Duma Key, Page 37

  "No!" Annmarie cried. "She's awake! Awake and aware! She's asking for you! Can you come?"

  "Right away," he said, and turned to me, grinning. "Do you hear that, Edgar? Come on!" He paused. "What are you looking at?"

  "These," I said, and held out the two pictures of Eastlake in his bathing dress: the one where he was surrounded by all his daughters, and the one taken two years later, where he was flanked by just Maria and Hannah.

  "Never mind em now--didn't you hear her? Miss Eastlake is back!" He booked for the door. I dropped his folder on the library table and followed him. I had made the connection--but only because I'd spent the last few months cultivating the art of seeing. Cultivating it strenuously.

  "Wireman!" I called. He'd gone the length of the dogtrot and was halfway up the staircase. I was limping as fast as I could and he was still pulling away. He waited for me, not very patiently. "Who told him the debris field was there?"

  "Eastlake? I assume he stumbled on it while pursuing his diving hobby."

  "I don't think so--he hadn't been in that bathing suit for a long time. Diving and snorkeling may have been his hobby in the early twenties, but I think that around 1925, eating dinner became his chief diversion. So who told him?"

  Annmarie came out of a door near the end of the hall. There was a goofy, unbelieving grin on her face that made her look half her forty years.

  "Come on," she said. "This is wonderful."

  "Is she--"

  "She is," came Elizabeth's cracked but unmistakable voice. "Come in here, Wireman, and let me see your face while I still know it."

  ix

  I lingered in the hall with Annmarie, not sure what to do, looking at the knickknacks and the big old Frederic Remington at the far end--Indians on ponies. Then Wireman called for me. His voice was impatient and rough with tears.

  The room was dim. The shades had all been drawn. Air conditioning whispered through a vent somewhere above us. There was a table next to her bed with a lamp on it. The shade was green glass. The bed was the hospital kind, and cranked up so she could almost sit. The lamp put her in a soft spotlight, with her hair loose on the shoulders of a pink dressing gown. Wireman sat beside her, holding her hands. Above her bed was the only painting in the room, a fine print of Edward Hopper's Eleven AM, an archetype of loneliness waiting patiently at the window for some change, any change.

  Somewhere a clock was ticking.

  She looked at me and smiled. I saw three things in her face. They hit me one after the other like stones, each one heavier than the last. The first was how much weight she'd lost. The second was that she looked horribly tired. The third was that she hadn't long to live.

  "Edward," she said.

  "No--" I began, but when she raised one hand (the flesh hanging down in a snow-white bag above her elbow), I stilled at once. Because here was a fourth thing to see, and it hit hardest of all--not a stone but a boulder. I was looking at myself. This was what people had seen in the aftermath of my accident, when I was trying to sweep together the poor scattered bits of my memory--all that treasure that looked like trash when it was spread out in such ugly, naked fashion. I thought of how I had forgotten my doll's name, and I knew what was coming next.

  "I can do this," she said.

  "I know you can," I said.

  "You brought Wireman back from the hospital," she said.

  "Yes."

  "I was so afraid they'd keep him. And I would be alone."

  I didn't reply to this.

  "Are you Edmund?" she asked timidly.

  "Miss Eastlake, don't tax yourself," Wireman said gently. "This is--"

  "Hush, Wireman," I said. "She can do this."

  "You paint," she said.

  "Yes."

  "Have you painted the ship yet?"

  A curious thing happened to my stomach. It didn't sink so much as it seemed to disappear and leave a void between my heart and the rest of my guts. My knees tried to buckle. The steel in my hip went hot. The back of my neck went cold. And warm, prickling fire ran up the arm that wasn't there.

  "Yes," I said. "Again and again and again."

  "You're Edgar," she said.

  "Yes, Elizabeth. I'm Edgar. Good for you, honey."

  She smiled. I guessed no one had called her honey in a long time. "My mind is like a tablecloth with a great big hole burned into it." She turned to Wireman. "Muy divertido, si?"

  "You need to rest," he said. "In fact, you need to dormir como un tronco."

  She smiled faintly. "Like a log. Yes. And I think when I wake up, I'll still be here. For a little while." She lifted his hands to her face and kissed them. "I love you, Wireman."

  "I love you, too, Miss Eastlake," he said. Good for him.

  "Edgar? . . . Is it Edgar?"

  "What do you think, Elizabeth?"

  "Yes, of course it is. You're to have a show? Is that how we left things before my last . . ." She drooped her eyelids, as if to mime sleep.

  "Yes, at the Scoto Gallery. You really need to rest."

  "Is it soon? Your show?"

  "In less than a week."

  "Your paintings . . . the ship paintings . . . are they on the mainland? At the gallery?"

  Wireman and I exchanged a look. He shrugged.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Good." She smiled. "I'll rest, then. Everything else can wait . . . until after you have your show. Your moment in the sun. Are you selling them? The ship pictures?"

  Wireman and I exchanged another look, and the message in his eyes was very clear: Don't upset her.

  "They're marked NFS, Elizabeth. That means--"

  "I know what it means, Edgar, I didn't fall out of an orange tree yesterday." Inside their deep pockets of wrinkles, caught in a face that was receding toward death, her eyes flashed. "Sell them. However many there are, you must sell them. And however hard it is for you. Break them up, send them to the four winds. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you do it?"

  I didn't know if I would or not, but I recognized her signs of growing agitation from my own not-so-distant past. "Yes." At that point, I would have promised her to jump to the moon in seven-league boots, if it would have eased her mind.

  "Even then they may not be safe," she mused in an almost-horrified voice.

  "Stop, now," I said, and patted her hand. "Stop thinking about this."

  "All right. We'll talk more after your show. The three of us. I'll be stronger . . . clearer . . . and you, Edgar, will be able to pay attention. Do you have daughters? I seem to remember that you do."

  "Yes, and they're staying on the mainland with their mother. At the Ritz. That's already arranged."

  She smiled, but the corners drooped almost at once. It was as if her mouth were melting. "Crank me down, Wireman. I've been in the swamp . . . forty days and forty nights . . . so it feels . . . and I'm tired."

  He cranked her down, and Annmarie came in with something in a glass on a tray. No chance Elizabeth was going to drink any of it; she had already corked off. Over her head, the loneliest girl in the world sat in a chair and looked out the window forever, face hidden by the fall of her hair, naked but for a pair of shoes.

  x

  For me, sleep was long in coming that night. It was after midnight before I finally slipped away. The tide had withdrawn, and the whispered conversation under the house had ceased. That didn't stop the whispered voices in my head, however.

  Another Florida, Mary Ire whispered. That was another Florida.

  Sell them. However many there are, you must sell them. That was Elizabeth, of course.

  The grown Elizabeth. I heard another version of her, however, and because I had to make this voice up, what I heard was Ilse's voice as it had been as a child.

  There's treasure, Daddy, this voice said. You can get it if you put on your mask and snorkel. I can show you where to look.

  I drew a picture.

  xi

  I was up with the dawn. I thought I could go to slee
p again, but not until I took one of the few Oxycontin pills I still had put aside, and until I made a telephone call. I took the pill, then dialed the Scoto and got the answering machine--there wouldn't be a living person in the gallery for hours yet. Artistic types aren't morning people.

  I pushed 11 for Dario Nannuzzi's extension, and after the beep I said: "Dario, it's Edgar. I've changed my mind about the Girl and Ship series. I want to sell them after all, okay? The only caveat is that they should all go to different people, if possible. Thanks."

  I hung up and went back to bed. Lay there for fifteen minutes watching the overhead fan turn lazily and listening to the shells whisper beneath me. The pill was working, but I wasn't drifting off. And I knew why.

  I knew exactly why.

  I got up again, hit redial, listened to the recorded message, then punched in Dario's extension one more time. His recorded voice invited me to leave a message at the beep. "Except for No. 8," I said. "That one is still NFS."

  And why was it NFS?

  Not because it was genius, although I think it was. Not even because when I looked at it, it was--for me--like listening to the darkest part of my heart telling its tale. It was because I felt that something had let me live just to paint it, and that to sell it would be to deny my own life, and all the pain I had undergone to reclaim it.

  Yeah, that.

  "That one's mine, Dario," I said.

  Then I went back to bed, and that time I slept.

  How to Draw a Picture (VII)

  Remember that "seeing is believing" puts the cart before the horse. Art is the concrete artifact of faith and expectation, the realization of a world that would otherwise be little more than a veil of pointless consciousness stretched over a gulf of mystery. And besides--if you don't believe what you see, who will believe your art?

  The trouble after the treasure all had to do with belief. Elizabeth was fiercely talented, but she was only a child--and with children, faith is a given. It's part of the standard equipment. Nor are children, even the talented ones (especially the talented ones), in full possession of their faculties. Their reason still sleeps, and the sleep of reason breeds monsters.

  Here's a picture I never painted: Identical twins in identical jumpers, except one is red, with an L on the front, and the other is blue, with a T. The girls are holding hands as they run along the path that leads to Shade Beach. They call it that because for most of the day it's in the shadow of Hag's Rock. There are tear-tracks on their pale round faces, but they will soon be gone because by now they are too terrorized to cry.

  If you can believe this, you can see the rest.

  A giant crow flies slowly past them, upside-down, its wings outstretched. It speaks to them in their Daddy's voice.

  Lo-Lo falls and cuts her knees on the shells. Tessie pulls her to her feet. They run on. It isn't the upside-down talking crow they are afraid of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them.

  The big boy.

  Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadow. Real enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumps. They have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn't come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is day, and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining.

  The next time it's Tessie who falls and Lo-Lo who pulls her up, casting a terrified glance behind her at the thing chasing them. It's surrounded by dancing bugs it sometimes licks out of the air. Lo-Lo can see Tessie in one bulging, stupid eye. She herself is in the other.

  They burst onto the beach gasping and out of breath and now there's nowhere to go but the water. Except maybe there is, because the boat is back again, the one they have seen more and more frequently in the last few weeks. Libbit says the boat isn't what it seems, but now it's a floating white dream of safety, and besides--there is no choice. The big boy is almost at their heels.

  It came out of the swimming pool just after they finished playing Adie's Wedding in Rampopo, the baby-house on the side lawn (today Lo-Lo got to play Adie). Sometimes Libbit can make these awful things go away by scribbling on her pad, but now Libbit is sleeping--she has had a great many troubled nights lately.

  The big boy leaps off the path and onto the beach, spraying sand all around. Its bulging eyes stare. Its fragile white belly, so full of noisome guts, bulges. Its throat throbs.

  The two girls, standing with their hands linked and their feet in the running boil of what Daddy calls the little surf, look at each other. Then they look at the ship, swinging at anchor with its sails furled and shining. It looks even closer, as if it has moved in to rescue them.

  Lo-Lo says We have to.

  Tessie says But I can't SWIM!

  You can dogpaddle!

  The big boy leaps. They can hear its guts slosh when it lands. They sound like wet garbage in a barrel of water. The blue fades from the sky and then the sky bleeds red. Then, slowly, it changes back again. It's been that kind of day. And haven't they known this kind of day was coming? Haven't they seen it in Libbit's haunted eyes? Nan Melda knows; even Daddy knows, and he's not here all the time. Today he's in Tampa, and when they look at the greenish-white horror that's almost upon them, they know that Tampa might as well be the far side of the moon. They are on their own.

  Tessie grips Lo-Lo's shoulder with cold fingers. What about the rip?

  But Lo-Lo shakes her head. The rip is good! The rip will take us to the boat!

  There's no more time to talk. The frog-thing is getting ready to leap again. And they understand that, while it cannot be real, somehow it is. It can kill them. Better to chance the water. They turn, still holding hands, and throw themselves into the caldo. They fix their eyes on the slim white swallow swinging at anchor close to them. Surely they will be hauled aboard, and someone will use the ship-to-shore to call the Roost. "Netted us a pair of mermaids," they'll say. "You know anyone who wants em?"

  The rip parts their hands. It is ruthless, and Lo-Lo actually drowns first because she fights harder. Tessie hears her cry out twice. First for help. Then, giving up, her sister's name.

  Meanwhile, a vagary of the rip is sweeping Tessie straight for the ship, and holding her up at the same time. For a few magical moments it's as though she's on a surfboard, and her weak dogpaddle seems to be propelling her like an outboard motor. Then, just before a colder current reaches up and coils around her ankles, she sees the ship change into--

  Here's a picture I did paint, not once but again and again and again: The whiteness of the hull doesn't exactly disappear; it is sucked inward like blood fleeing the cheek of a terrified man. The ropes fray. The brightwork dulls. The glass in the windows of the aft cabin bursts outward. A junkheap clutter appears on the decking, rolling into existence from fore to aft. Except it was there all along. Tessie just didn't see it. Now she sees.

  Now she believes.

  A creature comes from belowdecks. It creeps to the railing, where it stares down at the girl. It is a slumped thing in a hooded red robe. Hair that might not be hair at all flutters dankly around a melted face. Yellow hands grip splintered, punky wood. Then, one lifts slowly.

  And waves to the girl who will soon be GONE.

  It says Come to me, child.

  And, drowning, Tessie Eastlake thinks It's a WOMAN!

  She sinks. And does she feel still-warm hands, those of her freshly dead sister, gripping her calves and pulling her down?

  Yes, of course. Of course she does.

  Believing is also feeling.

  Any artist will tell you so.

  13--The Show

  i

  Someday, if your life is long and your thinking machinery stays in gear, you'll live to remember the last good thing that ever happened to you. That's not pessimism talking, just logic. I hope I have
n't run out of good things yet--there would be no purpose in living if I believed I had--but it's been a long time between. I remember the last one clearly. It happened a little over four years ago, on the evening of April fifteenth, at the Scoto Gallery. It was between seven forty-five and eight o'clock, and the shadows on Palm Avenue were beginning to take on the first faint tinges of blue. I know the time, because I kept checking my watch. The Scoto was already packed--to the legal limit and probably a little beyond--but my family hadn't arrived. I had seen Pam and Illy earlier in the day, and Wireman had assured me that Melinda's flight was on time, but so far that evening there hadn't been a sign of them. Or a call.

  In the alcove to my left, where both the bar and eight of the Sunset With pictures had drawn a crowd, a trio from the local music conservatory was tinkling through a funereal version of "My Funny Valentine." Mary Ire (holding a glass of champagne but sober so far) was expatiating on something artistic to an attentive little crowd. To the right was a bigger room, featuring a buffet. On one wall in there was Roses Grow from Shells and a painting called I See the Moon; on another, three views of Duma Road. I'd observed several people taking photographs of these with their camera-phones, although a sign on a tripod just inside the door announced that all photography was verboten.

  I mentioned this to Jimmy Yoshida in passing, and he nodded, seeming not angry or even irritated, but rather bemused. "There are a great many people here I either don't associate with the art scene or don't recognize at all," he said. "The size of this crowd is outside of my experience."

  "Is that a bad thing?"

  "God, no! But after years of fighting to keep our corporate heads above water, it feels strange to be carried along this way."

  The Scoto's center gallery was large, which was a good thing that night. In spite of the food, drink, and music in the smaller rooms, the center seemed to be where most of the visitors eventually gravitated. The Girl and Ship series had been mounted there on almost invisible cords, directly down the center of the room. Wireman Looks West was on the wall at the far end. That one and Girl and Ship No. 8 were the only paintings in the show which I had stickered NFS, Wireman because the painting was his, No. 8 because I simply couldn't sell it.

  "We keepin you up, boss?" Angel Slobotnik said from my left, as oblivious to his wife's elbow as ever.