Duma Key (44 page)

“The whole thing, or—”

“That remains to be seen.”

“I don't mean to pry, honey. It's just that enquiring Dads—”

“—want to know, of course they do, but I can't help you this time. All I know right now is that I still love him—or at least I think I do—and I miss him, but he's got to make a choice.”

At this point, Pam would have asked
Between you and the girl he's been singing with?
What I asked was, “Are you eating?”

She burst into peals of merry laughter.

“Answer the question, Illy.”

“Like a damn pig!”

“Then why aren't you out to lunch now?”

“A bunch of us are going to have a picnic in the park, that's why. Complete with anthro study notes and Frisbee. I'm bringing the cheese and French bread. And I'm late.”

“Okay. As long as you're eating and not brooding in your tent.”

“Eating well, brooding moderately.” Her voice changed again, became the adult one. The abrupt switches back and forth were disconcerting. “Sometimes I lie awake a little, and then I think of you down there. Do you lie awake?”

“Sometimes. Not as much now.”

“Daddy, was marrying Mom a mistake you made? That she made? Or was it just an accident?”

“It wasn't an accident and it wasn't a mistake. Twenty-four good years, two fine daughters, and we're still talking. It wasn't a mistake, Illy.”

“You wouldn't change it?”

People kept asking me that question. “No.”

“If you could go back . . . would you?”

I paused, but not long. Sometimes there's no time to decide what's the best answer. Sometimes you can only give the true answer. “No, honey.”

“Okay. But I miss you, Dad.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Sometimes I miss the old times, too. When things were less complicated.” She paused. I could have
spoken—wanted to—but kept silent. Sometimes silence is best. “Dad, do people ever deserve second chances?”

I thought of my own second chance. How I had survived an accident that should have killed me. And I was doing more than just hanging out, it seemed. I felt a rush of gratitude. “All the time.”

“Thanks, Daddy. I can't wait to see you.”

“Back atcha. You'll get an official invitation soon.”

“Okay. I really have to go. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I sat for a moment with the phone at my ear after she hung up, listening to the nothing. “Do the day and let the day do you,” I said. Then the dial tone kicked in, and I decided I had one more call to make, after all.

viii

This time when Alice Aucoin came to the phone, she sounded a lot more lively and a lot less cautious. I thought that was a nice change.

“Alice, we never talked about a name for the show,” I said.

“I was sort of assuming you meant to call it ‘Roses Grow from Shells,' ” she said. “That's good. Very evocative.”

“It is,” I said, looking out to the Florida room and the Gulf beyond. The water was a brilliant blue-white plate; I had to squint against the glare. “But it's not quite right.”

“You have one you like better, I take it?”

“Yes, I think so. I want to call it ‘The View from Duma.' What do you think?”

Her response was immediate. “I think it sings.”

So did I.

ix

I had sweat through my LOSE IT IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS tee-shirt in spite of Big Pink's efficient air conditioning, and I was more exhausted than a brisk walk to
El Palacio
and back left me these days. My ear felt hot and throbby from the telephone. I felt uneasy about Ilse—the way parents are always uneasy about the problems of their children, I suppose, once they're too old to be called home when it starts to get dark and the baths are being drawn—but I also felt satisfied with the work I'd put in, the way I used to feel after a good day on a hard construction job.

I didn't feel particularly hungry, but I made myself slop a few tablespoons of tuna salad onto a lettuce leaf and washed it down with a glass of milk. Whole milk—bad for the heart, good for the bones.
I guess that one's a wash,
Pam would have said. I turned on the kitchen TV and learned that Candy Brown's wife was suing the City of Sarasota over her husband's death, claiming negligence.
Good luck on that one, sweetheart,
I thought. The local meteorologist said the hurricane season might start earlier than ever. And the Devil Rays had gotten their low-rent asses kicked by the Red Sox in an exhibition game—welcome to baseball reality, boys.

I considered dessert (I had Jell-O Pudding, sometimes known as The Last Resort of the Single Man),
then just put my plate in the sink and limped off to the bedroom for a nap. I considered setting the alarm, then didn't bother; I'd probably only doze. Even if I actually slept, the light would wake me up in an hour or so, when it got over to the western side of the house and came angling in the bedroom window.

So thinking, I lay down and slept until six o'clock that evening.

x

There was no question of supper; I didn't even consider it. Below me the shells were whispering
paint, paint
.

I went upstairs to Little Pink like a man in a dream, wearing only my undershorts. I turned on The Bone, set
Girl and Ship No. 7
against the wall, and put a fresh canvas—not as big as the one I'd used for
Wireman Looks West,
but big—on my easel. My missing arm was itching, but this no longer bothered me the way it had at first; the truth was, I'd almost come to look forward to it.

Shark Puppy was on the radio: “Dig.” Excellent song. Excellent lyrics.
Life is more than love and pleasure.

I remember clearly how the whole world seemed to be waiting for me to begin—that was how much power I felt running through me while the guitars screamed and the shells murmured.

I came here to dig for treasure.

Treasure, yes. Loot.

I painted until the sun was gone and the moon
cast its bitter rind of white light over the water and after that was gone, too.

And the next night.

And the next.

And the next.

Girl and Ship No. 8.

If you want to play you gotta pay.

I unbottled.

xi

The sight of Dario in a suit and a tie, with his lush hair tamed and combed straight back from his forehead, scared me even more than the murmuring audience that filled Geldbart Auditorium, where the lights had just been turned down to half . . . except for the spotlight shining down on the lectern standing at center stage, that was. The fact that Dario himself was nervous—going to the podium he had nearly dropped his note-cards—scared me even worse.

“Good evening, my name is Dario Nannuzzi,” he said. “I am co-curator, and chief buyer at the Scoto Gallery on Palm Avenue. More importantly, I have been a part of the Sarasota art community for thirty years, and I hope you will excuse my brief descent into what some might call Bobbittry when I say there is no finer art community in America.”

This brought enthusiastic applause from an audience which—as Wireman said later—might know the difference between Monet and Manet, but apparently didn't have a clue that there was a difference between George Babbitt and John Bobbitt. Standing in the wings, suffering through that purgatory only
frightened main speakers experience as their introducers wind their slow and peristaltic courses, I hardly noticed.

Dario shifted his top file-card to the bottom, once again nearly dropped the whole stack, recovered, and looked out at his audience again. “I hardly know where to begin, but to my relief I need say very little, for true talent seems to blaze up from nowhere, and serves as its own introduction.”

That said, he proceeded to introduce me for the next ten minutes as I stood in the wings with my one lousy page of notes clutched in my remaining hand. Names went past like floats in a parade. A few, like Edward Hopper and Salvador Dalí, I knew. Others, like Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage, I didn't. Each unknown name made me feel more of an impostor. The fear I felt was no longer mental; it clamped a deep and stinking hold in my bowels. I felt like I needed to pass gas, but I was afraid I might load my pants instead. And that wasn't the worst. Every word I had prepared had gone out of my mind except for the very first line, which was hideously appropriate:
My name is Edgar Freemantle, and I have no idea how I wound up here
. It was supposed to elicit a chuckle. It wouldn't, I knew that now, but at least it was true.

While Dario droned on—Joan Miró this, Breton's Surrealist Manifesto that—a terrified ex-contractor stood with his pathetic page of notes clutched in his cold fist. My tongue was a dead slug that might croak but would speak no coherent word, not to two hundred art mavens, many of whom held advanced degrees, some of whom were motherfucking
professors
. Worst of all was my brain. It was a dry socket waiting to be filled with pointless, flailing
anger: the words might not come, but the rage was always on tap.

“Enough!” Dario cried cheerily, striking fresh terror into my pounding heart and sending a cramp rolling through my miserable basement regions—terror above, barely held-in shit below. What a lovely combination. “It has been fifteen years since the Scoto added a new artist to its crowded spring calendar, and we have never introduced one in whom there has been greater interest. I think the slides you are about to see and the talk you are about to hear will explain our interest and excitement.”

He paused dramatically. I felt a poison dew of sweat spring out on my brow and wiped it off. The arm that I lifted seemed to weigh fifty pounds.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Edgar Freemantle, lately of Minneapolis–St. Paul, now of Duma Key.”

They applauded. It sounded like an artillery barrage going off. I commanded myself to run away. I commanded myself to faint. I did neither. Like a man in a dream—but not a good one—I walked onstage. Everything seemed to be happening slowly. I saw that every seat was taken but
no
seat was taken because they were on their feet, they were giving me a standing O. High above me, on the domed ceiling, angels flew in airy disregard of the earthly matters below, and how I wished I was one of them. Dario stood beside the podium, hand outstretched. It was the wrong one; in his own nervousness he had extended his right, and so my return handshake was awkward and bass-ackwards. My notes were crumpled briefly between our palms, then tore.
Look what you did, you asshole,
I thought—and for one terrible moment I was afraid I'd said it aloud for the mike to
pick up and broadcast all over the room. I was aware of how bright the spotlight was as Dario left me there on my lonely perch. I was aware of the microphone on its flexible chrome rod, and thinking it looked like a cobra rising out of a snake-charmer's basket. I was aware of bright points of light shining on that chrome, and on the rim of the water glass, and on the neck of the Evian bottle next to the water glass. I was aware that the applause was starting to taper off; some of the people were resuming their seats. Soon an expectant silence would replace the applause. They would wait for me to begin. Only I had nothing to say. Even my opening line had left my head. They would wait and the silence would stretch out. There would be a few nervous coughs, and then the murmuring would start. Because they were assholes. Just a bunch of lookie-loo assholes with rubber necks. And if I managed anything, it would be an angry torrent of words that would sound like the outburst of a man suffering from Tourette's.

I'd just call for the first slide. Maybe I could do that much and the pictures would carry me. I'd have to hope they would. Only when I looked at my page of notes, I saw that not only was it torn straight down the middle, my sweat had blurred the jottings so badly I could no longer make them out. Either that or stress had created a short circuit between my eyes and my brain. And what
was
the first slide, anyway? A mailbox painting?
Sunset with Sophora
? I was almost positive neither of those was right.

Now everyone was sitting. The applause was finished. It was time for the American Primitive to open his mouth and ululate. Three rows back, sitting on the aisle, was that nozzy birch Mary Ire, with what
looked like a porthand shad open on her lap. I looked for Wireman. He'd gotten me into this, but I bore him no anus. I only wanted to apologize with my eyes for what was coming.

I'll be in the front row,
he'd said.
Dead center.

And he was. Jack, my housekeeper Juanita, Jimmy Yoshida, and Alice Aucoin were sitting on Wireman's left. And on his right, on the aisle—

The man on the aisle had to be a hallucination. I blinked, but he was still there. A vast face, dark and calm. A figure crammed so tightly into the plush auditorium seat it seemed it might take a crowbar to get him out again: Xander Kamen, peering up at me through his enormous horn-rimmed glasses and looking more like a minor god than ever. Obesity had canceled his lap, but balanced on the bulge of his belly was a ribbon-garnished gift box about three feet long. He saw my surprise—my shock—and made a gesture: not a wave but an odd, beneficent salute, putting the tips of his fingers first to his massive brow, then to his lips, then holding his hand out to me with the fingers spread. I could see the pallor of his palm. He smiled up at me, as if his presence here in the first row of the Geldbart Auditorium next to my friend Wireman were the most natural thing in the world. His large lips formed four words, one after the other:
You can do this.

And maybe I could. If I thought away from this moment. If I thought sideways.

I thought of Wireman—Wireman looking west, to be exact—and my opening line came back to me.