laugh. “Wow, my sister the scammer.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
Feyi listened to their banter as she ate her breakfast, the old family photo loud on the kitchen table beside her plate. She was choosing not to make more pictures in her head, of a pregnant Marisol padding across these worn ceramic tiles with bare feet, of Alim spinning a giggling baby under the skylight, of a time when he was happy and his family was complete. It would be ridiculous to be jealous of a ghost just because he’d loved her and touched her without recoiling. He’d also screamed over her cold body on a merciless beach, just like Feyi had screamed on that dark road. Those were moments that broke timelines, that cut them so deep and so bloody that they would never stitch back together again, that the life before the cut was as dead as the person who was lost. Just memories through a haze of hurt. Feyi knew better than to be selective about ghosts—for every happy echo of Alim and Marisol in the house, there was a broken man and two small children with no mother, years of grief navy blue in the air, sobs and nightmares and him rocking them against his chest, alone, alone, alone. There was nothing to be jealous of. Feyi ate her grapefruit and ignored the picture for the rest of breakfast.
The house had to be a stranger’s house, because it was. The Alim she knew lived up the mountain, not in this pistachio bungalow. Feyi decided it was Lorraine’s house, Lorraine’s decor, because it made no sense for it to be anyone else’s, not after all the time. Nasir drove her to the museum after breakfast, and Feyi spent the day blessedly enveloped in the work, gold and mirrors, music thumping in her earbuds. The hours spilled by, evaporating like water, and she didn’t leave until it was dark out and Denlis the security guard told her he had to lock up, for real this time. “Mi get a man at home, yuh know. He patient but he not this patient!”
Feyi had apologized and promised to buy him a drink, but Denlis waved her off. They’d been friendly since her first visit, and he was always smiling, with a full beard and a gold tooth. “I know yuh artists, it not ah problem to give yuh a likkle more time. Yuh leh me know if yuh want to start early tomorrow morning. Yuh have my number, oui?”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. Yuh boyfriend waiting outside fuh yuh.”
Feyi rolled her eyes as they walked out. “I told you before, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Mm-hmm.” Denlis winked as she headed to Nasir’s car. “Yuh keep telling yuhself that, sweetness.”
Feyi slid into the passenger seat and hugged Nasir, ignoring the unease she felt, that there was a story between them that was fast becoming inevitable, like a noose tightening. She kept reminding herself that she had a choice, that she didn’t have to end up with him. She didn’t have to end up with anyone, no matter how pretty the picture looked to strangers.