| And you know the bad part? I never didI
could have told Linnie that preferring Ilse was
like growing up lefthanded - something over which
I had no control - and that would only have made
it worse, even though it was the truthMaybe
especially because it was the truth
viii
Ilse coming to Duma Key, to Big PinkYippee, she
was excited, and yippee, I was, tooJack had
found me a stout lady named Juanita to clean twice
a week, and I had her make up the guest bedroomI
also asked her if she'd bring some fresh flowers
the day after ChristmasSmiling, she suggested
something that sounded like creamus cackusMy
brain, by then quite comfortable with the fine art
of cross-connection, was stopped by this for no
126
more than five seconds; I told Juanita I was sure
Ilse would love a Christmas cactus
On Christmas Eve I found myself re-reading Ilse's
original e-mailThe omega ladies watch sun was westering, beating a
long and brilliant track across the water, but it
was still at least two hours to sundown, and I was
sitting in the Florida room
Beneath me, the deep drifts of shell shifted and
grated, making that sound that was so like breath
or hoarse confidential speakingI ran my thumb
over the postscript - I have some special news -
and my right arm, the one that was no longer there,
began to tingleThe location of that tingle was
clearly, almost exquisitely, definedIt began in
the fold of the elbow and spiraled to an end on
the outside of the wristIt deepened to an itch I
longed to reach over and scratch
I closed my eyes and snapped the thumb of my right
hand against the second fingerThere was no sound,
but I could feel the snapI rubbed my arm against
my side and could feel the rubI lowered my right
hand, long since burned in the daytona rolex incinerator of a St
Paul hospital, to the arm of my chair and drummed
the fingersNo sound, but the sensation was there:
127
skin on wickerI would have sworn to it in the
name of God
All at once I wanted to draw
I thought about the big room upstairs, but Little
Pink seemed too far to goI went into the living
room and took an Artisan pad off a stack of them
sitting on the coffee tableMost of my art
supplies were upstairs, but there were a few boxes
of colored pencils in one of the drawers of the
living room desk, and I took one of those, as well
Back in the Florida room (which I would always
think of as a porch), I sat down and closed my
eyesI listened to the waves do their work
beneath me, lifting the shells and turning them
into new patterns, each one different from the one
beforeWith my eyes shut, that grating was more
than ever like talk: the water giving cartier ladies must de cartier temporary
tongue to the edge of the landAnd the land
itself was temporary, because if you took the
geological view, Duma wouldn't last longNone of
the Keys would; in the end the Gulf would take
them all and new ones would rise in new locations
It was probably true of Florida itselfThe land
was low, and on loan
128
Ah, but that sound was restful
Without opening my eyes, I felt for Ilse's e-mail
and ran the tips of my fingers over it againI
did this with my right handThen I opened my eyes,
brushed the e-mail printout aside with the hand
that was there, and pulled the Artisan pad onto my
lapI flipped back the cover, shook all twelve of
the pre-sharpened Venus pencils onto the table in
front of me, and began to drawI had an idea I
meant to draw Ilse - who had I been thinking of,
after all? - and thought I'd make a spectacularly
bad job of it, because I hadn't balenciaga knockoff attempted a single
human figure since starting to draw againBut it
wasn't Ilse, and it wasn't badNot great, maybe,
not Rembrandt (not even Norman Rockwell), but not
bad
It was a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins
tee-shirtThe number on the tee was 48, which
meant nothing to me; in my old life I used to go
to as many T-Wolves games as I could, but I've
never been a baseball fanThe guy had blond hair
which I knew wasn't quite right; I didn't have the
colors to get the exact darkening-toward-brown
shadeHe was carrying a book in one handHe was Ilse's special
newsThat was what the shells were saying as the
tide lifted them and turned them and dropped them
againShe had a ring, a diamond,
he had bought it at -
I had been shading the young man's jeans with
Venus BlueNow I dropped it, picked up the black,
and stroked the word
ZALES
at the bottom of the tiffany heart lock necklace she |