Duma Key, Page 31

  "Thank you, Edgar. Thank you, mi amigo."

  "So how do I do it?" I asked. I was holding my palm on the side of Elizabeth's head, feeling the smoothness of her hair as I had often felt the smoothness of my daughters' after it had been shampooed; when memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves. "How do I talk about a process that's at least partially supernatural?"

  There. It was out. The root of the matter.

  Yet Wireman looked calm. "Edgar!" he exclaimed.

  "Edgar what?"

  The sonofabitch actually laughed. "If you tell them that . . . they will believe you."

  I opened my mouth to refute this. Thought of Dali's work. Thought of that wonderful Van Gogh picture, Starry Night. Thought of certain Andrew Wyeth paintings--not Christina's World but his interiors: spare rooms where the light is both sane and strange, as if coming from two directions at the same time. I closed my mouth again.

  "I can't tell you just what to say," Wireman said, "but I can give you something like this." He held up the brochure/invitation. "I can give you a template."

  "That would help."

  "Yeah? Then listen."

  I listened.

  iv

  "Hello?"

  I was sitting on the couch in the Florida room. My heart was beating heavily. This was one of those calls--everyone's made a few--where you simultaneously hope it will go through the first time, so you can get it over with, and hope it won't, so you can put off some hard and probably painful conversation a little while longer.

  I got Option One; Pam answered on the first ring. All I could hope was this conversation would go better than the last one. Than the last couple, in fact.

  "Pam, it's Edgar."

  "Hello, Edgar," she said cautiously. "How are you?"

  "I'm . . . all right. Good. I've been talking with my friend Wireman. He showed me the invitation the two of you worked up." The two of you worked up. That sounded unfriendly. Conspiratorial, even. But what other way was there to put it?

  "Yes?" Her voice was impossible to read.

  I drew in a breath and jumped. God hates a coward, Wireman says. Among other things. "I called to say thanks. I was being a horse's ass. Your jumping in like that was what I needed."

  The silence was long enough for me to wonder if maybe she'd quietly hung up at some point. Then she said, "I'm still here, Eddie--I'm just picking myself up off the floor. I can't remember the last time you apologized to me."

  Had I apologized? Well . . . never mind. Close enough, maybe. "Then I'm sorry about that, too," I said.

  "I owe you an apology myself," she said, "so I guess this one's a wash."

  "You? What do you have to apologize for?"

  "Tom Riley called. Just two days ago. He's back on his meds. He's going to, I quote, 'see someone' again--by which I assume he means a shrink--and he called to thank me for saving his life. Have you ever had someone call and thank you for that?"

  "No." Although I'd recently had someone call and thank me for saving his sight, so I kind of knew what she was talking about.

  "It's quite an experience. 'If not for you I'd be dead now.' Those were his exact words. And I couldn't tell him he had you to thank, because it would have sounded crazy."

  It was as if a tight belt cinching my middle had suddenly been cut away. Sometimes things work out for the best. Sometimes they actually do. "That's good, Pam."

  "I've been on to Ilse about this show of yours."

  "Yes, I--"

  "Well, Illy and Lin both, but when I talked to Ilse, I turned the conversation toward Tom and I could tell right away that she doesn't know anything about what went on between the two of us. I was wrong about that, too. And showed a very unpleasant side of myself while I was at it."

  I realized, with alarm, that she was crying. "Pam, listen."

  "I've shown several unlovely sides of myself, to several people, since you left me."

  I didn't leave you! I almost shouted. And it was close. Close enough to make sweat pop out on my forehead. I didn't leave you, you asked for a divorce, you witting quench!

  What I said was "Pam, that's enough."

  "But it was so hard to believe, even after you called and told me those other things. You know, about my new TV. And Puffball."

  I started to ask who Puffball was, then remembered the cat.

  "I'm doing better, though. I've started going to church again. Can you believe that? And a therapist. I see her once a week." She paused, then rushed on. "She's good. She says a person can't close the door on the past, she can only make amends and go on. I understood that, but I didn't know how to start making amends to you, Eddie."

  "Pam, you don't owe me any--"

  "My therapist says it isn't about what you think, it's about what I think."

  "I see." That sounded a lot like the old Pam, so maybe she'd found the right therapist.

  "And then your friend Wireman called and told me you needed help . . . and he sent me those pictures. I can't wait to see the actual things. I mean, I knew you had some talent, because you used to draw those little books for Lin when she was so sick that year--"

  "I did?" I remembered Melinda's sick year; she'd had one infection after another, culminating in a massive bout of diarrhea, probably brought on by too many antibiotics, that had landed her in the hospital for a week. She lost ten pounds that spring. If not for summer vacation--and her own grade-A intelligence--she would have needed to repeat the second grade. But I couldn't remember drawing any little books.

  "Freddy the Fish? Carla the Crab? Donald the Timid Deer?"

  Donald the Timid Deer rang a very faint bell, way down deep, but . . . "No," I said.

  "Angel thought you should try to get them published, don't you remember? But these . . . my God. Did you know you could do it?"

  "No. I started thinking something might be there when I was at the place on Lake Phalen, but it's gone farther than I thought it would." I thought of Wireman Looks West and the mouthless, noseless Candy Brown and thought I'd just uttered the understatement of the century.

  "Eddie, will you let me do the rest of the invitations the way I did the sample? I can customize them, make them nice."

  "Pa--" Almost Panda again. "Pam, I can't ask you to do that."

  "I want to."

  "Yeah? Then okay."

  "I'll write them and e-mail them to Mr. Wireman. You can check them over before he prints them. He's quite a jewel, your Mr. Wireman."

  "Yes," I said. "He is. The two of you really ganged up on me."

  "We did, didn't we?" She sounded delighted. "You needed it. Only you have to do something for me."

  "What?"

  "You have to call the girls, because they're going crazy, Ilse in particular. Okay?"

  "Okay. And Pam?"

  "What, hon?" I'm sure she said it without thinking, without knowing how it could cut. Ah, well--she probably felt the same when she heard my pet name for her coming up from Florida, growing colder with every mile it sped north.

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Totally welcome."

  It was only quarter to eleven when we said goodbye and hung up. Time never went faster that winter than it did during my evenings in Little Pink--standing at my easel, I'd wonder how the colors in the west could possibly fade so fast--and it never went slower than it did that morning, when I made the phone calls I'd been putting off. I swallowed them one after the other, like medicine.

  I looked at the cordless sitting in my lap. "Fuck you, phone," I said, and started dialing again.

  v

  "Scoto Gallery, this is Alice."

  A cheery voice I'd come to know well over the last ten days.

  "Hi, Alice, it's Edgar Freemantle."

  "Yes, Edgar?" Cheery became cautious. Had that cautious note been there before? Had I just ignored it?

  I said, "If you have a couple of minutes, I wonder if we could talk about ordering the slides at the lecture."
r />   "Yes, Edgar, we certainly could." The relief was palpable. It made me feel like a hero. Of course it also made me feel like a rat.

  "Have you got a pad handy?"

  "You bet your tailfeathers!"

  "Okay. Basically, we're going to want them in chronological order--"

  "But I don't know the chronology, I've been trying to tell you th--"

  "I know, and I'm going to give it to you now, but listen, Alice: the first slide won't be chronological. The first should be of Roses Grow from Shells. Have you got that?"

  "Roses Grow from Shells. I've got it." For only the second time since meeting me, Alice sounded genuinely happy that we were talking.

  "Now, the pencil sketches," I said.

  We talked for the next half an hour.

  vi

  "Oui, allo?"

  For a moment I said nothing. The French threw me a little. The fact that it was a young man's voice threw me more.

  "Allo, allo?" Impatient now. "Qui est a l'appareil?"

  "Mmm, maybe I have the wrong number," I said, feeling not just like an asshole but a monolingual American asshole. "I was trying to reach Melinda Freemantle."

  "D'accord, you have the right number." Then, off a little: "Melinda! C'est ton papa, je crois, cherie."

  The phone went down with a clunk. I had a momentary image--very clear, very politically incorrect, and very likely brought on by Pam's mention of the cartoon books I'd once drawn for a little sick girl--of a large talking skunk in a beret, Monsieur Pepe Le Pew, strutting around my daughter's pension (if that was the word for a bedsitter-type apartment in Paris) with wavy aroma lines rising from his white-striped back.

  Then Melinda was there, sounding uncharacteristically flustered. "Dad? Daddy? Is everything all right?"

  "Everything's fine," I said. "Is that your roommate?" It was a joke, but I realized from her uncharacteristic silence that I had unwittingly hit the nail on the head. "It's not a big deal, Linnie. I was just--"

  "--goofin wit me, right." It was impossible to tell if she was amused or exasperated. The connection was good but not that good. "He is, actually." The subtext of that one to come through loud and clear: Want to make something of it?

  I most assuredly did not want to make something of it. "Well, I'm glad you made a friend. Does he wear a beret?"

  To my immense relief, she laughed. With Lin, it was impossible to tell which way a joke was going to go, because her sense of humor was as unreliable as an April afternoon. She called: "Ric! Mon papa . . ." Something I didn't catch, then: ". . . si tu portes un beret!"

  There was faint male laughter. Ah, Edgar, I thought. Even overseas you lay them in the aisles, you pere fou.

  "Daddy, are you all right?"

  "Fine. How's your strep?"

  "All better, thanks."

  "I just got off the phone with your mother. You're going to get an official invitation to this show I'm having, but she says you'll come and I'm thrilled."

  "You're thrilled? Mom sent me some of the pictures and I can't wait. When did you learn to do that?"

  This seemed to be the question of the hour. "Down here."

  "They're amazing. Are the others as good?"

  "You'll have to come and see for yourself."

  "Could Ric come?"

  "Does he have a passport?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Will he promise not to poke ze fun at your old man?"

  "He's very respectful of his elders."

  "Then assuming the flights aren't sold out and you don't mind sleeping two to a room--I assume that's not a problem--then of course he can come."

  She squealed so loudly it hurt my ear, but I didn't take the telephone away. It had been a long time since I'd said or done anything to make Linnie Freemantle squeal like that. "Thank you, Daddy--that's great!"

  "It'll be nice to meet Ric. Maybe I'll steal his beret. I'm an artist now, after all."

  "I'll tell him you said that." Her voice changed. "Have you talked to Ilse yet?"

  "No, why?"

  "When you do, don't say anything about Ric coming, okay? Let me do that."

  "I hadn't planned to."

  "Because she and Carson . . . she said she told you about him . . ."

  "She did."

  "Well, I'm pretty sure there's a problem there. Illy says she's 'thinking things over.' That's a direct quote. Ric's not surprised. He says you should never trust a person who prays in public. All I know is she sounds a lot more grown up than my baby sister used to."

  Same goes for you, Lin, I thought. I had a momentary image of how she'd looked at seven, when she'd been so sick Pam and I both thought she might die on us, although we'd never said so aloud. Back then Melinda had been all big dark eyes, pale cheeks, and lank hair. Once I remember thinking Skull on a stick and hating myself for the thought. And hating myself more for knowing, in the deep reaches of my heart, that if one of them had to sicken that way, I was glad it had been her. I always tried to believe that I loved both my daughters with the same weight and intensity, but it wasn't true. Maybe it is for some parents--I think it was for Pam--but it never was for me. And did Melinda know?

  Of course she did.

  "Are you taking care of yourself?" I asked her.

  "Yes, Daddy." I could almost see her rolling her eyes.

  "Continue to do so. And get here safe."

  "Daddy?" A pause. "I love you."

  I smiled. "How many bunches?"

  "A million and one for under your pillow," she said, as if humoring a child. That was all right. I sat there for a little while, looking out at the water, rubbing absently at my eyes, then made what I hoped would be the day's last call.

  vii

  It was noon by then, and I didn't really expect to get her; I thought she'd be out eating lunch with friends. Only like Pam, she answered on the first ring. Her hello was oddly cautious, and I had a sudden clear intuition: she thought I was Carson Jones, calling either to beg for another chance or to explain. To explain yet again. That was a hunch I never verified, but then, I never had to. Some things you simply know are true.

  "Hey, If-So-Girl, whatcha doon?"

  Her voice brightened immediately. "Daddy!"

  "How are you, hon?"

  "I'm fine, Daddy, but not as fine as you--did I tell you they were good? I mean, did I tell you, or what?"

  "You told me," I said, grinning in spite of myself. She might have sounded older to Lin, but after that first tentative hello, she sounded to me like the same old Illy, bubbling over like a Coke float.

  "Mom said you were dragging your feet, but she was going to team up with this friend you made down there and get you cranking. I loved it! She sounded just like the old days!" She paused to draw breath, and when she spoke again, she didn't sound so giddy. "Well . . . not quite, but it'll do."

  "Know what you mean, jellybean."

  "Daddy, you're so amazing. This is a comeback and a half."

  "How much is all this sugar going to cost me?"

  "Millions," she said, and laughed.

  "Still planning to drop in on The Hummingbirds tour?" I tried to sound just interested. Not particularly concerned with my almost-twenty-year-old daughter's love life.

  "No," she said, "I think that's off." Only five words, and little ones at that, but in those five words I heard the different, older Illy, one who might in the not-so-distant future be at home in a business suit and pantyhose and pumps with practical three-quarter heels, who might wear her hair tied back at the nape of her neck during the day and perhaps carry a briefcase down airport concourses instead of wearing a Gap-sack on her back. Not an If-So-Girl any longer; you could strike any if from this vision. The girl as well.

  "The whole thing, or--"

  "That remains to be seen."

  "I don't mean to pry, honey. It's just that enquiring Dads--"

  "--want to know, of course they do, but I can't help you this time. All I know right now is that I still love him--or at least I think I do--and I miss him
, but he's got to make a choice."

  At this point, Pam would have asked Between you and the girl he's been singing with? What I asked was, "Are you eating?"

  She burst into peals of merry laughter.

  "Answer the question, Illy."

  "Like a damn pig!"

  "Then why aren't you out to lunch now?"

  "A bunch of us are going to have a picnic in the park, that's why. Complete with anthro study notes and Frisbee. I'm bringing the cheese and French bread. And I'm late."

  "Okay. As long as you're eating and not brooding in your tent."

  "Eating well, brooding moderately." Her voice changed again, became the adult one. The abrupt switches back and forth were disconcerting. "Sometimes I lie awake a little, and then I think of you down there. Do you lie awake?"

  "Sometimes. Not as much now."

  "Daddy, was marrying Mom a mistake you made? That she made? Or was it just an accident?"

  "It wasn't an accident and it wasn't a mistake. Twenty-four good years, two fine daughters, and we're still talking. It wasn't a mistake, Illy."

  "You wouldn't change it?"

  People kept asking me that question. "No."

  "If you could go back . . . would you?"

  I paused, but not long. Sometimes there's no time to decide what's the best answer. Sometimes you can only give the true answer. "No, honey."

  "Okay. But I miss you, Dad."

  "I miss you, too."

  "Sometimes I miss the old times, too. When things were less complicated." She paused. I could have spoken--wanted to--but kept silent. Sometimes silence is best. "Dad, do people ever deserve second chances?"

  I thought of my own second chance. How I had survived an accident that should have killed me. And I was doing more than just hanging out, it seemed. I felt a rush of gratitude. "All the time."

  "Thanks, Daddy. I can't wait to see you."

  "Back atcha. You'll get an official invitation soon."

  "Okay. I really have to go. Love you."

  "Love you, too."

  I sat for a moment with the phone at my ear after she hung up, listening to the nothing. "Do the day and let the day do you," I said. Then the dial tone kicked in, and I decided I had one more call to make, after all.

  viii

  This time when Alice Aucoin came to the phone, she sounded a lot more lively and a lot less cautious. I thought that was a nice change.

  "Alice, we never talked about a name for the show," I said.

  "I was sort of assuming you meant to call it 'Roses Grow from Shells,' " she said. "That's good. Very evocative."