Sea Creatures (29 page)

What I was thinking was that in an hour or so I would change into my night clothes and slip into my cot beside Frankie, and we'd read as many books as we could before he drifted off. And despite the wine and the lightened mood, my focus was still consumed by my boy, on our upcoming release from the safe and predictable hospital routine, on our untamable future. The last time I'd let my focus stray, I'd almost lost him.

“This hospital—” I said.

“Don't worry.” He kissed my brow and cleared his throat. “I have a favor to ask you.”

I waited.

“I need to show you the house. Tomorrow, if you can get away.”

“I'll try,” I said.

I'd been leaving the hospital once a day with Lidia or alone, to walk to the store or around the block. But I'd never been gone long, and Charlie and I hadn't set foot out of doors together.

He stepped out of the closet and I followed him. He kissed me once and walked away with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders rounded. The noise level in our room had risen again, and I stood, listening to the happy sounds, the gabbing and teasing and giggling. If Charlie wanted me to visit his home, I believed, it could only mean one thing: he planned to throw us a life preserver. And though I hated to think of a time when Frankie and I would not see him daily, I felt more certain than ever that this was not the right future for us.

 

LIDIA AND MY FATHER AND
Charlie showed up at roughly the same time the following morning. I took one of the bagels Lidia had brought, kissed Frankie, and left the hospital with Charlie in Riggs's little sports car. Around us, Miami was struggling to return to normal. On every corner loomed a pile of debris, and between the piles the neighborhoods looked sparse and trim, uncluttered by typical growth, like newly groomed eyebrows. Almost every house was missing roof tiles or was topped with men on their knees, hammering. I'd heard that laborers were streaming into the area from as far away as Virginia and the Carolinas, taking advantage of the glut of work. Insurance companies were fast-tracking claims and lengthening their lists of providers. Even pool boys were in high demand, and every store in South Florida had run out of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. People who had never before so much as watered their own lawns now spent hours landscaping. In many neighborhoods, the electricity still had not returned. We could tell these neighborhoods because everyone was outside, sitting in loungers or talking to neighbors.

Charlie's home sat on property that took up an entire city block just a few streets off Sunset Avenue, one of the area's main arteries. The house was surrounded by a hodgepodge of new, tightly packed two-story homes on small lots, and ranch homes with portacacheres. His was a white farmhouse with a detached garage set back from the road behind a low limestone wall and semicircular gravel driveway, shaded by an immense sea grape tree on one side and a live oak on the other. The oak was rimmed at the base by a ring of bushy ferns—the English garden Charlie had mentioned had been overgrown. There was a truck in the driveway, and a few men worked on the roof. Charlie waved to them and they waved back. The stone wall continued around the perimeter, deteriorating in spots, sprouting air plants and moss from its crannies. There were no sidewalks in this neighborhood, and across the street to the east of Charlie's property was a tangled wooded area dotted here and there with what looked like headstones.

“Is that a cemetery?” I said.

Charlie grappled with the front door lock. “Vivian's parents are buried there.”

“Is that legal?”

“Not anymore.”

I stumbled on a crooked cement step, then followed Charlie inside. To the right was a formal dining room with sheets over the table and a crack in the picture window. On the wall were patches of fresh paint, each about a square foot in area: a light aquamarine, a dark coral, and a light coral.

“I'm supposed to make some decisions,” said Charlie when he saw me eyeing the colors. “You'd be doing me a favor if you'd just choose for me.”

“You got it,” I said.

To the left of the front door was a living room with a fireplace, the mantel bare and the furniture covered, and through the living room was a small kitchen with a back door and a window over the sink, through which I could appreciate the depth of the property. The back of the house was shielded from neighbors by a thicket of gumbo limbo trees, several messy areca palms, and a towering and craggy banyan, its thickest vines burrowing into the ground.

“I'm surprised you haven't been vandalized,” I said.

“Who says I haven't?”

He led me out back and around to the garage, which was locked with a padlock and chain. Behind the garage was a patio and covered barbecue pit. The area was littered with beer cans and soda bottles.

“Nothing too sinister,” Charlie said. “Just neighborhood kids.”

We picked up the cans and bottles and dropped them in a trash can at the back of the house. As we walked, he spoke slowly, as if to be certain I was listening. “Vivian's grandfather brought the family down to plant pineapple groves,” he said. He indicated the back of the property and the acres beyond. “When that didn't work out, he planted palm trees instead. Her father sold off most of the land when she was a girl.”

On the far side of the house was an empty swimming pool and a cabana. There were boards over the cabana's door and windows and a baby blue diving board lay on its side on the limestone patio. It was incredible to me that, given its current state, this had ever been a house where a family had thrived.

“The city made me take it out,” he said, gesturing to the diving board. “Jenny and her friends loved that thing. They'd lie on it for hours, head to toe.” He seemed to be picturing her there. “The pool is over nine feet deep. It feeds from a well, so it's very, very cold.”

As we started to step back into the kitchen, we heard someone calling Charlie's name from the front yard. A man appeared at the side of the house wearing khaki shorts and a golf shirt, waving congenially.

“Barton,” said Charlie. “How have you been?”

They shook hands. Charlie didn't smile, but he leaned toward his neighbor in a welcoming way, and the man seemed genuinely glad to see him.

“It's been ages,” said Barton.

I introduced myself and we shook hands.

“So sorry about Vivian,” said Barton to Charlie. “Moving back in?”

“Thinking about it,” said Charlie.

“Glad to hear it.” The men nodded at each other. “Well, I'll be seeing you,” said Barton.

“My best to Sandy and the girls,” said Charlie.

Inside, with Barton's receding back framed in a living room window, I said, “Goodness, you're neighborly. Who would have guessed?”

“He's a decent fellow. Always comes by with a big bucket of key limes when his trees start to drop.”

“Will you be happy here?”

He sat down on the white-sheeted living room sofa. Above our heads came the sounds of multiple hammers. He looked around the room as if trying to picture himself there. “I really couldn't say.”

I was very aware of the fact that we were alone, but also that there were people working unseen above our heads and bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Do you have a pencil? I'll help with those paint colors.”

Charlie went to the kitchen and returned with a pencil, then sank back onto the couch. The air was hot and sour. I wore a tank top under my shirt, so I took off my shirt and tossed it into Charlie's lap.

The designer had painted a few squares of color on a wall in each room. In the living room, the options were stacked in a reading nook beside an antique hutch; there, I circled a buttery yellow. In the kitchen, I circled a deep marine blue that reminded me of the office at the stilt house, along with a swatch of brightly colored wax cloth from a few options taped over the sink, for curtains. In the dining room, I circled the darker of the two coral colors. Behind the dining room was a sunroom with a terra-cotta floor, bare of furniture; there, I circled a light aquamarine. Off the sunroom was a bathroom with only one swatch on the wall: the lighter of the corals from the dining room. I circled it in approval, then took myself upstairs. As I went, I glanced into the living room. Charlie lay with his head propped on one arm of the sofa, and as our eyes met, my heartbeat sped up.

Upstairs were three bedrooms—chalky gray-blue for the master bedroom and baby blue for the master bath, cream for the larger of the two other bedrooms and taupe for the third. In the hallway were strips of wallpaper in toile and floral prints, and I circled one covered in cheery hibiscus blooms. In the closet of the master bedroom was a large, open box, and when I peered inside I found hundreds of what I assumed were Vivian's photographs. I wanted to thumb through them but forced myself to close the closet door.

Off the master bedroom was a screened sleeping porch with a wide-plank wood floor that needed a good sweep. Through the screens I could see the patchy lawn stippled with acorns, the mossy rock wall, the cabana's pitched roof. Just beyond the perimeter of palms was the crystal blue of a neighbor's swimming pool. I could no more easily imagine Charlie lounging on the sleeping porch with a newspaper, swimming in the pool, or using the barbecue, than I could imagine him choosing wallpaper for the hallway. We were alike, it seemed. We both had a place to go, but that place wasn't the right one at all.

Before going downstairs, I stood on the sleeping porch and fanned my face, trying to cool off. I looked down at the disrepair of the pool and grounds, so lovely in their own way even in that state, and hardened my resolve: when he asked, I would decline, for his sake as much as my own.

His eyes were closed when I came back downstairs. There was a sheen of perspiration on his stubbled cheeks, and he'd pulled up the hems of his jeans, baring his ankles. I circled one ankle with my hand and his eyes opened. “I'm done,” I said.

He touched his cheek. “Come on,” he said, pulling me down by the wrist. His hands dug in my hair and his thigh spread my legs. My resolve weakened.

We were still at the house when the roofers took their lunch break. The terrible hammering stopped. I started to feel pulled back to the hospital, back to Frankie, and hurried to dress. But Charlie put on each of his shoes and buttoned his shirt so deliberately that it occurred to me that he was biding time. Before I could ask him what was going on, the doorbell rang and there stood a pert forty-something woman in a ponytail and linen pants suit. She was pretty in a calculated way, with a glossy, heart-shaped mouth.

“Victoria,” said Charlie.

“Did you make any decisions?” she said brightly.

“We did!” he said, then introduced me. “This is the decorator,” he said to me.

“Designer,” corrected Victoria.

“I love those corals,” I said.

“This house begs for old Florida tones. All the white—I shudder.” She laughed loudly, then gestured for us to follow her into the kitchen. From a briefcase she pulled a file filled with pictures of cabinets and laid them out on the counter. Then she pulled out four squares of stone countertops in hues of white and gray. “The clock ticks,” she said.

“We were headed out, actually,” I said.

Charlie put a hand on my waist. “Just one more minute.” He put the photos in my hand. “Please.”

I understood then that this had been his plan all along. Not for me to just see the house, but for me to make these choices for him, even to meet Victoria; he'd been stalling until she arrived. And it was easy, picking out someone else's kitchen cabinets and countertops. It took me all of five minutes, after which Victoria led me through the house, pulling out photographs of ceiling fans with palm blades and upholstery options for the dining room chairs and living room sofa. When Graham and I had made some of these same choices at the cottage, it had taken weeks. What energy we are capable of wasting, when nothing more urgent is going on.

No, Frankie and I would not return to Round Lake. Whether I would sell the cottage or keep it, maybe for Frankie or as an investment, I wasn't sure, but there was no need to decide right away.

Finally we were done. We left Victoria behind in the house. The roofers had returned to their hammering. Sunlight dappled the driveway. As we drove away, I looked back at the house, which only an hour before had seemed so shabby and unloved, and saw it now as simply tarnished, in need of a spit and shine and not much else. I didn't think Charlie would be happy there, but I was happy for him.

“So what do you think?” he said when we were in the car. He didn't look at me. I studied his hard-set jaw, the lines of his handsome face.

“I think you have a beautiful home,” I said. “The designer was a good idea.”

“I'm getting the friend-of-the-boyfriend discount.”

“She's getting divorced?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Riggs is smitten. It's ‘Victoria this, Victoria that . . .' ” He trailed off.

We parked at the hospital and I started to get out of the car, then stopped. “Charlie—”

“I've got a couple errands to run,” he said. “Henry Gale's shop, for one.”

“We'll see you tonight?”

He hesitated. “Not tonight, no.” He pressed his palms against his thighs. He didn't look at me. “I've got a few things to catch up on.”

“I have something to tell you.”

He raised his eyes. “All right.”

“If you're thinking—I don't know if you are, but if you are—that we might live together . . .”

His smile was soft, apologetic. I saw that I'd been foolish. I saw, too, something I'd been ignoring, which had been right in front of me the whole time: he was much, much older than I. He had no intention of starting over, at least not in the way I might one day start over.