Duma Key

  The room was dominated by a long, low table of the sort my father had had in the cellar for his electric trains, only this one was covered in some light wood--it looked like bamboo--rather than fake grass. It was crowded with model buildings and china figurines: men, women, children, barnyard animals, zoo animals, creatures of mythical renown. Speaking of mythical creatures, I saw a couple of fellows in blackface that wouldn't have passed muster with the N-double-A-C-P.

  Elizabeth Eastlake looked at Wireman with an expression of sweet delight I would have enjoyed drawing . . . although I'm not sure anyone would have taken it seriously. I'm not sure we ever believe the simplest emotions in our art, although we see them all around us, every day.

  "Wireman!" she said. "I woke up early and I've been having such a wonderful time with my chinas!" She had a deep southern-girl accent that turned chinas into CHA-nahs. "Look, the family's at home!"

  At one end of the table was a model mansion. The kind with pillars. Think Tara in Gone With the Wind and you'll be fine. Or fahn, if you talk like Elizabeth. Around it were ranged almost a dozen figures, standing in a circle. The pose was strangely ceremonial.

  "So they are," Wireman agreed.

  "And the schoolhouse! See how I've put the children outside the schoolhouse! Do come see!"

  "I will, but you know I don't like you to get up without me," he said.

  "I didn't feel like calling on that old talkie-walkie. I'm really feeling very well. Come and see. Your new friend as well. Oh, I know who you are." She smiled and crooked a finger at me to come closer. "Wireman tells me all about you. You're the new fellow at Salmon Point."

  "He calls it Big Pink," Wireman said.

  She laughed. It was the cigarettey kind that dissolves into coughing. Wireman had to hurry forward and steady her. Miss Eastlake didn't seem to mind either the coughing or the steadying. "I like that!" she said when she was able. "Oh hon, I like that! Come and see my new schoolhouse arrangement, Mr. . . . ? I'm sure I've been told your name but it escapes me, so much does now, you are Mr. . . . ?"

  "Freemantle," I said. "Edgar Freemantle."

  I joined them at her play-table; she offered her hand. It wasn't muscular, but was, like her feet, of a good size. She hadn't forgotten the fine art of greeting, and gripped as well as she could. Also, she looked at me with cheerful interest as we shook. I liked her for her frank admission of memory troubles. And, Alzheimer's or not, I did far more mental and verbal stuttering than I'd seen so far from her.

  "It's good to know you, Edgar. I have seen you before, but I don't recall when. It will come to me. Big Pink! That's sassy!"

  "I like the house, ma'am."

  "Good. I'm very glad if it gives satisfaction. It's an artist's house, you know. Are you an artist, Edgar?"

  She was looking at me with her guileless blue eyes. "Yes," I said. It was the easiest, the quickest, and maybe it was the truth. "I guess I am."

  "Of course you are, hon, I knew right away. I'll need one of your pictures. Wireman will strike a price with you. He's a lawyer as well as an excellent cook, did he tell you that?"

  "Yes . . . no . . . I mean--" I was lost. Her conversation seemed to have developed too many threads, and all at once. Wireman, that dog, looked as if he were struggling not to laugh. Which made me feel like laughing, of course.

  "I try to get pictures from all the artists who've stayed in your Big Pink. I have a Haring that was painted there. Also a Dali sketch."

  That stopped any impulse to laugh. "Really?"

  "Yes! I'll show you in a bit, one really can't avoid it, it's in the television room and we always watch Oprah. Don't we, Wireman?"

  "Yes," he said, and glanced at the face of his watch on the inside of his wrist.

  "But we don't have to watch it on the dot, because we have a wonderful gadget called . . ." She paused, frowned, and put a finger to the dimple in one side of her plump chin. "Vito? Is it Vito, Wireman?"

  He smiled. "TiVo, Miss Eastlake."

  She laughed. "TiVo, isn't that a funny word? And isn't it funny how formal we are? He's Wireman to me, I'm Miss Eastlake to him--unless I'm upset, as I sometimes am when things slip my mind. We're like characters in a play! A happy one, where one knows that soon the band will strike up and everyone in the company will sing!" She laughed to show what a charming idea it was, but there was something a little frantic in it. For the first time her accent made me think of Tennessee Williams instead of Margaret Mitchell.

  Gently--very gently--Wireman said: "Maybe we ought to go into the other room for Oprah now. I think you ought to sit down. You can have a cigarette when you watch Oprah, and you know you like that."

  "In a minute, Wireman. In just a minute. We have so little company here." Then back to me. "What kind of artist are you, Edgar? Do you believe in art for art's sake?"

  "Definitely art for art's sake, ma'am."

  "I'm glad. That's the kind Salmon Point likes best. What do you call it?"

  "My art?"

  "No, hon--Salmon Point."

  "Big Pink, ma'am."

  "Big Pink it shall be. And I shall be Elizabeth to you."

  I smiled. I had to, because she was earnest rather than flirty. "Elizabeth it is."

  "Lovely. In a moment or two we shall go to the television room, but first . . ." She turned her attention back to the play-table. "Well, Wireman? Well, Edgar? Do you see how I've arranged the children?"

  There were about a dozen, all facing the left side of the schoolhouse. Low student enrollment.

  "What does it say to you?" she asked. "Wireman? Edward? Either?"

  That was a very minor slip, but of course I was attuned to slips. And that time my own name was the banana peel.

  "Recess?" Wireman asked, and shrugged.

  "Of course not," she said. "If it were recess, they'd be playing, not all bunched together and gawking."

  "It's either a fire or a fire drill," I said.

  She leaned over her walker (Wireman, vigilant, grabbed her shoulder to keep her from overbalancing), and planted a kiss on my cheek. It surprised hell out of me, but not in a bad way. "Very good, Edward!" she cried. "Now which do you say it is?"

  I thought it over. It was easy if you took the question seriously. "A drill."

  "Yes!" Her blue eyes blazed with delight. "Tell Wiring why."

  "If it was a fire, they'd be scattering in all directions. Instead, they're--"

  "Waiting to go back in, yes." But when she turned to Wireman, I saw a different woman, one who was frightened. "I called you by the wrong name again."

  "It's all right, Miss Eastlake," he said, and kissed the hollow of her temple with a tenderness that made me like him very much.

  She smiled at me. It was like watching the sun sail out from behind a cloud. "As long as he is still addressing one by one's surname, one knows . . ." But now she seemed lost, and her smile began to falter. "One knows that . . ."

  "That it's time to watch Oprah," Wireman said, and took her arm. Together they turned her walker away from the play-table, and she began to clump with surprising speed toward a door in the far end of the room. He walked watchfully beside her.

  Her "television room" was dominated by a big flat-screen Samsung. At the other end of the room was a stack of expensive sound components. I hardly noticed either one. I was looking at the framed sketch on the wall above the shelves of CDs, and for a few seconds I forgot to breathe.

  The sketch was just pencil, augmented by two scarlet threads, probably added with nothing more than a plain red ballpoint pen--the kind teachers use to grade papers. These not-quite-offhand scribbles had been laid along the horizon-line of the Gulf to indicate sunset. They were just right. They were genius writ small. It was my horizon, the one I saw from Little Pink. I knew that just as I knew the artist had been listening to the shells grind steadily beneath him as he turned blank white paper into what his eye saw and his mind translated. On the horizon was a ship, probably a tanker. It could have been the very one I'd drawn my first eveni
ng at Number 13 Duma Key Road. The style was nothing at all like mine, but the choice of subject-matter was damn near identical.

  Scribbled almost carelessly at the bottom: Salv Dali.

  iv

  Miss Eastlake--Elizabeth--had her cigarette while Oprah questioned Kirstie Alley on the always fascinating subject of weight-loss. Wireman produced egg salad sandwiches, which were delicious. My eyes kept straying to the framed Dali sketch, and I kept thinking--of course--Hello, Dali. When Dr. Phil came on and began berating a couple of fat ladies in the audience who had apparently volunteered to be berated, I told Wireman and Elizabeth that I really ought to be getting back.

  Elizabeth used the remote to silence Dr. Phil, then held out the book the remote had been sitting on. Her eyes looked both humble and hopeful. "Wireman says you'll come and read to me on some afternoons, Edmund, is that true?"

  We're forced to make some decisions in a split second, and I made one then. I decided not to look at Wireman, who was sitting to Elizabeth's left. The acuity she'd exhibited at her play-table was fading, even I could see that, but I thought there was still quite a lot left. A glance in Wireman's direction would be enough to tell her that this was news to me, and she'd be embarrassed. I didn't want her to be embarrassed, partly because I liked her and partly because I suspected life would hold a great many embarrassments for her in the year or two ahead. It would soon be more than forgetting names.

  "We've discussed it," I said.

  "Perhaps you'd read me a poem this afternoon," she said. "Your choice. I miss them so. I could do without Oprah, but a life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is . . ." She laughed. It was a bewildered sound that hurt my heart. "It's like a life without pictures, don't you think? Or don't you?"

  The room was very quiet. Somewhere else a clock was ticking, but that was all. I thought Wireman would say something, but he didn't; she had rendered him temporarily speechless, no mean trick when it came to that hijo de madre.

  "It can be your choice," she said again. "Or, if you've stayed too long, Edward--"

  "No," I said. "No, that's all right, I'm fine."

  The book was simply titled: Good Poems. The editor was Garrison Keillor, a man who could probably run for governor and be elected in the part of the world I came from. I opened at random and found a poem by someone named Frank O'Hara. It was short. That made it a good poem in my book, and I waded in.

  "Have you forgotten what we were like then

  when we were still first rate

  and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

  "it's no use worrying about Time

  but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves

  and turned some sharp corners

  "the whole pasture looked like our meal

  we didn't need speedometers

  we could manage cocktails out of ice and water . . ."

  Something happened to me there. My voice wavered and the words doubled, as if the word water from my mouth had summoned some in my eyes. I looked up and said, "Pardon me." My voice was husky. Wireman looked concerned, but Elizabeth Eastlake was smiling at me with an expression of perfect understanding.

  "That's all right, Edgar," she said. "Poetry sometimes does that to me, as well. Honest feeling is nothing to be ashamed of. Men do not sham convulsion."

  "Nor simulate a throe," I added. My voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

  She smiled brilliantly. "The man knows his Dickinson, Wireman!"

  "Seems to," Wireman agreed. He was watching me closely.

  "Will you finish, Edward?"

  "Yes, ma'am.

  "I wouldn't want to be faster

  or greener than now if you were with me O you

  were the best of all my days."

  I closed the book. "That's the end."

  She nodded. "What were the best of all your days, Edgar?"

  "Maybe these," I said. "I'm hoping."

  She nodded. "Then I'll hope, too. One is always allowed to hope. And Edgar?"

  "Yes, ma'am?"

  "Let me be Elizabeth to you. I can't stand being a ma'am at this end of my life. Do we understand each other?"

  I nodded. "I think we do, Elizabeth."

  She smiled, and the tears that had been in her own eyes fell. The cheeks they landed on were old and ruined with wrinkles, but the eyes were young. Young.

  v

  Ten minutes later, Wireman and I were standing at the end of the Palacio boardwalk again. He had left the lady of the house with a slice of key lime pie, a glass of tea, and the remote control. I had two of Wireman's egg salad sandwiches in a bag. He said they'd just go stale if I didn't take them home, and he didn't have to press me too hard. I also hit him up for a couple of aspirin.

  "Look," he said, "I'm sorry about that. I was going to ask first, believe me."

  "Relax, Wireman."

  He nodded but didn't look directly at me. He was looking out at the Gulf. "I just want you to know I didn't promise her anything. But she's . . . childish now. So she makes assumptions the way kids do, based on what she wants rather than on the facts."

  "And what she wants is to be read to."

  "Yes."

  "Poems on tapes and compact discs don't cut it?"

  "Nope. She says the difference between recorded and live is like the difference between canned mushrooms and fresh ones." He smiled, but still wouldn't look at me.

  "Why don't you read to her, Wireman?"

  Still looking out at the water, he said: "Because I no longer can."

  "No longer . . . why not?"

  He considered this, then shook his head. "Not today. Wireman's tired, muchacho, and she'll be up in the night. Up and argumentative, full of rue and confusion, liable to think she's in London or St. Tropez. I see the signs."

  "Will you tell me another day?"

  "Yeah." He sighed through his nose. "If you can show yours, I suppose I can show mine, although I don't relish it. Are you sure you're okay to get back on your own?"

  "Absolutely," I said, although my hip was throbbing like a big motor.

  "I'd run you in the golf cart, I really would, but when she's this way--Dr. Wireman's clinical term for it is Bright Going On Stupid--she's apt to take it into her mind to wash the windows . . . or dust some shelves . . . or go for a walk without her walker." At that he actually shuddered. It looked like the kind that starts out as burlesque and ends up being real.

  "Everybody keeps trying to get me into a golf cart," I said.

  "You'll call your wife?"

  "I don't see any other option," I said.

  He nodded. "Good boy. You can tell me all about it when I come to look at your pictures. Any time'll work. There's a visiting nurse I can call--Annmarie Whistler--if the morning works better."

  "Okay. Thanks. And thanks for listening to me, Wireman."

  "Thanks for reading to the boss. Buena suerte, amigo."

  I set off down the beach and had gotten about fifty yards before something occurred to me. I turned back, thinking Wireman would be gone, but he was still standing there with his hands in his pockets and the wind off the Gulf--increasingly chilly--combing back his long graying hair. "Wireman!"

  "What?"

  "Was Elizabeth ever an artist herself?"

  He said nothing for a long time. There was only the sound of the waves, louder tonight with the wind to push them. Then he said, "That's an interesting question, Edgar. If you were to ask her--and I'd advise against it--she'd say no. But I don't think that's the truth."

  "Why not?"

  But he only said, "You'd better get walking, muchacho. Before that hip of yours stiffens up." He gave me a quick seeya wave, turned, and was gone back up the boardwalk, chasing his lengthening shadow, almost before I was aware he was leaving.

  I stood where I was a moment or two longer, then turned north, set my sights on Big Pink, and headed for home. It was a long trip, and before I got there my own absurdly elongated shadow was lost in the sea oats, but in the e
nd I made it. The waves were still building, and under the house the murmur of the shells had again become an argument.

  How to Draw a Picture (IV)

  Start with what you know, then re-invent it. Art is magic, no argument there, but all art, no matter how strange, starts in the humble everyday. Just don't be surprised when weird flowers sprout from common soil. Elizabeth knew that. No one taught her; she learned for herself.

  The more she drew, the more she saw. The more she saw, the more she wanted to draw. It works like that. And the more she saw, the more her language came back to her: first the four or five hundred words she knew on the day she fell from the cart and struck her head, then many, many more.

  Daddy was amazed by the rapidly growing sophistication of her pictures. So were her sisters--both the Big Meanies and the twins (not Adie; Adie was in Europe with three friends and two trusty chaperones--Emery Paulson, the young man she'll marry, had not yet come on the scene). The nanny/housekeeper was awed by her, called her la petite obeah fille.

  The doctor who attended her case cautioned that the little girl must be very careful about exercise and excitement lest she take a fever, but by January of 1926 she was coursing everywhere on the south end of the Key, carrying her pad and bundled up in her "puddy jacket and thumpums," drawing everything.

  That was the winter she saw her family grow bored with her work--Big Meanies Maria and Hannah first, then Tessie and Lo-Lo, then Daddy, then even Nan Melda. Did she understand that even genius palls, when taken in large doses? Perhaps, in some instinctive child's way, she did.

  What came next, the outgrowth of their boredom, was a determination to make them see the wonder of what she saw by re-inventing it.

  Her surrealist phase began; first the birds flying upside-down, then the animals walking on water, then the Smiling Horses that brought her a small measure of renown. And that was when something changed. That was when something dark slipped in, using little Libbit as its channel.