Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  “Okay. As long as you’re eating and not brooding in your tent.”

  “Eating well, brooding moderately.” Her voice changed again, became the adult one. The abrupt switches back and forth were disconcerting. “Sometimes I lie awake a little, and then I think of you down there. Do you lie awake?”

  “Sometimes. Not as much now.”

  “Daddy, was marrying Mom a mistake you made? That she made? Or was it just an accident?”

  “It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t a mistake. Twenty-four good years, two fine daughters, and we’re still talking. It wasn’t a mistake, Illy.”

  “You wouldn’t change it?”

  People kept asking me that question. “No.”

  “If you could go back … would you?”

  I paused, but not long. Sometimes there’s no time to decide what’s the best answer. Sometimes you can only give the true answer. “No, honey.”

  “Okay. But I miss you, Dad.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Sometimes I miss the old times, too. When things were less complicated.” She paused. I could have spoken—wanted to—but kept silent. Sometimes silence is best. “Dad, do people ever deserve second chances?”

  I thought of my own second chance. How I had survived an accident that should have killed me. And I was doing more than just hanging out, it seemed. I felt a rush of gratitude. “All the time.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Back atcha. You’ll get an official invitation soon.”

  “Okay. I really have to go. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I sat for a moment with the phone at my ear after she hung up, listening to the nothing. “Do the day and let the day do you,” I said. Then the dial tone kicked in, and I decided I had one more call to make, after all.

  viii

  This time when Alice Aucoin came to the phone, she sounded a lot more lively and a lot less cautious. I thought that was a nice change.

  “Alice, we never talked about a name for the show,” I said.

  “I was sort of assuming you meant to call it ‘Roses Grow from Shells,’ ” she said. “That’s good. Very evocative.”

  “It is,” I said, looking out to the Florida room and the Gulf beyond. The water was a brilliant blue-white plate; I had to squint against the glare. “But it’s not quite right.”

  “You have one you like better, I take it?”

  “Yes, I think so. I want to call it ‘The View from Duma.’ What do you think?”

  Her response was immediate. “I think it sings.”

  So did I.

  ix

  I had sweat through my LOSE IT IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS tee-shirt in spite of Big Pink’s efficient air conditioning, and I was more exhausted than a brisk walk to El Palacio and back left me these days. My ear felt hot and throbby from the telephone. I felt uneasy about Ilse—the way parents are always uneasy about the problems of their children, I suppose, once they’re too old to be called home when it starts to get dark and the baths are being drawn—but I also felt satisfied with the work I’d put in, the way I used to feel after a good day on a hard construction job.

  I didn’t feel particularly hungry, but I made myself slop a few tablespoons of tuna salad onto a lettuce leaf and washed it down with a glass of milk. Whole milk—bad for the heart, good for the bones. I guess that one’s a wash, Pam would have said. I turned on the kitchen TV and learned that Candy Brown’s wife was suing the City of Sarasota over her husband’s death, claiming negligence. Good luck on that one, sweetheart, I thought. The local meteorologist said the hurricane season might start earlier than ever. And the Devil Rays had gotten their low-rent asses kicked by the Red Sox in an exhibition game—welcome to baseball reality, boys.

  I considered dessert (I had Jell-O Pudding, sometimes known as The Last Resort of the Single Man), then just put my plate in the sink and limped off to the bedroom for a nap. I considered setting the alarm, then didn’t bother; I’d probably only doze. Even if I actually slept, the light would wake me up in an hour or so, when it got over to the western side of the house and came angling in the bedroom window.

  So thinking, I lay down and slept until six o’clock that evening.

  x

  There was no question of supper; I didn’t even consider it. Below me the shells were whispering paint, paint.

  I went upstairs to Little Pink like a man in a dream, wearing only my undershorts. I turned on The Bone, set Girl and Ship No. 7 against the wall, and put a fresh canvas—not as big as the one I’d used for Wireman Looks West, but big—on my easel. My missing arm was itching, but this no longer bothered me the way it had at first; the truth was, I’d almost come to look forward to it.

  Shark Puppy was on the radio: “Dig.” Excellent song. Excellent lyrics. Life is more than love and pleasure.

  I remember clearly how the whole world seemed to be waiting for me to begin—that was how much power I felt running through me while the guitars screamed and the shells murmured.

  I came here to dig for treasure.

  Treasure, yes. Loot.

  I painted until the sun was gone and the moon cast its bitter rind of white light over the water and after that was gone, too.

  And the next night.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Girl and Ship No. 8.

  If you want to play you gotta pay.

  I unbottled.

  xi

  The sight of Dario in a suit and a tie, with his lush hair tamed and combed straight back from his forehead, scared me even more than the murmuring audience that filled Geldbart Auditorium, where the lights had just been turned down to half … except for the spotlight shining down on the lectern standing at center stage, that was. The fact that Dario himself was nervous—going to the podium he had nearly dropped his note-cards—scared me even worse.

  “Good evening, my name is Dario Nannuzzi,” he said. “I am co-curator, and chief buyer at the Scoto Gallery on Palm Avenue. More importantly, I have been a part of the Sarasota art community for thirty years, and I hope you will excuse my brief descent into what some might call Bobbittry when I say there is no finer art community in America.”

  This brought enthusiastic applause from an audience which—as Wireman said later—might know the difference between Monet and Manet, but apparently didn’t have a clue that there was a difference between George Babbitt and John Bobbitt. Standing in the wings, suffering through that purgatory only frightened main speakers experience as their introducers wind their slow and peristaltic courses, I hardly noticed.

  Dario shifted his top file-card to the bottom, once again nearly dropped the whole stack, recovered, and looked out at his audience again. “I hardly know where to begin, but to my relief I need say very little, for true talent seems to blaze up from nowhere, and serves as its own introduction.”

  That said, he proceeded to introduce me for the next ten minutes as I stood in the wings with my one lousy page of notes clutched in my remaining hand. Names went past like floats in a parade. A few, like Edward Hopper and Salvador Dalí, I knew. Others, like Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage, I didn’t. Each unknown name made me feel more of an impostor. The fear I felt was no longer mental; it clamped a deep and stinking hold in my bowels. I felt like I needed to pass gas, but I was afraid I might load my pants instead. And that wasn’t the worst. Every word I had prepared had gone out of my mind except for the very first line, which was hideously appropriate: My name is Edgar Freemantle, and I have no idea how I wound up here. It was supposed to elicit a chuckle. It wouldn’t, I knew that now, but at least it was true.

  While Dario droned on—Joan Miró this, Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto that—a terrified ex-contractor stood with his pathetic page of notes clutched in his cold fist. My tongue was a dead slug that might croak but would speak no coherent word, not to two hundred art mavens, many of whom held advanced degrees, some of whom were motherfucking professors. Worst of all
was my brain. It was a dry socket waiting to be filled with pointless, flailing anger: the words might not come, but the rage was always on tap.

  “Enough!” Dario cried cheerily, striking fresh terror into my pounding heart and sending a cramp rolling through my miserable basement regions—terror above, barely held-in shit below. What a lovely combination. “It has been fifteen years since the Scoto added a new artist to its crowded spring calendar, and we have never introduced one in whom there has been greater interest. I think the slides you are about to see and the talk you are about to hear will explain our interest and excitement.”

  He paused dramatically. I felt a poison dew of sweat spring out on my brow and wiped it off. The arm that I lifted seemed to weigh fifty pounds.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Edgar Freemantle, lately of Minneapolis–St. Paul, now of Duma Key.”

  They applauded. It sounded like an artillery barrage going off. I commanded myself to run away. I commanded myself to faint. I did neither. Like a man in a dream—but not a good one—I walked onstage. Everything seemed to be happening slowly. I saw that every seat was taken but no seat was taken because they were on their feet, they were giving me a standing O. High above me, on the domed ceiling, angels flew in airy disregard of the earthly matters below, and how I wished I was one of them. Dario stood beside the podium, hand outstretched. It was the wrong one; in his own nervousness he had extended his right, and so my return handshake was awkward and bass-ackwards. My notes were crumpled briefly between our palms, then tore. Look what you did, you asshole, I thought—and for one terrible moment I was afraid I’d said it aloud for the mike to pick up and broadcast all over the room. I was aware of how bright the spotlight was as Dario left me there on my lonely perch. I was aware of the microphone on its flexible chrome rod, and thinking it looked like a cobra rising out of a snake-charmer’s basket. I was aware of bright points of light shining on that chrome, and on the rim of the water glass, and on the neck of the Evian bottle next to the water glass. I was aware that the applause was starting to taper off; some of the people were resuming their seats. Soon an expectant silence would replace the applause. They would wait for me to begin. Only I had nothing to say. Even my opening line had left my head. They would wait and the silence would stretch out. There would be a few nervous coughs, and then the murmuring would start. Because they were assholes. Just a bunch of lookie-loo assholes with rubber necks. And if I managed anything, it would be an angry torrent of words that would sound like the outburst of a man suffering from Tourette’s.

  I’d just call for the first slide. Maybe I could do that much and the pictures would carry me. I’d have to hope they would. Only when I looked at my page of notes, I saw that not only was it torn straight down the middle, my sweat had blurred the jottings so badly I could no longer make them out. Either that or stress had created a short circuit between my eyes and my brain. And what was the first slide, anyway? A mailbox painting? Sunset with Sophora? I was almost positive neither of those was right.

  Now everyone was sitting. The applause was finished. It was time for the American Primitive to open his mouth and ululate. Three rows back, sitting on the aisle, was that nozzy birch Mary Ire, with what looked like a porthand shad open on her lap. I looked for Wireman. He’d gotten me into this, but I bore him no anus. I only wanted to apologize with my eyes for what was coming.

  I’ll be in the front row, he’d said. Dead center.

  And he was. Jack, my housekeeper Juanita, Jimmy Yoshida, and Alice Aucoin were sitting on Wireman’s left. And on his right, on the aisle—

  The man on the aisle had to be a hallucination. I blinked, but he was still there. A vast face, dark and calm. A figure crammed so tightly into the plush auditorium seat it seemed it might take a crowbar to get him out again: Xander Kamen, peering up at me through his enormous horn-rimmed glasses and looking more like a minor god than ever. Obesity had canceled his lap, but balanced on the bulge of his belly was a ribbon-garnished gift box about three feet long. He saw my surprise—my shock—and made a gesture: not a wave but an odd, beneficent salute, putting the tips of his fingers first to his massive brow, then to his lips, then holding his hand out to me with the fingers spread. I could see the pallor of his palm. He smiled up at me, as if his presence here in the first row of the Geldbart Auditorium next to my friend Wireman were the most natural thing in the world. His large lips formed four words, one after the other: You can do this.

  And maybe I could. If I thought away from this moment. If I thought sideways.

  I thought of Wireman—Wireman looking west, to be exact—and my opening line came back to me.

  I nodded to Kamen. Kamen nodded back. Then I looked at the audience and saw they were just people. All the angels were over our heads, and they were now flying in the dark. As for demons, most were probably in my mind.

  “Hello—” I began, then recoiled at the way my voice boomed out from the microphone. The audience laughed, but the sound didn’t make me angry, as it would have a minute before. It was only laughter, and goodnatured.

  I can do this.

  “Hello,” I said again. “My name is Edgar Freemantle, and I’m probably not going to be very good at this. In my other life I was in the building trade. I knew I was good at that, because I landed jobs. In my current life I paint pictures. But nobody said anything about public speaking.”

  This time the laughter was a little freer and a little more general.

  “I was going to start by saying I have no idea how I wound up here, but actually I do. And that’s good, because it’s all I have to tell. You see, I don’t know anything about art history, art theory, or even art appreciation. Some of you probably know Mary Ire.”

  This brought a chuckle, as if I’d said Some of you may have heard of Andy Warhol. The lady herself looked around, preening a little, her back ramrod straight.

  “When I first brought some of my paintings into the Scoto Gallery, Ms. Ire saw them and called me an American primitive. I sort of resented that, because I change my underwear every morning and brush my teeth every night before I go to bed—”

  Another burst of laughter. My legs were just legs again, not cement, and now that I felt capable of running away, I no longer wanted or needed to. It was possible they’d hate my pictures, but that was all right because I didn’t hate them. Let them have their little laugh, their little boo-and-hiss, their little gasp of distaste (or their little yawn), if that was what they wanted to do; when it was over, I could go back and paint more.

  And if they loved them? Same deal.

  “But if she meant I’m someone who’s doing something he doesn’t understand, that he can’t express in words because no one ever taught him the right terms, then she’s right.”

  Kamen was nodding and looking pleased. And so, by God, was Mary Ire.

  “So all that leaves is the story of how I got here—the bridge I walked over to get from my other life to the one I’m living these days.”

  Kamen was patting his meaty hands together soundlessly. That made me feel good. Having him there made me feel good. I don’t know exactly what would have happened if he hadn’t’ve been, but I think it would have been what Wireman calls mucho feo—very ugly.

  “But I have to keep it simple, because my friend Wireman says that when it comes to the past, we all stack the deck, and I believe that’s true. Tell too much and you find yourself … mmm … I don’t know … telling the past you wished for?”

  I looked down and saw Wireman was nodding.

  “Yeah, I think so, the one you wished for. So simply put, what happened is this: I had an accident at a job site. Bad accident. There was this crane, you see, and it crushed the pickup truck I was in, and it crushed me, as well. I lost my right arm and I almost lost my life. I was married, but my marriage broke up. I was at my wits’ end. This is a thing I see more clearly now; I only knew then that I felt very, very bad. Another friend, a man named Xander Kamen, asked me one day if anything made me happy. That wa
s something …”

  I paused. Kamen looked up intently from the first row with the long gift-box balanced on his non-lap. I remembered him that day at Lake Phalen—the tatty briefcase, the cold autumn sunshine coming and going in diagonal stripes across the living room floor. I remembered thinking about suicide, and the myriad roads leading into the dark: turnpikes and secondary highways and shaggy little forgotten lanes.

  The silence was spinning out, but I no longer dreaded it. And my audience seemed not to mind. It was natural for my mind to wander. I was an artist.

  “The idea of happiness—at least as it applied to me—was something I hadn’t thought of in a long time,” I said. “I thought of supporting my family, and after I started my own company, I thought of not letting down the people who worked for me. I also thought of becoming a success, and worked for it, mostly because so many people expected me to fail. Then the accident happened. Everything changed. I discovered I had no—”

  I reached out for the word I wanted, groping with both hands, although they only saw one. And, perhaps, a twitch of the old stump inside its pinned-up sleeve.

  “I had no resources to fall back on. As far as happiness went …” I shrugged. “I told my friend Kamen that I used to draw, but I hadn’t done it in a long time. He suggested I take it up again, and when I asked why, he said because I needed hedges against the night. I didn’t understand what he meant then, because I was lost and confused and in pain. I understand it better now. People say night falls, but down here it rises. It rises out of the Gulf, after sunset’s done. Seeing that happen amazed me.”

  I was also amazed at my own unplanned eloquence. My right arm was quiet throughout. My right arm was just a stump inside a pinned-up sleeve.

  “Could we have the lights all the way down? Including mine, please?”

  Alice was running the board herself, and wasted no time. The spotlight in which I had been standing dimmed to a whisper. The auditorium was swallowed in gloom.