Diary

  All Misty has to do is look down, and she starts to fall. If she turns her head, her vision blurs, the whole room smears for a moment.

  Misty tears the detective's check out of her pad and lays it on the table, saying, “Will there be anything else?”

  “Just one more question, Mrs. Wilmot,” he says. He sips his glass of iced tea, watching her over the rim. And he says, “I'd like to talk to your in-laws—your husband's parents—if that's possible.”

  Peter's mother, Grace Wilmot, is staying here in the hotel, Misty tells him. Peter's father, Harrow Wilmot, is dead. Since about thirteen or fourteen years ago.

  Detective Stilton makes another note. He says, “How did your father-in-law die?”

  It was a heart attack, Misty thinks. She's not sure.

  And Stilton says, “It sounds like you don't know any of your in-laws very well.”

  Her headache tap, tap, tapping the back of her skull, Misty says, “Did you say if you wanted some coffee?”

  July 16

  DR. TOUCHET SHINES a light into Misty's eyes and tells her to blink. He looks into her ears. He looks up her nose. He turns out the office lights while he makes her point a flashlight into her mouth. The same way Angel Delaporte's flashlight looked into the hole in his dining room wall. This is an old doctor's trick to illuminate the sinuses, they spread out, glowing red under the skin around your nose, and you can check for shadows that mean blockage, infections. Sinus headaches. He tilts Misty's head back and peers down her throat.

  He says, “Why do you say it was food poisoning?”

  So Misty tells him about the diarrhea, the cramps, the headaches. Misty tells him everything except the hallucination.

  He pumps up the blood pressure cuff around her arm and releases the pressure. With her every heartbeat, they both watch the pressure spike on the dial. The pain in her head, the throb matches every pulse.

  Then her blouse is off, and Dr. Touchet's holding one of her arms up while he feels inside the armpit. He's wearing glasses and stares at the wall beside them while his fingers work. In a mirror on one wall, Misty can watch them. Her bra looks stretched so tight the straps cut into her shoulders. Her skin rolls over the waistband of her slacks. Her necklace of junk jewelry pearls, as it wraps around the back of her neck, the pearls disappear into a deep fold of fat.

  Dr. Touchet, his fingers root, tunnel, bore into her armpit.

  The windows of the examining room are frosted glass, and her blouse hangs on a hook on the back of the door. This is the same room where Misty had Tabbi. Pale green tiled walls and a white tiled floor. It's the same examination table. Peter was born here. So was Paulette. Will Tupper. Matt Hyland. Brett Petersen. So was everyone on the island under the age of fifty. The island's so small, Dr. Touchet is also the mortician. He prepared Peter's father, Harrow, before his funeral. His cremation.

  Your father.

  Harrow Wilmot was everything Misty wanted Peter to become. The way men want to meet their prospective mother-in-law so they can judge how their fiancée will look in another twenty years, that's what Misty did. Harry would be the man Misty would be married to in her middle age. Tall with gray sideburns, a straight nose, and a long cleft chin.

  Now when Misty closes her eyes and tries to picture Harrow Wilmot, what she sees is his ashes being scattered from the rocks on Waytansea Point. A long gray cloud.

  If Dr. Touchet uses this same room for embalming, Misty doesn't know. If he lives long enough, he'll prepare Grace Wilmot. Dr. Touchet was the physician on the scene when they found Peter.

  When they found you.

  If they ever pull the plug, he'll probably prepare the body.

  Your body.

  Dr. Touchet feels underneath each arm. Rooting around for nodes. For cancer. He knows just where to press your spine to make your head tilt back. The fake pearls folded deep in the back of her neck. His eyes, the irises are too far apart for him to be looking at you. He hums a tune. Focusing somewhere else. You can tell he's used to working with dead people.

  Sitting on the examination table, watching them both in the mirror, Misty says, “What used to be out on the point?”

  And Dr. Touchet jumps, startled. He looks up, eyebrows arched with surprise.

  As if some dead body just spoke.

  “Out on Waytansea Point,” Misty says. “There's statues, like it used to be a park. What was it?”

  His finger probes deep between the tendons on the back of her neck, and he says, “Before we had a crematorium in this area, that was our cemetery.” This would feel good except his fingers are so cold.

  But Misty didn't see any tombstones.

  His fingers probing for lymph nodes under her jaw, he says, “There's a mausoleum dug into the hill out there.” His eyes staring at the wall, he frowns and says, “At least a couple centuries ago. Grace could tell you more than I could.”

  The grotto. The little stone bank building. The state capitol with its fancy columns and carved archway, all of it crumbling and held together with tree roots. The locked iron gate, the darkness inside.

  Her headache tap, tap, taps the nail in deeper.

  The diplomas on the examining room's green tiled wall are yellowed, cloudy under glass. Water-stained. Flyspecked. Daniel Touchet, M.D. Holding her wrist between two fingers, Dr. Touchet checks her pulse against his wristwatch.

  His triangularis pulling both corners of his mouth down in a frown, he puts his cold stethoscope between her shoulder blades. He says, “Misty, I need you to take a deep breath and hold it.”

  The cold stab of the stethoscope moves around her back.

  “Now let it out,” he says. “And take another breath.”

  Misty says, “Did you know, did Peter ever have a vasectomy?” She breathes again, deep, and says, “Peter told me that Tabbi was a miracle from God so I wouldn't abort.”

  And Dr. Touchet says, “Misty, how much are you drinking these days?”

  This is such a small fucking town. And poor Misty Marie, she's the town drunk.

  “A police detective came into the hotel,” Misty says. “He was asking if we had the Ku Klux Klan out here on the island.”

  And Dr. Touchet says, “Killing yourself is not going to save your daughter.”

  He sounds like her husband.

  Like you, dear sweet Peter.

  And Misty says, “Save my daughter from what?” Misty turns to meet his eyes and says, “Do we have Nazis out here?”

  And looking at her, Dr. Touchet smiles and says, “Of course not.” He goes to his desk and picks up a folder with a few sheets of paper in it. Inside the folder, he writes something. He looks at a calendar on the wall above the desk. He looks at his watch and writes inside the folder. His handwriting, the tail of every letter hanging low, below the line, subconscious, impulsive. Greedy, hungry, evil, Angel Delaporte would say.

  Dr. Touchet says, “So, are you doing anything different lately?”

  And Misty tells him yes. She's drawing. For the first time since college, Misty's drawing, painting a little, mostly watercolors. In her attic room. In her spare time. She's put up her easel so she can see out the window, down the coastline to Waytansea Point. She works on a picture every day. Working from her imagination. The wish list of a white trash girl: big houses, church weddings, picnics on the beach.

  Yesterday Misty worked until she saw it was dark outside. Five or six hours had just disappeared. Vanished like a missing laundry room in Seaview. Bermuda triangulated.

  Misty tells Dr. Touchet, “My head always hurts, but I don't feel as much pain when I'm painting.”

  His desk is painted metal, the kind of steel desk you'd see in the office of an engineer or accountant. The kind with drawers that slide open on smooth rollers and close with thunder and a loud boom. The blotter is green felt. Above it on the wall are the calendar, the old diplomas.

  Dr. Touchet with his spotted, balding head and a few long brittle hairs combed from one ear to the other, he could be an engineer. With
his thick round glasses in their steel frames, his thick wristwatch on a stretch-metal band, he could be an accountant. He says, “You went to college, didn't you?”

  Art school, Misty tells him. She didn't graduate. She quit. They moved here when Harrow died, to look after Peter's mother. Then Tabbi came along. Then Misty fell asleep and woke up fat and tired and middle-aged.

  The doctor doesn't laugh. You can't blame him.

  “When you studied history,” he says, “did you cover the Jains? The Jain Buddhists?”

  Not in art history, Misty tells him.

  He pulls open one of the desk drawers and takes out a yellow bottle of pills. “I can't warn you enough,” he says. “Don't let Tabbi within ten feet of these.” He pops open the bottle and shakes a couple into his hand. They're clear gelatin capsules, the kind that pull apart into two halves. Inside each one is some loose, shifting dark green powder.

  The peeling message on Tabbi's windowsill: You'll die when they're done with you.

  Dr. Touchet holds the bottle in her face and says, “Only take these when you have pain.” There isn't a label. “It's an herbal compound. It should help you focus.”

  Misty says, “Has anybody ever died from Stendhal syndrome?”

  And the doctor says, “These are green algae mostly, some white willow bark, a little bee pollen.” He puts the capsules back in the bottle and snaps it shut. He sets the bottle on the table, next to her thigh. “You can still drink,” he says, “but only in moderation.”

  Misty says, “I only drink in moderation.”

  And turning back to his desk, he says, “If you say so.”

  Fucking small towns.

  Misty says, “How did Peter's dad die?”

  And Dr. Touchet says, “What did Grace Wilmot tell you?”

  She didn't. She's never mentioned it. When they scattered the ashes, Peter told Misty it was a heart attack. Misty says, “Grace said it was a brain tumor.”

  And Dr. Touchet says, “Yes, yes it was.” He closes his metal desk drawer with a boom. He says, “Grace tells me you demonstrate a very promising talent.”

  Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.

  Misty askes about those Buddhists he mentioned.

  “Jain Buddhists,” he says. He takes the blouse off the back of the door and hands it to her. Under each sleeve, the fabric is ringed with dark sweat stains. Dr. Touchet moves around beside Misty, holding the blouse for her to slip each arm inside.

  He says, “What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.”

  July 17

  WHEN THEY WERE in school, Peter used to say that everything you do is a self-portrait. It might look like Saint George and the Dragon or The Rape of the Sabine Women, but the angle you use, the lighting, the composition, the technique, they're all you. Even the reason why you chose this scene, it's you. You are every color and brushstroke.

  Peter used to say, “The only thing an artist can do is describe his own face.”

  You're doomed to being you.

  This, he says, leaves us free to draw anything, since we're only drawing ourselves.

  Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It's all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand.

  Everything is a self-portrait.

  Everything is a diary.

  With the fifty dollars from Angel Delaporte, Misty buys a round ox-hair number 5 watercolor brush. She buys a puffy number 4 squirrel brush for painting washes. A round number 2 camel-hair brush. A pointed number 6 cat's-tongue brush made of sable. And a wide, flat number 12 sky brush.

  Misty buys a watercolor palette, a round aluminum tray with ten shallow cups, like a pan for baking muffins. She buys a few tubes of gouache watercolors. Cyprus green, viridian lake green, sap green, and Winsor green. She buys Prussian blue, and a tube of madder carmine. She buys Havannah Lake black and ivory black.

  Misty buys milky white art masking fluid for covering her mistakes. And piss-yellow lifting preparation for painting on early so mistakes will wipe off. She buys gum arabic, the amber color of weak beer, to keep her colors from bleeding together on the paper. And clear granulation medium to give the colors a grainy look.

  She buys a pad of watercolor paper, fine-grained cold-press paper, 19 by 24 inches. The trade name for this size is a “Royal.” A 23-by-28-inch paper is an “Elephant.” Paper 26.5 by 40 inches is called a “Double Elephant.” This is acid-free, 140-pound paper. She buys art boards, canvas stretched and glued over cardboard. She buys boards sized “Super-Royal” and “Imperial” and “Antiquarian.”

  She gets all this to the cash register, and it's so far beyond fifty dollars she has to put it on a credit card.

  When you're tempted to shoplift a tube of burnt sienna, it's time to take one of Dr. Touchet's little green algae pills.

  Peter used to say that an artist's job is to make order out of chaos. You collect details, look for a pattern, and organize. You make sense out of senseless facts. You puzzle together bits of everything. You shuffle and reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.

  If you're at work and every table in your section is waiting for something, but you're still hiding out in the kitchen sketching on scraps of paper, it's time to take a pill.

  When you present people with their dinner check and on the back you've drawn a little study in light and shadow—you don't even know where it's supposed to be, this image just came into your mind. It's nothing, but you're terrified of losing it. Then it's time to take a pill.

  “These useless details,” Peter used to say, “they're only useless until you connect them all together.”

  Peter used to say, “Everything is nothing by itself.”

  Just for the record, today in the dining room, Grace Wilmot was standing with Tabbi in front of the glass cabinet that covers most of one wall. Inside it, china plates sit on stands under soft lights. Cups sit on saucers. Grace Wilmot points to them one at a time. And Tabbi points with her index finger and says, “Fitz and Floyd . . . Wedgwood . . . Noritake . . . Lenox . . .”

  And shaking her head, Tabbi folds her arms and says, “No, that's not right.” She says, “The Oracle Grove pattern has a border of fourteen-carat gold. Venus Grove has twenty-four carat.”

  Your baby daughter, an expert in extinct china patterns.

  Your baby daughter, a teenager now.

  Grace Wilmot reaches over and loops a few stray hairs behind Tabbi's ear, and she says, “I swear, this child is a natural.”

  With a tray of lunches on her shoulder, Misty stops long enough to ask Grace, “How did Harrow die?”

  And Grace looks away from the china. Her orbicularis oculi muscle making her eyes wide, she says, “Why do you ask?”

  Misty mentions her doctor's appointment. Dr. Touchet. And how Angel Delaporte thinks Peter's handwriting says something about his relationship with his dad. All the details that look like nothing standing alone.

  And Grace says, “Did the doctor give you any pills to take?”

  The tray is heavy and the food's getting cold, but Misty says, “The doc says Harrow had liver cancer.”

  Tabbi points and says, “Gorham . . . Dansk . . .”

  And Grace smiles. “Of course. Liver cancer,” she says. “Why are you asking me?” She says, “I thought Peter told you.”

  Just for the record, the weather today is foggy with widely conflicting stories about your father's cause of death. No detail is anything by itself.

  And Misty says, she can't talk. Too busy. It's the lunch rush. Maybe later.

  In art school, Peter used to talk about the painter James McNeill Whistler, and how Whistler worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, sketching the coastline settings for proposed lighthouses. The problem was, Whistler wouldn't stop doodling little figure studies in the margins. He drew old women, babies, beggars, anything he saw on the street. He did his job, documenting land for the government, but he couldn't ignore every
thing else. He couldn't let anything slip away. Men smoking pipes. Children rolling hoops. He collected all of it in doodles around the margin of his official work. Of course, the government canned him for it.

  “Those doodles,” Peter used to say, “they're worth millions today.”

  You used to say.

  In the Wood and Gold Room, they serve butter in little crocks, only now each pad has a little picture carved in it. A little figure study.

  Maybe it's a picture of a tree or the particular way a hillside in Misty's imagination slopes, right to left. There's a cliff, and a waterfall from a hanging canyon, and a small ravine full of shade and mossy boulders and vines around the thick trunks of trees, and by the time she's imagined it all and sketched it on a paper napkin, people are coming to the bus station to refill their own cups of coffee. People tap their glasses with forks to get her attention. They snap their fingers. These summer people.

  They don't tip.

  A hillside. A mountain stream. A cave in a riverbank. A tendril of ivy. All these details come to her, and Misty just can't let them go. By the end of her dinner shift, she has shreds of napkins and paper towels and credit card receipts, each one with some detail drawn on it.

  In her attic room, in the heap of paper scraps, she's collected the patterns of leaves and flowers she's never seen. In another heap, she has abstract shapes that look like rocks and mountaintops on the horizon. There are the branching shapes of trees, the cluster of bushes. What could be briers. Birds.

  What you don't understand you can make mean anything.

  When you sit on the toilet for hours, sketching nonsense on a sheet of toilet paper until your ass is ready to fall out—take a pill.

  When you just stop going down to work altogether, you just stay in your room and phone for room service. You tell everyone you're sick so you can stay up all night and day sketching landscapes you've never seen, then it's time to take a pill.

  When your daughter knocks and begs you for a good-night kiss, and you keep telling her to go to bed, that you'll be there in a minute, and finally her grandmother takes her away from the door, and you can hear her crying as they go down the hallway—take two pills.