by Anna Roberts
“It sounds...deranged,” said Blue, retrieving her t-shirt and pulling it on over her bikini. The clouds were starting to look moody.
“It was,” said Gabe. “Once Pops figured out what was going on he told my mom flat out that she should press charges for all the things he supposedly did to her. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is for allegedly sewing a live snake to your teenage daughter’s ass, but she didn’t call his bluff. I pretty much begged him to take him away with me and that’s how I wound up with Gloria; he said she was an old girlfriend and that she’d take care of me until he got his shit together and found us an apartment.”
“So he found somewhere in the Keys?”
Gabe shook his head. “No idea. I never saw him again.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Told you – he may not have been a devil worshipping, abortion guzzling baby rapist, but he was still a pretty fucking terrible parent.”
“That’s awful.”
“It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it.” He glanced up at the sky again and reached for the boat hook. “Anyway,” he said, with a wry grin. “That’s my damage. What about you?”
Blue sighed. They were always going to get there one way or the other. “Oh, you can probably guess,” she said, watching him untether the boat from the buoy.
He straightened up and pulled in the rope, standing as relaxed as if the boat were solid ground. She wondered if he would ever be able to do that.
“Katrina?” he said.
“Yep.”
Gabe looked wary. “And do you ever...you know...talk about it?”
“Not really,” she said, thinking of all those victim support groups that had been set up in high school. All of them full of sullen kids like her, sleeves pulled up over their clenched fists, arms crossed. What was the use in talking when all it did was remind you?
He nodded thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said, and that was all. Just let it go, just like that.
“My mom was sick,” she said, feeling like she should give him something. “Before it happened. Bipolar. And you know how great mental health care is for poor black single mothers.”
Gabe said nothing. Just waited for her to speak. She appreciated that. When you’d survived a disaster as well-known as Katrina a lot of people assumed that your story was public property. Something to keep the news tickers rolling, a fresh garnish of horror and outrage.
“This is gonna sound weird,” she said. “But in many ways I was ready for that storm. Not that I wanted it - I don’t mean that – but when you’ve spent your whole life being ignored and hindered by the people and the systems that are supposed to help you, then it just felt like more of the same. Only much, much worse.”
“I can’t even imagine,” he said.
“Well, it wasn’t pretty. We ended up in Houston for a while after, but you’d be shocked to find out how fast locals get sick of refugees. No matter what they’re running from.”
He pressed his lips together and she fancied she could almost see the question mark hanging over his head. The question he’d asked her on the beach, the one everyone kept asking. Why would you wash up in a place like this?
“You’re going to ask me what I’m doing here, aren’t you?”
“That obvious?” he said.
“You have a very revealing face.”
He laughed. “I’ve never heard it called that before.”
“I’m surprised. Are you any good at poker?”
“Nope. Terrible.”
“Thought so.” A wave caught her by surprise, knocking the smile off her face and the air out of the fragile flirty tone between them. “My Mom used to paint,” she said. “She wasn’t an artist or anything. Actually she wasn’t even good, but some therapist had suggested it way back. Even psychiatric professionals can get delusions of grandeur of about bipolar, like it’s some flip side to being creatively gifted in some way.”
“Like Van Gogh, you mean?”
“Exactly,” she said, remembering all those tubes of yellow paint. Yellow house, yellow flowers, yellow sands. Someone had once told her that orange was the color of insanity, but they were wrong. It was yellow, especially if you subscribed to the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
“She’d paint the same thing over and over again,” said Blue. “Only it wasn’t sunflowers. And she wasn’t a genius. She was just sick. She’d just paint this same beach scene over and over again – blue sea, yellow sands, palm trees. Sometimes she’d switch it up and paint it at sunset, or with the moon over the water, but it was always the same.”
“Did you ever figure out why?”
“Kinda. She had this thing about the Florida Keys. She talked about them to me like other mothers talked about Disneyland, but as far as I know she’d never even been there. She was always talking about going, but as I got older I learned to understand that when she started talking about Key West at a hundred miles an hour it meant she’d gone off her meds, and that she’d been off them for a while.” She looked up at the darkening sky and swallowed, determined not to cry about things she couldn’t fix. “I think the Keys were her idea of paradise. So in the end...” She swallowed again. “I brought her ashes here. Where she wanted to be.”
Gabe sat quiet for a moment. “Was it...recent?” he asked, like someone testing the water.
“Yeah.” Three months. Three months of feeling like she could float off to the moon every time she woke up and realized she was alone in the world.
She was sure he was going to say something else, but then the boat heaved beneath them, a gray-blue wave slapping up the side of the fiberglass shell. The clouds looked heavy and mean. “Best get in,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to be coming back out this evening.”
And with that the long conversation was over. You couldn’t very well shout your innermost thoughts over the sound of an outboard motor.
There was a tall figure standing on the little pier. As they approached Blue could make out a shock of blond hair and realized it was the plumber; the one with the strange Nordic-sounding name she could never remember. He was waving, and when they came close enough she saw that he wasn’t smiling.
“What’s up?” said Gabe, as he tossed him the mooring rope. “Gloria gone walkabouts again?”
Lutesinger – that was it – shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s Eli. He’s been arrested.”
Gabe, with his back to his friend as he tethered the boat, laughed. “Holy shit. For what? Pimping?”
“No. Murder.”
Gabe straightened up. “Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?” said Lutesinger, then glanced at Blue. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to curse; it’s been a long day.”
She shook her head to let him know that he’d caused no offence, but she was out of this conversation anyway. In all their lingering talk that afternoon, Gabe hadn’t mentioned anyone named Eli.
“How? Who? When?” said Gabe. “This is goddamn ridiculous. Eli couldn’t so much as cut the head off a snapper; I’ve seen him. He’s squeamish as shit.”
“Man, you think I don’t know that? They’re saying he murdered some woman up in Miami.”
Gabe scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “Holy shit. They’ve charged him?”
“I don’t know about charged, but...”
“Okay. We need to get up there. Call his attorney, if he hasn’t called her already.” He ran his fingers through his hair. There was a thin crust of salt at his hairline. “Oh my God. And who’s going to keep an eye on Gloria? Eli couldn’t even come through with that goddamn nurse...”
“I can watch her,” said Blue.
Both men stared at her with an odd combination of gratitude, relief and shame. “Are you sure?” said Gabe, after a brief pause. “She’s kind of a handful.”
Blue nodded. “I can cope.”
“Are you sure?”
; “Very. Let’s just say I’m used to dealing with challenging behavior.”
7
“Margaret?”
Blue, up to her wrists in dish soap, stiffened over the sink. So far she had been Teddy, Sadie, Betty and Jane. But not Margaret. At least not yet.
She heard Gloria’s slippers flopping and shuffling across the linoleum in the hall and then Gloria poked her head around the door. “Now here’s a thing,” she said, setting down a mason jar on the table. “To catch the conscience of the king.” She peered up at Blue and frowned. “Margaret,” she said. “How long have you been black?”
“I’m not Margaret,” said Blue. “I’m Blue.”
“So you are. When you are queen, dilly dilly.” She seemed to drift off for a second and snapped back. “Where’s Gabe?”
“He went up to Miami. Some business, remember? Why don’t you go sit down and I’ll bring you some tea?”
Gloria waved her off. “If I set down in that chair I’ll die in it,” she said, shaking the fingers of that hand as if there was some kind of goo stuck to them. “It’s in the air, girlie-girl. On the wind. You can catch a death if you sleep with your mouth open and I’m going nowhere.” She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down in front of the mason jar. “I need to fly.”
“Would you like something to eat?” asked Blue, knowing there was no point trying to follow Gloria’s thoughts. Just deal with the basics - food, water, rest, medication. Some minds couldn’t think clearly enough to keep the body alive.
Gloria shook her head. “Not me. You’re trying to weigh me down, Shiny-New. How am I supposed to fly with an ass like the side of a barn?” She got up from the chair again and came over to the sink. She was so tiny that Blue was looking directly down at the crown of her head. Blue glimpsed red under the gray-white hair and instinctively double-taked, but when she looked closer she saw that it was just a birthmark, a port wine stain.
“Where’s that skillet now?” said Gloria. “The big one with the bacon grease.”
“Oh...I cleaned that up.”
“Goddamit, girl. What did you go and do that for?”
“It was dirty.”
The old lady sighed. “You kids. Wasteful. You throw everything away. Toss out your telephones. Come in all colors and he can’t even see them.” She shuffled back over to the table and came back with the mason jar clutched in her small, papery hands. “Set that on the sill. I can’t reach from here.”
Blue took the jar from her. It was filled with some kind of pale liquid and what looked like nails and broken glass. It was warm, and her mind immediately reared back in disgust. “Oh God, what is that?” she said, setting it down on the window sill and plunging her hands back into the hot water to take away the unpleasant sensation of warmth.
“Piddle,” said Gloria. “Spit. Iron and glass. He’s not getting out. Not if I can help it.”
“I...I don’t think that’s hygienic, Gloria.”
But Gloria wasn’t listening any more. She opened a cupboard and took out a box of salt. “Coming out in the rain,” she said, shuffling off with the salt in her hands. “I’ll get ‘em.”
Snails? Was that what she was talking about? Blue followed her through to the ramshackle living room, where an old Led Zeppelin album was crackling on the turnstile, Robert Plant singing something about ringwraiths. The rain was all but bouncing off the roof outside and Blue wondered if she was really going to have to do this, to reach out and manhandle this fragile old lady to keep her from roaming outside.
“Gloria, it’s raining. Maybe you should sit down. Have something to eat. A nice cup of tea?”
Gloria went to the window, drew back the curtains and scattered a fistful of salt along the length of the windowsill. “He wants out,” she said. “But I don’t let him. Else he raises hell. I let that evil out once. Not doing that again. No sir.”
It was black outside, the rain streaking down the window pane. Blue could see the ghost of the room reflected back at them but beyond that very little, and with it came that uneasy feeling, when the lights are all on and you can’t see out. Lit up like a fishtank. “Maybe close the drapes now,” she said, stepping towards the window.
Something flashed white across the threadbare lawn. She jumped back with a small scream, but Gloria just looked quietly puzzled.
“There’s someone out there,” said Blue, her mind catching up with what she had just seen. A thigh, part of a torso, flashing past bare and white as bone. The record crackled between songs. Gloria took up another fistful of salt and moved towards the front door.
“Gloria, wait...”
But it was too late. She had opened the door.
There was a tall, thin figure standing there - white and naked behind the screen. Blue jumped halfway out of her skin but then as she drew closer and looked through the mesh, she realized it was just a kid, a gangling, naked stringbean of a boy, his hands cupped over his genitals and his hair plastered to his head with the rain. “In,” said Gloria, opening the screen door as if this happened all the time.
“What the hell is going on?” said Blue, staring up at the kid. His eyes were full of fear and confusion, like he had fallen out of a raincloud onto the sidewalk and had no idea how he’d got there. He was precariously skinny - a boy stretched to the full height of manhood like he was a piece of human chewing gum. At first she didn’t recognize him - his hair was lank and dark from the rain - but then he turned his head to look at Gloria and the shape of his profile sparked recognition. She had seen him before, standing over Stacy’s kitchen sink, eating a peach. Sitting in the passenger seat of his mother’s truck, texting and sulking.
“Axl?” Blue said.
Axl sniffed and shivered. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, in a voice that hammered home just how damn young he was. “I don’t know why...I don’t know...”
“It’s okay,” said Blue. “Let’s get you dry. Come on in. It’s okay.” A prank, she guessed. Kids were assholes. They had probably taken his clothes and tossed him out in the rain, for reasons best known to their selves. “Gloria, where do you keep the towels?”
Gloria looked at Axl and sighed. “Always the boys,” she said. For an awful moment Blue thought she’d wandered off into a world of own once more, but then she turned back down the hall and opened a linen closet set into the space beneath the stairs. “Towels,” she said, and puttered off, clutching her box of salt.
The hall light flickered as Blue approached the closet door, and Axl glanced anxiously upwards at the bulb. “It’s okay,” Blue said, and fished out a couple of large, green bath towels. She let him cover himself up and hurried to close the front door, hoping that they weren’t going to lose power on top of everything else.
She led Axl into the living room. The record was now in the middle of Stairway to Heaven and she later she remembered thinking it was strange that it hadn’t skipped or scratched when the power was interrupted. “What happened?” she asked, settling the damp, shivering kid in a patched and duct-taped recliner. “Did someone do this to you?”
Axl shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
Great. He was probably high. “Okay,” she said. Stacy was going to love this. “Sit tight. Get warm. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Blue closed the living room door and went back into the hall, phone in hand. Once again the light flickered, but she ignored it and dialed Stacy’s number. “Hey, what’s up?” said Stacy. A child was crying in the background.
“Don’t freak out,” said Blue. “But I think Axl was in some kind of accident.”
“What? How? Why? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. I’m at Gloria’s place. He was just...I don’t know...naked.”
Stacy made an irritated noise. “One second,” she said, and then Blue heard her talking to her toddler - “Caleb, if you don’t knock if off then no more candy. Ever. Do you understand?” – then she was back. “Okay. Did you say naked?”
“In the rain,” said Blue. “I saw him o
ut the window then Gloria opened the door and he was standing there, buck naked and soaked. I’m guessing some of his classmates played some kind of prank - ”
“ - guess again,” said Stacy, with another hiss of annoyance as Caleb once again settled into his sirening howls. “Does he look fucked up? Spaced out?”
“I guess...I don’t - ”
“ - I do. I heard there was molly doing the rounds in that school – you know, like MDMA? That or ketamine. Can you believe that shit’s back?”
“It is?”
“You’re probably too young to remember,” said Stacy. “Things I thought would never come back: stirrup pants, Jem and getting all fucked up on cat tranquilizers. Don’t let him go anywhere, okay? I’m coming round to kill him.”
“Okay.”
Blue hung up and glared briefly at the flickering light. If she wasn’t losing her mind then she could have sworn the thing was swinging gently, the moving shadows lending a queasy, seasick feeling that – being unexpected – was so much worse than anything she had experienced on Gabe’s boat.
Axl was still in the living room, shivering under his towels. The record had reached the end of side one but the arm had not gone back and the needle continued to hiss and whisper in a noteless groove that only served to underscore the steady sound of the rain.
“I’ll make you some tea,” said Blue, thinking it would probably make things worse if she told him she’d just called his mother. “Are you feeling warmer?”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
She went into the kitchen and realized why the sound of the rain had seemed louder; the back door was wide open, the tatty screen hanging askew. There was a stripe of wet salt across the threshold, leading her eye to the box that lay on its side, the cardboard already puckering in the wet.
Blue raced out into the rain and stopped short. Gabe’s car was gone and the dry spots beneath it were already as slick and wet as everything else out there. Other than the spilled salt, there was no sign of Gloria.