Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “I feel so fine. These flowers make me feel fine again,” Abigail cried. “I haven’t felt this fine in a long time. A woman should feel this fine every moment of her life, don’t you think?” Her eyes blossomed in my direction, making my eyes bloom with tears, and when I turned toward Dahlia, I noticed her eyes opening widely. Together, the three of us women smiled at the men like a bouquet of wild flowers.

  “I gave flowers to my wife once but they didn’t make her feel that fine,” said one of the men.

  “Mine, either,” said the other.

  Lydia

  I laid the journal on my lap and looked out the bus window. We were still on Michigan Avenue, and my eyes buzzed up and down like bees, desperate to land upon flowers in the city. I wouldn’t feel content until they rested on something sweet and then, just as the bus closed its doors and started to go, I spotted something that might do the job.

  “Stop!” I yelled, springing from my seat. “Stop the bus!”

  “This isn’t a stop,” the driver said.

  “Those flowers! See those flowers?” I shouted, pointing to a floral shopwith every kind of flower imaginable and unimaginable blossoming out of buckets and overflowing out the doors of the shop and onto the sidewalk in carts. “I need those. I want those. I’ll die if I don’t get them right away!”

  It was a childhood phrase that had always worked with my father, but the driver glared into his rearview mirror at me. I could tell by the way his eyes bounced back and forth between the street and me that he wanted to smack me like a spoiled little bug. And like a bug, I wanted off his bus.

  “Sir,” I said. “Stop this bus right now. I want to get off.”

  “I’ll be stopping at the next street,” he said. “You’ll have to wait.”

  So I did, and when the bus stopped I flew out the door and back one block to the floral shop where I dove into bushels and buckets and up and down aisles inside and outside again searching for periwinkles. When I found nothing resembling what I recalled seeing on Sanibel or what Ava had described, with five petals and creeping stems, I settled for everything else.

  I was a bee drunk on honey, and the owner of the shop liked me, I think.

  “Is everything okay this morning?” she asked.

  “Fine, I hope, but I’ll tell you in a minute,” I answered.

  I pointed to the flowers I wanted, and in the midst of it all, I noticed her eyes rooting themselves into my purse, as if she didn’t think I had the money to pay for all the flowers. I was glad she was looking at my purse and not my face, for my nose was twitching in an effort to stop from sneezing. It wasn’t fair. The flowers that day didn’t make Abigail sneeze. They made her feel fine.

  Fresh cut daisies. Fragrant lilies. Ecuadorian red roses. Spring flowers. Blooming orchids. Blue iris. Belladonna delphinium. Yellow germinis. Festive orange Asiatic lilies. Yellow chrysanthemums. Yellow tulips.

  “I feel fine. Just fine. Really fine,” I muttered as I walked out of her shop carrying enough flowers in my arms to cover an entire island the size of Sanibel, or maybe Captiva, I thought as I took a seat between an old man and woman on a bench.

  “Gesundheit,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” I answered.

  “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. “Looks like you’ve got a male admirer.”

  “Nope,” I said in between sneezes. “Bought them for myself.”

  “God bless you,” said the lady to my right. “If we don’t treat ourselves, who will?”

  “Excuse me,” I said sneezing again and again and again, and then faking a sneeze or two.

  I didn’t feel like talking. I felt like sipping the intoxication right out of the flowers and nibbling away at their happy petals, waiting for the urge to fall to the ground and roll around like Abigail, or at least experience fineness in my own way, by singing, dancing, or maybe smiling.

  I sat there stroking petals, waiting, but nothing happened. I sniffed a rose, then sneezed, then waited for a feeling of fineness to shower over me. Instead, I felt un-fine. I felt alone and isolated with thoughts that were strange and remote. The flowers on the island were free to grow wherever they wanted while the ones in my lap stood still and obedient as flowers in captivity do.

  I longed to be free, to grow and extend out into the world, but I was surrounded by men who were dominant and hindering as Australian pines. If only someone asked my opinion, I’d say the male species is disastrous to the development of womankind and they ought to be removed promptly. But no one would ask and that’s a good thing, for I didn’t want to be called a freak of nature; me, the only girl in the world who thinks this way, probably.

  If only I had a mother. Maybe she might understand or help me put my remote and isolated thoughts into perspective. A mother knows, I’m sure, how to travel that distance, risking mammoth waves and dangerous creatures in her path, but voyaging onward until she reaches the remote island of her daughter’s innermost thoughts. Marlena reached me almost like that.

  “I believe in you,” she had told me that day on the island. “Anything is possible.”

  Hmm. Maybe the periwinkles on the island were magical, I thought, or maybe I’m not a typical woman who gets her contentment from a few flowers. I pondered what Marlena had said, and suddenly I felt fine, for I do believe there was magic in those words.

  After sneezing three more times, I handed half of the flowers to the man on my left.

  “Maybe your wife will like these,” I said. “I hope she goes wild over them.”

  “So do I,” he said.

  “And here,” I said, handing the other half to the woman on my right. “Don’t wait around for some man to buy you flowers.”

  “Thank you. My husband has only brought home flowers twice in all our forty years of marriage. I think I’ll start buying them for myself, like you did.”

  My hands were now free, so I reached into my bag and pulled out Ava’s journal. I began to read where I left off.

  Ava

  “Flowers haven’t ever made my wife act like that, either,” said one of the men as he watched my mother roll onto her belly. “Maybe there’s something different about the island flowers.” He reached down and picked a handful of the periwinkles. “I think I’ll bring some back to Florence.”

  “Worth a try,” the second man replied.

  I didn’t want the men thinking they could linger around all day on the land we were interested in. We had found it first. I also didn’t want any men knowing we had arrived to the island alone, without any men of our own. Such information might prove dangerous.

  “Daddy should be here any second,” I lied. “I know it’s heavy for him to be carrying all his rifles alone.”

  “Ava, forgive me for saying this, but the only way your daddy might arrive is if he washes ashore like a dead fish,” said Dahlia, destroying my plan of protecting us women from straying, stranger men.

  “He’s not dead,” I snapped in my most non-ladylike tone. “My daddy wouldn’t move us to Florida, then die, leaving us to claim land and fend for ourselves with all the wild animals out here.” I glared at the men.

  “Oh yeah? Remember the wild hog in Georgia? That thing was headed right for us,” Dahlia said, her voice loud enough for our old neighbors back in Kentucky to hear. She had one of those voices that reached a thousand miles out and pulled people in, and often she used it to convert innocent bystanders into her loyal sympathizers. “And your father, the only man alive that would do such a thing stopped to swig gin before lifting the double-barreled shotgun.”

  “No,” said one of the men. “Tell us it isn’t so!”

  “So!” insisted Dahlia, her eyes consuming. “That’s my son-in-law.”

  “I’d have taken two swigs,” mumbled one of the men. “Where’s he now?”

  Dahlia sighed. “We finally arrived in the Charlotte Harbor region, and he had the guts to go fishing with some native.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” said one of the men.

&nbs
p; “He spotted one of those silver fish,” continued Dahlia.

  “Tarpon?”

  “Yeah, one of those.”

  “Did he secure it?”

  “That man has never secured a thing in his life,” Dahlia looked at me and said, “You were on the boat that day, Ava. I’m not the only witness. Tell the men what happened.”

  I did like to tell stories, and I know I inherited the liking and ability to do so from my Grandmalia, although I never told the same story twice like she did. I took a deep breath and stepped two feet forward. “My daddy’s eyes glowed red, and he became entranced. After talking of nothing but that fish for hours, Grandmalia pleaded for him to stop and …” I shook my head and looked down at the ground, wanting to weep at the pandemonium I had witnessed on that boat. “He became physically violent with her, wringing her neck over the side of the boat. I think he’s possessed!”

  The men laughed. I continued my story.

  “The next day my mama wanted us ladies to stay back at the fishermens’ hotel. But Grandmalia and I didn’t want him drinking himself into any trouble out there in the water, so we went out with him again. The Floridian that owned the boat told us, ‘shush,’ then asked us if we heard it. Another fish as silver as the rim on Mama’s tea set came to the surface to blow. And that’s when it got bad.”

  The men raised their eyebrows, and their sons had huddled around my feet, so I continued my story. “In the flickering moment that its silvery side appeared before us on the crest of a wave, I gasped, for it was the most magnificent fish, and then, it vanished before our eyes, and I believed in magic, which I never believed in before.”

  “Tell us more,” insisted a little boy sitting at my foot.

  I sighed. “My daddy with his glowing eyes bossed the Floridian around in his own boat and made me wish I had stayed onshore like a typical lady. ‘No, the other way,’ my father had shouted at the boat captain. ‘Cut off that school of mullet and drag the bait before them,’ he had ordered. ‘Go the other way again, then cast it among the mullet.’ It had to have been two, maybe three or four yards long! ‘Who’s ready to hook it?’ he had asked and it was then that he gazed at me for a moment with that tarpon-possessed look and said, ‘Baby, how about we hook ourselves a Silver King today?”’

  “Did he hook it?” asked a puny boy covered in freckles and dirt, knocking on my shoe.

  I cast my eyes sadly upon him and patted his head. “No, he didn’t. Not that day, nor the next, nor the next after that.”

  “It’s not to say he didn’t come close,” added Dahlia. “He did fifty or sixty times, and we kept telling him that ‘nearly’ catching one was going to have to be good enough.”

  “But back at the hotel he nearly cried at the bulletin board that posted all of the names of men who caught Silver Kings,” I added. “‘Daddy,”’ I told him. “Us ladies are getting sick of staying at this fishermens’ hotel. It’s smelly, and Grandmalia claims the men are making lip-smacking sounds at her. You caught a 300-pound jewfish. Isn’t that enough?’”

  I turned to see my mother napping in the periwinkles. “The day he hooked the shark was the day my mama and Grandmalia decided to leave him behind and head to Sanibel on our own.”

  “Your daddy caught a shark?” asked a boy with no front teeth.

  “Not really. The shark cut himself free the moment it closed its jaws on the bait,” I said.

  I lightly kicked the little boy off my toes, then tilted my head upward toward the afternoon clouds, and closed one eye. “Lord God Almighty,” I said, and then paused. That is the way I prayed out loud, and that was my favorite prayer of all, for praying out loud and in front of anyone made me feel bashful.

  “Lord God Almighty,” repeated a male voice.

  I gasped thinking it might be the Lord himself responding to my prayer, but when I opened my second eye I saw it was a boy around my age.

  “Our Heavenly Father,” his lips muttered, his head bowed and his eyes sealed. “Thank you for the fish in the sea and all that you have created. Forgive her daddy for abandoning his family and bring him back safely. And, please, help him secure a Silver King. In Your name, Amen.”

  I opened my other eye and cracked a smile at the boy. It was the first time in all my nearly fifteen years of living that I had ever smiled at any boy. He grinned back, and I saw he wasn’t as ugly as all the other boys in the world. He was bony, puny, and smaller than me, but his eyes were a crystal green color and clear as a Florida freshwater spring. They were easy to look into and when I did, I think I measured depth.

  Abigail lifted her head off the pillow of flowers, and I walked over and gave her my hand, pulling her up.

  “That boy was a gentleman, finishing your prayer like that,” she said to me. “A gentleman is tender towards the bashful. Remember that, Ava.”

  I felt my face turning red. “It’s time we get going,” I said. “Do you men think this land here is good for claiming?”

  “Ava,” whined my mother. “It’s full of periwinkles. Of course it is.”

  “I’d probably give it a day or two,” said the father of the boy who had prayed for my daddy, the boy with the deep eyes. “Wait for your daddy to show. He’d probably like to take a look at it himself.”

  “Thanks for your input,” I said. “What land are you claiming?”

  “We didn’t come here to claim any land. We were cruising aboard a sloop when it went aground in San Carlos Bay. We’re just passing time until the tide floats it off. We figured we’d explore the island before we head back to Punta Gorda.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. They had proven themselves to be gentlemen, and it would have been nice to know a kind boy around my age living on Sanibel.

  “Location is everything,” added the boy’s father. “If I were here for that purpose, I’d probably claim a nice 160 acres extending along the Bay. I’ve met several who are taking up homesteads along the Gulf beach. I do think you have to prove you’re head of the family before you claim.”

  “I’m temporarily the head,” I said.

  “You don’t look twenty-one.”

  “I’m almost fifteen.”

  “Same age as my son, Jaden,” he said, looking toward the kind boy. “If you were my daughter, I’d want you to hold off and give me a day or two to show up. I’m sure that’s what your father would want.”

  I beamed a smile. “Then that is what we shall do,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

  VII

  LYDIA

  I CLOSED THE JOURNAL and returned it to my school bag. I wondered whether Lloyd might buy me a parcel of land on Sanibel. That way I could have a place to go to whenever I felt like getting away from the city. I’d have to ask him about it—if I ever saw him, that is.

  I stood up and stretched my legs. I had been sitting there for some time, listening to some man preach the word of God, never noticing when the old lady and man on each side of me got up to leave. I felt small standing there with the towering buildings surrounding me, but when I glanced up, and saw that I had been sitting this entire time on a bench in front of the Windy City Press Tower, my spirits soared higher than the Sears Tower itself. For there are no coincidences, I told myself. One day I’ll be sitting on this same bench, but it will be my lunch break, and I will be a journalist!

  I felt so fine that I wanted to stay there in that exact spot and relish the coincidence of my getting off that bus and choosing a bench outside the tower of my dreams, but then, my eyes did what they wanted to do. They peeked at my watch and made me wish I believed in a God and in the message that one of our city’s beloved homeless persons was preaching, for if I believed, then maybe God could make it so I wouldn’t be late for school. Then again, if that handsome boy could pray for Ava’s daddy to secure a tarpon, then I could at least try to pray for my own selfish needs. And whether I believed or not, maybe God, whether He existed or not, might hear me. And so I gave it a try, rattling off my first prayer, quick and simple as I took off sprinting
through the city.

  And when I saw that the crowds of people on Michigan Avenue spread apart creating a perfect pathway for me to run down, I nearly became a believer right then and there, but I didn’t. Maybe it was because believing didn’t run in my family.

  When I arrived at school, panting like a panther, I told the principal, Mr. Smith, a big white lie about our flight getting in this morning and our limo breaking down and me running nearly a mile to get here. And when I noticed the secretary’s questioning eyes, I pulled out from my pocket the single blue iris I had saved and handed it to her.

  “The bell will be ringing shortly,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat over there and you can make it to your next class. Actually, lunch is next.”

  “Fine,” I said, my face blossoming into a smile. “I’ll sit here and read until lunch.”

  I flipped open the journal to where I left off and began to read:

  Ava

  We left the periwinkles behind and treaded toward the east, asking directions as we went until we arrived at the house Stewart had arranged for us to stay at. Someone told him the woman of the house took in boarders, and after correspondence she and my father worked it out that we would stay there until we built a home of our own.

  “I’ve been expecting you for over two months now,” she said as she opened the door. “C’mon in. My name is Tootie. I’m glad you made it safely, but where’s Stewart?”

  “Sidetracked,” I said quickly. “He’ll be here any day, I’m sure.”

  “Fine.” There was a no-nonsense air about her as she led us to the small, square room we were to share. “Your boxes arrived this morning. Make yourselves at home. I told Stewart in a letter it would be fifteen dollars a month per person,” she continued, sizing each of us with her eyes, before they stopped suspiciously at Dahlia’s big tummy. “That fifteen dollars was after he wrote and claimed that you ladies don’t eat much.”