Cutting Loose in Paradise

by Mary Jane Ryals

  We’d reached my house, and I sneezed.

  “Uh oh,” I said, heading up the stairs. “Better get warm before this weather gets me.”

  I walked inside to a dark house and threw my keys and purse down and sat on the sofa, letting out a big sigh. I put my feet on the table. “What a night,” I said aloud.

  Something felt strange. I wasn’t alone. Fear bolted through me like lightning on water. I turned on the standing lamp beside me.

  There in the center of the room stood someone dressed in all black, including a ski mask. I screamed. He took off his mask. Taylor stood grinning.

  “What in God’s name—” I said, realizing I’d climbed up on the sofa. I jumped to the ground.

  “I’m getting good, aren’t I?” he grinned.

  “Mary, Joseph, and the baby—you just about scared me to death,” I said, sitting down.

  “That’s the point,” he said, strolling down the hallway.

  CHAPTER 22

  I SLEPT IN SUNDAY, and my head and belly spent the rest of the day reminding me why I didn’t do the bar scene anymore. I considered driving up to the cowboy bar past Wellborn and over to Southside Tallahassee to play a few pool tournaments and make some cash. But the freezing weather turned to all-day rain.

  The kids tiptoed around me for a change. Tay and Daisy promised to serve me lunch in bed and brought me tea and aspirin when I asked for it. For a split second, I pondered becoming a drunk full-time to get service like this. But I thought better of it when the lunch arrived. The toast was burnt, the eggs underdone, the coffee weak.

  MONDAY, AND THE COLD FRONT was passing by, making the world more bearable. But the ocean beyond roiled and the horizon was a yellow gray.

  An appointment with the school principal, a trip to Wellborn to hunt down a turquoise Ford, a pool tournament, and a hair appointment with an eccentric rich man—all looked as unpromising as being a sun bunny right now.

  Taylor and Daisy got up early, expecting perhaps that ole Mom had retired for good. I found them in the kitchen noisily making smoothies.

  “Taylor’s taking me to school today,” Daisy said with what came across as smugness. What I knew was that she’d bonded with him in a brief moment and was giving me the aloof treatment. In order to get on in the older world, she figured, she’d have to play the part of an I-don’t-care teen. I looked at Taylor.

  “I figured you could use the break,” he shrugged.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  As I made coffee for myself, I talked to Taylor about getting us all keys and locking up the place and leaving lights on when we left at night. “It’s easier to hide in the dark. With lights, I’d have to camo myself better,” he said.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said as he poured the thick juice and yogurt drink into a glass, “why you think you have to learn how to do this in the first place. Sneaking up on people, hiding in the dark, making yourself invisible.”

  “Mom, why do you always try to stop me from what I need to do?” he said. He and Daisy gathered their things to leave, and I sipped coffee. “I mean, other people do this. That cop guy you like must have learned it. Randy taught me how to do it. It’s not like it’s a crime.” Then they were out the door. I decided not to talk to him about the school meeting. Not all teenagers wanted to camouflage themselves and scare their mothers at night.

  IT TOOK A CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON to live here, I thought, as I stepped out of the door of Cutting Loose with a CLOSED sign over the door. Half the locals were avoiding the woman who may have poisoned the richest guy on the island. Main Street Monday morning, a breeze coming in from the north on the Intracoastal Waterway. More boats were bobbing in the slips on the pier than usual. This meant the water was rough out in the Gulf. I just hoped there wasn’t a tropical storm or a too-late hurricane brewing. What we all feared—that a hurricane could easily blow the oil straight into our part of Florida, completely destroying our lives with something simple as wind and water currents.

  I pushed against the wind up the street towards one-story tiny City Hall. Hollywood could have breezed in and filmed a cowboy Western in what seemed a ghost town. Except for the twenty-first-century cars parked next to shops and businesses on the street, the tough weathered balconies looked like Old West saloons and parlors and hotels. Up the hill, away from City Hall, Main Street wound around oaks hundreds of years old, then past old tall Georgian-style houses whose widows’ walks allow their occupants to gaze out across the Gulf.

  People came and went from here, but generally, we got along. Had to. Eccentrics, artists, swamp folks all agreed on this. We gossiped, fished, took life as easy as we could, working and playing hard, drinking hard, and some of us churching hard. We locals generally understood that we were the cash poor, and the tourists were the cash we needed to drive our place. We wanted them to visit. Fat chance now. Times were tough.

  This morning, the cafe was quieter than usual. I watched Madonna cross the street two blocks from City Hall and head my store’s direction, towards the local cafe. She waved, nodded, and crossed the street. It was time for a gossip session, even though I had to get to the school by eleven.

  Inside, it felt warm and sticky. Fishermen sat in the corner together. Booths lined the walls on the right, kitchen in the left back. Red and white gingham tablecloths covered each table, and plastic topped the cloths. Fake Wal-Mart flowers sat in the middle of each table. We made our way to our favorite booth, along the middle to the left side of the restaurant. I faced the door today.

  “I don’t trust Mac,” I said after AJ’s son poured us some bad industrial coffee. “This stuff will be the death of me,” I predicted, looking deep into the black liquid.

  “You’d better not say that too loud,” Madonna said, scanning the menu. “You’re theoretically the one who tried to knock Mac off with the exact same liquid, remember? I think I’ll have strawberry shortcake for breakfast.”

  “How do you stay so . . . voluptuous with your appetite?” I said. “Your hair looks great, by the way.”

  She shrugged. “Luck? So what happened with Mac?”

  I told her about my confrontation in Mac’s condo office. About the letter to ECOL from Trina and the information that I’d dug up in Mac’s real estate office. And how he’d politely sent me on my way.

  “Be careful, Rue,” Madonna said. “You don’t just go confronting people around here. This is a tiny town.”

  “I could also be facing jail time. And Jackson is tied up with some weird Santeria case. They found about a hundred birds on the big lake up there slaughtered, one wing torn off each. Animal sacrifice and refugees. He can’t help me right now.”

  Her eyes went to the doorway. “Well, look what the wind brought in.” she said. I turned around. Randy Dilburn, scanning the room, hands in his pockets. He saw us, and nodded. Waved at a few fishermen and sat in a corner alone.

  “Speaking of trust,” Madonna said, then waited while AJ’s son put the shortcake mounded with whipped cream in front of her. When the waiter left, she muttered, “I don’t trust that guy. I know you all think he’s hot or whatever, but . . .” She shook her head and spooned whipped cream into her mouth and licked her lips. “Something about him. Negative energy.”

  “You sound like a New Ager, Madonna,” I said. “Minus the positivism.”

  “He doesn’t talk to anybody. He lives in an isolated house on a lonely peninsula, and argues with Mary about politics—a true exercise in futility,” she drawled futility out for six syllables in her Southern syrupy way. She pushed her plate over to offer me some shortcake.

  “I had that ‘dinner date,’ if you want to call it that, with Jackson,” I said, spooning whipped cream into my mouth. “I just can’t date him right now. He’s so sweet to Daisy. But he doesn’t seem that thrilled about helping me with the case. And he doesn’t want to get into a relationship with a leading suspect when he’s working the case anyway. And I’m not ready for someone like him. I’m more attracted to Randy.
”

  Madonna rolled her eyes. “I heard Randy’s pretty hung up on his dead wife,” she said. “Gimme a break. That’s been, what, five years? And he’s got no sense of humor.”

  “Must be that Southern hardcore religious upbringing,” I said.

  She said she had something to tell me and leaned across the booth. “I was up in Wellborn picking up cleaning supplies for the bar and checked that address Jackson got on Trina’s car. Guess who’s name is on the mailbox?” I shrugged. “Parsons. The dude, the funeral home dude.” I put my fork down and sat back. She beckoned me to lean in. “I went past the funeral home on the way back to the islands, and that turquoise car sat in the back of the funeral home.”

  “Something is definitely up with that guy,” I said. “I can’t tell if he’s hiding something or if he’s just sinister. I need to go find out. What the hell would he have been looking for in Trina’s house? And why would he sneak out?”

  “You just be careful, LaRue,” Madonna said, pointing her spoon at me.

  After we ate, she got up with that body to die for and swished it in her cowboy boots and tight pants to the bathroom to primp. I didn’t even see Randy walk up, but suddenly he was beside me.

  I jumped, startled.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, a crease in his forehead. I told him it was okay. “Would you like to come out on the boat with me this weekend? I thought I’d run out to Seahorse Key, where I took your kids. They enjoyed it.”

  “They told me about the snake,” I said. He didn’t smile. “I was joking,” I said. “Yeah, why not? The kids . . .”

  “I meant, just us,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. I leaned my chin onto my hands so he couldn’t see my ribs—it felt like my heart was beating so hard, he couldn’t help but see.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, his face relaxing into an almost smile. “So why don’t you come to the house Saturday, say around nine o’clock? We can get a pretty early start that way.” I nodded. Madonna was back and had heard that last part. I didn’t look at her.

  “Sounds good,” I said. He nodded at Madonna, then turned and walked out the door.

  “Hmm,” Madonna said. “He’d been watching. Waiting to pounce while I was away,” she teased. “Why do you always go for these intense types?”

  “I can relate,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall opposite us. “And as for intense, at eleven, I have to go talk with the school principal.”

  “Daisy in trouble?” she asked.

  “No, you know it’s Tay. He’s behaving strangely lately. In school, too.”

  “For god sakes, he’s a teenager. Don’t tell me you didn’t act strange as a teen,” she said. Just then a big Pow! sounded outside in the street. Everyone in the cafe looked around at each other. The first thing we all thought about nowadays was terrorism, even on a little island like St. Annes. We all rushed to the door, creeping cautiously out to the street. Across the street, the whole block had darkened windows. People all along Main Street walked from businesses and looked around.

  Out came Tay from the apartment. Why wasn’t he in school?

  “Oh, boy,” I muttered to Madonna.

  Tay headed towards me. “Mom,” he shouted, his black headband on his long hair making him look like something out of the sixties. “I think the burglar alarm system I was putting in shorted out the street.” Great, I thought. He doesn’t even know he’s shouting, making a scene for this little town to freak out on. My son, who should be in school and is looking like something from the Black Panthers, has shorted out one whole side of Main Street.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” I asked as I met him in the street, keeping my voice low, hoping he’d catch on to keeping his down. “And where’s your sister?” People on both sides of the street were watching us. “What are you doing putting an alarm system in the house without talking to me about it?”

  “’Cause I’m trying to fucking protect us!” he shouted. “But forget it. I won’t.” He stomped off. He turned back around shouting. “My sister’s in school. I took her, ’cause we didn’t know if you’d still be lying around in bed!”

  “So much for not causing a scene,” Madonna muttered behind me.

  TAY SQUEALED HIS WHEELS as he left for school. The town maintenance guy, WH, began working on the electrical blowout. I’d have offered to help, but I had the school meeting to attend. I put on my jacket and walked to the one school in our little island town while I still had any dignity about me.

  The morning fog spilled over the island, so thick you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. The clouds made a sheet above. From Main to the school, people were having morning coffee, or were slumbering, or had already slipped out into their boats hours earlier. Soon, the fishermen would be eating eggs and grits at Rains down by the Fish House after bringing in their haul.

  Despite my appointment, I enjoyed walking up the hill through the old neighborhood with stately wood houses from the 1800s painted white with green shutters. Then the sharp-roofed turn-of-the-century Victorians, into the modest Depression-era bungalows and World War II block houses. Then past the old black churches and honky-tonks now converted to cottages.

  Up at Fifth and E Street, I saw Randy’s Honda hybrid parked by a house that had once been an African-American church at the southeast corner next to the last cove off St. Annes. I didn’t know who lived there, but morning was early to be out visiting. I glanced around, yet didn’t see signs of him, just the car. The inside of a car told you something about a person’s daily life. I slowed down and glanced inside the passenger side. A clean car, a pile of papers that looked like a deposition done on an Orlando defendant, and—I went numb.

  An ECOL envelope stuffed with something like what I’d stolen from Mac’s office. Randy wasn’t a member, was he? He could be representing the group. I tried the car door. Unlocked, of course. No one locked anything in St. Annes until lately. I opened the door, reached in and whisked up the envelope and slid it into the waist of my jeans in one fell swoop. I walked on without looking back. I would drop it back into his car tomorrow. He’d never miss it.

  Randy was handsome, well-off, and he could have dated any single woman on the island, aside from Madonna, that is. The Gulf breathed its huge-lunged tidal breath at the top of Sixth Street. I felt seasick. I was stealing from a guy I’d decided I might date. The early morning grew darker, thicker with clouds. Up ahead sat the school administration building, the color of gunpowder.

  FESTIVE WHITE LIGHTS blinked over the double doors of the entrance to the only K-12 school within forty miles. I pushed open the heavy door. In the glass trophy case of the entryway, I saw some blue ribbons, crinkled, and dusty. They’d sat in that horrible case since the 1930s. I turned right after dodging the school seal tiled into the floor. Back when I’d attended the school, kids could get a paddling for walking on the supposed sacred seal. Years ago, I’d leapt over it often.

  The lockers, putty-colored, displayed all manner of teen paraphernalia sticking out of slammed doors—shoe laces, pieces of rumpled paper, notes folded elaborately and stuck in the vents for the locker user to find. The waxy smell of cleaned cheap floor tiles shook up my school memories—often fun, and sometimes trouble.

  I walked into the first office on the right. Marge, the school secretary, pointed down a small corridor that ended to the left. From the doorway, I could see the long oval table. There sat the principal, Ms. Glick, medium height, distinguished, a nice pageboy shaped by an expensive cut from a larger town. Her jewelry was large and metallic and tasteful. She had that expectant look of one hoping to get a job in a real town and not look back.

  I hadn’t expected the other one, the youngish guy, the coach who’d played minor league soccer. Tay couldn’t stand him because he wanted all the boys in competitive sports. Tay preferred martial arts, competing with himself. I gave them both a weak smile and sat in the only available chair. The principal and coach smiled, nod
ded, said hello.

  “I thought—” I got out.

  “Ms. Panther?” Ms. Glick said. She knew my name. I hated officious behavior disguised as competency, especially in women bureaucrats, who seemed to have it down better than the men sometimes.

  “LaRue,” I said.

  “LaRue, we’ve been concerned over some behavior in your son Taylor’s classes lately,” the principal said. I noticed she didn’t offer her first name to me.

  “And out of class,” the coach said. His abruptness reminded me of New York where I’d done an internship in psychology after college. I’d felt trapped there. It wasn’t so much the people, curt and in a hurry, but the fact that I could not see more than thirty degrees of sky when I looked overhead. In a maze I couldn’t escape. Like now.

  “And out of school,” Ms. Glick said.

  “After hours,” said the coach, who Ms. Glick had politely introduced me to. He was tight as a barrel, a shiny, half-bald head.

  “Taylor and Daisy were close to Trina Lutz, is that right?” Ms. Glick said.

  “Yes, they were,” I said. “Since the . . . the . . . the divorce, they haven’t really had a grandmother to speak of. My mother—she died the day I was born.” They nodded sympathetically. Or was it pity? I hated telling people this, especially people who considered themselves a class up from me, because I was a hair stylist now. I had as much education as either of them, but the unemployment rate for higher degrees in English had astounded us all. Suddenly, an ancient wave of longing came over me. What would my mother have said to me today? Would she have invited me to the cabin out on the pond, made tea, told me it would all be okay? Would she have put her sixty-eight-year-old veiny and thin-skinned and tough hand over mine? I couldn’t know.

  On top of that, I remembered early days of being called TooTall, and aching for a mother who might tell me—well, whatever mothers tell their anxious teen daughters.