My “state” subsided enough so I could study the menu, and when we’d ordered, Marcus began to talk.
“As you know, Poppy didn’t want Derek to marry Iris. A few days before she died she must have confided some of her fears about him to Alida. Though Alida won’t discuss this, she did try to pick up the fight against Derek, and she had some notions of her own. There’ve always been questions about where his money came from, though he has plausible enough answers. Alida got hold of Eddie and began to pump him about Derek to see what might surface. Eddie still has a weakness for Alida—though he can pretend he hasn’t. He always felt a little in awe of her, so I guess he wanted to please her. He didn’t have any proof of anything against Derek, but he has his suspicions.”
“Who was that man who was after Eddie on the pier?”
“I didn’t have time to see him, and Eddie didn’t explain. He just wanted to get away.”
“I think I saw the same man having breakfast with Derek the first time I went to Mallory Square. They seemed to be fighting about something.”
“I’ll sound Eddie out the next time I see him. You know, he’s worked for Derek on and off over the years, and sometimes he’s followed him from one place to another. Alida thinks that deep down he’s never forgiven him for the vicious wound that caused his stiff shoulder. Anyway, he started to keep his eyes open, and recently he’s come across bits of evidence that seem to connect Derek with possible drug running. Alida’s eager to collect all the information about this that she can, and a few things are adding up. If Derek can be exposed before he marries Iris, Alida feels she can stop the marriage—which is what Poppy wanted. But now something seems to have happened that’s made Alida give up. So I had to see Eddie the other night and learn whatever I could. Which wasn’t much. He was already half drunk when he came to the house, and instead of loosening his tongue, the liquor made him maudlin. All he did was bemoan Alida’s possible death. So I got nowhere.”
“And my father doesn’t know any of this?”
“He likes Derek and trusts him. Cliff has a gift for seeing only what he wants to see in his friends. So there’s no point in bringing him into this until we have some real proof. I just hope it won’t come too late for Iris.”
Always there was a gentleness in his voice when he spoke of Iris—a gentleness that he never showed toward me. I stiffened my protective armor.
“You could have told me sooner what was happening,” I said.
“I’d rather not have told you at all. This is dangerous ground, Laurel, and you’d better not get mixed up in it.”
When I said nothing, he reached across the table to touch my hand lightly. “Let’s forget Derek and Eddie Burch and that whole mess. Maybe you’d be willing now to hear about the Martello towers?”
I hadn’t much interest in Fern’s orchid display, but I did want to keep him talking, so I nodded and managed a smile.
As we ate our meal, Marcus told me about the two old forts. One—East Martello—was a museum now and was used for art shows. The other was occupied by the Garden Club. Over the years tropical plants and trees had been planted in the fort enclosure, and inside there were displays of flowers and smaller plants.
“It’s a fascinating place with its old walls and underground rooms,” he said. “Fern can tell you more about its history when she takes you there. And if Fern goes to the hospital to visit Alida tomorrow, I hope you’ll go with her. I’m still worried about Fern. She’s too tense and high-strung these days. Now too much seems to be pushing her toward—I don’t know what. Especially with this crush she has on Derek.”
“I feel that too,” I said. “Do you have any ideas about the rumors your friend Connie mentioned? If he’s stashing treasure away, is he doing something illegal?”
“I’m not sure. We don’t know enough.”
I sighed. “I’ll be glad when his boat party is over.”
“So will I. I only wish there was some way to back out. Especially for Cliff. He’s still set on going. I think he doesn’t want to stay home that day, and he’d rather make it festive than gloomy. Laurel, how do you feel about him now—as a father?”
“Tentative, I suppose. Though I do think we’re coming closer together.”
“I hope so. It takes time. But I’m glad you’re here, Laurel. I really am.”
I shied away from the personal, not daring to trust myself. “Tell me what brought you to Key West in the first place. What were your parents like?”
He talked about them readily. His father had been a brilliant, much-respected man, mostly absorbed in his mathematical world. He’d been a professor in a Midwestern university.
“I don’t think he was an especially good teacher, or that he even liked teaching. It was the way he earned a living, but he was more interested in his mathematical concepts than in his young students. He wrote three distinguished books that were published by a university press—and went mostly unread, except by experts. I admired him a lot, and was a little scared of him.”
“And your mother?”
Marcus’s expression softened. “She was a wonder. She could be excited about anything and everything. I suppose she wasn’t really a pretty woman, but she seemed beautiful because she was so alive. Yet she knew how to keep a protective space around my father, so he could do his work. Maybe she’d be judged old-fashioned these days, but she loved her role as my father’s supporter. They needed each other.”
“She died first?”
“Yes—much too young—of some infection they’d know how to treat these days. Her death about finished him. He didn’t want to go on without her. I don’t mean that he killed himself deliberately—but I believe that he willed himself to die. He developed a tumor that couldn’t be operated on. When he was gone too, I didn’t have anything to hold me out there. I came to Key West mostly by chance. I suppose I was running away from everything that reminded me of happier times. Then I met Cliff and his family, and I began to make new connections.”
I could ache a little for Marcus’s loss. I knew what it was like.
“Poppy accepted me as a friend, just as Cliff did,” he went on. “So I had something to hold me here. Of course I fell in love with Iris early on—while she was still in her late teens. That’s over now. I wish she hadn’t settled for Derek, but that’s the way it is. I only hope it can be stopped in time.”
He sounded melancholy and a little grim. We ate in silence for a while, until I became aware that he was studying me thoughtfully, and I raised a questioning eyebrow.
“A few weeks ago,” he mused, “I’d never have talked to you like this. I wonder if you know how much you’ve changed, Laurel, since the time when I walked into your bookshop and first saw you?”
That startled me. “What do you mean?”
“You seemed awfully defensive. I suspected that a lot was going on in your head—but you were afraid to test yourself.”
For an instant I bristled in the old way. “But I did test myself!”
“Right. And something’s growing out of that testing, isn’t it? Nothing stands still. We go ahead, or we go back. You’re reaching out more—toward your sisters. Or at least toward Fern. And toward your father.”
Even toward you, I thought, feeling a bit grim myself.
“I do have more to care about,” I admitted. “But it’s scary too, because it makes me more open to—to damage.”
“Isn’t that a lot better than staying numb and playing it safe?”
I wondered if he was thinking of Iris and his own hurt.
The moon had risen over black treetops, adding its glow to the sentimental light of paper lanterns. By this time more diners had come in, but none of the clatter was evident that arose in a more enclosed space, and voices were soft at other tables.
“Stay open to hurt, Laurel,” Marcus said gently. “It becomes you. Excitement becomes you too, and I’ve seen you light up a few times lately—where all your emotions except anger seemed battened down in your setting back
home.”
“It’s such an accident that I’m here at all,” I said, thinking again of the chance meeting of my mother and father. “Unless there are no accidents, no coincidences? Sometimes I wonder if things have to happen.”
“I suppose we run into accidents and coincidences every day. What matters are the choices we make. If we let an important chance slip by without even trying, then what do we have?”
“What do we have if the chance is the wrong one?”
His sudden smile banished melancholy. “Right now, what it comes down to at this moment is two people having dinner together in a Key West garden. Shall we enjoy it?”
I returned his smile warmly, making my own choice in spite of myself. “I am enjoying it.”
The dinner was perfection, and we finished with Key lime pie that was nothing like the imitations I’d had up North. Real Key limes were the secret, Marcus said, and this had the right Key West touch—tangy and sweet at the same time, so that each melting mouthful was a delight. The garden with its glowing lanterns was a delight too, and so was Marcus’s presence across the table. There seemed a growing sense of wonder in me. I felt like one of those night flowers with petals unfolding visibly toward the moon. I wanted the moment to go on and on and never end—because this was the moment when I knew I was in love. This was what everyone had been talking about!
We walked back along Old Town streets toward my father’s house, and the moon sailed with us, nearly full. My hand was in the crook of his arm and there was for me a new closeness I’d never felt to a man before. Marcus needed only to make a move—a gesture—and I would turn to him unhesitatingly.
He made no such gesture, except in a light, affectionate way. If I had put down my guard, he had not. At the gate he kissed me lightly and said he would see me soon. I watched him walk away, wanting so much more, and still not sure that he felt as I did. Though there had been times tonight when Iris no longer seemed to cast her shadow between us. As I came dreamily up the steps, I found my father sitting in darkness near the rail.
“A pleasant evening, Laurel?” he asked.
“A beautiful evening. Is there any news of Alida?”
“She’s not doing well. I saw her this afternoon, and I think she doesn’t want to live. Though she won’t talk to Iris or me, or tell us why. She seems to have given up completely. In a way, I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like giving up myself.”
“No!” I sat down beside him in a wicker chair. “You aren’t the giving up kind. You have too much to live for.”
“I’m not sure I care any more.”
I hated that, but I didn’t know how to change anything or anyone—least of all myself. For a time we watched the shifting patterns of light and shadow as wind stirred branches and ruffled shrubbery.
After a while I asked the hopeless question that so troubled me. “Why should Alida stop caring, and why should you?”
He didn’t answer, and I knew he was thinking of Poppy and nearly a year ago. Only the lessening of pain would help him, but in the meantime he had to fight—for something.
“You have three daughters who need you,” I said, “and you have a book to finish.”
He said nothing, and there seemed no way past the barrier he’d built around himself.
Alida’s despair was something else, and the things Marcus had told me didn’t explain it. Her plotting against Derek through her ex-husband could have nothing to do with the “burden” she’d thrust upon me.
Out of my confusion I heard Cliff’s sudden question. “Laurel, can you type?”
Had I reached him, after all? “I took a course once. And I’ve always typed my letters for the bookshop.”
“You’re right that my book should be finished. Would you be willing to help me out while Alida’s away?”
“I’d like that,” I said quickly. “If I can.”
“It won’t be easy. I write directly on the machine, and my typing is terrible. Then I revise constantly in pencil, so every page is interlined and scrawled on. I need new smooth copy that I can read over every day, so I can tell what I’ve written.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised.
“You’re not being hired permanently.” He smiled. “You weren’t cut out to be some aging writer’s secretary. What about your painting?”
“I’ve done a little sketching since I’ve been here. Nothing much. Everywhere I look there’s a picture that wants to be painted. But it’s just for my own satisfaction—I’m not professional.”
“Well, you’ll have time for painting, once I’m caught up. My daily output isn’t all that high these days.”
His mood had changed completely, and even though I wanted to help, I felt a mild resentment. Mention of his daughters had done nothing for him. A reminder about his book had brought him to life. Yet in a way I could understand. He probably felt he could do nothing at all about his daughters, but he could finish his book, and writing was a way of life for him.
“I’ll enjoy this,” I told him. “Remember—I love your books. I have ever since I began to read them.”
He seemed pleased. “You do? You never told me that.”
It was a surprise to realize that I hadn’t. So I told him then. About my favorite titles, about characters I remembered and plots I’d enjoyed. It seemed strange in so successful a writer, but I could sense the way he was soaking up my words, relishing them. The bridge was so easy, once I’d found it. Irrelevantly, I wondered what bridge led to Marcus O’Neill—an idea that made me jerk my thoughts back impatiently. Tonight, for a little while, I’d been lost in the spell cast by lanterns in a garden. Reality was a lot more grim. Reality right now was Cliff and his deep despair. If I could manage to lift that just a little …
He leaned over to put his arm about me and held me for a moment. “Thank you for coming, Laurel. I hope you’ll never be sorry.”
“No matter what, I won’t be sorry,” I promised, and wondered how reckless such a promise might be.
Upstairs in my room, I kept on thinking about the two men in my life. A good relationship with my father might be more possible than I’d expected. Marcus was something else, and I didn’t know whether I would ever understand what he was like and how he felt.
That night I went to sleep remembering our dinner together at Lazy Afternoon. There had been no orchids in the garden where we’d dined, and I was glad of that.
In the morning, after an early breakfast, I presented myself upstairs in my father’s study and found him at his typewriter. He was already involved with his characters and the scene he was writing, the closeness of last night put aside. Yet not entirely forgotten, for he smiled as he handed me a stack of papers.
“See what you can do in copying this stuff,” he said. “You’ll find everything you need in Alida’s desk.”
As he’d warned, it wasn’t easy. Fortunately, Alida had a standard electric typewriter, as well as her word processor. I ran paper into the machine and began to decipher my father’s writing. Some words almost defeated me, but I managed to get several pages done, however slowly.
Jumping into work in the middle of his narrative, I didn’t know either the characters or the plot line, but the background of modern Caribbean piracy came through disturbingly. What he had written was obviously based on fact. When I had a chance, I must tell Cliff about what Connie Corson had said yesterday concerning Derek and his sunken treasure.
My typing speed picked up as I became more accustomed to Cliff’s interlinings, and I moved along well, with my stack of pages growing. I was hardly aware of passing time when Iris came up the stairs carrying a tray.
She looked surprised to find me working in Alida’s place, and she hardly greeted me as she went past. She wore white shorts again, and a red bandana halter that showed off her creamy tan and contrasted with her smooth black hair.
“I’ve brought lunch for two,” she told Cliff. “I meant to join you. I didn’t know you had a new secretary.”
“I’
m not hungry,” he said. “I can’t stop right now. You two have lunch together. Bring me something later, Iris.”
She placed the tray on a small table that pulled out from the wall. “We might as well eat, Laurel. The muse can’t be interrupted.”
I’d had little occasion to see Iris alone, so I sat down to the meal intended for Cliff, even though her invitation was anything but cordial.
The muse, however, had already been interrupted, for Cliff left his desk and went to the piano. As his fingers roamed the keys, he picked out various tunes he knew by ear—bits of Cole Porter, Gershwin, Berlin, and again Scott Joplin. Idle snatches that made a disjointed musical accompaniment as Iris and I started eating Angela’s shrimp gumbo and avocado salad.
“He does that to get his thoughts going again,” Iris said under cover of the nostalgic music. “He can dream up whole scenes in his head while he’s playing and then set them down on his typewriter. It’s all right to talk now. When he stops, we’ll have to be quiet. I’ve wanted a chance to speak to you, Laurel.”
She looked beautiful and calm, but her hand shook as she buttered a corn muffin. Iris ran a lot deeper than Fern, and I couldn’t help wondering how she would react if she knew that Derek might be involved in drug smuggling.
“I need your help,” she added, sounding as though she dared me to refuse.
“I’ll help if I can,” I told her quietly.
“Fern seems to like you.” She spoke as though this was hard to understand. “Perhaps she’ll listen to you, when she won’t to me. She’s cooking up a plan that must be stopped. Derek and I hope you can discourage her.”
“You’d better tell me the plan.”
Iris glanced across the room to where Cliff continued to roam through snatches of familiar tunes. He looked rapt and far away, unaware of us, the music covering our words.
“Fern wants to bring Alida home from the hospital to this house. She’s already had a room prepared for her near her own.”
“So?” I said. “Why should you object to that?”
“You don’t know Alida!” Iris’s dark eyes flashed. “I’m fond of her, but I don’t want her here. Not now.”
Dream of Orchids Page 17