Duma Key (54 page)

“But you're better now.”

“Yes,” he said. “Pam had a lot to do with that. Can I tell you something about her you might already know?”

“Sure,” I said, only hoping he wasn't going to share the fact that she sometimes laughed way down in her throat when she came.

“She has great insight but little kindness,” Tom said. “It's a weirdly cruel mix.”

I said nothing . . . but not necessarily because I thought he was wrong.

“She gave me a brisk talking-to about taking care of myself not so long ago, and it hit home.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And from the look of her, you might be in for a talking-to yourself, Edgar. I think I might find your friend Kamen and engage him in a bit of a discourse. Excuse me.”

The girls and Ric were staring up at
Wireman Looks West
and chattering animatedly. Pam, however, was positioned about halfway down the line of
Girl and Ship
paintings, which hung like movie posters, and she looked disturbed. Not angry, exactly, just disturbed. Confused. She beckoned me over, and once I was there, she didn't waste time.

“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,
chérie,
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.

Pam 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.