honest enough with himself to realize that his eagerness to feel French was what had led to his current financial jam. This house wasn’t very big or grand in any other way. But it was Art Deco!… a genuine Art Deco house from the 1920s!—one of a number built back then in this northeastern section of Miami known as the Upper East Side… not a really high-toned neighborhood but solidly upper-middle-class… lots of Cuban and other Latino business-types… white families here and there… and no Negs and no Haitians!—except for the Lantiers, and nobody up here ever pegged the Lantiers as Haitian… certainly not the Lantiers, an Everglades Global University French professor and his family in an Art Deco house… These Art Deco houses were considered rather special, Art Deco being English shorthand for Arts Décoratifs, the first form of Modern architecture—and it was French! He knew paying for it would be a stretch—a $540,000 stretch—but it was French!—and very stylishly so. Now, with a $486,000 mortgage on his back, he was paying $3,050 a month—$36,666.96 a year—plus $7,000 in annual property taxes, plus nearly $16,000 in federal income tax, all this on a salary of $86,442—there you had yourself a stretch, all right… he felt like one leg had a toehold on the edge of the cliff back there, and the other leg had a toehold on the other cliff, way out there, and in between was the bottomless Canyon of Doom. In any case, the Calvin chair had a nearly straight back and no seat cushion. Lantier didn’t want any visitor to get comfortable in here. He didn’t want visitors in here. Period. That went for his wife, Louisette, too, before she died two years ago… Why did he continue to think of Louisette at least a dozen times a day?… when every single thought of her caused him to draw in a deep breath and expel it in the form of a long sigh?… and turn his lower eyelids into two tiny ponds of tears?… as they were at this moment—
Twistflimsy clatter!—he himself had tried to fix the old handle on the cheap, damn it, and the door flew open, and there stood his twenty-one-year-old daughter, Ghislaine, yeux en noir blindingly bright with excitement, lips trying not to betray the enthusiasm that had lit up those big lovely sphères—
—yes, the door of his inviolate sanctuary flew open without so much as a preliminary knock, and there stood Ghislaine… and he didn’t even have to say it in his mind as a whole thought because in so many different situations it had come true: Where the happiness of his beautiful, pale-as-the-moon daughter was concerned, his patriarchal rules melted away. He immediately rose up from his chair and embraced her… then sat back on the edge of his desk so they would remain tête-à-tête.
In French she said, “Papa! I don’t know if I mentioned South Beach Outreach to you, but I’m thinking of joining!”
Lantier had to smile. ::::::Thinking of joining… try absolutely dying to join!… You’re so transparent my dear, sweet, predictable daughter. When you’re excited about something, you can’t stand taking time to build a nice little sofa of small talk for it first, can you. You have to spill it out now! don’t you.:::::: That made him smile even more.
Ghislaine apparently took it as one of his ironic smiles, which he had been guilty of in the past, and it was absolutely not the way to tell a child what you think. When they figure out you are mocking them, it ignites the bitterest resentment. Ghislaine must have taken it as one of those smiles, because she switched to English and spoke rapidly, urgently.
“Oh, I know, you think it’ll take up too much time. And it does take up more time… You don’t just visit the poor and drop off a box of food. You actually spend time with the families and try to learn their real problems, which are a lot more than hunger. That’s exactly what Nicole loves about it! Serena, too! You don’t just sit around feeling charitable. You try to help them organize their lives. That’s the only thing that can possibly change their lives! You can give them food and clothes—but only involvement can make a real difference!” In a completely different voice, a timid little voice, she said pleadingly, “What do you think?”
What did he think… The next thing he knew, he was bursting out with “What do I think? I