Stiltsville: A Novel (18 page)

“Turn left,” called Dennis. He was at least twenty yards off. We crossed into the next row of trees and a light appeared ahead. “Still with me?” he said. His voice and the light came from the same place.

“This is freaky, Dad,” called Margo. She sounded happy.

As we neared the light, I saw that it came from a flood lamp attached to a picker nestled in the high branches of a tree. In the basket of the picker was a man holding a bucket of oranges in one hand. Dennis had taken off his sweater and held it in front of him.

“I forgot to bring a bag,” said Dennis as we caught up. In the scope of the lamplight it looked like daytime. The man above us wore a red plaid jacket and heavy leather gloves. Dennis called up to him. “Got a few to spare?”

“Who’s catching?” called the man in the picker.

My arms rose, palms cupped. The man tossed an orange and I caught it, then placed it in Dennis’s sweater. I worried briefly about stretching the fabric, but then the man threw another orange, then another. When we’d collected half a dozen, Dennis knotted the sweater sleeves and slung the bundle over one shoulder. I took off my own sweater and Margo stepped up. “Here,” she called. I watched her in the grainy light, the lines and angles of her. She took a little hop every time she reached for a falling orange. Her hair swung. Her expression shifted from intent to ecstatic. The load in my arms grew heavy. From deeper in the grove, another shot rang out. “What is that?” I asked Dennis.

“Had enough?” said the man in the picker.

“Thank you kindly,” called Dennis, and the man waved. To Margo, Dennis said, “That sound is the fruit—it’s bursting.”

“The oranges are breaking?” she said.

“They have to,” said Dennis. “It’s too cold for them.”

We walked a little, shivering in cold air, and Dennis explained that the man in the picker was spraying the oranges with water. The water would freeze on the peels and the reaction would release the tiniest germ of heat, enough to keep some of the fruit alive. Dennis led us back to the road, and on the way I listened for bursting oranges and peered through the grove to spot other flood lamps, other pickers. The sound came every minute or so, always from a different direction, and I glimpsed half a dozen more lights. The grove was a galaxy, the flood lamps and explosions stars and celestial events. My family steered through space, linked, until we reached the highway. To Dennis, I said, “How did you know?” He smiled at me but didn’t answer. He seemed to regard fatherhood and husbandhood the way a magician regards magic: the delight is in the mystery. His father had probably brought him to beg for free oranges the last time the crops froze. By the time Margo became an adult, there would be fences to keep us out.

We put the oranges in the car trunk. I figured I would make marmalade and no one would eat it. I would make orange-chocolate-chip cookies and Margo would say she preferred the regular kind. It didn’t matter. On the way home, Margo’s cheeks were pink in the brightening light. She chatted for a while about the orange groves, then grew quiet. After a long silence, she said, “When Carla moves, I won’t have a best friend.”

“You’ll make a new one,” I said. “Or two or four.”

“Mighty Margo,” said Dennis. “Many people will love you.”

This time she cried almost without sound. We’d made a mistake in pushing her ahead—of this, I was certain. I’d let pride influence me. Shamefully, though, I felt a little grateful for the mistake, because my daughter needed me, and I knew she wouldn’t need me in the same way for much longer. Still, I couldn’t shake the image of Margo sitting in Mrs. Madansky’s class, raising her hand again and again.

I
n mid-December of that year—Margo had been a sixth-grader for three months—a dozen Dade County police officers chased down and fatally beat a thirty-three-year-old black insurance agent named Arthur McDuffie. They said McDuffie had rolled through a red light on his motorcycle while giving a cop the finger, and that he’d kicked one of the officers, who in turn cracked McDuffie’s skull open—these were the prosecutor’s words—
like
an egg
.

Mrs. Madansky sent home a typed letter addressed to all sixth-grade parents. “
Dear Mom and Dad
,” read the note, “
your son/daughter’s class will study Current Events this term. Students are required to bring a news article to class every Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday
.” On our copy, the second pair of days was circled in red pen. “
Please supervise your child’s choices to make sure they are appropriate. Parents have expressed concern that certain local events might cause students to become upset
.”

At the dinner table, over lasagna, Dennis tore up the note and tossed it theatrically over one shoulder. “Your teacher is an idiot,” he said to Margo.

“Dennis!” I said. “She’s being cautious.”

“She’s being a coward.” To Margo, he said, “Something horrible happened and people are going to remember it for a long time.”

“The police killed a black man,” she said.

“Right,” said Dennis, “and now people have to face the fact that Miami isn’t so much a melting pot as, I don’t know . . . ”

“Potpourri,” I said.

“Why did they kill him?” said Margo.

“We don’t know exactly why,” said Dennis. “But people feel so strongly about Mr. McDuffie’s death that a judge moved the trial all the way to Tampa.”

“What will happen to the police officers?” said Margo.

I said, “They’ll be punished.”

“In Tampa?” Dennis said to me. His jaw tightened. “No, they won’t.”

After dinner, Dennis spread a newspaper on our bed and pored over it, trying to find an article for Margo to take to school. There was no use telling him this was her assignment. “Here’s one,” he said. He called for Margo and a minute later she appeared, wearing a Dolphins jersey and white ankle socks. Dennis tore out the article and Margo read it while I got ready for bed. When she’d gone back to her room, I asked him what they’d chosen.

“That fisherman who drowned in his nets,” he said.

I stared at him. “How is that any better?”

“She’s going to show the kids how to signal an airplane from water.”

“You’re using Margo to teach Mrs. Madansky a lesson.”

“Which one was Mrs. Madansky?” said Dennis. He walked to the full-length mirror that hung from the back of the closet door. “I look older.”

Dennis had become very focused. He either went on an interview or made phone calls every afternoon. Marse had begged him to interview with her firm, but he’d declined. I’d taken on more hours at the bank. We owed his parents so much money I thought we’d never be able to pay it back.

“You look tired, not older,” I said.

“Same difference,” he said, borrowing an expression from Margo.

He came to bed and laid his head on my thigh. I took off my bifocals. Dennis worried sporadically, in consuming fits, while I worried consistently at a moderate intensity, so it was rare for a new concern to spiral me into full-blown panic. I thought of his advice to Margo about school. “List the things you’re most anxious about,” I said, “and we’ll cross off the last two.”

He paused. “I’m nervous about the possibility of homelessness and poverty.”

“Ours, though? Not generally.”

“Ours, yes.”

“What else?”

“I’m worried that I won’t find a job—”

“You’ll find a job.”

“Assuming I do, there’s no guarantee I’ll like it any better than the last one.” This was true. “And I’m concerned that our daughter doesn’t have any friends.”

Truthfully, in those moments, Dennis did look older. “Anything else?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t speak for a long moment. “I wonder if maybe Miami isn’t the best place for us.”

I sat up, knocking away his head.

“You’ve never thought about moving?” he said.

“Of course I have.” In fact, I’d thought of it a few times in recent years, as Miami had started to change. I’d noticed that on the bay there were more large flashy powerboats, and on land there were more luxury cars and new houses with security gates and surveillance systems—and I’d heard on the news that there were now more banks per capita in Miami than anywhere else in the country, and more cash in those banks than anywhere else. These seemed signs of something ominous. The summer before, in broad daylight, men in an armored van had pulled up to a liquor store at Dadeland mall and shot up the place, and since then, one could scarcely turn on the the news without hearing about the cocaine cowboys. More than once I’d heard the joke that in Miami one could always find work as a tail gunner on a bread truck. But although we saw the changes happening around us, they barely affected my family. We were insulated by where we lived and the circles we moved in. To this day, I’ve never seen cocaine in real life.

“It’s last on the list,” I said. “Cross it off.”

“Let’s talk about it,” said Dennis.

“We can talk about it, but we’re not going to do it,” I said. “Cross it off. You take the job thing, and I’ll worry about Margo. If you get tired, we can switch.”

M
argo and I also negotiated over the next month. It was an unspoken negotiation. She’d taken Dennis’s advice, and Dennis had taken mine, and they seemed to be trudging along with their respective duties—the sixth grade, the job search—without sliding into despair. Meanwhile, I was experiencing a surge of energy: I prepared lavish breakfasts and hemmed old skirts to a more fashionable length. I devoured novels while Dennis made phone calls or Margo studied. I engineered inexpensive weekend activities: the zoo, the science museum, the beach. When I picked Margo up from school, she walked from the gate to my car without speaking to anyone. Weekends, she helped out behind the counter at Bette’s dive shop. We went out on the boat with Grady and Gloria, and Margo sat chewing bubble gum at the stern, flipping through magazines. Marse took her shopping at the outlet mall in Boca Raton, and she came home with a pair of designer sunglasses and sneakers with silver laces. Gloria told her that adjusting to change takes time, and Bette told her that very often other people stink. Soccer season was finished, and Carla’s family had moved away.

Our negotiation was this: if she could avoid becoming terribly unhappy, and she continued talking to Mr. Callahan once a week, then I would not nag her about school and friends and whether her life was improving.

One afternoon, she came to the car after school with Trisha Weintraub in tow. She introduced us and said that Trisha needed a ride, and they climbed into the backseat. I started the car and pulled out of the lot without knowing where I was going. Trisha wore tight blue jeans and a sweatshirt with a wide neck that revealed a flesh-colored bra strap. She usually rode home with her best friend Melanie’s mom, she explained, but that day Melanie had left school early with the flu. Trisha directed me through the gates of CocoPlum to the stucco house with the terra-cotta porch. “See ya,” she said to Margo as she scooted out of the car. “Don’t forget to ask.” She slammed the door.

I waited to drive away until Trisha was inside. I tried to meet Margo’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but she was studying her fingernails. “Ask what?” I said.

“Trisha’s birthday is Saturday. She’s having a sleepover.”

“You can go. What time does it start?”

She shrugged, so I asked about the school day, and then she chatted a little about the softball unit in gym class. We arrived home, and together we walked into the house and found Dennis standing in the kitchen in his boxer shorts, drinking milk from the carton. “Enough,” I said. “You need to find a job.” I was mostly joking.

“Done,” he said, spreading his arms. “I start Monday.”

He’d been hired by a small firm that specialized in immigration and admiralty law. It was law, yes, and there was less money in it than in other areas of practice, but it was a close-knit and casual office, and he believed he could be happy there. Over the years, this would prove true.

We celebrated by going out to an Italian restaurant on Miracle Mile. “Patience is a virtue,” said Dennis, raising his glass. “Right, Margo?”

“I was invited to a sleepover,” she said uncertainly.

“Well done!” said Dennis. We toasted.

That Saturday afternoon, Margo came into the living room, where Dennis was watching basketball and I was reading the newspaper. “Mom,” she said. She gestured for me to get up. I put down the paper and followed her to her bedroom.

“All packed?” I said.

It had been almost a year since Margo had attended a sleepover. She looked miserable. She slumped on her bed, her hands wedged between her knees. Through my mind flashed a memory of her standing on the sidewalk outside Mr. Oxley’s classroom, looking confident and charming, and my gut clenched. “I have a problem,” she said.

I tried to sound capable and maternal. “Let’s try and solve it.”

She looked around the room, avoiding my eyes. I knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

Her arms looped around my neck and her head found my shoulder. I felt the hard chill of an earring on my skin. “Trisha shaves her legs,” she said. “And so does Melanie, but she won’t be there tonight because she’s still sick. Beverly Jovanovich does, too, and Sonia Rodriguez.”