All the Finest Girls (22 page)

When I met up with her, she was standing above a table so pungent I thought it might asphyxiate me. A woman in a rubber apron was fingering a row of sardine-sized fish, smoked and brown, with one hand while with the other she shooed away flies the size of grapes. Her knuckles were gouged and swollen, striped white with scars. Marva stuck out her lower lip and scrutinized the wares.

“What yah want for dese?”

“Dollar apiece,” answered the woman, lovingly straightening a scaly tail. Trying not to inhale, I inclined my head over the table, where the woman’s small umbrella offered a tiny bit of shade. Black flies whizzed around my face, landed on my sweaty brow and neck.

“Dey coming from which boat?”

“
Carrie-Ann,
just dis week past.”

Marva held up one of the little fish, sniffed it, and then slipped it under my nose. Both women busted up cackling when I gagged and drew away. Out from the umbrella, I fell back under the sun’s merciless interrogation and looked again toward the ocean liner and the town it dwarfed. Squinting, I tried to make out what lay in the boat’s shadow.

“I’ve lost my hat, Marva,” I told her. “I’m going to look for a new one. OK?”

Busy selecting her catch one by one, Marva didn’t turn around.

“Bus leaves at tree. Sharp.”

Reassuring her I’d be back in plenty of time, I moved off, shielding my face from the sun and the sickening smells of the market. I scuttled along, darting through the hucksters and the fishermen, vendors calling to me,
Yams here! Kokobeef, jump-up-and-kiss-me!
my sights set on the white strip of walkway ahead. When I reached the promenade, I leaned against a pylon, my heart speeding along. The air felt like a wet sock in my lungs. I stood there for five minutes, maybe, and waited to pass out. The concrete would definitely bang me up, but I couldn’t move any farther. I prepared for the veil of fog, the spike in my head, the oncoming whiteout. But I was, it seems, out of luck. My heart slowed its manic pace, my throat cleared, my head didn’t hurt a bit. And then, nothing. I wasn’t being hit by a wave of anxiety but something perhaps the inverse of it. I was having a calm attack.

My senses, all of them, were painfully acute, crystalline. I found myself longing for just the thing I had so often dreaded: the eclipse of consciousness. It seemed I’d had a useful escape hatch. Now, unceremoniously, that route had been closed. There I was, left out in a white-hot blaze. If I’d had a gun, I would have taken a marksman’s aim and shot out the sun.

I walked along the promenade, listening and looking. Each object floated with intense singularity, set off against the blue of the sky and the green of the water as if pasted in place. The world to me was a Magritte-ish one of unreal hyperclarity, strange and obvious at the same time. Traffic, vehicular and human, rang orchestral in my ears.

Near the center of town, I came to a pay phone hitched to a lamppost and lingered there. My head filled with peculiar ideas. I wanted to make a call, wished there were someone expecting to hear from me.
Addy? Oh, yes, operator, I’ll accept the charges.
But who? I would call Daniel. Yes. Why not? Did I still know his number? Of course. I picked up the receiver, dialed o, and only thought better of it after I’d been connected to New York. I hung up at the familiar hum of his answering machine but before I had to suffer the sound of his sweet, gravelly voice.

What, after all, could I have said?
Hi, it’s me. I’m down in the Caribbean. Listen, what was it exactly that I told you that evening? You remember. Downtown, near the mission, where you used to hand out dollar bills like business cards to the old drunks on the sidewalk. Even when you were stone-cold broke. Can’t remember the name of the restaurant now. We used to go there all the time. Anyway, what was it I said to you? “My heart just isn’t in it.”That was it, right? Came at you out of left field. “I’m sorry, but it’s that simple. I just can’t imagine my life with you. It’s not your fault.” Good God. You looked at me, stunned, like you’d been struck with a two-by-four. “Well, let’s not worry about it for now,” you said, unbelievably enough. “I love you.” I focused on a small crease along your brow, like a nail wound, so I wouldn’t have to look you in the eye. You tried to hold my hand and laugh a bit. “I’m willing to take what little I can get.”

I was pissed with you then, for making it so hard for me. “I have nothing to give you,” I remember saying, hoping it would be enough. You know you made me ill at that moment. I might as well confess. I couldn’t wait for dinner to be over, and that goddamn French place was so slow with our food I thought I’d die. “Please, Danny,” I said, “don’t make me say something that will insult you.” Ha. As if it weren’t too late for that.

“Oh,” you offered, fingertips on the table, scrutinizing your untouched soup as though you’d seen a fly dive in. “Oh.” That was it, before you placed a couple of twenties on the table and got up. I think I tried to give you a hug, not because I wanted to but because I thought I should, but you pushed me away. You were crying, for fuck’s sake. Jesus, that made me feel awful. It really did. I wanted to torch you then for making me feel so bad. What could I have done, Danny? I was doing the best I could. Saying good-bye is never easy, right? By the next day, I was just so relieved it was over that I barely thought twice about you. I figured you’d be fine, better in the long run. I have thought of you so rarely since then it’s a wonder you ever existed. It’s true. You always appreciated my honesty. There it is.

So, like I said, here I am on St. Clair. And I’m calling you because I miss you. Isn’t that strange? I don’t suppose you’ll ever forgive me. Do you and my mother still talk? Barbara was always crazy about you. Has she told you how terrifically I’m doing, about my promotion? How hotsy-totsy things are? Well, the funny thing is, they’re not. Not at all. And I was just thinking that, well, that if you still loved me I might feel, well, real. Like a living human being right now. I might believe that I’m a person standing here in this infernal heat and not just the fast-moving smoke from the real thing. Not just a disappearing vapor. If you loved me, that would be proof, wouldn’t it? I know you don’t owe me any favors, and nothing’s changed, really, so don’t get the wrong idea. I’m just looking for something, just a small place, maybe, cool and dark, where I could lie and be very, very still. Where I could feel my heart thump against my chest. Because then I would be certain of it, certain I was here on earth.

I looked at my feet, at the hair on my pale arms, the moons rising in my fingernails, the blue lacework of veins along my hands. It seemed I’d never seen them before, that they were the features of a stranger. Spreading my fingers, I raised them to see if sunlight would pass directly through.

Across the harbor, spelled out in giant bulbs like an old Broadway marquee, was the sign:
FOXY’S
. I squinted through the shimmering haze of the day, thinking it could be a mirage. The building was taller than any other in town and sat up on a bluff over a wedge of white sand beach. Foxy’s might easily have been something else, a fort or a plantation house, once upon a time. The two stories of stucco gleamed bright white beneath a red, cupolaed roof, and a prim line of international flags waved against the facade. It was smart looking, robust, an irresistible invitation. I fooled for a moment in my head with the letters — F O X Y — rolled their sounds about in English, in French. What did they mean? Was this a sign, or was it a Sign, a dadaist perversion made up in my head? The old familiar heat rose from my chest, and I moved off with a sudden purpose down the walkway. My hat would have to wait.

21

L
OU IS SITTING
on the dock, a dish towel in her hand, and I am waving good-bye. Edith drives the boat out of the harbor. Behind Lou, the staircase back up the cliff to Further Moor tilts at crazy angles. Cold water rushes up through the slats of the running boards, where I’m sitting in my bathing suit, a long-sleeved shirt and canvas cap between me and the August sun. Down my nose, white with zinc oxide, I admire my knees, which have become bony and sleek, like a teenager’s, since I turned eleven. When we take the bluff, the ocean becomes choppy and white, and I lick the salt spray from my chin.

My mother and grandmother are up front, Edith at the wheel. Mom absorbs the ocean movement expertly, bending her knees, hand across her eyes as she scans the horizon. Today she is forty. Like every year, Edith is throwing a party, though I’ve heard Mom say a dozen times she doesn’t want one. The tent and tables came this morning, and Edith painted all the guests’ names on seashells we had gathered. The sky is cloudless, but the air feels jagged as a bread knife.

Mom doesn’t make movies anymore. She sleeps till lunch each day with a black mask across her eyes.

Edith takes us into the sound and cuts wide around middle ground where the sandbar is marked by orange buoys. She opens up the motor.

Fucking baby

I hear Owen’s voice and what he said to me when I wouldn’t let him
I can’t
and feel him up against me, his breath hot like steam from a faucet
I have to go; Lou will be mad
his hand inside my suit wet and sandy, the smell of warm beer in a can, and a cobweb dangling from his dirty bedroom loft
Who cares, she’s just a
fingers like razors up inside.

someamazingflower

I cyaant stay no more, I cyaant

It’s been eight days since I saw Owen. I stood on his doorstep on Wednesday and peered inside the screen, but he wouldn’t let me in.

As we come up parallel to the rocky little island of Unkatena, Edith pulls back on the throttle and we cruise slowly into Blueberry Cove. Mom undoes the scarf around her head and lets her hair roll out loose around her shoulders. I can see her birthmark sneaking purple across her throat. When she looks in my direction, I turn quickly away and drop my feet into the foamy wake.

Edith cuts the motor and drops anchor while my mother unpacks the lunch basket. Beyond the bow of the boat, near the shore of Blueberry Cove, the ocean bottom is sandy and smooth and you can stand without fear. It’s no good for snorkeling but nice for headstands and underwater tea parties. Here, though, where we’re anchored, the water is congested with fingers of spongy seaweed and green tangles like mermaids’ hair. The warm weather and last night’s rain have brought schools of jellyfish up from the deep, coating the surface of the cove. The harmless jellies, orange and fuzzy like peach pits, circle like planets around the radiating suns of giant pink stingers. I kick my legs slowly and watch their dance.

“Ready for a sandwich, Snooks?” asks Mom. I hear the crinkle of unwrapping foil. I’ve got my eye on two glassy orbs the size of saucers.

“Addy doesn’t talk to me anymore, have you noticed that?” Mom’s voice is breezy, as though she doesn’t care.

“Addy, your mother is speaking to you.” Edith sounds like a bulldog.

Without turning around, I tell them I’m not hungry. One of the jellyfish billows his tentacles, puckers.

“She doesn’t do it with Hank, you’ll see.”

“That’s because she’s afraid of him. You let her run roughshod over you.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do.”

My mother’s voice cracks a little on the last word. I’ve twisted the corner of my shirt into a tight little ball. “Honestly, Mother, I don’t. She hates me.”

“Nonsense,” says my grandmother, dropping ice from the cooler into her vodka and lemonade.

“It’s not nonsense, Mother. Watch her. Louise is the only one who can get her to do anything. The only one she seems to like. Now, if she goes home …” Mom sighs. “What have I done?”

“Home? Where?”

“Where she’s from, Mother.” My mother’s voice gets softer and she turns her back to the wind. I can hear her just the same.

The sun is too bright, and my eyes begin to throb and ache. The wake from a passing boat sets us slowly rocking. One jelly flutters like eyelashes along my ankle and in its brown center, I can see Derek’s face.

“Anyway,” continues my mother, drifting off.

“Well, no sense worrying about that now,” says Edith.

“I just don’t know what to do, Mother.”

“How long is Hank staying? Briefly, I hope?” Edith always changes the subject when my mother gets upset. She lights a cigarette and hands my mother the pack.

“Just till Monday, I think. He’s got a conference or something in the city Wednesday.”

“Hmm,” says Edith. “Can’t stay for the Chiltons’ clambake?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Then you can go with Will Conway.”

I’ve counted thirty-four jellyfish, big and small, off the stern of the boat when my mother accidentally drops her glass.

“Shit,” she says, and I turn around to see her, hands in the air, tomato juice bleeding into the skirt of her two-piece. She begins to cry.

“Mother, I don’t want to go with Will Conway,” she says, rubbing vigorously at her suit. “Anywhere. At all.” The red liquid sluices down the fiberglass deck and pools around the fishing-rod holders.

“Well, darling,” Edith says evenly, “why not? I suspect he and his, what is she, Oriental, friend would want you to have some fun. Hmm?”

I’ve pulled off my shirt and feel the sun taking aim at my white shoulders. Mom is bent down, trying to clean up the tomato juice. Edith hands her a towel. I drop quietly into the ocean.

Floating on my back with my eyes closed, I can hear the underwater hum of boats out in the sound. I concentrate on my weightless body, anticipating, listening to my own breath. At first I sense only the tickle of tall seaweed on the backs of my legs.
yOU-COULDPLEASECOMEHOMEnOW.
Then, along my left forearm, comes the first sting. It is quick but dull, like an extinguished match pressed to flesh and held there. A second flash bursts at my heel, radiating up my calf to a third flame burning near my knee.
YOUrdEVOTEdSOn
At the top of my other thigh. Near to my bottom.
Fuckingbaby
Again at my neck, and then my cheek. I roll over, slowly, and lie like a dead body, bloated, white. A sensation like a hot raw egg settles on one eyelid, and there it sizzles. My whole body glows, I imagine. Even my belly burns, though it’s covered by the film of my suit. I turn back over and breathe through my nose, even and deep.