The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  “But this isn’t social. So the rule doesn’t apply, see?”

  I said, “It’s not business either, though. Or is it?”

  Amanda was sipping her tea, hands very steady, eyes and eyebrows showing just above the rim of her glass. “It’s neither,” she said. “What it is is personal.”

  She had handed me a sheaf of letters, all of them getting brittle and yellow, they were that old. Written on airmail onion-skin paper, so they were slightly brittle to begin with.

  As I leafed through them, she said, “He wrote my mom almost every day. That’s how much in love they were. The whole time he was in Asia or wherever he was. Those APO return addresses, you’ve got no way of knowing. But he mentioned Bangkok quite a bit, so that’s what Mom figured. And he mentioned you. Your name’s in there a lot.” Amanda looked at me, let her eyes linger for a moment, then looked away before adding, “One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you was so you could maybe tell me more about my dad. About where you two were when he was killed, what you were doing. It’s weird, but, my own father, I know almost nothing about him”

  I said, “I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Maybe more than you realize.”

  “My pleasure. And Tuck said something about you having a problem. Maybe a favor to ask.”

  “That’s why I brought the letters, because I wanted you to see how I came to know about you. So … what I’d like you to do now is read this—” She carefully unfolded another letter, placed it in front of me and tapped a paragraph midway down, knowing the letter so well she didn’t have to read it again because she knew where the paragraph was. “This will tell you why I’m imposing on you. Why I went to the trouble of finding you. Because, well, I had to. It was like it was an order from my father or something. Go ahead, take the letter and you’ll understand.”

  It was very strange reading words written by a friend who had been dead for nearly twenty years. About the dead we often say that their spirit remains in our hearts. But that’s seldom true. Not really. We abandon the dead as quickly as our emotions will allow, and Bobby had been dead for a long, long time. Now here he was speaking to me from paper that his hands had touched, through ink that was a direct conduit to what he had been thinking and feeling at that time.

  I could picture him hunched beneath a gas lantern, jungle moths fluttering around, writing. I’d probably been there when he’d put it on paper. Yeah, I probably had. Now his words created a voice that resonated as if it came from his own mouth:

  … Gail, darling, there’s something else that’s been on my mind. I don’t know why, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve mentioned my buddy Doc a couple of times in these crazy letters of mine, but what I want you to have is his whole name and how to get in touch with him just in case. I’ve been asking him for a week, but the stubborn bastard only just now told me where he can be contacted back there in the world. Here it is, I think it’s the phone number and address of some relative—

  What followed was the address of Tucker Gatrell, Mango, Florida, just south of Marco.

  I looked up from the letter and turned to Amanda, who was staring at me, watching me read. “I remember your father bugging me about it now. He wanted a permanent address. A hometown address, he called it. So he could always get in touch. I’d completely forgotten that he’d asked. This is really weird.”

  “Keep reading,” she said. “It’ll seem weirder.”

  … Don’t go getting superstitious on me, babe. That’s not why I’m telling you about Doc. I’m not going to die over here. I don’t know why I’m so sure, but I am.

  But what I’m thinking is what happens if you or Mandy ever get in trouble when I’m not around? Like you always say, I’m a worrier. But that’s why I want you to know about Doc. This letter makes it official. You get in trouble, Doc’s the guy to call. I’m talking about the kind of trouble where the police or a lawyer can’t or won’t get involved. Like a spot where someone’s giving you problems or scaring you or taking advantage of you—something I’d normally handle. Or maybe someone’s trying to take advantage of Mandy, like some asshole boy. That’s when I want you to contact Doc.

  Maybe I’m being silly, but you two are the only girls I got, and I always want someone nearby you can count on. So no screwing around, you talk to him. You can trust him, take my word for it. Let’s just say the man has special skills. If he can’t handle it, then he’ll know someone who can. And when Little Miss Mandy’s old enough, I want you to tell her the same thing. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, not to guys like Doc and me. After what we’ve been through, a couple of decades or so don’t mean a damn thing….

  I removed my glasses, cleaned them with a paper napkin, then fitted them back over my nose. “I see what you mean,” I said.

  She was leaning toward me, voice lower, intense. “It’s like he knows. Like he’s talking to us. I found these letters not quite two weeks ago, and that’s just the way it seemed.

  Like he knew exactly what was going on.”

  “He called you Mandy. A nickname.”

  “I guess. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about him. I used to pretend I did; made stuff up, but it’s because I wanted to believe I’d known him at least for a little bit. Daddy.”

  “It’s been nearly two decades,” I said.

  “That’s why it’s so weird.”

  “Because he mentions it in the letter—that time won’t make any difference to me? Or because you’re in some kind of trouble?”

  Amanda thought for a moment, not looking at me before she said, “All of the above.”

  “The problem is, I think something’s happened to my mother. She took off with a guy and now she’s disappeared.”

  I said, “What?”

  “Gail, the woman in my father’s letters, my mom. She’s been gone for nearly three months.”

  “Do you mean that she went away on a trip and you haven’t heard from her? Or do you mean she’s vanished?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I came looking for you. Maybe both.”

  “Then you should be talking to police, not me. Or the FBI.”

  “I already have.”

  “Then you are serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious. Why would I say such a thing? I haven’t seen her or spoken with her since early February. And it’s been more than a month since I got a postcard from her. My mom would never do that. She wouldn’t drop out of sight like that unless something was really wrong. When I explain it you’ll understand. Coming to you is about the only thing I haven’t tried. I mean, who else am I going to ask?”

  After I’d listened for a while, I thought: Who else, indeed?

  Amanda had trouble telling a story sequentially—most people do—so I interrupted occasionally to keep her on track or nudge her off lengthy asides. Mostly, though, I just listened. You have to let people tell stories in their own way. Take all the pieces apart, rearrange them neatly, and here’s what happened: After Bobby’s death, Gail Richardson was so devastated by grief that she sought professional counseling. “This was in Lauderdale,” Amanda explained, “and Mom had to find a counselor that was approved by the VA. They’ll only pay for certain ones and Mom ended up with Frank Calloway. I was so young at the time I really don’t know for sure what happened, but what they told me later was that Frank treated her for the next year or so … nearly two years, I think, and he gradually fell in love with her. When he realized his interest in Mom wasn’t just professional, he sat her down to explain why, ethically, he could no longer be her psychologist, but ended up asking her to marry him instead.”

  Gail, widow and the mother of a very young daughter, did not accept right away. But Frank persisted and, slightly more than two years after the death of her husband, Gail became Mrs. Frank Calloway. Within months after that, Amanda was legally adopted.

  “I don’t think that Mom was ever in love with Frank. Not like she’d been in love wit
h my real father, anyway. Read the letters and you’ll see the kind of passion they had for each other. That’s pretty rare.” Amanda allowed a reflective, cynical beat before adding, “These days, in fact, it’s almost nonexistent. But I think my mom’s a realist. She knew how tough it’d be raising me on her own, and I think she came to feel real affection for Frank. She certainly came to be dependent on him. She looked to Frank for everything. Financial security, emotional approval, the whole works. With some men, I think they’d rather have that than love.”

  “It sounds like you’re not a big fan of your stepfather.”

  “He’s not my stepfather anymore. He’s my mother’s ex-husband.” “You don’t like him.”

  “I respect Frank. At times I even find him likable and entertaining. But he never pretended to be my real father. No, with Frank and me, it was … it was more like a business arrangement. I think we both knew we had to accept each other or risk hurting my mother. Even when I was very little I can remember thinking that. It was the only way to keep my mom happy, and we both loved my mother very much.” She paused for a moment, remembering how it was, before she added, “You said my dad, my real dad, had a picture of me. Did he ever show you a picture of my mom?”

  I nodded. He had. Yes, he certainly had.

  Bobby had carried a couple of photos of Gail. One, I couldn’t remember much about … a busty teenage Latina girl in shorts and a T-shirt? Yeah … posed in front of some kind of fast car. A GTO, maybe or a 442. One of the popular muscle cars of the day. Essence of the American male from that period: dream car, dream girl, a bank loan and marital obligations implied.

  But the picture of Gail I remembered best was a glamour shot apparently taken by a professional photographer: haunting eyes, high cheekbones that created their own shadows in tricky lighting, long black hair with auburn overtones brushed as bright and smooth as a candle’s flame. It was the face of a starlet; one of the classic beauties from the forties. Imagine Rita Hayworth, but with Veronica Lake’s sleepy, secretive eyes, and you’d come pretty close to Gail Richardson.

  Bobby had called it his “‘Twelfth of Never’ photograph.” Which made no sense until one night, as I boiled coffee over a can of Sterno, tropic rain drumming down, he explained: “It’s because of the way she looks. Her face, her hair, the way her eyes look right into mine. It reminds me of the song ‘The Twelfth of Never.’ It’s our song, Gail’s and mine.”

  I said, “Huh?”

  “What‘a’ya mean, ‘huh?’”

  “I mean ‘The Twelfth of Never.’ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  At first, he thought I was kidding. Then he realized that I wasn’t. “Doc, you’re telling me you’ve never heard it? Not even on the radio? The Johnny Mathis song, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Nope. But it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been back to the States. Nearly four years, actually.”

  His expression was pained. “You’d have to live on the frigging moon not to have heard that song.”

  I was boiling the coffee, listening to the rain, looking at the blue flame of my miniature chemical fire: Sterno in the jungle. “The moon,” I said. “For the last few years, yeah. The moon, that pretty nearly describes the places I’ve been.”

  He said, “You’re serious. You’re really serious. Okay … you want to know what the song’s like? Look at my wife. The way her face is, that’s exactly what the song sounds like. Too beautiful even to describe. A thousand years ago, she coulda been an Aztec princess or she could be Miss Latin America today. You know what you can’t tell from that photograph? Her eyes; Gail’s got the most unusual eyes you’ve ever seen. Her right eye’s bright blue. Powder blue like those stones the Navaho Indians wear. Those stones … turquoise, that’s what they call it. But her left eye is green. Really deep green, jungle green. I look at her eyes and I know that there’ll never be anyone else for me but Gail. Like until the twelfth of never, get it? I mean forever.”

  Later, much later, when I finally heard the song, Bobby had been dead for, what, six months? Maybe a year. But listening to it, I’d thought about how right the man was. In his life, there had been only one true love. Gail. One blue eye, one green eye. And probably his toddler daughter, as well. Another girl with unusual eyes.

  Back then, I’d thought of them as Bobby’s girls.

  The only loves he would ever have. Just like he’d said: forever.

  To Amanda, I now said, “I never met your mother, but I remember the photos. She was a very beautiful woman.”

  “She still is. She’s in her forties, but the men—when she walks into a room?—men still stop what they’re doing and stare. She has that … I don’t know what you’d call it. That grace or something, it’s almost like an odor. When the two of us go into a restaurant or a lounge, she’s the one who gets the attention. But if I try to joke about it, like, Hey, Mom, they think I’m your younger plain-Jane sister, she gets this really hurt look in her eyes. Because she loves me, understand, and I think she’s always felt bad that she’s so much prettier than I am.”

  When I started to speak, Amanda held up her palm, shushing me. “I’m not fishing for compliments here, so you don’t need to offer any. I’m trying to make you see how it was with Frank and my mom. He wanted to possess her, and that’s exactly what he did. He possessed her, treated her like some kind of treasure. Which sounds great until you realize that treasure is nothing more than property with a specific value. There’s a Hindu saying that a woman’s face is shaped by her heart. My mother’s face is soft and kind and caring, but it’s not very strong. She let it happen, which isn’t uncommon for women of her generation. But she’s still the one who allowed herself to become completely dependent on Frank. And that’s why she was so unprepared for what happened last year.”

  What happened, according to Amanda, was a woman named Capricia and then a man named Jackie Merlot.

  4

  In terms of male behavior, the story of the Calloways is so unfortunately commonplace that you have to wonder about the validity of the human male as a lifetime mate. When Frank gave up his psychology practice, his land syndicate business blossomed, then it boomed. He kept his old secretary, a woman named Betty Marsh, and hired a second secretary to handle the growing workload. She was a twenty-seven-year-old former art student by the name of Capricia Worthington, “Cappy” for short, which Frank allowed a nautical interpretation, and so his name of endearment for her became Skipper.

  “I don’t know when the affair started,” Amanda told me. “I didn’t see much of Mom and Frank before the split up because my job keeps me so busy. I’m district manager for Vita Tech, a medical supply company. We’re based outside Pompano Beach, just south of Deerfield, and I’m almost always on the road. That, plus I share a condo with a girlfriend—a pretty nice place north of Lauderdale called Sea Ranch Lakes—so it’s not like I got by their house much.

  “But I remember this one time I was over there for dinner and Frank had this moony, distracted look. Like he had to really force himself to pay attention to what my mom or me said. Something else is, he gave Mom a couple of very pointed, well-disguised cuts about weight she’d gained and something about the way her skin looked, wrinkles, I think. My mom loves to lay out in the sun.

  “He’s very good at stuff like that, making criticism sound like it’s some harmless observation or a joke, but he really means it, and he knows how to make it hurt, too.”

  I asked, “Was it unusual for him to criticize your mother?”

  “About her actual physical appearance, yeah. She’s so beautiful, that’s what he loved about her. In every other way, though, he was a very demanding person. The way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she hosted a dinner party. Frank was always in control, and he let her know it.

  “He was never loud or vicious, but just sharp enough to make his point stick. Oh yeah—that night, he made some remark about her being too old to do something. Learn to play tennis, I think, but he gave it a sexua
l connotation, as if to imply she was letting him down in the romance department. I didn’t say anything, but I felt like smacking him. My mom’s so damn sensitive, I knew she’d spend the next couple of weeks eating nothing but lettuce and carrots and fretting about the way she looked. Yeah, she’d gained a little weight. She was forty-four years old, for God’s sake. But Frank didn’t like it, so he had to let her know it and, at the time, I remember thinking, Uh-oh, this marriage is in trouble.”

  It was indeed.

  Frank moved out and rented a penthouse beach condo just across from Bahia Mar Marina, Lauderdale. Capricia Worthington moved in.

  “I met Skipper three or four months after the divorce was final. Frank was having a house built for her at Boca Grande. New life, new home, new ocean, that was the thinking, I guess. Frank was being very modern and civilized about it all, so he and his young bride invited me to dinner. I accepted out of curiosity more than anything else. What did this woman have that made Frank act like such a complete dumbass? That’s what I wanted to find out.

  “So I found out. She has the body, she has the looks, but in an … artificial mall-girl kind of way. Implants and fitness classes, that kind of body. Meet her and you get the feeling that, if stores sold women, she’d be in the front window of Dillards. Something else, she’s totally New Age, but the Junior League variety, the kind that takes money to maintain. She said things like ‘The reason I prefer crystals instead of magnets when there’s a full moon is, I’m an Aries, but with Scorpio rising, so my needs and my sensitivity change just like the tides.’ The details may be off, but that’s the kind of stuff she’d say. Or she’d say, ‘I hope to do a couple of seminars in Sedona, Arizona, over the ski season and learn exactly why I’m lunar-sensitive more than solar-active.’ Buzz phrases. She uses all the newest buzz phrases. A real ditz.”

  “Sedona?” I said. “I have a friend who says Sedona is a major refueling spot for alien spaceships.”