Stiltsville: A Novel (36 page)

Paul came over from the deck. “Let’s test my handiwork,” he said. “I want to make sure you’re not going to roll right through this thing.”

Margo came outside, blinking in the sunlight, adjusting the straps on her red one-piece, and she and Stuart went down to the canal to get the boat engines started. Paul helped Dennis into his wheelchair, and then they rolled down the ramp right away, without the hesitation I might have shown, especially for a ramp that was not professionally installed. But they made it down, and I didn’t notice the ramp give at all, even in the middle. Paul had made it long, so the slope was gentle, and the base abutted the limestone patio that surrounded the pool, so when Dennis reached the patio, he turned right around and drove the chair up again, then back down.

“Thank you so much, Paul,” I said.

“It’s fantastic,” said Dennis, and put his hand out to shake Paul’s, and then Paul reached down and gave Dennis an awkward half hug, and this time it was Paul who welled up, red-faced, and had to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. “Glad I could help,” he said.

“Sissies,” said Marse to me. She rolled her eyes.

I packed a cooler of beers and sodas and Marse and I walked down to the pier to see everyone off. Margo was practicing reversing out of the slip, and Stuart kept reaching over to correct the steering wheel until she snapped at him and he stepped away. Paul waved to Marse and blew her a kiss, and Dennis waved to me. When Marse and I turned back toward the house, there was a figure standing on the deck in a yellow shirtdress, holding a brown leather purse. It was Gloria. She waved, and we waved, and in a moment we were beside her. “What’s this?” she said, pointing with one sandaled foot at the ramp. “This is not pretty,” she said.

“Marse’s boyfriend installed it this morning,” I said. “For Dennis.”

“Of course it’s for Dennis,” said Gloria. She sighed. “Grady is on my last nerve.”

“I think it’s going around,” said Marse.

We drove in Gloria’s sedan to a café on Miracle Mile. We sat outside in wrought iron chairs and ordered salads and iced teas, then Gloria spotted Eleanor Everest, and went off to say hello. Marse took off her floppy pink hat and tilted back to show her face to the sunlight. “I’m beat,” she said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“All this being together all the time. I need a break.”

For a moment I thought she meant a break from Dennis. I said, “Marse, you aren’t obligated to—” but then I realized she meant a break from Paul. “You get used to it,” I said. “It becomes like being alone.”

“Sometimes it’s a little like work,” she said. “I shouldn’t complain. I’m really very happy.”

“I know you are. Growing pains.”

Our salads arrived. Marse said, “I wanted to ask. Tell me if it’s too early—but have you thought about what happens next?”

“Next?”

She spoke tentatively. “As Dennis declines.”

I speared some greens, then put down the fork without taking a bite. We were in the heart of Coral Gables, and half a block away cars buzzed down Le Jeune Road in a loud, colorful blur. At the table next to us a family of four spoke Spanish, and the mother wore a ring with a diamond the size of a corn kernel. It sparkled in the sunlight. “You’re asking if I’ll stay? In the house? In Miami?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to leave,” she said.

Gloria reappeared at the table. “Leave where?” She sat down and put her napkin on her lap.

“Nowhere,” I said.

She looked from me to Marse. Marse said, “I asked Frances if she was planning to make any changes . . . once Dennis’s condition worsens.”

“I’m not planning any changes,” I said.

For a long moment, Gloria seemed frozen. She had ordered a salad, but I knew she wouldn’t eat it, and at the end of the meal would have it boxed to take home. She pushed her tortoiseshell sunglasses up on her head. “It’s a good question.”

“It’s not a good question. It’s not time yet,” I said. “We’ll discuss it in six months.”

Gloria touched her neck. “Six months,” she said. She patted my hand. “That’s what we’ll do.”

“All right,” I said.

“All right,” said Marse. “Let’s talk about sex, then.”

And over the course of the meal, we did discuss sex—apparently Paul wanted a little more than Marse, and Gloria said that she thought sex in her seventies might be the best she’d ever had. “There’s no pressure,” she said. “It’s just fun. I guess I’m looser.” She shrugged her birdlike shoulders.

Marse laughed. “I’ve never thought of you as loose.”

Gloria blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

It seemed to be my turn to divulge. Both women looked at me expectantly, but when I didn’t say anything, they looked away. We don’t sleep in the same bed, I wanted to say—though in fact we’d had sex the evening before, on the living room couch. Dennis had been taking longer and longer to orgasm, and afterward his muscles were sore from the exertion. Soon, I knew, it would be too much of a chore for him. I didn’t mind terribly, except sometimes.

The boaters were still out when we arrived home. Gloria got into her car and left, but Marse followed me inside to wait for Paul. The house was quiet and still. We slouched on the sofas in the living room, our purses in our laps. “You should take a nap,” said Marse.

“What have I done to deserve a nap? I made iced tea and went to water aerobics. I’m fine.”

“You’re a little overwhelmed, I think.”

“Do you think I’m handling things badly?”

She paused. “I think these days it’s easier to be me than you. I’ve never thought that before.” The afternoon light swept the room through the gauzy curtains, creating a smoky shadow around her. She placed her long, thin hands on her face, rubbing her skin like she was sleepy. She said, “You never told me that Paul came on to you way back when, at the stilt house.”

I sat still. We stared at each other. “I’m sorry,” I said. “After how I’d met Dennis . . . I didn’t want you to hate me. I was selfish.”

“You could have told me,” she said, without a hint of resentment. “I don’t think at the time I would have cared all that much. I would care now, of course.”

“He’s so different. I almost don’t believe it ever happened.”

“He was surprised I didn’t know. I felt a little foolish, to tell the truth.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

She waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re my oldest friend. What if I’d lost you? Where would I be now?”

“Over a man?” She shook her head. “Frances, give me a break.”

I knew if I choked up she would be embarrassed, so I took a deep breath and fiddled with the tassels on a pillow. I said, “I think Stuart might be having an affair with Lola.”

“Good Lord!”

“I’m not certain. But I saw them together, touching. It was awkward. He smiled right through it.”

“That boy,” she said, shaking her head. I’d always appreciated that Marse’s instincts about people were similar to mine. She’d matched my mistrust of, and reluctant affection for, Stuart ounce for ounce.

“I don’t know what to think,” I said.

“It might be nothing. Don’t tell Margo until you’re sure they’ve sealed the deal.”

“I’ll never tell Margo. Poor Margo.” I kicked off my sandals and lay down on the sofa. I closed my eyes. I heard Marse rustling, and when I opened my eyes again, she had lain down as well. It was quiet. I felt for a moment I could shut out the cacophony of the last weeks and months, the confusion of this nonsense with Stuart, the pain of all of it, and just drift off. But then I heard voices and heavy footsteps on the ramp out back, and the kitchen door opened and slammed shut, and though I kept my eyes closed for another long moment, I knew I had to wake up.

P
aul and Dennis went fishing every weekend in June, July, and August, sometimes twice in a weekend. Dennis’s alarm would go off in the darkness of early morning and I would wake up and make a thermos of coffee, and then Paul would arrive at the back door, loaded down in shorts with half a dozen filled pockets, and knock lightly on the glass for me to let him in. We would make quiet small talk. “Will you go back to sleep?” he might say, and I would say, “No, I’m up.” He’d say, “You should really put your suit on and join us—it’s going to be a beautiful day,” and I’d say, “You go right ahead without me.” Once, while we stood looking out the back windows, sipping coffee and waiting for Dennis to roll into the kitchen, he said, “I bet you never thought I’d be standing here drinking coffee with you.”

“I confess I didn’t,” I said.

“Not so bad, is it? I used to be kind of an ass.”

This made me laugh. Dennis came in and said, “What’s so funny?”

Paul answered, “Your wife has forgiven me.”

One evening in July, after a day of fishing with Paul, Dennis and I sat on the back deck with our feet up on the railing. He said, “I think I would have”—I didn’t understand the middle part of the sentence—“with Paul.”

“You think you would have
what
with Paul?” I said. This was something Lola had taught me: to repeat the part of the sentence I’d understood, so he wouldn’t have to work so hard to make me understand. He repeated it, but I still didn’t understand. He made a choppy, effortful gesture, hands together swinging an imaginary golf club, and then I understood. “You don’t really enjoy golf that much,” I said. Over the years, he’d played sporadically, without the passion he brought to running or fishing.

He took quick breaths inside his sentences. “I think I would have . . . liked it with him. Dad’s so . . . comp-et-it-ive.” He stumbled on the longer word, taking a breath in the middle. He took a sip of his beer. At a recent visit, Dr. Auerbach had recommended giving up alcohol, and I’d briefly rallied in favor of this idea. But Dennis didn’t ever drink much in one sitting, and I’d remembered how good a cold beer tasted during an afternoon on the boat, or how good wine tasted when we were sitting together on the back deck in the evening. We hadn’t spoken of it again.

On Saturdays, they might be gone on the boat until noon or later, but on Sundays Paul had to be back for church. Early on, Paul had brought over a wooden workbench and they’d set it up near the water, and that’s where they gutted the fish. Paul hosed down the blood and they spilled the guts into the canal, and then packed the fish tightly in plastic wrap and divided the catch. When Dennis got home, he would shower and rest, and then Lola or Stuart might arrive for exercises, and by the afternoon the house would be full again. Several times when Gloria and Grady had been over, we’d run out of the prepared meals Marse had ordered for us, so Gloria had called the catering company and increased the spread: now the refrigerator was always full, and every time I opened it I felt a wave of relief and gratitude.

After the incident with Stuart and Lola, weeks passed without any hint of impropriety, and I started to doubt what I’d seen. Stuart remained his usual outspoken, grating, charming self, and he continued to visit almost every day. Margo was teaching summer classes—she was unavailable during much of the week—and so Stuart started to schedule his work hours around mine as much as possible, so he could be at the house when I wasn’t. This was not something I’d asked him to do. One afternoon, Stuart and Margo and Gloria and Grady and I were in the kitchen at the same time, jogging around each other, while Lola and Dennis were out back. Margo and Stuart were making lunch, Gloria was making lemonade, and Grady was looking for an old washcloth to wipe down the steering column on the boat, where he’d accidentally applied too much WD-40. While I was bustling around, getting a washcloth for Grady and sugar for Gloria, Stuart was dicing tomatoes, and he asked me—it was bad timing, but he’d never been one to wait for an opportunity to speak—what shifts I was working for the rest of the week. I paused in front of the open refrigerator. “Is today Tuesday?” I said to Stuart. I handed Grady the washcloth, and he went out the back door.

Stuart sighed. “Frannie, you need to put up a schedule.” He pointed to the refrigerator door, where there were four prescriptions and two wedding invitations—this was, as Stuart had noticed, the place where my reminders went.

“A schedule?”

“Write it down, and I’ll print it out on my computer.”

“I can print it out,” I said. We didn’t have a computer at home, but I used one at work; I was perfectly capable of making a calendar. “Is that necessary?”

“It is for us,” said Stuart. “We show up here, but we don’t know your work schedule or when we’re needed. You need to start delegating.”

“Delegating what?”

Stuart put down the knife. Apparently, he was finding me trying, and I wasn’t quite in the mood to humor him. Margo said, “Let’s not—” but Stuart put up his hand. He took a deep breath. “I’m just saying, if you posted your schedule, maybe we wouldn’t all end up in your kitchen at the same time, fighting for space.”

“Young man,” said Gloria. She continued to section lemons as she spoke. “I’m not sure that tone is necessary.”

He turned back to the cutting board. “I apologize.”

“You don’t have to be here,” I said to him. “Why don’t you go home?”

“Mother!” said Margo.

“I didn’t ask for a full house. I did not ask for—” I stopped. My voice was shaking.