What I Saw and How I Lied

  I moved my hand to where I felt Peter that night, and Wally inhaled, and then things got a little out of my control, because it was like I was waving him on, saying go ahead go ahead don’t stop even though that was far from what I was feeling. I wanted things to keep going slowly. I wanted to stay bored.

  He pushed me back and ground against me. He fumbled down in his pants and I felt something naked against my bare leg. It felt soft and firm. It didn’t feel threatening, but I was suddenly aware of Wally’s weight, of his breath on my neck, too hot.

  I had to grab for air with my hands. I was suffocating. My leg was pinned underneath his knee, and his chin was digging into my shoulder. He kept shoving against me like a piston and I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes and saw a pimple right near his ear. My stomach rolled over. I smelled sweat and couldn’t tell if it was him or me. I had learned enough.

  I pushed him off as hard as I could, surprising him.

  “What gives?” He rolled away, furious, moving to cover himself.

  I had to scoot over on all fours to try to get up. He snatched at my skirt to stop me, and it ripped. I let out a cry that the wind took away.

  “Aw, Evie.” Wally tucked over himself, trying to zip up his pants. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I just want to go back.”

  “Don’t tell anyone. I didn’t mean it.” Wally looked scared.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “I just want to go back.”

  “Sure. Sure. I’ll walk you.”

  I lurched in the sand, walking like a drunk. We were halfway back when I started to cry. Wally walked carefully, trying not to brush me with an arm or a hand, trying not to touch me at all, afraid of what I’d do.

  I’d wanted to learn what love was like, but this wasn’t what I’d felt with Peter. It was cheap and stupid and it stayed with you. It was animal and mineral, it was a bad taste and a terrible feeling.

  “Look, you’re a swell girl. I didn’t think of you that way. Promise.”

  I couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t know if it was him or thinking of not being with Peter or feeling sick.

  “Evie, I’ve got to leave you here. I’d better not walk you in.”

  I saw through my tears that we were at the hotel. Wally was nervous and scared and apologetic all at once. He was practically on his toes, ready to run.

  “It’s okay.”

  Just then Mr. Forney came out on the steps for a smoke. He gave us a hard look, from my face to my clothes to Wally’s pants.

  “Wally, I need to see you,” he said. “Double-time.”

  I ran across the parking lot, toward the side door that only the maids were supposed to use.

  I hoped it would be the last time I’d ever see Wally. I hoped the hurricane would come so it could blow us all the way back to New York.

  They didn’t come back at three, or four. They didn’t come back by cocktail time. I told Forney, who called Wally’s dad and then, when Wally’s dad said they weren’t back, the Coast Guard. They didn’t come back by dinner. As the afternoon wore on, the seas got higher, and a report came in that the hurricane was headed this way. It would not go south or north, it was coming right here.

  The wind was blowing like crazy and the rain was starting when the chief of the Palm Beach police came to see me. He had kind eyes, and he looked worried even though he tried not to look worried. The fear I had inside bloomed and spread out through my body. My hands shook.

  “Was there an experienced sailor in the group?” he asked.

  “Yes. Peter. Peter Coleridge. They said they’d be back in two hours. Something must be wrong.”

  He exchanged a look with Forney and it was like a comic strip in a newspaper with a bubble over their heads saying “Dumb Tourists!”

  “Don’t worry, miss. The seas were probably more than they could handle and they put in somewhere. I’ve got the word out all the way up to Jupiter and down to Fort Lauderdale. We’ll find them.”

  I lay on my bed, not sleeping. Maybe they’d pulled in somewhere, like the man said. Maybe the storm would veer off. Tomorrow morning I was set to evacuate. They’d be back by morning. I knew that. Because if I closed my eyes and thought of them out on that churning sea, I went crazy. Mom. Peter. Joe. On one little boat.

  Chapter 24

  There were only three others in the lobby before dawn the next morning. The maids had knocked on our doors, waking us up with the news that the island was being evacuated. The other guests had left the night before, Crabby Couple back to Missouri, the others getting in their cars late yesterday afternoon and going home. I’d heard car doors slamming and voices saying, “Hurry up, why don’t you,” up until ten o’clock last night.

  The rain sounded almost friendly, pattering on the windows, but every so often a hard downpour would drown out what we were saying, and we’d all look outside at the palms thrashing around in the wind.

  Forney poured tea and coffee and put out plates of doughnuts. Mean Fat Man kept bellowing to Forney that he didn’t see why he had to leave the hotel, he’d seen worse storms in Detroit. Honeymoon Couple looked scared, even the husband.

  “I told you we should have left yesterday,” Honeymoon Wife said in a loud whisper to him. She wore a little blue hat with white flowers, which trembled every time she shook her head at him. Her ankles were crossed, just the way we were taught in Deportment.

  “I talked to a fellow who said only tourists were scared of hurricanes,” replied Honeymoon Husband. “Down here, they have a cocktail party and ride it out.”

  “And where’s this friend of yours now, Norman?” she whispered. “While I have to evacuate with a bunch of crackers?”

  “They’ll have sandwiches there, I heard,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  She gave me a nasty look. Later I found out that crackers meant poor Southerners, not Uneeda Biscuits.

  In the little suitcase at my feet was a jumble of things. I didn’t know what to pack. I’d gone through Mom’s things and Joe’s things because I knew they’d want me to. I packed Mom’s jewelry and Joe’s favorite tie and Mom’s new favorite cocktail dress and her blue high heels, everything mixed in together in my suitcase because I was living with panic in my stomach now. I threw in Mom’s perfume because if she was gone I’d want to still smell her. I didn’t even think that I could walk into any drugstore and buy it for three ninety-five. I needed her half-full bottle.

  I rode with Mr. Forney as he led the others in their cars over the Royal Palm Bridge into West Palm Beach. I peered out through the windshield, getting a look at things with every sweep of the wipers. The sky was a greasy yellow and the lake had turned a dark gray. It was moving like a great beast, rolling and crashing against the docks. I could hear the clamor of the sailboat lines hitting the masts. It sounded like bells ringing, warning us something scary was coming.

  On the radio there had been instructions for evacuees. Pack food if you have it. Bring diapers for babies and toys for children. Watch out for flying coconuts.

  This was how screwball the world had become. My parents and my love were lost at sea. And coconuts were falling from the sky.

  “I let Wally go yesterday,” Mr. Forney said. “I just want you to know that.”

  “You fired him?”

  “Of course. Fraternizing with hotel guests is cause for dismissal.”

  “But—”

  “We have high standards for the hotel, Miss Spooner. That includes employees.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen your high standards up close, Mr. Forney. I think you like rolling in your stinky high standards. Especially when you can kick a couple of guests out of the hotel because they have the wrong last name.”

  He didn’t say another word all the way to the courthouse.

  I hadn’t been afraid of the hurricane. But then it hit.

  I learned that even before it started, the air could be full of danger. Things flew—signs, branches, screen doors. The rain could come down so hard you couldn
’t hear people talking right next to you. You felt the air and the wind in your belly, like a pressure inside, and putting your hands over your ears only made it worse.

  I learned that a roof could fly off a building. That’s what we were all afraid of in the courthouse. We sat on the long benches, or lay down, and even the children didn’t cry, just the babies. The families stayed tight together, the mothers petting their children like puppy dogs. And I was alone.

  Everyone kept talking about their houses and the hurricane of ’28 and the thousand people who died out in Pahokee. Wherever that was. People were saying “I remember” and “Did you check on Marylou?” and “We should have stayed with the house.” Someone said the winds were over a hundred miles an hour now.

  A woman with a plain, strong face brought me a blanket. “Here you go, precious. Don’t you worry now. The storm will blow itself out. It always does.” I’d seen her talking to a policeman, and he must have told her about me, because she brought me soup, too, so I didn’t have to wait in line.

  It was as dark as nighttime. The lights went out. The wind made the windows shake. The roof rattled.

  They couldn’t be out there in this. They would have to be somewhere on land, waiting it out. That was it: The wind and the waves had gotten bad, and somehow they couldn’t get back, so they pulled in somewhere to wait it out, and there wasn’t a phone, or stupid Forney was too busy closing shutters to answer the phone.

  After the storm had blown through (because it was going to blow through, eventually—that had to happen, even with the biggest storm), I would walk out into the streets, and everything would be all right, and Peter would be walking down the block, looking for me, and he’d say:

  I’ve been searching for you everywhere.

  The storm would bring us together and make us realize that he would wait for me, we would be sweethearts until we could marry. I knew it was a crackpot dream, but I couldn’t stop dreaming it.

  I closed my eyes and dreamed that dream, and the hours passed. The wind stopped, and I lifted my head, but the man next to me said, “It’s the eye, girl.”

  “The eye? Then it’s almost over.”

  “It’s only half over.”

  Half over? Some of the boys and men went outside in the yellow light and came back and someone asked how it was and they said, “Pretty bad.” Trees down and the storm surge had made Clematis into a river. A building had collapsed right on the street outside.

  As I curled up into a ball and tried to rock myself to comfort, a roar of a freight train passing close hit my ears. It was the wind. It started all over again.

  Eventually, the storm ended. It blew out of town, sucking away buildings and trees and sending the lake spilling into the streets of West Palm.

  There was nowhere to go. They weren’t allowing anyone to go back to Palm Beach. The hotel was closed. I sat on the bench. The nice woman left, and someone gave me a pastry and some juice.

  A man came over to me, dressed in dirty pants and a shirt. “Sorry, I’ve been out cleaning up this morning,” he said, gesturing to his clothes. I realized he was wearing a police uniform. “We got hit pretty bad. I’m Officer Deary.”

  “Did you find my parents?” It was the question I didn’t want to ask. Dreading the answer.

  “Not yet,” he said kindly. “But my wife and me, we live close by. The street isn’t too bad. My Twyla’s a good cook, and we got a propane stove going. So come on with me, and you can have some coffee and breakfast. We better hurry before she starts feeding the neighborhood and the food runs out.”

  I hesitated.

  “Don’t worry now—every police officer knows right where you’ll be. Soon as we hear something, I’ll come see you. Things are crazy everywhere, phone service dead, most places. But we’ll find them.”

  So I took my suitcase and I followed him outside and I thought maybe, for the first time, I understood all those pictures in the paper I saw from the war. Bombs could have done this, knocked down buildings and trees, turned cars on their sides. It seemed like a dream. The world had exploded, and I was standing with a stranger, the person who would be the one, probably, to tell me that everyone I loved was dead.

  Chapter 25

  Twyla Deary was a thin woman in a housedress, with a skinny auburn braid that ran down her back. She had a thick Southern accent and a habit of repeating part of what she’d just said. She had set up a pot of coffee and had made plates and plates of sandwiches, and after clucking over me and saying “Don’t you worry, dearie, things have a way of turning out just fine, now don’t you worry now” and handing me a sandwich with her homemade marmalade and cream cheese, she ran back to the kitchen to make more food.

  She put me to work, too, because “idle hands make twice the worry.” I was happy to cut bread into slices and make more coffee and lemonade for the barefoot children who came shyly knocking on the frame of the open back door.

  Their house had survived better than many I’d seen (“Because my Bud made sure we were snug and tight, he went through the 1928 hurricane when he was a boy, so Bud is the only living soul who’s prepared for Armageddon. Prepared for Armageddon, I tell you”), but there was a river running outside the front door. I’d had to take off my shoes to wade to the porch with Officer Deary.

  I had a marmalade sandwich on a flowered plate for comfort, and people I didn’t know coming in and out the door saying “Now, how did you fare, Twyla?” while they couldn’t wait to tell their own hurricane stories. Then came the whispers about “that poor child, parents lost at sea, maybe,” and finally I had to double over, grab fistfuls of my skirt in my hands and do what I’d forgotten to do during the whole last night: pray.

  A few hours later, Sheriff Bud Deary waded through the water and arrived, grimy and wet and exhausted, to tell me my parents had been found. Joe and Bev had been blown off-course, had brought the boat into the mangroves near Munyon Island, wherever that was, and left the boat in a hurricane hole. They’d gotten ashore by wading and swimming, tying themselves together with rope. They couldn’t make it back, so they broke into a restaurant and rode out the storm there.

  “A hurricane hole?” I shook my head, remembering the night Peter had mentioned it.

  You and me should find ourselves a hurricane hole.

  “Your parents stumbled on it, I guess. They were lucky to get to shore.”

  They were alive. Alive. Mom. I felt her invade me, and I let her in. I started laughing and crying, the relief was so real. I felt Twyla patting me on the back, saying there, there over and over.

  And then I stopped on a dime. There was something wrong. Something I wasn’t hearing.

  I was so breathless I could only get out one word. “Peter?”

  “A family friend, I understand.” The way his voice went so gentle then—I knew.

  “He went overboard when they were in the ocean. The engine died, he was trying to fix it below, in the engine well. There was a rogue wave. According to your parents, he got hit in the head by something—a wrench, they think—and he came up topside. He seemed okay, but he must have been dizzy, because he went over. They said it happened so quick. One minute he was there, they could see him, and the next minute a swell came—the wind was gusting about that time, maybe forty miles per hour—and he got knocked off his feet. They tried to get him in the boat, your mother took the helm, your dad threw him all the life preservers, but they saw him go down.”

  “But he’s a good swimmer,” I said.

  “Jesus is merciful,” Twyla said. “Jesus is merciful, child. Your parents are safe.”

  “He’s not dead, no matter what you think,” I said. “He grew up around the water. Maybe he swam to shore, maybe he’ll turn up, just the way they did. Things are crazy everywhere, you said.”

  The sheriff exchanged a glance with his Twyla.

  “Your parents are trying to get up here to you,” he said. “The Clearview Hotel here in West Palm is open. They’ll take you in. Your parents will be here by af
ternoon. Police escort.”

  “He could have swum to shore!” I shouted. Because if I could get him to say it, it would be true.

  “Twyla, honey, pack her a couple of sandwiches,” he said instead.

  “I’ll do that right now. Don’t you worry, ladybug,” Twyla said, patting my shoulder. “Don’t you worry now.”

  Ladybug and pussycat, nicknames to call a girl you pity.

  Did he pity me?

  Peter, please come back so you can tell me. Tell me if you love me.

  I’ll die if I don’t know if you love me.

  You swam to shore. It was hard but you did it because you’re so strong. You walked and walked until you found shelter. Now you’re trying to get back here.

  I will be Twyla Deary. I will say everything twice until you come back to me. I will find the thing to do that will bring you back.

  Live.

  Live.

  Chapter 26

  They got to me late that afternoon. Mom’s white and pink sundress was filthy. She was barefoot. Joe looked worse. His pants looked like he’d used them for a mop in a fish store. His shirt was missing a button or two, open at his throat. I could see how thick his throat was, the black hair curling up in a snaky line. The policeman who had brought them stood back a couple of paces while they hurried to me outside the hotel’s front door.

  Mom put her arms around me. “Baby, I thought I’d never see you again.” I smelled water standing in a drain, and something else, sharp, like ammonia.

  I stepped back before she was ready, maybe. Joe leaned over and kissed me. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “What about Peter? What happened?” I could feel the policeman’s eyes on me, and I wondered why he didn’t go.

  “It was a terrible storm,” Joe said.

  “We almost drowned,” Mom said. “I need a bath.” She said it in a way that was almost angry, like we were standing in her way. She wasn’t herself. I knew that, I could see that she hardly knew where she was, or if she was standing up straight.