Sea Creatures

by Susanna Daniel

  There was a certain logic, I had to admit. But still, there seemed to be some experience we were meant to be having as a family. I didn’t know if other mothers felt this way, but I thought my own mother had, what with the way we’d paired up while my father orbited the universe on his own, colliding with us every so often, as if by chance. I grew up missing my father a little bit all of the time, looking around for him only to discover he’d left the house. The notion that Frankie was growing up the same way carved a rut in my heart.

  There was something about the way Charlie stood in the ocean, his focus trained on my son, his muscular arms tensed in preparation to help Frankie stand or lift him out of the water. I remembered, watching them together, that my mother’s old friend, Vivian, had had a daughter, which meant Charlie had a daughter. One could tell he was a father, looking at him. He wore fatherhood on his skin.

  After Graham and I were married but before we’d decided—I’d decided—to try to have a baby, my mother had told me that she believed it wasn’t a matter of being meant to be a parent. Rather, it was about inclination, like spicy food or heights. I think she meant to seem neutral on the subject, but I sensed an undercurrent of disapproval in her words, and I wondered if she believed that I did not possess this taste for parenthood, what with my moodiness and introspection, my only-child independence. It had always seemed that when my mother made a pronouncement about me, regardless of whether previously I’d believed the pronouncement was true, it became the truth. As if she not only had information that I didn’t, but also had the power to mold my future self, which maybe she did. Once, I’d mentioned on the phone that I was in the process of reorganizing my kitchen cabinets, and she’d said, not rudely but with a thoughtlessness that asserted itself only after she started to get sick, that this seemed like a task for which I was ill-suited. “You’ve never had much of a head for that kind of thing,” she said guilelessly. It wasn’t only that my feelings were hurt by the comment, but also that I was perplexed by it. I’d assumed, until that conversation, that in fact I was perfectly capable of simple home organization. Suddenly, I believed the opposite.

  If my mother had ever said that she thought I would be a good mother, maybe I could believe that I was.

  Offshore, there came a shout—but it wasn’t Charlie’s, it was Frankie’s, and then he was moving silently but frantically, scrabbling at Charlie’s shoulders until Charlie was holding him and the inner tube was floating beside them. I stood up, but Charlie gave a reassuring wave.

  “Stingray,” he called.

  Through the clear water I saw a gliding dark cloud of color, then the smooth flip of a fin. Frankie was grinning now, bouncing in Charlie’s arms. Up came his hand beside Charlie’s, and then, as the creature skated into deeper water, they both pointed emphatically to get my attention, signing for me to Look, look, look.

  MAYBE IT WAS THE SEA air or the swimming or both, but at Stiltsville Frankie took marathon naps, stretching well into a third hour. I worked in the office while he slept, listening for his knocks against the wall, and every so often I trudged out to the kitchen for water or coffee and found Charlie napping on the sofa with his forearm over his eyes or sitting in the armchair under the heaping yarn, needles clicking.

  After our swim at Soldier Key, Frankie’s fingers and toes were pruned and his cheeks were the fruity pink of plums. I read him a book—I’d taken to leaving a few behind, along with spare clothes—and kissed his clammy hairline, and when I came out to get a glass of water, I found Charlie cutting limes at the kitchen counter. He dropped a slice into a bottle of beer and handed it over with a white paper napkin wrapped around the base. A salty, warm breeze swept in from the open doorway.

  On the armchair was the bag of wool, and on top of the bag was a single knitted baby bootie made from cream-colored yarn. It was shaped less like a typical bootie than a prim little loafer, with a coconut button off to one side.

  I said, “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He grunted in acknowledgment.

  “But you know that won’t fit Frankie, right?” I said.

  “You don’t think?” he said.

  I couldn’t read him. “You’re multitalented,” I said.

  “My wife taught me.”

  I spoke without thinking. “Why don’t you bring the chair into the office? Keep me company?”

  He shrugged and took a swallow of his beer, then handed it to me to hold. He hoisted the low chair into the office, set it down in the corner, and picked up his needles. For an hour or so we worked without speaking, me sorting and him knitting. I started an unopened box, having finished five or so completely, and when I pulled off the lid, expecting to see a starfish or octopus or clipper ship, I saw instead something new: a map. Along the top of the page was an intricate strip of hammocks along a peninsula, and at the tip of the peninsula was a stout lighthouse. The rest of the page was Biscayne Bay, including the finger-channels of Stiltsville, and at the bottom of the page, the land petered out, and there lay a necklace of squashed shapes: the Florida Keys. The map was drawn on a faded and yellowing page from a dictionary, headed with the words that bookended the content: qualm to quick. The weekend before, I’d stopped at an art supply store and bought a three-pack of fancy technical drawing pens and a battery-operated electric pencil sharpener. I used my own money for these and didn’t submit the receipts to Riggs. Charlie thanked me politely when I handed over the packages, but as far as I could tell, none of it had been used.

  The box revealed more maps on dictionary pages. One—the headers read standard to stave—offered more detail of the swampy hammocks and the textured stucco of the lighthouse, and in the center of the bay, near the mouth of the big channel, was a small bonefish. No Name Cove was detailed, with a tiny sailboat moored in its middle, and farther south was an inlet, water lines swirling. On one of the islands was a hexagonal structure: this was the fort on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, where Graham and I were headed in a few days. Another map showed Soldier Key with a smaller key beside it, titled 1905.

  Frankie was still asleep when I finished sorting the maps. Charlie looked up. In his lap lay the rounded tip of a second ivory loafer.

  “Maps,” I said to him, pointing to the box.

  He put his finger to his lips, indicating the wall between the office and the main bedroom. “Yes, maps,” he said.

  “They’re exquisite.”

  “They don’t sell.”

  “I didn’t know there used to be another island next to Soldier Key.”

  “Islands sink.”

  “Those little shoes,” I said. “You’re not making them for Frankie, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” He bowed his head and continued to knit.

  The afternoon sunlight filled the room like a substance, viscous and damp. I stood near the window and waited for a breeze to cool my face. To the east, a little fishing boat slowed as it approached the neighbors’ house, its whine shifting into a low roar. The woman at the house—she was blond, a little older than I—went to greet the visitor, a thin dark-haired woman wearing a visor. The brunette was familiar, and I thought she might have been a woman named Marse Heiger, a friend of Lidia’s who stopped by every few weeks. It was impossible to tell for certain. She and the blond woman embraced on the dock. I went back to my tasks.

  Charlie fell asleep while I was working my way through another box. His head rested on the back of his chair, facing the wall. I’d never known an adult to nap as heavily, as unself-consciously, as he did. I envied him. After a while, I stood and stretched and watched the rise and fall of his chest under his T-shirt. His hands rested on the arms of the chair and his eyelids fluttered. I found myself touching his forearm.

  He opened his eyes but didn’t move. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered something.”

  His mouth tightened a little. “What?”

  I felt my face flush. “Can I ask,” I said, “do you ever miss living on land?�
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  “Not a lot, no.”

  I was going to let it drop, but then he went on.

  “I miss football, actually. Sometimes Riggs comes out and we watch on the set in his Bertram, but it’s not the same.”

  “What else?”

  “Gardening. My wife had the green thumb, but I held my own. We had an English garden around an old oak out back. I would spend hours on my knees, sweating into the roses.” He rubbed his thighs. “Every so often I think I’d like to spend some time in my garden.”

  “I’d think you’d miss”—I searched for the word. “Freedom.”

  “I’m not sure we understand the term the same way.”

  “Freedom of movement, of space.”

  He motioned out the window. “You have more space on land?”

  “Getting in a car and driving, that sort of freedom.”

  “Doesn’t hold much appeal.”

  “Because of people?”

  He nodded once. “Mostly.”

  “People don’t hold appeal?”

  “Not most, no.”

  “Is it hard to have me and Frankie around so much?”

  “Not particularly. You can take that as a compliment.”

  “I do.” I took a breath. “Why are you knitting those booties?”

  We both looked down at the half-finished pair in his lap, the delicate coconut button.

  “It’s a little complicated,” he said.

  I sat down on the floor close to his chair. He wiped his forehead, then put his hands on his knees. He didn’t look at me. “Maybe you know that I had a daughter,” he said.

  The past tense—had a daughter—landed in my gut. If I’d ever met his daughter, I didn’t recall it.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “She died.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “She was twenty-five. Married. Pregnant. This was ten years ago last December. Her husband, Sam, was an associate with my firm. I’d introduced them.”

  He said the last bit with a father’s pride, but still my breath caught in my throat.

  “No, no,” he said, seeing my expression. “It was insulin shock. She was home alone. I came in the back with some ferns—sometimes on the weekends we did a little work in their yard—and I found her on the kitchen floor. There was orange juice spilled everywhere, but she hadn’t gotten it to her mouth. Evidently.” He checked to see if he should go on. “Her cat was making a lot of noise at her feet. I called the ambulance. I held her and tried to get her to swallow something. She was alive when I found her, but by the time they got there she was gone.”

  Age twenty-five. I’d been twenty-five when I met Graham. “Where was Sam?”

  Charlie tensed. “He was at a job site. A pedestrian bridge at a college in Fort Lauderdale. His first big job. I’d made it happen.”

  “You liked him,” I said.

  “Very much. They had a good—” He searched for the word, then dropped it. “We thought they were too young when they got engaged, but we were wrong. Vivian was excited about the baby.”

  I tried to recall whether my mother had ever told me this story, but came up blank. I knew she’d kept things from me, truths of her life and of life in general, meaning to protect me. She would have believed telling me something like that would harm my spirit, I think—this was the kind of thing that had irritated me about her, once upon a time. Or maybe she did tell me of her friend’s daughter’s death, and I’d forgotten. I’d lived away from home at the time, after all, and had been in the process of falling in love. But the daughter and I must have been roughly the same age, and I didn’t think I’d forget a story like that.

  He looked at the little loafers in his lap. “It’s Vivian’s design,” he said. “I mean, I’m sure other people have made baby shoes that look similar, but this was her pattern. She made them for years. She said they were her signature gift.”

  He was a thick-shouldered, square-jawed, sandpaper-faced older man, holding a soft woolen shoe smaller than his palm.

  “They’re a perfect gift,” I said.

  “She thought I needed something to occupy myself after Jenny died. Every time she made me sit down I felt like I couldn’t stand it another minute.” He glanced up at me. “I wasn’t very nice about it.”

  “You learned.”

  He held up the shoe. “A little leather under here,” he said, pointing at the sole, “and it’s a slipper, for bigger kids.”

  “What else can you make?”

  “Cardigans. Babies wear a lot of cardigans, even in the heat, have you noticed? And roomy little pants. Vivian called them kicky pants.” On his face was a calmness I hadn’t seen before. He noticed me staring and cleared his throat. “Once you’ve had a little practice, it’s simple. Passes the time.”

  I knew I should return to work, but this was the most he’d ever spoken. “What happened to Sam?”

  “He remarried. She’s an attorney, a real go-getter. Her job moved them to Seattle. He writes letters.”

  “They have kids,” I said.

  “Two. Sam sends photos. A boy about Frankie’s age named Simon. And a new one, a little girl named Jennifer.” He touched the little shoe. “A nice gesture, naming the baby after her.”

  My hand came to my mouth. In my mind, this family assembled: Sam was a little stocky, a little unkempt, with a mop of dark hair and kind, weathered eyes. The wife had smooth, styled hair and wore tailored pants. She listened when Sam talked about his first wife. She let him cry. They went to breakfast on weekend mornings, and the kids were noisy and playful and the parents laughed at the baby’s expressions and the boy’s odd phrasings. The mother never had the feeling that something was missing, or if she did, it was fleeting and inconsequential. They mooned over the packages that came, every few months, from Florida. At least I hoped they mooned.

  “There’s no need to cry for me,” said Charlie.

  “I don’t know how a person survives it,” I said.

  “Some people pick up, keep going. Some people drink, divorce.”

  I put my hand on the back of his hand. He frowned at it, but didn’t move.

  He said, “Some people go to sea, and they drown.”

  From the other room came the sound—at first soft, then more insistent—of Frankie’s knuckles against the wall.

  9

  GRAHAM AND I PACKED SNORKELING gear, a tent and sleeping bags, groceries, and, because there was no freshwater where we were headed, two dozen bottles of water. Lidia came down the lawn as the sky was starting to lighten and settled on the Lullaby’s deck with a newspaper. We’d said good-bye to Frankie the night before, explaining again about our little vacation and how soon we’d be home. Come back, he’d signed.

  We stopped at a café in Tavernier for Cuban toast and coffee, then kept driving. We passed through Islamorada, Duck Key, Marathon, Big Pine. In the early hours, the sky was an unpleasant milky hue and the air smelled thickly of swamp. But as the sun rose the sky deepened in color and the air cleared. In Key West, we rented kayaks and strapped them to the roof of the car, then stopped at a bar in Old Town that was known for its oysters. Graham had never eaten oysters, but he was a good sport. I ordered a few of every kind and he grimaced at the raw ones and scarfed down the Rockefellers. I told him that my mother had always served oysters before Thanksgiving dinner. She’d placed a sliver of lemon on each and added a dollop of cocktail sauce, turning each half-shell into a tiny plate. For the meal itself, she’d always invited a gamut of single, childless friends. My father tolerated the parade of strangers through the house because she always spent days preparing his favorite foods: moist turkey, corn bread stuffing, cranberry sauce, grilled asparagus with hollandaise, several kinds of pie. My mother had eaten sparingly, careful of her figure, but she’d watched with pride as my father dug in.

  We found a room at a motel on the beach. Graham made me laugh by imitating the very serious desk clerk, who before handing over the room key had asked, as he shuffled ahead down the corridor, if we would
be kind enough to move the bed away from the wall before engaging in “energetic coitus.” Graham had a randy streak that I’d found crass when we met but over time had come to enjoy—it gave him an unpredictable quality. He climbed onto the bed after the clerk was gone, miming energetic coitus against the headboard, then bounced down on the satiny coverlet.

  “Do you feel like a good hotel guest, wife?” he said, patting the bed. “Or a bad one?”

  The next morning we were up early to catch the ferry, which made the two-hour passage to Garden Key, the largest of the Dry Tortugas, only once daily. The ferry was full, and after we pulled away from the dock, Graham took a map from his backpack and spread it across our laps. He’d circled snorkeling sites in red pen. We planned to camp two nights on the island, just outside the ramparts of Fort Jefferson, a Civil War–era marine fortress. There was also, said Graham, the option of paddling to Loggerhead, three miles across open water. The lady who’d rented us the kayaks had been skeptical when Graham mentioned this possibility—she’d asked about our experience, which was limited in my case to the lake behind our cottage and one trip to the Apostle Islands. Graham had just grinned gamely and assured her we’d be careful. When we docked, most of the passengers filed away to take a tour—they would return to Key West in a few hours—and Graham and I walked to the campground. It wasn’t much more than a triangle of grass between the beach and Fort Jefferson itself, a hexagonal brick structure surrounded by a moat.