The Drowning House (23 page)

Since the day he bought me ice cream, I had seen him only once. Or, to be accurate, he had seen me, since I watched for him in the places along the Strand where he was likely to be. Twice I had spotted and avoided him, stepping back into a shaded doorway and turning to walk suddenly the other way. Once, he had waved at me from across Twenty-fourth Street, but I pointed to my watch, pantomimed an appointment I didn’t have, and hurried on.

I felt foolish doing these things and also vaguely resentful. The need to be on the watch for Ty was an unwelcome distraction from the very different need—one I was prepared to indulge—to watch for Patrick.

Harriet was right, Patrick must know I was on the Island. I’d resolved not to call Lowell Morgan’s beach house or go back there again. I would take a less direct approach.

I drove by Saint Vincent de Paul. Once I even pulled into the mostly empty parking lot and observed the parishioners coming and going. They paid no attention to me. Either they were absorbed in what they were doing or they chose not to acknowledge my presence. They were casually dressed, and at least half of them seemed to be Hispanic. According to a sign, mass was offered daily at 7:30
AM
in English and Spanish. Too early for Patrick.

I looked often for the light in Stella’s room.

That was the first part of my plan.

The second part was to question everyone. Faline, Frankie, Harriet Kinkaid. To learn something.

What, exactly, I didn’t know. But my thoughts went often to the days after the fire. I replayed each scene, reviewing the cast of characters, struggling to recall all that had happened. I felt certain that there was more to discover, more to be learned from that experience, if only I could bring it back.

I carried the keys Will had given me in my bag, but I had yet to use them. I preferred to find my way into the Carraday house as I always had, through the open back door. Faline tolerated my presence as long as I didn’t touch anything in the kitchen or interrupt her progress. I perched at one of the marble counters, as if I had just happened to stop by. That was how we had always been most comfortable.

The subject matter of our exchanges had evolved a little. She was willing to address a wider range of issues, but the tenor was the same. There was no sign of the emotion—apprehension? pity?—I had glimpsed the night of the party. I understood that it was something I was not supposed to have seen. Light escaping from underneath a closed door. Now Faline’s manner was, I thought, intentionally opaque. Her hooded eyes revealed nothing. But I remembered how they had widened.
Is that why you here? Baby, tell me that not so
.

I kept hoping the door would open just a little. I remembered, too, what Mary Liz had said about never being alone. About Patrick sneaking
around. If I lingered before going upstairs, there was the possibility I might run into him.

“I seen in the paper some Shriners come down from Houston,” Faline said. “Put up in a bed-and-breakfast. Went out and had theirselves a good time. Some kind of function. Then they went for a swim, left their clothes on the beach.”

“That wasn’t in the paper,” I said.

Faline shrugged. “They got out, everything gone except their hats. Tall, you know, with the tassel.” She twirled her finger and I nodded. “Took them a while to get back without being seen. Stooping behind cars. Ducking down in back of trash cans. Must have been a sight.” She giggled, then covered her mouth with her hand. When she’d regained her composure, she said, “They got back to the house, the lights still on. A group of ladies occupying the front porch.” She paused and began taking things out of the refrigerator.

“Go on,” I said.

“Seems they was obliged to wait across the street, behind the construction. A pile of lumber. Mosquitoes bit them all over so bad they left the next day. Went back to the big city.” Faline was not BOI, but the Islanders’ peculiar sense of superiority was a natural fit. “Serve them right anyway,” she said darkly, “grown men running around nekkid.”

“What else could they do? They had to go home.”

“Home?” Faline frowned. “They should have
stayed
home in the first place.” The idea of tourism—travel for its own sake—offended her.

“It’s a good story.”

“Otis told me.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

“Tell you what I seen with my own eyes,” Faline said. “A woman comes out of one of those three-story houses on Sealy Street, maybe the one with the bay window. Had on a print dress and a real pretty hat, straw with a big brim. She comes down the front walk, taking little steps, nice as pie, right up to the curb. And what do you suppose she does when she gets there? Leans over and spits in the gutter.”
Faline banged the pans she was rinsing for emphasis. “Just because someone look a certain way, don’t mean they won’t surprise you. You can’t say what a person thinking. Or what they might do.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” I said.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I truly am. Only you not listening.”

She tucked a dishtowel into the waist of her skirt. “For instance, you see her upstairs, with her legs, you think that’s how it’s always been. But I got a perspective you don’t. I started here when I was twenty-two years old and she wasn’t much more. Times was different then. What was expected. How a girl, a woman, had to be. I never met anyone—man or woman—like her before, carried on exactly as she pleased. Watching her in those days was something, let me tell you. He followed her around like a puppy dog.”

“Will?” I hadn’t talked to him since I’d left Mary Liz’s room. There had been a perceptible coolness between us. I was surprised at how much I missed our exchanges.

“He had to chase her all over the state of Oklahoma to get her to marry him.”

This was interesting information, new to me, and I wondered what else I might elicit. Faline put a pot of water on the big enamel stove. There was a hiss and a series of clicks as she turned on the gas and adjusted the flame.

“Did she drink then?” I asked.

“Drink to excess, you mean? Yes, she did. She did everything to excess and back then drinking was just one thing. Now she got to fill up her days somehow.” Faline unwrapped a brisket, laid it on the counter, and turned it over several times. “What they want for this at the grocery is a sin,” she said. She put the meat in the sink and turned on the water.

“What was wrong with Catherine?” I asked. “I mean, what exactly?”

Faline shook her head. “Might could have been a fever.” She moved the meat to the counter and patted it dry.

Catherine had not been allowed into the kitchen, or any other
room where food was laid out, because she would gorge herself until she vomited. Outside, unattended, she would stuff her mouth with twigs or dirt, or with poisonous oleander blossoms.

“How old was she?”

“Little. A baby.”

How many fevers had Bailey had, I thought, with no lasting harm? How many children had played for years on backyard swings just like ours and grown up and lived their lives? How could the consequences of the same unexceptional experience be so different?

Faline was lining a baking pan with foil. I watched her elbows moving back and forth, the muscles working in her arms.

“Patrick was sweet with Catherine,” I said.

“Patrick have a good heart,” Faline said. Then she stopped abruptly. I knew she was on alert. There was a wire basket of green apples on the counter to my left. I reached out for one. Quick as a snake she turned and grabbed the basket. “What happen to your manners? You don’t know to ask before you take something?”

“May I have an apple?” I knew it was a game, still it irritated me.

“If looks could kill, I guess I wouldn’t be long for this earth. Take it on upstairs, now. I got work to do.”

On the landing I stopped and listened. Light poured in through the stained glass and made patterns on the wainscoting and the red runner. I could hear Faline moving around. The only other sound was the sigh of the air-conditioning.

In Stella’s room, I stood next to the table, leafing idly through an album stuffed with loose photos. I bit into the apple, enjoying the way the skin popped against my teeth, savoring the tart sweetness. I wondered if Stella had known that sensation. She would have been expected to eat an apple off a plate, to cut it first into pieces with a fruit knife.

I thought about Stella’s dress, the layers of concealing fabric she would have worn, even in the heat, the boned corset that would have left ridges on her skin. Her clothes, her eating habits, her behavior. So many constraints.
What was expected. How a girl, a woman, had to be
. And yet, there was the evidence of the relief that revealed her
body, that showed something completely different. Evidence of what, exactly?

Among the photos was an image of a woman standing in front of the Carraday house. There was no sidewalk of any kind, but sidewalks had never been a priority on the Island. The figure in the foreground stood on an expanse of bare, sandy earth. There were no trees in the photo, no grass either. I turned the picture over. On the back, in pencil, were the initials S.C. Could it be a photo of Stella?

It was nothing like the formal portrait on the living-room mantel, the one Will had shown his guests. There Stella posed gracefully in an upholstered chair. Her silk gown with its train probably cost more than the photographer earned in a year. One small, white hand cupped the curve of her cheek.

The woman in front of the Carraday house wore a shapeless cotton dress. She stood stiffly, her hands hidden in her skirt. Her hair seemed not to have been combed, and she squinted, chin tucked, in the harsh light. Her face was blotched, windburned. Everything about her spoke of discomfort, as though she had submitted, only, to be photographed. She seemed much older.

Or was it just the images? One made by a professional under ideal conditions, the other snapped casually, perhaps under protest?

I looked again at the photo, at the Carraday house. There was the imposing façade, a little lighter in color, the brick still fresh, still impressively new. There were the tall windows, the three-foot black cast-iron fence, like our own, but more elaborate. The gate where tourists gathered.

The gate. The three-foot fence. All at once I understood what it meant. When Stella was growing up in the house, the fence had been six feet tall, the same height as the gate. I looked again, this time at the windows on the lowest level of the house. They were cut in half at the ground, elongated ovals that had been half buried. The absence of trees or grass, the absence of any walkway confirmed it. The photo had been taken just after the grade raising. After the Great Hurricane.

Stella had survived.

If it was Stella. I sat down. I looked at the photo, front and back.
This wasn’t like the image from the trade show. I couldn’t be sure. Were the initials really Stella’s or someone else’s? Had someone added them later, making a guess at the woman’s identity? Did the letters signify something else entirely?

I was tempted to talk to Will, to share my thoughts. I recalled the way he had laughed about the bust that was supposed to be Lavinia Giraud. For just a moment, I let myself imagine his excitement and approval. Then I remembered his face when I inquired about Stella. What Mary Liz had said.
Will doesn’t like to talk about his folks
. I recalled, too, our family dinners. Frankie and my father laughing. I didn’t want to be wrong. I sat turning the photo over and over in my hands.

If Stella had not died during the hurricane, where had she been during the storm? Had she left the Island and then returned? I looked again at the face in the photo. If she survived, what had happened to her? What else had she endured? Probably Will knew, though he wouldn’t discuss it. And Mary Liz.

I believed Faline knew too. If she did, it might be something she’d be willing to tell me.

When I went downstairs, she was outside on the broad veranda, gazing toward the street. Faline’s back was ramrod straight, she gripped a broom, upright, the way a lookout might hold a rifle. There was sure to be a group of tourists just outside the gate. As long as they stayed where they were, there was nothing she could do about them. But their presence had always provoked her. How often had I heard her complain?
They got nothing better to do than stand around staring in other folks’ yards?

I went to the big front door and opened it. I waved at the tourists, who drew back. They seemed surprised that as onlookers, they were visible too. “They’re just curious,” I said to Faline. “They’ve heard about Stella, what happened to her.”

Faline stabbed her broom into a corner of the veranda. “They fools if they believe those stories.” She raised her voice and said again, “Fools.”

I sensed an opportunity. “So it isn’t true? About Henry Durand? And Stella running away?”

“They ran away all right.”

“But she didn’t drown,” I said.

Faline smiled. “No such thing.” Clearly she enjoyed knowing what the despised tourists didn’t. “They ran away, her and the young man, Henry. Crossed the causeway before the storm hit. Afterward, no one knew was she dead or alive. Then they thought they found her. The girl with her hair caught.” Faline lifted the doormat, exposing a rectangle of sandy dirt. She shook the mat, and hung it over the stone balustrade. “They found another one too. Some of her fingers gone. Cut off. Somebody wanted her jewelry.”

Reflexively, I made fists. But my need to learn more was urgent. “What really happened?”

Faline shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “Her daddy went after her. Brought her home.” She leaned the broom against the wall. There were begonias in pots grouped on the veranda. She bent and examined the first.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.”

“Nothing? She never got married?” Faline pulled off one dead leaf, then another. I knew she enjoyed making me wait. When she was satisfied, she straightened.

“She had offers. One from the doctor owned your house there. His wife had passed. They had to let him through when the street was tore up and all the digging going on. But her daddy said no.”