The Drowning House (9 page)

When I turned back, Ty’s face had gone thoughtful. “And people here were okay with this?”

“There’s always been a general sense that the Island makes its own rules. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s a state of mind as much as anything.”

“You’ve thought about all this.”

“It’s what Islanders do when they’re somewhere else.”

There was a crab on the plate I’d given Ty. It lay on its back, legs
splayed. Ty went to work, dismantling it with precision. Between bites, he looked at me intently. “Tell me more,” he said.

“Tourists used to come here, Texans, people from other parts of the mainland, when they wanted a wild time. To indulge themselves. To do the things they couldn’t or wouldn’t do at home. In a place without a conscience.”

“And now?”

“It’s a matter of local pride, what the Islanders got away with. It was partly self-preservation. When the port traffic moved to Houston, gambling and prostitution kept the city going. But …”

“But what?”

“I think what really mattered to them was demonstrating the Island’s separateness. Showing that they could do whatever they wanted.” I looked down at my plate and realized that my food was untouched.

“And now. Is there a conscience?”

“Well, visitors on vacation still do things here they wouldn’t at home. The men drink too much and start fights. The women drink too much and buy revealing clothing they’ll never wear again.”

“But the local people?”

“Officially, the city has no vices. Unless you count the careless beach development.”

“You disapprove.”

“It’s probably inevitable.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

“And what about unofficially?”

“Is there bad behavior? Of course. And I’m sure the Islanders know about it because they know everything. That’s the way it is here. Which is not to say they’ll discuss it in front of outsiders. They tend to close ranks.” I gestured toward the terrace, where a small group had gathered. “Look around you. If they aren’t related by blood, they’re intermarried or doing business together. Or hoping to buy their way in.”

“Sounds sort of incestuous.”

“Absolutely.” I smiled, signaling my detachment.

“You grew up here.”

“Right over there.” I pointed toward the oleander hedge. “But I’ve lived away a long time.”

Ty looked up from under dark brows. “Did you miss it?”

I felt a quick pinch of anxiety and straightened in my chair. “I didn’t want to come back, if that’s what you’re asking. I have a career I could never have had in Galveston.”

“But you thought about it.”

“Occasionally.”

“It’s a seductive place,” he said. “The colors. The weather.”

I swung my bare leg and nodded. I wondered when he would discover what all Islanders know—that the air and water are often so close to body temperature you sometimes feel, if it weren’t for the accident of your skin, you could melt into either one.

It was agreeable being the object of Ty’s interest. But I was thinking about Patrick. Where was he? I had dressed with him in mind. As the party progressed, I’d thought about how I wanted to look when he made his appearance. I wanted to seem relaxed, like someone who went out often and had a good time. Who ate and slept like other people and did not cry unexpectedly.

My skirt was blue, a sheer layer over a darker lining. I rearranged its folds. “The Island has always drawn people,” I said. “Even when it was run-down. Before they started fixing things up. Rehabilitating the city and its past. Making it all into copy for a vacation flyer.”

“You think it was different?”

“The reality? Well, you heard what Charlotte said.”

He thought for a minute. “That the past wasn’t always nice.” He paused. “But isn’t that what we all do? Rework our history? Most of us keep to the basic facts. But we improve on them, cast them in a better light. We back off just enough to be comfortable. I mean, who would want to remember what it was like to be an adolescent? The awful details. To live with that knowledge on a daily basis.”

I wondered how long he’d been in Galveston. If he’d heard about the fire. About Patrick and me.

Ty glanced over toward the house. Had he seen me look that way? Or had I gone on too long about the Island? I had no sense anymore of how people talked in social situations. I felt deflated, the way I always did when I described Galveston that way. Everything I’d told Ty was true. And yet I’d done exactly what I’d complained about—presented the information in a way I knew would be amusing.

At the other end of the garden, the buffet tables had been quietly cleared away. Waiters were circulating with coffee and chocolates. Under the tent, a band began to play.

This was what it meant to have things done. I thought it might be the most appealing thing about being really rich—this ability to orchestrate what was going on around you for everyone’s benefit, and to do it without apparent effort. I could understand how hard it might be to restrain that impulse, once it had become a habit. And that it might be misunderstood as interference. To my surprise, I realized I was expressing Will’s point of view.

The group on the terrace had grown. I recognized several guests Will had introduced me to earlier. The president of an insurance company. A developer who had renovated one of the old hotels. Across the lawn I saw Leanne, her head thrown back, asleep in a lawn chair.

Will led Eleanor onto the dance floor. The band struck up a familiar number, and there was scattered applause. Will was a wonderful dancer, graceful and light on his feet. But his real gift was the way he showed off his partner. As he spun her out, a strand of hair fell down past Eleanor’s cheek, and she laughed and pushed it back.

Then it came to me. Will was a fisherman. Hadn’t I seen a photo of him in the foyer? On a boat, wearing a canvas hat stuck with lures? It was his urgent step I had heard in our house, his hat I had seen in our front hall.

No wonder he and Eleanor looked so much at ease together. If Mary Liz objected, she wasn’t letting on. Probably everyone else understood too. Some of them, at least, applauded. Who knew what they really thought?

I took a deep breath. It seemed I needed more oxygen than the
moist air provided. I looked up into the night sky and saw that what I’d thought was an especially bright star had moved. I realized that it wasn’t a star but a plane, entirely silent, on its way to a destination I could only guess at.

Ty asked, “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

I shook my head and stood up. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I’ve been doing a lot of driving. I think I’d better make it an early night.” Ty stood too. I could see that he was disappointed, but he was too polite to ask questions.

There was no point in trying to explain. If Ty remained in Galveston, he would learn that whatever was happening between Eleanor and Will, the Islanders had already taken its measure and made the necessary social corrections. If he wanted to belong, to be part of Will’s circle, he would have to be willing to adjust his responses too. He’d heard the stories. But he didn’t understand yet. Things were different here.

A BARRIER ISLAND, LIKE GALVESTON
, is a slim formation of loose sand, no more than five to ten feet above sea level. The sand is always moving, raising itself into long bars offshore, into dunes above the beach.

The sand becomes stable only when it is covered with vegetation. First the grasses and sea oats. Then the vining plants, low to the ground—beach morning glories with interlacing runners, doveweed, goatweed. The leaves of these plants are thick and succulent, hairy, or reduced in size—adaptations that decrease water loss. Their roots go down deep. So specific and so extreme are the requirements of the environment that many of these plants can grow nowhere else.

Everything on a barrier island is dug in or braced—the plants, the egrets in the marsh grass, even the fishermen in caps and T-shirts, squinting, waist-deep, leaning into the wind, searching for shifts and currents.

There is so little to rest the eye on. Is the emptiness too much to bear? So that without understanding why, Islanders will do anything
to fill it? I don’t know how it happens. But islands have a way of taking over, of seizing the imagination. So that the people who live on them become different too, become wishful thinkers, fabulists, rearrangers of facts. What those on the mainland would probably call liars. It’s not surprising really in a place where survival, life itself, is the result of a kind of stubborn reinvention.

A hurricane can cause a small island to disappear in a matter of hours.

For some, the potential for catastrophe makes island life irresistible. It acts like a drug, heightening the senses. It magnifies the sound of the surf until you can hear it through heavy curtains and thick walls. It makes the breeze sweeter against your skin. It invests each day, each small decision with significance because it could be the last. You are waiting for the world to end, and part of you wants to see it happen.

The Islanders like to talk about the weather. That’s how they greet each other.
There’s a storm in the Gulf
.

Is it a game? Do they truly believe that they are invulnerable? Mention the laws of nature, meteorology, geological evidence, engineering, laws of any kind, and they just smile and look away. Is this where Galveston Islanders get their reputation for tolerance?
Live and let live
.

When the truth is, in a place so small, so interconnected, and so precarious, willful disregard can be a powerful form of self-interest.

Chapter 9

WHEN FINALLY WILL
’
S PARTY WAS OVER
and most of the lights were out, I left my bedroom, crossed the alley, and stepped back through the oleander hedge.

The mass of the Carraday house rose up suddenly before me, the lighted windows bright against the black sky. It was impossible to approach it gradually, to accustom yourself to its immensity, to the welter of narrow chimneys and conical towers of different heights that bristled above it. I’d been coming and going there all my life, and still it took my breath away.

The door was open and I let myself in.

Nothing in that part of the house had changed. There was the dumbwaiter that connected the two floors. On rainy days, Patrick and I would take turns hauling each other, cramped and sweating, up and down, until Faline heard the hollow knocking of the wooden pulleys and dragged us out.

Though it was late, a light still burned downstairs. I went down the half-dozen steps and through the doorway into the kitchen. It was in a half basement at the back of the house. Because it was below ground, the kitchen was always cool and pleasantly musky, like a root cellar.

Faline sat upright in an upholstered wing chair in the corner. A low, plush-covered footstool, clearly new, stood to one side. Next to it lay a stack of newspapers. Behind her on the wall was a row of call bells for summoning a staff that no longer existed. Faline’s eyes were closed, her brows drawn together as if she were focused on some
chore, but her lap was empty and her hands lay at her sides. I saw her eyelids flicker. I cleared my throat. When there was no response, I spoke her name.

“No need to shout,” she said. She opened her eyes. “You try my étouffée? I can tell you don’t get any real food up north. You wouldn’t be so skinny.”

I recognized this tactic—Faline was adept at diversion. “I don’t want to discuss the menu,” I said. “You told me to come back later. Faline, I need to know what happened.”

“What happened? What kind of question is that? What you think happened? The party’s over. Everyone gone home. Except you. You always turning up. Ever since you been a small child.” She pointed to the refrigerator. “I saved you some brown-sugar bread pudding.”

“Maybe later. First I want to know what you told them about Patrick and me.”

“You come here at this hour to ask me that? Why you still fussing about something everyone else have long forgotten? What difference it make now? Anyway, I stand by what I did. It was best for you both.”

“Why was it best?”

“Why?” Faline stood abruptly, pulled a cloth off a rack and snapped it. “Why? Since when I got to justify myself to you? My conscience clean, is all you need to know.” She turned her back and began to polish the stove whose black-and-white surfaces already gleamed. I could see her shoulder working under her cotton blouse.

“I want to know what you told them,” I persisted.

She turned and shook the cloth at me. “I seen you tonight,” she said, “flirting with that fellow from the mainland. Cross your legs. Cross them again. You a married woman, getting on for thirty years old. You ought to had enough of that foolishness. In that flimsy skirt.”

“I was just talking.”

“You ought to be talking to your husband. But here you are now in the middle of the night. Look like you come from a shelter.”

After the party, I’d fallen asleep briefly, then gotten up and changed into a T-shirt and jeans. I realized they were the ones I usually
wore in the darkroom, and they were stained with chemicals. I touched my hair. Had I remembered to brush it?