Stiltsville: A Novel (24 page)

In the Biltmore parking lot, Jack kept the car running while I gathered my things. “Next time we’ll try windsurfing,” he said, and I said, “Sure.” As I climbed into my car, my hands trembled, and I had the thought that there was a great doorway opening to me, with all kinds of pleasure waiting on the far side. I wondered if I had either the necessary courage or the necessary foolishness to pass through.

That weekend Dennis and I drove down south and picked blueberries and blackberries, but it was late in the season and they were good only for preserves. We shared a milk shake in the car on the way back and stopped at a nursery owned by Dennis’s old friend Paul, but Paul wasn’t there and we didn’t buy anything. I rolled down my window even though Dennis had turned on the air conditioner. He followed my lead and rolled his down, too. We passed fields dotted with migrant workers, and roadside stands advertising key limes and tomatoes. “You’re not here,” he said to me. “Where are you?” At home, he watched football while I jarred preserves, and when I was done I put five tightly sealed containers in the cupboard. That night I led him to the bedroom and had sex with him, my eyes closed.

O
ne Friday night in early August we went to Bette’s for dinner. She and Suzanne served seared tuna and sake, and after dinner we lay on lounge chairs in the backyard, watching the kidney-shaped swimming pool. Bette had bought the house when she’d sold her business. It was a one-story bungalow nestled in a wooded part of the Grove, with a carport and heavily textured stucco walls painted earthy colors—taupe in the kitchen, butterscotch in the living room—and the rugs were all kilim. “Bette,” I said to her when Dennis and Suzanne were engaged in conversation. “You’ll never guess who’s on my tennis team.”

She smirked. “I can’t believe you’re playing tennis,” she said. “You’re so suburban.”

“I know, but guess.”

“You said I’d never guess it.”

“You won’t.”

“I’ll just take one guess, then.” The pool bubbled quietly. Dennis and Suzanne were discussing real estate, and Suzanne was saying that South Beach was
exploding
. “Jane Brevard,” said Bette.

I looked at her. She wore an ankle-length batik sundress and gold chain earrings. “How did you know?”

“I’m clairvoyant.”

“Seriously.”

“I ran into her the other day at the dry cleaner. I see her every so often, around.”

I lowered my voice. “You see her?”

“Oh, Frances. For a while there she was dating my friend Tina. You know Tina, with the art.”

“I can’t stand her,” I said.

“Tina?”

“No.”

“Jane? Really? She was saying what a good player you’ve become.”

This surprised me. “She’s the best on the team.”

“She said that, too.”

Dennis and Suzanne were arguing lightly about property taxes, whether the cap was good for Miami in the long run. I felt a little sleepy from the sake and the food. Bette said, “Jane said you’re pretty tight with the instructor.”

Bette’s face was a mask. “I wouldn’t say we’re tight, no,” I said. “He’s a good coach.”

“And handsome, Jane says.”

I didn’t answer. She got up to refill our drinks. Suzanne was speaking intently to Dennis—“There’s more money in Florida real estate right now than in tourism and citrus combined,” she was saying—and over her shoulder Dennis looked at me. His eyes lingered for a moment and I felt a small stirring inside, and then thought of that day at the beach with Jack. I lay back on the lounge chair and thought again of what might have happened if I had not swum away. This was my new private pastime. Dennis and I had been having the best sex we’d had in a decade. This alone, if not something else, would give me away, I thought. And then I felt a rush of gratitude for myself, for the me who’d backed away at the beach, for the me who’d made the right choice.

Bette returned and handed me a glass. “You know what I’ve always liked about you and Dennis?”

“We bring dessert,” I said.

“You stay up late. All these couples we know, they’re in bed by nine.”

It was after midnight. A car alarm was going off nearby. Bette and Suzanne’s dog had come outside and was standing in the water on the top step of the swimming pool, looking around warily like a self-conscious woman in a bathing suit.

Before we left, Bette handed me a poinsettia in a copper pot. “Someone gave it to me,” she said. “I thought of you.”

It was compact, its flowers immature but bright. “I’m not sure I have a place for it.”

“You’ll find one. Be strong, woman.”

In the car, Dennis said, “What was that about? Being strong?”

“Your sister is strange,” I said. “Drive carefully. You’ve been drinking.”

I balanced the plant between my knees. I didn’t want it, and I knew I would eventually let it die. Bette knew it, too—I realized this in a rush—and that’s why she’d given it to me. She’d seen the flow of plants through my household over the past two decades. It was easier for her to give it to me, which she knew meant certain death, than to keep it and watch it die on her own. If she’d kept it, she would have rescued it from near-death out of guilt, then let it subside, then rescued it again. This could go on for years. “Stop the car for a second,” I said to Dennis.

He pulled over. We were at the corner of LeJeune and Barbarossa, in front of Merrie Christmas park, which I knew had once been a rock quarry. It now was a grassy basin filled with craggy banyans and a jungle gym. As a little girl Margo had swung from the vines. I took the plant, walked into the dark park, and placed it in the middle of a picnic table. I wanted to write a note—TAKE ME—but I didn’t have a pen or paper.

“That seems ungracious,” said Dennis when I got back into the car.

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s exactly what she would do if she were me.”

M
argo came home for a week before the start of the fall semester. She was settled into her apartment by this time—she’d been assigned a roommate, Janelle, whose boyfriend more or less lived with them, which concerned me—and we’d planned to spend some time shopping for kitchen necessities. As soon as she got off the bus, she said she needed to find a pay phone. She’d left the oven on, she told me, or thought she might have. Janelle’s boyfriend answered and she asked him to check. We waited. It was a muggy night, starry and bright with moonlight. She’d gained some weight since July Fourth weekend; her face was rounder, her jeans tight against her stomach. She caught me staring. “Stop looking at me, Mom,” she said. “So I put on a few pounds, so what?”

“So what, indeed?” I tried to sound breezy.

Margo spoke into the phone. “God, I thought so. Why do I always do that?”

“You really left it on?” I said. My breath caught. Would my daughter burn down her building?

She hung up. “I made toast this morning,” she said to me. “I left the broiler on.”

I hadn’t known Margo to use the word
broiler
. “Sweetheart, you have to be careful,” I said.

She threw up her hands and walked off toward the car. We’d been together ten minutes and already we were bouncing off each other like we did sometimes. “Are you hungry?” I said, and she said, “Starving.”

We went to a Mexican restaurant in downtown Coconut Grove, an area that at this hour was busy and frenetic. I paid to park and took her arm as we walked down Grand Avenue, past a pair of unwashed teenagers playing guitars on the sidewalk, then past a man wearing a JESUS SAVES sandwich board. At the restaurant, we slid into a corner booth and Margo dove into the tortilla chips and salsa. I ordered a margarita on the rocks and Margo said, “The same” and the waitress wrote it down without even looking at her.

“Well!” I said when we were alone.

“It’s OK, right?” she said. “I mean, I can drink.”

“I guess I don’t see why not.”

I avoided the chips and ordered my enchilada with no sour cream. “Are you on a diet?” said Margo.

“Sort of.”

“I mean, you look good.”

“It’s the tennis.”

“I’ll come watch tomorrow,” she said.

It hadn’t occurred to me to bring Margo to practice—would she even enjoy it? “That would be wonderful,” I said.

That night I checked the oven before going to bed, then in the middle of the night woke with the thought of Margo burning down her apartment, and couldn’t get back to sleep. In the morning I found her and Dennis in the kitchen, drinking coffee. The newspaper covered the breakfast table. “We were talking about heading down south,” said Dennis, “maybe taking a ride on an airboat.”

I felt a rush of relief that Margo wouldn’t be coming to practice with me. “Sure,” I said. “When will you be home? Should I make dinner?”

Dennis looked at me strangely. “You don’t want to come?”

“Of course I do. But I have practice.”

“You can miss one, can’t you?”

I felt my jaw clench. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, I told myself. I was probably the only one who had never missed. “I’d rather not.”

“We’ll come with you to practice, then we’ll all go,” said Margo.

“Sounds good,” I said. I asked Margo where this idea—the Everglades, the airboat ride—had come from.

“I was thinking about it the other day,” she said. “I remembered that place down Tamiami Trail, with the frogs’ legs.”

“You wouldn’t eat them last time we went,” I said.

“I’ll eat them now.”

At the club, Margo and Dennis followed me to the gazebo between the courts. Jane and Rodrigo were hitting and Jack was sitting in the shade with a cup of coffee, his visor pulled low on his forehead. He stood up as we approached. “Visitors!” he said. He put out his hand to Dennis, and I introduced them.

“Is my mom going pro?” said Margo.

“She’s on her way. The new racket helps.”

Margo had admired my racket in the car. She’d commented on the scratches and dings it had accumulated—I’d noticed this, too, and felt the pride of ownership that comes with using something hard.

“Mind if we stick around?” said Dennis.

“It’s OK with me if it’s OK with Frances,” said Jack. “We’re going to work on ground strokes,” he said. “Frances? Want to fill that hopper?” Jack touched my elbow briefly, a gesture of familiarity. I saw Dennis notice the gesture, and wondered if Jack had done it on purpose. I took the hopper two courts away to pick up tennis balls. Jack had probably been working on his serve before practice started. I’d caught him at it half a dozen times by now, and each time had watched his strength and control during the toss and follow-through, the power of his body. From across the courts I could hear the cadence of Jack’s and Dennis’s voices—and every so often Margo’s—but I couldn’t hear their words. The men stood facing my direction, both with their arms crossed against their chests. Margo sat Indian-style in a chair. When I returned to the gazebo, the hopper full, Dennis was saying, “I saw him play once,” and Jack said, “Yeah?”

“The man is a tree,” said Dennis.

Jack laughed. “He’s a big boy.”

“Who?” I said.

They looked at me. “Boris Becker,” said Jack. He took the hopper. “Was that ’eighty-six?” he said to Dennis.

“I believe so,” said Dennis.

Dennis didn’t care about professional tennis. Years earlier, Margo had worked as a ball girl at a tournament on Key Biscayne, and Dennis had enjoyed watching her sprint across the court for the ball, then snap into position at the edge of the net. When he’d clapped, he’d clapped because she had made a good ball-girl move, like managing three balls at once while Jimmy Connors barked at her to get him a different one.

Jack lined us up at the baseline for a drill: we each took a turn hitting three rapid-fire shots. I’d never hit the third shot before, but this morning I did. Jack called “That a girl!” and then it was the next player’s turn. I couldn’t resist glancing over toward the gazebo where Dennis and Margo both sat watching from behind sunglasses. Dennis gave me a thumbs-up and Margo waved, and I felt ebullient.

After an hour of drills, I was paired with Jane—we were expected to play at least one set at the end of each practice—and as we walked together to a court several down from where Dennis and Margo still sat, looking a little bored by this point, Jane said, “Your daughter is lovely.”

“How nice of you to say so,” I said.

“She’s in college?”

I explained about her transferring to the University of Florida and the summer class she’d taken, how she would be a regular student there in the fall. The fall, as it were, started in a week. Summer was almost finished. As for the tennis team, there were only four weeks left, but I was leaning toward rejoining. During the year the teams traveled and played in tournaments against other country club teams: Delray Beach, Bal Harbor, South Miami, and as far north as Naples, West Palm Beach, even Sarasota.

“I went to UF,” she said. “Where’s she living?”

We’d reached the court and were standing at the net. She was balancing a ball on her racket strings, bouncing it evenly.

“Off campus,” I said.

She cocked her head at me. “For her first year there?”