Last Resort (3 page)

Upstairs Jenny was still awake. At last she slipped out of bed, pulled a long robin’s-egg blue robe over her lacy white cotton nightdress, and padded barefoot down the wide, chilly oak stairs.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she apologized. “Goodness, it’s cold in here.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Wilkie lied, watching his wife as she turned up the thermostat, thinking how graceful she was, how beautiful, with her pale, fine regular features and her silky pale-beige hair, still only lightly touched with silver, waterfalling over her shoulders.

“Do you know, I was wondering,” Jenny began, perching on the arm of a wing chair. She paused, waiting for the go-ahead.

“Yes?”

“I was thinking about that awful cold I had for so many many weeks last year. I was wondering if we might go somewhere warm for a while this winter. It would be so nice to escape all the viruses that I know are on their way to Convers now, just looking for me.”

Wilkie said nothing.

“It doesn’t have to be abroad,” she added. “There are parts of America that don’t have winter.” She glanced at the silent television screen, which obligingly showed a weather map of the United States banded in rainbow colors, the wavy bottom strip a glowing red. Wilkie hardly saw it; instead he recalled a recent interview in a local TV studio where he had learned that what one sees on the screen is a lie, a construct: there is no real map projected behind the weatherman, only a blank wall toward which he gestures. That’s what I’m doing now, he had thought at the time, gesturing at a blank wall, while people imagine I see something there.

“I was wondering, what if we were to take a place in Key West for a month or two,” Jenny continued. “Molly Hopkins still goes there every winter, doesn’t she?” Molly was the widow of a professor of American history who, though older than Wilkie, had been one of his closest friends.

“I believe so,” her husband said in a neutral, considering voice. Key West, he thought. An island, surrounded by the deep kind drowning sea—Afterward everyone would assume it had been a sudden cramp, or a freak undertow—

“I wondered if Molly might know something about houses to rent in Key West.”

He should have known better; some people might say that too, Wilkie thought. Why did the old fool try to swim out so far? they might say. Well, so what?

“I could write to her there. Or even phone.” Jenny glanced back from the weather map to her husband, and caught her breath. What she saw in the flickering television light was someone she hardly recognized: an old, exhausted-looking person in the grip of something between desperation and despair, his eyes squeezed shut as if in pain, his jaw set.

But then Wilkie shifted his position, turned away from the ghastly blue glare toward Jenny, smiled slightly at her, and was himself again. “Well, why not, my dear?” he said. “If that’s what you’d really like.”

M
ID-DECEMBER IN KEY
West. Bougainvillea foamed over white stucco walls in Christmas-ribbon colors, palms swayed in the soft breeze, sand sparkled like Christmas tinsel in the sun. Streets and shops and restaurants were crowded with adults dressed like children at play, in colorful shorts, T-shirts, sneakers, and sandals. Their garb was the outward sign that for these few days or weeks they were free to enjoy and indulge themselves, like kids on vacation. They had no responsibilities or chores: they did not cook for themselves or make their own beds. They stayed up late at night, and ate when they liked, preferring the childish foods disapproved of by parents and health experts: cheeseburgers, hot dogs, sodas, chips, fries, pizza, and candy.

During the day many of them were at the beach: splashing in the warm ocean, or lazing in the warmer sand, watching the slow waves lick the shore. Others dawdled along the streets, gazing into shop windows or licking ice-cream cones. The more athletic were jogging, riding bikes, throwing balls, and tossing Frisbees, or out at sea: windsurfing, sailing, snorkeling, deep-sea fishing, or scuba diving. At night they could be seen dining in open-air seafood restaurants, or sitting in bars listening to loud, rhythmic music and exchanging loud, rhythmic comments.

Though most tourists accepted the occasional comic misadventure, it was important to them that overall their vacation should be pleasant. When you spend money on a holiday you are essentially purchasing happiness: if you don’t enjoy yourself you will feel defrauded.

There are dangers, though, in enjoying yourself too much. “Real life,” when you return to it, may seem painfully drab and confined by contrast. But this is usually temporary and bearable. More serious consequences faced those tourists who did not go home, who enjoyed the freedom and pleasure of Key West so much that they stayed on longer and longer.

What happened then, inevitably, was that these temporary children started to grow up. They bought property, joined volunteer organizations, took jobs, invested in some local business. As homeowners, workers, or proprietors, they began to view tourism from the other side. When they saw plastic debris washed up on the shore, or homeless people sleeping in alleys, they had the impulse to do something about it. They began to take positions on local issues; they not only read the local papers but wrote to the editor. Some became active in politics, or even ran for office. They agitated to save the reef, change the zoning laws, and permit cruise ships to tie up on Mallory Dock more often or never.

Meanwhile, because they now had jobs and meetings to go to, they stopped wearing shorts and T-shirts and sandals, and changed into shirts and slacks, perhaps even into skirts and suits. For them Key West was no longer a playground. It had become the “real world”—a world in which they were real adults.

Molly Hopkins, the widow of Wilkie Walker’s old friend, was one of these ex-tourists. For thirty years she had been coming to Key West every winter: at first only for Christmas and Easter vacation; later, after her husband retired, for the six months and one day that made them official residents of a state with no income tax. At present Molly lived in Key West from October through April, and socialized mainly with other winter residents, or with full-time citizens like Lee Weiss, whom she was visiting on this warm afternoon in early December.

Once, Lee Weiss herself had been a tourist. Twenty-five years ago she had come to the island on impulse for a week’s vacation from an oppressive marriage. As a direct result of this interlude, she left her husband. She returned the next season, then stayed on. Eventually she became the owner of a successful women’s guest house, and one of the island’s semisolid citizens. When she wanted to relax and enjoy herself in a carefree, childlike manner, she left town—usually in August or September, which is hurricane season and the low point for tourism—and went to Europe or to New England.

In the high season, from mid-December through mid-April, Lee had many cares and responsibilities. Now, as she sat on the vine-shaded front porch of Artemis Lodge with Molly Hopkins, she felt that this burden had just been increased.

“Oh, hell. How could you do that?” she exclaimed, sitting forward and letting her natural-fiber knitting slide to the floor. “Don’t you know what kind of a reactionary shit Wilkie Walker is?”

“No, not really.” Molly, who was reclining on a wicker chaise with her hair fluffed out against the flowered cushion, gave a little yip, almost a sigh. As she aged, she bore a greater and greater resemblance to the Hopkinses’ long series of Maltese terriers—especially the last one, Lulu, whose death three months ago still devastated her whenever she recalled it. Molly had the same big brown eyes, pug nose, mildly eager expression, and sparse floppy white curls.

“Didn’t you ever read that disgusting book of his,
The Natural Animal?”

“I don’t really remember it ...” Molly’s voice trailed off. How exhausting young people are today, she thought. In fact Lee was over fifty, and though her Polynesian tan, wavy black mane, and ruffled magenta mumu suggested vigor and sensuality, at second glance she looked her age. But to Molly, at eighty-one, Lee seemed young, as almost everyone did now. There were so few grown-ups around, so few sensible people left alive in the world.

“Made homophobia respectable, that’s what he did,” Lee growled, staring at the dramatic orange and vermillion blossoms of the trumpet vine that partially veiled her veranda from the street. “He’s quoted everywhere by those Family Values creeps. Prize-winning scientist states, etcetera.”

“But that was years ago. I know he doesn’t think that way now.”

“Yeah? Did he take it back in print?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Then it doesn’t count.”

“Honestly, it didn’t occur to me that anyone would mind,” Molly said, surprised by the persistence of her friend’s reaction. Usually Lee flared up and simmered down fast. “And it’s not as if he were living here.”

“Yeah, but he’s staying in Jacko’s front yard. How’s that going to work out? And it’s not just Jacko, I mind for every gay person on the island. Including myself. That goddamn book of his nearly destroyed me as a person.”

“Really?” Molly restrained herself from asking what else Lee could have been destroyed as; she had recently resolved to stop protesting the contemporary misuse of language. “I should have thought that would be difficult.”

“Now it would, sure,” Lee admitted. “But you didn’t know me back in college. Well, hell, I didn’t know myself. When I discovered I was attracted to women, this teacher I thought was so great gave me Walker’s book. Said it would help me. So I read how I was sick and unnatural, because animals aren’t queer. According to Walker, whatever animals do is natural and good. Homosexuality is a disease; it’s got to be treated and wiped out. And then he goes on about how we’ve got to preserve some scruffy old mouse that’s no use to anybody.” She lapsed into brooding silence.

“You know Wilkie Walker hasn’t been well lately,” Molly remarked eventually.

“Oh yeah? What has he got?”

“I don’t really know. But his wife said she thought he ought to be in a warmer climate this winter.”

“Jesus.” Lee slammed her glass of iced tea onto the wicker coffee table. “All right, let him be in a warmer climate. He’s got the whole state of Florida to choose from, not to mention the rest of the Caribbean. Why should he have to come to Key West?”

“I suppose someone recommended it. It’s where a lot of writers go, after all.”

Lee made a hostile noise. “So when does he hit town?”

“January second, I think.”

“Ugh. Less than a month away.” Her angry grin showed square white teeth. “God, it’s going to be disgusting. I can see it now. You’ll have a dinner party for him, and then people like Roz Foster will take him up because he’s famous, and he’ll be everywhere. Sneering at gays and holding forth on our threatened environment and giving little inspirational talks to the Friends of the Library on Bubba Beaver or whoever his latest animal character is. And that backlash bitch his wife too.”

“Oh, Lee.” Molly sighed again. “Jenny’s not a bitch. She’s a perfect lady.”

“Yeah, well, it comes to the same thing sometimes. I’ve read about her too; she’s always mentioned in those interviews. The happy fulfilled wife and mother, the devoted secretary and research assistant. And some smarmy quote. ‘I see my role in life as making it possible for Wilkie Walker to be truly productive.’” Lee raised her voice to a shrill, whispery caricature. “Sorry. But when I think of that type of female I get riled up.”

Molly shook her head slightly. Did I ever take such inconsequential things so hard? she wondered, as Lee began a review of the unliberated beliefs, statements, and actions of these females, much of which her friend had heard before. Perhaps when I was in my teens, she decided; but I was rather ashamed of it even then. I had been brought up to believe that except at the worst moments of life you didn’t curse or carry on. Because if you did, nothing would be left for those moments. It was like that old rhyme of Dr. Johnson’s:

If a man who turnips cries

Cries not when his father dies,

Is it not a proof he’d rather

Have a turnip than his father?

Molly had cried for her father, and miserably, wrenchingly, month after month, for her husband. But for two years now she had not cried, except in private when her arthritis was at its worst. She couldn’t imagine getting seriously upset because someone she didn’t want to see was coming to Key West. The world was full of people Molly didn’t especially want to see, but she recognized that they had as much right to spend the winter here as she did.

“So what’s been happening with you lately?” Lee asked at last.

“Oh, nothing really.” Molly smiled briefly. She recognized Lee’s question as not so much an expression of interest as a friendly willingness to listen rather than talk for a while. But Molly had always found it boring to speak of her own life. After over eighty years she still did not understand why people enjoyed talking about themselves so much—even insisted on it—and were so eager to repeat facts they already knew. Sometimes she wondered if they were not wholly convinced that they existed and had to keep proving this.

“Look, I’m sorry I flew off the handle about Wilkie Walker,” Lee said, apparently taking Molly’s silence for rebuke. “I know you weren’t deliberately planning to make things unpleasant for me.”

“No. I wanted to make them easier for Jacko, that’s all,” Molly said. “He’s been trying to rent Alvin’s house ever since those people from New York canceled, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lee admitted, her tone shifting to one of concern. For years her friend Perry Jackson, who was also a year-round resident of Key West, had made his living partly as a landscape gardener and partly as the caretaker of the estate of a former lover, a rich, fussy, tiresome old man called Alvin. He had the rent-free use of a one-room cottage on Alvin’s property, and was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about plants. Last month, Jacko had tested HIV-positive.

“How’s he doing?” Lee asked. “I haven’t seen him since Sunday, but he’s due here this afternoon.”

“Oh, he looks fine. It could be ten years, you know. Or more.”