Life Guards in the Hamptons (10 page)

It picked the fish, gasping, floundering, falling on its side in the grass.

“Crap, not that one.”

It didn’t change back. The wings tried to flap, but they hit the ground. The mouth opened and closed, silently crying while the gills made a valiant effort to draw in oxygen. Shit, shit, shit. I killed it!

I ran into the fenced-in dog pen, dragged out the kiddie wading pool my mother kept for hot days, so the big dogs could sit in it and cool off. The damned thing was full of leaves and twigs and old tennis balls. I tipped it upside down and dragged it toward the gasping fish-parrot. “Wait, wait. I’ll fill it.”

I ran back around and turned on the outdoor faucet full force, unreeled the garden hose and pulled it over to the pool, trailing a solid stream of water the whole way. By now I was gasping, too. And soaked.

As soon as the bottom of the kiddie pool was covered, I tipped it to make a deeper corner until the rest filled up. The fish dove in. All I could see was a pink and blue and yellow tail, a feathered tail, sticking over the lip of the pool. I kept the hose running until it overflowed, then set the whole thing level.

I wasn’t sure if it lived. I didn’t want to put my hand in the water, either. The thing was as long as a striped bass, legal keeper-size, with a wide mouth and big teeth I’d seen while it panted for air. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

It splashed. I saw the scales glisten under the water. I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “I guess we’re both breathing okay again, huh?”

I figured the critter must have been hanging out near the pond. Or in the farm fields with the irrigation system. I’d give it some time to recover, then try again to have a conversation. I wish I had my sketches with me. No, I wish I’d burned them.

I sat on the grass, not caring that my pants got colder and damper. “Now I can’t leave Paumanok Harbor. You know that, don’t you, Oey? I bet you planned it that way.”

Another splash.

“All right, you’ve had your swim. Now get out and talk to me. If you’re like every other creature from Unity, you can do it. I’m no Verbalizer, no Translator, but I’m all you’ve got, one piss-poor Visualizer.”

The bird head rose from the water, even bigger, it seemed. Beady eyes stared right at me—so much for no eye contact—until I felt like the one being examined and threatened. Then it hopped out of the pool and kept hopping, flapping wings, waving the fish tail, bouncing into the air, swimming across the pool, screeing, “Twee! Twee!”

“Shush. You don’t want any birdwatchers sneaking
back to see you.” Lord, that was the last thing we needed. “Now calm down so we can talk.”

The non-oiaca stopped hopping, but kept the fish tail wagging like a dog’s. It was happy to see me? I wasn’t happy. “Go home. Go back to your own universe. Go on, get. You don’t belong here. It’s against the rules. You’ll get me in trouble. Shoo.”

I swear it chuckled. “Haw haw.”

Then a car raced down the dirt road.

Oey disappeared. It didn’t fly away, didn’t swim away. It frigging flicked out of this world the same way the troll, the night mares, and the fireflies had all done. Pock.

Yeah, Willy, in case you didn’t know, the shit just hit the fan. Again. Awgh.

I
T WASN’T A CAR MAKING ALL THE NOISE. A beat-up black pickup rattled to a stop right at my front gate. I could smell the exhaust from the rusted-out muffler way around the corner, and choked on the dust it had kicked up. Cousin Bernie kept the old junker at the restaurant to haul garbage and fetch fresh produce from Grandma Eve’s farm. I smelled those, too.

Susan got out. Usually she came home in a taxi from wherever she’d gone after the Breakaway’s kitchen closed, so she must not have spent a lot of time in the local bars. She left the keys in the clunker and the headlights on, so I might be wrong. At least she hadn’t dragged another strange man home, or spent the night in some motel in Montauk.

“Hey, Susan. I’m over here.”

She started toward me, walking a line that could never pass a sobriety test. Then she tripped over the hose strung across the yard. She screamed louder than the bird ever had. I waited to see if lights came on at her mother’s house across the road. Aunt Jas must have taken sleeping pills tonight if those vaunted maternal instincts hadn’t woken her.

Susan got up from the wet grass, then tripped again over the pile of muck I’d dumped out of the wading pool. This time I gave her a hand up.

She squinted, shook her head, and looked me right in
the eye. Definitely hostile aggression. “What the hell have you done now, Willy?”

“I—” I started to deny everything, but she’d know. She always did. I wasn’t ready to talk about Oey yet, either. Chances were she couldn’t see it or she would have called out the cavalry. The people from DUE anyway. I didn’t want them swarming around yet, not until I tried to get rid of the birdfish on my own. The agents might decide the interloper was too much of a threat to Paumanok Harbor and the rest of the world as we know it. So they might expedite its departure. In a hostile, aggressive, and permanent manner.

I went on the offensive. “Why is it always my mistake? My sin? My fault? You’re no one to speak, driving drunk like that.”

“I am not drunk. Just a little high.”

“High? That’s worse! It’s a hanging offense. Or jail time, anyway.”

“Come on, there’s never anybody on the roads so late this time of year.”

“You were on the road, and the deer are there, too.”

“The deer can hear that old bomb coming a mile away and get out of the road.”

“The police are on patrol, especially with all the robberies.”

“So what if one of Uncle Henry’s cops pulls me over? You think they’ll arrest me? Not if they want to eat at the Breakaway again. Not if they don’t want their wives to know where they hang out after work. Not if they know Grandma Eve. They’ll give me a lecture, that’s all. So you can save yours.”

She headed back around toward the front of the house. “Let’s do this again soon, huh?” This time she tripped on one of the dogs’ old tennis balls. “Fuck.”

I didn’t help her up. I was wet and filthy enough on my own, and I was so mad at her, being reckless, taking chances, scaring away the oiaca that wasn’t an oiaca, I might have rubbed her nose in the mud. “You’re too stoned to drive, and too stupid to take a cab.”

She wiped her hands on the denim shirt she wore, not the one she’d left the house in. Then she wiped her nose on the sleeve. Yeck.

“When the hell are you going to grow up?”

“When are you going to stop playing big sister? You don’t understand anything, Saint Willow, including yourself, so how can you possibly understand me? You don’t know what it’s like to almost die, to wonder if the chemo and the radiation will work. To lose your hair and not be able to work at your job. To have to depend on other people driving you back and forth from one doctor to another. And then wait to see if the cancer has shrunk. Then wait for the three-month CAT scan to see if it’s come back, and go through that every fucking three to six months for years. With everyone watching, waiting for the bad news. And you’re sure every time someone is going to hand it to you. Then what? You start all over again, only this time is worse? No, you’ll never understand where I’m at.”

A lot of people survived worse, and didn’t make a mess of their lives. “No, I’ll never understand why you are living your life like it’s not worth anything, shacking up with every man you meet, driving under the influence of booze and who knows what else. You fought so damned hard to keep living. Why are you trying to kill yourself now?”

She put her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out. She had a smear of dirt on it, making her look like a bratty kid, not a college graduate and a professional chef.

“I am not trying to kill myself, only have a good time. I deserve that.”

I pointed to the mud up and down her, the smelly old truck with its lights on. “This is fun?”

“It’s all there is.”

“It’s all there is here in this backwater bog.” Not even I believed that, but I said it anyway, to make my point. “This place is a horrible influence if you can’t find anything to do but go to bars or beach parties. You are a fantastic cook. You can get a job anywhere, own your own restaurant. Meet people with your same interests in
cooking and feeding people. Write a book, write a cooking column, take more courses. Go abroad to study with the masters.”

“Hah! You had your chance to go to Royce University in England and you turned it down. You had your chance to go to London to visit a wonderful man, an English lord, no less. You didn’t do that either!”

“We’re not talking about me, and I like my life. Enough that I don’t try to escape it every way I can. And I am fulfilling my goals, not wasting my talent. Why, you could get your own show on television.”

“Why should I? That’s not one of
my
goals. None of your bullshit is. I’m not you. I don’t have your ambition, your burning need to be someone else, someone who wouldn’t deign to live among us common folk.”

“I resent that! Just because I want to have more of the world than this tiny corner. And no one here is common! You are all as rare as … as that bird no one can find.”

“Well, just so you know, my cooking isn’t as good out of Paumanok Harbor. I’ve tried. I got through cooking school, got a job. I wouldn’t have advanced much further, anywhere, except here. You of all people ought to understand the power of this place. My cooking is magic in the Harbor. Combined with Grandma’s ingredients, it’s almost irresistible. My meals show people how to relish life and savor all its tastes. They are as happy to eat what I cook as I am happy to feed them. That’s my goal, my ambition. So, no, I will not leave the Harbor, where my friends and family live, where people stood by me when I was having treatments, where they ran pancake breakfasts to help pay for my doctors, and Uncle Bernie kept up my health insurance when I didn’t work for six months. I am a little more loyal than that.” She picked up the sodden tennis ball and tossed it into the woods. “Unlike some I could name.”

“Yeah, well I am sure you’re making everyone proud and happy, playing the whore.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Thank God.”

“And you’re not so perfect yourself.”

“I never said I was. But you’re not my mother, either. So stop accusing me of heaven only knows what every chance you get. Or running to Grandma Eve with your snitchy stories. I haven’t done anything!”

“Sure.” She headed toward the house, this time over-concentrating on where she put her feet. She turned back when she got to the porch. “You haven’t done anything but fill the wading pool in the middle of night. You think we’re weird? Well, you can go to hell. You cause more damage and danger than any fifteen of us, and it takes fifty of us to mop up after you. No one ever got hurt by a weather magi or a clairvoyant or a telekinetic. But you? You’re havoc on wheels.”

“Wheels? I don’t drive drunk like you do.”

“Hah. You operate really heavy machinations, Willow Tate, playing in your own head, drunk on your creative high. So go back to your precious big city where no one gives a damn about you and your stupid plots that come true.”

The front door slammed.

Then it opened. Susan stuck her head around the corner. “And you look guilty as hell.” Then she slammed the door again.

I waited, but the door stayed closed.

I stayed outside for another hour, in case the un-oiaca came back. I also stayed out so Susan wouldn’t hear me crying. I hated confrontations of any kind, but especially with my cousin, the relative I was closest to. Now I knew what she thought of me, and that made me cry more.

I hated being a nag. Mostly I hated to think I was turning into my mother, who specialized in it.

Susan hated me. According to her, the rest of the town did, too. Maybe I should be afraid to let Janie at the beauty salon touch up my hair color again. Or let Kelvin put air in the Outback’s tires. Maybe I should simply camp out in the back of my house going “twee, twee” until someone came to lock me up.

The flashlight batteries gave out. Camping mightn’t be such a great idea, not when I couldn’t see past the side
yard, and I never did find out what the aberrant parrotfish ate.

The dogs were glad to see me, at least. They hadn’t received their good-night cookies. See? Everyone wanted something. Little Red wanted to be carried and cuddled, after being left alone for a whole two hours.

I needed the affection, too.

The answering machine light flashed for a new message I missed while I was outside feeling sorry for myself. Such a late phone call had to mean more trouble. I thought about leaving it till morning, but what if it had been a real emergency? Not Aunt Jas checking to see if Susan got home safely.

“Sorry to call so late, baby girl.” My father’s voice sounded shaky and I started to panic. “But I woke up in a sweat, gasping for breath.”

“And you called me instead of nine-one-one?” I shouted at the telephone. “You are—”

“I am worried about you. I dreamed someone tried to hit you on the nose. I love your nose, Willy. It’s just like your mother’s, not mine, thank goodness. So you be careful, okay, sweetheart? I’m going back to sleep. We have an early tee-off tomorrow, so don’t try to call when you get in. I don’t know any more about it, anyway. Just that someone is going to try to hit you on the nose. Love you.” There was a pause. “Oh, this is your father.”