Sand in My Eyes (27 page)

“It would probably be wise if I went home now,” I said.

“Whatever you like. If you don’t want to go to the overlook with me, you don’t have to.”

“I do want to go,” I said.

“You do?”

“Yes, but I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

I looked him in the eyes the way a mixed-up woman does, hoping, longing that he might tell me what to do, but he didn’t and I figured it out on my own. “Let’s go,” I said. “Take me to the refuge!”

“Great,” he said. “Would you like some coffee first?”

“Why, were you thinking of stopping?”

“No, I brought some along. It’s in that silver thermos down by your feet. There’s a couple of clean mugs on the floor in the back. You might have to reach back.”

“I haven’t had coffee from a thermos ever, I don’t think,” I said as I unscrewed the lid. “I do like coffee.”

“Does it help you write?”

“I used to think so,” I told him as I poured him the first cup. “Way back when I worked at the library, I’d start my day with a huge cup, and I used to think, each morning on my way to work, that I heard inspiration, as if inspiration were a creature hovering over my shoulder, feeding me literary one-liners. I’d sometimes pull my car over and jot it all down.”

“So a nice cup of java does stir your creativity.”

I poured myself a cup and sipped it slowly. “I’d like to believe that was the case, but then I’d look at what I wrote later and it wasn’t that good. My best writing, I’ve come to realize recently—in the past couple of days in fact—has nothing to do with caffeine highs in the morning or wine lows at night. It has more to do with letting myself feel whatever it is I am feeling—accepting that I’m human, and along with being human comes a range of emotions. When I accept this, rather than hide or try to get rid of the way I’m feeling, I find it easier to write. So to answer your question, coffee does absolutely nothing for me other than help me get through my morning with a little added oomph.”

“Oomph is good,” he said.

“Yes,” I said with a laugh. “So, does coffee make you creative?”

“Sometimes,” was all he said.

“So where did you learn to draw?”

“Not in school,” he said, and laughed. “I had this professor my first year of college. I told him I wanted to be an artist and he said, ‘Sorry, son, you chose the wrong school. We have no actual art classes here; just art history.’”

“So you transferred?”

“No—I switched majors four times, from accounting to engineering to business, and finally to art history.”

“Well, that’s close to what you wanted.”

“It was a good enough fit, I thought at the time. Now I see it worked out as it was meant to.”

“I can’t see you as an accountant.”

“No, me neither, but my parents urged me. I used to sit in class, always a seat by the window, and I’d try. I’d try hard to feel passionate about numbers. But I couldn’t, so I’d draw. I’d always have a big old cup of coffee, then go to class and sketch. The professors thought I was taking notes.”

By now we could hear distant thunder, and Liam said he felt a few raindrops hit his face, though I didn’t. I only felt what was going on inside me, and it was a twirling, whirling storm of sorts. But other than Liam commenting that the coffee was good and strong, we were quiet the rest of the way to the refuge. It was a comfortable silence and I felt a familiarity toward him, as if he had been a part of my world forever. And when he cast a smile my way, I couldn’t imagine what time was like before him, nor think about a time that would come without him. I only wanted more—more of the present, more of him. I wanted to know everything there was to know about him, yet I sensed we already knew and loved one another, as simply and easily as the blue sky, white clouds, and spring breeze I had known, and loved, all my life.

As the car stopped at the entrance gate to Wildlife Drive, I turned my face away from the woman at the booth and tilted my nose upward, as if I had spotted something high up in a tree—and then I did, a mangrove cuckoo hiding within a dense clump of leaves! I felt as secretive as the bird, only it wore a black mask, something I wished I had to hide my guilty eyes. As the car rolled slowly onto the narrow one-way road, bordered
on both sides by dense wetland woods, I feared red-bellied woodpeckers were watching me go by with another man and that they would wait until my husband returned, then come pecking at my door or drilling on my roof.

“Now that’s a feeding frenzy!” Liam said, and I shifted my attention to his side of the car, and a channel with scores of birds feeding and roosting in the mangroves. “Are you seeing all this?” he asked.

By now I felt raindrops falling on my head, and all I could think was,
Rain, rain, go away, Anna wants to stay and play
. But the rain knew what it was doing. It was trying to stop me from falling further for this man.

“Anhingas and tricolored herons,” Liam told me in a low voice. “Can you see them?”

I rested my elbow on the center divide and leaned as far as I could to his side of the car, not touching him, but almost. One slip of my elbow could make it happen, send me falling into his lap. My windblown hair was brushing across his face, I knew, as I tried focusing on the birds. But all I could muster in my brain was
one bird, two birds, pink bird, blue bird, white bird, black bird, big bird, small bird. That one has a featherless head. This one shiny black legs instead. What a lot of birds there are. Yes. Some are pink. And some are white. Some are near. And some are far
.

“See the snowy egret?” he asked, and I felt his breath on my cheek, whether he meant for it to be there or not.

“No,” I said, turning to find our faces uncomfortably close. “I live on this island. I should know its birds by now, but I don’t. Which one is it?”

“The one with the yellow feet,” he said. “The one that looks like it’s wearing golden slippers.”

I leaned further, and this time my elbow slipped a bit, touching his knee lightly but holding my weight, not letting me rest on him. I knew I only had seconds left to hold myself in this pose, pretending I cared about anything out in the trees, when all I could think about was his breath, warm in my ear as he talked, and my heart, and how fast it was beating, as fast as the wings of an anhinga in flight—continuously, with short, rapid beats.

I returned to my side of the car as the drive opened into the tidal basins
and out my window were the saltwater tidal flats and there were reddish egrets in the shallows. I was glad to have my own mind back.

“The overlook isn’t far, I don’t think,” Liam said, breaking the silence. “It should be coming up soon.”

“No hurry. When we get there, we get there,” I said. “How do you know so much about birds?”

“My father,” he said, studying the road ahead. “Shortly after my parents moved to Florida, I came to visit and he took me here, to the refuge. We didn’t make it to the Red Mangrove Overlook that day. But we got here early and pulled to the side of the road—just back there, in fact. He pulled out his binoculars and a book on birds he bought at the gift shop. I pulled out my pad of paper and a pencil, and the two of us spent a good part of the day here—him watching for birds, and when he spotted one, reading me everything there was to know about it, and me drawing those birds. The enthusiasm in his voice that day—Anna, he was like a boy. Other than bowling for a few years, my father never did anything for himself—never did the guy thing, if you know what I mean. He did nothing outside work and family.”

I thought of my own mother, how I missed her, and could feel the pain he might be feeling for his father. “I bet you miss him,” I said.

“There’s so much I’d love to ask him today—things I wonder now at this age, but didn’t think to ask back then, at that age. I’d do anything to have one more day with my dad—just me and him and the birds.”

We drove further, passing sandbars with birds on both sides. I was sorry to see birds on my side. It gave me no more reason to lean toward him. But soon the road made a gentle curve, and as it straightened we reached a sign that read The Red Mangrove Overlook, and Liam pulled the car to the side and got out. I stayed in my seat, wondering whether one day I might regret this four-mile wildlife drive and stopping at an overlook with a man I hardly knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

HAVE YOU EVER DONE
anything impulsive?” I asked Liam as he came around to my side of the car and opened the door for me. I didn’t expect him to take hold of my hand as I got out, but our hands wrapping together felt natural, as if we had been entwined for a hundred years. We stayed hand in hand as we stepped onto the boardwalk. “Holding my hand,” I then said. “Taking it like you did, was that impulsive?”

“Premeditated,” he said matter of factly. “I was thinking about it before I stopped the car.” He then pointed out a great heron perched on mangrove prop roots, and it struck me once more what I was doing—entering a mangrove forest with a man other than my husband. My spirits, high and obvious and not at all hidden, like an osprey’s nest, had to come down! I squeezed his hand, then let go, slowing my pace and dropping behind him, trying hard as I could to take the extra bounce out of my step. The birds, I decided, were the only ones who should be doing courtship dances today.

“Red mangroves are trees that walk on water,” Liam told me. By the time we reached the viewing platform, I couldn’t deny the way he made me feel, as though I, too, was walking on water. The tide was going out and there were thousands of feasting herons, egrets, and ibis. It felt right to be where we were, tucked away beneath our own mangrove canopy.

“You asked me whether I’ve ever done anything impulsive,” he said, his elbow leaning on the wooden railing, his eyes studying the fish in the
water below. “Well, I have, last night in fact.” He took his hat off, then rubbed his hands through his hair and looked me in the eyes. “I said ‘yes’ to that Grand Marnier, then had a few more, and stayed too long.”

“I didn’t think you stayed too long,” I told him, and then asked, “And how was that impulsive?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I have to look up the definition of
impulsivity—
compare it with
instinct
. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe that’s what has me drawn to you.”

I turned my back to him and studied the complicated, intertwined branches of a red mangrove. The connection and attraction we felt for one another was as intricate as the mangrove and left me feeling perplexed. I was a woman holding a couple of powerful titles—married, mother of three—and there were limitations in those titles.

“What are you thinking, Anna?”

I smiled. It was a question my husband never asked me. But then I grew serious and said, “It’s been so long since I’ve had days like this, all to myself, well, I’m not alone—I’m with you.” I turned to face him. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve had days when I’m selfish like this.”

“Do you view this as selfish?” he asked.

“I don’t think you know the real me,” I told him. “Usually every intent I have, all my energy, my actions, they go toward my children. I’m truly a twenty-four/seven hands-on mom, and it leaves me no time for myself.”

“Then this must feel good.”

“Yes,” I told him. “I feel like a young girl again, and I haven’t felt young like this in a long, long time.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But I remember the day I cried—felt for the first time like a full-fledged adult, all grown-up—no more youthful irresponsibility left in me. I was thirty-five and changing two dirty diapers, and also cleaning up vomit, while at the same time holding a teething, screaming baby on my hip.
And
I had the stomach flu! There was more going on, too, all at the same time, but it’s a blur to me now.”

“None of it sounds easy,” he said.

“It’s not, and many times it has left me feeling like a crazy woman, a
mixed-up person—a mangrove cuckoo!”

“I’ve never thought of you as a mangrove cuckoo, and I don’t think you’re mixed up at all.”

“I might not look it right now,” I started to say.

“You don’t look it at all,” he said.

“Well, I am,” I insisted. “I get that way all the time. You just haven’t seen it.”

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “I see you differently.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, one of the courses I teach is an introductory course in Renaissance art, and what I always have my students do is look at something, then write exactly what they see.”

“That sounds easy.”

“It’s not. It’s hard. It’s hard translating what you see into words. I have them summarize the overall appearance, then describe the detail of the object, the composition, the materials used, and, most importantly, I have them describe the order in which their eye is drawn around the object, starting with the first thing their eye notices.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, wondering why he was telling me this.

“When I first looked at you, Anna—in my mother’s hallway that morning—you know what I felt drawn to first?”

“The ridiculous nightgown I was wearing?”