Sunday, Day One - A Death at Laguna Shores
Laila spotted the HOA President, Bob Page, exiting the building. He paused under the portico to speak to a woman in trousers and an emblazoned shirt holding a clipboard. She jotted down whatever Bob was telling her and returned inside. Forrest held on to Alton, who had Laila’s hand. The boys extended from her side, vibrating with curious energy, but curtailed by the gathering crowd. They made no move to break away to explore on their own. Laila waved to Bob, and he joined her on the sidewalk where knots of neighbors stood, murmuring.
“A bad day for the Research Club, I guess,” he said.
Laila was dumbstruck. Only one member of her Research Club lived in this building, and Laila had seen her the day before. They spoke about the meeting to be held that Monday. Laila was scheduled to host, and they outlined the agenda together. She gaped at Bob.
“She was all alone,” Bob said.
Laila squeezed her eyes shut, but the boys were tugging on her hand, and she couldn’t keep her balance. She blinked open to find Bob with a knowing expression.
“Billie?” she whispered.
“Oh, you hadn’t heard,” he said.
“What hospital is this? Where are they taking her?”
An ambulance stood at the curb outside Billie’s condo. The red lights
rotated rhythmically. The siren had been turned off.
“It won’t be right away,” Bob said, watching her face.
“Was it a fall? They can’t move her?” Laila asked.
“Laila,” he said, “they’re waiting for the coroner.”
“No. No, it can’t be.”
Forrest and Alton moved in closer to her, each folding a hand around a
fistful of the fabric of her slacks. Alton slipped a thumb into his mouth. Laila looked up to the curtained window of Billie’s second floor bedroom. Her small condo was on the street side and was noisy, Billie complained, too noisy to sleep late so she ended up napping in the afternoon. Research Club meetings were bright and early Monday mornings mainly because it was Billie’s prime time.
“Oh, no,” Laila repeated. If the messenger were another neighbor, not Bob Page, they would have embraced, leaning on each other for a moment of oblivion, of erasure of all the considerations a sudden death forces upon the survivors. But in the recent past Bob had used his HOA position to ask Laila questions about David’s travel schedule, which discomfited her.
“Quick,” Bob said. “A heart attack, they think.”
Laila looked up once more at Billie’s window, taking in the whole building and its landscaped surroundings. So much of what Billie loved about Florida was right here at her doorstep. The tall palms that flanked the portico were mirrored in the graceful double row across the street. They curtained the Laguna Shores lane from the busy arterial and made her think of dancers. Spidery ferns and birds of paradise flanked the building. Billie never felt the need to buy flowers, she told Laila, because they engulfed her whenever she stepped outside her home. Walkways threaded between the lush flowerbeds and led behind the building to a two-tiered deck that looked over the white beach and the endless blue ocean.
Billie wasn’t one of the many older, retired beach walkers that logged thousands of miles each year, but she adored a late afternoon Scotch on the deck while dozens of skimming and diving sandpipers conducted their rituals. Laila understood completely. Never had she and David, in fifteen years of marriage, lived in a place so connected to natural beauty as Laguna Shores. The sun would rise the next morning, and the ocean would mirror the fresh light with blue diamond brilliance. How cruel that it could all go on without Billie!
“Who found. . . .” Laila began, but her voice caught, and she could only produce a sob. Her nose was beginning to run, and a tear streaked down her cheek.
“I saw she left her recycling container out after the pick up Saturday, which is not exactly unheard of, but then when it was still out this morning, I thought I’d better investigate,” Bob said. “Her car was in its parking space, so I got to her door, and the newspaper was still on the mat at ten a.m. So, I went in.”
“Oh, Lord,” Laila said.
“I know,” Bob began. “She was slumped half out of her lounge chair, her mouth hanging open, and the smell, I mean, bad.” But Laila wouldn’t focus on Bob’s words. She was picturing the empty chair she and the rest of the Laguna Shores Research Club would face the next day.
“She’s the foundation of the club,” Laila murmured.
“What is it you guys do, anyway? You’re all so closed-mouthed about your private little club,” Bob wheedled.
Laila was fishing her phone out of the small cross-body bag she wore during all her vertical hours. She checked the time and grimaced, his needling left unanswered.
“I’m sorry. I need to go.”
Laila took the hand of each twin and returned to the tennis courts the way she came. Regina would wait for Laila to return, and that was the problem. Sundays were long and closely scheduled days for Regina. She had back-to-back lessons at two other developments until eight that night. Laila picked up her pace, striding, if a woman barely five two and bountifully rounded (Regina’s words) on top could be said to stride.
Jackson was pushing the ball collector around the court, and Eddie was loading Regina’s collection of racquets into the back of her SUV. Laila and the twins got to Regina’s side, Laila puffing and the boys laughing and twirling about, relieved that Laila’s sudden upset had been quieted.
“You’re fine,” Regina said. “We just now finished up. I am merely lending you these future champions until next Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock.” She pulled off her sun visor to smooth down her box braids and wedge them once more under the elastic band.
“Thank you, Reggie,” Laila said. “I know you’ve got to run.”
“Who was the ambulance for?” Regina asked.
“I don’t know,” Laila said, hoping her throat wouldn’t constrict again
from the shock.
A small lie and a justified lie. A merciful lie.
Regina knew Billie well through the Laguna Shores Research Club, and
she wouldn’t take the news of the death stoically. Laila would no more be able to tell Regina without both of them crying than she would be able to sing an aria. With the four boys in close proximity, each one likely to need a tailor-made explanation of what had happened to their grandmother stand- in, the moment would become complicated.
Besides, it was an honest answer since it was not clear if that particular ambulance would eventually remove Billie’s body.
“It wasn’t our building, and they hadn’t come out yet,” Laila managed to say.
“Stow the ball collector, will you Jackson?” Regina called toward the court. “God, I wish he weren’t named for the most racist president ever,” she said to Laila.
“He’s not! I’ve told you! It’s a wonderful name, and I won’t cede it just because. .”
“I know, I know. The artist. I just like to see you get flustered,” Regina said. “But if I could just call him “Poll” for short, I’d feel better.”
“How about Jack?” Laila asked, hugging Forrest close while Eddie held Alton under his bony armpits and twirled him in a circle over the soft sand of the play area.
“It wouldn’t bother you?” asked Regina. “Not from you,” Laila answered. Regina gave her a quick hug.
“Can I call you tonight?” asked Laila.
“Of course,” said Regina. “I’ll be sitting with a glass of wine on my sofa by nine.”
Laila sucked in a gulp of air involuntarily, like a sigh that had reversed
course and made her gag. She thought she was in control, but her nerves were otherwise inclined.
Regina’s brow darkened as she looked down at her. “Are you okay?”
Laila nearly relented. Their funny, unstylish, highly educated and generous friend was gone. The jagged news cut through Laila’s calm, but the reality of Billie’s death would dismantle Regina’s day. Their grief had to wait until evening.
And I need time.
Billie’s message, urgent and troublesome, clawing at her conscience, sat
in her voicemail queue and made her phone seem now like a feverish thing she shouldn’t touch. The little lie would buy her that time.
“I’m good,” Laila said. “The sprint got me out of breath. What a wimp I am!”
Regina smiled at Laila, but Laila knew she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“I’ll pour one, too, right before I call,” Laila continued quickly with what she hoped was a conspiratorial smile.
Regina nodded, took a quick swig from her water bottle and vaulted her muscular frame onto the driver’s seat. Her Jamaican flavored goodbye had the lilt the boys loved, and they waved as she backed out of her parking slot.
“Aren’t you hungry, Mom?” Eddie called to her.
“No, but I think I know someone who is,” Laila answered.
Eddie shrugged.
“Let’s take the beach path,” Laila said. “Then I can test the temperature
of the pool water for later.”
“Great!” said Jackson.
They walked from the tennis courts past the handball courts towards the
pool enclosure sitting prettily by the sand.
“I want to swim,” called Forrest.
“Will Dad be home for a swim?” asked Alton.
Laila glanced sidelong at Eddie to see if the mention of David registered on his face. Yesterday afternoon, before David left for the trip to Vero Beach and then Miami, Eddie had been caught in an adult bookshop with the older brother of his best friend. The shop owner took their names and then shooed them out. He recognized Eddie’s last name from newspaper reports about Harrow United’s plans for new retail development, and he called David to report the incident.
David had a talk with Eddie, the two of them alone in David’s office.
Afterwards, when Laila asked David how it went, he said it was about as informative a session could be when one party wouldn’t talk. David said the behavior was normal, but refusing to talk about it worried him.
Eddie caught Laila’s glance and kept a straight face when she told Alton she expected their Dad at least by dinner.
“But, if traffic’s good and he gets in early, we can swim together.”
Delighted, the three younger boys sprinted around the community center, along the fencing for the pool, and on to the beach.
“I’m going,” Eddie muttered, seeming relieved to leave her. He trotted after the younger ones in his often grumbled-about role of shepherd.
Laila slipped through the gate, dipped a toe in the pool, and found the water temperature reasonable. But checking the temperature was not the only reason she chose the back route into her building. It meant her family would enter the condo building from the beach and take the elevator to the top floor. The only room in their home that gave out to the front where the ambulance was parked was David’s office and workout room, where the boys only entered if invited.
The news might reach them anyway. Friends would call, and neighbors might stop by. Plus, kids tended to gather on the building’s outdoor patio Sunday afternoons in anticipation of the weekly family happy hour, and this pleasant, sunny day would be no exception. News of Billie’s death would jump from person to person, a hot coal no one would hang on to for long. She would have only a short time to puzzle out the significance of Billie’s last words to her and prepare her four sons for the loss.
The twins had not grasped the meaning of Bob Page’s words, but the ambulance made them skittish. They had peppered her with questions, filling the air with noise to calm their nerves. Sudden events, like the arrival of an ambulance, made them twitch. She understood.
“Who drives? Does a doctor drive?”
“I could put lights all over the ambulance, like on a Christmas tree, couldn’t I?”
“Do they come for pets? If we called for Ruffles, would they come?” “Can you fall out the back? I saw it once in a movie.”
“How many fit in there?”
“Are you allowed to cry in there? I bet a lot of people want to cry.” When she and David first got the twins, their dark, ropey bodies curled on opposite sides of the crib in the hospital, it was after their parents succumbed to dysentery during the raft journey from Haiti. David begged for them. Every leader in the Haitian community, every Human Watch manager, every refugee volunteer heard his impetuous, passionate plan to raise them as his own. Laila had loved them from the first time she saw them, but it was David and his determination to make something good come out of their nightmare that won over hearts.
The social worker suggested ongoing counseling to deal with the embedded traumas of hunger and loss. She was right, and counseling constituted a staple expense for the Harrow family. Still, Laila quaked at the job of telling them the woman they called Nona was gone.
Eddie and Jackson, her older sons, born in quick succession after David’s completion of his MBA, were more solid emotionally, but the news would shake them, too. She would try to put it off until David got home—and until she dissected what had transpired during the previous twenty-four hours.
What had Billie meant when she called last night? The disjointed, rambling message, still on her phone, had bothered her, and she called back. Two tries, and Billie didn’t pick up. Laila was worried enough to call Ken Lee. Since he lived in Laguna Shores and could easily walk to Billie’s condo, she thought it the best option. She didn’t think she should leave all four boys asleep and alone. Ken said it was no problem and that he would check on her.
What had Ken found? Why didn’t he call after he checked on Billie? Was it too late in the evening? Ken had a streak of courtesy that Laila admired, but she admitted that sometimes he wore it like cardboard. And today he hadn’t called either. Yes, it was Sunday, and he disappeared every Sunday, rain or shine, until late afternoon at best, when, occasionally, he’d drop by their building’s happy hour. Such a devoted churchgoer, Laila fumed.
Immediately, she censored herself. It wasn’t as if she and David had the most conventional religious practice, with David ricocheting between his ultraconservative Miami family members and their relaxed, almost casual, membership in the St. Augustine Unitarians. Harrow family unity depended on tolerance among conservative and liberal members of their clan. Ken’s church life deserved the same respect.
Laila would call Ken again and leave a polite message. She was doubtful he would break with his routine and return a phone call on a Sunday, but she would try.
She hurried down the beach to her building, and found the boys waiting for her and the key to the elevator. They crowded in, all of them damp after more than an hour in the sun, the scent of sunblock mixed with sweat, Eddie’s head now reaching above hers, his arm better able to extend to the eighth floor button, the twins scuttling their sandaled feet so that no one flattened their toes by mistake.
The thing to do, thought Laila, would be to listen once more to Billie’s message. See if the words were so dire she should have gone over to Billie’s immediately. She had no intention of sharing it with anyone, including David. She would hate to admit to him her failure to help a friend, and anyway, he had little part in the Research Club and the friendship that had sprung up among them, Laila, Regina, Billie, Ken, and Claire.
“Claire!” Laila exclaimed out loud.
She startled the boys with her cry. She startled herself, not realizing how much she had begun to care about the club’s newest member.
“Mom, are you okay?” asked Jackson. He had David’s curly hair and thick eyebrows as well as her olive skin, a complexion that would protect him in Florida’s burnish or be-burned sunshine. She loved the way he made it his business to take the family’s temperature when things seemed amiss.
“How many times have I told you, Mom, to keep a hat on when you’re out in the sun,” Eddie preempted. “It is sunstroke, boys. We’re going to have to apply cold compresses to her forehead.”
The twins giggled at Eddie’s irreverence, and he folded his arms across his chest, imitating a doctor who has demanded that his remedy be followed. He gave a throaty “harrumph,” and when the elevator opened on to the foyer of their apartment, he strode out first, snapping his fingers as if his minions would carry out his orders. Laila smiled, and the boys relaxed, even Jackson, each running off to his own corner and leaving Laila to the business of setting out their lunch.
