Sanibel Scribbles (11 page)

“I’m going to sit up all night, because every time I lie down, my toes get numb again,” she moaned quietly to herself. “And someday, I’m going to invent quieter lunch bags!”

Her shortness of breath lasted for hours, and she dreaded the darkness called night. Sitting up in bed, as the doctor had ordered, she told herself she wasn’t going to die and that her shortness of breath originated from her own mind. Throughout the rest of the night, she’d drift hesitantly into a shallow sleep, then her inner voice would wake her. Her neck felt tender from resting against the wooden bed board, but she’d rather feel a stiff neck than all the other crazy things, she decided. Her eyes, shrinking into puffiness, watched through the blinds, and at four-thirty the moon slowly disappeared behind a pattern of passing clouds. At five o’clock, the bedroom walls flickered with the headlights of passing cars. At five-thirty, birds began chirping—probably year-round Florida birds that didn’t bother flying north for the summer. Or maybe they were mockingbirds, Florida’s state bird. But if they were, she should hear them mimicking the sounds of other animals. But no, they were just normal
chirp chirps
, the happy, stress-free kind.

Looking at the birds of the air, she felt disappointed with herself. If they weren’t worried, why should she be? As if worrying might actually add a single hour to life. She listened to the birds as if hearing their chirps for the first time.

She got out of bed and made a note to schedule an appointment with a psychologist, one specializing in anxiety. She got back into bed. If she took the job on the island, it would be difficult to make routine therapy appointments. She climbed out of bed and crossed it off her list. She climbed back into bed. She knew she was making excuses, so she started talking immediately to someone who required no appointment at all. She started talking to the Wonderful Counselor there in her bed.

She prayed to Almighty God, and then the sun rose and the show outside her window ended. Daylight, and the sun, that was all very good, she thought. She felt like a hypocrite. How dare a believer in God fear death? She had hardly discussed death, ever. During coffee, conversation and crayon time at the café, it had never crept up. Perhaps no one allowed it to.
In college, she took classes on everything from world religions to ancient philosophy to chemistry to biology, but everything focused on life. Not death. So how dare a believer in God fear death? Well, it was a great question because she did. She continued praying to the Wonderful Counselor even after getting out of bed.

The next morning she drove to a local island coffee shop, desperate for caffeine, but more than ever she wished she had Grandma’s recipe for instant gratification, whatever it might be. She could surely use some instant gratification right now.

As she walked up the steps to the shop, her feet felt heavy. Amused at herself, she looked down to see if she was wearing her wooden shoes by mistake, instead of her sandals.

“I’ll have a large, nonfat caffè mocha. No, make that a latté,” she requested, then caught a glimpse of her tangled hair in the reflection in the window, and it reminded her of the restless night before. “I’ll be right back.”

“What’s your name?” asked the woman behind the counter.

For a moment, Vicki went blank.

“I need a name, so I can call you when your drink is made.” She actually paused another three seconds before answering, “Vicki.”

“Is that your final answer?” The woman laughed.

“I think so. It’s the simple questions in life that catch me off guard.” She walked into the bathroom, known for its colorful magic marker scribbles on the walls. Anyone desiring to leave a footprint or a piece of their soul behind, for a chance at immortality, can pick up a marker and scribble something, anything, on the bathroom walls of the coffee shop.

As she shut and then locked the door behind her, she heard voices in her head. She saw scribbles. Together the voices and the scribbles screamed to be heard. As if tossed into a windmill on a wildly windy day, they whirled around madly, yelling out the one- or two-worded goals scribbled in crayon on the white paper tablecloth. She heard her dreams, like psychotic little voices in her head, crying out louder and louder. “Semester in Spain, semester in Spain, semester in Spain,” the voices screamed. They screamed so quickly that they turned into a tongue twister, and then
switched to, “summer on island, summer on island, summer on island, stingray shuffle all summer long.”

As she left the restroom, she heard her name called out and the woman handed her a hot cup. “Enjoy.”

Taking a cup that weighed about two pounds, Vicki felt like a starving, stubborn dog, a mutt walking the streets. She sipped the coffee, and then shut her eyes. The voices in her head shouted,
Victoria, Victoria
. She drowned them in another sip. After her coffee, she went out to eat at a restaurant Grandma had taken her to many times, and then after breakfast, she stopped to say hello to a parrot.

“Hello,” she said.

There was no reply from the parrot.

“Hello.”

The bird looked away.

“Come on, now. Isn’t hello usually the first thing they teach you birds?” There was still no reply.

“Boo!” She said. “Peekaboo!” She played with it. “Polly want a cracker? A biscotti instead?”

The bird just stared.

“What? You don’t like small talk? You think I’m shallow? Well, I’m not. What do you want to discuss. You tell me.”

“Take island job. Take island job,” the colorful bird replied. “You’d be a fool not to, a fool, a fool.”

Vicki looked around to see if anyone else might have heard what she had just heard. No witnesses, just the other macaws, parrots, and cockatoos on display. Unless the parrot was talking about its own job offer, she was convinced it was a message, perhaps from Grandma, who had loved to talk to the caged birds. She walked away, laughing, and the bird laughed, too.

Thanks to divine intervention working through a bird, she now knew she had to accept the job on the island, but first, she needed sleep. She knew she wouldn’t get any, so instead she opted for an attempt at rest and relaxation, and going to a concert at Centennial Park in Fort Myers would give her something to do, an excuse to stay up late.

“This will sure get his attention,” a woman sitting on a blanket said to her husband as she drew “We Love you B. J. Thomas” in thick red marker on poster board.

Vicki unfolded her blanket, spread it on the lawn, and sat down next to the couple. She missed her family and knew they would have loved to be here with her. She grew up on this music and had seen this guy many times in concerts back home.

To pass time before the concert started, Vicki walked over to the bridge and looked out at the Caloosahatchee River below. She pulled her camera out of her purse and peered through it, waiting for the clouds to shift before snapping the picture. It had to be just right. She always did this. She always tried taking perfect pictures, as if one day they might hang in a museum.

But the clouds weren’t moving. “Oh well,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Hasta luego.”
And she took the camera down from her face.

“Would you like me to take a picture with you in it?” A man in his late twenties wearing sporty sunglasses got off a black bike with no kickstand and laid it down on the cement.

“No thank you,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, okay.” She handed him the disposable camera she had bought the day Rebecca wanted to take photos of a frozen Lake Michigan. Now she felt eager to use up all the pictures and get them developed, hoping she would have at least one shot of her friend in the twenty-four exposures.

As she stood in front of the setting sun, her eyes burned. It didn’t help that she had poured an ocean of eyedrops into them before the concert. She opened her eyes extra wide in an effort to hide the signs of sleep deprivation that might show up through the lens of the camera. She didn’t want the good-looking man taking the photo to notice the bags under her eyes. He didn’t. Good.

“Do you speak Spanish, or is
hasta luego
your main phrase?” he asked.

“I’m learning.”

“Muy bien,”
he replied.

“You speak Spanish?” she asked.

“My parents are missionaries. I spent some time in South America as a kid.”

“Well, that sounds interesting,” she said with a smile. He took a few steps back and turned the camera, making it a vertical picture. “Oh, the music is starting. I don’t want to miss the opening.”

On “opening” he snapped the photo and handed the camera back to Vicki. The sun setting behind him made his sandy brown hair glow, and she noticed how gorgeous he was, like a Roman prince of sorts. The only thing missing was his halo. He wore a deep green T-shirt and black shorts. And he rode a black bike, not a flying white horse.
If he’s a B.J. Thomas fan, Dad will give us permission to elope
.

“My name is Ben O’Connor,” he said.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Vicki. You live around here?”

“I do,” he said. “And I bike just about everywhere, except when I’m working.” He handed the camera back to her.

“Well, thanks for taking the picture.”

“So what do you do? Are you in school, or do you work?”

“I’m in school in Michigan. I’m on summer break.”

“Michigan? Never been there. Nice state?”

“Great. They grow lots of Christmas trees, and the whole state has about fifty-four thousand farms.” She couldn’t believe her answer, although she knew his looks had caught her completely off guard, but she didn’t want to have an intelligent conversation. She wanted to stare. Maybe she could have
written
a great answer to his question, but it wasn’t an essay contest, just a conversational question. Grandma would have loved this one in a letter.

“Pride in one’s state. I like that,” he said.

She felt a smile stretching from ear to ear, and her face growing hot. “I’m only here for the summer, and I’ve got to find a job, quickly,” she added.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. Do you work around here?” Her sentences were becoming choppy. She couldn’t breathe.

“I’m a commercial architect here in Fort Myers. I moved down from
Mississippi after I finished school.”

“You like it here?”

“Love it. Oh, turn around, you’ve got to see the size of the sun now.”

“It’s blinding. Hey, I better go. The concert is starting.”

“Would you like to have a drink with me after the concert? There’s a piano bar just across the street.”

“Thanks, but I’m a bit under the weather right now. Lack of sleep.”

“Well, maybe we’ll meet again.” He shook her hand lightly.

“Maybe.”

Vicki sang along with the words being sung on stage as she walked back over to the blanket, “Life has had its hard times when I felt the chill of winter—can’t forget the night when my sweet Jesus slipped away.”

The man next to her kneeled in the grass and videotaped the stage. The woman with the sign swayed back and forth.

“Here, do us a favor, will you? Bring these flowers up to him now, on this song. I love this song,” the woman, who looked about her mother’s age, whispered in her ear. She handed Vicki a bouquet of lilies, but Vicki handed them back. “Gosh, no. I can’t walk up there in front of all these people.”

“Go on. You’re a young woman, full of life—go for it.”

“They’re your flowers. You bring them up.”

“I can’t. I have bad knees and don’t want to fall on the way. Please! It would mean so much to me. My husband’s busy with his camera, and I just want B. J. to get the flowers. I don’t care if they come directly from me. I can live vicariously through you for a moment.”

“Okay. I’ll do it, I guess.”

“You’ll be glad you did. Why is it we always regret the things we didn’t do in life more than the things we did? You won’t regret this.”

As Vicki walked up to the stage, she could feel her heart dancing in rhythm with the music, and she feared that walking too close to the speakers might trigger the pain. She didn’t want to die, not now, not tomorrow, not ever. And especially not with the beautiful man on his bike watching her from across the street. As she carefully walked around the blankets spread across the grass, so as not to step on any fingers, she glanced at the
lilies in her hand. They wore natural purple, blue, and white suits with ruffled blouses underneath. Somehow the lilies, once alive in the fields, reminded her not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. She was also reminded that tulips belong to the lily family.

“Thank you,” B. J. Thomas said softly into the microphone, and his voice echoed through all of downtown Fort Myers. His song had ended, and he bent down, hugged her, and took the flowers.

The crowd screamed, the woman cried, her husband kept videotaping, and Ben sat on his bike watching from the road. Later, Ben showed up at her blanket and handed her his phone number. “It’s too loud to talk now, but I’d love to go out. Call me if you’d like, if you’re not dating B. J Thomas, that is.” He laughed.

Vicki watched Ben take off on his bike. He was the sort of man she was attracted to, but she didn’t want to meet Mr. Right too soon in life. Admittedly, she viewed men as obstacles to all the things she wanted to do in life, before settling down. Then again, Ben was the type of man who would look quite sexy, even eating a Buffalo wing.

They spent every day together for the next several weeks. Their favorite thing was to walk the beach, and they did this for hours, always starting at the Sanibel Lighthouse. Sometimes they walked knee-deep in the water and sometimes on the white, crunchy shoreline, shuffling their feet as they went, forewarning stingrays to swim away. It was the same beach evening after evening, but each time it looked different, just as a painting on the wall looked different with the lights turned off and the shades shut, compared to when the lights were on or the sun was striking it from the window.

As they walked and held hands, Ben distracted her with frequent kisses. Each kiss felt like lightning, an electrical discharge between two clouds, and she liked being a cloud. They took a late afternoon Saturday bike ride through the J. N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge and spotted alligators everywhere on the 4.5-mile, one-way road. Once, a gator decided to slowly cross the road in front of them, so they stopped and waited for as long as it took, as if waiting for a train to pass. They
rented canoes and paddled the two-mile Commodore Creek canoe trail, beginning at Tarpon Bay, the heart of the refuge. They saw egrets, pelicans, and herons above and hermit and horseshoe crabs below.