by Dilloway, PT
“Thanks, Pastor. That’s very helpful.”
“I’m glad I could be of service.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Of course. Ask away,” Pastor Robbins said.
“When God created the garden, how did he know what they would like?”
“That is another head-scratcher. The short answer is that He knows everything. The longer answer is that He created the environment Adam and Eve were born into. God created Man in His image, so what they wanted or needed was a reflection of what He wanted or needed.” The pastor stopped for a moment to take a deep breath. “Does that make sense?”
Max thought about what he wanted and needed. His parents. A real home. Eyesight. To be “normal.” Then he considered Sarah’s dreams. The picture she’d loved so much she’d waded into the ocean to retrieve. The empty house where she kept calling for her parents. To make her happy, he needed to give her the one thing he could never give himself: a second chance at life with her family. “I understand,” Max said more to himself than the pastor.
“Great. Are you ready to get back to practicing?”
“Oh, sure.”
The tape began playing again and Max followed along on the piano. As he struck the keys, he considered how to go about creating a family for Sarah. Before he could do anything, he needed to learn more about her family. What had happened to her parents and her brother? How had she ended up alone in Gull Island Hospital?
He would have to find someone who knew her. Henrietta had mentioned Sarah worked at the aquarium. Even if her co-workers didn’t know much about her, they might have some crumb of information that would be helpful. He couldn’t think of any other possibilities.
After he finished practicing, Pastor Robbins shook his hand. “Remember, tomorrow we start at eight o’clock. But don’t worry, no one’s expecting you to be perfect. You can’t replace Mrs. Caulkins in one week.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you need a ride tomorrow?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“Well, just in case, I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Let’s say a quarter after seven.”
“All right.”
The pastor released Max’s hand. “God bless you.”
“Thanks. For everything.”
“It’s my pleasure.” Max made his way out of the church and proceeded to the bus stop. Instead of heading back to Midway House, he rode the bus downtown. Only after he stepped onto the sidewalk did he realize his mistake. The noise of so many cars and people blended into a confusing tumult. The bus’s exhaust mingled with a hundred others to create an odor powerful enough to make his eyes water and his head spin with vertigo.
He took a step backwards and bumped into someone. “I’m sorry,” he said. He heard a mumbled obscenity and then the person disappeared. Max eased his cane out ahead of him, hoping he didn’t trip anyone. He found his way to the wall of a building, stopping there to regain his composure.
He had thought he could do this alone, but he needed help. He tapped his way forward until he felt the back of someone’s shoe. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you tell me how to get to the aquarium?”
“What are you—” The man stopped in mid-snarl. He must have turned around and seen the cane. “Sure, it’s right across the street. Do you need any help?”
“I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way.”
“It’s not. I work there. I just finished lunch.”
“You work there?”
“I’m a marine biologist.”
“Really? Did you know Sarah Gladstone?”
“A little bit. It’s too bad about what happened to her. Are you a friend of hers?”
Max tried to think up a lie quickly. “I knew her a long time ago. I heard about the accident and came to visit. I thought while I was here, I’d talk with some of the people who knew her.”
“I see. Like I said, I didn’t know her too well. Lucille spent more time working with her. Come on, I can show you around and then we’ll ask her.”
“Right. I didn’t get your name.”
“Ben. Ben Griffin. You are?”
“Max Caldwell.”
“Nice to meet you, Max. Here, watch out for the curb.” Max stepped off the curb and felt Ben lightly touch his elbow as they crossed the street. “Sorry if I sounded a little bent out of shape earlier. It’s been a shitty week. We’ve got a new killer whale coming in tonight and everything is going to hell in a hand basket.”
“That’s too bad.”
“You’re telling me. Try not to trip over this curb.” Max had already found the curb with the tip of his cane, but he knew most people tended to overcompensate in kindness when dealing with the handicapped. He’d grown used to it by now. “The front doors are right here. Let me get that.”
Max passed from the warm air of the street into the clammy air-conditioned climate of the aquarium. Ben steered him to the left. “I’d give you the whole tour, but there’s not really time right now. If you come back in a couple days, I could show you around.”
“Thanks. That sounds nice.”
“Anyway, we’re passing a tank of freshwater fish. Nothing special, just the typical trout, salmon, and so forth. Then we’ve got the tropical fish: goldfish, angelfish, clownfish, et cetera.” The freshwater display sounded almost empty from the way their footsteps echoed, but the tropical fish display was much more crowded. Max felt Ben’s hold strengthen as they waded through. “Since Finding Nemo, the kids are really showing up en masse. My daughter—she’s seven—didn’t care what I did until she saw that movie. Then she wouldn’t leave me alone with the questions. Now she thinks I’m Superman. Go figure.”
They passed through a set of doors and Ben said, “This is our new whale exhibit. Koo, our killer whale, is being sort of put out to pasture. She used to perform at Sea World, but she’s getting on in years, so we’re taking her off their hands. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, right?”
“Right.”
A woman’s voice said, “Ben, you know no one is supposed to be back here yet. Who is this?”
“This is Max. Max, this ray of sunshine is Lucille. She’s getting on in years too.”
“Nice to meet you,” Max said.
“You still haven’t explained why he’s here. The last thing I need right now is a reporter badgering me.”
“Max is a friend of Sarah’s. He wanted to ask a few questions about her.”
“Sarah? What do you want to know about her?”
“Mostly I wanted to know what happened to her parents and brother. I’ve been trying to get a hold of them, but I can’t find them anywhere.”
“Have you tried a cemetery?” Max took a step backwards at this and Lucille’s voice lost its edge as she said, “I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say. You know, getting Koo was Sarah’s idea. She worked at Sea World in Orlando for a few years. It’s too bad she can’t be here for this.”
“It is. So her parents and brother are dead?”
“As far as I know. Sarah didn’t like to talk about it much. She didn’t really talk about anything much. She kept to herself most of the time. There were some days, though, when she’d come in almost bouncing off the walls. Those days you wouldn’t want to get downwind of her. The alcohol on her breath would choke the life from you.”
Max thought of Sarah lying on the couch, a bottle of vodka clutched in her hand. That was the real Sarah, not the beautiful girl on the beach. But it didn’t have to be that way. He could not only give her a second chance with her family, but a second chance at life in general.
“I hate to talk ill of someone in a coma,” Lucille began, “but she brought that fire on herself. If she hadn’t wasted so much money on booze she wouldn’t have been living in that dump in Fishtown.”
“Sarah wasn’t that bad. Most of the time she kept her drinking under control,” Ben said. “And sometimes she didn’t. She was just unlucky that a fire started on one of those days.”
; “I guess,” Max said.
“Look, the person you really need to talk to is Gloria Winchell. She lived next door to Sarah and came in here all the time with the most awful lemon bars. She put so much lemon flavor in they would eat a hole right through your stomach,” Lucille said.
“Thanks. Do you have a telephone I could use?”
“There’s one in the lobby. Ben can show you. I’ve got to check the ph level in the tank again before Koo arrives.”
Ben took Max’s arm again and they headed back the way they’d come. “Lucille isn’t usually that bad. Ever since Sarah’s accident, she’s been a lot crankier.”
“She doesn’t seem to like Sarah very much.”
“Lucille got Sarah a job here after the incident in Orlando.”
“The incident?”
“They caught her naked in the dolphin tank.” Ben squeezed Max’s arm. “It’s not what you’re probably thinking. She was with some guy and drinking too much and fell in. Anyway, Lucille thought a change of scenery might get her to clean up her act, but it didn’t work. I think Lucille blames herself.”
“Oh.” When they reached a counter, Ben placed a telephone receiver into Max’s hand.
“What number do you want to dial?”
“Just the operator.” He asked the operator for the number of Gloria Winchell and then asked to be connected. The phone rang five times before a woman’s voice chirped a greeting. “My name is Max Caldwell. I’m a friend of Sarah Gladstone.”
“How wonderful! Are you calling from the hospital?”
“No, I’m at the aquarium. I was wondering—”
“The aquarium? I love the aquarium. The fish are so pretty. Sometimes I wish I was a fish.”
“Oh. Do you think we could meet sometime? I’d just like to know a couple things about her.”
“Sure, you can come by right now if you want. Oh wait, not right now. I’ve got a bridge game in thirty minutes. How about seven? No, Will and Grace is on then and I don’t want to miss it. I can’t get enough of that show, even in syndication. Don’t you think it’s the most hilarious show?”
“Sure.”
“Stop by at eight. I made a fresh batch of lemon bars.”
“Great. I’ll be there.” Max hung up and wondered what he was getting himself into. He couldn’t imagine a woman like that would have much useful information. Still, every little bit added another piece to the puzzle. He handed the phone back to Ben and said, “Thanks for all the help.”
“No problem.” Before Ben left, he touched Max on the arm again. “One thing you should know about Sarah: when she was sober, she was the best. If she’d ever gotten her life together, she could have run the whole place.”
Max smiled. Maybe she could run the whole place. At least in her dreams.
Chapter 12
Gloria Winchell lived in the oldest part of town, where the first residents of Gull Island had built cottages for fishing. The kids at school who came from Fishtown, as it was known, were always made fun of for being poor and smelling like fish. Since Alicia Hauptman had lived in Fishtown and her lips had the puckered shape of a fish’s, the other kids had called her “Fishgirl.” Max had never joined in on the name-calling, but he had never stepped in to defend her either. A needle of guilt pricked him as he wondered again what had happened to Alicia. Maybe she still lived in Fishtown. He tried to imagine a scenario where he bumped into her, but in his mind Alicia looked too much like Sarah.
“We’re here,” the cab driver said. Max reached into his wallet and paid the fare. He would have taken the bus, but he didn’t want to end up getting lost in Fishtown after dark. His parents had always warned him to stay away from there at night; murderers and drug dealers walked the streets after the sun went down. How could Sarah have lived in such a place?
He felt around the front door for a bell, but could only find a knocker in the shape of a seashell. He ran his hands over the clothes Lindsey had bought him from Wal-Mart. When he had emerged from his room at Midway House in the outfit, Mrs. Garnett had squealed, thinking he was going on a date. Max did nothing to dissuade her, figuring the lie better than trying to explain the real reason he was going to visit Sarah’s neighbor.
He wondered if he should have brought flowers or some kind of gift to thank Sarah’s neighbor for her help. Too late now, he told himself. He flinched as a car alarm went off nearby and wondered why she hadn’t answered the door. He reached up to knock again when the door finally opened. “Hello, you must be Max. You’re early. Oh, you look so adorable. I should set you up with my daughter.” Gloria Winchell’s laugh sounded like an old witch’s cackle and Max shivered at the thought of what her daughter must be like. “Well, are you going to stand there all night? Come in, come in.”
Only when he stepped through the doorway did she seem to notice he was blind. Her already loud voice went up further as if she thought being blind somehow made him deaf too. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You poor man. Here, let me show you inside.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him through the room. “You sit down here and I’ll be right back with some lemon bars and milk.”
Max sat down in an easy chair and felt tape along the arms. The room smelled like a mixture of cat droppings, kitty litter, and potpourri. A long-haired cat dropped into his lap and began to lick his fingers. He stroked the cat’s fur and wondered how many more of them lived in the house; one cat could not be responsible for that smell. “Buster, get off his lap!” Mrs. Winchell said. The cat’s claws dug into Max’s lap before it jumped to the floor. “That cat, he just makes himself at home.”
“It’s all right,” Max said.
“I’ve tried to train him, but he just won’t learn. Here you go,” she said, pressing a plate into his hands. “I’m going to put the milk right here on the table next to you.”
Max bit into the lemon bar and knew immediately Lucille had not been exaggerating. The citrus flavor made his entire face pucker and he reached for the milk glass to drown out the taste. “You like them? I can get you the recipe. I suppose it might be hard for you to read it, though. I don’t have a Braille machine or anything, although my sister is legally blind. She lost her driver’s license last year. I’m already up to bifocals, so I suppose it won’t be much longer before they take my license too.”
“That’s too bad,” Max said after swallowing half a glass of sour milk.
She sat down across from Max and said, “Are you comfortable in that chair? I found it in Mrs. Florentine’s trash about three months ago. Good as new after I fixed up the arms. The cats love sitting there. It’s like their throne. One of them will get up there and another will come along to knock her off.”
“It’s fine.”
“Good. So you wanted to ask me about Sarah? That was terrible what happened to her. The house was a total loss, which is too bad, because it had been here longer than I have. I visited her once in the hospital, but I really can’t stand hospitals. My mother was stuck in one for two years. It got to the point where I couldn’t get through the front doors without having to run to the bathroom to throw up. Oh, what a terrible thing to say when you’re eating. I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t touched the awful lemon bars again, nor the sour milk. He needed to get her mind focused on Sarah again. “I was wondering about Sarah’s parents. Did she talk about them much?”
“Not a whole lot. Her father was a cardiologist or something like that. Her mom was a politician of some kind. In the state senate I think, back in North Carolina. That’s where Sarah grew up. She moved to Miami for college, the University of Miami. My daughter wanted to go there, but I told her over my dead body she was going to sit on some beach instead of concentrating on her studies. I said, ‘I didn’t work two jobs for the last twenty years so you could fritter all my money away to work on your tan.’ I sent her to Washington State instead. She went into criminal justice. She’s going to be a policewoman someday. I told her not to write her old mom up for any parking tickets.” She unleashed another cack
le that made Max flinch. He faked a chuckle, wondering if this woman was senile or just scatterbrained.
“About Sarah—”
“Right, Sarah. She was a good girl. Drank a little too much sometimes. Like my husband. He never laid a hand on me in seven years of marriage. When he’d come home all liquored up, I told him to lay right down on the couch until he sobered. Then the night before Christmas he didn’t come home. It was the worst snowstorm ever. They didn’t find Darren’s body until the spring thaw. All winter I thought he’d come walking through the door at any moment.”
“I’m sorry,” Max said.
“You’re such a sweet boy. How long have you known Sarah?”
“I knew her in college. Back in Miami.”
“Oh, really? She was a beautiful child. I went over to her house one night to give her some lemon bars and saw a picture album. Her whole family was like something you’d see on TV. The Cleavers or the Bradys. Not my family. We were more like the Munsters.” Max steeled himself against another horrible cackle and faked another chuckle. “I never understood why she lived alone all the time. A girl that pretty should have been able to find someone.”
“She never married?”
“Not even a serious boyfriend, she told me once. The longest was something like three months, if you can imagine it. Not me. Darren and I started seeing each other in junior high. Twelve years we were together. I didn’t have anyone else before or since. Just didn’t have the time to look, having to raise Cindy and all.”
“What happened to her parents? And her brother?”
“Well, for the longest time she wouldn’t talk about them, especially her little brother. Then last Halloween I hear a knock at the door. I go out there with my candy dish, thinking its some trick-or-treaters and then I see Sarah on my porch, naked as the day she was born and stinking like she’d bathed in Jack Daniels.” She paused to cackle again, but this time Max was too shocked to even fake a chuckle. “I brought her right in before anyone else saw her. I said, ‘Sarah, what are you doing out there with no clothes? You’ll catch a cold.’ And before I even get her to the couch she starts crying.”