Tigers in Red Weather (37 page)

I thought about this, and what it meant. There were a million things she could have said, like “Tyler Pierce is very drunk,” or “Goodness, that Tyler Pierce is a piece of work,” or “I just had the strangest conversation with Tyler Pierce.” But she didn’t say any of these things. So I thought about that. Then I followed her out to the dock, back to Daisy.

“Ed Lewis, you have got to be the slowest person alive,” Daisy said when she saw me. “And what happened to my drink?”

I looked down at the gin and tonic and realized I’d drunk most of it. “I got waylaid,” I said.

Aunt Nick was fiddling with the handkerchief in her pocketbook.

“Oh, fine,” Daisy said. “I’ll go get my own.”

I watched her go back inside and head for the bar. From where I was standing, I could see her order her drink from Thomas, and then Tyler come up next to her and put his hand on the small of her back. I was going to go back in, but Aunt Nick stopped me.

“Ed, Uncle Hughes and I are going to go home for supper now. Will you make sure Daisy gets back all right? Don’t go running around after the ladies. And don’t let her drink too much. It’s unbecoming.”

“I don’t run around after ladies,” I said.

“Well, fine,” Aunt Nick said, but she wasn’t really listening. “I’ll leave something out in the kitchen for you two. Sandwiches? I don’t know. Remember to eat when you get home.” She leaned in and kissed my cheek, and there was her perfume again, burning my nostrils slightly.

She walked over to Uncle Hughes, who was talking to some man in bright red trousers and an equally bright green belt by the oyster bar. She put her hand on his arm, and he turned and looked at her like he’d been waiting all night for that moment. Then they were gone. I walked back inside and headed to where Tyler and Daisy were standing. He was grinning at her. I was very close to them, but they didn’t notice. Sometimes I could do that, be surprisingly near to someone, and they didn’t even sense I was there. I hadn’t quite figured out the trick to it, but I knew it had something to do with being very still, not just on the outside, but inside my head, too. Everything had to go blank and quiet, and then it was almost as if I didn’t exist.

“I do owe you an apology. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me. I behaved abominably last summer.” He was saying this, but he was still grinning like it was a joke.

Daisy just looked at him.

“I felt terrible about it. I shouldn’t have let you go the way I did.”

“Yes,” she said finally. “You were disgusting.”

“I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me make it up to you.”

She looked like she was about to answer, but something made her turn and see me. She seemed startled. “Ed. For God’s sakes, stop sneaking up on people like that.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” I said. It was true, I had been standing right there in plain sight.

“Well, you know what I mean.” She stamped her foot a little.

“Your mother said I shouldn’t let you drink too much.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Daisy said.

“He’s just looking out for you. Aren’t you, Ed?” Tyler smiled at me. I got the feeling he thought I was slightly retarded, or something.

“I
am
looking out for Daisy,” I said.

Tyler narrowed his eyes as if I’d said something disagreeable. His stance altered ever so slightly, his head leaning back a bit to take me in. “Well, there’s no reason to worry, sport,” he said. “I’ll take care of her.”

I just watched him.

“Oh, Ed, really,” Daisy said. “Don’t get all weird.”

Sometimes, I got the impression that Daisy really understood me, that she knew all about my work and that she approved, or at least tolerated it. But maybe I was fooling myself.

“We’re going to go for a walk,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well.” She hesitated. “I guess I’ll see you back at the house.”

She put her arm through Tyler’s. He looked at me, his grin firmly back in place.

“Nice seeing you again, Ed.” But he didn’t try to shake my hand this time.

“Good-bye,” I said.

I took a walk, too, down by the harbor as far as I could, and then up around the Old Sculpin Gallery. A few people on bicycles were waiting for the last ferry to Chappaquiddick. One, a young woman, wearing a kerchief over her hair, was alone. She was playing with the strap on her shoe, which was evidently broken and hung limply to the side, resisting her efforts to make it buckle. I could feel myself starting to breathe a little harder. I thought briefly about getting on with them, but Chappy was so wild, I would probably get lost in the darkness and end up with poison ivy.

I walked up North Water Street and then took a left on Morse
Street. I could feel the tennis courts calling, but I ignored the urge. I had learned that going over something again and again made it lose its magic. So instead, I went down Fuller Street, with its perfect little white houses and wraparound porches. I saw someone, a woman, turn out ahead of me. I was quiet, walking on the balls of my feet, like Mr. Reading had taught me in Scouts all those years ago. As I got closer, I could see by the shade of her red hair and the way she walked, with her shoulders a little hunched in, that it was Olivia of the Violet Eyes.

She opened the front gate to one of the houses and went in. I hung back a little, until I saw a light go on in one of the upstairs rooms. Then I let myself in the front gate, and moved through the shadow at the side of the house, where I could see clearly up into the window.

She passed in front of it and lifted the sash a bit higher, running her hand around her neck, as if she was hot. She pulled off her dress and her slip was pink, the color of a seashell. She disappeared for a bit then, and I thought perhaps she might not come back. But just as I was thinking of leaving, she returned. She stood very still in front of the window, then put a hand over her eyes. I could hear the sobbing, not because it was loud, which it wasn’t, but because we were actually so close to each other, even if she was a good ten feet above me.

I wanted to go in very badly. I wanted to touch her, and find out what was underneath her skin. She was an interesting person, but she had cracks. And it was the cracks I was drawn to because they were the inside peeking out, a glimpse of what was hiding below the surface. The back fat spilling over the dress; the chewed cuticle; the smudged lipstick; the run in the stocking.

I knew I couldn’t go in. If Frank Wilcox had taught me anything, it was that the Island was too small. He’d been lucky; Elena Nunes had only been someone’s maid. But Olivia was one of us. She was off-limits.

Still, as I walked away, out of her yard, leaving her sobbing softly
to herself in her upstairs bedroom, I had a sense of satisfaction. I felt light, like anything was possible, like the world was my oyster. It wasn’t always about doing, sometimes it was just thinking about doing it, standing by yourself in the dark and being honest about what you wanted.

I could hear the hush of the night around me as I made my way down North Water Street toward Tiger House. The sidewalks were empty, and I was greeted only with the sound of my own shoes hitting the pavement. I was thinking that the evening had been a good one. Then I saw them.

The dim porch light scattered shadows around them and gave Daisy’s hair a glow like bright fire. They were standing so close together, yet their bodies weren’t quite touching. Gray, dusty-winged night moths were skittering overhead, and I had the fanciful notion that they were attracted by the glow coming off Daisy, rather than the light above. His hand was in her hair, pulling her head back slightly. She was on the brink, not entirely in control, and it was as if what had begun earlier in the evening on that same porch was about to be completed. Like a full bloom. And then he kissed her, and I knew there was going to be trouble.

1967: AUGUST

T
yler picked me up from the airport. I had just flown in from Cedar Rapids, and he was tapping the wheel of his olive-green car impatiently by the time I walked outside into the muggy eastern air. My mind was still full of Iowa and its rolling plains and the small farmhouse near Elvira, and Tyler’s clean, city looks and crisp shirt, not to mention those vinyl bucket seats, were like a shock to the system.

“Trunk’s open,” he said, so I put my suitcase and briefcase in the back.

“We’ll have to make time if we’re going to catch the last ferry,” he told me angrily, when I got into the car. “I don’t want to be stuck in Woods Hole.”

I just looked at him and watched as his eyes slid uneasily off me.

When we hit the Mass. Turnpike, he tried again. “So, your mother’s birthday.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I know Daisy’s excited you’re coming. How long’s it been since the two of you saw each other?”

“Nine months,” I said. A Mexican restaurant in the city before
Christmas. She’d spent the holidays in Florida with Aunt Nick and Uncle Hughes. I’d spent them at Tiger House with my mother, who’d talked a lot about some sewing business she wanted to start so she could buy back our old cottage. I didn’t really listen; I preferred Tiger House, anyway.

“Well, there’s been a lot going on. The wedding and all that.”

Daisy had called a month earlier to tell me she was going to marry him. I suppose I hadn’t been altogether surprised, but I found my mind had gone empty when she actually said it. For a while, all I heard was the scratch of the telephone line. Then I said: “What about college?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I can take a semester off and then see. I’m not like you. If I could speed through college in three years, I would. But I can’t and I don’t want to wait. I love him, Ed, and I want to marry him. As soon as possible.”

“Yes,” I said, although that’s not what I really meant.

Next to me, Tyler turned the radio on.

I leaned my head back and smelled the vinyl. It was new and had that hard, shiny smell that made me want to grit my teeth.

“Is your car new?” I asked.

“Yes. Nice, isn’t she? Buick Riviera. Probably a waste of money, though.” He smiled. “Nick says it reminds her of a lily pad.”

“What does Daisy say about it?”

His smile faded slightly. “She says it’s a car for a lounge lizard.” He laughed a little. “I guess she’s right. It is a little too much, but I just really liked it.”

“What color is it?”

“Gold.”

“It looks green,” I said.

His smile faded entirely. “I know,” he said, and turned the radio up louder.

I didn’t really listen to the radio much. But the woman at the farm
in Iowa, Anna, had had one, and we’d danced to it, even though she had to keep fiddling with the knob to get it to come in clearly. Tyler’s was pretty clear, but for some reason everything it played sounded jangly and ugly.

As we neared Woods Hole, Tyler said: “I love this song.” Then he glanced at me, as if for some kind of affirmation. “The Doors.” He started singing along with the music.
Come on, baby, light my fire
. I began to wonder what the inside of his skull looked like. Luckily for both of us, halfway through the song, we arrived at the ferry and had to rush to buy tickets and get the car on.

It was almost dark when we reached Tiger House and the headlights made an arch against the cedar shingles as we pulled into the back drive. I thought about the blown-out barns I’d seen from the Lincoln Highway. Tornadoes. They’d had an outbreak in the winter and early spring, the worst on record. They’d pulled out stores and houses and killed a little girl near Elvira.

The back door opened and Daisy appeared.

“You made it,” she said, running down the stairs toward us. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Thank God. I was worried. I’ve given your mother nothing but awful presents today. You’re going to restore my reputation, Ed Lewis.”

She kissed my cheek. I liked the way she never wore perfume; she smelled like Ivory soap and the baby shampoo from the upstairs bathroom.

She turned to Tyler. Her face was alive and flushed. “Hello.”

“Hello,” he said. He smiled down at her.

I waited while she kissed him. I watched their mouths moving. A muscle flickered faintly at the curve of Daisy’s jawline and I wondered what it felt like to be her, what she was searching for in all that human contact. Then again, she was a very physical person, always pushing forward, and it occurred to me that perhaps she wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe she was just burning along her path.

I thought about Anna, in the living room of the small farmhouse.

“I’ve been so lonely,” she had said when she asked me to dance, the remnants of dinner still cluttering the table.

I could feel the small muscles in her back moving under my hand as I held her, but there was no fire in her, just sadness. At least not until later, when I put the plastic bag over her head, and then all that life came to the surface and her face lit up like the Fourth of July.

I was wondering if what I was always looking for had to do with finding the true reduction of the physical spirit, when Daisy turned to me and said: “Crikey, Ed. Are you still here? Come on, we have to get you up to your mother.”

I let her lead me toward the house, her arm hooked through mine.

“Did you enjoy your trip in Ty’s loooxury car?” She was laughing as she drew out the word.

I didn’t know why this was supposed to be funny, so I said: “He says it’s gold, but it looks green.”

“I know.” She turned to me. “Oh, I hope you didn’t say that to him. It drives him nuts. Even Mummy thinks it looks green, and she thinks it’s the bee’s knees.”

“He said your mother told him it looked like a lily pad.”

“Did she? So poetic.” Daisy stopped at the back door. “By the way, Mummy’s a little frantic. The angel food cake has disappeared.” She leaned in and lowered her voice, cupping her hand around her mouth. “Mummy thinks some of the neighborhood boys got to it, but actually I saw your mother feed it to the dog next door.” She laughed. Tinkle, tinkle like glass. “Come on.”

The minute I walked into the house, I could feel it. Like an earthquake building up. I looked at Daisy to see if she noticed it, too, but she seemed her usual self.