Duma Key

The pen finished and fell away. The itch was gone. My fingers were stiff. On the other side of the long table, Elizabeth's doze had deepened into real sleep. Once she might have been young and beautiful. Once she might have been some young man's dream baby. Now she was snoring with her mostly toothless mouth pointed at the ceiling. If there's a God, I think He needs to try a little harder.

viii

I had seen a phone in the library as well as the kitchen, and the library was closer to the China Parlor. I decided neither Wireman nor Elizabeth would begrudge me a long-distance call to Minnesota. I picked up the phone, then paused with it curled to my chest. On a wall next to the suit of armor, highlighted by several cunning little pin-spots in the ceiling, was a display of antique weapons: a long-barreled muzzle-loader that looked of Revolutionary War vintage, a flintlock pistol, a derringer that would have been at home in a riverboat gambler's boot, a Winchester carbine. Mounted above the carbine was the gadget Elizabeth had been holding in her lap the day Ilse and I had seen her. To either side, making an inverted V, were four loads for the thing. You couldn't call them arrows; they were too short. Harpoonlets still seemed like the right word. Their tips were very bright, and looked very sharp.

I thought, You could do some real damage with a thing like that. Then I thought: My father was a skin diver.

I pushed it out of my mind and called what used to be home.

ix

"Hi, Pam, it's me again."

"I don't want to talk to you any more, Edgar. We finished what we have to say."

"Not quite. But this will be short. I have an old lady to look after. She's sleeping now, but I don't like to leave her long."

Pam, curious in spite of herself: "What old lady?"

"Her name's Elizabeth Eastlake. She's in her mid-eighties, and she's got a good start on Alzheimer's. Her principal caregiver is taking care of an electrical problem with someone's sauna, and I'm helping out."

"Did you want a gold star to paste on the Helping Others page of your workbook?"

"No, I called to convince you I'm not crazy." I had brought in my drawing. Now I crooked the handset between my shoulder and my ear so I could pick it up.

"Why do you care?"

"Because you're convinced that all this started with Ilse, and it didn't."

"My God, you're unbelievable! If she called from Santa Fe and said she'd broken a shoelace, you'd fly out there to take her a new one!"

"I also don't like you thinking that I'm down here going insane when I'm not. So... are you listening?"

Only silence from the other end, but silence was good enough. She was listening.

"You're ten or maybe fifteen minutes out of the shower. I think that because your hair is down on the back of your housecoat. I guess you still don't like the hairdryer."

"How- "

"I don't know how. You were sitting in a rocking chair when I called. You must have gotten it since the divorce. Reading a book and eating a cookie. A Grandma's oatmeal cookie. The sun's out now, and it's coming in the window. You have a new television, the kind with a flat screen." I paused. "And a cat. You got a cat. It's sleeping under the TV."

Dead silence from her end. On my end the wind blew and the rain slapped the windows. I was about to ask her if she was there when she spoke again, in a dull voice that didn't sound like Pam at all. I had thought she was done hurting my heart, but I was wrong. "Stop spying on me. If you ever loved me - stop spying on me."

"Then stop blaming me," I said in a hoarse, not-quite-breaking voice. Suddenly I remembered Ilse getting ready to go back to Brown, Ilse standing in the strong tropical sun outside the Delta terminal, looking up at me and saying, You deserve to get better. Sometimes I wonder if you really believe that. "What's happened to me isn't my fault. The accident wasn't my fault and neither is this. I didn't ask for it."

She screamed, " Do you think I did? "

I closed my eyes, begging something, anything, to keep me from giving back anger for anger. "No, of course not."

"Then leave me out of it! Stop calling me! Stop SCARING me!"

She hung up. I stood holding the phone to my ear. There was silence, then a loud click. It was followed by that distinctive Duma Key warbling hum. Today it sounded rather subaqueous. Maybe because of the rain. I hung the phone up and stood looking at the suit of armor. "I think that went very well, Sir Lancelot," I said.

No reply, which was exactly what I deserved.

x

I crossed the plant-lined main hall to the doorway of the China Parlor, looked in at Elizabeth, and saw she was sleeping in the same head-cocked position. Her snores, which had earlier struck me as pathetic in their naked antiquity, were now actually comforting; otherwise, it would have been too easy to imagine her sitting there dead with her neck broken. I wondered if I should wake her, and decided to let her sleep. Then I glanced right, toward the wide main staircase, and thought of her saying Oh, you'll find it on the second floor landing.