Duma Key, Page 39

  "Is the little girl in these pictures Ilse?" She pointed up at No. 1. "I thought at first this one with the red hair was supposed to be the doll Dr. Kamen gave you after your accident, but Ilse had a tic-tac-toe dress like that when she was little. I bought it at Rompers. And this one--" Now she pointed at No. 3. "I swear this is the dress she just had to have to start first grade in--the one she was wearing when she broke her damn arm that night after the stock car races!"

  Well, there you were. I remembered the broken arm as having come after church, but that was only a minor misstep in the grand dance of memory. There were more important things. One was that Pam was in a unique position to see through most of the smoke and mirrors that critics like to call art--at least in my case she was. In that way, and probably in a great many others, she was still my wife. It seemed that in the end, only time could issue a divorce decree. And that the decree would be partial at best.

  I turned her toward me. We were being watched by a great many people, and I suppose to them it looked like an embrace. And in a way, it was. I got one glimpse of her wide, startled eyes, and then I was whispering in her ear.

  "Yes, the girl in the rowboat is Ilse. I never meant her to be there, because I never meant anything. I never even knew I was going to paint these pictures until I started doing them. And because she's back-to, no one else is ever going to know unless you or I tell them. And I won't. But--" I pulled back. Her eyes were still wide, her lips parted as if to receive a kiss. "What did Ilse say?"

  "The oddest thing." She took me by the sleeve and pulled me down to No. 7 and No. 8. In both of these, Rowboat Girl was wearing the green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back. "She said you must be reading her mind, because she ordered a dress like that from Newport News just this spring."

  She looked back at the pictures. I stood silently beside her and let her look.

  "I don't like these, Edgar. They're not like the others, and I don't like them."

  I thought of Tim Riley saying, Your ex has great insight but little kindness.

  Pam lowered her voice. "You don't know something about Illy that you shouldn't, do you? The way you knew about--"

  "No," I said, but I was more troubled by the Girl and Ship series than ever. Some of it was seeing them all hung in a line; the accumulated weirdness was like a punch.

  Sell them. That was Elizabeth's opinion. However many there are, you must sell them.

  And I could understand why she thought so. I did not like seeing my daughter, not even in the guise of the child she had long outgrown, in such close proximity to that rotted sheerhulk. And in a way, I was surprised that perplexity and disquiet were all Pam felt. But of course, the paintings hadn't had a chance to work on her yet.

  And they were no longer on Duma Key.

  The young people joined us, Ric and Melinda with their arms around each other. "Daddy, you're a genius," Melinda said. "Ric thinks so, too, don't you, Ric?"

  "Actually," Ric said, "I do. I came prepared to be . . . polite. Instead I am struggling for the words to say I am amazed."

  "That's very kind," I said. "Merci."

  "I'm so proud of you, Dad," Illy said, and hugged me.

  Pam rolled her eyes, and in that instant I could cheerfully have whacked her one. Instead I folded Ilse into my arm and kissed the top of her head. As I did, Mary Ire's voice rose from the front of the Scoto in a cigarette-hoarsened shout that was full of amazed disbelief. "Libby Eastlake! I don't believe my god-damned eyes!"

  It was my ears I didn't believe, but when a spontaneous spatter of applause erupted from the doorway, where the real aficionados had gathered to chat and take a little fresh evening air, I understood why Jack and Wireman had been late.

  v

  "What?" Pam asked. "What?" I had her on one side and Illy on the other as I moved toward the door; Linnie and Ric bobbed along in our wake. The applause grew louder. People turned toward the door and craned to see. "Who is it, Edgar?"

  "My best friends on the island." Then, to Ilse: "One of them's the lady from down the road, remember her? She turned out to be the Daughter of the Godfather instead of the Bride. Her name's Elizabeth Eastlake, and she's a sweetheart."

  Ilse's eyes were shining with excitement. "The old gal in the big blue sneakers!"

  The crowd--many of them still applauding--parted for us, and I saw the three of them in the reception area, where two tables with a punchbowl on each had been set up. My eyes began to sting and a lump rose in my throat. Jack was dressed in a slate gray suit. With his usually unruly surfer's thatch tamed, he looked like either a junior executive in the Bank of America or an especially tall seventh-grader on Careers Day. Wireman, pushing Elizabeth's chair, was wearing faded, beltless jeans and a round-collared white linen shirt that emphasized his deep tan. His hair was combed back, and I realized for the first time that he was good-looking the way Harrison Ford was in his late forties.

  But it was Elizabeth who stole the show, Elizabeth who elicited the applause, even from the newbies who hadn't the slightest idea who she was. She was wearing a black pantsuit of dull rough cotton, loose but elegant. Her hair was up and held with a gauzy snood that flashed like diamonds beneath the gallery's downlighters. From her neck hung an ivory scrimshaw pendant on a gold chain, and on her feet were not big blue Frankenstein sneakers but elegant pumps of darkest scarlet. Between the second and third fingers of her gnarled left hand was an unlit cigarette in a gold-chased holder.

  She looked left and right, smiling. When Mary came to the chair, Wireman stopped pushing long enough for the younger woman to kiss Elizabeth's cheek and whisper in her ear. Elizabeth listened, nodded, then whispered back. Mary cawed laughter, then caressed Elizabeth's arm.

  Someone brushed by me. It was Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, his eyes wet and his nose red. Dario and Jimmy were behind him. Rosenblatt knelt by her wheelchair, his bony knees cracking like starter pistols, and cried, "Miss Eastlake! Oh, Miss Eastlake, so long we're not seeing you, and now . . . oh, what a wonderful surprise!"

  "And you, Jake," she said, and cradled his bald head to her bosom. It looked like a very large egg lying there. "Handsome as Bogart!" She saw me . . . and winked. I winked back, but it wasn't easy to keep my happy face on. She looked haggard, dreadfully tired in spite of her smile.

  I raised my eyes to Wireman's, and he gave the tiniest of shrugs. She insisted, it said. I switched my gaze to Jack and got much the same.

  Rosenblatt, meanwhile, was rummaging in his pockets. At last he came up with a book of matches so battered it looked as if it might have entered the United States without a passport at Ellis Island. He opened it and tore one out.

  "I thought smoking was against the rules in all these public buildings now," Elizabeth said.

  Rosenblatt struggled. Color rose up his neck. I almost expected his head to explode. Finally he exclaimed: "Fuck the rules, Miss Eastlake!"

  "BRAVISSIMO!" Mary shouted, laughing and throwing her hands to the ceiling, and at this there was another round of applause. A greater one came when Rosenblatt finally got the ancient match to ignite and held it out to Elizabeth, who placed her cigarette-holder between her lips.

  "Who is she really, Daddy?" Ilse asked softly. "Besides the little old lady who lives down the lane, I mean?"

  I said, "According to reports, at one time she was the Sarasota art scene."

  "I don't understand why that gives her the right to muck up our lungs with her cigarette smoke," Linnie said. The vertical line was returning between her brows.

  Ric smiled. "Oh, cherie, this after all the bars we--"

  "This is not there," she said, the vertical line deepening, and I thought, Ric, you may be French, but you have a lot to learn about this particular American woman.

  Alice Aucoin murmured to Dario, and from his pocket, Dario produced an Altoids tin. He dumped the mints into the palm of his hand and gave Alice the tin. Alice gave it to Elizabeth, who thanked her and tapped her cigarette ash into it.

  Pa
m watched, fascinated, then turned to me. "What does she think of your pictures?"

  "I don't know," I said. "She hasn't seen them."

  Elizabeth was beckoning to me. "Will you introduce me to your family, Edgar?"

  I did, beginning with Pam and ending with Ric. Jack and Wireman also shook hands with Pam and the girls.

  "After all the calls, I'm pleased to meet you in the flesh," Wireman told Pam.

  "The same goes back to you," Pam said, sizing him up. She must have liked what she saw, because she smiled--and it was the real one, the one that lights her whole face. "We did it, didn't we? He didn't make it easy, but we did it."

  "Art is never easy, young woman," Elizabeth said.

  Pam looked down at her, still smiling the genuine smile--the one I'd fallen in love with. "Do you know how long it's been since anyone called me young woman?"

  "Ah, but to me you look very young and beautiful," Elizabeth said . . . and was this the woman who had been little more than a muttering lump of cheese slumped in her wheelchair only a week ago? Tonight that seemed hard to believe. Tired as she looked, it seemed impossible to believe. "But not as young and beautiful as your daughters. Girls, your father is--by all accounts--a very talented fellow."

  "We're very proud of him," Melinda said, twisting her necklace.

  Elizabeth smiled at her, then turned to me. "I should like to see the work and judge for myself. Will you indulge me, Edgar?"

  "I'd be happy to." I meant it, but I was damned nervous, as well. Part of me was afraid to receive her opinion. That part was afraid she might shake her head and deliver her verdict with the bluntness to which her age entitled her: Facile . . . colorful . . . certainly lots of energy . . . but perhaps not up to much. In the end.

  Wireman moved to grasp the handles of her chair, but she shook her head. "No--let Edgar push me, Wireman. Let him tour me." She plucked the half-smoked cigarette from the holder, those gnarled fingers doing the job with surprising dexterity, and crushed it out on the bottom of the tin. "And the young lady's right--I think we've all had quite enough of this reek."

  Melinda had the grace to blush. Elizabeth offered the tin to Rosenblatt, who took it with a smile and a nod. I have wondered since then--I know it's morbid, but yes, I've wondered--if she would have smoked more of it if she had known it was to be her last.

  vi

  Even those who didn't know John Eastlake's surviving daughter from a hole in the wall understood that a Personage had come among them, and the tidal flow which had moved toward the reception area at the sound of Mary Ire's exuberant shout now reversed itself as I rolled the wheelchair into the alcove where most of the Sunset With pictures had been hung. Wireman and Pam walked on my left; Ilse and Jack were on my right, Ilse giving the wheelchair's handle on that side little helping taps to make sure it stayed on course. Melinda and Ric were behind us, Kamen, Tom Riley, and Bozie behind them. Behind that trio came seemingly everyone else in the gallery.

  I wasn't sure there would be room to get her chair in between the makeshift bar set-up and the wall, but there was, just. I started to push it down that narrow aisle, grateful that we'd at least be leaving the rest of the retinue behind us, when Elizabeth cried: "Stop!"

  I stopped at once. "Elizabeth, are you all right?"

  "Just a minute, honey--hush."

  We sat there, looking at the paintings on the wall. After a little bit, she fetched a sigh and said, "Wireman, do you have a Kleenex?"

  He had a handkerchief, which he unfolded and handed to her.

  "Come around here, Edgar," she said. "Come where I can see you."

  I managed to get around between the wheelchair and the bar, with the bartender bracing the table to make sure it didn't tip over.

  "Are you able to kneel down, so we can be face to face?"

  I was able. My Great Beach Walks were paying dividends. She clutched her cigarette holder--both foolish and somehow magnificent--in one hand, Wireman's handkerchief in the other. Her eyes were damp.

  "You read me poems because Wireman couldn't. Do you remember that?"

  "Yes, ma'am." Of course I remembered. Those had been sweet interludes.

  "If I were to say 'Speak, memory' to you, you'd think of the man--I can't recall his name--who wrote Lolita, wouldn't you?"

  I had no idea who she was talking about, but I nodded.

  "But there's a poem, too. I can't remember who wrote it, but it begins, 'Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may once more taste the green cup of the sea.' Does it move you? Yes, I see it does."

  The hand with the cigarette holder in it opened. Then it reached out and caressed my hair. The idea occurred to me (and has since recurred) that all my struggle to live and regain a semblance of myself may have been paid back by no more than the touch of that old woman's hand. The eroded smoothness of the palm. The bent strength of those fingers.

  "Art is memory, Edgar. There is no simpler way to say it. The clearer the memory, the better the art. The purer. These paintings--they break my heart and then make it new again. How glad I am to know they were done at Salmon Point. No matter what." She lifted the hand she'd caressed my head with. "Tell me what you call that one."

  "Sunset with Sophora."

  "And these are . . . what? Sunset with Conch, Numbers 1 through 4?"

  I smiled. "Well, there were sixteen of them, actually, starting with colored pencil-sketches. Some of those are out front. I picked the best oils for in here. They're surreal, I know, but--"

  "They're not surreal, they're classical. Any fool can see that. They contain all the elements: earth . . . air . . . water . . . fire."

  I saw Wireman mouth: Don't tire her out!

  "Why don't I give you a quick tour of the rest and then get you a cold drink?" I asked her, and now Wireman was nodding and giving me a thumb-and-forefinger circle. "It's hot in here, even with the air conditioning."

  "Fine," she said. "I am a little tired. But Edgar?"

  "Yes?"

  "Save the ship paintings for the last. After them I'll need a drink. Perhaps in the office. Just one, but something stiffer than Co'-Cola."

  "You've got it," I said, and edged my way back to the rear of the chair.

  "Ten minutes," Wireman whispered in my ear. "No more. I'd want to get her out before Gene Hadlock shows up, if possible. He sees her, he's going to shit a brick. And you know who he'll throw it at."

  "Ten," I said, and rolled Elizabeth into the buffet room to look at the paintings in there. The crowd was still following. Mary Ire had begun taking notes. Ilse slipped one hand into the crook of my elbow and smiled at me. I smiled back, but I was having that I'm-in-a-dream feeling again. The kind that may tilt you into a nightmare at any moment.

  Elizabeth exclaimed over I See the Moon and the Duma Road series, but it was the way she reached her hands out to Roses Grow from Shells, as if to embrace it, that gave me goosebumps. She lowered her arms again and looked over her shoulder at me. "That's the essence of it," she said. "The essence of Duma. Why those who've lived there awhile can never really leave. Even if their heads carry their bodies away, their hearts stay." She looked at the picture again and nodded. "Roses Grow from Shells. That is correct."

  "Thank you, Elizabeth."

  "No, Edgar--thank you."

  I glanced back for Wireman and saw him talking to that other lawyer from my other life. They seemed to be getting along famously. I only hoped Wireman wouldn't slip and call him Bozie. Then I turned to Elizabeth again. She was still looking at Roses Grow from Shells, and wiping her eyes.

  "I love this," she said, "but we should move along."

  After she'd seen the other paintings and sketches in the buffet room, she said, as if to herself: "Of course I knew someone would come. But I never would have guessed it would be someone who could produce works of such power and sweetness."

  Jack tapped me on the shoulder, then leaned close to murmur in my ear. "Dr. Hadlock has entered the buildi
ng. Wireman wants you to speed this up if you can."

  The main gallery--where the Girl and Ship paintings hung--was on the way to the office, and Elizabeth could leave by the loading door in back after having her drink; it would actually be more convenient for her wheelchair. Hadlock could accompany her, if he so desired. But I dreaded taking her past the Ship series, and it was no longer her critical opinion I was worried about.

  "Come on," she said, and clicked her amethyst ring on the arm of her wheelchair. "Let's look at them. No hesitating."

  "All right," I said, and began pushing her toward the main gallery.

  "Are you all right, Eddie?" Pam asked in a low voice.

  "Fine," I said.

  "You're not. What's wrong?"

  I only shook my head. We were in the main room now. The pictures were suspended at a height of about six feet; the room was otherwise open. The walls, covered with coarse brown stuff that looked like burlap, were bare except for Wireman Looks West. I rolled Elizabeth's chair slowly along. The wheels were soundless on the pale blue carpet. The murmur of the crowd behind us had either stopped or my ears had filtered it out. I seemed to see the paintings for the first time, and they looked oddly like stills culled from a strip of movie film. Each image was a little clearer, a little more in focus, but always essentially the same, always the ship I had first glimpsed in a dream. It was always sunset, and the light filling the west was always a titanic red anvil that spread blood across the water and infected the sky. The ship was a three-masted corpse, something that had floated in from a plaguehouse of the dead. Its sails were rags. Its deck was deserted. There was something horrible in every angular line, and although it was impossible to say just what, you feared for the little girl alone in her rowboat, the little girl who first appeared in a tic-tac-toe dress, the little girl afloat on the wine-dark Gulf.

  In that first version, the angle of the deathship was wrong to see anything of the name. In Girl and Ship No. 2, the angle had improved but the little girl (still with the false red hair and now also wearing Reba's polka-dotted dress) blocked out all but the letter P. In No. 3, P had become PER and Reba had pretty clearly become Ilse, even back-to. John Eastlake's spear-pistol lay in the rowboat.