Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  I paused to look at Sunset with Sophora as I started away, and … sure enough, there was a little red circle on the upper right corner of the frame. That was a good thing—it was nice to know the crowd here was composed of more than just lookers drawn by the novelty of a one-armed dauber—but I still felt a pang, and wondered if it was normal to feel that way. I had no way of telling. I didn’t know any other artists to ask.

  iii

  Dario and Jimmy Yoshida were in the office; so was a man I’d never met before. Dario introduced him to me as Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant who kept the Scoto’s books in trim. My heart sank a little as I shook his hand, turning my own to do it because he offered the wrong one, as so many people do. Ah, but it’s a righties’ world.

  “Dario, are we in trouble here?” I asked.

  Dario placed a silver champagne bucket on Jimmy’s desk. In it, reclining on a bed of crushed ice, was a bottle of Perrier-Jouët. The stuff they were serving in the gallery was good, but not this good. The cork had been recently drawn; there was still faint breath drifting from the bottle’s green mouth. “Does this look like trouble?” he asked. “I would have had Alice ask your family in, as well, but the office is too freaking small. Two people who should be here right now are Wireman and Jack Cantori. Where the hell are they? I thought they were coming together.”

  “So did I. Did you try Elizabeth Eastlake’s house? Heron’s Roost?”

  “Of course,” Dario said. “Got nothing but the answering machine.”

  “Not even Elizabeth’s nurse? Annmarie?”

  He shook his head. “Just the answering machine.”

  I started having visions of Sarasota Memorial. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Perhaps the three of them are on their way here right now,” Rosenblatt said.

  “I think that’s unlikely. She’s gotten very frail and short of breath. Can’t even use her walker anymore.”

  “I’m sure the situation will resolve itself,” Jimmy said. “Meanwhile, we should raise a glass.”

  “Must raise a glass, Edgar,” Dario added.

  “Thanks, you guys, that’s very kind, and I’d be happy to have a drink with you, but my family’s outside and I want to walk around with them while they look at the rest of my pictures, if that’s all right.”

  Jimmy said, “Understandable, but—”

  Dario interrupted, speaking quietly. “Edgar, the show’s a sell.”

  I looked at him. “Beg your pardon?”

  “We didn’t think you’d had a chance to get around and see all the red dots,” Jimmy said. He was smiling, his color so high he might have been blushing. “Every painting and sketch that was for sale has been sold.”

  Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, said: “Thirty paintings and fourteen sketches. It’s unheard-of.”

  “But …” My lips felt numb. I watched as Dario turned and this time took a tray of glasses from the shelf behind the desk. They were in the same floral pattern as the Perrier-Jouët bottle. “But the price you put on Girl and Ship No. 7 was forty thousand dollars!”

  From the pocket of his plain black suit, Rosenblatt took a curl of paper that had to have come from an adding machine. “The paintings fetched four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, the sketches an additional nineteen. The total comes to a little over half a million dollars. It’s the greatest sum the Scoto has ever taken in during the exhibition of a single artist’s work. An amazing coup. Congratulations.”

  “All of them?” I said in a voice so tiny I could hardly hear it myself. I looked at Dario as he put a champagne glass in my hand.

  He nodded. “If you had decided to sell Girl and Ship No. 8, I believe that one alone would have fetched a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Twice that,” Jimmy said.

  “To Edgar Freemantle, at the start of his brilliant career!” Rosenblatt said, and raised his glass. We raised our glasses and drank, not knowing that my brilliant career was, for all practical purposes, at an end.

  We caught a break there, muchacho.

  iv

  Tom Riley fell in beside me as I moved back through the crowd toward my family, smiling and shaking conversational gambits as fast as I could. “Boss, these are incredible,” he said, “but they’re a little spooky, too.”

  “I guess that’s a compliment,” I said. The truth was, talking to Tom felt spooky, knowing what I did about him.

  “It’s definitely a compliment,” he said. “Listen, you’re headed for your family. I’ll take a hike.” And he started to do just that, but I grabbed him by the elbow.

  “Stick with me,” I said. “Together we can repel all boarders. On my own, I may not get to Pam and the girls until nine o’clock.”

  He laughed. Old Tommy looked good. He’d added some pounds since that day at Lake Phalen, but I’d read that antidepressants sometimes do that, especially to men. On him, a little more weight was okay. The hollows under his eyes had filled in.

  “How’ve you been, Tom?”

  “Well … in truth … depressed.” He lifted one hand in the air, as if to wave off a commiseration I hadn’t offered. “It’s a chemical imbalance thing, and it’s a bitch getting used to the pills. They muddy up your thinking at first—they did mine, anyway. I went off them awhile, but I’m back on now and life’s looking better. It’s either the fake endorphins kicking in or the effect of springtime in The Land of a Billion Lakes.”

  “And The Freemantle Company?”

  “The books are in the black, but it’s not the same without you. I came down here thinking I might pitch you on coming back. Then I got a look at what you’re doing and realized your days in the building biz are probably done.”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  He gestured toward the canvases in the main room. “What are they, really? I mean, no bullshit. Because—I wouldn’t say this to very many people—they remind me of the way life was inside my head when I wasn’t taking my pills.”

  “They’re just make-believe,” I said. “Shadows.”

  “I know about shadows,” he said. “You just want to be careful they don’t grow teeth. Because they can. Then, sometimes when you reach for the light-switch to make them go away, you discover the power’s out.”

  “But you’re better now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Pam had a lot to do with that. Can I tell you something about her you might already know?”

  “Sure,” I said, only hoping he wasn’t going to share the fact that she sometimes laughed way down in her throat when she came.

  “She has great insight but little kindness,” Tom said. “It’s a weirdly cruel mix.”

  I said nothing … but not necessarily because I thought he was wrong.

  “She gave me a brisk talking-to about taking care of myself not so long ago, and it hit home.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And from the look of her, you might be in for a talking-to yourself, Edgar. I think I might find your friend Kamen and engage him in a bit of a discourse. Excuse me.”

  The girls and Ric were staring up at Wireman Looks West and chattering animatedly. Pam, however, was positioned about halfway down the line of Girl and Ship paintings, which hung like movie posters, and she looked disturbed. Not angry, exactly, just disturbed. Confused. She beckoned me over, and once I was there, she didn’t waste time.

  “Is the little girl in these pictures Ilse?” She pointed up at No. 1. “I thought at first this one with the red hair was supposed to be the doll Dr. Kamen gave you after your accident, but Ilse had a tic-tac-toe dress like that when she was little. I bought it at Rompers. And this one—” Now she pointed at No. 3. “I swear this is the dress she just had to have to start first grade in—the one she was wearing when she broke her damn arm that night after the stock car races!”

  Well, there you were. I remembered the broken arm as having come after church, but that was only a minor misstep in the grand dance of memory. There were more important things. One was that Pam wa
s in a unique position to see through most of the smoke and mirrors that critics like to call art—at least in my case she was. In that way, and probably in a great many others, she was still my wife. It seemed that in the end, only time could issue a divorce decree. And that the decree would be partial at best.

  I turned her toward me. We were being watched by a great many people, and I suppose to them it looked like an embrace. And in a way, it was. I got one glimpse of her wide, startled eyes, and then I was whispering in her ear.

  “Yes, the girl in the rowboat is Ilse. I never meant her to be there, because I never meant anything. I never even knew I was going to paint these pictures until I started doing them. And because she’s back-to, no one else is ever going to know unless you or I tell them. And I won’t. But—” I pulled back. Her eyes were still wide, her lips parted as if to receive a kiss. “What did Ilse say?”

  “The oddest thing.” She took me by the sleeve and pulled me down to No. 7 and No. 8. In both of these, Rowboat Girl was wearing the green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back. “She said you must be reading her mind, because she ordered a dress like that from Newport News just this spring.”

  She looked back at the pictures. I stood silently beside her and let her look.

  “I don’t like these, Edgar. They’re not like the others, and I don’t like them.”

  I thought of Tim Riley saying, Your ex has great insight but little kindness.

  Pam lowered her voice. “You don’t know something about Illy that you shouldn’t, do you? The way you knew about—”

  “No,” I said, but I was more troubled by the Girl and Ship series than ever. Some of it was seeing them all hung in a line; the accumulated weirdness was like a punch.

  Sell them. That was Elizabeth’s opinion. However many there are, you must sell them.

  And I could understand why she thought so. I did not like seeing my daughter, not even in the guise of the child she had long outgrown, in such close proximity to that rotted sheerhulk. And in a way, I was surprised that perplexity and disquiet were all Pam felt. But of course, the paintings hadn’t had a chance to work on her yet.

  And they were no longer on Duma Key.

  The young people joined us, Ric and Melinda with their arms around each other. “Daddy, you’re a genius,” Melinda said. “Ric thinks so, too, don’t you, Ric?”

  “Actually,” Ric said, “I do. I came prepared to be … polite. Instead I am struggling for the words to say I am amazed.”

  “That’s very kind,” I said. “Merci.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Dad,” Illy said, and hugged me.

  Pam rolled her eyes, and in that instant I could cheerfully have whacked her one. Instead I folded Ilse into my arm and kissed the top of her head. As I did, Mary Ire’s voice rose from the front of the Scoto in a cigarette-hoarsened shout that was full of amazed disbelief. “Libby Eastlake! I don’t believe my goddamned eyes!”

  It was my ears I didn’t believe, but when a spontaneous spatter of applause erupted from the doorway, where the real aficionados had gathered to chat and take a little fresh evening air, I understood why Jack and Wireman had been late.

  v

  “What?” Pam asked. “What?” I had her on one side and Illy on the other as I moved toward the door; Linnie and Ric bobbed along in our wake. The applause grew louder. People turned toward the door and craned to see. “Who is it, Edgar?”

  “My best friends on the island.” Then, to Ilse: “One of them’s the lady from down the road, remember her? She turned out to be the Daughter of the Godfather instead of the Bride. Her name’s Elizabeth Eastlake, and she’s a sweetheart.”

  Ilse’s eyes were shining with excitement. “The old gal in the big blue sneakers!”

  The crowd—many of them still applauding—parted for us, and I saw the three of them in the reception area, where two tables with a punchbowl on each had been set up. My eyes began to sting and a lump rose in my throat. Jack was dressed in a slate gray suit. With his usually unruly surfer’s thatch tamed, he looked like either a junior executive in the Bank of America or an especially tall seventh-grader on Careers Day. Wireman, pushing Elizabeth’s chair, was wearing faded, beltless jeans and a round-collared white linen shirt that emphasized his deep tan. His hair was combed back, and I realized for the first time that he was good-looking the way Harrison Ford was in his late forties.

  But it was Elizabeth who stole the show, Elizabeth who elicited the applause, even from the newbies who hadn’t the slightest idea who she was. She was wearing a black pantsuit of dull rough cotton, loose but elegant. Her hair was up and held with a gauzy snood that flashed like diamonds beneath the gallery’s downlighters. From her neck hung an ivory scrimshaw pendant on a gold chain, and on her feet were not big blue Frankenstein sneakers but elegant pumps of darkest scarlet. Between the second and third fingers of her gnarled left hand was an unlit cigarette in a gold-chased holder.

  She looked left and right, smiling. When Mary came to the chair, Wireman stopped pushing long enough for the younger woman to kiss Elizabeth’s cheek and whisper in her ear. Elizabeth listened, nodded, then whispered back. Mary cawed laughter, then caressed Elizabeth’s arm.

  Someone brushed by me. It was Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, his eyes wet and his nose red. Dario and Jimmy were behind him. Rosenblatt knelt by her wheelchair, his bony knees cracking like starter pistols, and cried, “Miss Eastlake! Oh, Miss Eastlake, so long we’re not seeing you, and now … oh, what a wonderful surprise!”

  “And you, Jake,” she said, and cradled his bald head to her bosom. It looked like a very large egg lying there. “Handsome as Bogart!” She saw me … and winked. I winked back, but it wasn’t easy to keep my happy face on. She looked haggard, dreadfully tired in spite of her smile.

  I raised my eyes to Wireman’s, and he gave the tiniest of shrugs. She insisted, it said. I switched my gaze to Jack and got much the same.

  Rosenblatt, meanwhile, was rummaging in his pockets. At last he came up with a book of matches so battered it looked as if it might have entered the United States without a passport at Ellis Island. He opened it and tore one out.

  “I thought smoking was against the rules in all these public buildings now,” Elizabeth said.

  Rosenblatt struggled. Color rose up his neck. I almost expected his head to explode. Finally he exclaimed: “Fuck the rules, Miss Eastlake!”

  “BRAVISSIMO!” Mary shouted, laughing and throwing her hands to the ceiling, and at this there was another round of applause. A greater one came when Rosenblatt finally got the ancient match to ignite and held it out to Elizabeth, who placed her cigarette-holder between her lips.

  “Who is she really, Daddy?” Ilse asked softly. “Besides the little old lady who lives down the lane, I mean?”

  I said, “According to reports, at one time she was the Sarasota art scene.”

  “I don’t understand why that gives her the right to muck up our lungs with her cigarette smoke,” Linnie said. The vertical line was returning between her brows.

  Ric smiled. “Oh, chérie, this after all the bars we—”

  “This is not there,” she said, the vertical line deepening, and I thought, Ric, you may be French, but you have a lot to learn about this particular American woman.

  Alice Aucoin murmured to Dario, and from his pocket, Dario produced an Altoids tin. He dumped the mints into the palm of his hand and gave Alice the tin. Alice gave it to Elizabeth, who thanked her and tapped her cigarette ash into it.

  Pam watched, fascinated, then turned to me. “What does she think of your pictures?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She hasn’t seen them.”

  Elizabeth was beckoning to me. “Will you introduce me to your family, Edgar?”

  I did, beginning with Pam and ending with Ric. Jack and Wireman also shook hands with Pam and the girls.

  “After all the calls, I’m pleased to meet you in the flesh,” Wireman told Pam.

  “The sa
me goes back to you,” Pam said, sizing him up. She must have liked what she saw, because she smiled—and it was the real one, the one that lights her whole face. “We did it, didn’t we? He didn’t make it easy, but we did it.”

  “Art is never easy, young woman,” Elizabeth said.

  Pam looked down at her, still smiling the genuine smile—the one I’d fallen in love with. “Do you know how long it’s been since anyone called me young woman?”

  “Ah, but to me you look very young and beautiful,” Elizabeth said … and was this the woman who had been little more than a muttering lump of cheese slumped in her wheelchair only a week ago? Tonight that seemed hard to believe. Tired as she looked, it seemed impossible to believe. “But not as young and beautiful as your daughters. Girls, your father is—by all accounts—a very talented fellow.”

  “We’re very proud of him,” Melinda said, twisting her necklace.

  Elizabeth smiled at her, then turned to me. “I should like to see the work and judge for myself. Will you indulge me, Edgar?”

  “I’d be happy to.” I meant it, but I was damned nervous, as well. Part of me was afraid to receive her opinion. That part was afraid she might shake her head and deliver her verdict with the bluntness to which her age entitled her: Facile … colorful … certainly lots of energy … but perhaps not up to much. In the end.

  Wireman moved to grasp the handles of her chair, but she shook her head. “No—let Edgar push me, Wireman. Let him tour me.” She plucked the half-smoked cigarette from the holder, those gnarled fingers doing the job with surprising dexterity, and crushed it out on the bottom of the tin. “And the young lady’s right—I think we’ve all had quite enough of this reek.”

  Melinda had the grace to blush. Elizabeth offered the tin to Rosenblatt, who took it with a smile and a nod. I have wondered since then—I know it’s morbid, but yes, I’ve wondered—if she would have smoked more of it if she had known it was to be her last.

  vi

  Even those who didn’t know John Eastlake’s surviving daughter from a hole in the wall understood that a Personage had come among them, and the tidal flow which had moved toward the reception area at the sound of Mary Ire’s exuberant shout now reversed itself as I rolled the wheelchair into the alcove where most of the Sunset With pictures had been hung. Wireman and Pam walked on my left; Ilse and Jack were on my right, Ilse giving the wheelchair’s handle on that side little helping taps to make sure it stayed on course. Melinda and Ric were behind us, Kamen, Tom Riley, and Bozie behind them. Behind that trio came seemingly everyone else in the gallery.