Heart of Palm (52 page)

Now, Friday morning, they emerged from the house, finally, after a pot of coffee and the dozen doughnuts Frank had picked up from the Publix.

“You seen Gooch?” Frank said to Dean. He looked around the yard again.

“Not since last night,” Dean said.

They made their way down the drive to pile into Biaggio’s van, Frank’s truck cab being too small to get the four out to Aberdeen to scatter Arla’s ashes. Frank watched as Dean picked his way slowly down the porch steps and moved awkwardly across the yard. He could barely walk. Frank held the back door of the van open and waited until Dean had climbed, nearly
crawled,
inside, his face a mask of pain and illness. Biaggio climbed behind the wheel, Sofia next to him in the passenger seat.

“Hang on,” Frank said. He walked over to the storage pod, spun the combination lock, and entered the dark cube, letting his eyes adjust to the hot darkness and feeling along the tops of the boxes until he found what he was looking for, Arla’s wooden cane, the dark straight wood shiny even in this dim light, the rubber handle soft and warm. He locked the pod, went back to the van, and handed the cane in to Dean, who nodded, cleared his throat, accepted it. Frank scanned the yard one last time, then climbed into the backseat and sat next to Dean.

Carson would meet them at Aberdeen, it had been decided, and he’d bring Elizabeth and Bell. Frank didn’t know whether Elizabeth had seen or even talked to Carson again after the scene with Mac at his house on Wednesday. It was not his place to ask, not his place to know.

They stopped at the funeral home, and Frank went in and signed for the ashes, which were packed in a cardboard carton the size of a shoe box, the box then wrapped in a purple velvet bag. He picked them up, surprised at the weight, then returned to Biaggio’s van.

Sofia gasped when she saw the box.

“My God,” she said. “That’s her?” She started to cry.

“Now, honey,” Biaggio said.

Dean stared at the box on Frank’s lap.

“Will’s box wasn’t that big,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” Frank said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Dean said.

“I was there. I remember. It was the same.”

“I was there, too, dumbo,” Dean said. “It was a smaller box.”

“It’s standard, Dad. They do it the same every time.”

“She was a big woman,” Biaggio offered.

Sofia sniffled.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the same,” Frank said, exasperated.

“You sure that’s her?” Dean said.

“For God’s sake, it’s her,” Frank said. “They’re careful with this stuff.”

“Well, you don’t know,” Dean insisted. “They could bung it up.”

“You’re upsetting Sofia,” Frank said. He glared at him. “This is Mom. It’s Arla. Now will you stop?”

“I’m just saying,” Dean said. “You can’t believe everything. Lots of people say things, that don’t make it so. You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make them biscuits.”

Sofia stared at him, her eyes wet and her lips clamped tightly together. Her chin shook.

“Aw, Mr. Bravo,” Biaggio said. “Let’s not talk about ovens.” He nodded at the box.

“Let me see that,” Dean said.

He took the box from Frank and fell silent. They all watched him as he held the box between his two gnarled hands, stared at it, seemed to take some strange energy from its weight on his lap.

“It’s okay,” Dean said, after a minute. “It’s her. I don’t know much. But I know Arla.” His voice broke on the last word. Sofia hiccupped. Frank stared out the window. Biaggio pulled out of the parking lot and headed for Aberdeen.

The house was razed. Leveled. Sofia let out a small cry and Dean said “
shit
” and Biaggio stopped the van in what used to be the driveway. They all stared, astonished, at the place that used to be Aberdeen and was now an enormous jumble of wrecked lumber, pale swatches of Aberdeen’s gunmetal gray paint still visible. Beyond the house, to the north, the woods leading to Uncle Henry’s had been clear-cut, and beyond that, at the other end of the property a half mile away, another pile of wreckage towered on the patch of land that used to be Uncle Henry’s. Twin backhoes were parked, unmanned, at the head of Aberdeen’s driveway, spatterings of rain still shimmering on their buckets. The concrete pad where Biaggio’s trailer had stood was still visible, though broken down the middle where a backhoe had no doubt driven across it.

How had they moved so quickly? Frank was confounded—he’d seen the backhoes doing their work at the Publix site, seen the earthmovers clear-cutting the properties on his own street, and he knew they worked fast, but this . . . this. . . .

It was just Monday they’d been here, all of them, walking around the porch for the last time, debating the value of the thick cement picnic table, piling bags of trash out by the road. It was just five days ago they’d sat in the kitchen, the paramedics’ paperwork spread out on the table, the weight of Arla’s spirit still lingering in the atmosphere. It was just a few weeks ago he and Elizabeth had walked the path from the house to Uncle Henry’s, that hot, beautiful night.

Frank got out of the van and Biaggio followed. Sofia helped Dean out. The air was heavy with moisture, and the temperature had begun to rise again so that it looked like clouds of steam were emerging from the piles of rubble and lumber. The magnolias—gone. The wraparound porch—gone. The path to Uncle Henry’s.

Gone.

Frank had thought about this day. Fantasized about it—the heavy timbers of Aberdeen broken and spent, the ties dissolved, his own future free and unfettered by the weight of the hundred-year-old house and the people and ghosts who inhabited it. But now his heart was heavy, and his stomach was gnawing again, and the vision of the ruined house became suddenly the embodiment of all he had lost in the last five days. A flight of images that felt like an aura swept over him: the blue vinyl tablecloth, the Felix clock, the thick round bannister, the pantry full of Little Debbie cakes, the peeling paint, Dean’s bass on the wall. The pile of shoes on the back porch. Always, the pile of shoes.
Don’t clomp all that mud in here, you boys! What were you, raised in a barn?

“Well,” Dean said. “I guess they’re in a helluva hurry to build that marina.” He leaned up against Biaggio’s van.

A car door slammed, and Carson and Elizabeth joined the rest of them at the edge of the property. Elizabeth, wide-eyed, held Bell’s hand.

“My God,” Carson said. “They really did it.”

They walked down to the edge of the water. Dean walked in front, one hand clutching the box, the other holding Arla’s cane, moving slowly and painfully through the rough dirt and around the larger piles of debris, down to the edge of the waterway, to a shady spot under a tall pine where the bank jutted steeply over the water, which rushed by five feet below. They stood together, the Bravos, and for the first time in as long as Frank could remember it seemed that nobody could think of anything to say, standing there in the imaginary shadow of what once was Aberdeen, what once was their lives. Dean’s breathing was labored, raspy.

“Dad,” Carson said finally, and Dean limped forward, opened the purple bag, the cardboard box and the plastic bag within. He turned back to the rest of the group.

“You wanna?” he said, gesturing at the ashes.

“You,” Sofia said. “You do it.”

So he did, letting the cane drop to the sand and clutching the bag of ashes with both hands, walking forward to the very edge of the embankment. He tipped the bag until gravity kicked in and a soft breeze took over and then Arla was moving, white and smoky and thin, through the hot wet air, out onto the surface of the water and down, away, borne south on the tide but some parts sinking deep, into the sand below, Frank guessed, becoming part of the land, part of the water, part of the earth.

“‘Night,
maman,
” Sofia said, “
Je t’aime.
” Frank was surprised that she was not crying, but was standing very straight and still, her hand in Biaggio’s. They waited a few minutes more, and then Sofia and Biaggio turned and walked back up the bank. Frank followed with Carson, Elizabeth, and Bell, but he turned back briefly to see Dean still standing alone at the edge of the waterway. Carson looked, too.

“Give him a minute, I guess,” he said to Frank. They made their way back to the van, but then they hung there, not knowing quite what should come next.

“Lunch?” Elizabeth said finally.

“Lunch,” Sofia agreed.

Bell was standing very still, looking down toward the water, and she put her hand up to her eyes suddenly, to shield the sun.

“Mama,” she said. “Is Grandpa Dean
swimming
?”

Frank turned and looked back at the water.

“Oh, Christ,” Carson said. “Oh for shit’s sake.”

Dean was ten, maybe fifteen feet from the shore, splashing awkwardly. His orange cap had fallen off and floated nearby. Frank saw Dean’s face go under once, his mouth open, then resurface, then go under again. Then they couldn’t see him anymore.

And then Carson was moving, faster than Frank could have given him credit for, and Frank was following, but slower, clumsier, back down the yards of overturned earth and the scuttled foundation that once was Aberdeen. Bell and Elizabeth were yelling, and Biaggio and Sofia were behind him now, too, but Carson was faster than all of them. Before Frank could even reach the edge of the water Carson was in it, had gotten to Dean, and was pulling, lugging, dragging him up, against the current, away from the steep embankment where Dean had entered the water and up twenty feet to a shallower part of the bank with a strip of sand. Frank reached them and he and Carson both pulled their father up onto land, where Dean kneeled, soaking wet, gasping and retching, before belching up a bellyful of brown tannin water.

“Ew,” Bell said. She’d arrived at the edge of the water with Elizabeth, Sofia, and Biaggio, and they all stood now in a circle around Dean, who looked up, finally.

“Damn,” he said.

“What in the name of God is wrong with you?” Carson said. He, too, was soaked to the bone, and he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, looked at it for a moment, then threw it to the ground in disgust. He bent over at the waist, breathing hard. “Don’t we all have enough to deal with without you trying to kill your fool self?”

“Did Daddy save Grandpa Dean?” Bell said.

“Yes, he did, Bell,” Elizabeth said. She stared at Carson. “He did.”

“
Jesus,
Dad,” Carson said. “You would have drowned. In your condition . . . if Bell hadn’t seen you, if we hadn’t gotten here in time. . . .” His voice trailed off. He ran his hands through his wet hair, and Frank could see that he was shaking. Elizabeth saw it, too.

“You all right, Carson?” Frank said.

“Honest to Christ,” Carson said. He squatted, put his head down for a moment, then looked at Dean again. He looked like he might cry. “Now we’ve all got to sit around and worry about you trying to off yourself? Is that the new barrel of monkeys?”

“Oh, shut it, Superman,” Dean said then. He struggled up from his knees, stood in front of them all. My God, what a sight, Frank thought. Muddy shirt clinging like gauze to his thin frame, hair flattened and gray across his head, the lines in his face more pronounced than ever. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, you dummy,” Dean said. “I tripped on a damn palmetto.” He looked at them all, then grinned. “What, you think I’d leave ya’ll orphans?”

“Oh, for
gosh
sakes,” Sofia said. She started to laugh, then put her hands over her mouth. “Sorry,” she muttered.

“Oh, no, it’s funny,” Carson said. “It’s just funny as hell.” He turned and marched up the bank toward the cars. Elizabeth smiled at Frank, then turned to follow Carson.

“Well, shit,” Dean said. He was squinting down the line of the waterway, shielding his eyes with his hand.

“Now what?” Frank said.

“I lost my damn hat,” Dean said. He shook his head. “I liked that hat.”

They turned and watched it go, a tiny orange fleck wobbling down the current with Arla.

T
WENTY-FOUR

They stopped at Sterling’s for lunch, but Carson was fractious, irritated by his wet clothes. He snapped at Cathy for bringing him the wrong drink, fussed loudly about the cloying perfume of the woman sitting behind him, then complained his meat loaf was undercooked. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“Dad’s wet, too,” Frank said, finally, having had enough. “I don’t hear him bitching.”

“That’s because it’s his fault,” Carson said.

“Shit, I don’t care,” Dean said, looking down at his own clothes. He seemed surprised to notice they were wet. “Wet’s better than hot.”

“I prolly got an extra shirt out there in the van, you want me to look?” Biaggio said.

“No, thank you,” Carson said. He scowled and eyed Biaggio’s enormous frame. “I don’t think you and I have the same tailor, so to speak.”

“Carson, take a chill pill,” Sofia said, which was funny, it seemed to Frank, but he didn’t dare laugh. Carson raised his eyebrows at Sofia but did not answer. Elizabeth picked at a tuna melt. Bell finished her chicken nuggets and then ate the rest of Carson’s rejected meat loaf. Cathy finally came to clear the plates and slap a bill down in the center of the table.