Duma Key (41 page)

“Edgar . . . I don't think ghosts can hurt people.”

“Maybe not ordinary people in an ordinary place,” I said.

He nodded, rather reluctantly. “All right. So what do you want to do?”

“What I
don't
want to do is leave. I'm not done here yet.”

I wasn't just thinking of the show—the bubble reputation. There was more. I just didn't know what the more was. Not yet. If I'd attempted putting it into words, it would have come out sounding stupid, like something written on a fortune cookie. Something with the word
fate
in it.

“Do you want to come down here to the
Palacio
? Move in with us?”

“No.” I thought that might make matters even worse, somehow. And besides, Big Pink was my place. I had fallen in love with it. “But Wireman, will you see how much you can find out about the Eastlake family in general and those two girls in particular? If you can read again, then maybe you could dig around on the Internet—”

He gripped my arm. “I'll dig like a motherfucker. Maybe you could do some good in that direction, as well. You're going to do an interview with Mary Ire, right?”

“Yes. They've scheduled it for the week after my so-called lecture.”

“Ask her about the Eastlakes. Maybe you'll hit the jackpot. Miss Eastlake was a big patron of the arts in her time.”

“Okay.”

He grasped the handles of the sleeping old woman's wheelchair and turned it around so it faced the orange roofs of the estate house again. “Now let's go look at my portrait. I want to see what I looked like back when I still thought Jerry Garcia could save the world.”

ii

I'd parked my car in the courtyard, beside Elizabeth Eastlake's silver Vietnam War–era Mercedes-Benz. I slid the portrait from my much humbler Chevrolet, set it on end, and held it up for Wireman to look at. As he stood there silently regarding it, a strange thought occurred to me: I was like a tailor standing beside a mirror in a men's clothing store. Soon my customer would either tell me he liked the suit I'd made for him, or shake his head regretfully and say it wouldn't do.

Far off to the south, in what I was coming to think of as the Duma Jungle, that bird took up its warning “Oh-oh!” cry again.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore. “Say something, Wireman. Say anything.”

“I can't. I'm speechless.”

“You? Not possible.”

But when he looked up from the portrait, I realized it was true. He looked like someone had walloped him on the head with a hammer. I understood by then that what I was doing affected people, but none of those reactions were quite like Wireman's on that March morning.

What finally woke him up was a sharp knocking sound. It was Elizabeth. She was awake and rapping on her tray. “Smoke!” she cried. “Smoke!
Smoke!
” Some things survived even the fog of Alzheimer's, it seemed. The part of her brain that craved nicotine never decayed. She'd smoke until the end.

Wireman took a pack of American Spirits from the pocket of his shorts, shook one out, put it in his mouth, and lit it. Then he held it out to her. “If I let
you handle this yourself, are you going to light yourself on fire, Miss Eastlake?”

“
Smoke!
”

“That's not very encouraging, dear.”

But he gave it to her, and Alzheimer's or no Alzheimer's, she handled it like a pro, drawing in a deep drag and jetting it out through her nostrils. Then she settled back in her chair, looking for the moment not like Captain Bligh on the poop deck but FDR on the reviewing stand. All she needed was a cigarette-holder to clamp between her teeth. And, of course, some teeth.

Wireman returned his gaze to the portrait. “You don't seriously mean to just give this away, do you? You can't. It's incredible work.”

“It's yours,” I said. “No arguments.”

“You have to put it in your show.”

“I don't know if that's such a good idea—”

“You yourself said once they're done, any effect on the subject's probably over—”

“Yeah,
probably
.”

“Probably's good enough for me, and the Scoto's safer than this house. Edgar, this deserves to be seen. Hell, it
needs
to be seen.”

“Is it you, Wireman?” I was honestly curious.

“Yes. No.” He stood looking at it a moment longer. Then he turned to me. “It's how I wanted to be. Maybe it's how I was, on the few best days of my best year.” He added, almost reluctantly: “My most idealistic year.”

For a little while we said nothing, only looked at the portrait while Elizabeth puffed like a choo-choo train. An
old
choo-choo train.

Then Wireman said: “There are many things I wonder about, Edgar. Since coming to Duma Key, I
have more questions than a four-year-old at bedtime. But one thing I don't wonder about is why you want to stay here. If I could do something like this, I'd want to stay here forever.”

“Last year at this time I was doodling on phone pads while I was on hold,” I said.

“So you said. Tell me something,
muchacho
. Looking at this . . . and thinking of all the other ones you've done since you started . . . would you change the accident that took your arm? Would you change it, even if you could?”

I thought of painting in Little Pink while The Bone pumped out hardcore rock and roll in thick chunks. I thought of the Great Beach Walks. I even thought of the older Baumgarten kid yelling
Yo, Mr. Freemantle, nice chuck!
when I spun the Frisbee back to him. Then I thought of waking up in that hospital bed, how dreadfully
hot
I had been, how scattered my thoughts had been, how sometimes I couldn't even remember my own name. The anger. The dawning realization (it came during
The Jerry Springer Show
), that part of my body was AWOL. I had started crying and had been unable to stop.

“I would change it back,” I said, “in a heartbeat.”

“Ah,” he said. “Just wondering.” And turned to take away Elizabeth's cigarette.

She immediately held out her hands like an infant who has been deprived of a toy. “Smoke!
Smoke! SMOKE!
” Wireman butted the cigarette on the heel of his sandal and a moment later she quieted again, the cigarette forgotten now that her nicotine jones was satisfied.

“Stay with her while I put the painting in the front hall, would you?” Wireman asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Wireman, I only meant—”

“I know. Your arm. The pain. Your wife. It was a stupid question. Obviously. Just let me put this painting safe, okay? Then the next time Jack comes, send him down here. We'll wrap it nice and he can take it to the Scoto. But I'm gonna scrawl NFS all over the packing before it goes to Sarasota. If you're giving it to me, this baby is
mine
. No screw-ups.”

In the jungle to the south, the bird took up its worried cry again: “Oh-oh! Oh-oh! Oh-oh!”

I wanted to say something else to him, explain to him, but he was hurrying away. Besides, it had been his question. His stupid question.

iii

Jack Cantori took
Wireman Looks West
to the Scoto the following day, and Dario called me as soon as he had it out of the cardboard panels. He claimed to have never seen anything like it, and said he wanted to make it and the
Girl and Ship
paintings the centerpieces of the show. He and Jimmy believed the very fact that those works weren't for sale would hype interest. I told him fine. He asked me if I was getting ready for my lecture, and I told him I was thinking about it. He told me that was good, because the event was already stirring “uncommon interest,” and the circulars hadn't even gone out yet.

“Plus of course we'll be sending JPEG images to our e-listers,” he said.

“That's great,” I said, but it didn't feel great. During those first ten days of March, a curious lassitude stole over me. It didn't extend to work; I
painted another sunset and another
Girl and Ship
. Each morning I walked on the beach with my pouch slung over my shoulder, prospecting for shells and any other interesting litter that might have washed up. I found a great many beer and soda cans (most worn as smooth and white as amnesia), a few prophylactics, a child's plastic raygun, and one bikini bottom. Zero tennis balls. I drank green tea with Wireman under the striped umbrella. I coaxed Elizabeth to eat tuna salad and macaroni salad, heavy on the mayo; I chivvied her into drinking Ensure “milkshakes” through a straw. One day I sat on the boardwalk beside her wheelchair and sanded the mystic rings of yellow callus on her big old feet.

What I did not do was make any notes for my supposed “art lecture,” and when Dario called to say it had been switched to the Public Library lecture space, which seated two hundred, I flatter myself that my offhand reply gave no clue as to how cold my blood ran.

Two hundred people meant four hundred eyes, all trained on me.

What I also did not do was write any invitations, make any move to reserve rooms for the nights of April fifteenth and sixteenth at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, or reserve a Gulfstream to fly down a gaggle of friends and relatives from Minnesota.

The idea that any of them might want to see my daubings began to seem nutty.

The idea that Edgar Freemantle, who one year previous had been fighting with the St. Paul Planning Committee about bedrock test drillings, might be giving an
art lecture
to a bunch of actual
art patrons
seemed absolutely insane.

The paintings seemed real enough, though, and the work was . . . God, the work was wonderful. When I stood before my easel in Little Pink at sunset, stripped to my gym shorts and listening to The Bone, watching
Girl and Ship No. 7
emerge from the white with eerie speed (like something sliding out of a fogbank), I felt totally awake and alive, a man in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, a ball that was a perfect fit for its socket. The ghost-ship had turned a little more; its name appeared to be the
Perse
. On a whim, I Googled this word, and found exactly one hit—probably a world's record. Perse was a private school in England, where the alumni were called Old Perseans. There was no mention of a School Ship, three-masted or otherwise.

In this latest version, the girl in the rowboat was wearing a green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back, and all around her, floating on the sullen water, were roses. It was a disturbing picture.

Walking on the beach, eating my lunch and drinking a beer, with Wireman or on my own, I was happy. When I was painting pictures I was happy. More than happy. When I was painting I felt filled up and fully realized in some basic way I had never understood before coming to Duma Key. But when I thought about the show at the Scoto and all the stuff that went into making an exhibition of new work successful, my mind went into lockdown. It was more than stage fright; this felt like outright panic.

I forgot things—like opening any e-mails from Dario, Jimmy, or Alice Aucoin at the Scoto. If Jack asked me if I was excited about “doing my thing” at the Selby Library's Geldbart Auditorium, I'd tell him oh-yeah, then ask him to gas up the Chevy in Osprey,
and forget what he'd asked me. When Wireman asked if I'd talked to Alice Aucoin yet about how the various groupings were to be hung, I'd suggest we volley some tennis balls, because Elizabeth seemed to enjoy watching.

Then, about a week before the scheduled lecture, Wireman said he wanted to show me something he'd made. A little craftwork. “Maybe you could give me your opinion as an artist,” he said.

There was a black folder lying on the table in the shade of the striped umbrella (Jack had mended the rip with a piece of electrician's tape). I opened it and took out what looked like a glossy brochure. On the front was one of my early efforts,
Sunset with Sophora,
and I was surprised at how professional it looked. Below the repro was this:

Dear Linnie: This is what I've been doing in Florida, and although I know you're awfully busy . . .

Below
awfully busy
was an arrow. I looked up at Wireman, who was watching me expressionlessly. Behind him, Elizabeth was staring at the Gulf. I didn't know if I was angry at his presumption or relieved by it. In truth, I felt both things. And I couldn't remember telling him I sometimes called my older daughter Linnie.

“You can use any type-font you want,” he said. “This one's a little girly-girl for my taste, but my collaborator likes it. And the name in each salutation is interchangeable, of course. You can customize. That's the beauty of doing things like this on a computer.”

I didn't reply, just turned to the next page. Here was
Sunset with Witchgrass
on one side and
Girl and
Ship No. 1
on the other. Running below the pictures was this:

. . . I hope you'll join me for an exhibition of my work, on the night of April 15th, at the Scoto Gallery, in Sarasota, Florida, 7 PM–10 PM. A First Class reservation in your name has been made on Air France Flight 22, departing Paris on the 15th at 8:25 AM and arriving in New York at 10:15 AM; you are also reserved on Delta Flight 496, leaving New York's JFK on the 15th at 1:20 PM and arriving in Sarasota at 4:30 PM. A limousine will meet your flight and take you to the Ritz-Carlton, where your stay has been booked, with my compliments, for the nights of April 15th–April 17th.

There was another arrow below this. I looked up at Wireman, bewildered. He was still with the poker face, but I could see a pulse beating on the right side of his forehead. Later on he said, “I knew I was putting our friendship on the line, but somebody had to do something, and by then it had become clear to me that it wasn't going to be you.”