Heart of Palm (45 page)

“Drusilla,” Arla said tonight, settling down on the fallen pine tree. “You would not believe what is going on up at the house.”

And she told her, then, about the sale of Aberdeen and Uncle Henry’s. And about Dean’s return, and Carson and Elizabeth breaking up. About the new Publix and Tip Breen and Morgan’s family in Memphis. And Sofia’s wedding. And about Frank—only she stopped there, frowned, cocked her head to the side. She didn’t know what to tell Drusilla about Frank. Sometimes it seemed like he was the one she knew least of all. He had a secret, it often seemed, something deep inside that he kept hidden, removed.

“Maybe he’s the most like me,” she said. “Poor thing.” She chuckled, then fell silent. And Will. Maybe Will was the one most like Dean. Back at Uncle Henry’s, the music had become more muted, and she sensed that the reception was ending. Dean would be back at Aberdeen soon, and Elizabeth, and Bell. She should get back, see if anyone was ready for tea.

“I’ll bet you were a beautiful lady, Drusilla,” she said. “I can just tell. I’ll bet the men just
loved
you. That’s how it was for me, too. I remember. You had something a little bit special, didn’t you? Once?”

Drusilla was silent. The wine rushed in Arla’s ears. The mosquitoes were becoming thicker, and she knew the Cutter would last only so long.

“Well, all right then,” she said. “I’m not sure when I’ll get back, Drusilla. This damn foot, you know. And I guess I’m moving. Willough Walk, for the love of Pete. So I guess it might be a while, Drusilla.” She wished she had something to leave behind. Poor Drusilla—under the wretched marina forever. She opened her purse, felt around in the dark, and her hand closed over a tiny beaded compact, a gift from Will the Christmas before he died. She’d carried it with her, always, but she felt compelled tonight, for some reason, to leave it for Drusilla. She bent over and balanced the compact on the headstone.

“Did you ever lose one, Drusilla?” she said. “It’s a heck of a thing. A game changer, I’ll tell you that.” She straightened up. “Oh, Drusilla,” she said. “I miss him.”

The compact sparkled in the moonlight on the cold gray stone, and Arla’s throat caught.

“Good-bye, love,” she whispered.

Arla took a step backward then, but she lost her footing in the tangle of brambles and the fallen branches, and the ground came rushing up to meet her. Her head contacted with the ragged edge of the pine stump and everything went bright white for a moment before she sat up again, put her hand to her head, and felt the blood.

“
Non
,” she said. “Oh, no.”

It took a long time to get back to Aberdeen after that. She had to sit down many times, once flat into a boggy patch of moss that soaked her backside and ruined her dress and made her feel ashamed, as though she had wet herself, and in truth she was not entirely sure whether maybe that had happened, too. She had to struggle over to her hands and knees to get back up, and she was dizzy and shaking all over, so she held a tree to steady herself. She pressed a handkerchief against the wound on her head, but it soaked through, so after a while she dropped it, and then she realized that somewhere she had dropped her purse, too, and so there were no more handkerchiefs to be had. She kept walking. When she was young the walk down this path had taken no more than fifteen minutes. Now it felt like hours. She used to have a cane. Where was the cane?

Through the trees, the sky above was thick and black, and she stopped for another moment, leaned against a tree and looked up. The blackness began to undulate, and shimmer, and then it was alive, the sky, with blues and purples, greens and oranges. It was alive and sliding across the firmament like mother of pearl, bright and hot as copper, and oh my Lord in heaven, she knew what it was, and though she was very happy, she cried a little bit and she stood and watched for a long, long time.

When it stopped, she walked some more, and then the light on the porch at Aberdeen blinked at her, winked like an eye, telling her about a secret. And then Elizabeth was there, and Bell, and Dean—my word,
Dean
—putting his arms around her and helping her up into the house, into the bedroom. There was lots of talk about a doctor, and a hospital, she was aware of that, and she said “no, no, no” and looked them in the eye and told them she was fine, just leave her alone, she wanted to sleep, that was all, with all the wretched packing she had to do tomorrow. Just leave me alone, she said. I’m just a little drunk, she said. That’s all. She’d never said that about herself before. It felt odd, shameful. She was sorry, to have said it in front of Bell.

She took a shower and kicked her muddy clothes into the bottom of her closet. Tomorrow she would go back down the path for her cane, her purse. She put a bandage on her forehead. The wound was not so bad after all—these head wounds, they always look worse than they are. She thought about fetching a cool glass of Chablis from the kitchen, but then thought it probably wasn’t a good idea. She clung to the wall and made her way to the bed. She lay back, and then Dean was standing over her in the darkness.

“What?” she said, sharply.

“I got your cane. And your purse,” he said. “On the path.” He hung the bag at the foot of the bed, propped the cane against the wall.

“Thank you.”

“Arla.”

He pulled a chair up next to her bed and sat down.

She waited for him to speak, and after a moment, he did.

“I’m sorry, Arla.”

“You should be,” she said.

He was quiet again, and the minutes passed, and she might have drifted to sleep for a moment, but then she was aware that he had reached out his hand, placed it lightly on her left leg
.
She almost laughed—was this it, then? Did he honestly think—? But no, that was not it, she understood, as he grazed his fingertips down the length of her leg to her damaged, foreshortened foot, lying bare on the bed with no bandages or socks to cover it. He touched her foot, closed his big palm over the whole of it, felt along the surface of the skin for several long minutes, as if he were reading a map. Then he got up and kissed her on the top of her head.

“I saw the northern lights, Dean,” she murmured. “They were beautiful.”

“Good night, Arla,” he said. And then he was gone.

E
IGHTEEN

Elizabeth rose early, again, this was becoming a habit, but between the emotion of the wedding, the drama of Arla’s fall last night, the separation from Carson, Bell’s kicking, and the unsettling aura of being in Frank’s boyhood bedroom, sleep had proven elusive. Now the Felix clock read six o’clock, and she stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, watching the white plastic eyes pivot back and forth with clocklike lunacy. She filled the carafe with water from the tap and went for the coffee canister.

She was on her second cup when Dean appeared in the doorway, and she jumped when she saw him, then felt guilty for the reaction.

“Here,” she said quietly, pushing a chair out with her foot. “Sit.”

He limped to the counter, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down to drink it black.

“Some night, huh?” he said, and she nodded, thinking of Arla’s bloodied head, how ashen Dean had looked when he’d seen her.

“You still in pain?” she said.

“Hell,” he said. “All I know is the pain I’m in.” He cleared his throat. “What are you doing up so early, missy?” he said. His face was gaunt, and his hands shook until he held them both around his cup.

“Can’t sleep. Bell’s a kicker. What about you?”

“I can’t never sleep. I guess life’s a kicker,” he said. “I feel like I haven’t slept in years.”

He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, then checked himself.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I’ll wait. You don’t need that stink this early.”

“I don’t mind.”

He looked at her, drumming his fingers on the coffee cup.

“How long we known you, Elizabeth?”

“Twenty years?” she said. She furrowed her brow. “No, gosh. Longer. Thirty? Lord.”

“Huh. Since you were just a kid.”

“A stupid kid,” she added, and then they were silent again for a few minutes. She tried not to stare directly at him, but she positioned her gaze somewhere behind his head so she could study him in her peripheral vision: his thinning hair, his drawn mouth, his haunted eyes. He looked older than he should have.

“Where have you been, Dean?” she said. “I mean, all these years?”

He took a sip of coffee, shook his head.

“Around,” he said. “Here and there. Not far. Palatka. Green Cove. I lived on a boat for a couple of years in Daytona. But it sank. I guess I don’t have good luck with boats.”

She smiled.

“I pulled a sentence, too, at Starke. Two years. No fun. I don’t recommend it.”

“What for?”

“DUI.” He shook his head. “I’m not what you call a quick study.”

“How come you never came back?”

He shrugged. “Well,” he said, but then he stopped, shook his head again. “You know something, Elizabeth? You’re the only one who asked where I been. The others, they didn’t.”

“They’re pretty angry.”

“I know.”

His hand flicked again to his cigarettes, then returned to his coffee cup. He looked so sad and beaten that she wanted to cry, but he was last on the list of things she planned to cry about anytime soon, so she bit her lip and spooned another small pile of sugar into her coffee. The sky outside the kitchen window was still pitch-black. It might have been the middle of the night.

“I suppose I’ll be coming into a little money here,” he said. “Wednesday, they say.”

“More than a little, Dean.”

“So I guess I’ll take a bit of that and be off again.”

“You’re not going to stay?”

“They don’t want me to, Elizabeth. You know as well as I do.”

She looked away.

“So what about you?” he said. “You going back with Carson, or—?”

Or what?
She wondered how much Dean knew, or suspected, about her and Frank.

“That’s the million-dollar question, I guess,” she said. She felt a creeping chill, suddenly, which made no sense. It was September in Utina. But still. She was cold.

“He’s got a million-dollar answer. Or will, on Wednesday.”

“It’s not about the money.”

“I know that, darlin’,” he said gently.

“I’m going to stay with Arla, for now,” she said. “In the new condo. Me and Bell.”

He nodded, then reached for his cigarettes a third time, and this time took one out, tapped it on the table, lit it up, and took a deep drag. She really didn’t mind the smell of it. It was fatherly, somehow, soothing.

“Are you happy about Sofia?” she asked.

He exhaled, leaned back, and looked up.

“I’m happy,” he said after a minute. “And I’m relieved. I like that Biaggio. He’ll take good care of her.” He sat very still, staring at the ceiling. “You didn’t really have much of a family life, did you?” he said, after a moment.

“Nah,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “My mother, you know, she was pretty sad. She wasn’t all there.” The thought hit her at the moment she said it, and for the first time she could remember, she felt something for her mother more akin to pity than to anger. Her throat tightened.
She missed out
, she thought suddenly, remembering Bell’s soft legs against her in the night.
My mother missed out. On me
.

“Same here,” Dean said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. My parents were not so good. Pretty bad, in fact. I’m kind of surprised my brothers and I grew up at all.”

She smiled. “But you made it.”

“You think so?” he said. “I guess.” He grew quiet, and he stared at the ceiling again, and when he spoke next his voice had taken a new texture, rough and strained.

“My father killed my mother,” he said. “Not all at once, you know, but he killed her just the same. Hit her so hard, so many times. Broke her, just broke her. The last time was the worst. Knocked out all her front teeth so she looked like hell, and then they had to operate, had to remove part of her intestines, they’d been so damaged by the blows. So she had to just wait, hooked up to a tube, just set and wait to die. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t shit. Looking like a dead body. But she could still talk, though I can’t repeat the things she said,” he said. He took a drag of his cigarette. “It took two months.”

Elizabeth stared at him, nearly frozen. Her hands had grown icy in her lap.

“I thought for a while I’d kill him back,” Dean said. “I mean, I really thought I would. One day I was driving down A1A, thinking I’d go try to find him. He used to hang out at the pier in St. Auggie, and I had my mind made up. I had a pistol in my pants.”

“But you didn’t,” she said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You changed your mind? That day?”

He looked at her, and a twitching, sad smile played at his lips.