Raymond arrived at Nicolas’s house the next day around noon and found Eve in the dining room with their live-in housekeeper, Freda. Freda cooked most of the delicious things in that house, but Eve made some herself, decorating them with sprigs of parsley and orange rinds. “I am a femme à tout faire—a woman of all trades,” she often joked at the stove. “My mother always said a woman must learn to use all ten of her fingers. Here are mine.” And she’d wiggle them in the air.
Today, Raymond watched her hands fly over the utensils. She lifted a serving spoon, topped the rice and beans with a flower-shaped bell pepper, and scooped out a fresh piman bouk pepper studded with cloves. She sliced onions into perfect rings to frame the chunks of beef, as if dinner were an arts and crafts project. It was almost offensive to Raymond, this display of luxury, this fussing over aesthetic details, and yet it made his stomach clench with yearning.
“How’s everything?” Eve asked distractedly. “We haven’t seen you since last week.”
Eve was a tall woman, even taller when she wore her wedge sandals around the house. She had a habit of dousing herself in lavender oil and carried a cloud of the scent wherever she went. She’d never been a thin woman; Eve was curvy, with a little meat on her bones. She had beautiful almond-tinted skin and perfectly pressed hair that framed her face like a smoky halo.
Raymond was holding Amélie, his niece, in his arms. The baby had just turned one, and she was looking more like her mother all the time, her black hair meticulously combed back on her head. She clung to her uncle’s collar. Raymond rubbed the baby’s back gently and admired Eve’s dedication as she went over a place setting that wasn’t up to her standards, switching a silver spoon for a fork here and there. His eyes widened at the sight of lobster, a rarity, bathing in a red Creole sauce. The aroma punched him in the gut and his mouth watered.
“M’ap knee,” Raymond said. “Hanging in there.”
She looked up and cocked her head to the side. Raymond knew instantly that she was reading worry in his eyes.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he said, turning away from her. He didn’t want her to see him like this, vulnerable. He kissed the baby’s forehead and she giggled, babbling something unintelligible.
“Amélie missed you,” Eve said. “Look at her, she’s beaming. You’re so important to her, you know. When you don’t come around, it breaks her heart.”
Raymond wondered how much the child was aware of. She was still so young. Amélie always smelled divine from the layers of lotion and talcum powder her mother smothered her in. Raymond had never been able to afford those luxuries for his children. All his money had been spent on food and medicine, especially that dreadful night when Enos nearly died of pneumonia. For a long time, the children walked around barefoot, and their first shoes had been a present from Eve.
“Nicolas will join us soon,” she said. “I told him you’re here, but he’s probably working on that book of his…” Eve shook her head longingly and sighed. “I wish you could talk some sense into him.”
Before Raymond could answer, she turned away to pour water into the glass goblets and asked Freda to close the door on her way out. Raymond assumed she was retreating to the help’s quarters in the back of the house.
“He won’t sleep at night, sometimes, always talking on the phone about his notes,” Eve added. “He won’t listen to reason either. I tried talking to him but he won’t hear it. The telephone is no place to talk about those things. You know? After what happened to my family…”
She paused for a brief moment, then continued her work. Raymond knew she was thinking about her father and brothers, who had died with the Jeune Haiti rebels in the southern mountains the year before.
“Trust me, I support him and I want nothing more than to see this regime crumble,” she continued. “There isn’t a place in hell hot enough for Duvalier to roast in. But why take silly risks, right?” She froze and looked hard at her brother-in-law. “The Baron is cunning, Raymond. You never know who’s spying for him. The walls have ears.”
She set the water pitcher at the center of the table, and when she turned her head, her body was still turned toward him. To Raymond, Eve was like the Madonna, a woman of unparalleled beauty who carried herself like royalty. His brother was so lucky. Raymond still loved Yvonne, but he had grown weary of her own weariness over time.
Realizing he’d stared at his sister-in-law too long, Raymond’s ears burned with shame.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Eve continued softly. “I’m preparing myself for the worst.”
Raymond stared at her. He wasn’t sure what she meant.
“What do you think will happen?” Raymond shook his head. “Everything will be fine, Eve.” He knew his brother’s ambitions were foolish, but he couldn’t imagine they’d really ever take off again like when they went into hiding.
“Won’t you talk to him again?” she pleaded. “When I think of what could happen if someone denounced him, it makes my skin crawl. Did you hear what they did to that lawyer downtown?”
Raymond leaned against the kitchen counter, shaking his head. Eve grabbed a newspaper from behind the fruit basket and handed it to him. Raymond unrolled it with his free hand, trying to ignore the smell of bananas and pineapple. He was hungry.
The grainy front-page photograph gripped him in the gut. He was looking at the charred skeleton of a man, the melted remains of a rubber tire clinging to his bones. There was nothing left of the corpse but blackened gristle and two rows of stark white teeth.
“How can you do that to a human being?” she asked, her hand on her hip. She shook her head. “He was a good man, never harmed anyone. Nicolas knew him.”
Her voice wavered, and Raymond realized she was fighting back tears. “Someone denounced him. They said he was plotting against the regime—” She blinked. “I haven’t slept since reading this.”
“I already tried talking to him,” Raymond said, dropping the newspaper back on the counter. “You know that. He won’t listen to you, so what makes you think he would listen to me, a taxi driver from anba lavil?”
Nicolas walked into the kitchen, and they fell silent. Eve stepped away from Raymond. Raymond wondered how much his brother had overheard.
The brothers shook hands with awkward formality, muttered quiet greetings to each other. The resemblance was there, even with their difference in height. Nicolas was younger than Raymond, but he was taller, leaner, while Raymond’s shoulders were broader, his arms and calves more muscular. But the brothers’ jaws and foreheads were of the same squareness, their noses the same width, their skin the same chocolate brown.
Nicolas pulled Amélie away from her uncle. “Come to Papa.”
“Leave him with Raymond,” Eve started. “She hasn’t seen him in a while.”
“She just took a bath,” Nicolas said, finding his way to his chair.
Raymond glanced at Eve, but she avoided his eyes and pretended to wave at Amélie. His brother likewise kept his eyes glued on the baby. Nicolas sat down in his usual place at the head of the table. The insult stung, but Raymond bit his lip. The last time they’d gotten into it, Raymond had stayed away for a month—and it would have been much longer if Eve hadn’t intervened. As they both got older, Raymond found his bitterness deepening, impatient with a life lived in the shadow of his brother’s ego.
Raymond had come here to borrow a bit of money from Nicolas to repaint his car, but the thought of asking his brother for help still pained him. He’d mulled it over all morning as he brushed his teeth and drank his tea. He was going to ask because he had no other choice. He