Duma Key (10 page)

I did not say this to my wife, who started off strong and then broke down in tears. “He's started the chemo, but Momma says it might already have metas . . . mesass . . . oh, whatever that fucking word is, I sound like you!” And then, still sniffing but sounding shocked and humbled: “I'm sorry, Eddie, that was terrible.”

“No, it wasn't,” I said. “It wasn't terrible at all. And the word is metastasized.”

“Yes. Thank you. Anyway, they're doing the surgery to take out the main tumor tonight.” She was starting to cry again. “I can't believe this is happening to my Dad.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “They do miracles these days. I'm Exhibit A.”

Either she didn't consider me a miracle or didn't want to go there. “Anyway, Christmas here is off.”

“Of course.” And the truth? I was glad. Glad as hell.

“I'm flying out to Palm tomorrow. Ilse is coming Friday, Melinda on the twentieth. I'm assuming . . . considering the fact that you and my father never really saw eye to eye . . .”

Considering the fact that we had once almost come to blows after my father-in-law had referred to the Democrats as “the Commiecrats,” I thought that was putting it mildly. I said, “If you're thinking
I don't want to join you and the girls for Christmas in Palm Desert, you're correct. You'll be helping financially, and I hope your folks will understand that I had something to do with that—”

“I hardly think this is the time to drag your goddam
checkbook
into the discussion!”

And the anger was back, just like that. Jack, almost out of his stinking little box. I wanted to say
Why
don't you go fuck yourself, you loudmouth bitch
. But I didn't. At least partly because it would have come out
loudmouf birch
or maybe
broadmouth lurch
. I somehow knew this.

Still, it was close.

“Eddie?” She sounded truculent, more than ready to get into it if I wanted to.

“I'm not dragging my checkbook into anything,” I said, carefully listening to each word. They came out all right. That was a relief. “I'm just saying that my face at your father's bedside would not be likely to speed his recovery.” For a moment the anger—the
fury
—almost added that I hadn't seen his face at mine, either. Once more I managed to stop the words, but by then I was sweating.

“All right. Point taken.” She paused. “What
will
you do for Christmas, Eddie?”

Paint the sunset,
I thought.
Maybe get it right.

“I believe that if I'm a good boy, I may be invited to Christmas dinner with Jack Cantori and his family,” I said, believing no such thing. “Jack's the young fellow who works for me.”

“You sound better. Stronger. Are you still forgetting things?”

“I don't know, I can't remember,” I said.

“That's very funny.”

“Laughter's the best medicine. I read it in
Reader's Digest
.”

“What about your arm? Are you still having phantom sensations?”

“Nope,” I lied, “that's pretty well stopped.”

“Good. Great.” A pause. Then: “Eddie?”

“Still here,” I said. And with dark red half-moons in the palms of my hands, from clenching my fists.

There was a long pause. The phone lines no longer hiss and crackle as they did when I was a kid, but I could hear all the miles sighing gently between us. It sounded like the Gulf when the tide is out. Then she said, “I'm sorry things turned out this way.”

“I am, too,” I said, and when she hung up, I picked up one of my bigger shells and came very close to heaving it through the screen of the TV. Instead, I limped across the room, opened the door, and chucked it across the deserted road. I didn't hate Pam—not really—but I seemed to still hate something. Maybe that other life.

Maybe only myself.

vii

ifsogirl88 to EFree19

9:05 AM

December 23

Dear Daddy, The docs aren't saying a lot but I'm not getting a real good vibe about Grampy's surgery. Of course that might only be Mom, she
goes in to visit Grampa every day, takes Nana and tries to stay “upbeat” but you know how she is, not the silver lining type. I want to come down there and see you. I checked the flights and can get one to Sarasota on the 26th. It gets in at 6:15 PM your time. I could stay 2 or 3 days. Please say yes! Also I could bring my prezzies instead of mailing them. Love . . .

Ilse

P.S. I have some special news.

Did I think about it, or only consult the ticking of instinct? I can't remember. Maybe it was neither. Maybe the only thing that mattered was that I wanted to see her. In any case, I replied almost at once.

EFree19 to ifsogirl88

9:17 AM

December 23

Ilse: Come ahead! Finalize your arrangements and I'll meet you with Jack Cantori, who happens to be my own Christmas Elf. I hope you will like my house, which I call Big Pink. One thing:
do not do this w/o your mother's knowledge & approval
. We have been through some bad times, as you well know. I am hoping those bad times are now in the past. I think you understand.

Dad

Her own reply was just as quick. She must have been waiting.

ifsogirl88 to EFree19

9:23 AM

December 23

Already cleared it w/Mom, she says okay. Tried to talk Lin into it, but she'd rather stay here before flying back to France. Don't hold it against her.

Ilse

PS: Yippee! I'm excited!!

Don't hold it against her.
It seemed that my If-So-Girl had been saying that about her older sister ever since she could talk. Lin doesn't want to go on the weenie roast because she doesn't like hot dogs . . . but don't hold it against her. Lin can't wear that kind of sneakers because none of the kids in her class wear hightops anymore . . . so don't hold it against her. Lin wants Ryan's Dad to take them to the prom . . . but don't hold it against her. And you know the bad part? I never did. I could have told Linnie that preferring Ilse was like growing up lefthanded—something over which I had no control—and that would only have made it worse, even though it was the truth. Maybe
especially
because it was the truth.

viii

Ilse coming to Duma Key, to Big Pink. Yippee, she was excited, and yippee, I was, too. Jack had found
me a stout lady named Juanita to clean twice a week, and I had her make up the guest bedroom. I also asked her if she'd bring some fresh flowers the day after Christmas. Smiling, she suggested something that sounded like creamus cackus. My brain, by then quite comfortable with the fine art of cross-connection, was stopped by this for no more than five seconds; I told Juanita I was sure Ilse would love a Christmas cactus.

On Christmas Eve I found myself re-reading Ilse's original e-mail. The sun was westering, beating a long and brilliant track across the water, but it was still at least two hours to sundown, and I was sitting in the Florida room. The tide was high. Beneath me, the deep drifts of shell shifted and grated, making that sound that was so like breath or hoarse confidential speaking. I ran my thumb over the postscript—
I have some special news
—and my right arm, the one that was no longer there, began to tingle. The location of that tingle was clearly, almost exquisitely, defined. It began in the fold of the elbow and spiraled to an end on the outside of the wrist. It deepened to an itch I longed to reach over and scratch.

I closed my eyes and snapped the thumb of my right hand against the second finger. There was no sound, but I could
feel
the snap. I rubbed my arm against my side and could feel the rub. I lowered my right hand, long since burned in the incinerator of a St. Paul hospital, to the arm of my chair and drummed the fingers. No sound, but the sensation was there: skin on wicker. I would have sworn to it in the name of God.

All at once I wanted to draw.

I thought about the big room upstairs, but Little
Pink seemed too far to go. I went into the living room and took an Artisan pad off a stack of them sitting on the coffee table. Most of my art supplies were upstairs, but there were a few boxes of colored pencils in one of the drawers of the living room desk, and I took one of those, as well.

Back in the Florida room (which I would always think of as a porch), I sat down and closed my eyes. I listened to the waves do their work beneath me, lifting the shells and turning them into new patterns, each one different from the one before. With my eyes shut, that grating was more than ever like talk: the water giving temporary tongue to the edge of the land. And the land itself was temporary, because if you took the geological view, Duma wouldn't last long. None of the Keys would; in the end the Gulf would take them all and new ones would rise in new locations. It was probably true of Florida itself. The land was low, and on loan.

Ah, but that sound was restful. Hypnotic.

Without opening my eyes, I felt for Ilse's e-mail and ran the tips of my fingers over it again. I did this with my right hand. Then I opened my eyes, brushed the e-mail printout aside with the hand that was there, and pulled the Artisan pad onto my lap. I flipped back the cover, shook all twelve of the pre-sharpened Venus pencils onto the table in front of me, and began to draw. I had an idea I meant to draw Ilse—who had I been thinking of, after all?—and thought I'd make a spectacularly bad job of it, because I hadn't attempted a single human figure since starting to draw again. But it wasn't Ilse, and it wasn't bad. Not great, maybe, not Rembrandt (not even Norman Rockwell), but not bad.

It was a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins tee-shirt. The number on the tee was 48, which meant nothing to me; in my old life I used to go to as many T-Wolves games as I could, but I've never been a baseball fan. The guy had blond hair which I knew wasn't quite right; I didn't have the colors to get the exact darkening-toward-brown shade. He was carrying a book in one hand. He was smiling. I knew who he was. He was Ilse's special news. That was what the shells were saying as the tide lifted them and turned them and dropped them again.
Engaged, engaged.
She had a ring, a diamond, he had bought it at—

I had been shading the young man's jeans with Venus Blue. Now I dropped it, picked up the black, and stroked the word

ZALES

at the bottom of the sheet. It was information; it was also the name of the picture. Naming lends power.

Then, without a pause, I dropped the black, picked up orange, and added workboots. The orange was too bright, it made the boots look new when they weren't, but the
idea
was right.

I scratched at my right arm, scratched
through
my right arm, and got my ribs instead. I muttered “Fuck” under my breath. Beneath me, the shells seemed to grate a name. Was it Connor? No. And something was wrong here. I didn't know where that sense of wrongness was coming from, but all at once the phantom itch in my right arm became a cold ache.

I tossed back the top sheet on the pad and sketched again, this time using just the red pencil. Red, red, it
was
RED!
The pencil raced, spilling out a human figure like blood from a cut. It was back-to, dressed in a red robe with a kind of scalloped collar. I colored the hair red, too, because it looked like blood and this person felt like blood. Like danger. Not for me but—

“For Ilse,” I muttered. “Danger for Ilse. Is it the guy? The special-news guy?”

There was something not right about the special-news guy, but I didn't think that was what was creeping me out. For one thing, the figure in the red robe didn't look like a guy. It was hard to tell for sure, but yes—I thought . . . female. So maybe not a robe at all. Maybe a dress? A long red dress?

I flipped back to the first figure and looked at the book the special-news guy was holding. I threw my red pencil on the floor and colored the book black. Then I looked at the guy again, and suddenly printed

HUMMINGBIRDS

in scripty-looking letters above him. Then I threw my black pencil on the floor. I raised my shaking hands and covered my face with them. I called out my daughter's name, the way you'd call out if you saw someone too close to a steep drop or busy street.

Maybe I was just crazy.
Probably
I was crazy.

Eventually I became aware that there was—of course—only one hand over my eyes. The phantom ache and itching had departed. The idea that I might be going crazy—hell, that I might have already gone—remained. One thing was beyond doubt: I was hungry. Ravenous.

ix

Ilse's plane arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule. She was radiant in faded jeans and a Brown University tee-shirt, and I didn't see how Jack could keep from falling in love with her right there in Terminal B. She threw herself into my arms, covered my face with kisses, then laughed and grabbed me when I started listing to port on my crutch. I introduced her to Jack and pretended not to see the small diamond (purchased at Zales, I had no doubt) flashing on the third finger of her left hand when they shook.