Reunion

by Therese Fowler

  “On second thought, just the Bunting,” she called.

  When the woman was out of earshot, Blue muttered, “No one can read minds.” Saying the words aloud gave them more weight, more reassurance.

  There was an easy explanation for what seemed like clairvoyance: When the woman knew the show was coming to town, she’d studied up on her Blue Reynolds facts, easily found on the Internet. Blue wouldn’t be surprised if there were sites devoted solely to birthdays of celebrities’ family members. The woman had recognized her when she came in, watched her while she looked around just now, and simply made a lucky guess.

  It had to be something like that. Her pulse slowed, but the sensation of vulnerability, like an aftertaste, remained.

  8

  itch encouraged his father to narrate their tour around the island, from fish market to grocery store to pie shop. Brenda, who found Daniel completely charming, was the ideal audience for a man who’d become a teacher because, he said, he liked to hear himself talk.

  “Turn left here,” Daniel directed, as they headed back from their last stop. “We’ll go give you a peek at Mallory Square, where some of the cruise liners dock—it’s impressive, the way they dominate the waterfront. The Enchantment’s about to sail, so things’ll be quieting down a little. You wouldn’t believe the circus, when these ships first put in.”

  Mitch didn’t bother to remind his father that he and Brenda had seen cruise ships before, that they had sailed on them twice with their spouses of the past. Those had been good trips, kicking around San Juan, spelunking in Curaçao … In the Bahamas, Brenda had loved the Royal Victoria Gardens, while Angie complained that she hadn’t gone to the Bahamas to see grass and trees, both of which were plentiful in Chapel Hill. She had a good point. Still, Brenda had seemed to bloom amongst the blooms there in Nassau. Her perspective was, Who had time to notice such things at home?

  And here was something he’d forgotten until just now: The next night, while he and Craig sipped whiskies in the ship’s casino, Craig had been compelled to tell him how versatile Brenda was in bed—on the night before, and in general. Uninhibited, as if all her study of Victorian morality had worked as a warning. “Whatever the case,” Craig said, elbowing him, “I’m damn lucky for it!” Mitch had been embarrassed; that kind of candor was for lesser men, for locker rooms and seedy bars. That said, he had to admit he now felt lucky too.

  “We’re on the northwest corner of the island here, and if we went down to the opposite end, on Whitehead,” his father was saying, “that’s where you’d find the southernmost point in the continental U.S. Now Hawaii, at about nineteen degrees south latitude, has the southernmost point altogether—I tried to compare them from the Shuttle on my final trip, just to see for myself, but the fact is, both are pretty much invisible from orbit.”

  Mitch glanced over his shoulder at Brenda, to see whether she’d noticed his father’s slip. She smiled at him and shrugged. She was a tolerant person, the type to take lemons (of which there were many in academia) and make not only lemonade but also lemon bars and lemon drop martinis. A good trait. He really did like her. He might even love her, the way you loved any friend who’d stuck by you for so long—which could become something more, sure it could.

  Would Craig sanction him and Brenda as a couple? Was he up there in English professor heaven nodding in approval? Mitch wasn’t the best of her prospects; while he was considered good looking, he wasn’t as accomplished or well-connected as some other single men he could name, which made him wonder—again—what drew her. He supposed she simply liked him, always had and, like he with her, now liked him … more.

  His father, still chatting away, was saying, “Maybe Mitch will take you over there—to the point, not to Hawaii—well, maybe Hawaii, too—but anyway, don’t be fooled by the touristy claims. It’s not the honest-to-god southernmost point, even on the Key. That’s over farther west, on Navy property.”

  “How interesting,” Brenda said. “You have such a wealth of knowledge about Key West—I’m glad Mitch brought me along.”

  Mitch liked the rapport his father was forging with Brenda, even if at times it was Ken Mattingly who forged it. Whereas Renee had been … tempestuous, and Angie had been … flighty, Brenda was sensible and solid, attractive, dependable, kind. She’d make an ideal daughter-in-law, if it ever came to that.

  “Oh, there she is,” his father said. Mitch, looking seaward down Front Street, saw the cruise ship, Enchantment of the Seas, rising majestically from behind the small buildings at the corner.

  Brenda said, “That’s her? How can you tell?”

  What do you mean, how can you tell? Mitch was about to say as much when his father answered, “I watch her every day—and don’t forget, I taught her senior year English class. Even hiding behind those sunglasses, she has the same posture, same ponytail.”

  Mitch, catching on, spotted the woman—and hit the brakes, stopping the car abruptly.

  The posture. The ponytail. The girl—now woman—he should not still regret wounding, but did.

  In that moment it was as if she was nineteen and walking toward him on the Lakefront, that cold Saturday afternoon when he’d ended it. She’d had to have been expecting bad news, given that he’d told her they “needed to talk,” and yet she’d been there, she’d shown up to face whatever song he was about to play

  As abruptly as he’d braked, he pressed the accelerator again and they lurched past Blue Reynolds.

  No one spoke. The silence was worse than any outburst of surprise or criticism would have been. As he drove down Duval, the pressure to say something, to explain himself, grew oppressive.

  What was the big deal? He’d been surprised is all.

  Why didn’t his father speak? The man was never silent. Mitch glanced over at him, dredged up, “Have we forgotten anything?”

  “How to drive, maybe?” His father was grinning.

  “The apple juice!” Mitch said, grasping the words as if they were a rope that would haul him out of sinking sand. “Did we get the apple juice?”

  Brenda, voice calm, flat, said, “Yes, we did.”

  “Oh, okay, good.”

  Silence.

  Then she said, “Is it true that ‘Key West’ is really a bastardized translation of the original ‘Cayo Hueso,’ or bone key?” And though Mitch was unsure whether her question was forgiveness or diversion, he was relieved when his father bit, launching into a colorful recounting of the island’s history that lasted until well after they had returned to the house.

  9

  lue had been perhaps a block from the hotel, where she intended to drop off her package, when she saw a sedan stop abruptly some fifty feet ahead of her. She’d barely gotten a look at the man in the passenger seat before the car lurched forward again, zipping past her and around the next corner. She stared after it. The man had reminded her strongly of Daniel Forrester—older than she recalled him, but of course he would be older, in his seventies by now. The question was, what would he be doing in Key West?

  The possibilities occupied her as she continued on to the hotel, careful not to meet any passerby’s eye. So far, she’d evaded detection—the artist excepted—and prayed her luck would hold. Maybe Daniel was on vacation, or visiting friends. Maybe he lived here—with Lynn, she hoped; they were such a wonderful couple, and judging from what she’d seen so far, there were worse places to retire to than Key West.

  Inside the hotel’s nautical lobby, she left her package with a clerk, a pale young man with Rasta braids held back by a bright green shoestring. “Would you go ahead and send that up to my suite? Thanks a bunch.” The narrow, secret streets of residential Old Town she’d read about in the guidebook were calling to her, and there would be no time for exploring once her staff got organized and the show’s wheels began turning once again.

  “Of course, Ms. Reynolds. How are you enjoying our town?”

  “So far, so good—the warm weather is such a treat. We left Chicago with six inches of
snow on the ground.”

  He nodded. “I’m a Nebraska native. Used to be a computer programmer—my dad’s idea of the right job for me. A lot of the residents here are people who quit their jobs and ran away to Key West, to live la buena vida. Corporate people, CEOs even.”

  “How could you just drop everything that way? Just… leave?”

  The clerk shrugged. “You only live once.”

  His words, common as they were—clichéd even, nonetheless stayed with her as she left downtown, walking along the short blocks, the historic cemetery as her goal. Instead of thinking about the show or her mother or Branford’s search, she would try to live fully in the moment, the way Thoreau had advocated. Or was that Socrates? Both, maybe.

  As she walked, she paid attention to the picket fences and low stone walls that delineated more tiny front yards. She noticed the folded-fan shape of one of the few plants whose name she knew: palmetto. She noticed a dragonfly, its iridescent body, its gossamer wings. “Gossamer,” she said, just for the pleasure of it. The word made her think of fairies.

  The houses sat very close to the street, but when she looked past them she could see deep rear lots, some of them thick with trees and shrubs and bursts of colorful blooms. It was surprisingly quiet, a few blocks in. The three or four humans she saw were children who, judging from the way they ignored her, were pleasantly underexposed to television talk shows. The rest of the beings whose paths she crossed, or that crossed hers, were roosters and lizards and, in one case, a dog.

  Despite the guidebook’s claim, until she was here she hadn’t believed that the air could be as perfumed as it was. The salty breeze she expected; this trip was not, by far, her first time near an ocean. When, though, had she ever done as she was doing now, simply walk around a place and see it? And smell it? When had she done this, stop at an old wrought-iron gate laced with a flowering vine—jasmine?—to press her nose into a small yellow flower? What a heavenly smell… If she thought she could get away with it she’d sit down right here and keep her nose in these flowers for the rest of the day.

  When she stood back from the gate, a sign posted on the nearby stone wall—coral stone, it was—caught her eye. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and read, Offered by Claskey and Shefford, and a phone number.

  “Really …” She looked past the gate and into what was a small but lush courtyard so thick with green that it dazzled her. Perhaps because it was a corner lot, the yard was a little wider than some she’d seen. Not huge by any standard; no bigger than the one her grandma Kate told of, at Blue’s first home, when you took into consideration that a narrow garage had shared that lot. Here there was no garage. There were trees. And shrubs. Ferns. Vines. Flowers. Bricks. Pots.

  Here in this yard—a garden, really—were short palms and tall ones, wide-leafed shrubs and shrubs with such small, intricate variegated leaves that each seemed its own work of art—and vines everywhere. It was Eden, left untended after Adam and Eve had gone. Were those lemons hanging from a crowd of green in the far corner? And what sort of tree was the one with hairy-looking bark? There seemed to be a pond behind the tree; she craned to get a clearer view, but there was too much in the way.

  The house that belonged with the yard was, as far as she could tell, reasonably sound. A story-and-a-half cottage—a conch cottage, she remembered—with an attached open carport, wide sloping rooflines, and a wrap porch. Its narrow wood siding was a faded yellow. What few windows she could see were uncovered, and there was no furniture on the porch. Maybe the place was vacant… She reached for the gate’s latch and glanced around. Seeing only a hen nudging her fluffy chicks onto the curb, she opened the gate and stepped through.

  If the place was occupied, she’d have to quickly become Blue Reynolds again. Her anxiety was sharp and surprising, as full-fledged as in the moments before she’d gone on-air for the first time. Will I remember how to be Blue? She walked up the cobbled brick path, up the six wooden steps onto the wide porch, five paces to the door … Without waiting to analyze why she was standing on this porch, facing a stranger’s door with no prescribed agenda, she made a fist and knocked.

  Now she could feel her pulse throbbing in her neck, her heart hammering her ribs. “Ridiculous,” she whispered, listening for motion inside the house. Waiting … waiting …

  If someone answered the door she’d say … she’d say … what would she say? Nothing like the truth, her grandmother’s voice advised, as clear and real as if Kate was standing next to her on the porch.

  Grandma Kate had been such a good person. A chain-smoker, a terrible money manager, too soft on Blue’s mother, but caring and good-hearted. She’d caught Blue in a lie once, overheard her fabricating a heroic father for the benefit of a girl who’d moved into the apartment across the hall. Blue and her new friend were playing outside, in the scrubby yard below the windows of Blue’s first-floor apartment. She remembered being aware that her grandmother was sitting near the open window even as she told the girl about a father drafted into the army, sent to Cambodia, taken prisoner—but still alive, they were sure, and no one should give up hoping for all POWs to come home safely; President Ford was even that minute getting everything straightened out. She remembered waiting for her grandmother to interrupt, to call her out, remembered feeling both shame and relief when nothing happened. Only later, at bedtime, did it get brought up.

  For all that your mom has done things not everyone approves of, she’s honest, you know? No matter what, she tells it like it is.

  I know, Grandma. I just don’t like how it is.

  Harmony Blue, the truth is always easier in the long run. Lying will leave you as worn-out as the soles on a cheap pair of shoes.

  Blue thought again of her grandmother’s advice, and knew it was right. She’d been tired for years.

  If someone answered the door, she’d say …

  “I’ll just say I love the house and wanted a closer look.” Everything did not have to be so damn complicated.

  A sudden screech from close behind her made her jump. She turned to see a flash of red feathers as a macaw winged through the canopy of trees, and onward. What next? Wild boars? Alligators? Who knew Key West had a little bit of Wild Kingdom going on?

  She was smiling as she turned back toward the still-closed door. It seemed that no one was coming, so she braved a peek in one of two windows looking in from the porch. The room was empty. No furniture, no rugs, no curtains. Just a broad expanse of wide-planked floor, slashed by a shaft of sunlight that had cut its way through the foliage. Beyond this room, through an arched doorway, was another empty room.

  Empty. Unoccupied.

  For sale.

  Her pulse slowed, and with her calm came a light breeze that stirred the leaves. Go ahead, it seemed to be saying.

  “Oh, sure.” First, the artist was a mind reader, then her grandmother was talking to her, and now the leaves were speaking, telling her to buy a house. “Harmony Blue, you are not right,” she said, stepping down from the porch.

  She went around to the carport, where an old coaster-brakes bike like the ones she’d seen parked all around downtown leaned against the wall, connected to it by cobwebs. In back of the carport was a patio; from here, she peered into the house through a sliding glass door and saw a small kitchen with Formica counters and sixties-era appliances. Older, maybe. The floor was wood in here, too, scratched and gouged from decades of active use. Very unlike her kitchen at home. She imagined a little boy with tanned skin and honey-blond hair lying on his tummy on the floor, pushing a toy car between chair legs while his mother peeled and sliced a mango, to be eaten out here in the shade.

  From the patio, she stepped onto a path leading into the garden. She knew already that she was going to hate leaving this serene spot, that she would truly, tangibly miss it. Still, she had to leave; certainly she couldn’t do what the hotel clerk said so many others here had done. She couldn’t ditch her career for a collection of palms and bromeliads and, what? Orchids? She
recognized this pink flower, too, hibiscus.

  But she could, if she wanted to, purchase an occasional escape.

  She went outside the gate to check the realty sign, and then she called Marcy.

  “Hi,” Marcy said, “I was just about to call you. Have you been kidnapped? Where did you go?”

  “Listen, I need you to call this number,” she read it from the sign, “and, whatever price they want for the house on the corner of… of…” she located the street sign and read it to Marcy, “I’ll pay it. It’s empty; I want to take possession immediately—while we’re here in town, if possible.” If she waited, she might change her mind. She knew herself: practical, cautious—she’d talk herself out of it if she had to wait.

  Marcy said, “You don’t even want to negotiate the price—of a house that you, what, just saw, in a town you’ve been in for like seven hours? Have you lost your mind?”

  Blue leaned over to smell the jasmine again, considering the question. The prospect of spending summer hiatus right here gave her butterflies, and why was that? It was just a house. In Key West, true, but what did she know about the place, beyond the guidebook, this walk, and Peter’s notes? She shouldn’t feel so giddy. Had she lost her mind? No, she thought, suppressing a laugh that felt like a gulp. Not lost; quite possibly found.

  She said, “You’re always saying I should live a little. Anyway, please just get the details—actually, never mind, I’ll call and see if they’ll meet me here.” She’d have the agent bring a purchase contract and they could do the paperwork inside.

  “Blue …” Marcy was laughing. “This is crazy!”

  “Crazy!” she agreed, and bent to sniff the jasmine again.

  “But hell, why not? I want to come see it! Oh, but first, here’s why I was calling you: Someone named Daniel Forrester left a message for you at the hotel’s front desk.”