Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide (5 page)

Kimmie Dee Burke could easily get on a person’s nerves. “Can you?” Isabel said.

“Yes. I’ll show you.”

Kimmie Dee went to an end table in the living room, pulled out a drawer, and there, sure enough, was a collection of crayon drawings on newsprint. A house and an apple tree. A horse, or possibly a dog. Isabel saw no evidence of outstanding talent, but to be nice she said, “Very good.”

Kimmie Dee nodded. “I did those for Miss Merriam.”

Isabel noted with some bewilderment that Kimmie Dee Burke seemed to adore Merriam. Perhaps Merriam never made Kimmie Dee sweep the back porch before she could have dinner or lectured her for half an hour about there being no excuse for carelessness.

Kimmie Dee wandered around as if checking the trailer to make sure Isabel hadn’t done any damage. “When is Miss Merriam coming back?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” The answer sounded too stark. Isabel added, “She isn’t feeling very well.”

Kimmie Dee’s shoulders drooped. She studied the framed portrait of John James, touched the blue-and-white porcelain bottle with a careful fingertip. “Well, guess I better go,” she said.

Without protesting, Isabel ushered her out.

Kimmie Dee was outside on the dirt path, Isabel in the doorway seeing her off, when the girl said, “You never told your name.”

“My name? Isabel.”

The child’s face contorted with shock.

Isabel stepped outside. “What’s wrong?”

Kimmie Dee didn’t speak.

Isabel said, “I’m Merriam’s niece. I lived with her years ago. Did she ever talk about me?” Maybe Merriam had said that her niece, Isabel, was some sort of monster.

At last, Kimmie Dee said, “She called me that.”

Insects were buzzing. The palms rattled in a gust of warm wind. “Merriam called you Isabel?”

“Yes.” The girl took a backward step. “I got to go.”

“Kimmie Dee—”

But Kimmie Dee Burke was running up the drive, leaving motes of dust whirling in the sunlight behind her.

After Kimmie Dee Burke’s visit, Isabel’s concentration was shot. She wanted to know why Merriam had called Kimmie Dee Isabel. She wanted to know how Kimmie Dee could have been so fond of Merriam.

Merriam had been in her fifties, a solitary local eccentric, when nine-year-old Isabel came to live with her at Cape St. Elmo. Merriam and her brother, Johnny, Isabel’s father, had been estranged for years. When Isabel became Merriam’s responsibility, Merriam’s primary concern had been making sure Isabel did not become an irresponsible ne’er-do-well— in other words, making sure Isabel didn’t take after her father. Isabel’s mother, Johnny’s third wife, had been generally beneath mention as far as Merriam was concerned.

So Merriam had cracked the whip, and Isabel labored; Merriam lay down the law, and Isabel obeyed; Merriam lectured, and Isabel learned. Until Isabel, inevitably, rebelled and did everything Merriam had tried to prevent her from doing and then some.

Isabel leaned against the sink, gazing across the weeds at the house. It was a hell of a scene, like something out of a horror movie. What a strange man John James Anders must have been to build that ambitious structure, with its deep porches and elaborate gingerbread trim, in such an inhospitable spot. Now that Isabel thought of it, the gesture smacked of recklessness, even arrogance. According to Merriam’s history lessons, John James had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to do it: “He came here with nothing but the shirt on his back, and first thing you know he had a sawmill and a turpentine business and decided to build himself a house. There weren’t even any roads around here to speak of. Every stick of this place had to come in by steamer. Every stick.”

It was a pity that Merriam had let the place fall to pieces after working so hard to keep it up. Merriam had cut dead fronds from the palms, chopped palmettos out by the roots, painted the front porch—.

The gasoline can was gone.

A red gasoline can had been sitting on the front steps. It was gone.

Isabel put on her sneakers and stepped out into the blazing forenoon. The house seemed to hover, almost to lean toward her. She walked along the dirt track to the palm-shaded drive. She should have worn a hat. Merriam’s sun hat was hanging on a peg by the door and she should have taken it. The sun was dazzling.

Isabel stood at the front steps. A circle of rust showed where the gasoline can had been. She looked around. The can was not on the porch. It was not in the palmetto thickets encroaching on the steps. Somebody had moved it. Somebody had been here without Isabel’s knowledge. She would ask Clem Davenant if anyone else had a reason to come to the house.

The air was motionless, the only sound the hum of dirt daubers at their mud-colored nests under the porch roof. Isabel gazed at the boarded-up front door. She could go in, see what was left. She pictured the wide hall and the staircase, the front parlor with its marble mantelpiece. The door was nailed shut. She imagined her younger self inside, trapped.

She wasn’t going in. She had no reason to go in. She turned away.

***

That afternoon, Merriam was awake. She sat on the side of her hospital bed, a flowered hospital gown voluminous around her shrunken body. Her eyes were fixed on a point beyond Isabel’s shoulder, and from time to time her mouth worked soundlessly. “She’s better today,” said Dr. McIntosh. “If she keeps up this way, we can move her to Bernice Chatham’s.”

“I guess so.” Isabel’s heart was laboring. The reunion was worse than she had anticipated. The pink carnations she had brought lay on the bedside table in their cellophane wrapping.

When Dr. McIntosh stepped out of the room, Isabel took Merriam’s hand. The skin was mottled and rough. Isabel said, “Merriam? Merriam, it’s Isabel.”

Merriam’s body stiffened. Her hand closed on Isabel’s like a vise. “Don’t do it,” she said. She rounded on Isabel.
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

Isabel tried to pull away, but Merriam was flailing, clutching at Isabel’s sleeve, at Isabel’s hair. Isabel struggled silently, unable to escape the thought that Merriam was trying to destroy her. Merriam’s screams rose into an agonized, wordless howl.

In seconds, Dr. McIntosh was back, and a nurse had rushed in with a hypodermic. Isabel extricated herself and Merriam was subdued, her cries becoming more languid, modulating to dreary moans.

Isabel left the room, weak with relief at her escape. She talked with Dr. McIntosh on the hospital porch, where empty cane-backed rocking chairs sat in an even row. “You can see it’s a difficult situation,” the doctor said. “The slightest thing agitates her. She has medication all right, but it takes time to adjust the dosages.”

Merriam’s fingernails had raked Isabel’s neck and left a stinging scratch. She touched it gingerly.

“The skin is barely broken,” Dr. McIntosh said. “Clean it with hydrogen peroxide and put antibiotic ointment on it. It’ll be all right.”

The drive back to the Cape was sweltering. Isabel’s thoughts kept returning to the scene with Merriam. She must have done something wrong. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken Merriam’s hand.

Isabel was still wondering why Merriam had called Kimmie Dee Burke by Isabel’s name. She wanted to talk with Kimmie Dee again. Since the girl was in the habit of visiting Merriam, she must live close by. After Isabel doctored her scratch, she decided to take a walk and look at the names on neighboring mailboxes.

Finding Kimmie Dee Burke proved absurdly simple. Across the road from Isabel’s driveway, straggling through the dunes toward the Beachcomber, was a line of stucco cottages. The name
Burke
was on the closest mailbox. The house was a flat-roofed bungalow like the others, painted a fading turquoise. Squatting under the carport near the screened back door, stirring in a red plastic bucket with a toy shovel, was Kimmie Dee Burke. A diapered toddler stood beside her, looking on.

Isabel walked a few steps up the driveway. “Kimmie Dee?” she called.

The girl looked up. Isabel couldn’t read her expression. “Has Miss Merriam come home yet?” she asked.

“No. No, she hasn’t.” Closer now, Isabel could see that the bucket was half full of wet sand. Several circular patties of sand had been deposited on the concrete. “Are you making mud pies?” she asked.

Kimmie Dee looked incredulous. “Mud pies? No!”

Isabel pointed to the blobs of sand. “I thought those were mud pies.”

Kimmie Dee snorted. “They’re
sand cakes.”

So much for chitchat. The toddler crowed loudly. “That’s my brother, Toby,” said Kimmie Dee. Toby plunged a chubby hand into the bucket, pulled out a fistful of sand, and flung it at Isabel.

Isabel sidestepped and pushed on. “I wanted to ask about something you told me. You said Merriam called you Isabel.”

Now the girl did look uncomfortable. “That’s right.”

“Well, I wanted to know— when did she call you that? What did she say?”

After a slight hesitation, Kimmie Dee said dismissively, “She was just mixed up.” She picked up the shovel. With a sweetness Isabel could not believe was customary, she said, “Now we’ll make sand cakes for
you,
Toby.”

Merriam
was
mixed-up, and the question wasn’t crucial, but it felt crucial. Isabel said, “If you could tell me when she did it. Tell me what she said.”

Kimmie Dee sighed. “Miss Merriam would get mixed up and say, ‘Here’s your banana, Isabel,’ or ‘That’s a mighty pretty drawing, Isabel,’ and I’d say, ‘I’m
Kimmie Dee!’
and we would laugh. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all. Isabel could tell by looking at the girl’s face. She didn’t want to push much harder, though. “There wasn’t any other time?”

Kimmie Dee shook her head. Her hair fell along her cheeks.

“All right, then.” Isabel half-turned to leave.

“Just that day,” Kimmie Dee said.

Isabel stopped. “That day? What day?”

“The day I saw her down yonder.” Kimmie Dee pointed in the general direction of the lighthouse. “The day she got sick.”

Isabel tried to remember what Clem and Dr. McIntosh had told her about Merriam’s accident. Merriam was found wandering on the beach, dazed and incoherent. Nobody ever said who found her. “Were you the first one to see her?”

Kimmie Dee nodded. “Yes’m. I had been practicing my routine, and I saw her. She was holding her head. Walking funny. I said to her, ‘What’s wrong, Miss Merriam?’ and she looked at me like she didn’t see me at all. And that’s when she called me Isabel.”

Isabel’s throat was tight. “What did she say?”

Kimmie Dee squirmed, as if trying to wriggle away from the memory. “She said,
‘Help me, Isabel! Help me, Isabel!’ ”
She shivered. “I tried to tell her I wasn’t Isabel.”

Isabel stared down the beach at the lighthouse.
Help me, Isabel.
Kimmie Dee went back to stirring the wet sand. Toby, meanwhile, had pulverized several sand cakes and was depositing their remains in his wispy brown hair.

Isabel smelled cigarette smoke. Standing inside the screened back door of the Burke house, a cigarette in his hand, a man stood watching her.

She was embarrassed, as if she had been caught intruding. She said, “Hello.”

“Hidy.” The man was about fifty, with graying blond hair and a weathered face. He wore an open-necked shirt that exposed white chest hairs. On his wrist was a complicated-looking black watch.

“I’m Isabel Anders. I’m staying across the road at my aunt’s place.”

“Ted Stiles.” The man turned and called, “Joy! You got company!”

Isabel glanced at Kimmie Dee. The girl seemed intent on her sand cakes.

A woman with tousled bleached hair appeared beside Ted Stiles. She had an attractive, sulky face and a well-formed body shown off by pink-and-white-checked shorts and a matching halter top. She came out the screen door, looked at Toby, and said, “My God, Kimmie Dee! Look at the mess you let him make.”

Ted Stiles said, “Joy, this is— um—”

“Isabel Anders.”

“Isabel Anders. Looks like she already met Kimmie Dee.”

Joy Burke said, “Hi,” and returned to Kimmie Dee. “Turn on the hose this minute and rinse him off. You know better than that.”

Stiles said, “Would you like a beer or something, Isabel?”

“No, thanks.” Isabel felt a need to explain what she was doing there. To Joy Burke, she said, “I’m Merriam Anders’s niece. I was just talking to Kimmie Dee about Merriam’s accident.”

“Oh, yeah,” Joy Burke said. “Give me a cigarette, would you, Ted?” When the cigarette had been donated and a light provided, Joy said, “Kimmie Dee found her. She sneaks out early in the morning to practice her baton. I’ve told her not to. She’ll get a whipping for it one day.”

The prediction didn’t seem to faze Kimmie Dee, who had turned on the hose as requested and was dribbling water over a delighted Toby. “I’m going to be in the talent contest July Fourth,” the girl said.

“Hush up. The lady doesn’t care about that.” Joy Burke expelled smoke. “Kimmie Dee came running in all upset and got me. Poor Miss Merriam wasn’t making any sense at all. I called the ambulance and they took her off.”

Stiles, leaning in the doorway, said, “May I ask what you all are talking about?”

Joy Burke smiled at him, teasing. “Nosy, aren’t you?”

Stiles grinned, but Isabel didn’t think he was amused. “Yes, I’m real nosy.”

Isabel said, “My aunt had a serious accident. The doctor thinks she fell and hit her head. Kimmie Dee found her wandering on the beach.”

“You don’t say,” Stiles said. “When was this, exactly?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“She in the hospital?”

“She is now. She’s going to be released before long, I think.”

Kimmie Dee’s head turned quickly toward Isabel as Joy said, “Really? She’s coming home?”

Isabel shook her head. “She isn’t well enough to come home right now. She’s going to stay with a nurse in town. A woman named Bernice Chatham.”

“Poor thing,” said Joy.

Stiles picked at his bottom lip as if removing tobacco, although he was smoking a filter tip. “You never told me this, Joy.”

Joy simpered, “I don’t tell you every little thing.” To Isabel she said, “Miss Merriam was off her head, hollering and all. It was terrible.”