Duma Key

After our plates and glasses were in the dishwasher, I led him back upstairs, but just long enough so I could take half a dozen digital photos of him - big, charmless close-ups. I have taken a few good photographs in my life, but always by accident. I hate cameras, and the cameras seem to know it. When I was done, I told him he could go home and spell Annmarie. It was dark outside, and I offered him my Malibu.

"Gonna walk. The air will be good for me." Then he pointed at the canvas. "Can I take a look?"

"Actually, I'd rather you didn't."

I thought he might protest, but he just nodded and went back downstairs, almost trotting. There was a new spring in his step - that was surely not my imagination. At the door he said, "Call Nannuzzi in the morning. Don't let the grass grow under your heels."

"All right. And you call me if anything changes with your..." I gestured at his face with my paint-stippled hand.

He grinned. "You'll be the first to know. For the time being, I can settle for being headache-free." The grin faded. "Are you sure it won't come back?"

"I'm sure of nothing."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's the human condition, ain't it? But I thank you for trying." And before I knew he was going to do it, he had taken my hand and kissed the back of it. A gentle kiss in spite of the bristles on his upper lip. Then he told me adi s and was gone into the dark and the only sound was the sigh of the Gulf and the whispering conversation of the shells under the house. Then there was another sound. The phone was ringing.

x

It was Ilse, calling to chat. Yes, her classes were going fine, yes, she felt well - great, in fact - yes, she was calling her mother once a week and staying in touch with Lin by e-mail. In Ilse's opinion, Lin's strep was probably so much self-diagnosed bullcrap. I told her I was stunned by her generosity of feeling and she laughed.

I told her there was a possibility that I might be showing my work at a gallery in Sarasota, and she shrieked so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

"Daddy, that's wonderful! When? Can I come?"

"Sure, if you want to," I said. "I'm going to invite everybody." This was a decision I hadn't entirely made until I heard myself telling her. "We're thinking mid-April."

"Shit! That's when I was planning to catch up with The Hummingbirds tour." She paused. Thinking. Then: "I can work them both in. A little tour of my own."

"You think?"

"Yes, of course. You just give me the date and I am there."

Tears pricked the backs of my eyelids. I don't know what it's like to have sons, but I'm sure it can't be as rewarding - as plain nice - as having daughters. "I appreciate that, hon. Do you think... is there any possibility your sister might come?"

"You know what, I think she will," Ilse said, "She'll be crazy to see what you're doing that's got people in the know so excited. Will you get written up?"

"My friend Wireman thinks so. One-armed artist, and all that."

"But you're just good, Daddy!"

I thanked her, then moved on to Carson Jones. Asked what she heard from him.

"He's fine," she said.

"Really?"

"Sure - why?"

"I don't know. I just thought I heard a little cloud in your voice."

She laughed ruefully. "You know me too well. The fact is, they're SRO everyplace they play now - word's getting around. The tour was supposed to end on May fifteenth because four of the singers have other commitments, but the booking agent found three new ones. And Bridget Andreisson, who's become quite the star, got them to push back the start of her understudy pastorate in Arizona. Which was lucky." Her voice flattened as she said this last, and became the voice of some adult woman I didn't know. "So instead of finishing in mid-May, the tour has been extended to the end of June, with dates in the Midwest and a final concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Some bigga-time, huh?" This was my phrase, used when Illy and Lin were little girls putting on what they called "ballet super-shows" in the garage, but I couldn't recall ever saying it in that sad tone of not-quite-sarcasm.

"Are you worried about your guy and this Bridget?"

"No!" she said at once, and laughed. "He says she has a great voice and he's lucky to be singing with her - they have two songs now instead of just one - but she's shallow and stuck-up. Also, he wishes she'd pop some Certs before he has to, you know, share a mike with her."

I waited.

"Okay," Ilse said at last.

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I'm worried." A pause. "A little bit, because he's with her on a bus every day and on stage with her every night and I'm here." Another, longer pause. Then: "And he doesn't sound the same when I talk to him on the phone. Almost... but not quite."

"That could be your imagination."

"Yes. It could. And in any case, if something's going on - nothing is, I'm sure nothing is - but if something is, better now rather than after... you know, than after we..."