Cocoa Beach

by Beatriz Williams

  Why? Why had I done it? Exposed myself like that. Pulled apart my ribs and shown this man, this stranger in his uniform, the heart that beat inside. Given him a piece of precious, vital information, a club that he could wield, if he really wanted revenge against Simon.

  You’re better off without us. Was that the nature of Samuel’s revenge? A love for a love? Steal my lover, and I will drive away yours.

  My chest shook as I gripped the wheel. The dust cleared, but my eyes remained clouded and wobbly, and I realized that they were wet. I reached up to brush the corner of my eye, and at that instant a light exploded before me, like the flashbulb of a newsman’s camera, and I’m afraid I really don’t remember anything more.

  June 28, 1920

  Darling V,

  Here’s something that may shock you: my brother Samuel has arrived from England, dead broke and desperate, and I’ve given him a job. I hope you don’t mind, although I suppose there’s no reason you should, other than the fact that you never had a high opinion of him exactly. But there wasn’t much left after my parents died, you see; nearly everything was sold off to pay the debts and the death taxes—including, as you know, the poor old house itself—and he and my sister have run out of what little remained. He has resigned his commission, and there are no honest jobs to be had at the moment, with so many soldiers out of work. So he’s come here—buried his pride, you might say, as a last resort—and I suppose I haven’t the heart to refuse my own brother.

  Not that I have much to give him, at present. I have taken out a massive mortgage on the property in order to fund the building of the new steamships—nearly complete—and the repair of the orchards and the house. But the fact is, I could use the help of someone whom I—well, if not trust utterly, at least understand. Left to myself, you know, I should much rather spend my time mucking about on the plantation, while Samuel is, by nature, better suited to the civilized warfare of the business interests in Cocoa. And since I can’t be in two places at once, I imagine this arrangement will make the best of both of us: he managing the day-to-day affairs of the hotel and the shipping company, I turning my orchards into a thriving vale once more, and neither of us having to do more than is absolutely necessary with the other.

  Well, I shan’t bore you with any more business details. I daresay that’s the last thing you’re interested in. In any case, there’s a luminous, golden-pink dawn dreaming outside my bedroom window, and the haze is rising slowly above the blossoming trees, and I would really rather slumber on and think of you than do anything else at all.

  But that would accomplish nothing, would it? So instead I shall finish this letter, rise from the armchair, and don my trousers and work boots. I shall head out into that fragrant dawn and see to my trees and garden, and when I return I shall bunker down in my study and attend to business over a pot of fresh coffee. Try to make these sums in my account books stretch out a little longer. Just a bit longer, and then in another year, God willing, I can approach my wife, hat in hand, heart in throat, and explain everything. Ask her to join me in this new home I am building around me.

  Until then, I remain your own

  S.F.

  Chapter 20

  Maitland Plantation, Florida, July 1922

  Sometime in the night, I open my eyes to the strange perspective of the bedroom floor, illuminated rather luridly by the glow of the kerosene lamp above my head. I suppose I’ve fallen asleep, though I can’t imagine how. My cheek sticks to the fibers of the rug. My hand throbs. Damned scorching thirst fills my throat. And my head! My God, how it hurts. Not a headache as you ordinarily experience them, but a kind of unbearable, itching, spider-crawling pressure, as if my brain is going to burst from my skull.

  I must have aspirin.

  There’s no question of standing, let alone walking. As I detach my face from the rug and place my left palm against the floor to hoist my torso a few inches upward, into a world that swings violently back and forth, I think I’ve never tried so hard to accomplish anything else in my life. Even giving birth to Evelyn, for which at least God and nature granted me a certain reservoir of strength. Here, I have nothing. I have only will. Just need.

  Because of the injury to my hand, I crawl across the floor on my knees and my elbows. I cross the edge of the rug, and now the bare wooden floorboards grind against my bones. Why is the bedroom so large? It’s like scaling a continent. I pass the open French window, and a draft of damp air engulfs me, cooler than you might expect on a July night in Florida. I think—trying to distract myself—maybe it’s another thunderstorm, about to pull across the night sky, and just as this thought takes its fuzzy shape in my mind, a distant groan troubles the atmosphere. I would say ominous, but the thunderstorms come so regularly here, drenching us daily, rattling the roof tiles and coursing down the drainpipes, bathing the orchards and the turf until the sun bursts out again and all that water turns to steam—as I say, the thunderstorms are such frequent visitors, they’re like old friends. Not ominous at all. I imagine, as I reach the threshold of the bathroom, how lovely it would feel to dance in the rain at midnight.

  The mere act of dragging myself across the bedroom floor seems—paradoxically, maybe—to have restored a little life to my limbs. I gaze up at the elegant basin, and the medicine cabinet above it, and I might just manage it. If I brace my good left hand on the marble and gather my feet underneath me. If I use my legs to lever myself upward, and my arm for balance, and I set my teeth against the myriad agonies blooming inside me. Outside the bathroom window, the thunder rumbles again, imminent now.

  I have always considered myself a woman of tidy habits. Everything in its place, you know, and even though I never flinched at the prospect of those muddy battlefields, I always cleaned myself afterward, to a meticulous standard, before I allowed myself to collapse in bed. I don’t know why. I wasn’t an especially tidy child. I had such a multitude of toys when I was young, so many dresses and hair ribbons and God knows what else, I could strew them around me and not care what became of any particular item. And then we moved to New York, and my earthly possessions could—and did—fit into a single satchel, and suddenly the disposition of those possessions actually mattered. The orderly arrangement of my hair mattered. The clean symmetry of my face and hands mattered. A speck of dirt on the hem of my dress became a subject of immediate anxiety. A scuff on my shoe sent me into a panic.

  And now. Just look at me in the mirror.

  My face, smeared with blood. My nightgown, stained. My right hand crusted and clotted and swollen. My hair matted and limp. Wan, hollow-eyed, dull, blurry. I turn on the tap. Hot and cold running water, terribly luxurious. I must clean myself, of course. Clean up this terrible mess I’ve made of myself.

  But first. Aspirin.

  Tap off.

  The fingers of my right hand have lost all strength. Shaking and vulnerable. A kind of panic fills me as I fumble and fumble with the bottle, and then I turn it into my left hand and use my teeth to screw open the lid and it pops off, satisfying sound, and I pour one tablet—just one!—onto the marble edge of the basin, and my fingers are shaking so hard, my muscles are trembling so violently, that when I try to grasp that darling, delicious tablet it careens down the side of the basin and disappears into the drain.

  (A brief double flash outside the window. A quiet crash of thunder deepens into a rumble.)

  Calm down now. (The breath saws along my throat.) Calm down. Close your eyes. You can do this.

  I can do this.

  All I need is an aspirin. Just one little aspirin and I can clean my face and hands and change my nightgown, I can find that perfect tranquillity of mind and become myself again. Virginia. Whoever that is. Clear everything away.

  Open your eyes. Take the bottle in your left hand—the left, now!—and tilt it carefully, carefully, to the marble. There are two tablets left. Wait until the first one slides to the edge of the rim. Now tap. Once. There it comes. Atta girl.

  Now, try this instead. Wet you
r forefinger and just press it into the tablet. Gently, now. Just until it sticks. That’s the way. Now lift your finger, nice and slow, holding your wrist so the poor thing doesn’t shake quite so much. Except your right hand is making it shake even more! So drop the right hand. Bring your mouth to your forefinger. Open your lips.

  It’s not there.

  Eyes open. Look down. Tablet sticking to the curve of the basin. Scramble, scramble. The tablet tips off the edge of the finger, rolls like an unattended tire right down under the edge of the drain.

  Angry now. Angry! Goddamn fingers, goddamn aspirin! Take the bottle and shake it and it’s EMPTY! EMPTY! But there were two tablets left, you were sure of that! TWO! Where’s the other one? WHERE? You shake again and tilt the bottle to your lips, because maybe it’s stuck, but there’s nothing there, nothing, and you throw the bottle on the floor—SHATTER!—and dig your fingers around the drain, DIG DIG DIG, gore melting from your skin and staining the porcelain, DIG! fingers scraping on the pipe, and you lift out a dirty, hairy white tablet—TWO dirty, hairy white tablets, stuck together!—and SHOVE them both into your mouth just as the thunder goes CRASH outside your window, and the bedroom door goes CRASH against the wall, and you crumple gratefully to the bathroom tiles and dimly, dimly, hear a familiar, anguished voice calling your name.

  He wants to know where Clara is. I say I don’t know. I thought she was in Miami Beach. That’s what she said, that she was going to Miami Beach. She took the Packard and just left. He runs the washcloth over my face and arms, and I let him. Feels so good and warm, scented with soap. He swears and asks me how I cut my hand. I tell him it was the flowers, and I point through the doorway into the bedroom, and he follows the direction of my finger, I guess, because then he swears again and says that cut is going to have to be stitched up.

  Okeydokey, I say.

  He tells me to open my eyes. I open my eyes.

  He swears a third time and asks me what I’ve been taking, what they’re giving me here.

  Aspirin, I say. I point to the bottle on the floor.

  He takes me by the shoulders. “Where the hell is Clara? Tell me!”

  “Miami Beach. She said she was going to Miami Beach.”

  “When?”

  I close my eyes again. “Maybe a month ago. The day after we arrived here. She got a telegram.”

  “What telegram?”

  “I don’t know. She left a note.”

  “Where? Where is the note?”

  I point again. “Top drawer.”

  He drags me along the floor and props me up against the bathtub and runs to the chest of drawers, and do you know something? I don’t mind a bit. Really.

  Tranquillity.

  He’s carrying me out of the house in his big, strong arms, and I still don’t mind. Not. A bit. Someone is arguing with him. Miss Bertram, I think. Oh, she’s furious! My, my. I raise my head and tell her it’s all right, he’s not going to hurt me.

  Miss Bertram shouts. “What have you done to her?”

  “What have I done to her? I found her like this! On the bathroom floor!”

  “Take her back to the bedroom! I’m going to call the doctor.”

  “The hell with your doctors. She’s coming with me.”

  I raise my head again. “Evelyn!”

  He shouts to Miss Bertram. “Bring the girl!”

  “Oh, no, you don’t! That little girl is staying right here.”

  (Menacing.) “I said, bring the girl. Or I’ll fetch her myself.”

  “You will not!”

  He doesn’t answer. He just swings me around and marches out the door and into the warm, wet night, and he deposits me into a car of some kind, smelling of leather and oil and rain. Don’t move, he tells me.

  As if I could.

  He leaves, and I hear them shouting, Miss Bertram demanding and remonstrating, and I just close my eyes and let them shout. This seat is so comfortable. I’m fresh and clean, all washed up, dressed in a crisp new nightgown and a dressing gown, my hair pulled back, my right hand wrapped in a thick white bandage. The leather is soft and beaten smooth beneath my cheek. I allow my hand to fall kerplop to the floorboards.

  Tranquillity.

  I wake up retching. The car skids to a stop. Footsteps crunch. Door opens. He pulls me out of the seat and holds back my hair while I vomit into the grass by the side of the road. Vomit and vomit. Sweating. Spots popping. Slump into his arms.

  I whisper. “Evelyn?”

  “She’s all right. Everything’s all right. I’m going to make everything all right, okay?”

  Okay, Samuel.

  Chapter 21

  Neuilly, France, September 1918

  Later—I don’t remember when—they told me that I hadn’t been hit by a German bomb, as I thought. Hunka Tin’s right front tire had exploded, sending me into the hood of an oncoming truck, packed with soldiers coming off the front line.

  I asked them, How does that explain the flash of light? And they couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer. I don’t suppose I’ll ever really know. They never gave me the name of the other driver, either, who must have seen what happened. It’s a terrible thing, believe me, not remembering something so important.

  In fact, the gap of memory lasted over a month. I’m told I wavered in and out of a conscious state, but when I search my mind for details—the crash itself, the rescue, the fight to save my life—I can’t find anything at all.

  One thing only: the profile of a trim, gray-haired man in a British Army uniform, standing by my bed while he spoke, in great animation, with an American doctor whose name I forget.

  On the last day of September, when I could sit up at last without feeling dizzy, Simon Fitzwilliam walked down the long ward and stopped at the end of my bed. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and golden light flooded the windows behind him, but I knew it was him.

  “Thank God,” he said. “You’re awake.”

  “What are you doing here? How did they let you in?”

  “I came last month, on a forty-eight-hour pass, when you were first brought in. I don’t suppose you remember. You were half-dead. I was never so afraid in my life. You’re looking much better.”

  I didn’t answer. I hadn’t yet dared to look in a mirror, but I had touched my bandaged face and shorn hair just that morning. I knew that my skin was still bruised, my eyes swollen. “Thank you,” I said drily.

  “Do you mind?” he said, after a moment. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just—I’m not very good company for you.”

  “For God’s sake. You don’t need to say a word. Just be alive, that’s all. Be Virginia. That’s all that matters.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “Good. Because I had the devil of a time getting more leave. There’s a war on, in case you didn’t know.”

  The old charm. It stole over me, like the sunlight behind him, warm and familiar, driving away all the shadows. The doubts that had shrouded me, the words that had drummed and drummed inside my skull as I lay on this bed. And I was too tired to fight. My limbs hurt. I tried to smile. “Is there? I hadn’t noticed.”

  He walked around the corner of the bed toward me, and his face jumped out from shadow, along with his hand, which contained a pair of books. He held them out to me. “For you.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was no nightstand, at least for my use. He laid the books on the blanket beside me. “Aren’t you curious to see what they are?”

  “I haven’t been able to read yet. The words keep swimming.”

  “God, yes. Of course.” He sat down respectfully near my left knee. “A Tale of Two Cities and The Story of an African Farm.”

  “I haven’t read the second one.”

  “I think you’ll like it. It’s not very long, however.” He took my hand and laid his first two fingers on the inside of my wrist, feeling my pulse. “Hmm.”

  “Better?”

  “Yes, much
.” He moved his fingers but didn’t release the hand. His palm was warm and dry. “It’s good to see you, Virginia.”

  “Is it? I’m not exactly an object of seduction anymore.”

  “You never were. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.”

  He leaned forward. His thumb pressed into my palm. “My God. You know everything about me! What’s the matter? What have I done?”

  His face, I now saw, was lined with fatigue. His hair had taken on more gray, and his cheeks were thinner, and his tunic hung roomily on his frame. His eyes were unnaturally bright, as if he were existing on nerves alone, and he fixed upon me with desperation.

  “Your brother,” I whispered. “Your brother came to see me.”

  His shoulders fell. “Yes. So I thought.”

  “He told me terrible things. But I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him—”

  “Of course not. Of course you didn’t believe him. Because you have faith in me, dearest. You trust me. You must trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  “It was a terrible shock when he turned up. A wonderful shock and a terrible one.” His hand gripped mine like a manacle. “I won’t say more. I don’t want to tire you. I’ll be off in a moment. But I swear, Virginia—”

  “You don’t need to swear anything. I could see how bitter he was, how he resented you. How he’s resented you all his life. I understood right away.”

  “But you doubted, just a little.”

  “Not really. I just—I needed to see you, that’s all. To hear the truth from you.”

  “That I love you. That I cannot imagine my life without you. Don’t believe anything else, not for an instant. Do you hear me? Do you understand me?”

  He spoke, as I did, in a low, husky voice—conscious of the dozen occupied beds on either side of us, the bored ears straining to catch our conversation. A nurse strode by, carrying a tray, and her gaze slid away as I glanced at her.