The Drowning House (11 page)

In my pocket I had a shoelace of Patrick’s. He had given it to me one day at the beach to tie back my hair, and had walked around the rest of the afternoon with his tennis shoe flopping. Later I wore it around my wrist. Once my grandmother pointed to it. “Would you like me to wash that?” she asked.

I had some photos of him too, but they were blurred. Patrick would never sit still long enough to be photographed. Sometimes during that long winter in Ohio, I would take the snapshots out and look at them.

No one ever asked me if I missed Patrick, but if they had I wouldn’t have known what to say. Missing someone sounded like something you could choose to do when you thought of it, when you had the inclination. Something you might talk about with friends. What I felt was more like the persistent, painful awareness of an arm or leg that was gone, the legacy of that kind of radical displacement. It was as though a piece of me had been cut away.

For a time the memories were vivid. Even hidden in the bedroom under the eaves of my grandmother’s tidy house with its stone bird-bath and chain-link fence, even there I could recall the damp wind, the immensity of sky, the flat, graphite Gulf. I could close my eyes and be on the beach again with Patrick. And for a time, I still believed what Islanders do—that if you look hard enough into the distance, you can see the thing you want most coming toward you.

Chapter 11

THE MORNING AFTER THE PARTY
, I found Eleanor in the kitchen arranging her breakfast on a tray. An early riser, she had already been out and was snipping the stems of some yellow lantana. I wondered where she had found them. It was a peculiarity of Eleanor’s that she didn’t acknowledge ownership of anything that grew, and she had no reservations about raiding other people’s flower beds.

“Pretty, don’t you think?” she asked. “Harriet Kinkaid grows these. She has quite a successful garden.” She folded a napkin and laid it next to her plate. “Harriet, wisely, grows what thrives here. Not everything does. It’s a special environment.” She glanced over to be sure I’d understood that she wasn’t speaking only about flowers. “There’s coffee made. And I bought fresh raisin bread.”

It annoyed me to hear her hold forth about the Island. She was the Yankee. I had been born there, grown up on Galveston. I had more claim to understanding its peculiar requirements than she did. I didn’t want any more of her reminders. “You said Patrick has a place of his own.”

She looked up, eyes wide. “Yes,” she said.

“Where is it?”

She paused, for a moment, considering. “Clare, it might be best if you and Patrick … He isn’t the same, you know. He was burned. In the fire. He’s badly scarred.”

“I don’t care.”

“I understand. But have you thought about him? Maybe he does.”

“I don’t believe that. Patrick is probably the least vain person
I’ve ever met.” I spoke with confidence, describing the Patrick I had known, but I couldn’t be sure. We had weathered adolescence together—the year Patrick grew three inches and sprouted a tuft of hair on his chin, the summer my small, embarrassing breasts appeared. My feelings for him were not about his looks. But it was possible that Patrick had changed in more important ways.

“Remember, you were fourteen the last time you were together. Fourteen! Hardly more than a child.”

“So?”

“Patrick has put a lot of things behind him. He may not want to go back there.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Did he write to you?”

I felt Eleanor’s gaze on me but I looked away, out the window. “Patrick’s not a letter writer,” I said.

“Did he call?”

In the garden, a mockingbird shot upward, displaying white-tipped wings.

“Clare, I don’t say this to hurt you. But those are the facts.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to think. Patrick had never had to write or call. We were together daily. When I left the Island for my grandmother’s house in Ohio, when he was sent to Europe, would he have known how to find me? Would he have known my grandmother’s name? It was the 1970s. There was no Internet, no e-mail. I wanted to believe it was distance and circumstance that had kept us apart.

But Eleanor and I both knew that distances could evaporate, circumstances change, with the application of enough money. Carraday money.

Eleanor looked down at the tray in front of her. She made small adjustments to the plate, the flowers, the cup that held her coffee, the pitcher of hot milk. Once again, I felt the pull of her concentration.

Outside the mockingbird chattered an alarm. “I want to know where he lives,” I said.

“He’s sharing a house with Lowell Morgan out past Jamaica
Beach,” Eleanor said. She picked up the tray. “Don’t do something you’ll regret.” She left the kitchen.

I found Lowell Morgan’s listing in the slim local directory. When I dialed, the phone rang for a long time. The someone who answered, finally, was a sleepy-sounding man whose voice I didn’t recognize. “Are you Lowell Morgan?” I asked. He mumbled something. “Is Lowell there?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

I had no idea what to say next. I hung up. Jamaica Beach wasn’t far. It would be better, I decided, to drive there.

Outside, the breeze was up, and fast-moving clouds streamed across the sky. It was as if the world had gained speed overnight and was turning faster. The weight of the previous day’s heat had lifted a little. The air was fresh, and it gave me a welcome feeling of clarity and purpose.

I took my camera. That was the part of myself I meant to feature when I encountered Patrick—the photographer, the serious professional. I had my story ready. If the whole thing felt a little like a role I was playing, well, when had that not been true? When had I ever truly believed in my own accomplishments? It had happened so suddenly, when I was still so young.

My Leica sat next to me on the front seat of the station wagon. From time to time I reached over and touched its metal skin. The camera was reassuringly solid and familiar, not at all like a prop.

I turned at Seawall Boulevard, where the tourists were already out. Pictures taken when the seawall was new, an engineering wonder, show the owners of carriages and of the first Model Ts dressed for an occasion, the men in suits and ties, the women in full skirts that swirl around their legs like foam. The beach extends behind them for half a mile.

Now the short stretch of sand was so packed and stirred it looked like dirt. In the years since its heroic construction, the seawall had disrupted the equilibrium of the shoreline and destroyed the naturally occurring beach. Foreign sand, darker and coarser than what was lost, had to be hauled in periodically by truck.

There were still a few grand hotels along the seawall with expensive cars conspicuously parked out front. But nearby were apartments whose paint had peeled like blistered skin, restaurants with fake thatch roofs, strip malls, gas stations. This was the least desirable beach, the place where people came who didn’t know or couldn’t afford better. People who spent the night illegally beside the piers or in one of the cheap motels behind the tattoo parlor.

People who couldn’t swim.

Where the seawall ended the Island narrowed so that I could see both shores. Building in that part of the Island had begun modestly with improvisations, trailers raised up on stilts, and there were still a few mom-and-pop grocery stores that sold beer, ice, casting nets, and crabbing supplies. But change was coming—had come. I passed paved drives—Driftwood Court, Osprey Circle—leading to sales offices marked by smiling mermaids or oversize life preservers, the oddly eclectic iconography of beachfront real estate. As I drove, the houses on the Gulf side got noticeably larger. I passed a tall, white-columned colonial and an Italianate castle with a Range Rover parked in front.

On the bay side, toward the mud flats and away from the Gulf, there were fewer new houses. Next to a field of yellow daisies, I found a modest subdivision where pairs of plastic trash cans stood prominently on view. Some of the structures were no more than sheds with outside stairs leading to a second story.

Others were more imaginative, more expressive of their owners’ convictions—domes that looked like divers’ helmets on legs. Octagons and polyhedrons that must have been daringly futuristic when they were built.

The yards were neatly mowed and full of stuff—propane tanks and fishing gear, boats and boat trailers. Tubs of spackle and oddly shaped pieces of Sheetrock. Dozens of tired-looking houseplants on their own summer vacation. Everywhere, evidence of people dug deep into their own lives.

I parked across the street from Lowell Morgan’s house, the one Patrick was sharing. It was unremarkable—white siding with a sagging
porch running its length. Several of the stairs were missing. There was no bell, so I knocked on the door. When nothing happened, I knocked again, louder.

Someone called out, “Yeah, yeah, okay.” A girl—she looked about twenty—in a Def Leppard T-shirt opened the aluminum storm door. Her bare legs were smooth and tan. “Shoot,” she said, “I was asleep. I’m sorry I hollered at you. I thought you were my brother. He’s coming to pick me up. Are you a friend of Lowell’s? My alternator’s shot.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Come on in. Don’t mind me. I’m not pulled together yet. Do you want something? A beer? Is that clock right? It’s really ten thirty? Jeez Louise, I’m going to be so late. I got to get to work.” She disappeared into the next room.

I called after her, “I’m looking for Patrick Carraday.”

A horn blared outside. The girl ran back carrying a pair of red platform sandals. She was wearing a tiny jean skirt. She stopped briefly to tie her T-shirt above the waist. “I haven’t seen him for a while.” I heard the horn again. She yelled back, “I’m coming! Keep your darn pants on!” In a lower voice she said, “You’re welcome to wait. Make yourself at home.” She gestured toward the interior like a game-show hostess indicating a prize. The door banged shut behind her.

The room was small and disheveled, the scattered furniture mostly obscured by clothing and towels. An empty pizza box lay open on the floor in front of the TV. The ripe odor of garbage wafted in from the kitchen.

I went the other direction, toward the bedrooms. There were two, side by side, both equally chaotic—beds tousled, floors strewn. I stepped into the first and gingerly picked up a sweatshirt, then a pair of surfer shorts. They might have belonged to anyone. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, but found only some tattered issues of
Road & Track
and several unmatched socks. I understood that it was hopeless. I would learn nothing there, and there was no way to know when Patrick might return.

I felt myself slipping into sadness, and I realized then how much I had invested in our reunion. When I was growing up, Patrick’s
sudden arrivals had rescued me from my own dark thoughts. Was I counting on him to do that now? Surely, given all that had happened, it was too much to ask of anyone.

I went back down the stairs to the car. I put the key into the ignition, but when I felt the upholstery warm against my back, my arms dropped off the steering wheel. I hadn’t slept much the night before, just short periods of unconsciousness bracketed by uneasy dreams.

I woke to find a man leaning in the window. At first I thought it was Patrick, and my heart leaped. But his face was clean-shaven, the skin ruddy and unmarked. There were no scars on his hands or arms. Then I thought it might be Lowell Morgan, until I realized he was too young.

It has been said that any use of the camera is aggressive. Without thinking, I reached down, picked up my Leica, and pointed the lens at him. At the sound of the shutter, he drew back until he stood at least ten feet off, where I could see him clearly. There was nothing threatening about him. I lowered the camera.

“Ma’am,” he said, “you think you could move your vehicle? So we can get by?” I looked beyond him to where his wife stood, her hand raised, shielding her eyes. Two small children in bathing suits, a girl and a boy, clung to her thighs. Folded lawn chairs rested against the walls and stairs. A tricycle lay overturned in the grass near a barbecue grill.

I saw that I’d partially blocked what was in fact a sandy driveway. “Of course,” I said. I pulled out and watched the car dipping and swaying along the road.

I tried not to think about Bailey, but it was too much for me, the deserted yard with its scattered reminders of family life. I began to cry.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I shook myself and pushed my hair out of my face. I put my hand on my Leica and it steadied me.

The sky had clouded over, conditions were good. I told myself that since I’d driven out, I might at least photograph some of the beach houses. I recalled one that was perfectly round, like a cooking
pot, its sheet-metal walls pocked and stained. The front door, eight feet aboveground, was padlocked. An experiment that hadn’t quite worked.

The house stood forlornly in a field of tall grass. I got out and walked around it, pressing the shutter now and then, without ever feeling I’d captured anything important.