Sea Creatures

by Susanna Daniel

  It was Marse who stepped in. “I’d love to have one,” she said. “She was so talented.”

  Lidia continued to look at Charlie without blinking. He stared at his lap and covered his mouth with one hand. Marse went to the closet and pulled down a suitcase and opened it on the bed. She brought down a stack of sweaters, then started to pull blouses and dresses off hangers and fold them neatly in the well of the suitcase. Lidia started to help but I didn’t move.

  “Is this okay?” Marse said to Charlie. He nodded, and they continued. Trip by trip, the closet emptied.

  I felt a presence behind me and turned to find a man staring into the room. He had very light blue eyes, short dark hair with a graying cowlick, and a long, rectangular face with heavy jowls, though the rest of him was fit. He wore a short-sleeved plaid shirt tucked into tan pants, and black leather slippers.

  “Good afternoon, Anthony,” said Charlie impatiently.

  The man nodded to Charlie. To Lidia and Marse, he said, “What are you doing?”

  Lidia stopped. “We’re packing Vivian’s things, Anthony.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Lidia looked at Charlie, who shrugged. “Is there something in particular you’d like to have?” she said to Anthony.

  He opened and closed his mouth. “Her pillow.”

  Lidia looked again at Charlie, who was staring out the window. She went to the head of the bed and took one of the pillows there. I moved out of the way, and ended up squeezed between the dresser and the wall.

  Anthony hugged the pillow to his chest. To me, he said, “You’re her daughter?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” said Charlie.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not,” I said to Anthony.

  Anthony looked back at Lidia. “Perfume?” he said.

  “No,” said Charlie.

  Anthony gave a soft whimper. “Her reading glasses, then. The purple ones. Please.”

  Lidia looked at Charlie, who said nothing. She went to the bedside table and brought back a pair of bifocals with a red beaded cord. Anthony took them carefully in one hand and continued to clutch the pillow with the other. No one spoke. Then Charlie stood up, saying, “Enough.” He stepped to the dresser—we locked eyes as he went—and reached toward several squat bottles arranged on a mirrored tray. He hesitated. “Which one?” he said, speaking to Anthony but looking sideways at me.

  “The pink one,” said Anthony.

  Charlie seemed to know which one Anthony would choose. It was the least full bottle. He sniffed it almost imperceptibly before handing it over. “Could you leave, please?”

  “Thank you,” mumbled Anthony.

  Lidia patted his shoulder and he walked away. She went back to packing.

  “I meant all of you,” said Charlie.

  Lidia dropped a sweater into the suitcase. “We’ll come back after the service.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Charlie. He held his hand up to his face, to shield it from sight. Marse and Lidia left the room, but I stayed behind.

  “What are you doing here?” he said to me.

  “I brought Lidia.”

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He glanced toward the open doorway, as if afraid of being caught, then reached for my hand. I was certain the ladies were just beyond the doorway, possibly listening. I kneeled beside the chair. His hand was cold in mine, the skin papery and dry. He took it away, touched his jaw with his fingers. “I wish you hadn’t come,” he said gently.

  “Why?”

  “It’s odd, seeing you here.”

  “It’s odd seeing you here, too.”

  This was true. I’d never seen him on solid land. It was as if he’d grown several sizes in his clothes and needed more air than the room could provide.

  “Were you here when she died?” I said.

  He nodded. “Riggs loaned me his car. After I got here it was only another hour or so. She didn’t know who I was.”

  “Maybe she did.”

  “Don’t be a child.”

  I blanched.

  “Damn it,” he said. “I apologize.”

  “Was it horrible?”

  “Not particularly. Yes. It was quiet.”

  I thought of my mother’s death, which had not been quiet. “That’s better,” I said.

  “I held one hand, Anthony held the other. It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. But I hadn’t seen her in a year.” He seemed to have trouble catching his breath. “So if I knew it was coming, how come I’m so—so—”

  “I know.” My mother’s death, which had been inevitable for more than a year, was as shocking as a multicar pileup. I said, “You should let them pack up. It will help.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I can stay with you.”

  “No. Go.” Up went his hand again, blocking his face. I touched it with my fingertips. I closed the door behind me as I went out. Lidia and Marse were in the hallway, looking abashed. We walked to the car without speaking. The service was still an hour off, so we went to a diner. Marse and Lidia each ordered a slice of pie, so I ordered one as well.

  “He’s a mess,” said Marse.

  To Lidia, I said, “Why do you hate him?”

  “I guess I don’t, really.”

  “Why did you send me to work for him?”

  She took a small bite and chewed slowly. “I knew Vivian wanted someone who would be good to him.”

  “Vivian did?”

  “She’d been so fond of your mom. And when you said you were moving back—well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “And now?”

  She pursed her lips. “She worried about him, all those years. I never understood it.”

  Marse signaled the waitress for more coffee. “Poor Anthony,” she said.

  Lidia and I looked at her.

  “What?” she said. “He sort of lost a wife, too.”

  “He has a wife,” Lidia said. “She lives in Atlanta. Their son runs his business.”

  “Henry Gale,” I said, making the connection for the first time. So this is how Charlie and Henry had met, linked by the inappropriate yet innocent coupling of their loved ones.

  Lidia was smiling.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was just thinking about your father. Viv did not care for him. She thought I was crazy for marrying him, knowing how things had been with your mother. People can be wrong. And people can change, at least a little, which sometimes is enough. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

  “I didn’t think you were crazy,” I said.

  “I’ve always liked that about you.”

  THE SERVICE WAS IN A chapel not far from the rest home. Marse and Lidia and I sat in a row filled with women, some of whom I recognized from Lidia’s backyard klatches. Lidia nodded to them or kissed cheeks. But then she went up to sit with Charlie, who until then had been the sole occupant of the front pew. Behind him sat Anthony Gale and a man with a helmet of thick black hair: Henry. I stared at his profile until he turned toward me. He gave a small, festive wave, then shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes a little, as if we were in cahoots. That someone was glad to see me was a great relief. When he turned away, he put his arm around his father’s shoulders, which were shaking. I hadn’t known, until putting two and two together that day, that Henry had a deteriorating parent. Sometimes I forgot that other people’s parents can die. I wasn’t even sure how Graham was handling his mother’s death. The time I’d asked, during a brief phone chat, he’d seemed a little impatient with the question, as if he was tired of talking about it, or as if there was so much to say that there was no point even getting started.

  Lidia and one other friend gave eulogies. Lidia told a story of driving to New Orleans with Vivian when they were nineteen, then talked about raising their kids together, then called Vivian one of the most resilient people she’d ever met. There was a photo of Vivian propped beside the lectern. In it,
she wore a white blouse with a skewed collar, a rope of salt-and-pepper hair blowing across her neck. She shaded her eyes with one hand and smiled coyly. She looked like a European movie star. Normally, I found this kind of woman—beautiful, glamorous, graceful—off-putting, so I avoided looking at the photo, lest it spoil me on Vivian, who I now thought of protectively, as if I’d known her well.

  My eyes drew to the back of Charlie’s head, and I thought of the afternoon two weeks before when I’d trimmed his hair. He’d begged me, handing over the clippers. I had no experience, and had worked so slowly that he’d nodded off in the chair, his head jerking away from my hand.

  Vivian’s body would be taken back to Miami, so there was no trip to the cemetery, but the reception was back at the Palms at Park Place, in a hall that had likely seen hundreds of replicated gatherings. Coffee urns percolated noisily in the corner beside trays of crudités and squares of cheese and dry bricks of brownie. The wallpaper was gold-and-burgundy filigree, the furniture scuffed brass and worn maroon velvet.

  Marse and I sat in the corner. “I need a nap and a glass of wine,” she said, slipping off her heels. Then she straightened up and put her shoes back on. “I’ll be right back.”

  Henry Gale found me. He sat and balanced a plate of food on his knee and offered to share it. We both ate from it until it was empty. I said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “It’s going fast. But not fast enough for him to miss this.” He waved a hand. “He’s like a widower. And my mom’s up in Georgia, playing bridge on Tuesdays and golf on Thursdays. She’s kind of a widow, too.” It seemed the notion had occurred to him for the first time. His cheeks above the dark beard were as pink and smooth as a child’s. He stared at his own hands. They were large, fleshy hands, the palms faintly lined. I had the urge to take them in my own, but I kept still.

  I said, “I loved the last batch of portraits. You’re very talented.”

  He blushed. “Charlie’s the artist. I’m just a technician.” He cocked his head, regarding me. “I’ll tell you a secret—I’m a little drunk. My father keeps a bottle of Scotch in his room, but he’s forgotten it’s there.” His smile, engulfed by the abundant beard, was wry and sad. His shoulders slumped. “That’s not nice of me, is it? Vivian was very nice.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  Marse came back with two paper cups and handed one to me. They were filled with sweet-smelling white wine. “Anniversary celebration next door,” she said, scanning the room. “Vivian would’ve hated this. At least the old Vivian would have.”

  She looked Henry up and down, then introduced herself. She was older, but I could see them hitting it off, in an opposites-attract kind of way.

  “I’ll be around,” she said to him, then crossed the room to a group of women, who parted to greet her. Nearby, Lidia was telling a woman in an apron that they needed to bring out more brownies and paper cups.

  “Your friend,” said Henry, motioning with his chin toward Marse. “Single?”

  “Go for it,” I said. I brushed crumbs from my lap and excused myself.

  I checked first in Vivian’s room. The door was open but the room was empty. I continued down the hall, then pushed open the heavy fire door to the stairwell, thinking I might find some back exit to a garden or lawn, but instead I found Charlie. He sat on a cement stair, slumped against the wall. He’d removed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt. His hair was a little askew, as if he’d run his hands through it without brushing it back into place. The lighting was dim and the air was cool. I was not at all surprised to find him there, in the least public place he could find. He looked as if he’d been returned to his own body.

  “Nice service,” I said.

  He wiped his mouth. “I didn’t speak.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  I said it to myself as much as to him. I hadn’t spoken, when it had been my turn. My father had left the podium expecting me to take his place—he’d choked up while speaking, which had surprised me—but I’d just sat still, feeling the cold wood of the church pew against the backs of my knees, thinking about driving to Key Biscayne in my mother’s car, her hair electrified by wind, her expression resolute, hands at ten and two o’clock on the wheel. She’d hated to drive, especially in traffic, which in Miami was difficult to avoid. Usually I drove; why I hadn’t on the afternoon of this particular memory, I had no idea. Maybe Graham’s aversion to driving hadn’t turned me off, as surely it had many women before me, because it was familiar.

  “She wasn’t so perfect,” said Charlie. “We build people up for this kind of thing.”

  “Of course she wasn’t perfect,” I said.

  “When Jennifer died, she closed up. She blamed me.”

  “I doubt that’s true,” I said, thinking that Lidia seemed to believe the opposite. But how much could Lidia know about what went on in their marriage?

  “She hated me.” He looked up, a hint of cruelty in his eyes. “She said I’d dawdled on the way to Jenny’s, that I’d lingered over coffee. She said I’d been putting off spending time with my child.”

  This hit me. It sounded like something I might have said to Graham, had I been in the habit of saying such things. But if something happened—something like what had happened to Jennifer—maybe I would say it.

  “This is a dead end,” I said.

  He clenched his teeth. “Fuck her.”

  “Take a drink, please.”

  He took a long swallow from my cup, then handed it back. He slapped his palms on the step, and the sound echoed. “Get me out of here?” he said.

  Then it was the two of us I pictured speeding away with the windows open. But when I moved toward him—I was going to give him a hand getting up—he pulled me down, so I was kneeling one step below where he sat. He tugged on the front of my blouse and I tipped toward him, and then his mouth was on mine. His whiskers were rough against my chin, his hands rough in my hair and on my neck. We tasted of the cheap wine. He cupped my breast with one hand and my waist with the other. Then I felt him lose heart. I tried to draw him back, but he pushed me away.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Stop. Stop, Georgia.”

  I pivoted away from him, breathing hard. I touched the places on my face where his stubble had scrubbed my skin. The weight of what I’d done started to press on me. I said, “I’m married.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  His tone—mournful—reminded me that this wasn’t about us at all. I stood up, smoothing my skirt, and before I knew it I was back in the carpeted hallway among the watercolors and elevator music. He did not follow or call out for me. I waited outside the reception hall until Lidia and Marse emerged, and together we went upstairs to gather the rest of Vivian’s things. There was no sign of Charlie.

  It was almost dark by the time we packed the car, and before we hit the interstate, Marse directed us to look up at the gossamer lavender clouds. She was one of a distinct sect of born-and-bred Floridians, people who couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, like my father.

  “I gave that Henry Gale my number,” said Marse.

  “Good for you,” I said.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror: Lidia’s forehead was pressed against the window. Marse went on about Henry and I half-listened. After I dropped off Marse, Lidia didn’t bother to move up next to me, and we didn’t speak. Maybe my guilt was visible, a film on my skin. At Sally’s house, I moved Frankie into his car seat without waking him, and Sally yawned and said she wanted to keep him for her own. When I hoisted him out of the car in Lidia’s driveway, Lidia rubbed his back and looked at me with her sad eyes. “Muchas gracias,” she said finally, then turned away.

  I guess he hadn’t taken a key when he’d left, because Graham’s body took shape in the darkness as I struggled down the lawn with Frankie in my arms. He was standing on the dock, looking out at the canal with his hands in his pockets. His hair reflected the moonlight. The sight of him made my
heart race and my face heat up. He turned when he heard my footsteps, then reached to take Frankie from me. He kissed Frankie’s hair, shushing quietly. I unlocked the sliding door and waited outside. I picked up a piece of paper from the table and strained to make it out in the low light coming through the glass. It was another citation from the City of Coral Gables. This time, they were giving us ten days to vacate, or they would confiscate the houseboat.

  When Graham came back, he collapsed into a deck chair and pulled me onto his lap.

  “You’re back?” I said. I motioned to the citation. “And I guess we’re out of here.”

  “Apparently,” he said, letting his eyelids drop.

  He rested his head on my chest. I brushed his hair with my fingers. “You’re home?” I said again.

  He nodded against me and sighed heavily. He didn’t need to tell me that something other than love for his family had driven him off the ship. I knew this well enough.

  That night, Graham slept, and I went to the roof deck and watched the surface of the canal shudder in the breeze. It was well after midnight. I figured that if the neighbor woman had taken a swim that night, she’d long since finished. But then I heard the whispering pull of her stroke, and I stood as she hauled herself out of the water.

  “Hey,” I hissed.

  She spun around, pulling her towel tight. “Yes?”

  “Did you call the police about us?”

  She waited a second before answering. “It’s against the law,” she said.

  “There are alligators in this water, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she said.

  16

  DID I BETRAY MY OWN son?

  What happened next, I’ll tell quickly, because it’s difficult for me to do any other way.

  Graham was back, loaded down and heavy-lidded with the weight of whatever had happened on the R. V. Roger Revelle. He didn’t offer details, except to say he wasn’t needed back at work for a while. I didn’t press him. We kept Frankie home from preschool the next day and spent hours at the zoo. Frankie jumped and spun and made faces and pulled on Graham’s hand and laughed aloud at his own silliness. His bliss was beautiful and difficult to watch. He and Graham spent a long time studying a gaggle of baby penguins in a glass incubator; they giggled each time one of the sleepy babies tripped or yawned. Graham tried to get Frankie to say what he wanted to do for his birthday, which was four days away. Did he want to learn to ride a bike? Did he want a cake in the shape of a sea animal? Frankie spoke but not a whole lot, and Graham looked a little spooked, but terribly proud, each time.