Sand in My Eyes (26 page)

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” I insisted, though I wanted to tell him that a few ant bites were nothing in comparison to the aggravations I had experienced over the last several months.

“You’re a long ways from home,” he said. “How about I give you a ride?”

I hesitated, thinking about the blister on my toe, the flat tire on my bike, and how my feet were stinging from the fire ant bites, and then about all the weedy events in my life that had entangled me for months, yanking me to my knees. And I knew that only more trouble comes when a married woman accepts a ride from a single man she is attracted to.

“No thanks,” I told him. “I think I’ll go sit on the beach and put my feet in the water.”

He glanced up at the sky and then back at me. “I don’t want to ruin your plans, but those are some pretty dark clouds. Are you sure you don’t want me to take you home?”

“You’ve already helped so much.”

“How?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him that when a man makes a woman’s heart move like the waves of the sea after a long time of stagnancy, he has done her a service, letting her know her romantic organs are still there, affected by the tides of love and life. “You helped me move my love seat, remember?” I told him.

“I don’t mind giving you a ride as well. I don’t mind helping you twice.”

“No,” I reiterated strongly. “I need a good walk. It’s good for the mind.”

“All right,” he said, “but those bites are only going to keep on stinging.”

“That’s okay. I’m not going to let a few prickling stings ruin my walk,” I told him.

“If I were you, I’d ice my foot when I got home. And keep an eye on it. Make sure you’re not allergic to them.”

“No, I don’t think I am.”

He got into his mother’s 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, and I started on my way, one foot burning from the blister and the other stinging from the bites, wondering how this all began—our friendship and the
way we talked and felt. I knew, as much as I did that the sky was blue and the grass green, that he felt it, too, and when I heard him start the engine I turned and cast a friendly wave. And, because he gave me the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen on a man’s face before, I reciprocated with a wink.

“Oh fudge,” I muttered. I didn’t mean to wink. I remembered something I once heard, that if one part of the body sins, one should cut it off. I could never cut my eyelid off, nor take back my wink, so I kept on walking, trying hard not to limp.
Move, move, move your feet, gently down the path
, I sang to myself, knowing the car he was driving was about to pass me by,
wearily, wearily, wearily, wearily, life is not a dream
.

“I offered you a ride because I thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do,” he said as his car rolled slowly alongside me, “but after watching that limp of yours, I
know
you need a ride. It would be negligent of me to pass you by.”

I cringed. “I look that bad?”

“Damsel in distress,” he said, nodding.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I told him. “I feel more like roadkill mess.”

I intended at that point to step into the road, open the door of the car, and get in, but before I could do any of that he had already gotten out, run over to my side of the car, and picked me up.

“Put me down,” I insisted, embarrassed. “I’m not a turtle!”

“No, you’re all woman, and, once in a while, every woman needs a little help.”

“Yeah, but picking me up like this …” I said, laughing in his arms, wondering whether I was breaking his back. “It’s over and beyond the call of duty for a gentleman.”

“Only when the moment calls for it,” he said as he gently set me down on the passenger side of his mother’s red convertible. I felt as if I were a movie star, fanning my face and rolling my eyes like I couldn’t believe what he had just done, nor how my heart was spinning in front flips for this man as he walked around to his side of the car and got in. When he took hold of the silver steering wheel, I sat up straight and took hold of my emotions. “I see you’ve got your mother’s car today,” I said.

“I took it into the shop this morning, got it checked, and got an oil change,” he said. “Now, where’s that bike of yours?”

I told him where I had left it, and he pulled into a small beach parking lot to turn around and head us in the direction of my flat tire. We were quiet for a moment, neither of us saying anything. I tried to think of something to say, but at the same time, I felt comfortable saying nothing. And then he turned on the radio and surprised me again.

“Somewhere beyond the sea,” he sang along to an oldies’ song, “she’s there watchin’ for me.” He sang like he couldn’t care less whether his voice was good or not, like he was just having fun, and I felt like a sixteen-year-old girl on her first date, wondering whether or not to sing along as well. “If I could fly like birds on high, then straight to her arms I’d go sailin’,” I sang, too, smiling all the while.

“Is this the kind of music you like?” I asked when I started to feel self-conscious and needed an excuse to stop singing.

“Bobby Darin—beyond the Sea’—my folks used to play it,” he said, staring straight ahead at the road. “But this is my mother’s station, and when I drive her car I don’t mess with her stations. I’m surprised, however, at how loud she has it blaring when I turn on the car. Maybe it’s her hearing. I don’t know.”

“This car is great!” I said.

“She’s owned it forever, at least twenty years,” he said. “I suggested she try an SUV, something bigger, safer, but she refused, said she’s keeping this the rest of her driving life.”

“If I had a car like this, I’d never get rid of it either,” I said, putting my nose up in the air like a dog. “Now I see what convertibles are all about. I had always wondered.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, looking at me as the car rolled to a stop at a stop sign. “This is your first time in a convertible?”

I looked him in the eyes and wanted to tell him it was my first time for a lot of things: for driving anywhere with a man other than my husband, and for singing loudly in front of another person, and for feeling as happy as I had been feeling every time we were together. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one, but never knew anyone who owned one.”

“Well, now you do,” he said, “and I’m sure my mother would love to take you for rides any time you show the least bit of interest. She sits on a pillow, you know, to see over the dashboard.”

“Does she?”

“Yeah. She’ll do anything to keep this car.”

“Good for her. When I’m her age, I hope I drive a convertible, too,” I said, resting my head on the seat, closing my eyes, and, to my surprise, singing out loud the rest of the song without a care in the world. “Happy we’ll be beyond the sea. And never again I’ll go sailin’.”

“So how long do you plan to be around for?” I asked when the song ended and I opened my eyes.

“Long enough to finish the stairs,” he said, “and build my mother a ramp.”

“A ramp?”

“She’s going to need one—so she can wheel her groceries up—but I don’t know for sure whether I’ll be able to start that this time around. It all depends how long the stairs take. Of course, I could spend all the time in the world fixing her stairs, building her a ramp, but I think the biggest threat to her comes every time she puts her key in the ignition of this car and drives!”

I liked talking about his mother. It was a safe, neutral conversation. The more we talked about her, the less guilty I felt for being with him, and the less I said about myself or asked further about him. He sounded comfortable, too, and I think it was because, like me, he felt guilty talking the way we had about ourselves and to each other.

“You haven’t noticed anything strange, have you?” he asked.

“No. Like what?”

“I rode with her to the store the other day, and her stops and starts were jerky, her left turns borderline reckless.”

“Did you say anything?”

“I did, but she took it as criticism. I’ll wait awhile and bring it up indirectly,” he said, and then we spotted my bike against a tree. After pulling to the side, I watched him pick it up carefully as he had both the turtle and me, only the bike was heavier—at least heavier than the turtle—and required
more muscle, which he had. I noticed his arms, and they were nice. They were like my husband’s used to be when we were in college and he still worked out. As he put my bike in the back of his mother’s car, I could hardly take my eyes off his biceps, which were very nice.

“I feel bad. I’m probably disrupting your entire day,” I told him when he got back in.

“Not really. I was thinking of checking out the Red Mangrove Overlook. Have you been there?”

“No,” I said, “never heard of it.”

He cast me a glance, the kind that questions how a person can be living on the island and not be familiar with whatever overlook it was. I gave him a smile back that says, “Don’t mess with me, I’m a woman with three kids who hardly knows a shark from a dolphin, an osprey from an eagle, a roseate spoonbill from a flamingo, but I know everything there is to know about my three children, from their heads to their toes, and I know all there is about love, the unconditional kind that only a mother has.”

“It’s over at the wildlife refuge. It’s a viewing spot along the drive. I’ve been meaning to make it over there but never have. I hear you can park your car and get out, walk into a mangrove forest, and stand out on a platform. From what I hear there’s an incredible view of the tidal feeding flats. Would you like to come with me?”

Oh, what is a woman to do
?
What is a woman to do
?
She pitters, she patters, she does all that matters, oh, what is a woman to do
?

“It’s up to you,” he added. “I could drop you off at your house and then go. It’s no big deal either way.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you in the mood for company?”

“I could use some company. Too much time alone is no longer a good thing after awhile.”

“You mean that?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

“Okay, then, I’ll go,” I said, biting my lips. “I would love to go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

AS HE TURNED IN
the direction of the refuge, all I could think was,
Poor Timothy, if he could see me now, his wife in a car with another man
. The thought made me quiet with fear, as did the possibility of my feelings for Liam progressing and how it might look like either revenge or “rebound,” as I’ve heard people call it when a relationship turns foul and the wounded instantly flocks to another. But I would know the truth. I would be the only one in the world to know the truth, that what I had for this man beside me in the car was a subtle inner sense, one I didn’t fully understand, but that drew me to him, as mysteriously to me as how billions of birds each year arrive where they need to be, tuning into low-frequency sound waves or barometric pressure to help them along.

“Mind if I make a quick stop?” he asked, pulling into a sandy, bumpy parking lot.

“Of course not,” I said. When I saw the sign for a florist, I looked at him curiously.

“What did you want, a dozen?”

“Oh, come on,” I chided. “I know I said it, but I didn’t really mean it. I don’t need roses.”

He looked at me with non-believing eyes.

“Yard sale signs,” I declared. “That’s what I really need. Not roses.”

“My mother has signs. I think I saw three or four of them in her shed. I’ll bring them over to you. So, what color roses?”

“Oh,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t know. I think I’d better go in and see for myself.”

“It’s my treat,” he insisted. “A get well gift after all those ant bites.”

“That’s nice of you,” I told him, putting my hand on his and giving it a friendly squeeze, “but this is something I have to do myself—and
for
myself.”

I was paying for a dozen yellow roses and peeking constantly out the window at the man who brought me here, when the realtor who had helped my husband and me find our rental home walked in. “Anna Hott,” she said. “Buying roses for that charming little house you’re in?”

“Oh, yes,” I said as she gazed out the window into the parking lot.

“Is that Timothy out there? I should go say ‘hello.’”

“No, it’s a friend,” I said. “My neighbor’s son.”

“Oh?”

“I had a flat tire, then a blister. And the fire ants came. They bit me all over.”

“Oh, my goodness!” she declared, looking down at my swollen foot. “You were attacked!” But then she looked back out at the man in the convertible.

“Did I mention I had a flat tire? He just happened to come along at the right time,” I said, and then stopped when I saw the way she was staring at me, telling me with her eyes that
less is more, less is more, less is more
.

“You look great,” she said. “What’s different, your hair?”

“That or life—it’s going well,” I said, taking my roses. “I had better scoot.”

I got back into the car, and once Liam pulled out of the parking lot I put the roses up to my nose, closed my eyes, and took a good whiff. When I opened my eyes, Liam was looking at me. I didn’t want him thinking I was one of those egocentrics, always indulging themselves, so I put them on the floor by my feet.