Duma Key

"I know about shadows," he said. "You just want to be careful they don't grow teeth. Because they can. Then, sometimes when you reach for the light-switch to make them go away, you discover the power's out."

"But you're better now."

"Yes," he said. "Pam had a lot to do with that. Can I tell you something about her you might already know?"

"Sure," I said, only hoping he wasn't going to share the fact that she sometimes laughed way down in her throat when she came.

"She has great insight but little kindness," Tom said. "It's a weirdly cruel mix."

I said nothing... but not necessarily because I thought he was wrong.

"She gave me a brisk talking-to about taking care of myself not so long ago, and it hit home."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And from the look of her, you might be in for a talking-to yourself, Edgar. I think I might find your friend Kamen and engage him in a bit of a discourse. Excuse me."

The girls and Ric were staring up at Wireman Looks West and chattering animatedly. Pam, however, was positioned about halfway down the line of Girl and Ship paintings, which hung like movie posters, and she looked disturbed. Not angry, exactly, just disturbed. Confused. She beckoned me over, and once I was there, she didn't waste time.

"Is the little girl in these pictures Ilse?" She pointed up at No. 1. "I thought at first this one with the red hair was supposed to be the doll Dr. Kamen gave you after your accident, but Ilse had a tic-tac-toe dress like that when she was little. I bought it at Rompers. And this one-" Now she pointed at No. 3. "I swear this is the dress she just had to have to start first grade in - the one she was wearing when she broke her damn arm that night after the stock car races!"

Well, there you were. I remembered the broken arm as having come after church, but that was only a minor misstep in the grand dance of memory. There were more important things. One was that Pam was in a unique position to see through most of the smoke and mirrors that critics like to call art - at least in my case she was. In that way, and probably in a great many others, she was still my wife. It seemed that in the end, only time could issue a divorce decree. And that the decree would be partial at best.

I turned her toward me. We were being watched by a great many people, and I suppose to them it looked like an embrace. And in a way, it was. I got one glimpse of her wide, startled eyes, and then I was whispering in her ear.

"Yes, the girl in the rowboat is Ilse. I never meant her to be there, because I never meant anything. I never even knew I was going to paint these pictures until I started doing them. And because she's back-to, no one else is ever going to know unless you or I tell them. And I won't. But-" I pulled back. Her eyes were still wide, her lips parted as if to receive a kiss. "What did Ilse say?"

"The oddest thing." She took me by the sleeve and pulled me down to No. 7 and No. 8. In both of these, Rowboat Girl was wearing the green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back. "She said you must be reading her mind, because she ordered a dress like that from Newport News just this spring."

She looked back at the pictures. I stood silently beside her and let her look.

"I don't like these, Edgar. They're not like the others, and I don't like them."

I thought of Tim Riley saying, Your ex has great insight but little kindness.

Pam lowered her voice. "You don't know something about Illy that you shouldn't, do you? The way you knew about-"

"No," I said, but I was more troubled by the Girl and Ship series than ever. Some of it was seeing them all hung in a line; the accumulated weirdness was like a punch.

Sell them. That was Elizabeth's opinion. However many there are, you must sell them.

And I could understand why she thought so. I did not like seeing my daughter, not even in the guise of the child she had long outgrown, in such close proximity to that rotted sheerhulk. And in a way, I was surprised that perplexity and disquiet were all Pam felt. But of course, the paintings hadn't had a chance to work on her yet.

And they were no longer on Duma Key.

The young people joined us, Ric and Melinda with their arms around each other. "Daddy, you're a genius," Melinda said. "Ric thinks so, too, don't you, Ric?"

"Actually," Ric said, "I do. I came prepared to be... polite. Instead I am struggling for the words to say I am amazed."

"That's very kind," I said. " Merci. "

"I'm so proud of you, Dad," Illy said, and hugged me.

Pam rolled her eyes, and in that instant I could cheerfully have whacked her one. Instead I folded Ilse into my arm and kissed the top of her head. As I did, Mary Ire's voice rose from the front of the Scoto in a cigarette-hoarsened shout that was full of amazed disbelief. "Libby Eastlake! I don't believe my god-damned eyes!"