Stiltsville

by Susanna Daniel

  Dennis slowed the boat before looking around, which gave me a moment to search the water for Marse’s orange life vest. I found her a ways back, in the dead center of the channel. Sit up, I thought. Show yourself. Dennis started his turn. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I looked away.”

  “You can’t look away,” he said.

  I pointed at Marse until he spotted her. Beyond her, a speedboat with a high red hull cruised toward us. “Hurry up,” I said.

  “I can’t,” said Dennis. “We’ll fly right by her.”

  When we were close, Marse waved, rising from the water, and as she did, the red boat adjusted its course by a degree or two, and there were twenty yards of water between Marse and the red boat when it passed her. Dennis and the captain exchanged gestures of greeting. We were supposed to be flying a flag—I know this now—to convey to other boaters that we had a skier in the water. It was the kind of rule that most boaters ignored, which made me frantic: it’s a terrific idea, that flag.

  “Were you planning to leave me here?” said Marse. She spat water.

  Dennis cut the engine. The boat’s shadow swallowed Marse, and I noticed how dark it had become. Orange sunset soaked into the horizon. “Sorry about that,” said Dennis.

  Marse held up her ski and I pulled it into the boat. Dennis reached to give her a hand, but she was unfastening her life vest. “You go on,” she said. “I’m going to swim.”

  The stilt house was about three hundred yards away. I had no idea how far a person could swim. “No way,” said Dennis.

  Marse handed the life vest up to me and, not thinking, I took it, but Dennis snatched it from me and threw it down to her. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Get in the boat.”

  “Don’t be such a bore,” said Marse. She kicked away from us, leaving the life vest behind. Kyle pulled it out of the water. Dennis started the engine and maneuvered until we were puttering along beside her. Her stroke was fast and smooth. She raised her face from the water. “Go away,” she shouted.

  Kyle stood beside me at the gunwale. “Marse,” he called, “I’m hungry. Get in the boat.”

  To Kyle, I said, “This is my fault.”

  “Not really,” he said, but I saw in his expression that he didn’t wholly trust me. Marse’s stroke had started to falter. The tide was probably coming in, canceling her efforts. She could have swum all night just to keep the stilt house in sight.

  “Dennis,” I said. I thought he should have been doing something.

  “She’ll get tired,” he said.

  “She won’t,” said Kyle. When Marse tilted her head to breathe between strokes, her face was very red. Quietly, Kyle said to me, “Tell her you’re sorry.”

  I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Marse,” I called, “I’m a lousy lookout—”

  “Not that,” Kyle said.

  I wondered if Kyle was particularly astute, or if I had been—if Dennis and I had been—particularly transparent. And I wondered how I’d gotten myself into this situation. Less than forty-eight hours from now, I thought, I’ll be back in Atlanta, thinking that I kissed a boy I barely knew and hurt a girl who’d been nice to me. “Marse,” I called again, “I’m going home tomorrow.” She slowed, then treaded water. “I’m going home tomorrow,” I said again, “but if you drown, I’ll have to stick around.”

  The tactic was plain; it embarrassed us both. “Big deal,” she said.

  “Get in the boat,” said Dennis.

  Marse looked away, toward Miami, then ahead at the stilt house, blue with evening. When finally she swam to the boat, her stroke had returned and her breathing was even. She sat at the prow without drying herself off, and Kyle sat beside her. They passed a beer back and forth and I watched them from the stern, holding my towel with both arms around my chest, clutching the solid, loyal edges of myself.

  Dennis’s father, Grady, had built his family’s stilt house in 1945, when Dennis was just two years old. The idea came from a local fisherman named “Crawfish” Eddie Walker, who constructed a shack in shallow water in Biscayne Bay and became legendary for the fresh chowder he sold to passing boaters. Grady had friends who followed Eddie’s lead. By the time Grady secured the funds and manpower to build his own shack, several more had sprouted, including a men’s club called the Quarterdeck. By 1960, Stiltsville comprised twenty-seven shacks, but then the Quarterdeck burned in a fire and hurricane Donna leveled all but six of the other buildings. Many of the squatters, including Grady, rebuilt, and the new houses were cottage-style, larger and sturdier, designed to withstand all but the most devastating squall. Then in 1965, responding to complaints from Key Biscayne residents who claimed that Stiltsville ruined their ocean view, the state of Florida issued private leases for plots of submerged land. After hurricane Betsy hit that year, fourteen houses were left standing, and the state stopped issuing new leases and banned commercial ventures altogether. Grady was, by this point, Stiltsville’s semi-official mayor—he kept the paperwork up-to-date and mediated grievances between stilt house owners and the state, or between owners and each other.

  Dennis was twenty-six years old when I met him, same as me. He’d lived in Miami all his life, as I’d lived in the Atlanta area all of mine. After graduating from college, he’d worked for a sailing company that hauled tourists on sunset cruises. He’d lived briefly with a girl named Peggy on a yawl moored at Dinner Key marina, but she’d grown weary of the waterlogged life and moved to Boca Raton to become a travel agent. He’d missed her for a long time. He’d quit his job and spent six months in Spain with his high school friend Paul, touring and living on fried fish from street vendors. Then he’d returned to Miami to attend law school, and moved into a small apartment on Miami Beach. He liked school but wasn’t crazy about the prospect of being a lawyer; he hoped an affection for law would come with the diploma. He knew Marse was after him and he liked her and considered having sex with her, but the thought of what would happen afterward made him feel unkind. He spent at least one weekend a month alone at the stilt house. On land, he studied in diners and took long drives at night, often ending up in the lounge of the Key Largo airport, where they served the best conch fritters in the state. Sometimes he thought about buying a house in Coconut Grove or Coral Gables—he couldn’t imagine living anywhere except South Florida—but he made no promises to himself. He liked his small beachfront apartment. He kept his bicycle unchained on the balcony and walked barefoot to the corner store. Once a week, he paid an upstairs neighbor five dollars to give him an hour-long Spanish lesson.

  That night at the stilt house, Kyle and I set the table for dinner while Marse changed clothes and Dennis used the boat radio to check the weather. The boats rocked against the dock; the blue-black water heaved beneath the house. The lobsters’ tails ticked against the steel insides of the giant cooking pot, slowing from desperate to resigned. I could taste and feel salt on my lips and skin. When we were finished, Kyle stared out the kitchen window toward land, where lights along the shoreline flashed like sequins.

  “I’ll be sorry to leave,” I said.

  He took a jug of water from the refrigerator. “You’ll be back.”

  In the bedroom, Marse was leaning toward the mirror, applying lip gloss. When she saw me come in, she turned her back to me and put both hands behind her neck, holding the ends of a red halter-top. “Do me up?” she said. I took the fabric and tied a bow. The backs of my fingers brushed her neck. “Not quite so tight,” she said. We looked at each other in the mirror. I admired the peaks of her collarbone, the hollows in her neck. The day before, at the wedding, her shoes had given her blisters—they were sling-backs, and new—so she’d taken them off and looped them around the strap of her purse so she wouldn’t forget to take them home. “You could forget your shoes?” I’d asked, and she’d said, “It’s been known to happen.” She’d greeted the bride and groom in her stockings, standing tall and straight-backed.

  “Marse—” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She shook he
r head and shrugged.

  I retied the bow slowly, leaving a little slack. “You don’t know me,” I said, “but if you did, you’d know that this isn’t like me.”

  She thought for a moment. “If you say so,” she said. “I believe you.”

  It would have seemed ridiculous to say what I wanted to say at the time: that I hoped we could be friends. I said, “I appreciate that.”

  It seemed we were both making an enormous effort to act like grown-ups. She tugged at her halter to test the knot, then turned to face me. We both looked at her torso—the fabric was in place, everything covered. “How do I look?” she said.

  “Lovely.”

  All at once, the room went dark and the generators stilled. She said, “He always does this for dinner. Saves propane.”

  Moonlight dove in through the windows, bluing the planes of her face. She led me into the main room, where the firelight from stout white candles made shadows on the walls. The room smelled strongly of garlic cooking in butter. Kyle and Dennis set down plates piled with lobster tails and filled cups with red wine. I watched their faces in the candlelight. They were easy together, chatting and teasing. Marse joined in. Dennis pulled out a chair next to him, and when we were seated, I toasted the most beautiful scenery south of the Mason-Dixon, and Dennis toasted adventurous southern belles. The meeting of Styrofoam brims gave off a squeak. Wine sloshed onto the table and no one bothered to wipe it up. Dennis’s knee brushed mine, then stayed there. Every so often I felt him looking at me. I cherished the sense of caged joy.

  The lobster was so sweet I ate it plain. Kyle told a story about walking with a girl on the beach at night and slipping on a jellyfish. He’d cried real tears from the pain, and the girl had stopped returning his calls. Marse told a story about her first day working for a district judge—she’d been waiting for the judge to get off the telephone when he’d picked up a steno pad and written on it. He’d held it up for her to read: YOUR ZIPPER IS UNDONE, said the note. SORRY TO EMBARRASS YOU. We laughed so hard our eyes watered. During a lull, Dennis said, “The wind is up.”

  “Aye, captain,” Kyle said.

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  Marse folded her long arms on the table. “Dennis thinks a storm is coming,” she said to me. I thought she winked, but it might have been the candlelight. “He’s about to tell us we can’t stay the night.”

  Dennis leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll check the barometer after dinner.”

  “Either way,” said Marse. “Just let me follow you in. I don’t know the way at night.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that we might stay the night. I hadn’t brought extra clothes. The boys went downstairs to check the barometer on the boat while Marse washed plates and I dried them. In the candlelight, without the thunder of the generators, the clatter of dishes punctuated the night. “Dennis is probably right about the storm,” she said. “He has hunches about these things.”

  On land, one looks toward the ocean to predict whether a storm is coming. From the ocean, one looks to the horizon. But the sky through the window was black, the stars cloaked by cloud cover. I wondered what it would be like to ride out a storm at the stilt house. We would refasten the boat lines and shutter all the windows. The doors would rattle on their hinges, and surely the roof would leak. How much weather could the house withstand? This was a question that would go unanswered for many years. We went downstairs and found the boys on the big boat, which lunged with every wave. “The barometer’s falling,” said Dennis.

  Marse stepped onto the boat. “How fast?”

  “Fast,” said Dennis.

  I stepped after Marse, but once I was standing in the boat, I didn’t know where to go. Dennis and Kyle and Marse were spaced out around the deck; I stood awkwardly in the middle. “Come look,” said Dennis, extending an arm. I followed him to the helm, and he positioned me in front of the steering wheel and stood behind me. If Marse and Kyle had been looking in our direction, they could have seen our necks and heads, but the console obscured our bodies. I put my hands on the metal wheel and jiggled it. It locked like a car’s. Dennis reached over my shoulder and touched a circular instrument in a teak case. “The most important piece of weather equipment on a boat,” he said. “A rise could mean strong winds or good weather. A drop means a storm.” He moved his hand to my hip. Then it seemed he wasn’t satisfied, and he pulled me against him, snaking his arm around my waist. “The quicker the drop, the bigger the storm.” I layered my arm over his. I could feel the rush of my blood, my beating heart. He spoke into my ear. “Come back with me. I’ll take you home.”

  I turned to reply, but Kyle called out from the prow. “Let’s go if we’re going to go.”

  Dennis released me. “Pack up,” he said loudly. “I’ll close the house.”

  Marse’s bag was upstairs, so we went to get it and I followed her from room to room, checking for forgotten items. Dennis and Kyle closed all the shutters and dragged the rocking chairs inside and locked the doors. Dennis pulled a gate across the stairs and secured it with a padlock. We gathered on the dock, and Marse stepped onto her boat and started the engine, and Kyle stepped onto Dennis’s boat. To Marse, Dennis said, “Follow me to the second set of markers. You’ll know the way from there.”

  “Got it,” said Marse.

  I hadn’t realized we weren’t all headed to the same marina. I felt a flush of resentment toward Dennis because he seemed to hold all the cards. He could come to Snapper Creek to find us, but we might be gone by then, or he could call Marse later to find out where I was staying. Or—what? He most likely would do nothing. He would drop off Kyle and drive home alone, wondering what might have happened. I started to say good-bye, but then I didn’t. I untied the stern line and climbed into Marse’s little boat. Dennis tossed aboard the bowline, watching me. We drifted from the dock.

  In the dark, Dennis’s body at the helm of the bigger boat was grainy and indistinct. We kept up with him for a while, trailing in his wake, but the water was choppy and soon it was difficult to distinguish wake from waves. I tried to keep an eye on his running lights, but I had to keep turning my head to avoid spray coming over the side of the boat, and eventually I lost track of him altogether. Marse shouted over the motor and the wind. “Shit,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  She pulled back on the throttle. The boat slowed, slapping hard against each wave. I lost my balance and grabbed the gunwale. Without stars, the night was black and suffocating. Not until we stopped could I even tell that it was raining. The fall was light but the drops were large and warm. Tropical storm, I thought. Hurricane. This toy boat, this floating saucer. I could barely make out the dark snake of shoreline. A minute later, in the thickening rain, it vanished entirely.

  Marse went to the prow and searched the darkness, then returned to the helm. With her wet hair and clinging clothes, she seemed to have shrunk. I shouted over the rain, “Tell me what to do.”

  She wiped her face. “Get up on the bow, hold on to the rail. Don’t let go. Watch the water, make sure we stay in the channel.”

  “What happens if we leave the channel?”

  “We could run aground. I don’t want to be out here in a storm.”

  I thought I could see her shivering. “Go slow,” I said.

  At the prow, I crouched low and held on to the anchor chain with one hand and the metal rail with the other. The water was a roiling black tangle streaked with white and gray, and I couldn’t judge its depth. Lightning flashed to the north. For an instant, I could see the whole Miami coastline, from the Everglades to Cape Florida, in one electric sweep. But then night fell again. Rain slid off my hair into my face. Every time I took my hand from the rail to wipe water from my eyes, the boat tipped and I stumbled. There was another flash of lightning, then another. I used the bright seconds to try to assess the depth of the water. The light silvered the slopes of the waves. “Frances!” called Marse. I couldn’t turn toward her without losing
my grip, so I looked up instead. Something ahead of us caught my eye: a red light. “Took you long enough,” shouted Marse into the rain.

  The red light approached, followed by the bright white of a boat’s deck, nestled in the night like teeth in a dark mouth. I stepped down and made my way to Marse’s side. Dennis’s boat came closer, and then we could make out the captain himself, a solid figure with one hand on the throttle and one on the wheel. Kyle huddled under a raincoat at the stern.

  Four weeks from that night, on a clear evening salted with stars, Marse would attend the Vizcaya gala in an enticing black cocktail dress, and Dennis would dance with her on the mansion’s limestone deck while I watched from our picnic spot on the grass. The heels of their shoes would click against the stone, and over Marse’s shoulder Dennis would meet my eye, and wink, and my heart would buoy. Dennis would say that love is like the electric eel, coiled wherever it happens to live, unflappable and ready to strike. We want to mess with it but we can’t. On that stormy night, though, as the big boat drew nearer, I stood so close to Marse that the rain skated off us as if we were one person, and when we raised our arms to wave, Dennis could not distinguish my hand from hers.

  1970

  Six months after meeting Dennis, I stood over the kitchen sink in his parents’ home, washing dishes. It was January. Beside me Dennis’s mother, Gloria, smoked a cigarette. She held it more than she smoked it, and it burned away in her pale, thin hand. Although her mouth was closed, every few minutes her jaw worked, as if she were thinking aloud to herself. She tapped the ashes into the sink. This was the house where Dennis had been born and where he’d grown up. I’d been given the tour months earlier, including the room Dennis had occupied as a child, where neatly made twin beds lay under thin navy bedspreads and a University of Miami pennant hung on the wall.