Duma Key: A Novel Page 21

  She stopped for a moment, then went on.

  “Before he came, I never meant to say it right out like that. But it’s funny—the minute he walked through the door I was almost positive, and when he kissed me I knew for a fact. His lips were cold. And dry. It was like kissing a corpse.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, and tried to scratch my right arm.

  “His face tightened up and I mean really. Every line smoothed out, and his mouth almost disappeared. He asked me who put an idea like that in my head. And then, before I could even answer, he said it was bullshit. That’s the word he used, and it’s not a Tom Riley word at all.”

  She was right about that. The Tom I’d known in the old days wouldn’t have said bullshit if he’d had a mouthful.

  “I didn’t want to give him any names—certainly not yours, because he would have thought I was crazy, and not Illy’s, because I didn’t know what he might say to her if—”

  “I told you, Illy had nothing to do with—”

  “Be quiet. I’m almost through. I just said these people who were talking about how funny he was acting didn’t even know about the pills he’s been taking since the second divorce, and how he quit taking them last May. He calls them stupid-pills. I said if he thought he was keeping everything that was wrong with him under wraps, he was mistaken. Then I said that if he did something to himself, I’d tell his mother and brother it was suicide, and it would break their hearts. That was your idea, Edgar, and it worked. I hope you’re proud. That was when he broke my vase and called me a meddlesome cunt, see? He was as white as a sheet. I bet …” She swallowed. I could hear the click in her throat across all the miles. “I bet he had the way he was going to do it all planned out.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “What do you think he’ll do now?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “Maybe I better call him.”

  “Maybe you better not. Maybe finding out we talked would push him right over the edge.” With a touch of malice she added, “Then you’ll be the one losing sleep.”

  It was a possibility I hadn’t thought of, but she had a point. Tom and Wireman were alike in one way: both needed help and I couldn’t drag them to it. An old bon mot bounced into my head, maybe apropos, maybe not: you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think. Maybe Wireman could tell me who had said it. And when.

  “So how did you know he meant to kill himself?” she asked. “I want to know, and by God you’re going to tell me before I hang up. I did my part and you’re going to tell me.”

  There it was, the question she hadn’t asked before; she’d been too fixated on how I’d found out about her and Tom in the first place. Well, Wireman wasn’t the only one with sayings; my father had a few, as well. One was, when a lie won’t suffice, the truth will have to do.

  “Since the accident, I’ve been painting,” I said. “You know that.”

  “So?”

  I told her about the sketch I’d drawn of her, Max from Palm Desert, and Tom Riley. About some of my Internet explorations into the world of phantom limb phenomena. And about seeing Tom Riley standing at the head of the stairs in what I supposed was now my studio, naked except for his pajama pants, one eye gone, replaced by a socket filled with congealed gore.

  When I finished, there was a long silence. I didn’t break it. At last she said, in a new and cautious voice: “Do you really believe that, Edgar—any of it?”

  “Wireman, the guy from down the beach …” I stopped, infuriated in spite of myself. And not because I didn’t have any words. Or not exactly. Was I going to tell her the guy from down the beach was an occasional telepath, so he believed me?

  “What about the guy from down the beach, Edgar?” Her voice was calm and soft. I recognized it from the first month or so after my accident. It was her Edgar’s-Going-Section-Eight voice.

  “Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You need to call Dr. Kamen and tell him about this new idea of yours,” she said. “This idea that you’re psychic. Don’t e-mail him, call him. Please.”

  “All right, Pam.” I felt very tired. Not to mention frustrated and pissed off.

  “All right what?”

  “All right, I’m hearing you. You’re coming in loud and clear. No misunderstandings whatsoever. Perish the goddam thought. All I wanted was to save Tom Riley’s life.”

  To that she had no answer. And no rational explanation for what I had known about Tom, either. So that was where we left it. My thought as I hung up the phone was No good deed goes unpunished.

  Maybe it was hers, too.

  vi

  I felt angry and lost. The dank, dreary weather didn’t help. I tried to paint and couldn’t. I went downstairs, took up one of my sketchpads, and found myself reduced to the sort of doodles I’d done in my other life while taking phone calls: cartoon shmoos with big ears. I was about to toss the pad aside in disgust when the phone rang. It was Wireman.

  “Are you coming this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I thought maybe with the rain—”

  “I planned on creeping down in the car. I’m certainly not doing squat here.”

  “Good. Just don’t plan on Poetry Hour. She’s in the fog.”

  “Bad?”

  “As bad as I’ve seen her. Disconnected. Drifting. Confused.” He took a deep breath and let it out. It was like listening to a gust of wind blow through the telephone. “Listen, Edgar, I hate to ask this, but could I leave her with you for awhile? Forty-five minutes, tops. The Baumgartens have been having trouble with the sauna—it’s the damned heater—and the guy coming out to fix it needs to show me a cut-off switch or something. And to sign his work-order, of course.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “You’re a prince. I’d kiss you, but for those sore-raddled lips of yours.”

  “Fuck you very much, Wireman.”

  “Yeah, everyone loves me, it’s my curse.”

  “Pam called me. She talked to my friend Tom Riley.” Considering what the two of them had been up to it felt strange to be calling Tom a friend, but what the hell. “I think she took the air out of his suicide plan.”

  “That’s good. So why do I hear lead in your voice?”

  “She wanted to know how I knew.”

  “Not how you knew she was bumping uglies with this guy, but—”

  “How I diagnosed his suicidal depression from fifteen hundred miles away.”

  “Ah! And what did you say?”

  “Not having a good lawyer present, I was reduced to the truth.”

  “And she thought you were un poco loco.”

  “No, Wireman, she thought I was muy loco.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No. But she’s going to brood about this—believe me when I say Pam’s U.S. Olympic Brooding Team material—and I’m afraid my good deed could explode in my younger daughter’s face.”

  “Assuming your wife’s looking for someone to blame.”

  “It’s a safe assumption. I know her.”

  “That would be bad.”

  “It’d rock Ilse’s world more than it deserves to be rocked. Tom’s been like an uncle to her and Melinda their whole lives.”

  “Then you’ll have to convince your wife that you really saw what you saw, and your daughter had nothing to do with it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “How about you tell her something about herself you have no way of knowing?”

  “Wireman, you’re crazy! I can’t just make something like that happen!”

  “How do you know? I have to get off the phone, amigo—by the sound, Miss Eastlake’s lunch just went on the floor. I’ll see you later?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was about to add goodbye, but he was already gone. I hung up, wondering where I had put Pam’s gardening gloves, the ones that said HANDS OFF. Maybe if I had those, Wireman’s idea might not turn out to be so crazy after all.


  I looked for them all over the house and came up empty. Maybe I threw them away after making the Friends with Benefits drawing, but I couldn’t remember doing it. I can’t remember now. All I know is that I never saw them again.

  vii

  The room which Wireman and Elizabeth called the China Parlor was filled with a sad, subtropical winterlight that afternoon. The rain was heavier now, drumming against the walls and windows in waves, and a wind had gotten up, clattering through the palms surrounding El Palacio and sending shadows flying across the walls. For the first time since I’d been coming there, I could see no sense to the china figures on the long table; there were no tableaux, only a clutter of people, animals, and buildings. A unicorn and one of the blackface guys lay side by side next to the overturned schoolhouse. If there was a story on the table today, it was a disaster movie. Near the Tara-style mansion stood a Sweet Owen cookie-tin. Wireman had explained the routine I should follow if Elizabeth called for it.

  The lady herself was in her wheelchair, slumped a bit sideways, vacantly overseeing the disheveltry on her play-table, which was usually so neatly kept. She was wearing a blue dress that almost matched the enormous blue Chuck Taylors on her feet. Her slump had stretched the boat neck of the dress into a lopsided gawp that revealed an ivory-colored slip-strap. I found myself wondering who had dressed her that morning, she or Wireman.

  She spoke rationally at first, calling me by my correct name and enquiring after my health. She said goodbye to Wireman when he left for the Baumgartens’ and asked him to please wear a hat and take an umbrella. All that was good. But when I brought her her snack from the kitchen fifteen minutes later, there had been a change. She was looking into the corner and I heard her murmur, “Go back, go back, Tessie, you don’t belong here. And make the big boy go away.”

  Tessie. I knew that name. I used my thinking-sideways technique, looking for associations, and found one: a newspaper headline reading THEY ARE GONE. Tessie had been one of Elizabeth’s twin sisters. Wireman had told me that. I heard him saying The presumption is they drowned, and a chill like a knife slipped into my side.

  “Bring me that,” she said, pointing to the cookie-tin, and I did. From her pocket she drew a figurine wrapped in a hankie. She took the lid off the tin, gave me a look that combined slyness and confusion in a way that was hard to look at, then popped the figure inside. It made a soft hollow bonk. She fumbled the lid back on, pushing my hand away when I tried to help. Then she handed it to me.

  “Do you know what to do with this?” she asked. “Did … did …” I could see her struggling. The word was there, but dancing just out of reach. Mocking her. I could give it to her, but I remembered how furious it made me when people did that, and waited. “Did him tell you what to do with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Take the bitch.”

  I carried the tin up one side of the tennis court to the little pond. The fish were jumping at the surface, a lot more excited by the rain than I was. There was a little pile of stones beside the bench, just as Wireman had said there would be. I tossed one in (“You might not think she could hear that, but her ears are very sharp,” Wireman had told me), being careful to avoid beaning one of the carp. Then I took the tin, with the figurine still inside, back into the house. But not into the China Parlor. I went into the kitchen, removed the lid, and pulled out the wrapped figure. This hadn’t been in Wireman’s set of contingency instructions, but I was curious.

  It was a china woman, but the face had been chipped away. There was only a ragged blank where it had been.

  “Who’s there?” Elizabeth shrieked, making me jump. I almost dropped the creepy little thing on the floor, where it surely would have shattered on the tiles.

  “Just me, Elizabeth,” I called back, laying the figure on the counter.

  “Edmund? Or Edgar, or whatever your name is?”

  “Right.” I went back into the parlor.

  “Did you take care of that business of mine?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure did.”

  “Have I had my snack yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” She sighed.

  “Do you want something else? I’m sure I could—”

  “No thanks, hon. I’m sure the train will be here soon, and you know I don’t like to travel on a full stomach. I always end up in one of the backwards seats and with food in my stomach I should certainly be train-sick. Have you seen my tin, my Sweet Owen tin?”

  “I think it was in the kitchen. Should I bring it?”

  “Not on such a wet day,” she said. “I thought I’d have you throw her in the pond, the pond would do, but I’ve changed my mind. It seems unnecessary on such a wet day. The quality of mercy is not strained, you know. It droppeth like the gentle rain.”

  “From heaven,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” She flapped her hand as if that part were of no matter.

  “Why don’t you arrange your chinas, Elizabeth? They’re all mixed up today.”

  She cast a glance at the table, then looked at the window when an especially strong gust of wind slapped it with rain. “Fuck,” she said. “I’m so fucking confused.” And then, with a spite I would not have guessed she had in her: “They all died and left me to this.”

  I was the last one to be repulsed by her lapse into vulgarity; I understood it too well. Maybe the quality of mercy isn’t strained, there are millions of us who live and die by the idea, but … we have things like this waiting. Yes.

  She said, “He never should have got that thing, but he didn’t know.”

  “What thing?”

  “What thing,” she agreed, and nodded. “I want the train. I want to get out of here before the big boy comes.”

  After that we both lapsed into silence. Elizabeth closed her eyes and appeared to doze off in her wheelchair.

  For something to do, I got out of my own chair, which would have looked at home in a gentlemen’s club, and approached the table. I plucked up a china girl and boy, looked at them, then put them aside. I scratched absently at the arm that wasn’t there, studying the senseless litter before me. There had to be at least a hundred figures on the polished length of oak. Maybe two hundred. Among them was a china woman with an old-fashioned cap on—a milkmaid’s cap, I thought—but I didn’t want her, either. The cap was wrong, and besides, she was too young. I found another woman with long painted hair, and she was better. That hair was a little too long and a little too dark, but—

  No it wasn’t, because Pam had been to the beauty parlor, sometimes known as the Midlife Crisis Fountain of Youth.

  I held the china figure, wishing I had a house to put her in and a book for her to read.

  I tried to switch the figurine to my right hand—perfectly natural because my right hand was there, I could feel it—and it fell to the table with a clack. It didn’t break, but Elizabeth’s eyes opened. “Dick! Was that the train? Did it whistle? Did it cry?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Why don’t you nap a little?”

  “Oh, you’ll find it on the second-floor landing,” she said as if I had asked her something else, and closed her eyes again. “Call me when the train comes. I’m so sick of this station. And watch for the big boy, that cuntlicker could be anywhere.”

  “I will,” I said. My right arm itched horribly. I reached into my back pocket, hoping my notebook was there. It wasn’t. I’d left it on the kitchen counter back at Big Pink. But that made me think of the Palacio kitchen. There was a notepad for messages on the counter where I’d left the tin. I hurried back, snatched up the pad, stuck it between my teeth, then almost ran back to the China Parlor, already pulling my Uni-ball pen from my breast pocket. I sat down in my wingback chair and began to sketch the china doll rapidly while the rain whipped the windows and Elizabeth sat leaning in her wheelchair across the table from me, dozing with her mouth ajar. The wind-driven shadows of the palms flew around the walls like bats.

  It didn�
�t take long, and I realized something as I worked: I was pouring the itch out through the tip of the pen, decanting it onto the page. The woman in my drawing was the china figure, but she was also Pam. The woman was Pam, but she was also the china figure. Her hair was longer than when I’d last seen her, and spread out on her shoulders. She was sitting in

  (the BURN, the CHAR)

  a chair. What chair? A rocking chair. Hadn’t been any such item in our house when I left it, but there was now. Something was on the table beside her. I didn’t know what it was at first, but it emerged from the tip of the pen and became a box with printing across the top. Sweet Owen? Did it say Sweet Owen? No, it said Grandma’s. My Uni-ball put something on the table beside the box. An oatmeal cookie. Pam’s favorite. While I was looking at it, the pen drew the book in Pam’s hand. Couldn’t read the title because the angle was wrong. By now my pen was adding lines between the window and her feet. She’d said it was snowing, but now the snow was over. The lines were meant to be sunrays.

  I thought the picture was finished, but apparently there were two more things. My pen moved to the far left side of the paper and added the television, quick as a flash. New television, flat screen like Elizabeth’s. And below it—

  The pen finished and fell away. The itch was gone. My fingers were stiff. On the other side of the long table, Elizabeth’s doze had deepened into real sleep. Once she might have been young and beautiful. Once she might have been some young man’s dream baby. Now she was snoring with her mostly toothless mouth pointed at the ceiling. If there’s a God, I think He needs to try a little harder.

  viii

  I had seen a phone in the library as well as the kitchen, and the library was closer to the China Parlor. I decided neither Wireman nor Elizabeth would begrudge me a long-distance call to Minnesota. I picked up the phone, then paused with it curled to my chest. On a wall next to the suit of armor, highlighted by several cunning little pin-spots in the ceiling, was a display of antique weapons: a long-barreled muzzle-loader that looked of Revolutionary War vintage, a flintlock pistol, a derringer that would have been at home in a riverboat gambler’s boot, a Winchester carbine. Mounted above the carbine was the gadget Elizabeth had been holding in her lap the day Ilse and I had seen her. To either side, making an inverted V, were four loads for the thing. You couldn’t call them arrows; they were too short. Harpoonlets still seemed like the right word. Their tips were very bright, and looked very sharp.