Hemingway's Girl (15 page)

To Mariella’s relief, the rain slowed and the clouds drew back to let in the evening.
Mariella got the girls fed and ready for bed early. She felt guilty leaving them with
her mother, who sat chain-smoking
and listening to classical guitar music, but she needed a life, too. She told Estelle
to put herself and Lulu to bed at eight o’clock and told Eva that she was going to
Mallory Square. She left out the part about meeting Gavin, guessing that Eva would
have something unkind to say about vets.

Mariella walked up Whitehead Street, passing the lighthouse and Hemingway’s house.
A group of gawking tourists stood by the gate. The house was quiet, so the family
must have gone out. Mariella wondered whether they were dining with the Thompsons
or out at a bar. She wondered whether she’d run into them.

As she passed a café, she stopped to check her reflection in the glass. She pushed
her hair out of her eyes and smoothed it back away from her face. She reached in her
pocket and put on a little more red lipstick she’d found in the bathroom medicine
cabinet. She was nervous and wished she had a cigarette.

At the top of Whitehead, Mariella stepped onto the dock at Mallory Square. The presunset
carnival had begun. Jugglers, singers, magicians, and vendors converged to celebrate
the sun and start the party on Duval Street. What had started as a small event had
become a pagan celebration and tourist beacon in spite of the depression that weighed
so heavily on the rest of the city. Everyone needed an escape.

The sun was still fat over Sunset Key. Mariella thought back to second grade in Catholic
school, when Sister Theresa told her of the Son’s all-consuming love for his children,
and her seven-year-old ears had heard
sun
, and had associated the sun with God. Her childish imaginings had been reinforced
throughout her schooling—the burning bush, the transfiguration, visions where God
was too bright to look upon. The all-consuming love of God was like fire. Then she
had read that the angels were the wind that moved the trees, and she felt what she
did on the water, and became convinced that the veil between this earth and the other
was thin, but people just lost the ability to recognize it as they got older.

She felt a hand on her back.

Gavin.

He hugged her, and she inhaled the faint smell of his aftershave and the traces of
his last cigarette. He held out his hand and they started walking.

“I didn’t think you’d meet me,” he said.

“Why? Too many hopes dashed in the past?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ve never seen you in church before this morning,” said Mariella.

“I’m not usually in Key West. I stay up on Matecumbe most weekends.”

“You stay with your friend on Olivia Street?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna have to start paying him rent. I’ve been down here a lot more lately.”
Mariella liked the way he said that—as if she were the reason.

The jugglers on Mallory Square separated as Mariella and Gavin walked among them.
The sun was going down. A wisp of a boy brushed by the woman in front of Gavin, and
reached for the wallet in her purse. Mariella grabbed the kid by the arm and saw it
was her neighbor Manuel. He looked up at her in shock and then screwed up his forehead
and shook his arm out of hers.

“Put it back,” she said.

The boy dropped the wallet into the woman’s purse without her noticing any of the
exchange. Then he looked at Gavin’s and Mariella’s clasped hands and his face darkened.
Manuel turned and disappeared as fast as he’d arrived. Gavin raised his eyebrows.
Mariella shook her head.

“He’s a neighbor and a thief,” she said.

“And an admirer of yours,” said Gavin.

“Probably, and he doesn’t like people mixing.”

“He’s not alone.”

“I guess it doesn’t bother you or you wouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Not a bit,” he said. “Why’d you give him a hard time about stealing? You never steal?”

“I never get caught.”

“That was the lesson you wanted to teach him?”

Mariella smiled and kept walking.

“So, why are you such a well-behaved vet?” asked Mariella. “All the other guys stir
up trouble around here on the weekends, while you go to church and invite girls for
sunset walks.”

“I can hold my liquor,” he said. “It wasn’t always that way.”

“What changed?”

“Maturity. Fatigue.”

“Fatigue? At your age?”

“I’m probably old enough to be your father.”

“Hardly. I’m almost twenty. How old are you?” asked Mariella.

“I’m thirty-three.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“The war screwed things up. I’m just getting around to fixing them.” He was quiet
for a moment. “Does my age bother you?”

“No,” she said. “Does my skin bother you?”

“No. Do my scars bother you?” he asked.

She ran her hand over the scar on his arm, and he flinched. She immediately pulled
away, regretting the intimacy of the gesture. He turned to her so she could see the
scar on his face. He took her hand and ran it over the scar.

“I’m not a monster to you?” he said.

“It goes away the longer I look at you, but I want to brush it off. It’s like a smudge
on a painting. You look like you’re lucky to have that eye.”

“The cut from the shrapnel was so deep the doctors couldn’t believe I kept it. I wouldn’t
be able to box without it.”

Mariella removed her hand from his face. The crowd clapped while the sun sank into
the ocean—curtain drawn, or, rather, opened for the night. She watched as the sun
slipped into the
waves. He turned her face back to his own. He brushed a lock of her hair off her forehead
and tucked it behind her ear.

He leaned in to kiss her and she responded. My God, she felt as if she were melting
into him. How much time passed? Two minutes, five, ten? She pulled back and turned
from him to look where the sun had left the sky. She put her hand to her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said, breathless. “Too much?”

She looked back at him without any restraint. “No.” She had only stopped to make it
a moment she wouldn’t forget, framed by the passage of the sun.

They walked down Duval, arms laced, past bars pouring music and laughter into the
street. It was too early for the drunken overflow, so it was nice passing bars as
each song spilled into another in a continuous, energetic sound track. Gavin stopped
to buy them both ice cream, and they moved along in silence. He kept stealing glances
at her, taking quiet pleasure in the cool refreshment and in her company.

“When the road’s done, I’m going up to Miami to get my mom,” said Gavin. “I’m going
to work up there. I’ve saved up a decent amount, all things considered.”

“What’ll you do?” she asked.

“My uncle’s got a construction business that’s been around awhile. Once his partner
retires, I’ll buy in. My dad passed while I was in the war, and Mom’s been pretty
bad off with her health.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s got a disease in her nervous system called ALS. She was doing okay for a while,
but she’s gotten really bad recently.”

“Can she come live down here?”

“I thought about it. But my uncle’s business is up there, and my aunt helps care for
her now, so I’ll have her stay put.”

“Do you see her often?”

“About once a month. I wish I could see her more. How about your family?”

Gavin thought he saw Mariella stiffen, and he wondered whether he shouldn’t have asked
about them. She hesitated a moment, but then replied.

“My dad died a few months ago,” she said.

“God, I’m sorry,” he said as he stopped walking. “How have you been holding up?”

“It’s always there,” she said. “Lurking behind everything, you know?”

“I do,” he said, and pulled her into him. He held her for a moment; then they continued
walking.

“You know what I miss most?” she asked. “My parents were really great together. They
danced around the kitchen when their favorite songs came on the radio. They sat on
the front porch swing talking long into the night after they thought my sisters and
I were asleep. During thunderstorms, she read to him while they shared an apple on
the couch.”

Gavin was touched by Mariella’s memories. “That’s sweet,” he said.

“I feel bad, too,” said Mariella.

“Why?”

“My dad had this great, deep, raspy voice, and he used to sing all the time. It didn’t
matter if we were in public, at church, at home—he loved to sing. And when we were
out I used to tell him to stop, and I’d get so embarrassed. But now I’d give anything
to hear that scratchy voice singing his out-of-tune songs.”

“I’m sure he understood.”

Mariella nodded.

When they arrived back at the house, Gavin asked, “Would you and your sisters like
to go to the Point next Saturday? I’m going back to Matecumbe tonight, but I’d love
to see you again.”

“All right,” she said. “The girls would like that.”

“What about you?”

“I’d like it, too,” she said. “But we can’t go too late. I have to work a party at
the Hemingways’ house next Saturday night.”

“We can go in the morning,” he said.

Mariella stood before him, close enough to kiss, and he badly wanted to. He also wanted
her to know how much he respected her. When he looked into her eyes, he was overcome
with emotion, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her, so he kissed her hand and walked
off into the shadows.

The morning sunlight revealed all the things Mariella’s house was able to conceal
in the night—broken shutters, peeling paint, holes in the screen door. Gavin thought
it was like waking up with a woman you’d met drunk the night before, and hoped the
feeling wouldn’t extend beyond the house.

He flicked his cigarette into the road and walked up to the porch. The thin, wrinkled
Cuban man across the street watched him. Gavin raised his hand in a wave, but the
man just narrowed his eyes and exhaled his cigar.

The beach outing filled Gavin with apprehension. He worried that he had come on too
strong with the kiss in Mallory Square, then not strong enough at the end of the evening.
He didn’t want to overwhelm Mariella after they’d talked about their fathers, but
it had taken everything he had not to kiss her again.

Before Gavin got to the door, Mariella opened it and stepped out with her two sisters
in a line behind her, suited up and ready to go. His apprehension disappeared as soon
as he saw her. The sun lit up her face, turning her brown eyes gold, and she smiled
warmly at him. Forgetting himself, he hugged her, but she broke off quickly and hurried
them onto the sidewalk.

“Introductions?” said Gavin.

“Sorry,” she said. “This is Estelle. This is Lulu. Girls, this is Gavin. Let’s go.”

“Is your mother home?” asked Gavin. “Doesn’t she want to meet the guy taking all of
her girls to the beach?”

Mariella looked back at the house for a moment. “I thought about it, but I don’t know
how that would go.”

“You won’t know until you try,” said Gavin. “What did you tell her?”

“That we were going to the beach with a friend.”

“That all?”

She broke into a grin at him and he smiled back. Then he reached out and took her
beach bag from her.

“We’ll introduce you when we get home,” she said. “That way, if there’s a problem,
we’ll have had our fun.”

Gavin thought that probably wasn’t a good idea, but Mariella had already picked up
Lulu and started quickly away from the house, with Estelle following. Gavin looked
at the old man, who continued to regard him with suspicion. He turned back and saw
Mariella and her sisters crossing the street to the next block, and he jogged to catch
them.