The Art of Floating (27 page)

At mid
night, the Dogcatcher wandered between her spot under the bridge and Sia's house four times.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

At 3:30, she lay down in her lean-to and fell asleep to the sound of cars passing overhead, every one of them hitting the same pothole.

whirr, bumpety-bump . . . whirr, bumpety-bump . . . whirr, bumpety-bump

•  •  •

At 2:00
A.M.
Sia heard, “I'm running over a piping plover . . .” being sung to the tune of “I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.” From the window she saw a wobbling gaggle of men strung around the flashing beacon. Hands held as if playing Ring around the Rosy. Puddles of beers cans behind them.

“Hey,” she hollered.

The men turned. Dizzy and unbalanced. A few waved. Joe Laslow yelled. “Hey to you, Keeper of the Silent Man.”

“Joe, what the hell are you doing out there? It's the middle of the night. I'm sleeping.”

“Sorry, Sia!” Joe hollered back. “We're just waiting for the ship.”

“The ship?” Sia looked out at the dark horizon.

“Yeah, the spaceship.” Joe's face glowed green in the beacon's light.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Sia said.

“What?”

“The ship isn't coming tonight,” she yelled back.

The men dropped their hands, their fizzle extinguished.

“Party pooper,” Joe said.

“Yep. Now go home before I call Richard. Or your wife.”

“Okay, okay, we're out of here.”

As they moved down the beach, Joe led the men in a raucous rendition of “Fifty Ways to Kill a Plover”:

You just toss 'em in a sack, Jack

Stuff 'em in a can, Stan

Create a new ploy, Roy

Those plovers are wee

Secure 'em with a truss, Gus

And then eat 'em for lunch

Kick 'em with your knee, Lee

And get the beach free.

“It's a campus,” Jilly said. “Like college.”

“Yeah, except here they have Toad locked up and won't let him out.” Sia hit the brakes and a guard stepped out of the booth.

“We're here to see Dr. Dillard,” she told him.

“Just a minute,” the guard said. He returned to the booth, did a few guardlike things with a serious look, and stepped back to her car. “He's expecting you,” he said. “Sign here.” He handed Sia a clipboard with a form attached.

Sia signed.

“Up the hill and to the right,” the guard indicated, waving his arm.

•  •  •

“Which one?” Jilly asked.

“The one on the right.”

It was a brick Tudor with white accents.

“This place is fancy,” Jilly said. “I wouldn't mind staying here for a while.”

“Shut up, Jil. It's a loony bin, for Christ's sake.”

“I don't see any loons.”

She was right; the grounds were empty. Beautiful and green with flowers and bushes and trees. But no people. Not even any white-coated doctors strolling in the sunshine.

“Just pay attention to where we're going, Jil. It's going to be different in the dark.”

Jilly slid her sunglasses onto the top of her head and poked her head out the window. “Ten-four,” she whispered.

•  •  •

When Dr. Dillard rolled into the room, Sia could have sworn trumpets began to play. He was so smug and pompous and full of himself and the knowledge that he'd pulled off the great heist of the Silent Man. She wanted to throw up on his shoes.

“Isn't this building for the real loons?” Sia asked. “The kooks? The wackos? The totally off-the-deep-end patients who will probably never go home again?”

Dr. Dillard's blond-bunned secretary chuckled, even though the look he shot her implied that she shouldn't have.

“Hello, Mrs. Dane,” Dr. Dillard said, ignoring her question. “Miss Weaver.”

When the trumpets quieted, Jillian pulled herself up as tall as she could and said, “Dr. Dillard,” in a voice mockingly like his own.

“Dr. Dillard,” Sia said, “Toad is not a loon. He's not a wacko. He's just a lost guy. Why do you have him in here? Why did you do this?”

“Odyssia, please lower your voice. There are patients here.”

“And nonpatients,” she said.

Dr. Dillard turned and rolled down a long hallway. The walls were pale green and the carpet pale brown.

“Where is he?” Sia called.

“This way,” Dr. Dillard said over his shoulder. “This way.”

•  •  •

The wise and wonderful Dr. Dillard led Sia and Jillian to a small room that looked out over the green. Toad was sitting in a chair, staring at the wall with that same familiar look of nothing on his face. He was wearing khaki pants, a pressed white shirt, and polished loafers, just like Dr. Dillard.

“For God's sake, Dillard, you cut his hair,” Sia said.

“Of course I cut his hair, Mrs. Dane. He looked like Robinson Crusoe.”

“You're an idiot.”

“Thirty minutes, Mrs. Dane,” Dr. Dillard said as he rolled out of the room and closed the door behind him.

“Piss off,” Sia said.

•  •  •

Sia put a hand on Toad's shoulder. “Hello, you.”

Toad didn't respond. He didn't look up or move or even blink.

“Gumper misses you,” Sia said.

Jilly put her hand on Toad's other shoulder. “I miss you most.”

•  •  •

And Jilly to Sia: “He's fucking gorgeous.”

•  •  •

“Jilly, stay with Toad. I'm going to talk to Blondie.”

“You think she'll help us?”

“I hope so.”

•  •  •

At the Unitarian Church:

In the practice of tolerance,
one's enemy is the best teacher.
(Dalai Lama)

Before sleep . . .

Sia imagined Toad on a street corner in Paris, one of those close corners where it feels like all of the buildings might tumble down around you but that it wouldn't be such a bad thing because existentially Paris was that beautiful. That cool. That powerful. She and Jackson had stuck two pins into Paris. That cool.

“We'll go for our tenth anniversary,” he said the night they'd pinned it.

“We'll have kids by then,” she said.

“All the better. They'll love it. We'll groom them on croissants and crepes.”

“We can't do that. What if they're babies?”

“French cream. It will taste almost as sweet as your breast milk.” He kissed her. “Shall we start now?”

“Start now?”

“Making babies?”

She giggled. “One more year.”

“Tell me again why.” He kissed the tips of her fingers.

“We have to have enough money in our savings. Enough equity in our house.”

“Are you sure you're M's daughter?” He kissed her belly.

“What do you mean?”

“M didn't think of any of that. She just wanted you.”

“She was surprised by me.”

“I could surprise you.” He kissed the shallow spot below her hip bone.

“One year,” she whispered.

That was eight months before he disappeared.

•  •  •

After sleep . . .

Sia dreamed that she was climbing a ladder that was supposed to be attached at the top of the house against which it leaned. That's what she believed in the dream. That the ladder was attached at the top.

The house was tall and white. Stark white against a crystal-blue sky, and the ladder, well, it was a dream ladder, so it was oddly shaped, bowed in the middle away from the house. As she climbed, Sia looked up, not down, and at some point she realized that the ladder wasn't attached to anything and that when she hit the point of no return, the ladder would fall away from the house, taking her with it.

That was what she called it in her dream. The point of no return. Inevitably, this happened. She reached the point where the ladder curved not up, but out. Right at the bow. And then she and the ladder fell backward and smashed into the earth.

Sia stood at the bottom of the embankment under the bridge. It started at road level and rose in a steep angle until it met the bridge itself. From what Sia could see, there was only one structure at the top. A fairly respectable-looking lean-to with a red cardigan hung over one corner and a curtain/flap thing draped over the front.
Wizzle, wizzle
went the fish. “Be still,” Sia whispered.

She began to climb. For the first ten or so steps, she could stand upright, but then she had to bend at the waist so she didn't slam her head into the undercarriage of the bridge. “Explains a lot,” she said, thinking about the Dogcatcher's posture.

At the top she paused. What do you do when you arrive at someone's lean-to? Knock? Call out? Poke your head in? Was there etiquette? Lean-to etiquette?

She knocked . . . and called, “Hello? Evelyn?”

“Yes?” said the Dogcatcher.

Despite the heat, the air under the bridge was cool and dampish. Greasy, with a little of the trapped-automobile-fumes-mind-numbing phenomenon that occurs in poorly ventilated parking garages.

“Hi, it's Odyssia Dane. Gumper's mom.” Pause. “You know, Gumper-Lady.”

The lean-to shuddered. The Dogcatcher poked her knobby head from under the flap. A rancid smell poked out, too.

“Hey,” Sia said.

The Dogcatcher scrambled out of the lean-to on her knees, leapt up, and clanked her head against the bridge.

“Ouch,” Sia said for her.

“No, no,” the Dogcatcher said. “A hazard of the neighborhood. Fine, fine.”

Sia laughed.

“Gumper-Lady?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you here?”

Sia paused. Good question. “You always come see me. I figured it was time to reciprocate.”

“Officer Richard visits me,” said the Dogcatcher.

“He told me.”

“Not a glamorous neighborhood like yours.”

“It seems to have its benefits. The air is nice and cool here.” Sia sat on the concrete ledge and looked down at the road below . . . cars were lined up bumper to bumper . . . beachgoers.

The Dogcatcher closed the flap of the lean-to before Sia could get a peek inside. She squatted on the ledge a few feet away. “You think?”

“Yeah,” Sia said. “You like it here?”

“Yes, yes, I do, I do.”

“That's what's important.”

“Isn't it.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“Most of the time.”

Sia nodded.

“Why are you here, Gumper-Lady?” the Dogcatcher said, scratching her cheek.

“I really don't know,” Sia said.

The Dogcatcher nodded.

Sia resisted the urge to pummel her with questions . . . tear through the lean-to to see if there was anything that would help her figure out what happened to Jackson. Instead she sat still. Listened to the steady, annoying thrum of cars overhead. Learned to expect the
crr-bump
when each hit the biggest pothole. Nothing happened quickly with the Dogcatcher. By now, Sia knew this. Nothing happened on normal people's time . . . or in normal people's way. One trip to the lean-to wasn't going to move things forward any more quickly. So Sia shut up, sat still, and stared at a dried paint spill a few feet away.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Is he a juggler from France?”

“No,” Richard said. “Rotten lead. During the investigation, the police discovered Pierre Babin had simply gotten tired of juggling and moved out of the country. They tracked him down in Spain. He's taken up twirling fire or walking on stilts. New challenges, I guess.”

The fish flopped in Sia's belly. “Thank God,” she said.

“But he could have been, Odyssia.”

Sia eyeballed him over her sunglasses. “What does that mean?”

“It means just that. He could have been a weird juggler guy from France. It was a possibility. And he still could be a lot of things that you may not like or approve of. He could be a swindler or a gambler or a thief or a—”

“Or a painter or an engineer or a salesman. He could even be a policeman.”

Richard was quiet. “All I'm saying is that—”

“All you're saying is that you think I'm creating a lot of romantic possibilities for Toad, lives he probably never led, and I shouldn't do that.”

“Aren't you?”

“No, that's Jilly's thing. And she's doing a fine, fine job with that. But me? Sure, I'd rather Toad didn't turn out to be some wacko juggler guy, but I haven't made decisions about who it is I would like him to be.”

“No?”

“No. How could I? Hell, even people I know and love constantly prove themselves to be very different from the people I want them to be. How could I expect Toad to do any better than them?”

Richard set his coffee cup down. “Okay. Just remember, Odyssia, you're no better or worse at your imaginings than the rest of us.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Every day I imagine my boss to be a hell of a lot better than he is. I get hopeful at night between shifts, and each day he reminds that my hope is futile. He is who he is as much as I am who I am.”

Sia nodded. “Well, if not a juggler from France, who is Toad?”

“That's all we've got right now. We know that he is not one particular Frenchman who defected to Spain out of boredom.”

“Not much,” Sia said.

“Not much.”

“What happens next?”

“We wait. We keep looking. We let Melissa interview you again on television and get Toad's picture on the airwaves again. We hope Dr. Dillard has some luck getting him to talk.”

“Dr. Dillard will never get Toad to do anything.”