Sea Creatures (28 page)

“It's sad. He not coming home.”

The doctor's smile faded. He looked at me.

“That's right, baby,” I said, smoothing Frankie's hair. “That's exactly right. Daddy had an accident, and we're not going to see him anymore.”

Frankie nodded. “See? Mommy talk about it, when the bird flied.”

“I'm very sorry to hear that, Frankie,” said the doctor.

“Me, too,” Frankie said. He pointed above the bed. “See my octopus friend right there? See my sea horse friend right there?”

And the doctor, to his credit, stayed several minutes more, paying close attention as Frankie introduced each of his creatures. Frankie struggled to a kneeling position and Dr. Lomano helped him, and I watched Frankie's little fingertips as he touched the animals, sending them swaying.

21

RIGGS RETURNED THE FOLLOWING EVENING
with pizza for everyone. Lidia brought her rarely used knitting supplies, and Charlie set to examining them while we all ate. Usually when Lidia or my father were in the room, Charlie slipped out to attend to some errand or another, but this time he sat down in one of the lawn chairs, and after the pizza was finished, he and Lidia started knitting.

I was reading to Frankie when Sally and Carson came in. The book blocked my view of the doorway, so it wasn't until Carson jumped on the bed and was chastised by Sally that I even realized they were there. I threw myself into her arms and helped Carson stand at Frankie's feet so he could see the floating animals up close. Sally took off her shoes and sat with Carson and Frankie on the bed, chatting and playing cat's cradle with some of Lidia's yarn. When I asked about rebuilding the house, she shrugged and said she figured they might as well. They didn't rise to leave until bedtime.

Sally pulled my hands to her chest before going out and asked quietly how Frankie was doing.

“Ask again in a few days,” I said.

“My Lord,” she said, her eyes dampening. “You've got quite a full plate, don't you?”

“I was thinking the same of you.”

“Oh, I hated that house, anyway.” She tilted her head. “Except sometimes. It's strange, all our stuff is gone, but I can't bring myself to care very much. Stanley cried about his Porsche. ”

“He'll get another.”

“Maybe we'll live at the Hampton Suites for the rest of our lives. Free breakfast.”

The next day, we woke to find phone service had been restored. I used a phone at the nurses' station to call Graham's mother's husband, Bob Winters, and tell him what had happened to Graham. I spent a long time listening to his labored breathing and confused questions. He mentioned that his daughter and her new baby were living with him, and as if to prove it a baby cried out in the background.

Next, I called Graham's colleague Larry Birnbaum, who had read about Graham's death in the newspaper. He'd been trying to get in touch with me to let me know I was welcome to pick up the few items left behind in Graham's office. There was an old photo of me and Frankie, he said, a stack of weather maps Graham had collected over the years, and a few books. I declined. Larry mentioned, offhandedly, that he'd boxed the items up after Graham's last day. After we hung up, the way he'd put it nagged at me, and I called back. After some misunderstanding, I finally wrangled from Larry this fact: Graham had been dismissed from his job with Rosenstiel at the same time that he'd left the
Revelle
. The details of his flight from the ship remained unclear, but Larry said something about keeping the whole thing private, out of respect for me and my son. He also mentioned pointedly, as if this were a detail prominent in my mind, that he knew Graham had bought supplementary insurance out of pocket, so although his work-subsidized plan was canceled when he was let go, the second plan would still pay out.

This was the first I'd thought of insurance. Larry transferred me to a woman in human resources who gave me the number of the company representative who worked with Graham's team, and from her I learned that Graham had bought a sizable plan just before he'd left for the
Revelle
. There were forms to fill out; she would send them.

When I reentered the room, I found a kind of party in full swing: my father with his ukulele propped on one knee, Riggs nodding along in conversation with Lidia, and Frankie sitting up in bed playing a bumbling—but apparently hilarious—game of handball with Antoine, wherein if Antoine couldn't swat back or catch the ball, Frankie ambled to get it while Antoine's mother shadowed him in case he needed help. Charlie was not in the room. For a moment, I stood watching the scene from the doorway, thinking that Graham should have been there, too. But then I remembered something. It was something I would need to continue to remember, throughout those months after Graham's death. I might have missed him, but Graham would not have wanted to be there, in the thick of any kind of domestic chaos. He would have been eyeing the door, as he'd done the evening we'd returned from the Dry Tortugas and he'd made origami for Frankie while I napped. And his own discomfort would have continued to hurt him as much as it hurt me.

Whether he meant to kill himself, I still don't know. He couldn't have been certain the
Lullaby
would sink, after all. The insurance company would request all his medical records from Detention, but in the end the policy would pay out. I assume Graham bought it because he could not ignore the perils of living in a place surrounded by water, and out of love and concern for his family. And it made a difference. That money would continue to provide the only kind of peace of mind he'd ever been able to give us.

 

OVER THE COURSE OF OUR
three hospital-bound weeks, Frankie's walking continued to improve, with fewer incidents of the
seizing behavior
, as Dr. Lomano called it. There was one other thing, which the doctor said was unlikely to go away, but also unlikely to cause much trouble: when Frankie looked at you straight on, his right eye wandered slightly to the outside of his vision. This was due either to trauma to the retina or mixed messages from the brain left over from the swelling. Objects in Frankie's far peripheral vision might appear flattened or smaller than they really were, skewed almost undetectably. If Frankie noticed this, he didn't mention anything, and I didn't ask him about it. I would need to have his vision tested twice a year to make sure the problem, which the doctor called
strabismus
, didn't worsen.

When I asked Dr. Sonia about it, she shrugged. “I can barely even see it,” she said. “What's the big problem?”

It continued to be reassuring and frustrating both, working with her.

Sally and her boys were at loose ends in the hotel suite, all their camps canceled for the remainder of the summer. And so more days than not, they came by with sandwiches and cookies and games, and the older boys horsed around in the lounge or took themselves on expeditions through the hospital while Carson and Frankie played with Legos or action figures and Sally and I chatted. Charlie made himself scarce when people visited and showed up again after they left; he never exchanged more than a few words with Sally, though he and my father and Lidia always made polite conversation before Charlie headed out. I teased Charlie that he was practically an imaginary friend.

Though he'd started out spending nights in Frankie's room, there was no truly comfortable place for visitors to sleep—I'd been squeezing into Frankie's small bed and Charlie had been taking the floor or the short lounge sofa—so eventually I convinced Charlie to spend nights at Riggs's. A day or two later, Nurse Barb was moved by my homelessness and new widowhood to bring a cot, which she squeezed between Frankie's bed and the wall. There, with only me and Frankie and Antoine in the room at night, I slept soundly for the first time in years. Despite everything, I have many contented memories of our time in the hospital, though none as precious as that of falling asleep beside my lightly snoring son, secure that his sleep would be a typical child's sleep, filled with dreams and not much else.

For Nurse Barb's birthday, Lidia brought a cake and candles and party hats, and Frankie made her a card. We took up a collection from the other families in the unit and celebrated in the lounge, and when she opened the card she cried and her mascara ran.

Riggs became a near-daily fixture in the room, stopping by with
pastelitos
and Cuban coffee in the late morning, handing off coloring books to Frankie and Antoine and paperwork to Charlie, who always turned up shortly after sunrise. The paperwork, I gathered, though Charlie was tight-lipped on the subject, had to do with repairs to Charlie's house in South Miami, which hadn't been occupied since Vivian had left for the rest home. With Riggs's help, Charlie hired roofers, painters, plumbers, and even an interior designer (someone Riggs was dating), who was in charge of choosing wall paint and wallpaper, some furniture, a few rugs. Every day brought some new hiccup. The neighbors' tree trimmer was blocking the driveway and the roofers couldn't get in. Then the painters found lead in the exterior trim paint and renegotiated their fee. Then the flooring people said the downstairs wood could be refinished but the upstairs might be better off with new carpeting, so extensive was the water damage.

I needled Charlie for information, but he continued to be evasive. “What's the problem with the floors?” I'd say, and he'd say, “I don't really know.” I'd say, “What colors were you hoping for?” and he'd shrug. “Blues, yellows, maybe even some pink.”

“You just want to be back at Stiltsville,” I'd said, and he shrugged again, avoiding my eyes.

We had both reached the end of an era in our lives. When I looked forward, I couldn't see far, which made me distinctly uncomfortable. When I mentioned this to Lidia, she reassured me. “Make no decisions!” she said. “Come to my house, settle in, get Frankie back in preschool! Then figure out your plan.”

This seemed at once very good advice and also impossible to follow. Wasn't a shaky plan better than no plan at all? Temporary housing in Lidia's guest room was comforting and familiar, but unfeasible long-term. When I explained this to Sally, she reminded me that her five-person family was living in a hotel suite next door to a Denny's, and that they would continue to live there for months, maybe even a year. She said she'd already gained five pounds. She guessed this was because there was so little cleaning to do.

“But you're rebuilding your house,” I said. “I'm not rebuilding anything.”

“So build one,” she said. “There are plenty of empty lots these days.”

There was the remote possibility of moving back to Round Lake, where the cottage now sat empty.

“Illinois?” said Sally. “No.”

“Good schools,” I said.

“You stay here,” she said. “With us.” She gestured around the room. Sally and I sat cross-legged on my cot, and on the far side of Frankie's bed he and Carson ate ice cream in the patio chairs and Lidia knitted. Riggs was propped at the foot of Antoine's bed, teaching him a card trick he'd been teaching Carson and Frankie a few minutes before. (Riggs's ease with kids reminded me that he'd lost his son, which reminded me again to be grateful for Frankie's recovery.) Even Henry Gale had stopped by a few times—he'd been giving out free printing to anyone whose pet had gone missing in the storm, for posting flyers—and Marse Heiger had called earlier that day to say she'd be coming by with dinner. She'd been working long hours in a volunteer phone bank in the lobby of her condo building. Was she allowed to bring wine to a hospital? she'd asked, and after I passed the question on to the room, Lidia and Sally clapped enthusiastically and told me to tell her to smuggle it in a Thermos.

More than once I let myself wonder if Charlie would invite Frankie and me to live with him in the house in South Miami, which I'd gathered had plenty of room. I'd told myself if and when the time came to decline. There had been no discussion of a shared future. We'd never so much as eaten a meal in a restaurant or watched a movie together. We'd never spoken on the phone or kissed in public. Imagining us together, in a traditional way, was like imagining life on another planet. It had shades of a reality that was familiar to me, but all the indistinct details kept muddling the picture.

Riggs went home, my father had a gig, and Stanley came by to pick up the kids but Sally stayed. Charlie hung around even though Sally and Lidia were still in the room, but it was quiet, relatively speaking, when Marse arrived.

“You've certainly settled in,” said Marse to me, eyeing the mobiles. A few had torn from handling and Charlie had taped them. Whenever a door opened in the hallway, they fluttered. “You know,” she said to Frankie, examining his fading wounds, “you're supposed to land in the
water
.” He giggled.

The wine was poured and the sandwiches were distributed. Marse told a story about a homeless man who worked beside her at the phone bank, who kept asking her out on dates. Once, she'd actually consented—nothing had materialized with Henry Gale—and they'd ended up at the Barnacle, an historic home on the bay in Coconut Grove, listening to people play guitar and drinking dark liquor out of a brown-bagged bottle, her paramour in sweatpants and she in a suit. Lidia started hiccupping loudly during Marse's story, which made all of us laugh, including Frankie. Charlie was quiet in the storm of girl-talk but seemed content enough, sitting with his legs crossed and his fingertips against his cheek. Every few minutes I felt his eyes on me. I warmed under his gaze. In the time we'd spent at the hospital, we'd done little more than touch hands. When it was just us and Frankie, I kept some distance between us and he respected it. But now I felt the surfacing of a distinct urge.

Nurse Barb came by to ask us to quiet down, which Charlie took as a cue to leave. I followed him into the hall to say good-bye, and he pulled me into a supply closet. “This,” he said, and kissed me hard on the mouth. “I have been waiting for this.”

“I—” I said, but then his mouth was on mine again, his hands inside the waistband of my jeans.

“I love watching you,” he said when we came up for air.

His brow pressed against mine. I liked the way our shoulders met almost evenly, as if we'd been carved in mirror image from one large substance. But as he pulled me in, more and more urgent, I felt myself receding. My lips numbed. Sorrow rose in my chest. I felt that it was possible—just possible—that our time had come and gone.

“Come back,” he said.

I shook my head.

“It's okay,” he said quietly.