Stiltsville: A Novel (23 page)

“Well,” I said as we walked. “What do you recommend?”

“You should try out a few, see what suits you.”

“They’ll let me do that?”

“They have to. Everyone’s different. Spend some time with each. Don’t forget to show your left shoulder on your forehand.”

“I’ll try to get to it this week,” I said.

“Why don’t I go with you?”

We reached my car and I opened the door. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Really, I’ll get a new racket. I promise.” I slid into the driver’s seat, and when I did my skirt pulled high on my thighs—thighs that had, along with my waistline, tightened a bit in the past weeks. He stood in the door with his hand on the hood. I caught a whiff of his scent—sweaty but clean, with a ghost of the cologne he’d applied that morning. “Frances—”

“No, you’re absolutely right,” I said. It had been years since I’d blushed, and now it seemed I couldn’t stop. I looked at my watch without registering the time.

“You don’t want company? I’m a professional.”

I shook my head. “I’ll figure it out.”

He shut my door and leaned down to talk through the window. “I know I’m pushy,” he said.

“You are pushy,” I said. “I needed a push.”

He stepped away, and I sat still for a moment. In my peripheral vision Jack walked across the parking lot toward the tennis center, and his figure diminishing in the distance had the power of a person standing squarely in my vision, staring me straight on. That night after dinner, I brought three rented rackets back to the Biltmore to hit against the backboard, and within half an hour had decided which one I would buy.

M
argo came home for July Fourth weekend, and we went to Stiltsville to watch the fireworks over the skyline. From the porch we could see several small pockets of them sweeping from downtown to the Everglades. When Dennis stepped inside for a moment, Margo turned to me. “I have a request,” she said. In the reflection of her eyes, tiny blooms of red and white light burst and fell. Her hair was damp and kinky from the saltwater and she smelled of coconut oil.

Her request was this: when the fall semester started, she wanted to move out of the dorms and into an apartment complex off campus. “It’s only a couple of blocks away,” she said. “It’s practically student housing—they pair you up if you don’t have a roommate.”

“What’s the rent?” I said.

“It’s about the same.”

Dennis returned to the porch and sat in the rocking chair between me and Margo. “Margo wants to live off campus,” I said.

“What’s this?” he said.

“It’s not so different from the dorms,” she said. “Except I’d have a kitchen and no adviser.”

“How is Joshua?” I said.

“He’s fine.” She touched her cheek. “I went out with him.”

“Alopecia?” said Dennis.

“Yes, Dad. We saw a play. His friend was in it.”

“Are you going to see him again?” I said.

“No.”

It was clear to me that this was disappointing.

“Why not?” said Dennis. “Is it because of his hair?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I think he’s cute.”

“Then why not?”

Margo started to speak, then stopped. The bursting of the fireworks reached us in waves, a second after their lights had started to fade. “Because he doesn’t like me,” she said.

Dennis waved a hand. “Other fish. Where did this apartment idea come from?”

I assumed the two topics were at least loosely linked, but Dennis didn’t need to know that.

“I know some people who live there,” she said.

“You wouldn’t need a car?” said Dennis.

Margo shook her head. “Tons of people do it. Especially upperclassmen. There’s not enough room in the dorms for everyone.”

“But it’s only your first year away from home,” I said. “Can’t this wait?”

Margo ignored me and explained the costs: the rent was a little more expensive, but she wouldn’t have to buy the university’s meal plan, which would make up the difference.

“You’ll cook?” said Dennis.

“Sure,” said Margo. She had never cooked much, but I didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t start.

“We’ll think about it,” said Dennis. “And sweetheart, don’t worry about the boy.”

Kathleen Beck’s twin daughters attended the University of Florida. I had the notion that I might call Kathleen—whose husband, Marcus, had recently left her for his high school sweetheart—and ask her if she’d heard anything about living off campus, or about the apartments where Margo wanted to live. Margo went inside to brush her teeth and Dennis and I ferried the mattresses from the bunk room to the porch, and while I was tucking the sheets under the corners, fighting a bit with the rising wind, Dennis said, “I’m not inclined to go along on this one.”

I remember it so clearly, with an ache in my gut: he was not inclined. And because I was the mother, I felt the nudge to fill in for her. I said, “The dorms don’t really seem to suit her.”

“Who knows what suits her?” he said. He was exasperated. No matter what we provided for Margo, it seemed, there was always something more she wanted. Kathleen Beck would be no help: her daughters were willowy, complacent things. He said, “It just seems like I’m constantly having to shift my expectations.”

“Parenthood,” I said. “If you don’t want her to do it, then she won’t.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “If you think it’s fine, it’s fine.”

“I think it’s probably fine,” I said, and when Margo returned to the porch, I shuffled away to the mattress nearest the outside railing and Dennis went inside to sleep in the big bedroom. The water beneath us slapped against the pilings. I asked Margo to remind me of the name of the apartment building where she wanted to live. She answered: Williamsburg Village Apartments. I remember thinking that this was a bland, nondescript name that I would likely forget. Moreover, I did forget, and a month later when she moved in (without us, with the assistance of a friend who owned a truck) I asked for the name again. And every time I forwarded mail or addressed an envelope for Dennis, who had a habit of cutting out newspaper articles and sending them to her with a greeting scribbled along one side, I had to work to recall it.

J
ack noticed my new racket as soon as I stepped onto the court. I was late, and he was already running a volley drill. He paused only a second when I arrived, time enough to nod at me as I pulled my new racket out of its cover. I got in the back of the line, behind Jane.

“New racket?” she said. “It’s about time.”

I felt bold. Maybe it was the bright day, the breeze that had returned after going missing, or the image I’d caught of myself that morning in the hall mirror, my strong tanned arms and legs, my pretty face. How had I forgotten, for so long, that I was attractive? “You know, Jane,” I said as we shuffled forward in line, “I know you.”

She frowned. “How is Bette?”

This threw me. “She’s wonderful.”

“She always worshipped you.”

“We worship each other.” She was next in line, and started to bounce a little on the balls of her feet, shifting her weight from side to side. You certainly take yourself seriously, I thought. “How’s your husband?” I said.

“I’m divorced,” she said. “How’s yours?”

I didn’t have time to answer. It was her turn to hit, but instead of rushing up for the volley as the exercise required, she hit high and long, and then it was my turn. After practice, Jack and I headed toward the parking lot together, and as we walked he reached over and took my new racket from my hand and in the same motion handed me his racket. The back of his arm brushed briefly against my stomach, but he didn’t apologize or smile awkwardly like a person without a certain level of intimacy would, and when we reached my car he handed my racket back. “Good choice,” he said.

It was a week later that Jack and I had lunch together. He’d been frustrated that day—several players had not shown up, and the heat was stifling, making us sluggish—and afterward I’d offered to buy him a soda, and he’d said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” It was Wednesday and Dennis was at work. We went in his car to a Cuban restaurant in Little Havana and ate beans and rice and eggs with hot sauce and drank
café con leche
. On the court, I was easy and even flirtatious with him, but when we were alone together, I was self-conscious. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Coaching teenagers is a lot easier.”

“Whose idea was it?” I said. “The team, I mean.”

He pointed to himself and rolled his eyes. “I’d had a few clients who’d asked about it, so I thought it might get a good response.”

“It did.”

“Sure, but it’s waning now. Their hearts aren’t in it.”

“Mine is.”

“I know.”

I blushed a little and looked away, out the window toward the midday traffic, the pedestrians with their grocery bags and trailing toddlers. We talked about our spouses. He’d met his through a friend; she didn’t play tennis. I told him that I’d met Dennis on a visit to Miami, that I’d never before thought of moving here. He told me he’d grown up in the Keys, on Islamorada, and had moved to Miami after a run on the pro tour.

“Did you go to one of those schools where the bus drives on the beach?” I said.

“I walked to school,” he said. “And you’re not the first person to ask me that.”

He picked up the check, and when we were back in the hot car, he said, “I’m free the rest of the day. I was thinking of going to the beach.”

“It’s a perfect day for it,” I said.

“Come with me?” he said.

Of course my first instinct was to decline, but at that moment I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do. I directed him to my house and he waited in the car while I ran inside. Dennis had shut the curtains to keep out the heat during the day, and the house was still and shrouded. I put on my bathing suit and a cotton skirt and flip-flops, then put some sodas in a small cooler. I grabbed a magazine and sunscreen and towels and threw it all into a bag.

“Nice house,” said Jack when I stepped back into the car. It was nice enough, certainly—a good-size ranch with creamy yellow stucco and a terra-cotta roof, not the nicest on the block but holding its own. We drove to Key Biscayne with the windows down. Along Virginia Key, windsurfers dipped and meandered just offshore. “I used to know how to windsurf,” I said. “Once upon a time.” Years before, after Marse taught me, I’d windsurfed every so often, to jog between stilt houses or take a quick run down the channel, but it had never become second nature and eventually I’d given it up.

“You should get back to it,” he said. “You have good balance.”

This was something Jack did—he made pronouncements about a person, like he’d been studying up. “Maybe I will,” I said.

The beach was not crowded. I looked away while Jack wrapped a towel around his waist and changed into his swim trunks, then we headed toward the sand. There was a Cuban family having a picnic and some surfers doing very little with the meager waves. We laid our towels on the sand and Jack took off his shirt. He went straight to the water while I applied sunscreen, but then after a few minutes the heat found my lungs and hair, and I went to join him. When I was waist-deep my nipples hardened from the chill of the water, and out of embarrassment I dove under, and came up near Jack.

“I love Miami,” he said. “Paradise.”

“You sound like my husband.”

“Smart man.”

We swam out another twenty yards, to a shoal where we could sit in the low water and look back at the beach. The Cuban family started packing up, and the surfers paddled south, away from the point. “It’s amazing how rarely I actually come to the beach,” I said. It had been a year, maybe more. When Margo had been a little girl, once a week we’d bring sandwiches and sit on an old blanket and maybe Dennis would go for a swim or we’d all wade around in the surf, then head back home at sunset.

“Do you work?” he said.

“Part-time.” I was still considering increasing my hours. The fact that I was at the beach on a Wednesday afternoon seemed a good argument for it. I asked Jack what his wife did for a living, and he said she was the creative director at the science museum. “I haven’t been there in ages,” I said. I’d chaperoned a field trip when Margo was in second grade, then again when she was in seventh. I remembered Margo’s silhouette fading from the shadow wall. I remembered a cyclone-shaped drain where she had sent a penny spinning and spinning until it dropped. “You don’t have kids?” I said.

“Never did,” he said.

“My daughter will be a junior at UF in the fall. She transferred there. It’s her first time away from home.”

“Big adjustment,” he said.

We were reclining in the shallow water, propped up on our elbows. The exposed part of my bathing suit dried quickly in the sunlight; the mix of cool and hot was delicious. I felt magnetic and aroused—not by Jack exactly, or by Jack only, but by the heat on my suit and the smell of the air and sand, by Jack’s strong legs and the dark hair that covered them, and by my own body, even. There was no question I was attracted to Jack, and I knew in that moment that he was equally attracted to me—there was a pull between us. But all at once it was too much. I knew that if I waited another long moment he would touch me. Alarms in my head sounded distantly, then grew louder. Without thinking, I scooted to the deeper water. “I’m going in,” I said. He moved forward as if to reach for me, but I turned away and started to swim, then dove through the water until the beach rose up and I could stand.