“Don’t sweat it,” said Paul. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
Paul was a pink-cheeked man, fleshier than Dennis but more muscular as well, with thick black hair that had started to recede. He and Dennis had sailed together during high school, and after graduating they’d spent six months together in Spain, traveling, and though this was a trip Dennis remembered fondly, they had not continued to be quite so close. I’d been around Paul many times, but almost always in a group setting—a dinner party, a luncheon at the yacht club, a day of boating with friends. He struck me as the type of man who believed himself more handsome and charming than he was.
Dennis gripped the throttle, his jaw sharp. The boat started toward the dock again. The engine sputtered as Dennis eased back on the throttle, then hummed as he shifted into neutral. I hoped our momentum would be strong enough to fight the tide until Marse had her chance.
She jumped earlier than I would have. Maybe my timing had been our problem all along. She landed on the dock with a slap and grabbed a piling for balance, then stood as we drifted away. “Here,” I yelled, throwing her a line. She caught it awkwardly, hands splayed at knee level, then wedged a foot behind a piling and pulled us in. I felt her pride, her sense of strength. The men hooted and I clapped. When the boat reached the dock, Paul stepped off and took Marse in his arms. Over her shoulder, he winked at me.
I unlocked the gate and sent Marse to unlatch the bedroom shutters and crank open the windows while I lugged the rocking chairs onto the porch. Dennis started the generator and retied Marse’s cleat knots, then lit the pilot lights on the refrigerator and stove—both of these ran on gas, and we used the generators as rarely as possible, for overhead lights—while I unloaded the groceries. On my last trip, Paul intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs. He took a bag from my arms and put it down. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He reached for my hand and held it between us. There was a shallow slice along the outside of my thumb, a ridge of blood. “You should get something on this,” he said. “It might get infected.”
“Yes, doctor,” I said. I meant to tease, but he glanced up sharply. “It’s nothing, really,” I said. There was a bead of sweat or salt water on his nose. Already, the day’s whiskers darkened his jaw. I wondered if he was the type of man who never shaved on weekends, if by Monday morning he would have a beard as thick as Dennis’s.
Paul picked up my other hand, examined it, dropped it. “Hand me that, would you?” he said, motioning to a duffel bag at the foot of the stairs. I turned and bent down for it. Paul had a way—I’d felt it before—of making me feel like I had a stake in giving him what he wanted. “Get something on that cut within the hour,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and he turned away, as if I’d been keeping him.
After dinner, we sat in rocking chairs on the porch, our legs perched on the railing, eight feet pointing toward shore. The world had gone from blue to purple, and the only lights in the sky were the distant windows of downtown Miami and the stars. Dark water stretched in every direction. I said, “What does everyone want to do tomorrow?”
Dennis’s hand was on my thigh. “I want to fish,” he said, stroking my skin with his thumb.
“Me, too,” said Marse. This surprised me. “And I want to swim.”
I collected the empty beer cans and took them into the kitchen. While I was inside, I saw the others get up from their chairs and move to the porch railing. I heard Paul’s laugh swell, and it was a wholehearted laugh, the laugh of someone relaxed. I felt the muscles in my neck and shoulders soften. Marse appeared in the doorway. “Frances!” she said. “We’re jumping—get your suit.”
“In the dark?” I left the beers on the counter and joined her. Dennis had a leg over the porch railing and held on to the roof with one hand. Next to him, Paul leaned out, scanning the water. Dennis swung his other leg over the rail and faced the water. “Here goes,” he said. He jumped.
We’d never jumped at night before. I held my breath and searched the black water until a notch of moonlight glazed Dennis’s wet hair. “Who’s next?” he called.
Paul took off his shirt and turned to Marse. “You are,” he said.
Marse was already wearing a suit, so she stepped out of her shorts and stepped over the railing. “Ready,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes on the ledge, and then Paul edged away and she jumped. Mid-flight, it occurred to me to hope she didn’t land on Dennis.
She didn’t. Dennis cheered her and together they swam around the dock, talking in breathy fragments. The tone of their talk was open and friendly, lacking subtext. “Our turn,” said Paul. He took off his shirt.
“Me first,” I said. But I wasn’t wearing my suit.
“I’ll wait while you change.”
“OK,” I said. But I just stood there. The humidity pressed against the back of my neck. I unzipped my shorts and stepped out of them, tugging on the hem of my T-shirt.
“Indeed,” said Paul, stepping aside. I climbed over the rail and watched Dennis and Marse as they rounded the dock. The wind lifted my T-shirt and brushed against my thighs. It occurred to me that afterward, I’d have to walk back upstairs with my shirt wet against my skin. But it was too late to change my mind. I jumped.
The water was warm. I swam under the dock to the ladder, where Marse sat on the lowest rung and Dennis held on with one hand. After cheering me, Dennis went back to talking with Marse about sharks in the bay. Marse was saying she’d seen tiger sharks and hammerheads, but Dennis said he had seen only nurse sharks. “It’s the same as with anything else,” he said. “They’re more afraid of you.”
Paul jumped and swam to us, then challenged Dennis to a race around the dock. They kicked away in a splash of elbows and ankles, dark heads bobbing. Marse sat down on the ladder, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Do you want to get out?” I said.
“I don’t know.” She looked off. “You two usually sleep on the porch, right?”
The burden of hosting returned: Were there enough clean sheets? Would Dennis’s snoring keep everyone awake? I said, “I usually do, but Dennis likes to sleep inside sometimes, when it’s windy.”
“I love sleeping outside.”
“I can sleep inside with Dennis.”
“Or we can all sleep on the porch.”
The idea gave me pause. How widely apart would we space the mattresses? Would I be able to sleep with them beside us? If Marse had been with us alone, without Paul, I wouldn’t have thought twice. There was practically nothing I wouldn’t share with her. She’d been the one to first bring me to Stiltsville, after all—she’d introduced me to my husband. Over the years we’d shopped and cooked and exercised and boated together, and though she was not typically a person who fawned over children, when Margo was born she’d bought a slew of books and outfits and stuffed animals, and had come every weekend to hold the baby while I catnapped on the sofa. Margo called her Aunt Marse, and had believed until recently that Marse, like Bette, was a blood relation. Every few weeks Marse picked up Margo and strapped her into the backseat of her car, and they spent the entire afternoon together. When Margo came home, breathless with tales about their day, Marse smirked at me, as if reminding me that although I was the mother, she had license to buy the kid both ice cream and cotton candy in the same afternoon, then drop her off and drive away.
A few years earlier, we’d started a tradition of lending the stilt house to Marse’s extended family for a long weekend every summer. We’d cautioned them about the electric eel beneath the dock, and a couple of years passed without incident, but then Marse’s cousin Warren, a college student, had dove down with a machete and chopped off the eel’s head. Marse, who hadn’t known about Warren’s plan, apologized to us, but Dennis told her very calmly that although she was like a sister to him and he expected her to continue to treat the stilt house as her own, her family was not welcome there again. To my surprise, he kept his word. The eel’s severed head dried atop a piling for weeks, unt
ouched by the pelicans that bothered our lobster traps, until I was sick of how angry it made Dennis and how lonely it seemed, perched there with its raisin eyes and bald head, and I knocked it into the water with the back of my hand. When I did this, Dennis closed his eyes for a moment, as if in eulogy.
There was a flurry of splashing. Paul and Dennis rounded the dock, heading toward us with their heads in the water. This had become, apparently, a serious race. Marse climbed the ladder and I followed. Marse called it. “Dennis had an arm’s length on you, Paul.”
“He’s got practice,” said Paul, breathing hard.
I went to get towels from the generator room, and when I returned they were standing on the dock, looking down at the water. Below—I didn’t see anything at first, but then I caught the flip of a fin—was the smooth, pale body of a manta ray. It flickered across the surface and beneath the dock. We stepped across to watch it, but it dove and was gone. I wished Margo had been there to see it. I shivered with longing for her—how well was she sleeping, without me or Dennis to tuck her in? Would she have nightmares? Would she have fun?
The swim had worn us out, and after the clamor of bedtime—brushing teeth and changing clothes—Dennis turned off the generator, and the house lights faded and died. We towed four mattresses out to the eastern stretch of porch, four salt-damp pillows and four white sheets. Paul slept nearest the railing—Dennis warned him not to roll over during the night—and Marse slept beside him. Then me, then Dennis. There were no boats in the channel, no voices riding the waves from other stilt houses. The night closed in. I lay on my side, facing Dennis, and listened to his breathing and the rhythms of the water.
I woke from the feeling of a hand moving in slow circles across my hip. The rubbing stopped when I opened my eyes; Dennis stared at me. His hand moved to my waist, then he pulled me to him and kissed me. His teeth grazed mine and his fingers moved under the elastic of my underwear. My blood warmed. He rose to his knees and looked beyond me, at Marse and Paul, then put a finger to his lips and gestured for me to follow. The soles of our feet made sandpaper sounds against the weathered wood floor. He paused in front of the door to the living room, looked in, then continued walking, to the western porch, where the wind blew loudly. I watched the movement of his hair, raising up and flattening again.
He pressed me against the porch railing and slipped off my underwear, which I looped around one ankle. I held the railing and Dennis held my breasts. The wind blustered in my ears when I faced him, so I turned away, and gradually my attention shifted as well, and I watched the boat as Dennis moved inside me. There was a liquid compass the size of a man’s fist on the boat console, and I imagined its needle jerking with every wave.
Dennis wanted my attention. Sometimes when he lost it, he let it go, and sometimes—this time included—he fought for it. He pulled out of me, keeping his hands against my hips. Then I was being pivoted, facing away from the house, with my hips squeezed against the porch railing and my torso pitched out over the water, holding on to the railing with both hands. He spread my legs with his knee and circled my waist with one arm, which was my cue, I felt, to let go.
That weekend, before leaving for Bette’s, Margo had packed five stuffed animals and a smattering of bedtime books and every pair of shoes she owned—four, total. I didn’t know how other only children coped with the long quiet hours, but Margo found ways to amuse herself—she put on performances for us, she tromped through the backyard, examining every stone and stick, and she sat coloring on the kitchen floor while I cooked or cleaned. She’d recently developed a habit of lining up her stuffed animals and talking to them as she puttered around her room. “Mimo,” she would say to her stuffed monkey, “this is where the toys go when you’re done with them. Nettie, this is where I keep my pajamas.”
The only other time she’d stayed at Bette’s overnight, she’d twirled so long on the swing in the backyard that her hair had tangled in the chains and Bette had been forced to cut her free. Her beautiful dark brown hair, chopped before I’d been ready—it had broken my heart. Margo was a somewhat serious little person and enjoyed the company of adults; Bette claimed to prefer conversing with her niece rather than with most of her friends. The plans for this weekend included visiting the Crandon Park Zoo—Margo had asked me to call her aunt ahead of time to make certain Mimo would be invited along—and swimming at Dennis’s parents’ pool, and baking cupcakes with Bette’s lover, a pastry chef named Daphne. When we’d dropped her off, Bette and Daphne had been arguing. Dennis had taken Margo inside to unpack while Bette and I stood on the porch. “She’s so stubborn,” said Bette. She blew a thin stream of smoke and handed me the cigarette. I checked to see that Dennis was out of view, then took it.
“What’s the problem with Daphne?”
“She has a bee in her bonnet about getting a cat. Imagine us, the lesbians and the cat. I can barely stand having people in my house, not to mention vermin.”
“Cats aren’t vermin,” I said, though I more or less agreed about them—I’d never had any affection for them, but this was something I’d learned to keep to myself, since most people thought cats were just great. “Lots of people have perfectly clean cats.”
“Plus, she keeps making these spicy Mediterranean desserts, and I don’t have the heart to tell her, but Frances, they are not good.”
I thought that probably Bette had told her, and more than once. “I try to imagine what Dennis puts up with.”
“What?”
I took another drag on the cigarette. “You know, when I’m annoyed with him. I remind myself that there’s plenty to annoy him, too.”
“For once you might just commiserate.”
“Sorry.”
Across the street, at a bungalow even smaller than Bette’s, a man walked to the street to check his mail. He had a life-size manatee mailbox, the kind with the manatee standing on its tail and holding the mail slot in its mouth. The man waved at us and walked inside again.
“That’s guy’s a poofter,” said Bette.
“Bette!”
“I know I shouldn’t talk, but my word—he sashays!”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Stop it.”
She elbowed me gently. “Seriously, though, I’m thinking of kicking Daphne to the curb.”
“Will you miss her? Will you miss anything about her?”
She thought for a moment. “Not the spicy desserts, that’s for sure.”
Daphne was the most recent in a string of girlfriends, the first of whom had been Bette’s diving partner, Jane. I’d met Jane in person only once, years earlier; as it turned out, she’d been a decade older than Bette, and married. She had salt-and-pepper hair and a large, patrician nose, and her angular, rawboned body had reminded me of a waterbird. She hadn’t smiled when she’d shaken my hand. After Bette had run out on her wedding, she’d seen a lot of Jane for a time, but then suddenly they didn’t see each other at all. The second woman who had come to occupy Bette’s attention was Delilah. She had crooked teeth and long, straight brown hair that might never have been cut. This relationship had ended for reasons I never knew, and it was not easy to recall the sequence of infatuations after that. Bette’s circle of friends now encompassed, almost exclusively, a certain ilk of women: feminists and artists. As for Daphne, Margo liked her, and even Gloria and Grady invited her to dinners and holidays, and everyone loved her baking, but I had never sensed an uncontrollable affection between them.
Bette had left her job at the Barnacle shortly after Dennis and I married. With her part of the inheritance from their grandmother, she’d rented a storefront in downtown Coconut Grove and opened a dive shop. She’d started small, organizing day trips and classes, but within two years she’d moved into a larger space and had a staff of six. It had been more than five years since we’d camped together at Fisheating Creek, and still her hair was cut very short.
After Dennis came out of Bette’s house—he was a little rattled at leaving Margo behind, I recall—we’d
gotten into the car, and Margo had stood waving happily at us from the porch, clutching Mimo and leaning against her aunt’s slender hip.
The package bobbed along while we ate breakfast, and every few minutes either Paul or Dennis walked to the window.
“Still there,” Dennis said.
“No sign of the pickup,” Paul said.
“Our detectives,” said Marse, rolling her eyes. “I say, call the Coast Guard and be done with it.”
“I agree,” I said, and received a sharp look from Dennis.
I’d barely spoken to Paul during breakfast, but afterward, when I was washing the dishes, he came up behind me. Marse and Dennis were on the porch, drinking coffee and keeping an eye on the Becks’ house. Paul took a plate from my hands and dried it with a dish towel. We continued for several minutes—me washing, him drying—without speaking. “Frances,” he said after the last dish was in the cabinet. “I thought maybe we could walk the flats while they fish. I don’t feel like fishing anyway, do you?”
“Not really.” I should have known Paul would be interested in the flats—he owned a plant nursery down south. “Did you want to go now?”
“Why not? There’s no wind, and the tide’s out.”
“Put on a T-shirt so you won’t burn.”
“Do I need shoes?”
I nodded. “There are some in the generator room. What size?”
“Eleven.”
“I’ll meet you down there.”
On the porch, Marse was staring through binoculars at the shore, and Dennis was telling a story I’d heard half a dozen times. “Right about there,” he said, guiding her binoculars. The buttons of his shirt were undone: Paul’s influence, I surmised. “Just off Gables Estates—those gigantic houses with the fake columns and the sculptures in the yard, those ugly houses.” Marse put down the binoculars and Dennis continued, “It just looked like a mannequin, to tell you the truth. That’s what I thought—someone had lost a mannequin in the middle of the waterway. I was twelve years old. My mother went crazy when she saw. She started cursing like a trucker. I’d never heard her curse like that. Fucking Mafia, she yelled. Fucking no-good sons of bitches, fucking drug-dealing pieces of shit. You would’ve thought she knew the guy. My father covered her mouth with his hand, and we drifted right by the body. I just stood there at the helm, watching it float by. It was a man, and he was twisted out of shape, like both arms were broken, and I could see one open eye, a bunch of bruises on his face. My father called the marine police, and they showed up in thirty minutes or so, and we went home. We had planned to go to the yacht club and get some sandwiches or something, but we just went home.”
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