Sand in My Eyes (16 page)

“You’re not Mother Teresa. Not everyone is able to be Mother Teresa,” I said. “But you’re Fedelina Aurelio, mother of seven and a wife who did the best she could in her own yard. Look what you’ve done—you added seven productive adults to this world. Without you they wouldn’t be here. And they’ve produced, too. Your family tree is bigger than any royal poinciana! And all the things you once said to me, well, they had a profound influence on my life.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I needed to hear that.”

I realized then that I had helped her. It was the first time I had helped her. “You were the one who told me,” I said then, “that when a rosebush isn’t in bloom it still makes a lovely backdrop for those that are. I hope you see that now. Your son, who I talked to on the phone, your other children, your friends and the nurses, they all love coming to see you, not because you’re blooming, but because you’re still beautiful. You’re as beautiful as ever.”

“That’s nice of you, Anna,” she said.

“I’m only using your own words.”

“I do appreciate that, how nice you are.”

“Want to know what I did next, after you gave me all those roses, and your flowers influenced me?” I asked her.

“Tell me you didn’t pursue my son,” she said.

“You really want to know?”

She nodded and I began to read from where I left off last.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THEY SAY KAYAKS RARELY
tip in calm water, and that unless someone is horsing around, there’s no reason one should flip. But if I happened upon an alligator, if I tapped one accidentally on its head, my jumping, screaming, would be all the coaxing necessary for tipping a kayak upside down and trapping myself beneath.

So I decided against kayaking and rented a canoe instead. As I climbed into the center cockpit, steadying myself with a hand on each side, I knew it was foolish for a woman who had never set foot in any form of craft with a paddle to now be embarking on a solo expedition. I took my seat on the bench and picked up my paddle, making a mental note to teach my daughter never to do the irrational things I’ve done, especially going out of her way, taking up activities she otherwise wouldn’t, with the intention of bumping into a man.

“But hard as she tries, hard as she might,” I said to myself as I paddled gently away from the shore, keeping one eye out for gators and the other for him, “a woman can’t always do the sensible thing.”

And as Cora had written in her letter, the day is going to come when Marjorie no longer views me as the omnipotent, omnipresent all, and no longer wants to hear mommy’s knowledge of life. “It’s why I must tell her everything I want her to know by the time she is five,” I said out loud to no one but the birds. “I will say to her before she turns six, ‘When you are married, Marjorie, never go canoeing in search of a man. Go canoeing in
search of yourself, darling, but never a man.’”

I was going at a good pace now, looking over my shoulder as I do in my minivan when I hear strange noises coming from my children, but there was nothing in the water behind me—no gators, no other rowers as far as I could see, and no children in the backseat feasting off stale crumbs unearthed from the crevices of their car seats. Oh, how I gagged recently when I pulled to the side of the road to pull a blue piece of hard cheese—the type I hadn’t bought in months, since before our move—out of my daughter’s mouth.

The quietness of my ride was haunting, making me miss the sounds of my children and feel guilty for what a lacking mother I was. I was not programmed like all the other mothers of the world, the ones with shiny, showered hair, sitting on the benches at parks, unwrapping perfectly well-balanced picnic lunches for their kids, their boys with groomed hair, clean faces, and stainless shirts. All I could picture of my three now were their noses pushed to Grandma’s window. Where was Mama?, they were wondering. Where oh where did she go?

I felt frustrated as I rowed and started to cry at the thought of Timothy asking me to forgive him. I cried harder, knowing I couldn’t. But staying with a man I would grudge the rest of my life, until “death due us part,” was what had me crying hardest of all. By staying with him, I was making him believe that one day I might come around, forgive, and forget. It was easy to lie to Timothy. He had done so to me, and his was the big, bad, hurtful lie, whereas mine was a dreary gray lie, bordering between a little white and a great, big, bad lie.

A woman, I told myself as I reached a wide-open area of Tarpon Bay, is allowed so many gray lies throughout her life. But then I stopped rowing, put my paddle down, and leaned to the side, noticing in the reflection of the water how big my nose looked. It had to be an illusion. Water does that, distorts one’s features, I told myself, but knew the truth, that my nose had grown. Not from all the white lies every woman tells, but from parading around like a cheerful soul, pretending my marriage was good and that the only love I needed was the mommy kind coming from my children, when in reality I longed for the romantic kind, too, the kind of
love that lets a mommy feel like a woman. The truths a woman refuses to acknowledge about her own life are the worst kinds of lies.

When I looked up from my reflection in the pristine water, there he was across the bay, near the edge of the mangroves—the man I had watched plant that magnolia tree. But then he disappeared into the Commodore Creek Water Trail. I picked up my paddle and followed after him as though I knew him—everything there was to know about the man—and how ridiculous, I thought, for he was a stranger, a beautiful man playing tricks on my mind, confusing me as to that which is or isn’t possible.

I only knew that I no longer wanted to be a miserable person caught up in lies. I row, row, rowed my boat merrily toward him with ridiculous purpose, all the while feeling blind, unable to see the meaning of life. Despite my thirty-six years of experience in the world, I felt lost and poor, regardless of material possessions, wobbly, for one day wanting to stay with my husband and the next wanting to leave him, and lonesome—for what? I did not know, but as my canoe glided across the water, not moved by wind or engine but by my own strength and will, I felt free from my wearisome captivity and all the chronic stress that for so long had been settling within me, attaching to my organs, my cells, and eating away at my essence.

As I entered the mangrove tunnel I should have slowed, stopped paddling, but I was too deep in thoughtful confusion, and I was used to driving a minivan with excellent brakes, not a canoe. He heard my paddle hitting the water and looked over his shoulder, and saw me coming straight at him. I wanted to slow, to stop, but didn’t know how. I was glad when he reached his paddle out to defend his ship from the fender bender headed his way. It worked. His paddle stopped me from ramming into him, but the impact sent me rocking wildly in another direction.

He looked at me with deciphering eyes and I felt my face turn red as a woodpecker’s crest. “You must think I’m crazy,” I said, looking over my shoulder at him, my canoe drifting back in his direction. “I don’t know where my mind was—lost in its own thoughts.”

I expected him to laugh, to ask me if I was okay, but instead he looked at me as if I were a freak, like he didn’t know me at all. “I live next door to your mother,” I told him.

He paused and said, “Yes, it took me a second to recognize you.”

I wanted then to tell him that of course it did. His mother’s hallway was dark when we met, and my hair is down, and I’m not wearing the goofy nightgown that I wore the day I found his mother collapsed in the garden, the day I saved his mother’s life. I wanted to tell him all of that, but I didn’t. “It took me a second to recognize you, too.”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked. “Trying to beat rush-hour traffic?”

“No,” I said with a laugh. “I thought I heard a gator behind me.”

“You mean that stick in the water? From the right angle it might look like a gator, or just a big stick.”

“Oh, that’s funny,” I said. “So what brings you out here today?”

“Taking time for myself, enjoying the moment.”

It was then that I noticed a small pad of paper and a pencil in his lap. “Are you drawing?”

“I was.”

“What were you drawing?”

“I was working on a great white heron until you scared it away.”

“Oh no, did I really?”

He shook his head and gave me a smirk. “No, I’m doodling, still looking for something that inspires me.”

“You like to joke, don’t you?”

“Only when the moment calls for it. So what brings you out here—in search of your own inspiration?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I guess you could say that.”

“So what’s your novel about?”

“It’s really just a silly little story,” I said.

“A silly little story about what?”

“Flowers.”

“So is this story about flowers also going to be about a man in a kayak that you almost knocked over?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just getting started. I’ll see where it takes me, see what kind of inspiration I find.”

He looked at me oddly. “I guess we’re both looking for something,
aren’t we?”

“Everyone is, don’t you think?”

He nodded. “I’ve never met a person not looking for something.” He was holding onto the side of my canoe now, keeping our boats locked. “So you come out here often?” he asked.

“My kids are too young.”

“How old are they?”

“My girl is almost two and my boys are three.”

“You’ve got your hands full.”

“Crazy full,” I said.

“You look good for having that many children.”

“Do I?” I asked, flattered for the first time in years.

“So where are they, babysitter?”

“No. They’re with grandparents,” I declared. “Gone for the week, and I’m trying to make the most of it, get reacquainted with myself. My husband’s gone, too,” I added.

“It must be hard when he’s away, with the three little ones.”

“It is, but I’m getting used to it.”

“Is he gone often?”

“Most of the time, yes,” I said, aware of my own melancholy. I changed the look on my face and perked myself up, asking him, “So, do you kayak often?”

“Kayak, hike, bike—I do it all.”

“You’re a real outdoorsman,” I said.

“I feel most alive, at peace, when I’m outside. Now put me in a mall,” he said with a laugh, “a crowded amusement park, or confine me to a house for too long and I’m a walking dead person, I kid you not.”

“Oh come on, everyone loves a good mall once in awhile,” I said. “I’m sure you appreciate a few modern luxuries.”

“A good hot shower and a beer mostly, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ll return from a trip and walk into my house feeling like one of those persons you hear about that has a near-death experience. You know, they get a glimpse of the other side, the side in which they are free from the burdensome weight of their lives, their bodies, their aches and pains,
and then they come back to physical life and it feels cumbersome. My ex could never understand this, and I don’t blame her. We never should have gotten married. We were mismatched souls from the start.”

“I do understand,” I said. “I’m thinking of leaving my husband. In fact, I’m almost sure of it. We’re mismatched souls, too.”

He let go of my canoe and I feared he thought I was one of those loony chicks who chatter, blab about everything upon a second encounter, and I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t loony, even though I know there are a lot of loony chicks out there and I had been friends with many, but that I myself wasn’t loony. I was normal. I wanted to tell him all of that, but instead I tightened my lips and refrained from saying anything else.

“It’s none of my business,” he then said, “and they say every person’s experience is unique—but you will come out of it a whole person. You can, at least. I did.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said formally.

“You might be more hardened than before,” he added, his face growing serious, “and shy, too, shy of getting involved in certain things. At least I was. It wasn’t easy at the time, but it’s a good thing now. We’re better off without each other.”

“It’s nice that you can see the good in it.”

“There’s still the whole ‘failure’ thing, you know, feeling like I couldn’t make something so important work. But we try. That’s all we can do is try, right?”

The look in his eyes told me he was still suffering. I wanted to tell him I was too—suffering—but the distance between his kayak and my canoe was getting wider. “Are you friendly?” I asked, wanting to keep us going, for our conversation to never end.

“Depends who you ask,” he said, his back facing me. “The guy at the four-way stop who almost hit my car might say I’m not.”

“No,” I said with a laugh. “I mean you and your ex-wife.”

“I don’t know,” he said, facing me again. “We never had children so there’s no reason to keep in touch. I have no ill will toward her, or anyone in life, really. It was mutual. We both march to a different beat. And when I marched home one day I didn’t expect to find her in the arms of another
man. I walked out of the house and left it all. To this day, the thought of buying another house sounds like confinement to me. Neighborhoods make me claustrophobic. And women who want to marry right away make me nervous.”