Stiltsville: A Novel (15 page)

It had been a decade since he’d left the house for his first day of work as an attorney. I’d checked him for wrinkles and kissed him good-bye. “Are you nervous?” I’d said. He’d shaken his head. “A means to an end,” he’d said, and rolled his eyes. Then he was off, and we’d fallen into a routine. And still sometimes when he came through the door at the end of the day, I saw him unshoulder his work and take on the life he meant to live. A different man could not have done it, that shrugging away of work cares, day after day. When women I knew complained about their overworked, overtired, overstressed husbands, I thought of energetic, unworried, distractible Dennis—Dennis, who would never fulfill his potential or win an award or retire early, Dennis the underachiever—and I understood that we were lucky. He was home by five almost every day, he never worked weekends, and sometimes he left the office in the afternoon and went to the marina to tinker with the boat engines—we now owned a twin-outboard sports fisherman—or came home to share a sandwich with me and water the alamanda bushes in the side yard, then retied his tie and returned to the office.

I couldn’t think of a single job that Dennis would truly love. And while I accepted the close boundaries of my own ambition, I was nonetheless a little unnerved by the same lack in my husband; I thought one of us should be setting an example. As I sat beside him, holding tight to the reins of the swing as he pumped away, I found myself warding off annoyance by recalling the things I appreciated about him: he loved to wake up early and go running, and as a result I never had to make the coffee. He spent money lavishly on things he enjoyed, like fishing equipment and gifts for me and Margo, and meagerly on things he didn’t, like his own clothes and generic-brand deck shoes. He still wore his hair as long as he had worn it when I’d met him, so it hung half an inch over his ears.

Beyond the jungle gym, light from Margo’s bedroom bled into the evening. She crossed the room and lingered out of view, then crossed again. Fourth grade was in full swing and sixth grade was still in the hazy long distance. I didn’t know when her bedroom door had started being closed as much as it was open, or when I’d stopped knowing what she did when she was alone. I considered tiptoeing to the window and peering in, then watching as she danced alone to a cassette on the yellow shag rug, or as she dragged the telephone in from the hallway and shut its cord in the door hinges, or as she read a book with one hand in a bag of pretzels.

Dennis’s swing rose as high as he could make it go. He tucked his legs under when he dropped so they wouldn’t hit the ground, and then pumped them out when he rose. “It’s not fucking long enough,” he said. “We need one of these for adults.”

“I don’t think they make them,” I said.

“Goddamn kid swings,” he muttered, and then I’m not sure if he let go or if his hands slipped on the wet chains, but all of a sudden he was in the air and then on the ground, clutching his ankle. By the time I reached him, he was sobbing.

D
uring the last week of fourth grade, Dennis and Margo and I sat down at the kitchen table for a family meeting. I’d cleaned up from dinner and Margo was freshly showered. Dennis had been scanning the classifieds and eating blackberries over the sink. When we were seated, Dennis clasped his hands. He started by explaining our meeting with Mr. Oxley to Margo, who interrupted to remind me that Elise Martinez, our neighbor for years until her family moved, had skipped second grade. She fidgeted until Dennis was finished. “But my friends,” she said. She scratched at the table with a fingernail.

Dennis got up from the table and came back with a steno pad. He drew three rectangles and labeled them FOURTH GRADE, FIFTH GRADE, and SIXTH GRADE. Beside the rectangles, he drew a stick figure in a skirt and labeled it MARGO. Beside the figure, he drew a question mark. “The way I see it,” he said, “we’ll fill these boxes with pros and cons, and whichever has the most pros wins.”

I said, “Fourth grade isn’t an option.”

“It’s the standard by which all other grades are measured,” Dennis said.

I said, “Mr. Oxley thinks you might be a little too mature for the fifth grade, sweetheart.”

“Except he pronounces it
matoor
,” said Dennis, and Margo giggled.

“I like Mr. Oxley,” said Margo.

“Me too,” I said.

“Me too,” said Dennis, and in the fourth-grade box he wrote: MR. OXLEY.

“I don’t think sixth-graders take art class,” said Margo.

NO ART CLASS, wrote Dennis in the sixth-grade box.

I said, “They have health education in the sixth grade,” and Margo made a face. Dennis pointed out that she’d be in a different class from her friends, and Margo nodded solemnly. FRIENDS, wrote Dennis in the fifth-grade box. Margo pointed out that sixth-graders were allowed to take two elective classes per term. SHOP & HOME-EC, wrote Dennis, and she said she’d prefer to take gymnastics.

“Sixth-grade boys are cuter,” she said, which came as a surprise. This was true, from what I’d observed. CUTE BOYS, wrote Dennis with difficulty. Margo said, “Graduation.”

Dennis was always less reluctant than I to show ignorance. “Meaning what?” he said.

“There’s no ceremony for the sixth-graders,” said Margo.

There were plenty of times when I wasn’t certain what Margo was talking about—music bands, for example, or slang, or comic book characters. For an instant, I thought this was one of those times, but then I remembered the most significant difference between fifth and sixth grades: although they were both located on the same campus, one was elementary school, and the other, as of a school board decision two years earlier, was middle school.

“You’ll miss graduation,” I said, and Margo said, “Obviously.”

Sunset School comprised two large buildings, one for kindergarten through fifth grade, and the other for grades six through eight. Grades nine through twelve, which didn’t yet concern us, were located in a different place entirely. If Margo skipped the fifth grade, not only would she occupy a different desk in a different classroom—she’d cross into a new world order. This was not a minor distinction.

“They have lockers at middle school,” I said.

LOCKERS, wrote Dennis.

“They have different teachers for every subject,” said Margo.

DIFF. TEACHERS, Dennis wrote.

“They don’t have to walk single file in the hall,” said Margo.

Dennis wrote, NO SINGLE FILE. Then, in the fifth-grade box, he wrote, SINGLE FILE.

“I’ll go,” said Margo.

I marveled at her flexibility. “You don’t have to,” I said.

Dennis put down the pencil. “Why don’t you sleep on it?”

Margo bit her lip. “No. It’s OK.” She put her arms around his neck. When she drew back, she hugged me, too, then picked up the steno pad with the boxes all filled in. She tore off the top sheet and folded it as small and tight as a matchbook, then slipped it into her back pocket and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Can I have ice cream?” she said.

Two weeks later, Margo left in a van full of local kids for Camp Cherokee in southern Georgia, where she’d spent a month every summer since she was eight. In July, Dennis and I drove up to Atlanta to spend the weekend with my mother—we met my father and Luanne, whom we’d seen only occasionally over the years, for breakfast—and on the way home we visited Margo at camp on her birthday. We took her out for barbecue and she and Dennis went through ten packets of Wet Wipes each. Camp was only half over and already she was tan and hollow-cheeked, with a newly chipped molar. She explained that she’d been doing backward somersaults in the shallow part of the lake, one after the other without coming up for air, and then the back of her head had hit the metal swim ladder. She’d believed she’d been rolling in place, when really she’d been traveling. As soon as her head had hit, she’d felt something sharp roll over her tongue. She’d stood up and spat into her hand, then presented the shard to her counselor. I wondered why we hadn’t been notified. Dennis sighed—thinking, I assume, of the dentist bill.

“On land,” said Margo, “when I do a somersault, I roll about this far.” She spread her arms. “But I thought that in water, I’d stay in place. Wouldn’t you think I’d stay in place?”

“Like laundry in a machine,” said Dennis, nodding.

Margo shrugged. “I guess not.”

Usually when we drove up for her birthday—as we had done three summers running—Margo begged to stay at camp for another two-week session. We’d always refused. A month was already too much time without her, in my opinion, and Dennis always wanted to spend a week at Stiltsville as a family before school started. Not to mention that camp was expensive. But on the drive up, I’d told Dennis I thought we should let her stay this year. “What on earth for?” he’d said. “Are we feeling guilty?” I didn’t answer. “I guess we are,” he’d said.

I resisted the impulse to wipe a smear of barbecue from Margo’s chin. “Aren’t you going to ask to stay at camp?” I said.

She put a finger in her mouth and felt around. “Look,” she said, pulling apart her lips. The broken tooth looked like the craggy face of a mountain.

“We’ll get it fixed when you’re home,” I said.

“I don’t want to stay this year,” Margo said.

“Good,” said Dennis.

“Why not?” I said.

Margo shrugged. Her shrug had become something of a default reaction, a prelude to the preteen years. She’d also assumed the habit of thinking before answering. “It’s fun, but it’s not that fun,” she said. “You know?”

“Sure,” said Dennis. “More Margo for us.”

That night, in what must have been the crummiest motel room between Tallahassee and Panama City, I cried. Dennis was only moderately sympathetic—he’d long since dubbed our annual camp visit the Trail of Tears. He lay with his head propped on a stack of flat pillows, watching the weather report flashing on the television. “She’s changed,” I said.

Dennis nodded.

“She’ll miss graduation,” I said.

“Big deal.”

“She would’ve received an award.” Best Citizenship, I thought, or Best Spelling.

“Are we having second thoughts?”

“No,” I said. I cried harder. “But she would’ve gotten a new dress, and I would’ve fixed her hair.”

“Frances—”

“And you would’ve taped the whole thing.”

This got his attention. He’d purchased a video camera shortly before quitting his job. Since, he’d archived twenty-five hours of Margo practicing cartwheels in the backyard, and me reading a book on the sofa in my bifocals, and Margo running red-faced down a green stretch of soccer field, and me in one of his old polo shirts, fixing breakfast. When he trained the camera on Margo, she made faces. “Come on,” Dennis would say, “be candid.” Margo would lunge at the camera, fingers flexing. “Candid, candid, candid,” she’d say in a monster voice. “Someday we’ll look back,” Dennis would say, reattaching the lens cap.

Dennis turned up the volume on the television. “She’s all registered; she’s ready.”

“She needs new clothes,” I said seriously.

His jaw tensed. “I’ll borrow some cash.” His parents had offered; we’d known it was only a matter of time.

“I’ll take that bank job,” I said.

“Shit,” he said. On television, a local meteorologist stood in front of a red-and-yellow whorl: a tropical storm was brewing in the West Indies. Dennis said, “We can’t keep her in a class where we know she isn’t challenged.”

“If only we didn’t know,” I said.

“Plus, the girl thing,” he said. “Chests like mosquito bites—bad influence.”

I stopped crying and laughed a little. I moved next to him and watched the grainy television. Hurricane season was under way, and this West Indian blip was its first noteworthy event. For months Dennis would follow weather events like elections. The meteorologist’s chatter would function as the backdrop during every family meal. There had been only one real hurricane since I’d moved to Miami—David in 1979, which had torn several two-by-fours from the stilt house roof and half a dozen shingles from our house in Miami. Tropical storms brewed constantly from May to September, but they had so many ways of falling apart. They might diffuse over the continental reef or rub up against cold snaps and disperse like bubbles in tepid bathwater. Sometimes they just disappeared: angry radar spirals dissolved, and the screen went black. Dennis feared, as I did, that it was only a matter of time before another big one hit Stiltsville. He remembered Donna, Cleo, Betsy. If the worst happened—
when
the worst happened—I knew my little family would find itself unmoored. We would boat the bay and the Miami River, destinationless. Maybe we would anchor where our stilt house had stood and dive the spot like any wreck, searching for bed frames, shutters, shoes. We would feel loss and lost, and I would realize once again: This is what it means to be part of a family. There are no maps and the territory is continually changing. We are explorers, traveling in groups.

“Do you think she’s changed?” I said.

“She’s older,” he said. “She’s eleven now, for Christ’s sake.”

“She’s become . . .” I couldn’t think of the right word. The red swirl on the television flashed across the blue Atlantic. By the time it reached South Florida—if it even made it that far—it would be no more destructive than a rainstorm. “Reserved,” I said.