Carolina Moon (26 page)

“What was on the note?” Denny asks.

“What note?”

“In the pillbox.”

“Oh.” Quee points to a photo way up high, a woman standing at the far edge of the photo, her hand up and shielding the sun from her eyes. Behind her is the ocean. “It was something he had copied from a book.”

“A poem?” Ruthie asks. “If it’s a poem, I bet I will have heard of it.”

“She was more beautiful than thy first love, this lady by the trees,” Quee says, to which Ruthie shrugs and smirks.

“Nope, doesn’t ring any bells.”

“What an odd thing to put,” Alicia says. “Does that mean that he thought Gwendolyn was prettier than his wife?”

“Who knows?” Quee laughs. “I’m making it up as I go, right?” She turns to Ruthie and whispers, “Have you ever heard of a man named Yeats?”

“Did he have asthma?” Denny asks. “If he did, I’m sure I’ve heard everything he ever did.”

“I think I’ve heard the name,” Ruthie says, still studying the dwarf couple. “Yeah, I’m sure I have. He’s from somewhere near Taborville, right?”

“The line is from something called ‘A Dream of Death,’ now don’t ask me why I thought of it.” Quee points to the woman up top, her head wrapped in a scarf the ends of which are blowing out behind her. “I bought this photo because as you all know I’m rather partial to
scarves myself. Besides, when I first glimpsed her, I thought somehow she might be the older Gwendolyn.”

Now Ruthie is coming down the hall with the photo of the masquerading dwarfs clutched to her chest. “May I take this back to my room?” she asks. “I am really feeling inspired.”

“By all means,” Quee says. “I wish you would.”

“Thanks!” When Ruthie closes her door, Quee turns back to the wall. “Things couldn’t last with him. How could they? She knew that, always had, and was always prepared for the day when they would agree that it was all over. What she wasn’t prepared for was that he would die.” She turns to Alicia. “Oh dear, sweetheart, how thoughtless of me.”

“Was it murder?” Alicia asks in an almost trancelike voice.

“Oh, no, honey, no.” Quee pats her on the shoulder. “This man took his own life. He was a burdened sad man, and he felt torn between lives.”

“You know, Tom Lowe’s father killed himself,” Denny offers. At this, Quee looks at Alicia and nods. “Yes, that’s right.”

“He told me all about it,” Denny says, eyebrows raised in anticipation of a response. “Do you think that means, you know, that he likes me or something? You know, since he is kind of the independent type?”

“I hear discussions of death are always a good sign.” Alicia remains deadpan until Quee laughs and gives her the reaction she had expected. The girl is finally starting to relax, the life slowly creeping back into her now that Jones Jameson isn’t all set up like a siphon to drain her soul. “So finish the story, and then let’s go give Ruthie and Mr. Radio Jr. a rubdown.”

“Well, when she got word that he was dead, she suddenly thought that there might have
been something there for her. There might have been a note, something. And she went to the Ocean Forest expecting to find him there, but no, so she ran down the beach to where he was staying in a small house, one of those perched way up on pillars like a big spider. And she stood under the coolness of that house, complete silence over her head. The smell of pitch was in her nose and the wind had left her hair damp and tangled. Her heart was pounding so loud she could feel it in her neck and ears and as she stood there trying not to cry, trying to understand, she saw a scrap of paper over in front of the trash cans. It was damp and sticky but she recognized his handwriting. It said: ‘I loved you. I love you. Only now do I know how much. Only now do I . . .’ but the rest was torn away so she held on to this and she slipped it into her little pillbox and walked up to the top of the dunes, her scarf blowing while a passerby with no knowledge whatsoever of her loss clicked the shutter.”

“That’s beautiful,” Alicia says. “If only you could make a naked man in a pile of topsoil sound good.”

“There’s no way to do that, sweetheart.” Quee goes now and hugs Alicia into her, her big arms wrapping and squeezing. “I wish so much that I could. If I could, then you know that I would.”

“If you could, you’d be a magician.”

“If I could, I’d be God.”

Tom Lowe has spent the whole day sitting on the beach. Once his property lines surfaced, he picked up an old soggy stick and drew his dream house. Now he and Blackbeard are stretched out in the master bedroom, dozing in and out with the sound of the surf and the whine of gulls overhead. He imagines glass everywhere in this house, a view from every angle. Today he has even drawn another bedroom—two other bedrooms—as if for a family. It’s hard to imagine, though not impossible.

Whenever he’s here, drifting and dozing, it’s like he’s a receiver of sorts, all kinds of images and words floating in and out of his mind. The grand staircase of the
Titanic
, ladies in ball gowns coming and going, the men working out in the gymnasium below, the seagulls circling above, or Atlantis, the underwater world. He imagines swimming in the deep, down at such a pitch-black depth that evolution has robbed some fish of their unnecessary eyes, swimming down and down, feeling over coral and rock and the debris of wreck after wreck, whale bone and rusty anchor, and then there is a door no bigger than a porthole that leads to a small chamber and then another and then another until finally he pushes free and swims out into a
pure blue bay, a whole world encapsulated there at the bottom of the sea. He has gotten this far, swimming close to the shore with its fine white sand and shade just beyond. “I’m home,” he calls out, and Sarah is there looking just as she did in high school with cutoff jeans and a big embroidered peasant shirt that covers her shorts. Her hair is pulled back and tied with a big piece of yarn like the first time he saw her. But as he travels the fantasy, he gets interrupted, he hears people talking in the distance, people walking the beach in search of sand dollars and conchs, kids screaming and throwing Frisbees, and with all the distraction, all the noise, it’s hard to focus on Sarah’s face and instead he sees his father, how he must have looked when found by an old fisherman who heard the shot. Did his father think of him at all in those minutes? How could he, and with the image comes panic, the need to get back. There is an urgency—a need for light and for air.

“Hey.” The voice stuns him. He opens his eyes to black dots and brightness. Denny is standing over him, hands on her hips, hair falling forward. “Quee said I might find you here.”

He sits up and Blackbeard does the same. “So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know.” She sits down right beside him and studies the lines around them. “So am I in a box or what?”

“No.”

“I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

“Sure.” His eyes have adjusted now, and he turns to look at her. “I hope I didn’t scare you last night.”

“Scare me?” She laughs and scoops up sand in a tiny scallop shell. “Why’d you think that?”

“Because you said you were. Because you talked a thousand miles an hour when you thought something might happen.”

“It just surprised me is all. I mean I’m not used to celibate people acting that way.”

“Just other people.”

“Yeah, right.” She breathed out as if she was about to say more, but instead closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun.

“Well, I’m thinking maybe I’m tired of being celibate.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. What about you?”

“Is this a trick?”

“No trick.”

“Do you absolutely promise?” She puts her hand on top of his. “You’re not going to make fun of my underwear? or me? or how I do things?”

“No.” He shakes his head and laughs.

“Okay then.” She stands up and brushes the sand from the back of her white shorts. “I can do that.”

“
Do that?
”

“Yeah, you know, what you were just saying.”

“So say it.” He gets up and follows her down to the water. “Tell me.”

She wades out knee deep, her arms stretched out to the sides to balance as the undercurrent pulls and swirls. “It’s rough today.”

“That’s what you want? Rough?” He stands behind her, his hands on her hips as they sway with the waves.

“No!” She turns into him. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Me? Do you want me?” He hears Blackbeard splashing and barking behind him but he doesn’t turn to look. She looks down and then out at the ocean, her hair all tangled as the wind whips it back from her face. “I swear it’s not a joke.” He has to yell over the waves. “Denny?”

“Yes, yes, I guess I do.”

Mack left work early, and now he is standing in the Winn-Dixie looking over the produce. It’s been ages since he prepared a real meal complete with flowers and dessert and gourmet coffee. He even grabs a bottle of burgundy on the way out, though tonight he will only nurse a glass or two.

The last time he was in charge of such a meal was when he surprised Sarah after she and June had gone on an all-day shopping trip at Myrtle Beach. The two of them came into the house with squeals and laughs and more baskets than he could imagine anybody ever needing or wanting, and there he was with candles lit and music playing, clam chowder, shrimp scampi, and key lime pie (all of which he bought at a local restaurant).

“Look!” Sarah said and pulled June into the dining room where everything was all set up. “I can’t believe it.”

“Now when am I going to find me somebody who cooks and cleans?” June asked.

“I’m not cheap,” Mack had said, and Sarah gave him that look, that slight smirk and lift of an eyebrow that said
just you wait until later
.

And now the mouth and the brow never move at all, and now he
and June are just trying to make something happen so that they can stop thinking, can somehow if only for a second forget what is happening. He puts down the artichokes he’s been holding and turns, abandoning his cart. As he leaves the store, he sees a woman he recognizes from one of Sarah’s parents’ parties when they first moved to town. She nods and gives him a slight smile, the one other people give him, the one he’s used to, the one that says,
Oh you poor, poor boy. You must feel as if your life is over
.

All the way home he tries to think of what to say to June, how he has, with great guilt, imagined every scenario. He tells the sitter he’s on a
date?
Sarah, oh miracle of miracles, gets up and walks through the house, down the long hall to his office, and finds them there on the old futon he had in college. He tells her parents that they can come get her, that he is young and deserves to have a life. “I am not an old man,” he would yell. “I don’t
deserve
this.” He can go on and on, but the truth is that he can’t think of anything that would excuse him when it was all over. There is no way that he and June could ever untangle the lines—what was love for Sarah and what was love for each other? Maybe they needed to possess each other because they were Sarah’s most valuable possessions, her loved ones, her heart.

What to say to June, how to apologize, how to suggest that they try to forget whatever has been passing between them and go back to being friends. As he parks his car, the children next door are playing a game of freeze tag; three are standing like statues while the oldest child chases the last free one. They run circles around the Mother Mary statuette until finally the big kid reaches over Mary’s head and slaps the little one on the arm.

By the time Mack is on his porch, they are all unfrozen and screaming again. He has watched them do this every afternoon this week, their voices loud and then dwindling to silence, only to flare
up and start all over again. He has decided that he will order pizza, nothing special, nothing fancy, and that he will sit June down at the kitchen table and tell her in slow simple sentences that the two of them are making a mistake. That what each of them truly wants is Sarah.

He sees the note before he gets to the door and with the first line knows that he won’t have to say everything he’s planned after all. She is so sorry not to have let him know sooner but she has a date—no, not Ted—there really is someone from work who has been asking her out and she finally decided to go.
Please let me know whenever there’s anything I can do. I’ll check in with you or Sarah’s mom soon. And again, I’m sorry
.

Mack is met at the door by the sitter and in a flurry of cheerful chatter, which he is sure she musters for his benefit, she is gone until tomorrow. He stands in the doorway looking at Sarah, hoping for something, a blink, a sigh. She’s too young for this. He sits on the foot of the bed and pulls the covers to the side. Her leg is thin and cool as he lifts it, up and down and up and down. He massages her ankles and feet, rubs lotion into her skin. And outside the voices continue to rise and fall, screams and laughs from children he has not met.
Freeze. You’re it
.

Quee’s picture tours have become a regular pastime, and now somebody is forever asking her to tell about this one or that one. Just yesterday, Alicia and Taylor and that Bobbin man were over and asking about the one where there’s an old man wearing nothing but a barrel. Quee doesn’t mind telling old silly stories. It’s rare for people to point to the ones that actually mean something to her. When she got Alicia alone in the kitchen to see how she was getting along, Alicia told her fine, but that she was afraid Robert was getting too interested in her, that all she wanted right then was a friend. “I don’t want to use him,” Alicia said, and Quee told her she had every right to go ahead and do as she pleased.

“He’s a grown-up,” Quee said. “Let him take care of himself.”

“He has been getting calls from Ruthie,” Alicia whispered, and they both fell out laughing. Quee said, More power to him then; bless him. “Ruthie told him that her aunt
told
her to call him.”

“That Carter woman is insane,” Quee said. “She convinced herself years ago that I slept with that old husband of hers.” Bobbin and Taylor came in about then, so Quee gave them all a piece of pound cake as a nice send-off on their drive to a little local zoo. That cop actually
looked right good; amazing what having yourself a full dance card will do for the soul. Taylor had only asked after his daddy a couple of times and now had pretty much stopped, or so Alicia said. Jones was never around much anyway, she said. But Jones. The talk is still going on but there are no leads, not a single clue, nothing.