by Ronald Malfi
They kept walking.
—Chapter XVII—
They shuttled the Impala south toward Harbour Town. It was early enough to see the striped twist of the lighthouse on the water, the sky streaked bright and pastel, unbidden and illuminative. Even at dusk, the sea was an icy green, formidably glowing and crested with whitecaps. They ran along the shoulder of Calibogue Sound. Ensconced by a wave of curling wet palmettos, the roadway extended before them, frame after frame after frame, until it finally broke open, yawningly, then clung tight and fast to the edge of the water. They could see boats, sturdy and proud, grazing at the shore like cattle. Fishermen were in small johnboats hoisting crab-pots from the channel. More fishermen, darkly silhouetted, were coming through the pines, nets over shoulders, buckets in hand. It would be a strong, dark night: the sun was setting deep and far behind the clouds, already sinking down behind the other side of the island. Cold, resigned, Nick pushed the car down a swivel of narrow streets, steering them away from the water. The sound glistened with the setting sun; they watched it peel away and recede in the Impala’s rearview mirror. Land flat, the wide face of the beaches appeared over the salt flats and dunes, through the black swaying stalks of ocean reeds. A slanting wall of clapboard storefronts soldiered up on either side of the Impala. There were some people in the streets here, mostly collected beneath the awnings of the cafés and bistros, fly-like, congregating, moving together in swarms. They all seemed to be drinking. Emma took down her window. The air was breezy and cool, smelling strongly of the beach. It smelled strongly, too, of oysters wrapped in Smithfield ham and of the spicy smoked link sausage and shrimp used in the local bistros’ indigenous Frogmore stew. Driving, the wind blew Emma’s hair back from her face and Nick could make out the faint hint of a smile on her lips.
They parked beneath a forest of sodium lamps. Nick did not move at first, listening to the car’s engine tick down as it cooled. Through the Impala’s windshield, the narrow strip of sand that ran alongside the roadway was turning from pink to pale-bone blue as the moon crept across the sky. Ahead, a few men in tennis whites came through the pines.
“Will you teach me to drive?” Emma said.
He turned and watched the sun setting on her face. “You know how to drive,” he said.
“I’ve never driven before. Maybe you can teach me.”
“Emma—”
“I’ve never driven before,” she said. Determined. “Maybe you can teach me.”
“Oh. All right.” They were starting fresh. He’d forgotten. “All right. Later,” he said. “Tonight. After dinner.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he lied.
A spacious outdoor Japanese restaurant, determinedly festive with its green and red crepe lanterns dangling from a wire above the courtyard, called to them. They claimed a table nestled in the hug of azalea bushes. Prerecorded koto music played on hidden speakers. When the waitress came, she collected their orders with the incisiveness and mastery of a skilled musician executing a well-rehearsed solo, though the child was maybe fifteen, sixteen at most. Plum wine was served, an aperitif, along with a ceramic bowl of edamame, heavily salted. This close to the sea, the air was pleasant and fresh, and they could only smell the sea and their own food and nothing else could interfere.
“I’m going to have the smoked salmon,” Emma said. “Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
“Do it, sweet,” he said. The name, sweet, registered with both of them. It was the first time he had used it since things went wrong between them. Since the storm.
When Emma’s meal arrived, it looked handsome and neat, garnished with rings of purple onions and brown sugar, the salmon smoked straight to lox. He had miso soup before his meal and, with his plastic spoon, played with the tofu cubes in the broth.
“I’m thinking about going back to school,” she said after some time.
“For real? Since when?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about it.”
“What would you study?”
“History,” she said. “Some type of history. Maybe European history. Maybe art history.”
“All right.”
“I like the idea of someone writing all that history down. I like the idea of learning about what happened before we were ever here, and how it continues to change us. I want to learn about it, I think.”
“All right,” he said again.
“Or maybe poetry.”
“You’d be good at that.”
“Do you think so?”
“Sure,” he said. “You’re always reading it.”
“That’s true.”
“You used to love writing poems.”
“Do you think I should start writing them again?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Well, I’ve been writing a little, you know,” she said, watching her salmon. It was as if she feared it would flip right off the plate and somehow make its way back to the sea if she removed her eyes from it for even a second. “A little, anyway. Just recently.”
“Oh, yeah? When?”
“Sometimes when you go off to paint. Thinking of you being an artist makes me want to be one, too. Or to try, at least.”
“I’m sure you could do it,” he said. “I remember when you used to do it.”
“I like being an artist,” she said. “I like pretending it, anyway.”
“You’re not pretending it if you’re really doing it.”
“How do you know when you’re really doing it?”
“When you lie,” he said. “You know you’re an artist when you lie for the sake of your art.” He’d gotten it from Isabella Rosales. While he hadn’t fully agreed with her on this at the time, here, now, it made the most sense to him in the world.
“I’m not a good liar.”
“It’s a different kind of lying,” he said.
“Is it?”
“It’s the only good kind.”
“Can I ask you about the painting?” she said. “The mural?”
“All right.”
She said, “Is it difficult for you?”
“You mean because it’s taking me so long?”
“I suppose,” she said. She seemed embarrassed to have brought any of it up now.
“It’s all right,” he told her.
“I didn’t want it to sound insulting.”
He nodded with compassion, almost smiling himself now, and said, “It’s the first thing I’ve painted since coming back from Iraq. I didn’t know how hard it would be. I wasn’t prepared, I guess.”
“What is it?”
“I just can’t seem to fully focus. It keeps going off in different directions and I can’t seem to paint it straight, if that makes any sense. But it’s getting better, getting easier. I had a good day with it today.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I just meant—I mean, I thought it was difficult for you because of your hand.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t even occurred to him.
“I thought it was taking so long because it hurt you to do it.”
“Oh.”
“Does it? Does it hurt you to do it?”
He almost felt himself say it, but then concentrated on keeping his mouth shut. He looked at his own plate—beef domburi, rice, diced avocado cubes, the cloudy yellow miso broth—then, inevitably, felt his eyes shift to his right hand, his right arm. Holding chopsticks. In shirtsleeves, he could only make out the gnarled twist of scar tissue that navigated his palm, up over his thumb, around the back of his hand. He could not see it, but he was all too familiar with the way it trailed up his arm, spiderwebbing along his flesh. The visual was ingrained in him. Still, now, even in the cool (or maybe because of it), he could feel its faint, ghostly throb. There would never be an escape from the throb.
“I’m sorry,” Emma said quickly. She swallowed her words with a sip of plum wine. �
�I know you don’t like talking about it.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
This is like a feat, a dangerous balancing act. We can both feel it. Are we destined to live like this forever? he wondered.
“You’ve been different,” she said to him, knowing that she was treading now, treading carefully but nonetheless. Perhaps the tedium of the balancing act had gotten to her, too. “Since you came back, and even before we came here, Nick, to the island, you’ve been different. Is that normal? Is that what war does to people?”
“Some,” he said. “Some people.”
“You never say anything about what happened over there.”
“It’s not something you’d want to hear.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Well, it’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Was it so terrible?”
“Some of it.”
“But it’s over now,” she said.
“No,” he reminded her, “it’s not.”
“All right, no, it’s not. Not for everyone. Some are still there fighting, of course. But for you it’s over. Now, here, it is for you. Except for your hand, Nick, it’s over now for you.”
She would never understand, he thought. Not in a million years would she ever understand. Even when the war itself was finished and the last American soldier was either back home or buried in some mass grave on the other side of the world, it would never truly be over.
The too-young waitress returned with her automatic smile.
“Is good?”
“It’s very good,” Emma told the girl.
“Could we get some sake, please?” he said.
The waitress half-bowed, half-nodded, and slipped back into the restaurant.
Had he possessed the words, he would have attempted to relay to his wife what it had all been like, and how his own actions overseas had led him to his current state. He would have told her, too, of his recent delusions—the way the world seemed, on occasion, to twist spitefully out from under him, angry at him, laughing at him—and how it was becoming increasingly arduous to discriminate between the waking world and his own morbid dreams. Dreams—nothing more than an inventory of misplaced sensations. Dreams were reality and reality was nothing but a nightmare, a mocking nightmare. Not unreasonably, his days and weeks following his return from Iraq were plagued by a creeping sense of unease, and of an ill-defined breed of disillusionment. It was all new to him. He was a child, coughed from the womb and thrust into new life. Things had changed. Something from the war had trickled over into the real world, the working world. Somehow it had crossed the separation, traversed it like a physical causeway. He had brought it back with him. Was he prisoner to the past? It certainly seemed that way. Reality impeded, there was no truth to anything. Emma’s recent disclosure as a prime example, nothing fit and all was out of whack. Dreams? Dreams? Increasingly, he became more and more confused. Was this even real? Was the painting, the mural? What about the hotel? Was that even real, did it even exist on this plane?
And what was this plane?
No; he would never leave Iraq. He had died in Iraq.
As if summoned, breathed, ghostlike, Isabella’s face and shoulders appeared over the hedgerow of azaleas. Behind her like a halo, the moon hung fat and glorious. The sky had melted to a deep purple-black.
“My friends,” Isabella said.
“Well, hello,” said Emma, turning to look. “You look so beautiful!”
“Nicholas,” Isabella said, nodding at him. She came around the stone walk and paused at a dip in the hedgerow.
“Hello.”
Emma invited Isabella to eat with them. When Nick’s sake came, they all took a shot, toasting the cool weather and the beautiful island. The sake was warm and it was overly strong going down. Nick shot it and tried to keep his eyes closed for the ultimate experience. But with his eyes closed he found he could smell nothing but the scent of Isabella, and that made him quickly open his eyes.
Indeed, she was beautiful—darkly and dangerously beautiful. Looking at her, he suddenly felt like a child. With obvious deliberateness, he glanced away, but did not think either woman noticed his haste.
“Your meals,” commented Isabella, “they always appear so civilized. I love watching the both of you eat!”
Emma poured herself some more plum wine. She poured Isabella a glass, too.
“There have been people talking about your painting, Nicholas, back at the hotel,” Isabella said. Lifting the wine glass to her lips, she held it there, not tasting it, as if in a taunt. Her eyes were very dark and very large. Her black, luxurious hair was draped around her face, and she had a magnolia blossom propped behind one ear. He could not stop smelling her; she had become infused with the air.
“Well I guess I’m famous,” he said.
“We were just talking about the painting,” said Emma.
“Everyone is talking,” said Isabella. “It has become a topic of conversation at the hotel.”
“What have they been saying?” Emma asked.
“It’s been curious,” admitted Isabella. “Apparently it has left some of the staff confused.”
“Confused?” said Emma—who looked it.
“Something like a controversy,” Isabella added.
“Oh, that’s just silly,” Emma said. To Nick, she said, “Isn’t that silly?”
“I can’t seem to keep it straight,” Nick confessed. “Any of it.”
Isabella shook her head. “I do not know what that means.”
Placing one of his chopsticks flat on the table, he traced it with his finger. Said, “Straight.”
“How do you keep a painting straight?” Isabella asked. “I do not understand. This is artist talk?”
“Straight,” he said, turning away from her and looking out into the street. A number of people were moving across the boulevard toward the water. They all seemed to be laughing and talking loudly, having a good time. “Keeping with the line. It’s seeing the vision and following it through till the end. Walking the line.” He repeated, “Straight.”
“Straight-straight-straight,” said Isabella. “This is too much for me.”
It suddenly occurred to Nick that, in Emma’s presence, Isabella quite deliberately took on the role of the ignorant foreigner which, in reality, she was anything but. For her, it seemed the donning of a guise—a clever part to play. Nick knew Isabella understood more about the aura of art than he did, and he did not need to explain the straight-straight-straight to her. When alone with her, and without Emma, Isabella Rosales was a different woman. Thinking this now, though, made him feel that he was somehow boring a hole into Isabella’s façade which, for whatever convoluted reason, he did not wish to do, and so he hurriedly chased the thought away.
“Where is everyone going?” Emma asked. She, too, had turned to watch the people move down toward the beach. A busboy, determined to work a patch of dark fuzz from his upper lip into some classification of mustache, came to clear the table. Emma asked him where the people were going.
“Yes,” said the busboy.
“Yes what?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” said the busboy. “Yes.”
“Where are all the people going?” she asked again.
“Oh,” said the busboy. “Oh, yes. Yes.”
“Yes,” said Emma, and broke into a laugh.
“Yes,” caroled Isabella.
“Oh, yes,” said the busboy.
“Yes,” said Emma, still laughing.
Nick paid the bill. Then the three of them walked across the boulevard on the heels of the crowd. Isabella came in between them and took both Nick and Emma by one arm. Isabella laughed and sang while they crossed the boulevard, which made Emma laugh and sing, too:
What is the purpose of a bastardful man
Who beats all his women with a bastardful hand?
What is the purpose of a man without money
Who hounds after women for a taste of the honey?
/>
What is the purpose of a son of a bitch
Who neither is handsome and neither is rich?
What is the purpose of a drunk, loudmouthed fellow
Whose heart is stone cold and whose belly is yellow?
“Oh, that’s terrific,” Nick said.
“Tremendo!” bellowed Isabella, which set both her and Emma off again.
What is the purpose of a gentleman caller
Whose pockets are empty of even a dollar?
They crossed the boulevard and crested the grassy dunes that partitioned the roadway from the beach. The beach itself was a bone-colored strip of velvet against the bejeweled glitter of the sea. Many people had gathered down by the shore. Visible on the water was a lavish cabin cruiser with an exaggerated front deck. The cruiser was too far off to visually surrender its occupants, but perhaps the boat belonged to someone famous, because many of the people gathered at the foot of the sea were waving at the craft, swinging their arms high above their heads and shouting nonsense into the air.
“I could live on a boat like that,” Emma marveled.
“Could you?” Nick said.
“It would be the best way to have no home,” she said.
A blast of magnesium registered on the craft’s wide front deck and, an instant later, a bright pink streak of dazzling light soared vertical into the night sky. The sun had completely set now, and the fireworks were brilliant against the backdrop of night. As the display began, the crowd applauded. A few children ran ahead of their slow-roving parents and balanced themselves precipitously at the cusp of the sea, jumping and shouting and waving their thin, white arms with little fear of falling.
“I love fireworks!” Emma exclaimed.
Watching, Nick felt a weight lift from him and a gentle ease pervade his senses. The fireworks whistled and whizzed and popped. They reverberated in his chest. He felt Emma rest her head against him. Isabella did so, too, at one point. He betrayed no reaction. The cabin cruiser slowly drifted closer to the shore (either that or his eyes simply grew accustomed to the dark) and he could make out a few men onboard now. Occasionally, the men would wave back at the crowd. There were three men, from what he could tell. Purples, reds, oranges, greens, pinks—the bursts of colors brought into alternating relief the coast of Sea Pines and Harbour Town, as well as the blur of onlookers, the flashes of their shadows like the barely remembered fragments of dreams. He felt a hand gently at the small of his back. He did not know if it belonged to his wife or Isabella. He did not move to find out.