Cutting Loose in Paradise

by Mary Jane Ryals

  My ex had been a fantastic liar. Told me to leave with the kids, that he wanted the house if I’d chosen to leave the marriage, I thought as I put on lipstick. Then he had never made another payment on the house again and lived in the house for a year. Meanwhile, I had struggled with a new business and paid rent downtown for an apartment. I hadn’t known about his non-payments until a year later when I received a copy of the foreclosure papers in the mail.

  I wiped the lipstick with a paper towel, remembering how my husband had run off and left me horrible credit and a tax debt, too. He’d lied about his income and then had gotten audited. And since we had been married, I had to pay. I wasn’t thrilled with the law. It had never benefited most women in general. Law was one thing, justice another altogether. I decided I looked dead, so reapplied the lipstick I’d put on before leaving home.

  And people ask me about child support. Ha. I had been lucky to pay off the taxes and the charge card bills he left me in order to clear up my credit report. Trust? It was something stupid people did. I put a layer of plum over the pink lipstick and headed back out to the dining room. There just weren’t any men in their late thirties or forties who weren’t attached, divorced, rigid, or weird. Laura and I had complained endlessly about the no-guys-to-meet-or-date factor, especially on St. Annes. The reason we joked so much about Randy. I made a note to ask Laura why a dude Jackson’s age was single.

  BACK IN THE DINING ROOM, there she sat, in my chair next to Jackson—Daisy. Panic struck me—what could have gone so wrong that she’d walked four Main Street blocks to the restaurant? And sat with a stranger? She and Jackson were talking. She was eating from a new plate. Grapes. She ate one, then put one on Jackson’s plate, which he then ate. Suddenly she burst out in gales of laughter. Jackson was wiggling something black in her face. I walked over. A big black plastic cockroach. She was screaming with laughter and nearly dumping herself out of the chair.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to Daisy with some alarm. “And where did you get this?” I said to Jackson, pointing to the cockroach. They both sat up straight and got quiet.

  “I just walked down, Mama,” she said. “I got lonely, and . . .” She shrugged.

  “She’s fine, LaRue,” Jackson said. “The cockroach is something I have to entertain kids when there are stressful situations. I keep it in the pocket—” He shrugged, looked a little embarrassed. “We ordered some grapes, and we’re having a feast. Right, Daisy?” He brightened, looking at her for help.

  “Mama, he’s got a gun,” Daisy said. “He showed it to me. Sometimes he has to use it.”

  “Well, what I said was—” Jackson tried to explain, but I interrupted by pointing to Daisy to sit in another chair. She ignored me.

  “Is everything okay?” I said.

  “Fine, Mama,” she said. “It’s boring in the apartment.”

  “She’s fine, LaRue,” he said.

  “You know you can call me,” I said. “Why did you leave? Someone could have—. Scoot over,” I said. Then I waved an Oh, forget it hand and sat on the other side of Jackson.

  “I think it’s safe to say she just decided to take a walk in the neighborhood,” Jackson said, then saw my face. He turned to Daisy. “You know you need to follow your mom’s instructions about leaving the house. If she wants you to call before you leave, you need to do so.” He looked at me. I touched his hand under the table. I didn’t know why. Maybe I was too afraid, too alone. I didn’t really know what I was doing, frankly. He continued, steady. “And she should know where you are all the time.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Can I have a glass of chocolate milk?”

  “Of course,” Jackson said, holding his hand up for the waiter. “Should we all have dessert then? Daisy, how would you like some ice cream?” He ordered ice cream for her, but he and I were full.

  “Mama, Mr. Jackson is cool,” Daisy said when her ice cream arrived.

  “Right,” I said. “He’s the one who—”

  “Who’s trying to help your mother find out who we need to put in jail around here,” Jackson said.

  “Will you use your gun?” she said. “I think you should. It’s so cool.” I groaned.

  Suddenly, Mary was standing by the empty chair at our table, holding a beer with one hand and patting Daisy on the head with the other. It creeped me out, but I asked if she wanted to sit down.

  “Maybe for a minute,” she slurred. She was two-and-a-half sheets to the wind. “Daisy, you’re growing up so, Baby.” She sat in the only empty seat, put her elbow on the table, her head resting on her hand, staring at Daisy eating ice cream.

  “I know,” Daisy said. A lack of confidence was nothing I’d have to worry about with this child. Then Mary sat up, as if remembering the adults at the table.

  “How y’all doing tonight?” she said, but she stared at Jackson. “You’re the detective,” she said. “You find out who did it?”

  “Still working on it,” Jackson said, glancing at me. “State investigator,” he corrected. “It’s not my case, exactly . . .”

  “Well, I sure don’t know,” Mary said, pulling off her beer. She stared at nothing, eyes wide, looking in the distance. She turned her head to me. “Did you see that wreath?” She didn’t look directly at me.

  “Which wreath, Mary?” I asked.

  “Well, not exactly a wreath, but this . . .” She waved her hands around in the air. “thing. Of flowers. One with the big-ass silver cross,” she said. “Sorry, Daisy, that was bad of me to potty mouth.” She turned her drunken attention back to me. “At Trina’s grave.” She reminded me of myself early on after the divorce when I’d go out with friends. I’d just wanted to leave planet Earth for a while.

  I glanced at Jackson and rolled my eyes in a who-knows way. “Silver cross?” I said.

  “Yeah, big styrofoam job with mums all spray-painted silver. Gaudy as shit,” she said. “Oops, sorry, Daisy.”

  “No. I missed that,” I said. “I was thinking about doing wedding hair, I have to admit.”

  Mary leaned forward into the table and whispered. “They say this black woman sent it.” No black people lived on St. Annes, unfortunately. The black population had left and never come back when the fiber factory folded. It spoke to Madonna’s inner strength and charm that she could mix it up as a brown person on our island. Jackson and I exchanged looks.

  “Who was it?” I asked. She shrugged, turning her half-focus back onto Daisy, patting her hair.

  “Always wanted a pretty little girl,” she said. She finished off her beer, then got up from the table and walked out the door.

  “Well then,” I said.

  “Mama, Mary’s drunk again,” Daisy said. “I remember the time you got so drunk you forgot where I was.”

  Jackson chuckled. I said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

  “Follow up on it,” Jackson said, raising an eyebrow at me. I understood what he meant. Check out the cross, the name, whatever the connection might be. I felt like it would be a waste of good time but would check the graveyard on my way to breaking into Trina’s house. Something he didn’t need to know about. I nodded.

  Jackson asked for the check, paid for the meal, and we all walked down dark and cold Main Street to the apartment. Daisy insisted on skipping between us and holding our hands. The crescent moon floated in a hazy sky. The wind was blowing hard, and I decided with chattering teeth to invite Jackson in for a hot cocoa.

  WHEN DAISY finally fell into sleep on the sofa, we watched Tallahassee’s evening news. Three guys with Spanish last names had been arrested for animal cruelty after being found running around in a back yard covered with blood, a slaughtered goat nearby. The newscaster connected it with the Cuban Santeria. Jackson shook his head and put down his mug.

  “This is more about insanity than Santeria,” Jackson said. “I know these guys. Tomorrow somebody will find a murder victim in a seedy apartment. They were celebrating the death of the other gang’s member, mark my words.” He slumped down
in his chair and let out a huge sigh. “All these kids killing other kids. It’s insane. I’ll be busy next week. TV makes it look like a Hispanic thing when it’s an economic thing.” Of course my mind wandered straight to my son of the same age.

  “I wonder where Taylor is,” I said. “He should be home in a while.”

  “If I were you, I’d be keeping close tabs on that kid,” Jackson said. “Just being careful.”

  “Oh, Mr. How-to-raise-children, how many children do you have?” I said. He gave a half-smile. He seemed to get a kick out of my faux toughness.

  “Just mentioning it,” he said. “I don’t mean to offend you. And by the way, I respect your ability with this case, in some ways.” He drained his cup of chocolate. “It seems like people have an easier time talking to you than they would me. Even if you do get rough with me, you’re not that way with your townies. And folks seem to talk to your friend Madonna. And Laura digs until she finds the information she needs. I’m just saying, use what you do well without getting a B&E charge, hear?” I wouldn’t look at him. He leaned in towards me. “I’ve made you mad now. Can I make it up to you?”

  He had ruffled my feathers about my son. I wasn’t used to men telling me what to do anymore. “No, I don’t think so,” I said.

  “We need to follow up—the Mexico thing, blood analysis, the funeral wreath. How about we get up next week?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Can I cook your family dinner?” he tried.

  I hesitated, thinking about how full my life was. How nice he was. I didn’t trust it. “I need to get this monkey of a crime off my back. That’s my first concern.”

  “Okay, we’ll solve this monkey of a crime, then,” he said.

  “Well, you make it sound like you need some deep research or something, like a dissertation, for god sakes,” I said, talking fast now. “I don’t have a fellowship to feed me for five years, Jackson. I am the sole provider for five people, okay? I need to get cleared of this stupid crime I clearly did not commit. You need to find out things. Like who the hell is the coroner who let it slip by him that the death was by a cut throat and not a shot in the heart? And how do we really think it was suicide? I mean, she didn’t leave a note.”

  “Notes don’t mean anything,” he said. “And this guy was a doctor, some yokel county doctor who’s hard to find. He’s been out of town and not returning calls. I will be stepping into a dangerous game. And you’ll be at high risk.”

  “Find him,” I pleaded. “And see if you can dig up anything about these guys in the photos, the Boarders or whoever.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “Well, thanks for dinner,” I said. “And for entertaining Daisy.”

  “She’s a pistol, so to speak,” he said. I nodded. He went on. “Say, find out more about Mary. And Tiffany. Something’s going on there. Why are two young women, one married, hanging around men so much older? Follow the money, they say. And you’re welcome. Let’s do it again soon.”

  Suddenly, I felt heavy as a whale. I nodded, yawning. We stood up, and I saw him to the door. He turned around. “Look, you be careful,” he said. Before I could protest, he said, “If someone tried to kill Mac with poison and put it on you, they’ll try to kill again. Be very careful. Don’t worry, just be vigilant. We’ll have this cleared up very soon.”

  “Stay cool and drive safely,” I said. “Thanks, again. Good night.”

  I FELL ASLEEP dreaming that a maniac from a foreign country who spoke a language we couldn’t understand had kidnapped Laura and me. We were held captive in a tent, and our captor had a piece of art that the other side wanted. I began to realize that I was in fact wearing the art they wanted—a dress. A purple silky dress with black hieroglyphic figures in some ancient language no one understood anymore. Laura kept trying to phone Jackson, but she couldn’t get through. The maniac was saying, “Huh, hah huh, haha huh huh.” We couldn’t comprehend his words.

  That’s when I woke up in my bed and heard those very sounds in the living room. I got up and tiptoed out to the front. There stood Taylor, performing karate moves with a fierce frown on his face.

  “Huh, hah huh, haha huh huh,” he said.

  “Taylor, what are you doing?” I said.

  “GoKu,” he said, not looking at me, not pausing from making hand and leg strikes. “From Dragonball Z.” He’d told me before Dragonball Z was a male soap opera in Japanese animation. The main character practiced a variety of martial arts on the screen.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said. “It’s like two a.m. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “You never know what’ll happen at school tomorrow,” he said, knifing the air with his hands.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “A night is only a grain of salt in the ocean of time, Mom,” he said, twirling around and giving the air another kick.

  “Honey, please get to bed,” I said. What was going on with him, anyway? “Come on, I’m tired. Let’s get to bed.”

  “Okay,” he said, loosening his body and straightening up. “But Mom, don’t ever sneak up on me like that again. Huh Huh!” He chopped at a mystery foe.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE NEXT MORNING after the kids had left for school, and still nobody was visiting the shop, AJ Lutz called to see if I’d cut his hair on a house call. AJ, Fletch and Cooter’s older, smarter brother, wanted me to walk to the Fish House. He’d avoided saying anything about Mac’s poisoning; this was Southern for I want to help you out. I carried the supplies bag for the short, scenic stroll that led past the grocery store and car parts place, then past two Victorian houses where the back cove sat. I could smell the salt sea tang. The air was slightly warm, gentle. I was suddenly suffused with happiness, transient though it often was. I’d left my hoodie at home, and the long-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans were enough. No cars headed towards town, typical for a Monday. Laughing gulls called overhead, in case I might toss them some fish heads, like fishermen sometimes did.

  I rather liked that they were trying to communicate, even if for food. Right now, the Gulf birds west of us needed room, sympathy and food. BP was currently setting off cannons to scare the shore birds from the shores of Louisiana where they’d be covered in oil if they landed looking for food. Not to mention being poisoned.

  Pelicans and seagulls perched on old dock pilings out in the hushed cove. I passed a few herons and egrets that stood in the oyster beds picking meat out of the shells. In some ways, this place had not changed much since Europeans had discovered the continent. In others, we had managed to compromise all of life here.

  The heavy bait scent hit when I knocked on the front door of the Fish House. AJ had haircuts about three times a year. He didn’t fuss over his appearance, but he had the manners of a nineteenth-century English gentleman. He didn’t schmooze around the bars every day, and he worked hard for a living. The closed sign hung in the door window. Through the shop glass, I could see inside. Cases sat empty. Normally, they displayed the raw oysters, shrimp, stone crab claws, red fish, and the catch of the day. People had stopped buying seafood. AJ came to the door and took off his baseball cap. He opened the door and bowed slightly, squinting at the sun.

  “Miss LaRue,” he said, nodding, beckoning me in. “Nice morning, ain’t it?”

  “How’re you, AJ?” I said. I automatically circled him, inspecting his hair, picking and fluffing the crown. “Looking healthy,” I said. His hair, though fine-stranded, was dense and chocolate. He stood still while I felt the back of his hair. I suggested we find a chair.

  “Out yonder,” he beckoned. He shuffled behind the counter and guided me to the rear, where two weighing machines hung. He pulled up a chair and sat by the dock at the inlet where the fishermen brought boats to weigh and sell their catch. The late morning sun beamed on us.

  “Just do the usual,” he said, as I fastened my barber’s cloak around his neck. He must trust me, I figured, as I pulled out the hair-thinning shears. He
re I was with sharp implements where no one could see us. And AJ didn’t even have a mirror to look as I did the cutting. “Thanks for the business, AJ,” I said as I began to thin his hair.

  “I wouldn’t leave you stranded,” he said. “You and me, we go way back. I know you didn’t poison no Mac Duncan. Bunch of foolishness.”

  “Does it worry you that there’s somebody out there who’s, you know, trying to poison people?” I said.

  “Nah,” he said, waving his hand. “I’ve seen some stuff. Once in a while there’s somebody dies. You know that, LaRue. Some of them around here, they got some enemies.” He chuckled. “Fletch and Cooter’s my brothers, but I’ll tell you what, they both got their hands full.”

  “Yeah?” I said, shaving the back of his neck first, opposite the way I was taught. But it cleaned things up so you could see the landscape.

  “Cooter, now he’s got the most problems, seems to me,” he said. “It’s one thing to have your wife kill herself like Trina done on Fletch. Sad. Real sad. But—” He shrugged. “Cooter, he’s got a wife wants to kill him!”

  “Mary?” I said.

  “You didn’t hear about that?” he asked, turning around to look at me. I shook my head no. “Mary, she ended up in the nut ward up in Gainesville ’cause she took a knife to old Cooter.”

  “A knife?” I asked, putting the shears away and pulling out the scissors. I felt like Old Testament Delilah. I wanted to hear Cooter’s brother’s version of the story. “Why a knife—I mean, why did she try to kill him?”

  “Some fight over this baby thing,” he said. “She’s always wanted a child, and they can’t get one. Seems he can’t. She claimed she was pregnant, though.”

  “She tried to kill him ’cause he can’t get her pregnant, but she was pregnant?” I said.

  “Well you know she’s a drunk, LaRue. Like half the people on this island. Me, I love to have a drink, get loose, go over to the Rusty Rim and sometimes even to the Hook Wreck and dance, but not every damn day.” I mentally counted, realized I’d been drinking every day lately. What the hell, holiday season, I thought.