The Art of Floating (24 page)

Wing
nut did a pretty good job of keeping Sia informed about what folks around the world were saying about Toad, but after a while it was fairly easy to sum up:

alien

fish

freak

alien

fish

freak

alien

fish

freak

Behin
d the reporters, a line of weekend looky-loos wound its way down Sia's lane:

silver Mercedes

baby-blue Prius

pine-green Outback

red Jeep with seven teenagers hanging out of its windows

black Mercedes

two motorcycles

some ancient jalopy

a Ford truck

another Ford truck

sixteen pedestrians in town for a wedding

Then Jilly in her Mini Cooper . . . laying on the horn . . . and yelling, “Put your eyes back in your heads! Go home! You think this is performance art?” She zipped up the oncoming lane, whipped into Sia's driveway, and screeched to a halt.

“Good gracious, Mavis!” she hollered when she popped out of the car. “Don't y'all have something better to do on a beautiful Saturday morning?”

Then she put her hands on her hips, smiled her best smile for the cameras, and went inside.

•  •  •

“What are you so happy about?” Sia asked.

Jilly tripped-tropped over to Toad and gave him a loud smooch on the top of the head. “Nothing,” she said. “Just a gorgeous day.”

“You went out on a date.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn't. But thank you for thinking you know everything about me.”

“I do know everything about you, and I know you went on a date. I can tell. It was a good date, too.”

“For your information, it wasn't a date. I met Richard last night for dinner to talk about you and Toad.”

Sia laughed. “You went on a date with Richard.”

“I did not go on a date with him. We met to discuss you and Toad and your screwed-up situation.”

“Richard doesn't discuss my situation with anyone. That would go against his moral code.”

“Well, I discussed you and Toad and your screwed-up situation. Richard listened.”

Sia ignored her. “Toad, did you hear that?” she said. “Richard and Jilly went on a date last night.”

“Odyssia Dane,” Jilly said, “we did not go—”

“Richard and Jilly sitting in a tree / K-I-S-S-I-N-G / First comes love / Then comes marriage / Then comes . . .” Sia paused. She was going to say something awful like,
Then comes the disappearance of your husband into oblivion
, but she caught herself. “Then comes,” she continued, “baby in a baby carriage.”

Jilly smiled and squeezed Sia's knee. “It wasn't a date.”

Sia dropped her head into her hands. “I hope it was.”

“The Dogcatcher lives here?” Sia said. The bridge over the river—a slab of concrete as hideous as the town was quaint—was a monstrosity whose esthetics should have been given a bit more thought considering it was adjacent to the most popular seafood restaurant in town. A place where locals and tourists (happily) dined on lobster and fresh clams and (unhappily) listened to the steady
vroom-vroom-vroom
of cars passing over the river from one town to the next. In summer when the town teemed with tourists, it was more like
vvrooom-vvrooom-vvrooom-vvrooom-vvrooom-vvrooom
, tires on hot concrete, until the sailboats queued and traffic stopped to let the drawbridge draw. Then silence. Best time to eat if you could gauge it right.

Richard nodded. “She's lived here a long time. It seems to fit her needs.”

“Which are?”

“Dry, clean, spare.” He paused. “Isolated.”

PLOVER REPORT

JULY 2012

N
ESTING
P
AIRS:
12 (refuge); 4 (Sandy Point Reservation)

P
AIRS
S
TILL
S
ITTING ON
N
EST:
2 (refuge); 1 (Sandy Point Reservation)

C
HICKS
H
ATCHED:
17 (refuge); 4 (Sandy Point Reservation)

C
HICKS
F
LEDGED:
3 (refuge); 2 (Sandy Point Reservation)

B
EACHES:
Beach accessed from parking lots #6 and #7 now open to humans.

•  •  •

And a note at the bottom of the report:

Interested in riding on the plover float at this year's Yankee Homecoming Parade? Call Mrs. Wysong to register.

On the day of Jackson's memorial service, the sign outside the church was a quote by Martin Luther King about finding the things you've lost.

•  •  •

It didn't rain after all on the day of the memorial service. Sunshine, in fact. Lots of it. Cool air. Misty blue sky. Jackson's favorite kind of October day. Hundreds of people who needed to let go of him filed into the Unitarian Church in suits and dresses, their Sunday best.

•  •  •

Elizabeth Dane did as she promised. Sia found a bench placed under a window on the east side of the church, along with a bouquet of yellow roses and a pillow. Beside the bench, she'd filled a ceramic bowl with water for Gumper, which Gumper liked very much.

When the bells sounded, Sia lay down with the pillow under her head and the flowers on her belly. The stone was cool against her back. M, who sat in the very last pew, sneaked out every five minutes to make sure her daughter was still breathing.

Reverend Carter talked a long time. Sia could hear him clearly through the window but listened only to the intonations of his voice, not the words.
He is getting old
, she thought. She heard a gravelly undercurrent where there only used to be smooth, polished stones, and a stutter before words like
and
and
but
. As he told the story about how Jackson used to bring snakes to church in his pockets when he was little, she thought about things that made Jackson laugh, like the first time they took Gumper to Jilly's cottage in New Hampshire and during a hike ran into a bear. The bear wasn't so big, but he was a bear, and Gumper, though practiced in the art of humans and other dogs, didn't know what to make of him. They'd expected mighty things in that moment—a frenzied bark, a chase to tree the bear, a deep primal growl—but instead Gumper had whimpered, turned tail, and bolted back to the cottage. The bear, satisfied with its easy dominance, had sauntered off in the other direction, and Jackson had nearly rolled down the mountain laughing.

When they got back, Gumper was on the porch pressed against the door. He was still shivering and whimpering with fear, and Jackson was still laughing.

“Looks like you met your match,” he'd said, rubbing Gumper's head.

My life goes on in endless song

Above Earth's lamentations,

I hear the real, though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

Jackson's favorite hymn poured out the open windows. Sia sat up and rubbed her ass. It was cold from the stone.

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that rock I'm clinging.

Since love is lord of heaven and Earth

How can I keep from singing?*

“Piss off,” Sia said to the tree off to her right. “Piss off, piss off, piss off.”

•  •  •

On the other side of the church, the Dogcatcher crouched against the white clapboards. She sang along with the hymn, replacing all words with Gumper-Man.

Oh, Gumper-Man, Oh, Gumper-Man,

Oh, Gumper-Man-an-an-an

She sang off-key.

•  •  •

“He's with God now, dear,” Jackson's aunt promised after the ceremony. Unlike Sia, she believed in an almighty God who created things like heaven and hell and demanded redemption.

“Okay, Aunt Rose,” Sia said. She didn't want to steal Aunt Rose's faith.

Aunt Rose moved away.

“Odyssia, that man loved you so much,” Reverend Carter said. He set his bony hand on Sia's head. “I remember the day I married the two of you. Jackson nearly burst open like a seed pod when he saw you walk down the beach.” His knobby fingers lifted a piece of her hair and then dropped it.

“I know,” Sia said. She was thinking about the past tense.

Mrs. Windwill leaned against the trunk of the giant weeping willow tree next to the church and dabbed her eyes with a hanky. The wind lifted the long green willow tendrils stretched out and wrapped them all around her.

•  •  •

salt

banker

whiskey

stultify

pantheon

Sia reached for the words. Pulled at them. Pleaded. But nothing. No sense at all.

Sabbatina Duchella's handwriting was round and loopy, like cooked noodles. Expertly Italian. The black ink on the envelope was thick, raised up like Braille, and the paper was as soft as sifted flour. As Sia fingered it, she imagined the
paperie
in which Signora Duchella had purchased it.

“Why can't you use this?” she imagined Signor Duchella hollering, holding up the tablet his wife stored in the kitchen drawer, the one on which she wrote grocery lists and notes to the pharmacist requesting particular tonics for her sore knees and achy shoulder. It was the same tablet on which she used to write notes to Marco, her lost son, so that when he came home late from a party, he knew she'd stored a plate of fresh pasta in the oven for him.

“Oh, Antonio, you would want to embarrass me to this American woman,” Signora Duchella sputtered. “Get in the car. We're going shopping.”

Sia imagined that Sabbatina badgered Antonio to drive her to the
paperie
the same way she badgered him about his occasional cigarette and his tendency to linger too long at the soccer matches on Sundays. It was a good-natured badgering, and even Antonio didn't mind, so after thirty minutes of insisting she use the kitchen tablet, he acquiesced, pulled the car from its spot in the shade, and opened the door for her.

When Sabbatina didn't find the paper she needed at the local
paperie
and insisted Antonio drive her to the next town over where the stock of stationery was twice that in quality and abundance, he shook his head and held up a thick, stocky parchment.

Sabbatina, Sia imagined, huffed and walked out the door. “But, my dear,” Antonio said to his wife's shadow, “this paper can hold up many sorrows.” Poor Antonio meant well.

But Sabbatina was determined, and she smiled triumphantly when at the second
paperie
she discovered the softer-than-sifted-flour paper Sia now held in her hands. “It feels like tears,” she said.

•  •  •

Lothario Mancini—proprietor of Libreria Lothario, a small Italian bookstore in a town just down the coast from Sia's that was famous for its rocky shores, lobster fishing, and Italian pastries—was a tall man with toothpick legs. He met Sia in the doorway and ushered her to a small table next to the window. After she told him her story, he took Sabbatina Duchella's letter in his hands and held it very gently. Sia looked at his hair. It was white and thick, the way you want your hair to grow if you have to get old. She reached out and touched it. Lothario didn't seem to mind. His hair, as she suspected, was thick like summer grass. When she pulled her hand away, he smiled.

“So, Signor Mancini, can you read this to me?” she asked.

He nodded and read.

Dearest Odyssia Dane,

When the postman handed your letter to me, my heart leapt up into the olive trees that grow behind our house. Antonio, I said, word has come about our Marco. But Antonio, my dear Antonio, didn't even look up from his newspaper. I was disappointed but not surprised. My husband's heart doesn't leap much anymore, not since Marco last had dinner at our table. Since then, Antonio's heart has become tough like old beef. He grumbles and grunts much more now, and I was so hoping your letter would carry news that would make those ugly noises go away.

Unfortunately, the man in the photo you sent is not our Marco. That man is, as my daughter-in-law described in our advertisement, unusually handsome, and though I would like to be able to tell you that our Marco shared this trait, he does not. Lilia's passion for my son has blinded her, as has the fact that his heart makes up for what he lacks in looks. In truth he has an imperfect nose and a deep scar just above his right eye that he got during a ferocious battle with the largest and oldest olive tree behind our house. Marco was seven when that fight occurred. The tree, planted by my husband's great-great-great-grandfather, was two hundred and two. That day, it decided it did not want to be climbed anymore. It wanted to be left alone, like Antonio. But my Marco was determined. Always determined. He scampered into its upper branches like a squirrel, scrambling hand over hand, until he disappeared from sight. From the kitchen window, I could see bits of him at first—a speck of blue shirt, the bottom of his sneaker, an elbow, a knee. I called to him many times. “Marco,” I said, “that tree is not happy. Come down here. Listen to it wail.” But Marco didn't respond, and I didn't hear a sound until he tumbled out of the branches, moaning. His head was bleeding very badly, and the cut needed thirteen stitches. The doctor who sewed the wound was either drunk or blind, and Marco's scar did not heal well. It bubbled up like a curb and stayed that way forever.

Maybe this is how he will return to us again. Maybe he will tumble at our feet from high in the branches of a faraway place.

The man you have found on your beach is very handsome, Odyssia, and Antonio says that if you do not find his path home, you should marry him and make many babies. But that is just a man talking. Mostly, we are sad that you lost your Jackson, we lost our Marco, and someone has lost the man from the beach.

Thank you for writing and for reminding us of hope. Though yours was not the letter we were hoping to receive, in the end, it was the letter that we needed.

With love,
Sabbatina Duchella,
Mother of Marco

•  •  •

“I have five children,” Lothario said when he finished reading the letter. “Four of them live on the same street as their mother and me. The fifth one lives with us. I can't imagine the sadness of this woman who lost her Marco. I can't imagine yours.”

Three men carrying lobster crates trundled past the door. They banged on the frame and one called, “Lothario, we have lobster for your wife. She says if you do not pick it up soon and bring it to her, she will cook lobster for the man next door.”

Sia smiled. “Ah, lobster and love beckon, Signor Mancini. Making your wife happy will be a good way to forget our sorrows.”

“I won't forget them, Odyssia. Thank you for allowing me to read the letter to you.”

“You knew who I was when I walked in, didn't you?” Sia asked.

“Of course. I've seen you and Toad on the news and in the papers. I imagine there aren't many who don't know you by now.”

Sia nodded.

“Can I convince you to stay for a bite of lobster? My wife is a very good cook, especially when she is angry with me.”

“Some other time,” Sia promised. “Toad has been alone for three hours and I need to get back.”

Before leaving, Lothario made her a special cappuccino for the road. “Extra foam,” he said, “makes everything a little better.” He handed Sabbatina's letter back to Sia. “Keep this close,” he said, and then he was off to get the lobster.

•  •  •

After Jackson's memorial service, Sia lined up eleven colorful pills on the bedside table. Eleven that taken together would have killed her efficiently, albeit slowly and messily and probably somewhat painfully, at least in the first few minutes.

“Take them,” she ordered herself. “Get it over with.”

She poured a large glass of water and set it next to the pills.

“Take the friggin' pills,” she said.

She sipped the water. Gumper licked her bare ankle.
What if Jackson is alive?
she thought.
And what if he comes home in two months and Mom has to tell him I'm dead. What then? But even worse, what if Jackson
is
dead, and after I cross over, he meets me at the gate to (hopefully) heaven? He'll kick my ass for committing suicide. And I'm damn sure he'll find a way to get God to send me back. Maybe as a city dweller or a car mechanic.

“Fine,” she yelled at the pills. “FINE!” And she threw them into the toilet and flushed.