It was an excuse not to be alone in our sodden clothes. We both knew but played along. The gazebo was already filling with the scent of her. The September air was body-heated.
She led, I followed. I thought we were going to the house. Instead, she led me to the family cemetery where I’d first heard her voice. Chestra knelt by a marble crypt that I recognized as the grave of Nellie Kay Dorn. She used the flashlight to illuminate the headstone next to it.
“This is my godmother,” she said and placed her hand upon the stone, an affectionate, familiar gesture. I got the impression Chestra came here often.
She held the flashlight steady. In the harsh light, I read what the stonecutter had engraved:
MARLISSA ARKHAM DORN
BORN FEBRUARY 7, 1923, VARGUS, AUSTRIA
DIED OCTOBER 19, 1944,
SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA
WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES
October 19—she’d died in the hurricane Arlis had told us about.
Chessie stood. “It’s an old line, but I mean it: Let’s get out of these wet things and into a dry martini. What a night! I’ll show you Marlissa’s picture.”
I checked my watch: 11:20.
I told her, “Just one.”
23
There were two photos on the piano, black-and-white glossies, and I looked from one to the other as Chestra played softly. She’d changed into a lime satin robe and heeled slippers. I stood barefoot on a towel; another wrapped around my neck.
Coincidentally, she was playing the melody I’d heard while eavesdropping from the beach—a song I recognized but had yet to ask its name.
One photo was of the boat that had sunk on the night of 19 October 1944. It was a beauty—a thirty-eight-foot Matthews, according to information on the back. From the data that was noted, I would’ve known a man had written it even if I hadn’t seen the precise masculine hand.
Built 1939, Port Clinton, Ohio. Oak keel, double oak frame, Philippine mahogany planking. Master cabin and crew quarters bunks six. Twin gas engines, Chrysler straight-8s. Top speed, 25 knots, range 400 miles.
Yes, a beauty. A vessel that had been much loved, judging from the number of times it was a backdrop for family photos. But this was the first full shot of it I’d seen—taken from the beach, probably, because the aspect was from the vessel’s port side, forward of the bow.
The photo showed the boat under way, a white wake breaking beneath bow stringers, yacht pennants flying from the wooden radio mast and bow pulpit, all indicators of speed. It was a classic design from that era: low, roomy wheelhouse, three portholes forward, a stern deck that was open. Lashed to the stern was a wooden dinghy; an American flag on the transom above it, catching the wind.
The boat’s hull and wheelhouse roof were painted black or midnight blue. The decking and cabin frame were amber-stained mahogany; the wheelhouse roof was painted white.
The vessel’s name was Dark Light. It’s rare when a boat is christened with a name that fits. Most suffer cutesy double entendres, or names that are saccharine sweet attempts at poetry. I’ve never named a boat for the simple reason that I lack the imagination. Dark Light was perfect for this vessel. It celebrated her hull color, and also her quickness—twenty-five knots was lightning fast in those times. Even now, it’s fast for a boat her size. The name was subtle and esoteric, like her understated design.
It had been a tragedy to lose a craft so articulately made to a storm. But Dark Light hadn’t fallen to just any storm. Arlis had seeded the date in my memory: 19 October 1944. A hurricane had flooded Sanibel on that date. It was a storm that had killed several hundred people. Among the dead were Cuban fishermen who were buried on the same beach where the body of another victim was found: Marlissa Dorn.
I’d just visited the woman’s grave. Now I picked up her photo and looked at it closely for the first time.
I expected to be disappointed by this “extraordinary beauty,” as she was described by Chestra.
I wasn’t.
The photograph was a black-and-white glossy, eight-by-ten, framed and glassed. It was a Hollywood-style glamour shot that I associate with film stars from the 1930s and ’40s. Full length, professional lighting.
Marlissa Dorn wore a black gown that accentuated how she would look if a man were lucky enough to see her naked: long legs, sensual symmetry of hips, breasts full and firm enough to resume their natural curvature once free of the garment’s constraints.
The gown was black but glittered with sequins. She stood with hip canted to one side, her opposite hand held at eye level, a cigarette between her fingers. The woman was leaning against a black grand piano as if taking a break from performing.
I glanced at Chestra and studied her face for a moment as she sat at the piano and continued to play. I returned my attention to the photo.
Marlissa’s cigarette was freshly lit. The smoke formed a lucent arc with the same curvilinear contour as her hips and breasts. She was staring through cigarette smoke at the camera, her hair combed full and glossy to her shoulder, head tilted in a way that emphasized the intensity of her gaze and the dimensions of her perfect face.
Her eyes were shadowed, I noticed. It added an exotic, smoldering effect.
The photo had been lighted and composed by a superb craftsman. The photographer also had an extraordinary subject to work with.
There were photographs in this house of several women who resembled Marlissa Dorn—the delicacy of chin, the swollen weight of lips, her body, her eyes. But the genetic pool had found a separate and elevated balance in this woman.
“Isn’t she the most exquisite thing you’ve ever seen?” Chestra spoke without looking up from the keys.
A few faces came into my mind—film stars from the same era. Rita Hayworth. Lauren Bacall. Veronica Lake. Women who were signature beauties of their generation. I prefer women whose beauty requires time to assemble. The appeal is more private. But there was no denying that Marlissa Dorn was among the rarest of the rare.
“Yes. She’s very pretty.” Once again, my eyes moved from the photograph to Chestra. There were startling family similarities. I noted the shape of Marlissa’s chin, the wide full lips, the eye spacing…
“Please don’t flatter me by saying I look like Marlissa. Tommy did the same thing. I’m all too aware that she was in an entirely different league.”
I paused a moment to inspect her intonation. There was subtext of some kind. Drama. Or was it jealousy? I find beautiful women intimidating. Most men do—the cliché of the prettiest girl in school who can’t get a date is experientially based. Women are intimidated as well. Beauty is supposed to be only skin-deep but it’s not. Beauty is power. Its facial components can be described mathematically, but emotionally it is nature’s prime currency. We attempt to trivialize beauty’s power because it makes us uneasy, even as we covet it.
I shrugged. The woman was commenting on a family legend, so I let it go. “Your godmother was gorgeous, no question. This looks like a PR shot. I’m surprised movie producers didn’t mob her.”
The woman stopped playing, but the piano’s sustain pedal let the melody echo. “Oh, but they did. Not mob her—that came later. By the time Marlissa was fifteen, she’d been offered several modeling and film contracts. At sixteen, she starred in her first film. Her talent was considered quite remarkable.”