Stiltsville: A Novel (11 page)

A few years earlier, we’d started a tradition of lending the stilt house to Marse’s extended family for a long weekend every summer. We’d cautioned them about the electric eel beneath the dock, and a couple of years passed without incident, but then Marse’s cousin Warren, a college student, had dove down with a machete and chopped off the eel’s head. Marse, who hadn’t known about Warren’s plan, apologized to us, but Dennis told her very calmly that although she was like a sister to him and he expected her to continue to treat the stilt house as her own, her family was not welcome there again. To my surprise, he kept his word. The eel’s severed head dried atop a piling for weeks, untouched by the pelicans that bothered our lobster traps, until I was sick of how angry it made Dennis and how lonely it seemed, perched there with its raisin eyes and bald head, and I knocked it into the water with the back of my hand. When I did this, Dennis closed his eyes for a moment, as if in eulogy.

There was a flurry of splashing. Paul and Dennis rounded the dock, heading toward us with their heads in the water. This had become, apparently, a serious race. Marse climbed the ladder and I followed. Marse called it. “Dennis had an arm’s length on you, Paul.”

“He’s got practice,” said Paul, breathing hard.

I went to get towels from the generator room, and when I returned they were standing on the dock, looking down at the water. Below—I didn’t see anything at first, but then I caught the flip of a fin—was the smooth, pale body of a manta ray. It flickered across the surface and beneath the dock. We stepped across to watch it, but it dove and was gone. I wished Margo had been there to see it. I shivered with longing for her—how well was she sleeping, without me or Dennis to tuck her in? Would she have nightmares? Would she have fun?

The swim had worn us out, and after the clamor of bedtime—brushing teeth and changing clothes—Dennis turned off the generator, and the house lights faded and died. We towed four mattresses out to the eastern stretch of porch, four salt-damp pillows and four white sheets. Paul slept nearest the railing—Dennis warned him not to roll over during the night—and Marse slept beside him. Then me, then Dennis. There were no boats in the channel, no voices riding the waves from other stilt houses. The night closed in. I lay on my side, facing Dennis, and listened to his breathing and the rhythms of the water.

I woke from the feeling of a hand moving in slow circles across my hip. The rubbing stopped when I opened my eyes; Dennis stared at me. His hand moved to my waist, then he pulled me to him and kissed me. His teeth grazed mine and his fingers moved under the elastic of my underwear. My blood warmed. He rose to his knees and looked beyond me, at Marse and Paul, then put a finger to his lips and gestured for me to follow. The soles of our feet made sandpaper sounds against the weathered wood floor. He paused in front of the door to the living room, looked in, then continued walking, to the western porch, where the wind blew loudly. I watched the movement of his hair, raising up and flattening again.

He pressed me against the porch railing and slipped off my underwear, which I looped around one ankle. I held the railing and Dennis held my breasts. The wind blustered in my ears when I faced him, so I turned away, and gradually my attention shifted as well, and I watched the boat as Dennis moved inside me. There was a liquid compass the size of a man’s fist on the boat console, and I imagined its needle jerking with every wave.

Dennis wanted my attention. Sometimes when he lost it, he let it go, and sometimes—this time included—he fought for it. He pulled out of me, keeping his hands against my hips. Then I was being pivoted, facing away from the house, with my hips squeezed against the porch railing and my torso pitched out over the water, holding on to the railing with both hands. He spread my legs with his knee and circled my waist with one arm, which was my cue, I felt, to let go.

T
hat weekend, before leaving for Bette’s, Margo had packed five stuffed animals and a smattering of bedtime books and every pair of shoes she owned—four, total. I didn’t know how other only children coped with the long quiet hours, but Margo found ways to amuse herself—she put on performances for us, she tromped through the backyard, examining every stone and stick, and she sat coloring on the kitchen floor while I cooked or cleaned. She’d recently developed a habit of lining up her stuffed animals and talking to them as she puttered around her room. “Mimo,” she would say to her stuffed monkey, “this is where the toys go when you’re done with them. Nettie, this is where I keep my pajamas.”

The only other time she’d stayed at Bette’s overnight, she’d twirled so long on the swing in the backyard that her hair had tangled in the chains and Bette had been forced to cut her free. Her beautiful dark brown hair, chopped before I’d been ready—it had broken my heart. Margo was a somewhat serious little person and enjoyed the company of adults; Bette claimed to prefer conversing with her niece rather than with most of her friends. The plans for this weekend included visiting the Crandon Park Zoo—Margo had asked me to call her aunt ahead of time to make certain Mimo would be invited along—and swimming at Dennis’s parents’ pool, and baking cupcakes with Bette’s lover, a pastry chef named Daphne. When we’d dropped her off, Bette and Daphne had been arguing. Dennis had taken Margo inside to unpack while Bette and I stood on the porch. “She’s so stubborn,” said Bette. She blew a thin stream of smoke and handed me the cigarette. I checked to see that Dennis was out of view, then took it.

“What’s the problem with Daphne?”

“She has a bee in her bonnet about getting a cat. Imagine us, the lesbians and the cat. I can barely stand having people in my house, not to mention vermin.”

“Cats aren’t vermin,” I said, though I more or less agreed about them—I’d never had any affection for them, but this was something I’d learned to keep to myself, since most people thought cats were just great. “Lots of people have perfectly clean cats.”

“Plus, she keeps making these spicy Mediterranean desserts, and I don’t have the heart to tell her, but Frances, they are not good.”

I thought that probably Bette had told her, and more than once. “I try to imagine what Dennis puts up with.”

“What?”

I took another drag on the cigarette. “You know, when I’m annoyed with him. I remind myself that there’s plenty to annoy him, too.”

“For once you might just commiserate.”

“Sorry.”

Across the street, at a bungalow even smaller than Bette’s, a man walked to the street to check his mail. He had a life-size manatee mailbox, the kind with the manatee standing on its tail and holding the mail slot in its mouth. The man waved at us and walked inside again.

“That’s guy’s a poofter,” said Bette.

“Bette!”

“I know I shouldn’t talk, but my word—he sashays!”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Stop it.”

She elbowed me gently. “Seriously, though, I’m thinking of kicking Daphne to the curb.”

“Will you miss her? Will you miss anything about her?”

She thought for a moment. “Not the spicy desserts, that’s for sure.”

Daphne was the most recent in a string of girlfriends, the first of whom had been Bette’s diving partner, Jane. I’d met Jane in person only once, years earlier; as it turned out, she’d been a decade older than Bette, and married. She had salt-and-pepper hair and a large, patrician nose, and her angular, rawboned body had reminded me of a waterbird. She hadn’t smiled when she’d shaken my hand. After Bette had run out on her wedding, she’d seen a lot of Jane for a time, but then suddenly they didn’t see each other at all. The second woman who had come to occupy Bette’s attention was Delilah. She had crooked teeth and long, straight brown hair that might never have been cut. This relationship had ended for reasons I never knew, and it was not easy to recall the sequence of infatuations after that. Bette’s circle of friends now encompassed, almost exclusively, a certain ilk of women: feminists and artists. As for Daphne, Margo liked her, and even Gloria and Grady invited her to dinners and holidays, and everyone loved her baking, but I had never sensed an uncontrollable affection between them.

Bette had left her job at the Barnacle shortly after Dennis and I married. With her part of the inheritance from their grandmother, she’d rented a storefront in downtown Coconut Grove and opened a dive shop. She’d started small, organizing day trips and classes, but within two years she’d moved into a larger space and had a staff of six. It had been more than five years since we’d camped together at Fisheating Creek, and still her hair was cut very short.

After Dennis came out of Bette’s house—he was a little rattled at leaving Margo behind, I recall—we’d gotten into the car, and Margo had stood waving happily at us from the porch, clutching Mimo and leaning against her aunt’s slender hip.

T
he package bobbed along while we ate breakfast, and every few minutes either Paul or Dennis walked to the window.

“Still there,” Dennis said.

“No sign of the pickup,” Paul said.

“Our detectives,” said Marse, rolling her eyes. “I say, call the Coast Guard and be done with it.”

“I agree,” I said, and received a sharp look from Dennis.

I’d barely spoken to Paul during breakfast, but afterward, when I was washing the dishes, he came up behind me. Marse and Dennis were on the porch, drinking coffee and keeping an eye on the Becks’ house. Paul took a plate from my hands and dried it with a dish towel. We continued for several minutes—me washing, him drying—without speaking. “Frances,” he said after the last dish was in the cabinet. “I thought maybe we could walk the flats while they fish. I don’t feel like fishing anyway, do you?”

“Not really.” I should have known Paul would be interested in the flats—he owned a plant nursery down south. “Did you want to go now?”

“Why not? There’s no wind, and the tide’s out.”

“Put on a T-shirt so you won’t burn.”

“Do I need shoes?”

I nodded. “There are some in the generator room. What size?”

“Eleven.”

“I’ll meet you down there.”

On the porch, Marse was staring through binoculars at the shore, and Dennis was telling a story I’d heard half a dozen times. “Right about there,” he said, guiding her binoculars. The buttons of his shirt were undone: Paul’s influence, I surmised. “Just off Gables Estates—those gigantic houses with the fake columns and the sculptures in the yard, those ugly houses.” Marse put down the binoculars and Dennis continued, “It just looked like a mannequin, to tell you the truth. That’s what I thought—someone had lost a mannequin in the middle of the waterway. I was twelve years old. My mother went crazy when she saw. She started cursing like a trucker. I’d never heard her curse like that. Fucking Mafia, she yelled. Fucking no-good sons of bitches, fucking drug-dealing pieces of shit. You would’ve thought she knew the guy. My father covered her mouth with his hand, and we drifted right by the body. I just stood there at the helm, watching it float by. It was a man, and he was twisted out of shape, like both arms were broken, and I could see one open eye, a bunch of bruises on his face. My father called the marine police, and they showed up in thirty minutes or so, and we went home. We had planned to go to the yacht club and get some sandwiches or something, but we just went home.”

“Goddamn,” said Marse. “My mother would have fainted on the spot.”

I said, “Anyone interested in walking the flats?”

Marse shook her head. “Your husband and I are going to hunt and gather.”

“You’re sure?” I said. “There’s no wind—it’s clear as glass.”

Dennis smiled. “Have fun,” he said. He pulled my wrist to his lips and kissed it, then turned back to Marse.

In the generator room, under layers of old shoes—sneakers and flip-flops and even a pair of ballet slippers—I found a pair of navy deck shoes that had belonged to Dennis’s father. I brought the deck shoes and a pair of sneakers to the dock. Paul slipped on the shoes, then jumped off the dock while I climbed down the swimming ladder, turning away from his splash. He dove, kicking, and did a handstand. When he emerged, he said, “This is fucking divine. How do you not come here every weekend of your lives?”

We moved from the deeper water beneath the docks onto the flats. “It takes a lot of work to leave civilization behind,” I said. “And Margo isn’t that strong a swimmer.” Every weekend, Dennis practiced with her in his parents’ swimming pool. She put her head down and made her way across the water, splashing erratically and coming up for air in mid-stroke, blustery and blinking. Dennis would tell her to focus on breathing for one lap, on her stroke for the next. When she tired, he perched her on his shoulders and told her he was her giant and the pool was her kingdom, and let her order him to take her to the steps, then back to the deep end, then back to the steps again.

The family who had owned the stilt house directly west of us, the Suttons, had recently moved to Orlando. This was the beginning of a period during which we were always learning of another family moving north. Often this had more to do with the changing demographics of the city, I suspected, than anything else. It had been almost fifteen years since the Bay of Pigs, and still John F. Kennedy was the second-most-hated man in South Florida, after Fidel Castro. In the coming years a bumper sticker would gain popularity: WILL THE LAST AMERICAN TO LEAVE MIAMI PLEASE BRING THE FLAG?