Anansi Boys

Which, Fat Charlie explained, after briefly choking on a Brazil nut, was really the last thing you wanted at your wedding, after all, wasn’t it, your father turning up and being the life and soul of the party? He said that his father was, he had no doubt, still the most embarrassing person on God’s Green Earth. He added that he was perfectly happy not to have seen the old goat for several years, and that the best thing his mother ever did was to leave his father and come to England to stay with her Aunt Alanna. He buttressed this by stating categorically that he was damned, double-damned, and quite possibly even thrice-damned if he was going to invite his father. In fact, said Fat Charlie in closing, the best thing about getting married was not having to invite his dad to their wedding.

And then Fat Charlie saw the expression on Rosie’s face and the icy glint in her normally friendly eyes, and he corrected himself hurriedly, explaining that he meant the second-best, but it was already much too late.

“You’ll just have to get used to the idea,” said Rosie. “After all, a wedding is a marvelous opportunity for mending fences and building bridges. It’s your opportunity to show him that there are no hard feelings.”

“But there are hard feelings,” said Fat Charlie. “Lots.”

“Do you have an address for him?” asked Rosie. “Or a phone number? You probably ought to phone him. A letter’s a bit impersonal when your only son is getting married…you are his only son, aren’t you? Does he have e-mail?”

“Yes. I’m his only son. I have no idea if he has e-mail or not. Probably not,” said Fat Charlie. Letters were good things, he thought. They could get lost in the post for a start.

“Well, you must have an address or a phone number.”

“I don’t,” said Fat Charlie, honestly. Maybe his father had moved away. He could have left Florida and gone somewhere they didn’t have telephones. Or addresses.

“Well,” said Rosie, sharply, “who does?”

“Mrs. Higgler,” said Fat Charlie, and all the fight went out of him.

Rosie smiled sweetly. “And who is Mrs. Higgler?” she asked.

“Friend of the family,” said Fat Charlie. “When I was growing up, she used to live next door.”

He had spoken to Mrs. Higgler several years earlier, when his mother was dying. He had, at his mother’s request, telephoned Mrs. Higgler to pass on the message to Fat Charlie’s father, and to tell him to get in touch. And several days later there had been a message on Fat Charlie’s answering machine, left while he was at work, in a voice that was unmistakably his father’s, even if it did sound rather older and a little drunk.

His father said that it was not a good time, and that business affairs would be keeping him in America. And then he added that, for everything, Fat Charlie’s mother was a damn fine woman. Several days later a vase of assorted flowers had been delivered to the hospital ward. Fat Charlie’s mother had snorted when she read the card.

“Thinks he can get around me that easily?” she said. “He’s got another think coming, I can tell you that.” But she had had the nurse put the flowers in a place of honor by her bed and, several times since, had asked Fat Charlie if he had heard anything about his father coming and visiting her before it was all over.

Fat Charlie said he hadn’t. He grew to hate the question, and his answer, and the expression on her face when he told her that, no, his father wasn’t coming.

The worst day, in Fat Charlie’s opinion, was the day that the doctor, a gruff little man, had taken Fat Charlie aside and told him that it would not be long now, that his mother was fading fast, and it had become a matter of keeping her comfortable until the end.

Fat Charlie had nodded, and gone in to his mother. She had held his hand, and was asking him whether or not he had remembered to pay her gas bill, when the noise began in the corridor—a clashing, parping, stomping, rattling, brass-and-bass-and-drum sort of noise, of the kind that tends not to be heard in hospitals, where signs in the stairwells request quiet and the icy glares of the nursing staff enforce it.

The noise was getting louder.

For one moment Fat Charlie thought it might be terrorists. His mother, though, smiled weakly at the cacophony. “Yellow bird,” she whispered.

“What?” said Fat Charlie, scared that she had stopped making sense.

“ ‘Yellow Bird,’ ” she said, louder and more firmly. “It’s what they’re playing.”

Fat Charlie went to the door, and looked out.