There Must Be Some Mistake (3 page)

When Jilly came to visit on the weekend Morgan had already returned to Houston. Cal got out on bail and flew to Rhode Island to see Diane. She called long distance to tell me all about it. The lawyer said Cal should remain calm and quiet and wait for the court date and then they would postpone, postpone, postpone, thus draining the girl's resolve and her parents' resolve, and eventually Cal would prevail. “It will take two years at a minimum,” Diane said.

“Cal is up there with you? Are you nuts?”

“I'm expanding my experience,” Diane said.

“I mean, is this…I don't want to pry, but is this a new thing?” I said.

“You mean did I sleep with him before?”

“Sure. If that applies.”

“Well,” she said.

“Never mind,” I said. “I suddenly don't want to know.”

“Well, there's you and Jilly,” she said. “And she's practically a daughter.”

“I never did anything with Jilly.”

“That's not what Cal says.”

“Yeah, well, you listen to Cal you're gonna hear a lot of things that aren't necessarily so.”

“I never thought about Cal this way before,” she said. “You get to know him and he seems more like a flightless bird than a criminal.”

“You're about half in the park there.”

“He's a wounded soldier, is what he is.”

“You were a great wife, Diane.”

“There are worse,” she said.

At my end I nodded agreement and said, “I believe you. But sleeping with Cal hurts my feelings. It makes me feel bad. I feel weakened.”

“So how is Jilly doing? You still with her?”

“I am not ‘with her' in the sense you mean,” I said.

“Not for want of wanting,” Diane said. “You better get started, Wallace. You can't live by yourself forever.”

“Maybe I could try, in my advanced years, something new,” I said. “Like Cal.”

She punched a button on her phone to send a nasty beep down the line. “You are a pig, Wallace.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

“I think I gotta run anyway.”

“Let's talk soon,” I said.

“Right,” Diane said.

I was in the kitchen during all this. Jilly was carefully prepping vegetables, carrots, cutting on the cutting board, and the fine edge of the knife clapping on the wood reminded me, as silly as it sounds, of the guillotine dropping at the end of
Dialogues of the Carmelites,
the opera. One of three I was acquainted with. In the end these nuns are singing the “Salve Regina” as they process to their deaths by beheading, one by one. My first wife, Lucy, introduced me to this opera years before, but then I'd heard it again recently on NPR one day when I was out in the car driving around in the rain. Now Jilly's knife brought the opera, and Lucy, back in an instant—the lovely voices of the diminishing choir, the thwack of the guillotine, the thinning chorale, finally a single voice, a falling blade, silence. I watched Jilly work the vegetables. I lifted my hand off the telephone. I listened to the water running intricately in the sink, a lovely sound, a blissful unbroken sound.

I RENTED
a condo on the Florida Gulf Coast for a few days in April. Jilly drove over with me; Morgan joined us on the weekend. The town of Destin was pristine and plenty touristy, like Galveston but prettier, a coastal island known for powder-white sand and bright green water. The rental was in a beachfront high-rise with a view of the Gulf. “I ought to buy one of these and rent it when I'm not here,” I said, when we got inside the place. “Like an investment. My dentist has two units in this building and he says they pay for themselves.”

“Don't they have a lot of tarantulas in Florida?” Jilly said, looking out at the frothy water. “Per capita?”

“No,” I said.

The rental was a three-bedroom on the sixth floor overlooking a pool, some parking lots, a few two-story cottages, a lake, the beach drive, bright white sand, and then the flickering water. It was a big change from Kemah. High ceilings, clean grounds, quiet except at night when the wind was up and howling through the ductwork. Don't ask me why that happened. It was a little creepy. There were six TVs in the place, all forty-two-inch flat screens.

Morgan arrived on Friday. She liked the place from the minute she saw it. “You definitely need to get one of these, Dad,” she said.

“Yeah, Dad,” Jilly said. She did that sometimes when Morgan was around, called me that.

“I'm thinking about it,” I said. “Prices aren't bad.” I had gotten some information from the on-site rental-management woman, who said rentals were up and that owners had a good chance of making enough renting to offset the mortgage. The three of us were in the living room, strewn about on the beachy furniture, which was floral and bright, and would have been grotesque anywhere else.

“Count me in,” Morgan said. “Maybe Diane would take a piece of the action.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “I think she's busy sleeping with Cal.”

She looked at me like I was a nutcase. “I may have heard something about that,” she said. “The trifecta.”

I looked to Jilly for an explanation.

“He's a lucky guy,” Jilly said, getting up. “I'm going to rest a bit.”

No help there.

“Let's reconvene in an hour or so,” Morgan said. “Let me get moved in.” She asked which was her room, and I showed her and then went to mine for a nap.

I got trifecta after a while. Some things are so cold in this world.

We spent the weekend looking at beach places—houses for a million bucks, condos at the Dunes—the place we were in—and in buildings called the Pelican, the Sandpiper, the Tern, the Flower Drum Song Super Towers, and a couple others. They all had the names going for them, beach names, the beachier the better. We met up with a real estate guy at an open house on Sunday. He had a flattop and talked a good game, so we began looking at properties with him. He was pleasant company, an ex-pilot, laughed a good deal, knew the area. He was writing a book about the Russian Mafia, nonfiction.

The financial crisis had hit Florida real estate hard, like 50 percent hard, so you could get places for two hundred thousand that had been five hundred a few years before. There wasn't much chance of the boom coming back, but there was, according to our guy, a good chance for growth. He owned a couple of condos himself, rented them out on VRBO, swore by the whole deal. He was always running late or rescheduling because he had to go and clean up his condos for incoming guests. We looked in Sandestin, a ritzy development with six golf courses and every kind of dwelling, from detached homes to condos, bungalows, high-rises, town houses, you name it. It was all a little too rich for my blood, and too Stepford. On its own the Stepford part wouldn't have kept me out—I like a good dose of restrictive and compulsory decorum—but the money was a nonstarter.

Morgan went to the beach more than we did. She looked great all decked out. She was tall and stringy with nicely acne-scarred skin and auburn hair, and she had that walk some girls have, a cowboy walk, real loose and relaxed, powerful. She had gained a lot of self-confidence, and it showed. She had a wisecracking way about her without actually cracking wise all the time. She did it with subtle things, cocks of the head, eye stuff, quick goofy facial expressions. She reminded me of her mother and made me happy all over again that we'd had a child.

Saturday morning Jilly and I went for a walk on the beach at dawn. I hadn't been to bed yet and she'd been asleep for ten hours. That happened sometimes. It was early and there were not many people on the beach, a few joggers, a couple old people. I said, “What do you think about this Cal thing with Diane?”

She made a face, not disgust or disinterest, but something oddly blank. “I don't envy her,” she said. “Cal was scum in my twenties and he's scum now. Maybe she can make something of him, I don't know. Anyway, it's not your business. Leave it alone.”

I nodded for a minute, then waved at the beach, the water, the sky. “You like it here? Florida?”

“Sure,” she said. “It's pretty. Right now I'd like some Eggos.”

“Eggos are so over,” I said.

“Yet within our grasp, grocerywise,” she said.

“True,” I said. “We could leave this lovely beach right now, get a couple boxes of Eggos at Winn-Dixie, douse 'em with Log Cabin, wolf 'em down.”

“I don't think I want 'em anymore,” she said.

“That was quick.”

“Maybe I'm a bad person,” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Everybody tells me that.”

She said things like that sometimes, as if the only thing she was worried about was being a bad person. It was touching, but also rhetorical, a request for reassurance. That's what was touching.

“Never mind,” she said.

“I was asking what you think about a condo here. Think it's a good idea? Would you come all this way? Like, to visit?”

Seagulls swirled around us. “Might,” Jilly said.

“I'm getting older and older,” I said. “I like Kemah, but this is cleaner.”

“It could be short on character,” she said. “But character might be overrated.”

The sand was dusty white and the water Kool-Aid Kiwi Lime, jittery in the morning light. I didn't have much idea what Jilly was about, apart from being friendly. She did not telegraph her intentions. We were hanging out together but keeping our distance. I didn't mind it, but I was aware of it. I thought I should let it alone, play it out. It was fun just being with her. Still, I had to remind myself of the baselines.

“Cal's kind of scummy,” Jilly said.

“You said that,” I said. “But I don't worry about Diane so much, not anymore. Or maybe it's that she doesn't come to mind. There ought to be a point when your ex is your ex, know what I mean? A statute of limitations on their emotional bite.”

“Cal's got bad teeth,” Jilly said.

“Way to contribute to the conversation,” I said.

“He could use some whitener,” she said. She plopped down in the sand and I sat alongside her, both of us facing the water, which was wavy, waves rushing at us, rushing away.

“So you think I should get a condo? I could get a two-bedroom pretty cheap.”

“Rent it when you're not here?” she said. “Let it pay for itself?”

“Exactly.”

“Hmm,” she said.

We sat on the beach for another fifteen minutes and then went back to the Dunes. Morgan was buttering toast when we arrived.

That night we went to dinner at Olive Garden. My choice. We squeezed into a booth, all three of us, and each of us studied the menu carefully. The seats were sticky plastic and squealed whenever anyone moved. Finally, Jilly said, “I don't think Diane should be sleeping with Cal.”

Morgan said, “Me neither.”

I said, “Delay of game!”

“Diane probably thinks it makes things more interesting if she sleeps with him,” Jilly said. “She hasn't thought about it carefully.”

“Duh,” said Morgan.

I reached for their hands across the table. “I'm glad that you two have spoken up. I was worried it was just me for a while there.”

“I know you were,” Jilly said.

“Diane's a slut anyway,” Morgan said.

“I'll be right back,” I said, starting out of the booth. “Get me some pasta, will you?”

“Stay put, Dad,” Morgan said. She pointed me back into my seat.

“I don't know,” Jilly said. “She's lonely maybe.”

“We're all lonely,” Morgan said. “And we're all sluts.”

“What are you talking about?” I said to Morgan.

“I've done my share of slutty stuff,” she said.

“I've got to get out of this booth,” I said.

“Dad,” Morgan said.

“I'm going to be sick,” I said.

The waitress was wearing a stained white shirt. She was suddenly alongside the table, pen poised. Jilly took over and ordered for herself and for me. I was getting spaghetti and meatballs. She and Morgan were having salads, wonderful, complicated salads. The waitress vanished.

“Let's move on to other topics,” Jilly said.

“Good,” I said. “I don't want to hear any more about Cal. What's done is done. I mean, we're here at Olive Garden.
Fantastico!
Christ.”

“Wallace,” Jilly said. “You want your children to talk to you, yes?”

“Sure,” I said. “There's one child, and I want her to be an attractive young woman with no boyfriends. No sex, love, anger, worry. No pets.”

“He doesn't mean that,” Jilly said.

“Pets are OK,” I said.

“It was just once,” Morgan said.

“You're making it worse, sweetheart,” Jilly said.

Our food arrived in due course. Mine was execrable, in the best possible way, as usual. Thick, gloppy, greasy, misshapen, lukewarm, and inedible. We dined in silence, unless slurps and other sucking noises are to be counted.

WHEN WE
got back to Kemah I had neighbors coming out of my ears with rumors about the things that had happened at Forgetful Bay. The assaultee, Chantal White, was now said to be, variously, a druggie, a woman recently in business with unsavory types, an LGBT pioneer, transgendered division, a woman with sexual appetites described as “voracious,” a word I seldom used myself. The dancing woman remained a mystery, but it was acknowledged she was connected to Duncan Parker, who had apparently been asked by the members of the board to vacate his presidency of our HOA and had been replaced by an interim president, a woman who was relatively new to the development and about whom I knew nothing but her name: Bernadette Loo. This was a crushing blow to Roberta Spores, who was, I was told, embittered. There was, also, a new peculiar event in the neighborhood, which was that someone had stolen—under cover of darkness, presumably—a dozen mailboxes, these being removed whole, post and all, like teeth pulled right out of their sockets, and installed in the shallows of Smoky Lake. By this time the neighbors were sure that one of our own was the culprit, the engineer of all carnage.

One afternoon coming home from Target where I had two prescriptions filled and bought some Orange Milanos, the Pepperidge Farm cookies my mother used to like so much before she died, I thought about my mother on the drive, remembering her at different points in her life, and in mine—when I was a kid at Saint Michael's, when I went off to college for the first time, when I went the second and third times, and then much later, in her last years, when she was approaching eighty and something of a recluse. My father had long since passed away, and Mother was living alone in a small town house among a group of town houses set aside for seniors where the fees, which were ridiculous, covered a good deal of care and attention from a staff that included RNs and PAs and assorted additional semi-medical people, not to mention staff that cooked and cleaned. The place was an old-folks home, though it was at pains to represent itself as something more modern and inoffensive.

I visited her often in those days, staying for an afternoon, for dinner and occasionally overnight, alone, often with Diane, who liked Mother tremendously and didn't object. Those were not bad times for us, for all of us, even Mother, who, in spite of her age, was still healthy and cheerful, funny, pretty much all there. It was only in the last few months that things hit the skids.

So I was coming home and I drove into our little community, which was dotted with some trees I suspected we paid a fortune to get to grow in the soil there, and with more recent low bushes designed to look natural, which of course they weren't, and I admired once again the plot plan of the place, the units set back with balconies or decks over tiny but impeccable yards, the better to be easily cared for, all providing pleasant outdoor space and detached housing units that, through careful design, did not impinge too much, one on the next. Our two-lane road circled the community so that the two entrances—they were only several hundred yards apart—could live up to their distinct signage, one saying
NORTH ENTRANCE
and the other saying
SOUTH ENTRANCE
.

I rolled past the condos of a half-dozen neighbors, none of whom I knew other than to wave at or wish a good day. A gay couple—two guys who looked maybe a little more working class than most of the regulars, and who were, by and large, younger than the average residents—had recently bought the condo four units down from mine. We hadn't talked much. They were very nice and sociable and had brought me some rather unattractive barbecued shrimp one weekend a few days after they moved in, probably because Jilly had chatted one of them up when she was out for a run the day they arrived.

I hadn't met these guys, but I had said hello and waved on several occasions when entering or leaving, and this particular afternoon, as I entered Forgetful Bay, I noticed their garage door was up, and inside, standing on a white Styrofoam ice chest with a blue top, was a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It wasn't news that they owned such a statue. I had seen it before a couple of times, displayed at various positions in their front yard, in every case staying in one place only a day or two before being moved to a new location, and another, until it had disappeared entirely a week or so before.

Jilly had remarked that the statue was in poor condition. It was about twenty-four inches tall, and a hand was missing, and the paint was badly flaked, but it was perfectly recognizable as the Blessed Virgin Mary, with her flowing white floor-length gown and her pale blue cape and cowl, her right hand held out with what appeared to be a rosary—an actual rosary, not part of the statue—draped over it, and her other arm similarly posed, but missing the hand.

We were both, Jilly and me, taken with this statue, a little surprised to see it at the new neighbors' house because it was not the sort of thing people routinely put in their yards. Mostly they put in their yards seasonal decorations—Christmas wreaths and candy canes, Halloween orange and black crepe paper, goblins and ghouls on a stick, rabbits at Easter, and, of course, American flags of all sizes, some with glitter.

And here was Mary in the neighbors' garage. Mary the Mother of God. Since there did not seem to be anyone around, I pulled out my phone to record the event—
Mary on an Ice Chest
—and, as luck would have it, at that minute the smaller of the two gay men emerged from the other side of the garage, a door there to a storeroom, and saw me holding the iPhone in that unmistakable pose necessary for taking a picture, which in no way resembled the way one holds the phone when using it, so there was no getting around what was going on. “Taking a picture of Mary,” I said, thinking the best way to handle the situation was directly. “You don't see enough of her these days.”

The guy came to the car window and looked back to see what the shot was, then stuck out his hand and said, “I've been wanting to introduce myself. I'm Gil. We moved down from Houston recently.”

“Wallace Webster,” I said, sticking my hand out the window. “I used to live there, Houston, out Memorial. Moved here some years ago with my ex-wife.”

“Was that her, the Jilly person I met?” he said.

“No. Jilly's a friend I used to work with. She keeps me company down here sometimes. And I have a daughter, Morgan, you may have seen. We live down the way here.” I pointed out the windshield. “Thanks for the shrimp, by the way. Delicious.”

“We have Mary to keep us company,” Gil said, turning to give her another look. “I'm getting ready to clean her up some, maybe repaint—that blue's a little faded. We like to have her around. I always say there's no reason not to have things around you that make you feel better, whatever your beliefs. You don't think anyone will be upset, do you?”

“Can't imagine,” I said.

“We talked to a couple of folks. People walk by, so we talk to them and they all say the same thing. They like it—they said, anyway. We're not pressuring anyone, but it's a good feeling you get when you come home and she's standing there, watching over things. We like her.”

“She's nice,” I said. “I was raised Catholic, so she's an old friend. I'm glad she's in the neighborhood.”

“Great,” he said. “We should have dinner sometime. I cook, we could eat out on the deck there. We've got some other statuary coming.”

“I don't get out much,” I said. “Please don't take offense, but I don't socialize much, not at all, really. And my schedule's all screwed up, so—but it's a kind invitation and I thank you for the thought.”

“Well, all right,” he said, now backing a step away from the car. “I'm pleased to have met you and look forward to seeing you, uh, when I see you. How's that?”

“Perfect,” I said.

“And you can fill me in on the gossip down here. I mean, there are a lot of rumors, and we're not in the loop, if you know what I mean.”

“Probably more than I am,” I said. “Pleasure meeting you, too. I'm going on to the house.” I pointed out the windshield again and lifted my foot off the brake and let the car roll slowly forward.

“Maybe you could send me a copy of that picture,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, toeing the brake to receive the business card he was handing me. It had nothing but his name and an e-mail address on it.

“I'd appreciate that,” Gil said. “Let's chat again.”

“Will do,” I said, giving him a little salute and pulling away.