City of Boys (28 page)

She is perhaps seventeen, in cutoff jeans and a faded Hawaiian shirt, and she is carrying a bright green knapsack, which she drops on the floor. She smiles brightly at Florence.

—Nice place, she says. —I love your flowers. She looks expectantly at Florence and Louis, but Louis has bent to rub at the spot on his knee.

—Thank you, Florence says, and they all wait quietly for someone to speak.

—Well, the girl says, —do you mind if I use your bathroom?

—Of course, Florence says. She points the way to the bathroom, and as the girl passes him, Louis steps back quickly, then stares at the doorknob as the lock clicks home.

—It’s just, you know, he says, —all the things you read about. All the crazy people who could pick her up.

Florence tries to imagine the girl standing by the side of the road with her green knapsack, and she tries to picture Louis as he passes her, wondering if he should stop. Florence can’t quite put an expression on his face as his eyes shift
between the road ahead and the rearview mirror, or as he slows, or as he finally stops, and when she watches him now, staring miserably at the bathroom door, she can’t think of him any way other than this. She wants suddenly to look around at the pictures on the piano, but the toilet flushes and the girl comes out of the bathroom smiling.

—I really appreciate this, she says to Florence. —It will only be a couple of days.

Florence glances at Louis, but he is looking out at something green crawling up the trunk of a palm tree.

—I just love all your things, the girl says, and picks up a picture of Louis, taken when he was in high school. —Hey, she says after a moment. —This is you.

She picks up another, from grade school, and holds it next to the first. —Hey, she says again, looking up at Louis, who is just starting to inch toward his chair in front of the television.

—Well, the girl says, and her eyes run up and down the line of pictures on the piano, —it must be kind of hard to play the piano.

She puts the pictures down and looks around. —Where can I put my things? she asks Louis, but he has already found a ball game on the television. He stares at the game intently as he twists the color knob, turning the faces of the players bright red, then down to shades of black and white.

The girl’s name is Marybeth, and she is from New York, which she explains as she watches Florence slice tomatoes for dinner.

—You know, Marybeth says, —this is really nice of you. A lot of people wouldn’t do this.

Florence stops slicing, her hand on the tomato; she remembers that Louis no longer eats tomatoes, and she carries the plate to the garbage and scrapes it clean. She can feel Marybeth
watching her as she goes to the icebox and bends, searching through the drawers for another vegetable.

—This is really nice of you, Marybeth says again, at dinner. —Both of you. She reaches for another roll. —Really, she says. —I mean it.

Louis gently removes slices of cucumber from his salad, propping them up against the sides of his bowl.

—What? Marybeth says. —You don’t like cucumbers?

—No, Louis says, —I’ve never really liked them.

Marybeth nods, but Florence could swear he’d asked her to buy them; perhaps he even bought them himself. She tries to remember being with him in the store; she can almost see his hand reaching out over the cucumbers.

—I know just what you mean, Marybeth says. She picks a slice of cucumber from her salad and leans it against the inside of her bowl. —They give me gas. She smiles at Florence. —They’re good for you, though, she says. —Lots of vitamin C.

Louis puts down his fork and stares at the ring of pale green circles in his bowl. Though only Louis has finished eating, Marybeth stands with her plate.

—I’ll clean up, she says to Florence. —You relax.

As she carries the dishes to the sink, Louis lists gently in the direction of the television, until finally he leaves the table and turns it on, switching channels until he finds a sporting event. Florence sits at the table watching Marybeth clear things away; when Marybeth has got all the dishes piled on the counter, she turns on the water and the smell of sulphur fills the room. She turns off the tap and steps back, looking at the sink.

—Jesus, she says to Florence, —what’s wrong with your water?

—It’s sulphur, Florence says. —It’s like that everywhere here. It’s in the water.

—Jesus, Marybeth says again. She turns the water on and leans back from the sink to wash the dishes with her arms stretched away from her body. It’s an awkward process, and Florence can see even from the table that the dishes aren’t getting very clean.

Outside, as it grows dark, Mrs. Walker emerges from her house to feed the pigeons. She feeds them regularly, always waiting until evening, when the sea gulls are sweeping the beaches for food and don’t come around to the houses. She hates sea gulls, which, she tells Florence, would as soon kill each other over a piece of bread. They remind her of her husband’s children, she tells Florence, and Florence suspects that Mrs. Walker feeds the pigeons primarily to deprive the sea gulls. She scatters seed and kitchen scraps in a wide arc over the gravel, and the pigeons move in clumsily, kicking up stones to get at the seed. Most of it falls between the rocks, to sprout or rot, Florence supposes; there must be a lot of it down there by now, a layer of rotting food right under the gravel, all mixed up with the dirt and Mr. Walker’s ashes. When Mrs. Walker has finished, she stands in the yard with her arms crossed, staring up into the sky. Marybeth turns the water off and leans against the sink to watch her.

—What’s her problem? she says. She laughs and whips the dishrag at the window.

—Knock knock, she says, and Florence thinks for a moment she is talking to Mrs. Walker.

—Knock, knock, Marybeth repeats. —It’s a joke.

—Oh. Who’s there?

—Orange, Marybeth says, and laughs wildly, then stops abruptly. —Wait a minute, she says. —Shit. I forgot it. She
shakes her head. —I always screw up jokes. Although she is not done with the dishes, she hangs the dish towel over the edge of the sink. —Oh well, she says. —It’s just a joke. She walks into the living room, where she stands next to Louis and stares down at the television. —So, she says.

—What’s on?

Louis looks up suddenly, startled, then looks at Florence, as if she is somehow responsible for Marybeth’s presence.

—Football, he says. —Pre-season.

—Football, Marybeth says. —I love football. It’s so— She closes her eyes, then opens them. —I don’t know, she says. —But I love it. Now what’s happening here?

Outside, pigeons flutter off one by one, and Florence reads a magazine as she listens to Louis patiently explain what a first down is. His voice drones over the spray of the sprinklers as they come on, interrupted only by the occasional thud of a moth against a screen. When Mrs. Walker goes inside, lights go off in all but the tiny window in the corner of her house. Florence wonders what Mrs. Walker thinks about at night, if she stands at the window and stares out at her neatly raked lawn, thinking about all that she owns, and all that she must endure before the Rapture comes to change her world. The game is still playing when Florence goes to bed, and as she falls asleep, she can hear Marybeth’s voice.

—Knock knock, she is saying. —Come on, knock knock.

When Florence comes into the kitchen in the morning, Marybeth is already awake; she is wearing her cutoffs again, and a Hawaiian shirt, but this one is different, blue with tiny orange pineapples. The window blinds are pulled wide and sunlight gleams against her skin as she opens and closes cabinets.

—Oh, she says to Florence. —Hi. I was just looking to see
what there was to eat. She smiles and closes the drawer she has just opened. —You seem to eat a lot of canned food.

—Louis likes it, Florence says, and draws the blinds half closed.

—Hey, Marybeth says, —you don’t like sunshine?

—I like it. It’s just a little bright this early.

—Well, Marybeth says, —I love sunshine. It’s why I came here. She stops, her hand on a cabinet, and looks at Florence. —I don’t see how anyone could not love sunshine, she says.

—I like it, Florence says again. —I just like it better in the evening.

Marybeth opens a cupboard, looks briefly at the cups and saucers inside, then closes it. —Why?

—Oh, Florence says, and shrugs, trying to think of a reason. She remembers a phrase she read recently, or heard on the radio, something about the quality of light. —It’s the quality of the light, she says. —It’s different then.

—Different how? Marybeth asks, and Florence waves her hand.

—Oh, she says. —Just different.

Marybeth pulls out a cereal box, reads the label, then puts it back. —Well, she says, —I like it all day long.

She opens a drawer that holds potholders and dish towels, and flips through them, then closes it. She smiles at Florence. —I guess I’m just nosy, she says. —I’m not looking for anything. Really.

She looks up as Louis walks into the room in his bathrobe, his hair wet from the shower. —Louis, Marybeth says, —I had the best sleep.

Louis pulls his robe tightly around him and smiles at the window. In his bright green robe and the flat morning light, he looks like a paper cutout.

—How about some coffee? Marybeth says. Florence can’t
tell from her voice if she is offering or asking, and she goes into the bathroom, which is still steamy from Louis’s shower. Things that belong to Marybeth–a few small bottles, little jars of lotion, a red plastic comb and brush–are scattered across the counter, and several long blond hairs cling to the side of the sink.

When she comes back to the kitchen, coffee has been made. Marybeth is standing at the sink, watching Mrs. Walker rake her gravel.

—What
is
her story? she says. —She’s out there raking gravel.

—She always does that, Louis says. —She’s crazy.

This is the first time Florence has heard Louis express an opinion on Mrs. Walker. She joins Marybeth at the window. —She’s not really crazy, Florence says. —Just kind of odd. —Now look at her, Marybeth says as Mrs. Walker sits in her chair. —She’s going to rock. In gravel.

—She’s crazy, Louis says bitterly.

Mrs. Walker looks over at their window and stares at Marybeth and Florence a moment, then pulls her hat down over her eyes. Marybeth shakes her head.

—Boy, she says. —What a place. Oh well. She turns to Florence. —Are you ready for the beach? We are.

Florence has not been to the ocean since their first weeks here, when she and Louis took a few experimental trips to the public beach just down the street. It was August, a bad time to be here, everyone told them; it was blinding hot and the sand and water were full of irritable tourists and anxious hot children and shrieking gulls. Florence had never swum in the ocean before, and she and Louis only waded in, waded out, then retreated home to avoid sunburn.

It all made Florence uneasy: the fish flashing around her ankles, the slimy drifting seaweed, the sand shifting underneath.
And later, she felt right to be frightened: Within a month of their arrival, a boy on the coast was killed by a shark; it was nowhere near them, really, though it was, Florence pointed out to Louis, the same ocean, the same water that pounded up on their own beach. Since then, Florence has not gone back; the burnt unhappy faces of tourists straggling back home in the evening are enough to keep her inside, that and the occasional article about sunshine and skin cancer that her mother tucks inside her letters.

—No, she says to Marybeth. —I don’t really like to swim.

—You don’t like swimming either? Marybeth says. —You don’t like sunshine. You don’t like swimming. So why live in Florida?

—She’s afraid of sharks, Louis says abruptly, and they both turn to look at him. He looks startled at the attention.

—Lots of people are, he says, and smiles helplessly. —But there’s really no reason to be, he says to Marybeth. —They never come up to the beach.

—Well, Florence says, —there was that boy last year.

—That was the Gulf, Louis says. —That was a lost shark. It was on the other side of the coast.

—Yes, Florence says, —but it was still a shark, and it still killed that boy.

Marybeth holds her coffee cup to her lips, her eyes shifting between Louis and Florence.

—It didn’t really kill him, Louis says patiently to Marybeth. —The boy died in the hospital.

—He bled to death, Florence says. —Because of the shark. Louis sighs. —It was a little shark, he says to Marybeth.

—It got lost and bit this kid.

—It ate him, Florence says. —It ate his leg.

—They don’t know it ate the leg. They don’t know that. He and Marybeth look at Florence, waiting for her response, but since it is true that there is no way of knowing whether
or not the shark actually ate the boy’s leg, Florence says nothing and instead watches the progress of a lizard as it moves in a slanted path across the porch screen. Its tail makes a dry rustle as it flicks across the wire.

—Anyways, Louis says. He rubs his hands across his chest, smiling blankly at them, then at Mrs. Walker. He watches her rock for a moment, then rises. —Guess I’ll get ready. When he has left the room, Marybeth turns to Florence. —Did the shark really eat that boy’s leg? she asks.

—I don’t know. He didn’t have one when they found him.

—I can see why you’re afraid of them, Marybeth says.

—I’m not really afraid. I just think it’s best to be safe, Florence says. But after it happened, she thought about it for days, wondering what it must have felt like: the sudden rough jolt, the thousand teeth closing over the delicate bones of the knee, and she wondered if it hurt, or if the shock stunned the boy into a loss of sense. It was possible, she considered, that he felt nothing at all as he paddled after his lost leg, searching out over the white sand for the face of his mother as she slid her hand across her magazine and drifted into a hot sunny sleep.

—Well, Marybeth says, —shark or no shark, I’m going swimming. You should see the water in New York. It makes sharks look safe. Besides, I don’t like to be afraid of things. —I’m not afraid, Florence says again, but Marybeth turns her eyes on Louis as he comes back, wearing a white terry-cloth jacket his mother gave him before they came here. Florence has only seen him wear it once or twice before. On his feet are green plastic sandals that flap against the carpet; they are the same color as the artificial grass carpet on the porch.