Cutting Loose in Paradise

by Mary Jane Ryals

  “I’ll be up with you this week,” he finally said. He put his hands in his pockets and took the stairs back down two at a time.

  CHAPTER 13

  I SLEPT THE REST OF THE DAY. The kids spilled into the apartment, exhausted and hungry as the sun fell slowly towards the horizon. I pulled myself up from the bed and found Daisy and Tay preparing their own version of pasta: loads of olive oil and garlic. No meat, no vegetables. At least they were preparing their own meal, and were bounteous full of their trip to the islands.

  “Mama, we saw a big snake!” Daisy said, tipping the bottle of olive oil. My eyes darted to Taylor.

  “On Seahorse Key,” Tay explained, taking the olive oil and putting it on the shelf.

  “Yeah, and it was a monster!” Daisy said. “Six feet long and about as big around as Mr. Randy’s thigh.” She grabbed her stool to peer into the pot of pasta boiling.

  “Rattlesnake,” Taylor said, illustrating with his hands, about three times the thickness of a ripe watermelon, “and it was huge. But—”

  “But it didn’t get us,” Daisy said. “Mr. Randy, he threw stuff at the snake, and it slithered to the middle of the island where there’s a swamp.”

  “Good grief,” I said, opening the refrigerator.

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” Daisy said, scooting off the stool to hug my waist. “We were safe.”

  “Yeah, it was really cool, Mom,” Taylor said as Daisy returned to the stool. “All these pelicans were roosting in the trees. I thought of a New York tenement house.” He grinned. “They’re all yakking at each other. Living on top of each other in the mangroves, and side by side, sitting on their nests. Daisy, pay attention or you’ll get burned!” He pushed her down from the stool and took the pot off the burner.

  “Yeah, and they’re really funny,” Daisy said. “They fight.”

  I laughed. “Maybe all families do.”

  After we sat down to eat the kids’ pasta dish in the living room, I let the kids know the bad news: I was under suspicion until further notice and for bizarre reasons. And that my business would lose customers. They both looked confused and glum.

  “But you didn’t poison him, did you, Mama?” Daisy said, sucking spaghetti into her mouth.

  “Of course not, you idiot,” Taylor said, looking at the ceiling. He was tired.

  “Tay,” I said. “She is not an idiot.”

  “But Mom, you know she knows you didn’t do it. Why do you think she asks, except to get attention.” He picked up the remote and turned on the TV to ABC’s news, which showed the oil as it had gushed into the Gulf for all those many weeks, and the months after.

  “Honey, you used to ask questions like that. It wasn’t so long ago either,” I said.

  He sat back with a huff.

  “You didn’t do it, did you, Mama?” Daisy said softly.

  “Of course not, honey,” I said, continuing with a conversation about living with less. I launched into no allowance, no extras like videos, snacks, and Taylor would have to find some kind of work to pay his car insurance.

  “Great,” Tay said, turning up the volume of the TV. “Dishwashing at one of the scum-bag restaurants on the dock.” I ignored his remark. I didn’t add that he probably wouldn’t even find work at a scum-bag anything right now. Tourists had abandoned our stretch of water and sand.

  “Tay?” I said. “I need you to babysit tonight.” It was Saturday night, so he argued.

  “You can have Stephie over if you want,” I said. The girlfriend whom I’d never allowed over without me around.

  “Yeah, cool!” Daisy said. Taylor blew out his breath in disgust. I asked Daisy to get ice cream. When she had trotted out of hearing range, I turned a full look to Taylor.

  “Tay,” I said. “I really need you—I have something I need to do—trust me on this.”

  He looked at me hard and curious, then folded his arms over his chest and said, “Okay.”

  I CALLED MAC’S HOSPITAL ROOM at 5:30 p.m. Tiffany answered and told me Fletch would be visiting tonight, and that tomorrow would look better for Mac. Good, I thought. No one could find us snooping. I told nurse Tiffany to please tell Mac I’d see him tomorrow. Then I called Madonna and invited her to hang out around eight.

  I drove over to Piney Point. This was crazy, I knew, but I had to find out more about Trina. She’d never invited me into her home. The kids had visited, but not me. She and Fletch never entertained that I knew of either.

  Piney Point burst with natural life and therefore became attractive as the choice spot for new construction on the islands these past years. Oaks and pine trees kept the island cool in summer. Deep, old growth woods. Luckily, the pencil mogul who’d ravaged St. Annes had only lumbered cedars and left the other trees untouched. Piney Point sat right on the Gulf, too, just north and east of the island where Randy and Laura lived. I parked at the old professor’s house, vacant now, and walked to the water’s edge to Trina’s house. The sun had just sunk out of view.

  I approached the house, walking past it first. It perched on stilts like all newer houses on the Gulf these days. Under the house, Fletch’s truck was missing. But Trina’s red Jeep sat in the weather, covered in a small coat of leaves, untouched for days. The house was built of cypress, expensive wood that resisted all manner of insects and water rot. I saw that Trina had grown sunflowers out back near the Gulf. And a fountain she’d made using lime rock burbled among the ferns in the shade. A suicidal woman wouldn’t have designed a landscape this thoughtful, I decided. I walked towards the fountain, closer to the house.

  Fletch, I hoped, had taken his truck to the bar where he hung out all the time. Tiffany might think he was going to the hospital, but that man never made an unnecessary trip off the islands. A statue of an angel praying stood a foot deep in water. Was it one of those by Liza Jane Gardner, who signed the bottoms of her work? Nosey me, I picked it up to look. Signed, of course. Trina liked the best, and could afford it, being an accountant. What I saw then made my throat constrict. A key lay in the spot where the statue’s bottom had sat. I looked around. Nothing, nobody around. I picked up the key. It was labeled with a rusty tag that said, “Back door.” I brushed away the dirt, thrust the key into my jeans pocket and walked back to the water’s edge.

  I STOPPED AND BOUGHT a pint container of mullet dip at Kiss-Me-Quick and headed back across the bridge from the Fish House. I would figure out how to get into Trina’s house later. The day grew dark. I parked my car in the usual spot behind the grocery store and ran in to grab some crackers. Hell, go on and shop, I thought. The cupboard’s damn bare. I grabbed a cart, found vegetables and cheese, and wandered down to the back of the store. In the butcher area, Jim Smiley, the owner, was packaging meat. Usually he took weekends off during the colder months. He had good if thinning hair and a thick mustache.

  “Sorry to hear you got accused of something you didn’t do,” Jim said, leaning on the counter. He had the freshest meat in the county.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. “Small towns. You lift a finger, and everybody knows. Business will be bad for me. Got some chicken breast meat? About a pound?”

  “Hey, murder or attempted murder ain’t good for my business, either,” he said. “Suicide here, murder attempt there, and any tourists left who’ll come down will take their dollars to the east coast where the oil’s not done spilled.” He wrapped the poultry and marked the meat with black crayon, handing it over. The summer had been rough. The media blitz had scared tourists away. “I can barely stay open. Got too much inventory. Not a good thing in a grocery store.” He shook his head.

  “Sorry, Jim. Everybody’s saying the same thing. They won’t know what they’re missing if they go east,” I joked. The east or Atlantic coast was far more popular, but we still had nature on the Gulf coast. And no high rises.

  “Look,” he leaned up on the meat case. “I could use a trim.” He pointed to his head and then his mustache. “If you want to book me this coming week. Everybody needs to know we can trust
you with a pair of scissors.” He winked, picked up his butcher knife, and began to sharpen it.

  “Thanks, Jim.” I pulled out my day calendar. “When’s convenient?”

  He shrugged. “Tomorrow, say before eleven? It gets busy, you know, after church.”

  “That’d be fine,” I said, cheered. I figured Madonna and I wouldn’t be sneaking around until really late tonight, but I could be ready to give a haircut in the morning. “Just walk over. I’ll be in the shop.” I waved and headed down the aisle. Then I walked back, looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Jim. I didn’t do it.”

  “Rue, everybody who knows you knows that. Everybody but the evidence gets that.”

  “Will you spread the word that I will cut hair? And I’ll clean houses—whatever.” He nodded.

  I turned around and pushed the cart back up the aisle. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be okay.” He nodded.

  Sometimes there were benefits to living in a small town. I piled my purchases on the conveyor belt. The cashier looked glum and very pregnant. A youngster who’d gone to school with Tay before she got pregnant and dropped out. Tay was one of twelve in the senior class. The other twenty who’d begun with him when we moved back in his eighth grade had either quit to become fishermen or had gotten pregnant or married. This island inertia had Tay both frustrated and confused. I had felt grateful to Trina for showing Tay the many ways a computer could work for a kid. And I appreciated Randy for taking Tay out. Nothing got in Daisy’s way. At least not yet, I thought, carrying the two bags of groceries out the store’s old squawky double doors. Once in the car, I checked the grocery receipt. Jim hadn’t charged me a cent for the chicken.

  Cars slowly cruised the highway, turning at the only corner in town with a traffic signal onto Main Street, where I lived, and headed to bars and restaurants. I left the car at the grocery store because it was in the same short block where our apartment was. I hefted the two bags down the block towards the apartment. Folks were steadily parading their Saturday-night way into town from everywhere else on the highway. Back when I’d first moved into the upstairs house on the corner, I’d be up all night hearing the cars and trucks. Now I slept right through most of it.

  When I walked inside, Madonna was sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee. Laura sat in the E-Z-Boy with a glass of white wine. Both kids were asleep on the floor. “Well, that’s different,” I said when I walked in. “The party came to me, and the kids are asleep.”

  “You should start locking the doors, Rue,” Laura said.

  “Oh, I see you decided to illustrate the dangers for me by making yourselves at home.” I went to the coffee pot and poured a cup. I unloaded groceries and put the mullet dip on the coffee table with the crackers. Madonna carried Daisy to her bedroom and shook Tay awake enough to send him to his room. Maybe Tay’s girlfriend wouldn’t even be in the house if I was lucky.

  “Hey, how about coloring my hair, LaRue?” Laura said, walking into the kitchen.

  “Sure. I’ll give you a deal.” I dug into the mullet dip. “Delicious. But it would be so much better with a glass of red wine.”

  “Nope. No red wine for the boat investigators, and no inexpensive hair deals. Full price. I know what this color thing costs in Tallahassee. I’m paying Tallahassee prices.” She drained her glass. I wanted to hug her, but instead gulped more coffee.

  Madonna was perusing the newspaper and began to frown. “Laura, this funeral notice you wrote says the beloved Trina Lutz died of suicide. She shot herself in the heart at home.”

  “Madonna, I’m going with the lie for now,” Laura said, pouring herself another glass of white and dipping a cracker into mullet dip.

  Madonna went on. “Says she grew up in Atlanta and went to school at Duke. Business College. Brainy. Or her parents had money. Who could pay Duke tuition?” She scooped up some mullet dip on a cracker. “How’d she end up with creepy old Fletch?”

  “Oh, the women I see with some men,” Laura said, shaking her head. “Slim pickings out there.” I walked downstairs and got the new color and scissors, put a chair in the middle of the living room, newspaper underneath.

  “Her parents died when she was young, the article says. Hey, she was valedictorian of her senior class,” Madonna added. I pulled a cape around Laura and mixed the color chemicals. Madonna went on, looking at the newspaper, musing. “Laura, you got a lot of quotes to show people were surprised. Dang, everybody was surprised. I think it was that damn Fletch who killed her. After her money. Truth be told, I’d have grabbed the gun and turned it on him. Or knife, or whatever the weapon was.”

  None of us said anything. I squeezed the frosting cap over Laura’s head and pulled strips of hair through. Madonna read about the reception poisoning. “You don’t sound very guilty, LaRue, thanks to Laura’s writing,” Madonna said.

  “Well, I’m not guilty,” I said, mixing up the bleach and applying it to Laura’s hair. Then I showed Laura the two colors and the catalyst.

  “You do it—I trust you,” Laura said.

  Madonna folded up the paper and turned on TV. Controversy about what dispersants really did or might do in deep waters. “Shit,” Madonna said. “Where’s Andy Griffith when you need him?”

  There was a knock at the door. “I’m doing Laura’s hair for free,” I whispered. I could be in real trouble if I was found doing hair under the table by someone who wanted me shut down. Madonna answered the door. AJ Lutz, neat, trim owner of the Fish House, brother of Cooter and Fletch Lutz. How one mother could turn out such a variety of men, I couldn’t figure. He took off his fishing hat and nodded. He was a more attractive, older version of Cooter, and better looking than Fletch. A more relaxed and earnest Lutz. He still had hair, salt and pepper, styled old school rockabilly. We all said “Hey” and invited him in. He had gentlemanly ways, hat in hand, nodding his head, calling us all Miss Laura, Miss Madonna, Miss LaRue, like the old-timers did.

  “Think I could get a haircut?” he said. You could hear the wind chuffling laughter through palms. It was that quiet.

  “Uh—AJ, I’d love to but I’m not working tonight. I’m doing this for Laura—I owe her one.” A lie. “Actually, you might not want to get your hair cut by me.” I figured he’d heard the poisoning news.

  “All the more reason to be taking it under the table,” he said. So he knew I’d need business, and he didn’t care what others thought. “Making a little extra in case you got to get you a lawyer.” Another silence. “Listen,” he drawled. “I done plenty of under the table in my day. Times when weather’s bad, the fish ain’t biting, my fishermen’s out on drunks. Right now, we’re all working for BP, working for the devil hisself over Louisiana way and west Florida, and that’s the only reason we’re afloat.” He cleared his throat in the silence. “I know you ain’t done it.”

  Madonna stood up with the crackers and dip and offered snacks to him. “You’re a sweet soul, AJ. Have some crackers. Miss Polly’s dip’s got extra spice in it.” He shook his head no, but I took Madonna’s words as a cue.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’d be great, AJ, but you please have to keep this to yourself.” AJ nodded his cool head. “Is there a good time for you? And where do you want to meet?” I asked. We decided on Monday morning at the Fish House when it was closed, after I got the kids off to school. He nodded his goodbyes.

  “You’re not out of business yet,” Laura said after his footsteps faded down the stairs and into the street.

  “Unless somebody squeals about my black market haircuts,” I joked. “Then it could be trouble.”

  We watched the news. A fisherman was trolling the waters of Barataria Bay in his johnboat, flashing on globs of oil on dying grass in Louisiana. The fisherman was saying, It’s eerie, quiet. It’s all gonna die. You don’t hear the birds. You don’t hear the shrimp pop in the water, that li’l splash. You don’t hear the redfish rolling on a pod of minnows up on the edge of the marsh. This is my way of life. This—it’s pulling everything out
ta my heart. None of us said anything. We ate mullet dip and drank coffee. Madonna talked about a bird, an oriole she picked up on the road and took to the refuge for injured birds. No one could figure out why the pale bird seemed so disoriented and couldn’t fly, but everyone seemed to know the spill’s poison had gotten to the yellow bird.

  The poisonous smell had gotten to us all on the island. We saw no goo, but everyone in town had felt nauseous from the smell of oil. I’d called my respiratory therapy nurse friend in Tallahassee, and I asked her if hypochondria was getting the best of me when the petrol smell rolled in off the water and gave me a headache. She said to get inside and not come out until it passed.

  “Sure it’s multi-billion dollars BP will pay us, but we won’t see a dime of it for two or three years,” Laura said as I rinsed her hair. We all talked about how businesses would go under completely before any benefit to people on the Gulf would occur. I shortened the length of Laura’s hair, blew it dry, and showed her the new look in the mirror.

  “God, I look young,” Laura said.

  Madonna said, “I’d think you were those ladies in ‘Sex and the City,’ only you’re not getting laid enough.” Very funny, hahaha, Laura said.

  Madonna and I had to prepare to go out to the boat. Laura agreed to stay over in case the kids woke up. She’d sleep in my bed. I’d come back and sleep on the sofa, and Madonna would head home.

  Another knock on the door. We all looked at each other. 9:23 p.m. by the kitchen clock. “Who is it?” I said.

  “Just Tiffany,” she said. She walked in, her youthful glowing skin, her pale exterior and eyebrows going up and down in nervous energy. She did have beautifully shaped brows and doe eyes. She looked from one of us to the next. We all shifted in our seats and muttered hello. “What’s up?” she said.

  “Oh, we’re fixing to call it a night,” Madonna said, casual. “We should be asking you. What’s up? How’s Mac?”

  She came in and sat down. “Doing pretty fine,” she said. “They’ll let him go tomorrow, so you don’t need to go to Tallahassee. Or call.” She looked pale, her eyes not lighting on anything.