Sea Creatures

by Susanna Daniel

  Whether he meant to kill himself, I still don’t know. He couldn’t have been certain the Lullaby would sink, after all. The insurance company would request all his medical records from Detention, but in the end the policy would pay out. I assume Graham bought it because he could not ignore the perils of living in a place surrounded by water, and out of love and concern for his family. And it made a difference. That money would continue to provide the only kind of peace of mind he’d ever been able to give us.

  OVER THE COURSE OF OUR three hospital-bound weeks, Frankie’s walking continued to improve, with fewer incidents of the seizing behavior, as Dr. Lomano called it. There was one other thing, which the doctor said was unlikely to go away, but also unlikely to cause much trouble: when Frankie looked at you straight on, his right eye wandered slightly to the outside of his vision. This was due either to trauma to the retina or mixed messages from the brain left over from the swelling. Objects in Frankie’s far peripheral vision might appear flattened or smaller than they really were, skewed almost undetectably. If Frankie noticed this, he didn’t mention anything, and I didn’t ask him about it. I would need to have his vision tested twice a year to make sure the problem, which the doctor called strabismus, didn’t worsen.

  When I asked Dr. Sonia about it, she shrugged. “I can barely even see it,” she said. “What’s the big problem?”

  It continued to be reassuring and frustrating both, working with her.

  Sally and her boys were at loose ends in the hotel suite, all their camps canceled for the remainder of the summer. And so more days than not, they came by with sandwiches and cookies and games, and the older boys horsed around in the lounge or took themselves on expeditions through the hospital while Carson and Frankie played with Legos or action figures and Sally and I chatted. Charlie made himself scarce when people visited and showed up again after they left; he never exchanged more than a few words with Sally, though he and my father and Lidia always made polite conversation before Charlie headed out. I teased Charlie that he was practically an imaginary friend.

  Though he’d started out spending nights in Frankie’s room, there was no truly comfortable place for visitors to sleep—I’d been squeezing into Frankie’s small bed and Charlie had been taking the floor or the short lounge sofa—so eventually I convinced Charlie to spend nights at Riggs’s. A day or two later, Nurse Barb was moved by my homelessness and new widowhood to bring a cot, which she squeezed between Frankie’s bed and the wall. There, with only me and Frankie and Antoine in the room at night, I slept soundly for the first time in years. Despite everything, I have many contented memories of our time in the hospital, though none as precious as that of falling asleep beside my lightly snoring son, secure that his sleep would be a typical child’s sleep, filled with dreams and not much else.

  For Nurse Barb’s birthday, Lidia brought a cake and candles and party hats, and Frankie made her a card. We took up a collection from the other families in the unit and celebrated in the lounge, and when she opened the card she cried and her mascara ran.

  Riggs became a near-daily fixture in the room, stopping by with pastelitos and Cuban coffee in the late morning, handing off coloring books to Frankie and Antoine and paperwork to Charlie, who always turned up shortly after sunrise. The paperwork, I gathered, though Charlie was tight-lipped on the subject, had to do with repairs to Charlie’s house in South Miami, which hadn’t been occupied since Vivian had left for the rest home. With Riggs’s help, Charlie hired roofers, painters, plumbers, and even an interior designer (someone Riggs was dating), who was in charge of choosing wall paint and wallpaper, some furniture, a few rugs. Every day brought some new hiccup. The neighbors’ tree trimmer was blocking the driveway and the roofers couldn’t get in. Then the painters found lead in the exterior trim paint and renegotiated their fee. Then the flooring people said the downstairs wood could be refinished but the upstairs might be better off with new carpeting, so extensive was the water damage.

  I needled Charlie for information, but he continued to be evasive. “What’s the problem with the floors?” I’d say, and he’d say, “I don’t really know.” I’d say, “What colors were you hoping for?” and he’d shrug. “Blues, yellows, maybe even some pink.”

  “You just want to be back at Stiltsville,” I’d said, and he shrugged again, avoiding my eyes.

  We had both reached the end of an era in our lives. When I looked forward, I couldn’t see far, which made me distinctly uncomfortable. When I mentioned this to Lidia, she reassured me. “Make no decisions!” she said. “Come to my house, settle in, get Frankie back in preschool! Then figure out your plan.”

  This seemed at once very good advice and also impossible to follow. Wasn’t a shaky plan better than no plan at all? Temporary housing in Lidia’s guest room was comforting and familiar, but unfeasible long-term. When I explained this to Sally, she reminded me that her five-person family was living in a hotel suite next door to a Denny’s, and that they would continue to live there for months, maybe even a year. She said she’d already gained five pounds. She guessed this was because there was so little cleaning to do.

  “But you’re rebuilding your house,” I said. “I’m not rebuilding anything.”

  “So build one,” she said. “There are plenty of empty lots these days.”

  There was the remote possibility of moving back to Round Lake, where the cottage now sat empty.

  “Illinois?” said Sally. “No.”

  “Good schools,” I said.

  “You stay here,” she said. “With us.” She gestured around the room. Sally and I sat cross-legged on my cot, and on the far side of Frankie’s bed he and Carson ate ice cream in the patio chairs and Lidia knitted. Riggs was propped at the foot of Antoine’s bed, teaching him a card trick he’d been teaching Carson and Frankie a few minutes before. (Riggs’s ease with kids reminded me that he’d lost his son, which reminded me again to be grateful for Frankie’s recovery.) Even Henry Gale had stopped by a few times—he’d been giving out free printing to anyone whose pet had gone missing in the storm, for posting flyers—and Marse Heiger had called earlier that day to say she’d be coming by with dinner. She’d been working long hours in a volunteer phone bank in the lobby of her condo building. Was she allowed to bring wine to a hospital? she’d asked, and after I passed the question on to the room, Lidia and Sally clapped enthusiastically and told me to tell her to smuggle it in a Thermos.

  More than once I let myself wonder if Charlie would invite Frankie and me to live with him in the house in South Miami, which I’d gathered had plenty of room. I’d told myself if and when the time came to decline. There had been no discussion of a shared future. We’d never so much as eaten a meal in a restaurant or watched a movie together. We’d never spoken on the phone or kissed in public. Imagining us together, in a traditional way, was like imagining life on another planet. It had shades of a reality that was familiar to me, but all the indistinct details kept muddling the picture.

  Riggs went home, my father had a gig, and Stanley came by to pick up the kids but Sally stayed. Charlie hung around even though Sally and Lidia were still in the room, but it was quiet, relatively speaking, when Marse arrived.

  “You’ve certainly settled in,” said Marse to me, eyeing the mobiles. A few had torn from handling and Charlie had taped them. Whenever a door opened in the hallway, they fluttered. “You know,” she said to Frankie, examining his fading wounds, “you’re supposed to land in the water.” He giggled.

  The wine was poured and the sandwiches were distributed. Marse told a story about a homeless man who worked beside her at the phone bank, who kept asking her out on dates. Once, she’d actually consented—nothing had materialized with Henry Gale—and they’d ended up at the Barnacle, an historic home on the bay in Coconut Grove, listening to people play guitar and drinking dark liquor out of a brown-bagged bottle, her paramour in sweatpants and she in a suit. Lidia started hiccupping loudly during Marse’s story, which made all of us laugh,
including Frankie. Charlie was quiet in the storm of girl-talk but seemed content enough, sitting with his legs crossed and his fingertips against his cheek. Every few minutes I felt his eyes on me. I warmed under his gaze. In the time we’d spent at the hospital, we’d done little more than touch hands. When it was just us and Frankie, I kept some distance between us and he respected it. But now I felt the surfacing of a distinct urge.

  Nurse Barb came by to ask us to quiet down, which Charlie took as a cue to leave. I followed him into the hall to say good-bye, and he pulled me into a supply closet. “This,” he said, and kissed me hard on the mouth. “I have been waiting for this.”

  “I—” I said, but then his mouth was on mine again, his hands inside the waistband of my jeans.

  “I love watching you,” he said when we came up for air.

  His brow pressed against mine. I liked the way our shoulders met almost evenly, as if we’d been carved in mirror image from one large substance. But as he pulled me in, more and more urgent, I felt myself receding. My lips numbed. Sorrow rose in my chest. I felt that it was possible—just possible—that our time had come and gone.

  “Come back,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s okay,” he said quietly.

  What I was thinking was that in an hour or so I would change into my night clothes and slip into my cot beside Frankie, and we’d read as many books as we could before he drifted off. And despite the wine and the lightened mood, my focus was still consumed by my boy, on our upcoming release from the safe and predictable hospital routine, on our untamable future. The last time I’d let my focus stray, I’d almost lost him.

  “This hospital—” I said.

  “Don’t worry.” He kissed my brow and cleared his throat. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  I waited.

  “I need to show you the house. Tomorrow, if you can get away.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  I’d been leaving the hospital once a day with Lidia or alone, to walk to the store or around the block. But I’d never been gone long, and Charlie and I hadn’t set foot out of doors together.

  He stepped out of the closet and I followed him. He kissed me once and walked away with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders rounded. The noise level in our room had risen again, and I stood, listening to the happy sounds, the gabbing and teasing and giggling. If Charlie wanted me to visit his home, I believed, it could only mean one thing: he planned to throw us a life preserver. And though I hated to think of a time when Frankie and I would not see him daily, I felt more certain than ever that this was not the right future for us.

  LIDIA AND MY FATHER AND Charlie showed up at roughly the same time the following morning. I took one of the bagels Lidia had brought, kissed Frankie, and left the hospital with Charlie in Riggs’s little sports car. Around us, Miami was struggling to return to normal. On every corner loomed a pile of debris, and between the piles the neighborhoods looked sparse and trim, uncluttered by typical growth, like newly groomed eyebrows. Almost every house was missing roof tiles or was topped with men on their knees, hammering. I’d heard that laborers were streaming into the area from as far away as Virginia and the Carolinas, taking advantage of the glut of work. Insurance companies were fast-tracking claims and lengthening their lists of providers. Even pool boys were in high demand, and every store in South Florida had run out of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. People who had never before so much as watered their own lawns now spent hours landscaping. In many neighborhoods, the electricity still had not returned. We could tell these neighborhoods because everyone was outside, sitting in loungers or talking to neighbors.

  Charlie’s home sat on property that took up an entire city block just a few streets off Sunset Avenue, one of the area’s main arteries. The house was surrounded by a hodgepodge of new, tightly packed two-story homes on small lots, and ranch homes with portacacheres. His was a white farmhouse with a detached garage set back from the road behind a low limestone wall and semicircular gravel driveway, shaded by an immense sea grape tree on one side and a live oak on the other. The oak was rimmed at the base by a ring of bushy ferns—the English garden Charlie had mentioned had been overgrown. There was a truck in the driveway, and a few men worked on the roof. Charlie waved to them and they waved back. The stone wall continued around the perimeter, deteriorating in spots, sprouting air plants and moss from its crannies. There were no sidewalks in this neighborhood, and across the street to the east of Charlie’s property was a tangled wooded area dotted here and there with what looked like headstones.

  “Is that a cemetery?” I said.

  Charlie grappled with the front door lock. “Vivian’s parents are buried there.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Not anymore.”

  I stumbled on a crooked cement step, then followed Charlie inside. To the right was a formal dining room with sheets over the table and a crack in the picture window. On the wall were patches of fresh paint, each about a square foot in area: a light aquamarine, a dark coral, and a light coral.

  “I’m supposed to make some decisions,” said Charlie when he saw me eyeing the colors. “You’d be doing me a favor if you’d just choose for me.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  To the left of the front door was a living room with a fireplace, the mantel bare and the furniture covered, and through the living room was a small kitchen with a back door and a window over the sink, through which I could appreciate the depth of the property. The back of the house was shielded from neighbors by a thicket of gumbo limbo trees, several messy areca palms, and a towering and craggy banyan, its thickest vines burrowing into the ground.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t been vandalized,” I said.

  “Who says I haven’t?”

  He led me out back and around to the garage, which was locked with a padlock and chain. Behind the garage was a patio and covered barbecue pit. The area was littered with beer cans and soda bottles.

  “Nothing too sinister,” Charlie said. “Just neighborhood kids.”

  We picked up the cans and bottles and dropped them in a trash can at the back of the house. As we walked, he spoke slowly, as if to be certain I was listening. “Vivian’s grandfather brought the family down to plant pineapple groves,” he said. He indicated the back of the property and the acres beyond. “When that didn’t work out, he planted palm trees instead. Her father sold off most of the land when she was a girl.”

  On the far side of the house was an empty swimming pool and a cabana. There were boards over the cabana’s door and windows and a baby blue diving board lay on its side on the limestone patio. It was incredible to me that, given its current state, this had ever been a house where a family had thrived.

  “The city made me take it out,” he said, gesturing to the diving board. “Jenny and her friends loved that thing. They’d lie on it for hours, head to toe.” He seemed to be picturing her there. “The pool is over nine feet deep. It feeds from a well, so it’s very, very cold.”

  As we started to step back into the kitchen, we heard someone calling Charlie’s name from the front yard. A man appeared at the side of the house wearing khaki shorts and a golf shirt, waving congenially.

  “Barton,” said Charlie. “How have you been?”

  They shook hands. Charlie didn’t smile, but he leaned toward his neighbor in a welcoming way, and the man seemed genuinely glad to see him.

  “It’s been ages,” said Barton.

  I introduced myself and we shook hands.

  “So sorry about Vivian,” said Barton to Charlie. “Moving back in?”

  “Thinking about it,” said Charlie.

  “Glad to hear it.” The men nodded at each other. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” said Barton.

  “My best to Sandy and the girls,” said Charlie.

  Inside, with Barton’s receding back framed in a living room window, I said, “Goodness, you’re neighborly. Who would have guessed?”
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br />   “He’s a decent fellow. Always comes by with a big bucket of key limes when his trees start to drop.”

  “Will you be happy here?”

  He sat down on the white-sheeted living room sofa. Above our heads came the sounds of multiple hammers. He looked around the room as if trying to picture himself there. “I really couldn’t say.”

  I was very aware of the fact that we were alone, but also that there were people working unseen above our heads and bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Do you have a pencil? I’ll help with those paint colors.”

  Charlie went to the kitchen and returned with a pencil, then sank back onto the couch. The air was hot and sour. I wore a tank top under my shirt, so I took off my shirt and tossed it into Charlie’s lap.

  The designer had painted a few squares of color on a wall in each room. In the living room, the options were stacked in a reading nook beside an antique hutch; there, I circled a buttery yellow. In the kitchen, I circled a deep marine blue that reminded me of the office at the stilt house, along with a swatch of brightly colored wax cloth from a few options taped over the sink, for curtains. In the dining room, I circled the darker of the two coral colors. Behind the dining room was a sunroom with a terra-cotta floor, bare of furniture; there, I circled a light aquamarine. Off the sunroom was a bathroom with only one swatch on the wall: the lighter of the corals from the dining room. I circled it in approval, then took myself upstairs. As I went, I glanced into the living room. Charlie lay with his head propped on one arm of the sofa, and as our eyes met, my heartbeat sped up.