Duma Key (68 page)

“Miss Cookie!” I shouted. “Miss Cookie, don't you dare hang up this phone!”

That got through. “Dad . . . dee?” There was a world of wonder in that broken word.

“Yeah, honey—Dad.”

“If you're really Daddy . . .” A long pause. I could see her in her own kitchen, barefoot (as she had been that day in Little Pink, looking at the picture of the doll and the floating tennis balls), head down, hair hanging around her face. Distracted, maybe almost to the point of madness. And for the first time I began to hate Perse as well as fear her.

“Ilse . . . Miss Cookie . . . I want you to listen to me—”

“Tell me my screen name.” There was a certain shocked cunning in the voice now. “If you're really my Daddy, tell me my screen name.”

And if I didn't, I realized, she'd hang up. Because something had been at her. Something had been fooling her, pawing her over, drawing its webs around her. Only not an it.
She
.

Illy's screen name.

For a moment I couldn't remember that, either.

You can do this,
Kamen said, but Kamen was dead.

“You're not . . . my Daddy,” said the distracted girl
on the other end of the line, and again she was on the verge of hanging up.

Think sideways,
Kamen advised calmly.

Even then,
I thought, without knowing why I was thinking it.
Even then, even later, even now, even so
—

“You're not my Daddy, you're
her,
” Ilse said. That drugged and dragging voice, so unlike her. “My Daddy's dead. I saw it in a dream. Goodb—”

“
If so!
” I shouted, not caring if I woke Wireman or not. Not even thinking about Wireman. “
You're If-So-Girl!
”

A long pause from the other end. Then: “What's the rest of it?”

I had another moment of horrible blankness, and then I thought:
Alicia Keyes, keys on a piano
—

“88,” I said. “You're If-So-Girl88.”

There was a long, long pause. It seemed forever. Then she began to cry.

vii

“Daddy, she said you were dead. That was the one thing I believed. Not just because I dreamed it but because Mom called and said Tom died. I dreamed you were sad and walked into the Gulf. I dreamed the undertow took you and you drowned.”

“I didn't drown, Ilse. I'm okay, I promise you.”

The story came out in fragments and bursts, interrupted by tears and digressions. It was clear to me that hearing my voice had steadied her but not cured her. She was wandering, strangely unfixed in time; she referred to the show at the Scoto as if it had occurred at least a week ago, and interrupted herself
once to tell me that a friend of hers had been arrested for “cropping.” This made her laugh wildly, as if she were drunk or stoned. When I asked her what cropping was, she told me it didn't matter. She said it might even have been part of her dream. Now she sounded sober again. Sober . . . but not
right.
She said the
she
was a voice in her head, but it also came from the drains and the toilet.

Wireman came in at some point during our conversation, turned on the kitchen fluorescents, and sat down at the table with his harpoon in front of him. He said nothing, only listened to my end.

Ilse said she had begun to feel strange—“eerie-feary” was what she actually said—from the first moment she came back into her apartment. At first it was just a spaced-out feeling, but soon she was experiencing nausea, as well—the kind she'd felt the day we had tried to prospect south along Duma Key's only road. It had gotten worse and worse. A woman spoke to her from the sink, told her that her father was dead. Ilse said she'd gone out for a walk to clear her head after that, but decided to come right back.

“It must be those Lovecraft stories I read for my Senior English Project,” she said. “I kept thinking someone was following me. That woman.”

Back in the apartment, she'd started to cook some oatmeal, thinking it might settle her stomach, but the very sight of it when it started to thicken nauseated her—every time she stirred it, she seemed to
see
things in it. Skulls. The faces of screaming children. Then a woman's face. The woman had too many eyes, Ilse said. The woman in the oatmeal said her father was dead and her mother didn't know yet, but when she did, she would have a party.

“So I went and lied down,” she said, unconsciously reverting to the diction of childhood, “and that's when I dreamed the woman was right and you were dead, Daddy.”

I thought of asking her when her mother had called, but I doubted if she'd remember, and it didn't matter, anyway. But, my God, hadn't Pam sensed anything wrong besides tiredness, especially in light of my phone call? Was she deaf? Surely I wasn't the only one who could hear this confusion in Ilse's voice, this
weariness
. But maybe she hadn't been so bad when Pam called. Perse was powerful, but that didn't mean it still didn't take her time to work. Especially at a distance.

“Ilse, do you still have the picture I gave you? The one of the little girl and the tennis balls?
The End of the Game,
I called it.”

“That's another funny thing,” she said. I had a sense of her
trying
to be coherent, the way a drunk pulled over by a traffic cop will try to sound sober. “I meant to get it framed, but I didn't get around to it, so I tacked it on the wall of the big room with a Pushpin. You know, the living room/kitchen. I gave you tea there.”

“Yes.” I'd never been in her Providence apartment.

“Where I could look . . . look at it . . . but then when I camed back . . . hnn . . .”

“Are you going to sleep? Don't go to sleep on me, Miss Cookie.”

“Not sleeping . . .” But her voice was fading.

“Ilse! Wake up!
Wake the fuck up!
”

“Daddy!” Sounding shocked. But also fully awake again.

“What happened to the picture? What was different about it when you came back?”

“It was in the bed'oom. I guess I must have moved it myself—it's even stuck on the same red Pushpin—but I don't remember doing it. I guess I wanted it closer to me. Isn't that funny?”

No, I didn't think it was funny.

“I wouldn't want to live if you were dead, Daddy,” she said. “I'd want to be dead, too. As dead as . . . as . . . as dead as a marble!” And she laughed. I thought of Wireman's daughter and did not.

“Listen to me carefully, Ilse. It's important that you do as I say. Will you do that?”

“Yes, Daddy. As long as it doesn't take too long. I'm . . .” The sound of a yawn. “. . . tired. I might be able to sleep, now that I know you're all right.”

Yes, she'd be able to sleep. Right under
The End of the Game,
hanging from its red Pushpin. And she'd wake up thinking that the dream had been this conversation, the reality her father's suicide on Duma Key.

Perse had done this. That hag. That
bitch
.

The rage was back, just like that. As if it had never been away. But I couldn't let it fuck up my thinking; couldn't even let it show in my voice, or Ilse might think it was aimed at her. I clamped the phone between my ear and shoulder. Then I reached out and grasped the slim chrome neck of the sink faucet. I closed my fist around it.

“This won't take long, hon. But you have to do it. Then you can go to sleep.”

Wireman sat perfectly still at the table, watching me. Outside, the surf hammered.

“What kind of stove do you have, Miss Cookie?”

“Gas. Gas stove.” She laughed again.

“Good. Get the picture and throw it in the oven. Then close the door and turn the oven on. High as it will go. Burn that thing.”

“No, Daddy!” Wide awake again, as shocked as when I'd said
fuck,
if not more so. “I
love
that picture!”

“I know, honey, but it's the picture that's making you feel the way you do.” I started to say something else, then stopped. If it
was
the sketch—and it was, of course it was—then I wouldn't need to hammer it home. She'd know as well as I did. Instead of speaking I throttled the faucet back and forth, wishing with all my heart it was the bitch-hag's throat.

“Daddy! Do you really think—”

“I don't think, I know. Get the picture, Ilse. I'm going to hold the phone. Get it and stick it in the oven and
burn
it. Do it right now.”

“I . . . okay. Hold on.”

There was a clunk as the phone went down.

Wireman said, “Is she doing it?”

Before I could reply, there was a snap. It was followed by a spout of cold water that drenched me to the elbow. I looked at the faucet in my hand, then at the ragged place where it had broken off. I dropped it in the sink. Water was spouting from the stump.

“I think she is,” I said. And then: “Sorry.”

“
De nada.
” He dropped to his knees, opened the cupboard beneath the sink, reached in past the wastebasket and the stash of garbage bags. He turned something, and the gusher spouting from the broken faucet started to die. “You don't know your own strength,
muchacho
. Or maybe you do.”

“Sorry,” I said again. But I wasn't. My palm was bleeding from a shallow cut, but I felt better. Clearer. It occurred to me that once upon a time, that faucet could have been my wife's neck. No wonder she had divorced me.

We sat in the kitchen and waited. The second hand on the clock above the stove made one very slow trip around the dial, started another. The water coming from the broken faucet was down to a bare rivulet. Then, very faintly, I heard Ilse, calling: “I'm back . . . I've got it . . . I—” Then she screamed. I couldn't tell if it was surprise, pain, or both.

“Ilse!” I shouted.
“Ilse!”

Wireman stood up fast, bumping his hip against the side of the sink. He raised his open hands to me. I shook my head—
Don't know.
Now I could feel sweat running down my cheeks, although the kitchen wasn't particularly warm.

I was wondering what to do next—who to call—when Ilse came back on the phone. She sounded exhausted. She also sounded like herself. Finally like herself. “Jesus Christ in the morning,” she said.

“What happened?” I had to restrain myself from shouting. “Illy,
what happened?
”

“It's gone. It caught fire and burned. I watched it through the window. It's nothing but ashes. I have to get a Band-Aid on the back of my hand, Dad. You were right. There was something really, really wrong with it.” She laughed shakily. “Damn thing didn't want to go in. It folded itself over and . . .” That shaky laugh again. “I'd call it a paper-cut, but it doesn't
look
like a paper-cut, and it didn't feel like one. It feels like a bite. I think it bit me.”

viii

The important thing for me was that she was all right. The important thing for her was that I was. We were fine. Or so the foolish artist thought. I told her I'd call tomorrow.

“Illy? One more thing.”

“Yes, Dad.” She sounded totally awake and in charge of herself again.

“Go to the stove. Is there an oven light?”

“Yes.”

“Turn it on. Tell me what you see.”

“You'll have to hold on, then—the cordless is in the bedroom.”

There was another pause, shorter. Then she came back and said, “Ashes.”

“Good,” I said.

“Daddy, what about the rest of your pictures? Are they all like this one?”

“I'm taking care of it, honey. It's a story for another day.”

“All right. Thank you, Daddy. You're still my hero. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

That was the last time we spoke, and neither of us knew. We never know, do we? At least we ended by exchanging our love. I have that. It's not much, but it's something. Others have it worse. I tell myself that on the long nights when I can't sleep.

Others have it worse.

ix

I slumped down across from Wireman and propped my head on my hand. “I'm sweating like a pig.”

“Busting Miss Eastlake's sink might've had something to do with that.”

“I'm sor—”

“Say it again and I'll smack you,” he said. “You did fine. It's not every man who gets to save his daughter's life. Believe me when I say that I envy you. Do you want a beer?”

“I'd throw it up all over the table. Got milk?”

He checked the fridge. “No milk, but we
are
go for Half-n-Half.”

“Give me a shot of that.”

“You're a sick, sick puppydick, Edgar.” But he gave me a shot of Half-n-Half in a juice glass, and I tossed it off. Then we went back upstairs, moving slowly, clutching our stubby silver-tipped arrows like aging jungle warriors.

I went back into the guest bedroom, lay down, and once more gazed up at the ceiling. My hand hurt, but that was okay. She'd cut hers; I'd cut mine. It fit, somehow.

The table is leaking,
I thought.

Drown her to sleep,
I thought.

And something else—Elizabeth had said something else, as well. Before I could remember what it was, I remembered something much more important: Ilse had burned
The End of the Game
in her gas oven and had suffered no more than a cut—or maybe a bite—on the back of her hand.

Should have told her to disinfect that,
I thought.
Should disinfect mine, too.

I slept. And this time there was no giant dream-frog to warn me.

x

A thud woke me as the sun was rising. The wind was still up—higher than ever—and it had blown one of Wireman's beach chairs against the side of the house. Or maybe the gay umbrella beneath which we had shared our first drink—iced green tea, very cooling.