Stiltsville: A Novel (10 page)

Miami is the only place in this country where Stiltsville could exist, and for a while I had the good fortune of spending time there.

I lived in Miami through scandals and riots, through dozens of tropical storms and one devastating hurricane, through the Mariel boat lift and the cocaine cowboys. Outside Florida, I’ve never met anyone else who lived in Miami or cared to, or even anyone who is not somewhat surprised to hear that I lived there for half of my life. Perhaps what is still most surprising to me about Miami is that in spite of its lurid excesses and unreal beauty and unreal ugliness, it was possible for me, a girl from Georgia, to create a life there. Overall, an excellent life. A life I knew even as I was living it, I would miss when it came to an end.

1976

W
hen Margo was five, we left her with Bette one summer weekend and took Marse and Dennis’s old friend Paul, whom Marse had been dating on and off for a year, to Stiltsville. The morning after we arrived, I was in the downstairs bathroom changing into a swimsuit when I heard an airplane’s engine. The noise drew me into the sunlight on the dock and I watched as the plane—a Cessna with twin propellers and a red stripe down the fuselage—swept into the sky above our leg of the channel, then banked and circled over the Becks’ stilt house to the northeast. Dennis was fixing breakfast while Marse and Paul dressed. Stiltsville was five miles from downtown Miami: from land, the plane would resemble a quiet mosquito, and the houses perched on stilts in the bay would dissolve in the blurring of waves and sky. But from where I stood, the plane’s noise and proximity were overwhelming. It was seconds before I heard Dennis shouting over the sound. I turned to find him waving frantically from the upstairs porch for me to come inside.

I walked back up the dock, trying not to run, and up the stairs. Paul stood at the kitchen window holding binoculars to his face, and Marse stood beside him in her pajamas. Paul handed me the binoculars. “Looks like we have company,” he said.

The Cessna’s fuselage was pockmarked and the paint was faded and nicked. There was one man in the cockpit, but I couldn’t make him out. “Drugs?” I said.

“What else?” said Paul.

“We don’t know it’s drugs,” said Dennis.

“Who owns that house?” said Paul.

“The Becks,” said Marse. “Marcus and Kathleen. They’re hardly the type.”

I thought of Kathleen Beck in her floral sundresses, and of the stork-shaped cookies she’d brought when Margo was born. Every so often I saw her in the parking lot of Margo’s school, picking up her twin daughters. I’d thought she and Marcus had planned to be on the water that weekend, but they must have changed their minds.

A hatch door opened beside the cockpit. “Here we go,” said Marse. We waited, and then a package dropped into the water ten yards off the Becks’ dock. There was a small splash and the bright white package bobbed immediately to the surface. The Cessna circled once more and headed southeast, away from land.

We stepped onto the porch. There was little current, and any movement of the package was almost imperceptible. “What are we waiting for?” said Paul.

Dennis watched the package through the binoculars. It seemed to be heading toward the Becks’ house; if so, it would slip under the dock, past the pilings, and out to sea. The whole process would take three hours, or five at the most. “Could be messy,” said Dennis.

“We can’t just leave it there,” said Marse. “We should call the Coast Guard.”

“Why would we do that?” said Paul.

I said, “Calling the Coast Guard isn’t a bad idea.”

“I’d rather not,” said Dennis.

“Why?” I said.

He didn’t look at me. “Because the registration on the boat is—well, it’s lagging.”

“I don’t think they’ll care about our boat registration, honey. Besides, the Coast Guard is federal.”

“They could call the marine police.”

Paul said, “How well do you know these people, the Becks?”

“Fairly well,” said Dennis.

“Kathleen’s a Girl Scout troop leader,” said Marse.

“Marcus plays the tuba, for goodness’ sake,” I said. “This has nothing to do with them.”

Paul took the binoculars. “Someone could be in there,” he said. We all looked at the Becks’ stilt house, which was a smaller version of our own, painted white with blue shutters. “They could be waiting until dark to make the pickup.”

It had become apparent that all the cloak-and-dagger talk was just that. But I was glad the men had found something to occupy them. Weekends at Stiltsville—our little island, our weekend oasis—tended to stretch out when we entertained guests. “Let’s just keep an eye on it, see what happens,” I said. “I’ll finish breakfast.”

“I smell adventure,” said Paul.

“You always smell adventure,” said Marse.

They were not a demonstrative couple; I’d rarely even seen them kiss. Dennis and I had set them up after years of having said we should; we’d had them over for dinner, and the following weekend they’d attended an office party at Marse’s firm, and after the party—I knew this because Marse told me—they’d gone for a midnight cruise in her boat, and wound up having sex on the deck. For a time, Marse had been smitten. A month before the weekend at Stiltsville, though, she’d told me they were through—something about an argument at a wedding, where friends of his had not known who she was, or had mistaken her for someone else—but then he’d popped back into her life and their relationship had resumed. I didn’t know the particulars. When it came to her love life, if nothing else, Marse was reluctant to give details. I could count on one hand the number of men she’d introduced me to. That’s not including Dennis, of course.

W
hen we’d arrived at the stilt house the day before, it had taken half an hour to dock. Our boat, which we’d bought after Dennis had been invited to join Grady’s yacht club, was a nineteen-foot Mako with a single outboard engine and a center console—a boat for skiing and day trips, not serious seafaring—and the current kept fighting us off. I stood on the gunwale, knees buckling with the waves, prepared to jump to the dock—but every time we came close, Dennis shifted too soon into neutral and the tide pulled us away. The downtown skyline shimmered in the heat, supporting the sunset on its shoulders. Night advanced from the east. If we didn’t dock soon, I thought, we’d have to open the house in the dark.

Marse climbed onto the gunwale beside me and stood there in her bikini, her hair wet with spray from the choppy ride. “I can make it,” she said. “No offense, but I’m lighter than you.”

I moved out of her way. “Be careful.”

“Don’t sweat it,” she said, crouching. I was afraid she would slip off right then, while Dennis was bringing us around again. The dock was yards away, and the water in the channel was soupy with roiling sand and seaweed. I planted my feet. Dennis stood at the console, sweating and gritting his teeth, his too-long hair spiking into his eyes, and his beard—which he’d cultivated over the last year—dark with perspiration. He was a good captain. Over the years, we would upgrade to a twin-outboard sports fisherman, then to a thirty-six-foot Hatteras with a tuna tower. Now, though, in the midst of the docking fiasco, with only 175 horsepower at his disposal, Dennis was dejected. “This has never happened before, I swear,” he called out. Marse laughed, and Paul slapped Dennis on the shoulder.

“Don’t sweat it,” said Paul. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

Paul was a pink-cheeked man, fleshier than Dennis but more muscular as well, with thick black hair that had started to recede. He and Dennis had sailed together during high school, and after graduating they’d spent six months together in Spain, traveling, and though this was a trip Dennis remembered fondly, they had not continued to be quite so close. I’d been around Paul many times, but almost always in a group setting—a dinner party, a luncheon at the yacht club, a day of boating with friends. He struck me as the type of man who believed himself more handsome and charming than he was.

Dennis gripped the throttle, his jaw sharp. The boat started toward the dock again. The engine sputtered as Dennis eased back on the throttle, then hummed as he shifted into neutral. I hoped our momentum would be strong enough to fight the tide until Marse had her chance.

She jumped earlier than I would have. Maybe my timing had been our problem all along. She landed on the dock with a slap and grabbed a piling for balance, then stood as we drifted away. “Here,” I yelled, throwing her a line. She caught it awkwardly, hands splayed at knee level, then wedged a foot behind a piling and pulled us in. I felt her pride, her sense of strength. The men hooted and I clapped. When the boat reached the dock, Paul stepped off and took Marse in his arms. Over her shoulder, he winked at me.

I unlocked the gate and sent Marse to unlatch the bedroom shutters and crank open the windows while I lugged the rocking chairs onto the porch. Dennis started the generator and retied Marse’s cleat knots, then lit the pilot lights on the refrigerator and stove—both of these ran on gas, and we used the generators as rarely as possible, for overhead lights—while I unloaded the groceries. On my last trip, Paul intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs. He took a bag from my arms and put it down. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He reached for my hand and held it between us. There was a shallow slice along the outside of my thumb, a ridge of blood. “You should get something on this,” he said. “It might get infected.”

“Yes, doctor,” I said. I meant to tease, but he glanced up sharply. “It’s nothing, really,” I said. There was a bead of sweat or salt water on his nose. Already, the day’s whiskers darkened his jaw. I wondered if he was the type of man who never shaved on weekends, if by Monday morning he would have a beard as thick as Dennis’s.

Paul picked up my other hand, examined it, dropped it. “Hand me that, would you?” he said, motioning to a duffel bag at the foot of the stairs. I turned and bent down for it. Paul had a way—I’d felt it before—of making me feel like I had a stake in giving him what he wanted. “Get something on that cut within the hour,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and he turned away, as if I’d been keeping him.

After dinner, we sat in rocking chairs on the porch, our legs perched on the railing, eight feet pointing toward shore. The world had gone from blue to purple, and the only lights in the sky were the distant windows of downtown Miami and the stars. Dark water stretched in every direction. I said, “What does everyone want to do tomorrow?”

Dennis’s hand was on my thigh. “I want to fish,” he said, stroking my skin with his thumb.

“Me, too,” said Marse. This surprised me. “And I want to swim.”

I collected the empty beer cans and took them into the kitchen. While I was inside, I saw the others get up from their chairs and move to the porch railing. I heard Paul’s laugh swell, and it was a wholehearted laugh, the laugh of someone relaxed. I felt the muscles in my neck and shoulders soften. Marse appeared in the doorway. “Frances!” she said. “We’re jumping—get your suit.”

“In the dark?” I left the beers on the counter and joined her. Dennis had a leg over the porch railing and held on to the roof with one hand. Next to him, Paul leaned out, scanning the water. Dennis swung his other leg over the rail and faced the water. “Here goes,” he said. He jumped.

We’d never jumped at night before. I held my breath and searched the black water until a notch of moonlight glazed Dennis’s wet hair. “Who’s next?” he called.

Paul took off his shirt and turned to Marse. “You are,” he said.

Marse was already wearing a suit, so she stepped out of her shorts and stepped over the railing. “Ready,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes on the ledge, and then Paul edged away and she jumped. Mid-flight, it occurred to me to hope she didn’t land on Dennis.

She didn’t. Dennis cheered her and together they swam around the dock, talking in breathy fragments. The tone of their talk was open and friendly, lacking subtext. “Our turn,” said Paul. He took off his shirt.

“Me first,” I said. But I wasn’t wearing my suit.

“I’ll wait while you change.”

“OK,” I said. But I just stood there. The humidity pressed against the back of my neck. I unzipped my shorts and stepped out of them, tugging on the hem of my T-shirt.

“Indeed,” said Paul, stepping aside. I climbed over the rail and watched Dennis and Marse as they rounded the dock. The wind lifted my T-shirt and brushed against my thighs. It occurred to me that afterward, I’d have to walk back upstairs with my shirt wet against my skin. But it was too late to change my mind. I jumped.

The water was warm. I swam under the dock to the ladder, where Marse sat on the lowest rung and Dennis held on with one hand. After cheering me, Dennis went back to talking with Marse about sharks in the bay. Marse was saying she’d seen tiger sharks and hammerheads, but Dennis said he had seen only nurse sharks. “It’s the same as with anything else,” he said. “They’re more afraid of you.”

Paul jumped and swam to us, then challenged Dennis to a race around the dock. They kicked away in a splash of elbows and ankles, dark heads bobbing. Marse sat down on the ladder, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Do you want to get out?” I said.

“I don’t know.” She looked off. “You two usually sleep on the porch, right?”

The burden of hosting returned: Were there enough clean sheets? Would Dennis’s snoring keep everyone awake? I said, “I usually do, but Dennis likes to sleep inside sometimes, when it’s windy.”

“I love sleeping outside.”

“I can sleep inside with Dennis.”

“Or we can all sleep on the porch.”

The idea gave me pause. How widely apart would we space the mattresses? Would I be able to sleep with them beside us? If Marse had been with us alone, without Paul, I wouldn’t have thought twice. There was practically nothing I wouldn’t share with her. She’d been the one to first bring me to Stiltsville, after all—she’d introduced me to my husband. Over the years we’d shopped and cooked and exercised and boated together, and though she was not typically a person who fawned over children, when Margo was born she’d bought a slew of books and outfits and stuffed animals, and had come every weekend to hold the baby while I catnapped on the sofa. Margo called her Aunt Marse, and had believed until recently that Marse, like Bette, was a blood relation. Every few weeks Marse picked up Margo and strapped her into the backseat of her car, and they spent the entire afternoon together. When Margo came home, breathless with tales about their day, Marse smirked at me, as if reminding me that although I was the mother, she had license to buy the kid both ice cream and cotton candy in the same afternoon, then drop her off and drive away.