Sia shook her head. “Nope, he’s pretty good looking.”
“And he’s going to be here how long?” M said.
“Sshh, Mom. Not here. In the kitchen.”
“I’ll take Gump for a walk,” Stuart said.
“He won’t leave Toad, Dad, but if you want, you can take them both.”
“Really?” Stuart said.
“Really.”
• • •
It was Saturday night, and every Saturday night since Jackson’s disappearance and the reopening of Sia’s house, M and Stuart had appeared—uninvited—for dinner.
“But I don’t like to cook anymore,” Sia told them again and again.
“We know,” M always said, “but we had takeout last night.”
It was a lie, and Sia knew it. Every week they brought a new fib:
we were in the neighborhood
we needed to drop off your ________ (baking dish, sweater, seeds, etc.)
we heard you were under the weather
we’re so hungry we can’t wait until we get home
and so on
But really, they just needed to see her, touch her, make sure she was whole.
• • •
Sia followed M into the kitchen.
“Are you okay, Odyssia?” M asked.
“I think so.”
“Is he . . . ?”
“Mom, I told you. Yes,” Sia said. “Toad is fine. Very safe to have around. No need to hide the knives.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Richard has entrusted him to me, and you know Richard wouldn’t do a thing like that if he thought there would be any trouble.”
“Entrusted him to you?” M said. She looked out the window at the trio making its way down the beach, followed by a few photographers. “For how long?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I guess until we can get him home.”
M nodded. “Any idea where home is yet?”
Sia shook her head.
“Okay, sweetie. Just be careful and take care. That heart of yours is pretty tender.”
“No kidding.” As Sia watched Toad with Stuart and Gumper, the little fish swam laps in her middle.
“What about those reporters?” M moved to the other side of the house and peeked out a window. “Your dad had to jimmy a spot with his elbows in order to get us through your gate.” When the curtain moved, the gangly geek from Channel 7 shouted and the entire gaggle jumped to attention . . . cameras raised . . . boom mikes poised. Walloping waves of energy emanated from them . . . the prayer . . . the plea . . . that Sia would step out of her house and talk to them.
“They’re making me crazy,” Sia said.
M returned to the kitchen. “Why aren’t more of them on the beach? Seems like a missed opportunity.”
“I heard murmurings of sand in the equipment and tide charts. Wusses. If they don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to buy a BB gun and start target practice.”
“Oh, you would never do such a thing. Maybe you should try making friends.”
“Don’t start, Mom.”
“I’m just suggesting it might be helpful to get them on your side.”
“No.”
“What harm can it do if they’re going to be out there anyway?”
“No.”
“Okay, okay,” M said. “Right now I propose we feed your guest one of our most excellent tuna casseroles.”
• • •
An hour later, Stuart set four places at the table and M made four salads. During dinner, they spoke to Toad directly but didn’t wait for answers or grimace when none came. Stuart rolled on the floor with Gumper like he always did.
“Have you written anything, baby?” M asked. Her voice was always tender when she asked this, but insistent. She would not let Sia go down. She would not let her sink. Even though she had to serve as both buoy and ocean for a while, she’d do whatever it took to keep Sia afloat.
Sia looked at the lump of macaroni and tuna, speckled with peas, on her plate. Then she looked at Toad. “Actually I did. I wrote a list.”
M looked at Stuart. “You did?”
“Yes, a list about Toad.”
M smiled and closed her eyes.
“Good for you, sweetie,” Stuart said.
Between salad, tuna casserole, and bowls of chocolate ice cream, Sia told them everything, even though they’d already heard most of it from Jilly.
“Any leads?” Stuart said.
“Nope.”
“Any ideas at all?”
“None.”
• • •
After dinner, Toad dozed off in his chair, and as always, Gumper lay down by his side.
“Gump really likes this guy,” Stuart said.
“It’s more than that, Dad,” Sia said. “It’s as if he has a mission with Toad. A mandate from some higher power to look out for him. He’s been this way since the first moment we found Toad.”
“And you?” M said. “Maybe you have a mission, too?”
Sia shrugged.
“Well, he sure is a deep sleeper, isn’t he?” M asked.
Toad’s head fell to one side.
“Only when he’s sitting up. At night in bed he has horrible nightmares.”
“But no words?”
“Not even any sounds.”
M stood and leaned close to study him. “Oh, what’s that?” she asked, pointing at the star-shaped wound behind his ear.
Stuart leaned in, too.
“I’m not sure,” Sia said. She felt embarrassed for Toad and wanted to cover him up. “It’s been there since he arrived.”
“It looks like a gill,” M said. She reached out to touch it.
“Mom, don’t.”
Stuart took M’s hand.
“I won’t touch it,” M said, “but it looks like a gill.”
“It can’t be a gill, Mom. He’s a man.”
“A man you found in the sea.”
“By the sea, and let’s not argue logistics.” Sia pulled them away from Toad. “I’ve got enough trouble with Jilly spouting theories about him being from outer space.”
“Yes, we heard,” Stuart said. “She stopped by this morning to talk it through. She’s even studying the constellations to see if there’s a planet that feels like a good fit.”
“Dad, she built a beacon on the beach.”
“She told us that, too. Any luck with it?” M said.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mom. For the last time, Toad is not an alien.”
M hugged Sia. “Whatever you say, sweetie. But don’t be surprised if he turns out to be a fish because that”—she pointed at the wound on his neck—“looks like a gill.”
CHAPTER 75
And back at the waterfront playground with the jump-jump-jump-ropers:
Sexy, sassy Sia Dane
wrote good books
and found much fame.
Sexy, sassy Sia Dane
lost her husband
what a shame.
(boo hoo!)
Sexy, sassy Sia Dane
closed her house up
down the lane.
The grass grew high.
The grass grew thick.
Couldn’t part it with a stick.
When a single shingle blew,
the house cracked open.
Would Sia too?
Sexy, sassy Sia Dane
found a man
perhaps a swain?
Sexy, sassy Sia Dane
how many days
until she’s sane?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
. . .
/> • • •
“Seriously,” Jilly said, whipping to a stop in her Mini Cooper, “how do any of you know what a swain is?”
The shortest girl—a redhead—pulled out her iPhone and stuck out her hip. “Duh,” she said. “I have a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary.”
“I should sign you now,” Jilly said.
CHAPTER 76
The first letter to Toad arrived via Express Mail three days after Wingnut’s spot on the news. It was addressed to “The Silent Man,” c/o “the woman who found the Silent Man on the beach.”
“Wasn’t any question where this letter was headed,” Bert said as he handed over the envelope.
“You could have put it in the mailbox with all my other mail, Bert,” Sia said, and as he craned his neck trying to get a glimpse of Toad, she thought about the green gooseneck desk lamp she had back in college.
“Thought this one deserved the personal touch, Odyssia. You know, hand delivery.” As he said it, Bert wiggled his eyebrows.
Sia closed the door, as gently as possible, in his face.
• • •
“For you,” Sia said to Toad. She sat next to him and opened the envelope. The letter was written on see-through white paper with scalloped edges and red, hand-drawn hearts in the corners.
Dear Silent Man:
I’m quite sure we’ve loved one another in a past life. I have been looking for you ever since. Finally I’ve found you. More soon.
Love,
Lucinda
Sia turned to Toad. He was staring out the window, unmoved by Lucinda’s confession of love and devotion. “Hold on, my friend,” she told him. “I have a feeling this ride is just beginning.”
• • •
After dark, Jilly’s beacon began to blink. Like a fallen star embedded in the sand.
blue
green
red . . . red
blue
green
red . . . red . . . red
• • •
“What message do you think it’s sending?” Mrs. Windwill whispered to Mr. Windwill from the window in their bedroom.
“That’s easy. It’s saying, Jilly is crazy. Your wife is crazy. Odyssia Dane is crazy. All the women in this town are downright crazy.”
“Go to sleep, old man. What do you know?”
CHAPTER 77
“Odyssia Dane?”
“Yes.”
“THE Odyssia Dane?”
“Yes.”
“The novelist Odyssia Dane?”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s me. What can I do for you?”
“Oh, my God. Wait right here. Don’t move. Okay? Promise?”
Sia took a deep breath. She was tempted to flee, but her toasted club sandwich wasn’t ready yet. “I’ll be here,” she said.
A few moments later, three breathless women in snug sundresses stormed the café.
“Oh, my God. You’re right, Stella. It is her! You weren’t pulling our legs.”
All three were clutching copies of Girl Has Wings with the gold “Hometown Author” sticker on the front cover.
“Mrs. Dane,” the chesty one said, “we drove all the way here from our vacation house in Marblehead to buy ‘Hometown Author’ copies of your book. We love this novel. Our book club read it a few months ago and we’re still talking about it. Never did we dare to dream that we’d see you in person.”
Sia was backed up against the magazine rack, right between the porn and the souped-up car mags. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s good to hear.”
“Now that we have you in our clutches, can you tell us a little something about the Silent Man? Is it all true? Are you writing about him? Is he the subject of your next novel?”
A year ago they would have asked those same questions about Jackson.
Sia circled the women until she was close to the cash register. “I’m so happy you love the book, and I’m delighted to meet you. But I can’t tell you anything about Toad.”
The freckly woman glanced at her friends. “It’s true. She does call him Toad.”
“But you won’t dish on him?” the chesty one said.
“It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I knew you’d be respectful,” the third one said. “That’s the kind of woman you are.”
The girl behind the counter handed Sia her sandwich in a bag. “Here you go, Sia.”
“Thanks, Sam. Anything else I can do for you ladies?”
“Sign our books?” Freckles said.
Sia paused. She hadn’t signed a book since before Jack disappeared. She hadn’t even signed a check. Jillian was an excellent forger.
Another deep breath.
“Okay,” she said, and she reached for a pen on the counter. “Who’s first?”
CHAPTER 78
Next [click]
• • •
Ninety-two-year-old Hiroshi Aomori disappeared in 1945 at the end of World War II. Sixty-seven years after he was last seen—just a few days after Sia discovered Toad on the beach—he was reunited with his family in Japan. He had been discovered in Moscow.
A young woman found him abandoned on a side street. He was embarrassingly naked and very confused. His ninety-two-year-old weenie scared and shriveled. No one knew where he came from or where he’d been living during those lost years . . . a lifetime for many. Some speculated that he was a prisoner of war, held by Russian authorities for his great knowledge, but his wife, Nyoko Aomori, insisted he had none. She said that he was just a normal man who spoke in loose language. She said there would be no reason for the Russian authorities to hold him.
“What does he know?” she told a reporter. “My husband was the runt in a very big litter and his family had too little food to grow his brain. He is a little bit dumb. Who, besides me, would want a man who is a little bit dumb?”
Someone else said that they might have used him for his brawn. “What brawn?” she asked. “Look at his pictures. Even when he was young, nothing but bone. Skinny arms. Scrawny legs. He could barely lift a stick of wood to put in the fire.
“No one would want my husband for hard work,” Nyoko Aomori said. “He was a shoemaker. Nothing else. Just a shoemaker. Leather and lasts. That is all he could lift. Not stones or bricks. Not sacks of wheat or railroad ties.”
Yet despite his obvious failings, Nyoko Aomori cried when she finally saw him again.
“I did not remarry in all those years. I raised our daughters, and every night I visited Hiroshi in my dreams. He was almost a better lover there than in our real life.
“At night, I dreamed his reality. Each night when I lay down I made him my final thought and then I would go to him in my sleep. We had only been married fifteen months . . . long enough to make two children. One he never even saw.”
Hiroshi returned to Nyoko Aomori in a wheelchair. Broken from the war and from whatever life had engulfed him for so long. Someone put pants on him before she saw him.
“I could have been caring for him,” she said. “All these years, I could have been caring for him. Instead I have been tending an invisible man . . . so much, so much, that I became invisible, too.”
• • •
In Shiloh, Texas, there was suspicious activity surrounding the disappearance of a respected banker. An investigation was under way. His wife and accountant were prime suspects.
• • •
And as for the man missing in North Dakota? Nobody really wanted to find him anyway. His wife said he was a malignant tumor on her soul and his parents wished him good riddance.
• • •
Gumper stood, stretched, padded over to Sia, and nudged her leg.
“What do you think?” she said to him. “Could our Jackson ever be a malignant tumor?” She imagined a blackened, broiled Jack stuck to her soul like a Siamese tw
in.
Gumper sighed and rolled over onto his back for a belly rub.
“No. No way,” she said, rubbing his furry middle with her foot. “And no, nothing yet about Toad. Lots of lost men, but nothing fits.”
• • •
Then, in bright Google-y blue, she saw it:
Jackson Dane
lost, mysteriously, disappeared, without a trace, poof
Sia’s innards softened and up she went.
• • •
“Up, up, and away,” she said, and then Floating Sia headed straight for the Windwill house, which was gleaming like a hot-pink gumdrop in the midafternoon sun. As usual, Mrs. Windwill was in the garden, trimming rosebushes and pruning morning glories. Her silver hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing the stupid green fishing hat that Mr. Windwill always teased her about.
“She’s not getting old,” Sia had said when Richard had proposed age as an excuse for Mrs. Windwill’s blunder in omniscience. “If anything, her seeing is getting keener.”
After all, two months before Toad’s appearance on the beach, Mrs. Windwill had seen Ralph and Rose Winks get into a fight and dismantle each other at dawn, sending both parties to the emergency room and then anger management classes. She’d watched Bud Miller race down Water Street in his brand-new Hummer, drunk as the devil, lose control, plow through the sea wall, and finally come to rest bottom up in the basin. (She’d even swum out to help him back to shore, though she admitted to debating his worth before leaping in.) And just a few days before, she’d seen fifteen-year-old Wendy Nelson run stark naked along Water Street during a slumber party at the Oakes house. “Probably a dare,” she’d told Wendy’s mother when she’d called to report the incident. She didn’t believe in such nonsense.
But on the day that Jackson disappeared, she’d seen nothing. She swore by this up and down, and even allowed herself to be hypnotized twice by the police psychologist. Maybe she was in the shower, she said. Maybe she was in the basement with a load of clothes. She just didn’t know.
And Toad?
No excuse.
“Weepy eye, my ass,” Sia said.
• • •
The Art of Floating Page 18