Duma Key

  I stood looking down at the recorder. Not safe. Before she had said not lucky, or at least that was my recollection. Did those two things come to the same or not?

  "And your art. There is the matter of your art." She sounded apologetic and a little breathless. "One does not like to tell an artist what to do; really, one cannot tell an artist what to do, and yet . . . oh dear . . ." She broke out in the loose, rattlebox cough of the lifelong smoker. "One does not like to speak of these things directly . . . or even know how to speak of them directly . . . but might I give you a word of advice, Edgar? As one who only appreciates, to one who creates? Might I be allowed that?"

  I waited. The machine was silent. I thought perhaps the tape had run its course. Under my feet the shells murmured quietly, as if sharing secrets. The gun, the fruit. The fruit, the gun. Then she began again.

  "If the people who run the Scoto or the Avenida should offer you a chance to show your work, I would advise you most strongly to say yes. So others can enjoy it, of course, but mainly to get as much of it off Duma as soon as you can." She took a deep, audible breath, sounding like a woman preparing to finish some arduous chore. She also sounded completely and utterly sane, totally there and in the moment. "Do not let it accumulate. That is my advice to you, well-meant and without any . . . any personal agenda? Yes, that's what I mean. Letting artistic work accumulate here is like letting too much electricity accumulate in a battery. If you do that, the battery may explode."

  I didn't know if that was actually true or not, but I took her meaning.

  "I can't tell you why that should be, but it is," she went on . . . and I had a sudden intuition that she was lying about that. "And surely if you believe in art for art's sake, the painting is the important part, isn't it?" Her voice was almost wheedling now. "Even if you don't need to sell your paintings to buy your daily bread, sharing work . . . giving it to the world . . . surely artists care about such things, don't they? The giving?"

  How would I know what was important to artists? I had only that day learned what sort of finish to put on my pictures to preserve them when I was done with them. I was a . . . what had Nannuzzi and Mary Ire called me? An American primitive.

  Another pause. Then: "I think I'll stop now. I've said my piece. Just please think about what I've said if you mean to stay, Edward. And I look forward to you reading to me. Many poems, I hope. That will be a treat. Goodbye for now. Thank you for listening to an old woman." A pause. Then she said, "The table is leaking. It must be. I'm so sorry."

  I waited twenty seconds, then thirty. I had just about decided that she'd forgotten to hang up on her end and was reaching to push the STOP button on the answering machine when she spoke again. Just six words, and they made no more sense than the thing about the leaking table, but still they brought gooseflesh out on my arm and turned the hair on the nape of my neck into hackles.

  "My father was a skin diver," Elizabeth Eastlake said. Each word was clearly enunciated. Then came the clear click of the phone being hung up on her end.

  "No more messages," the phone robot said. "The message tape is full."

  I stood staring down at the machine, thought of erasing the tape, then decided to save it and play it for Wireman. I undressed, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I lay in the dark, feeling the soft throb of my head, while below me the shells whispered the last thing she'd said over and over: My father was a skin diver.

  8--Family Portrait

  i

  Things slowed down for awhile. Sometimes that happens. The pot boils, and then, just before it can boil over, some hand--God, fate, maybe plain coincidence--lowers the heat. I mentioned this once to Wireman and he said life is like Friday on a soap opera. It gives you the illusion that everything is going to wrap up, and then the same old shit starts up on Monday.

  I thought he'd go with me to see a doctor and we'd find out what was wrong with him. I thought he'd tell me why he'd shot himself in the head and how a man survives that sort of thing. The answer seemed to be, "With seizures and a lot of trouble reading the fine print." Maybe he'd even be able to tell me why his employer had a bee in her bonnet about keeping Ilse off the island. And the capper: I'd decide on what came next in the life of Edgar Freemantle, the Great American Primitive.

  None of those things actually happened, at least for awhile. Life does produce changes, and the end results are sometimes explosive, but in soap operas and in real life, big bangs often have a long fuse.

  Wireman did agree to go see a doctor with me and "get his head examined," but not until March. February was too busy, he said. Winter residents--what Wireman called "the monthlies," as if they were menstrual periods instead of tenants--would start moving into all the Eastlake properties the coming weekend. The first snowbirds to arrive would be the ones Wireman liked least. These were the Godfreys from Rhode Island, known to Wireman (and hence to me) as Joe and Rita Mean Dog. They came for ten weeks every winter and stayed in the house closest to the Eastlake estate. The signs warning of their Rotties and their Pit Bull were out; Ilse and I had seen them. Wireman said Joe Mean Dog was an ex-Green Beret, in a tone of voice which seemed to indicate that explained everything.

  "Mr. Dirisko won't even get out of his car when he has a package for them," Wireman said. He was referring to the U.S. Postal Service's fat and jolly representative on the south end of Casey and all of Duma Key. We were sitting on the sawhorses in front of the Mean Dog house a day or two before the Godfreys were scheduled to arrive. The crushed-shell driveway was glistening a damp pink. Wireman had turned on the sprinklers. "He just leaves whatever he's got at the foot of the mailbox post, honks, and then rolls wheels for El Palacio. And do I blame him? Non, non, Nannette."

  "Wireman, about the doctor--"

  "March, muchacho, and before the Ides. I promise."

  "You're just putting it off," I said.

  "I'm not. I have only one busy season, and this be it. I got caught a little off-guard last year, but it's not going to happen this time around. It can't happen this time around, because this year Miss Eastlake's going to be far less capable of pitching in. At least the Mean Dogs are returners, known quantities, and so are the Baumgartens. I like the Baumgartens. Two kids."

  "Either of them girls?" I asked, thinking about Elizabeth's prejudice concerning daughters and Duma.

  "Nope, both the kind of boys who ought to have GOT IT MADE BUT DON'T HOLD IT AGAINST US stamped on their foreheads. The people coming into the other four houses are all new. I can hope that none of them will be the rock-and-roll-all-night, party-every-day type, but what are the odds?"

  "Not good, but you can at least hope they left their Slipknot CDs home."

  "Who's Slipknot? What's Slipknot?"

  "Wireman, you don't want to know. Especially not while you're busy working yourself into a state."

  "I'm not. Wireman is just explaining February on Duma Key, muchacho. I'm going to be fielding everything from emergency queries about what to do if one of the Baumgarten boys gets stung by a jellyfish to where Rita Mean Dog can get a fan for her grandmother, who they'll probably stash in the back bedroom again for a week or so. You think Miss Eastlake's getting on? I've seen Mexican mummies hauled through the streets of Guadalajara on the Day of the Dead who looked better than Gramma Mean Dog. She's got two basic lines of conversation. There's the inquisitive line--'Did you bring me a cookie?'--and the declarative--'Get me a towel, Rita, I think that last fart had a lump in it.' "

  I burst out laughing.

  Wireman scraped a sneaker through the shells, creating a smile with his foot. Beyond us, our shadows lay on Duma Key Road, which was paved and smooth and even. Here, at least. Farther south was a different story. "The answer to the fan problem, should you care, is Dan's Fan City. Is that a great name, or what? And I'll tell you something: I actually like solving these problems. Defusing little crises. I make folks a hell of a lot happier here on Duma Key than I ever did in court."

  But you haven't lost the knack for leading peop
le away from the things you don't want to discuss, I thought. "Wireman, it would only take half an hour to get a physician to look into your eyes and tap your skull--"

  "You're wrong, muchacho," he said patiently. "At this time of year it takes a minimum of two hours to get looked at in a roadside Doc-in-the-Box for a lousy strep throat. When you add on an hour of travel time--more now, because it's Snowbird Season and none of them know where they're going--you're talking about three daylight hours I just can't give up. Not with appointments to see the air conditioning guy at 17 . . . the meter-reader at 27 . . . the cable guy right here, if he ever shows up." He pointed to the next house down the road, which happened to be 39. "Youngsters from Toledo are taking that one until March fifteenth, and they're paying an extra seven hundred bucks for something called Wi-Fi, which I don't even know what it is."

  "Wave of the future, that's what it is. I've got it. Jack took care of it. Wave of the father-raping, mother-stabbing future."

  "Good one. Arlo Guthrie, 1967."

  "Movie was 1969, I think," I said.

  "Whenever it was, viva the wave of the mother-raping, froggy-stabbing future. Doesn't change the fact that I'm busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest . . . plus come on, Edgar. You know it's going to be more than a quick tap and peek with the old doctor-flashlight. That's just where it starts."

  "But if you need it--"

  "For the time being I'm good to go."

  "Sure. That's why I'm the one reading her poems every afternoon."

  "A little literary culture won't hurt you, you fucking cannibal."

  "I know it won't, and you know that's not what I'm talking about." I thought--and not for the first time--that Wireman was one of the very few men I ever met in my adult life who could consistently tell me no without making me angry. He was a genius of no. Sometimes I thought it was him; sometimes I thought the accident had changed something in me; sometimes I thought it was both.

  "I can read, you know," Wireman said. "In short bursts. Enough to get by. Medicine bottle labels, phone numbers, things like that. And I will get looked at, so relax that Type-A compulsion of yours to set the whole world straight. Christ, you must have driven your wife crazy." He glanced at me sideways and said, "Oops. Did Wireman step on a corn there?"

  "Ready to talk about that little round scar on the side of your head yet? Muchacho?"

  He grinned. "Touche, touche. All apologies."

  "Kurt Cobain," I said. "1993. Or thereabouts."

  He blinked. "Really? I would have said '95, but rock music has largely left me behind. Wireman got old, sad but true. As for the seizure thing . . . sorry, Edgar, I just don't believe it."

  He did, though. I could see it in his eyes. But before I could say anything else, he climbed down from the sawhorse and pointed north. "Look! White van! I think the Forces of Cable TV have arrived!"

  ii

  I believed Wireman when he said he had no idea what Elizabeth Eastlake had been talking about on the answering machine tape after I played it for him. He continued to think that her concern for my daughter had something to do with her own long-deceased sisters. He professed to be completely puzzled about why she didn't want me to stockpile my pictures on the island. About that, he said, he didn't have a clue.

  Joe and Rita Mean Dog moved in; the relentless barking of their menagerie commenced. The Baumgartens also moved in, and I often began to pass their boys playing Frisbee on the beach. They were just as Wireman had said: sturdy, handsome, and polite, one maybe eleven and the other maybe thirteen, with builds that would soon make them gigglebait among the junior high cheerleader set, if not already. They were always willing to share their Frisbee with me for a throw or two as I limped past, and the older--Jeff--usually called something encouraging like "Yo, Mr. Freemantle, nice chuck!"

  A couple with a sports car moved into the house just south of Big Pink, and the distressing strains of Toby Keith began to waft to me around the cocktail hour. On the whole, I might have preferred Slipknot. The quartet of young people from Toledo had a golf cart they raced up and down the beach when they weren't playing volleyball or off on fishing expeditions.

  Wireman was more than busy; he was a dervish. Luckily, he had help. One day Jack lent him a hand unclogging the Mean Dog lawn-sprinklers. A day or two later, I helped him push the Toledo visitors' golf cart out of a dune in which it had gotten stuck--those responsible had left it to go get a six-pack, and the tide was threatening to take it. My hip and leg were still mending, but there was nothing wrong with my remaining arm.

  Bad hip and leg or not, I took Great Beach Walks. Some days--mostly when the fog came in during the late afternoon, first obliterating the Gulf with cold amnesia and then taking the houses, as well--I took pain pills from my diminishing stock. Most days I didn't. Wireman was rarely parked in his beach chair drinking green tea that February, but Elizabeth Eastlake was always in her parlor, she almost always knew who I was, and she usually had a book of poetry near to hand. It wasn't always Keillor's Good Poems, but that was the one she liked the best. I liked it, too. Merwin and Sexton and Frost, oh-my.

  I did plenty of reading myself that February and March. I read more than I had in years--novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President). But mostly what I did was paint. Every afternoon and evening I painted until I could barely lift my strengthening arm. Beachscapes, seascapes, still lifes, and sunsets, sunsets, sunsets.

  But that fuse continued to smolder. The heat had been turned down but not off. The matter of Candy Brown wasn't the next thing, only the next obvious thing. And that didn't come until Valentine's Day. A hideous irony when you think of it.

  Hideous.

  iii

  ifsogirl88 to EFree19

  10:19 AM

  February 3

  Dear Daddy, It was great to hear you got a "thumbs up" on your paintings! Hooray! And if they DO offer you a show, I'll catch the next plane and be there in my "little black dress" (I have one, believe it or not). Got to stay put for now and study my butt off because--here is a secret--I'm hoping to surprise Carson when Spring Break rolls around in April. The Hummingbirds will be in Tennessee and Arkansas then (he sez the tour is off to a great start). I'm thinking that if I do okay on my mid-terms, I could catch up with the tour in either Memphis or Little Rock. What do you think?

  Ilse

  My misgivings about the Baptist Hummingbird hadn't faded, and what I thought was she was asking for trouble. But if she was making a mistake about him, it might be better for her to find out sooner rather than later. So--hoping to God I wasn't making a mistake--I e-mailed back and told her that sounded like an interesting idea, assuming she was okay on her course-work. (I couldn't bring myself to go balls-out and tell my beloved younger daughter that spending a week in the company of her boyfriend, even assuming said boyfriend was chaperoned by hardshell Baptists, was a good idea.) I also suggested it might be bad policy to share her plan with her mother. This brought a prompt response.

  ifsogirl88 to EFree19

  12:02 PM

  February 3

  Daddy Dearest: Do you think I've lost my freakin' MIND???

  Illy

  No, I didn't think that . . . but if she caught her tenor doing the horizontal bop with one of the altos when she got to Little Rock, she was going to be one very unhappy If-So-Girl. I had no doubt that everything would then come out to her mother, engagement and all, and Pam would find a lot to say on the subject of my own sanity. I had already asked myself some questions on that score, and mostly decided to give myself a pass. When it comes to your kids, you find yourself making some weird calls from time to time and just hoping they turn out all right--calls and kids. Parenting is the greatest of hum-a-few-bars-and-I'll-fake-it skills.

  Then there was Sandy Smith, the Realtor. On my answering machine, Elizabeth had said I must be one of those who believed in art f
or art's sake, or Duma Key would not have called me. What I wanted from Sandy was confirmation that the only thing calling me had been a glossy brochure, one that had probably been shown to potential renters with deep pockets all over the United States. Maybe all over the world.

  The response I got wasn't what I had hoped for, but I'd be lying if I said I was completely surprised. That was my bad-memory year, after all. And then there's the desire to believe things happened a certain way; when it comes to the past we all stack the deck.

  SmithRealty9505 to EFree19

  2:17 PM

  February 8

  Dear Edgar: I am so glad you're enjoying the place. In answer to your question, the Salmon Point property wasn't the only brochure I sent you but one of nine detailing lease opportunities in Florida and Jamaica. As I recall, Salmon Point was the only one you expressed interest in. In fact, I remember you saying, "Don't dicker the deal, just do it." Hope this helps.

  Sandy

  I read this message through twice, then murmured, "Just do the deal and let the deal do you, muchacha."

  I couldn't remember the other brochures even now, but I remembered the one for Salmon Point. The folder it came in had been a bright pink. A big pink, you might say, and the words that caught my eye hadn't been Salmon Point but those below it, embossed in gold: YOUR SECRET GULFSIDE RETREAT. So maybe it had called me.

  Maybe it had, after all.

  iv

  KamenDoc to EFree19

  1:46 PM

  February 10

  Edgar: Long time no hear, as the deaf Indian said to the prodigal son (please forgive me; bad jokes are the only jokes I know). How goes the art? Concerning the MRI, I suggest you call the Center for Neurological Studies at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The number is 941-555-5554.