“Look.”
The sky above the trees where we’d just emerged was alive with silver streaks.
“Meteor shower,” Mel said.
“Wrong time of year.”
“Nonetheless.”
In a minute it was over. The regular stars shimmered demurely in the dense black.
“Did you make a wish?” Mel asked me.
“No. I didn’t have time to think.”
He put his arm around me and we stood there on the dock watching the sky for a while, waiting for something else to happen.
22
The restaurant was dim and for once just the right coolness, not the usual bone-chilling freeze I’d come to expect in Florida. Amber cut-glass tumblers clinked discreetly as ice water was poured into them from a silver pitcher, a relief compared to New York City restaurants, where you felt as if you were at a very loud nerve-racking party with everyone else in the room. Our waitress’s name was Slim, which I thought was a strange name for a woman until my uncle explained that Slim was what you called anyone who was tall. Like Red, for redheads. Down South, nicknames stuck. In my class at RISD there had been a girl from Alabama named Shug Maloney, Shug short for Sugar.
It was my last night in Florida, which also happened to be my birthday. I was wearing the hibiscus print dress Aunty Mabel had bought for me although I had a cardigan on over it because I was self-conscious about my newest scar. My hair was up in a bun like Nai-nai’s. The trick, I’d found, was to do it right after you got out of the shower when your hair was still wet. I could feel the chill of the jade point on my nape.
“I’m a lucky man,” Uncle Richard pronounced. “Out on the town with the two handsomest women in St. Pete.” He was looking the healthiest he had in days and dressed like a real high roller-gleaming black oxfords, gold cuff links, but not, I was relieved to see, the parrot tie. It made me feel less guilty about the mornings I’d missed with him. He squinted at me behind his glasses. “So who you think she looks like?” he asked my aunt.
Aunty Mabel considered. “She used to look like her ba-ba. Now she looks a little like her Aunty Ching-yu.” She explained to me: “My second-to-oldest sister. Serious face, always thinking.” I tried, unsuccessfully, to remember which face that was from Nai-nai’s old albums.
“And what happen to this sister?” My uncle picked up a roll and reached for the butter dish as my aunt deftly slid it away from him.
“She married a merchant’s son. Three children.”
“Merchant’s son,” said my uncle. “That means rich. We gotta find a rich man for Sally, support her be an artist. That Mel, is he rich?”
“Not exactly.”
“He’s a good boy, though.”
My uncle had met Mel only once, when he’d come by to pick me up and Aunty Mabel had persuaded him to come in for lemonade. They’d talked basketball. Everyone was polite. I knew Ma would hear every detail of my bad behavior, how I hadn’t even come home for the last two nights.
That morning I’d watched Mel shaving naked, angling into the bathroom mirror, one foot up on the edge of the bathtub, as classical a stance as any marble Greek warrior. “You could drive back with me, you know,” he said.
“My plane ticket’s nonrefundable.”
“Maybe I’ll just have to make a pit stop then.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, there was this gas station attendant in Savannah.”
“How old is she?”
“You’re jealous,” he said, reaching behind to wrap his arm around me. “I like that.”
On this, our last morning together, we drove into St. Pete to a consignment shop and he bought me a birthday present, the cardigan I was wearing, black with pearl buttons in the 1930s style I liked. Then we got some postcards and sat in a coffee shop to write them.
“Which should we send to Doug?” Mel asked me. “The manatees?”
“How about the alligator wrestling one?”
“Excellent choice.”
“The manatees go to Lillith.”
“You wanna do it?”
“Sure.”
I wrote: “This is how Mel and Sally spend their time in Florida, swimming and getting fat. We hope you are too.”
Mel was hunched over, scrawling something complicated to Douglas. The errant hair like an exclamation point was standing up. I reached over and brushed it down. “Your gas station lady won’t recognize you, you’re so dark.”
“Nothing compared to you.”
“I could stay here forever.”
“I know what you mean, honey.”
“What’s going to happen? I mean, when we get back.”
“I’m going to summer school and you’re going back to New York City to your advertising job.”
“What about us?”
“We’ll talk.”
I knew, then, for certain, that it was over. Something was over.
After a while I asked: “What are you telling people? About the hospital, I mean.”
“The truth. It’s kind of hip to have a screw loose, don’t you think? Especially if you’re an artist.”
“Not if you’re a graphic designer.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He grinned and then leaned over and whispered: “You know what I’m going to be thinking about every single second I’m on the road?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Swear on my mother’s honor. You are unquestionably the sexiest woman I have ever known.”
“Out of how many? You are so full of it.”
“Admit it, Sally. You know we’re a match.”
And it was true, driving back to my uncle and aunt’s, I wasn’t sure whether I could let him go. I had an image of us pulling up in front of the house and him asking one last time if I wanted a ride up and I’d say yes and run in and pack in two minutes and we’d be off, speeding up 1-95 where it would grow cooler and cooler, back into early spring like a time warp. Somewhere in the Carolinas we’d pick up a six-pack and check into a No-Tel motel and mess up the sheets. But he didn’t ask, and after we’d kissed good-bye he let me off at the corner and said, “I’ll miss you, honey.” As he pulled away, honking the horn wildly, I felt something extreme lift from me, and I was almost relieved, as if this were a signal that I could go on with my life, although I knew I was going to be sad later.
Uncle Richard wanted lobster, but my aunt took the menu from him and gave the waiter directions: scrod, broiled, margarine, no sauce. Uncle Richard pointed at me. “Niece, you order anything you want. Shrimp, huh? They have them delicious here, jumbo prawns, you’ll like.”
“I think I’ll have the lobster.”
My uncle leaned back, unbuttoning his vest. “So how old are you, Niece? Twenny-eight? What was I doing when I was twenny-eight? I got my accountant’s degree, thought I was a big shot. Impress your aunt, huh?”
“Ding-ah!”
“Work extra hard to impress this lady. She’s so sophisticated, from good family. I wear flashy clothes, doesn’t impress her. She wants to know how much money I have in the bank.” My uncle hoisted his glass of Perrier. “To my niece on her twenny-eighth birthday. Prosperity, long life, and good fortune.”
When our entrees came I broke off a claw of my lobster and put it on my uncle’s plate. Vertical lines appeared in Aunty Mabel’s forehead but then she said: “Okay, it’s special occasion.”
Daddy hadn’t believed in birthdays. New Year’s is everyone’s birthday, he always said. In fact we never did anything for his, which was sometime in September, I don’t even know the date. On hers Ma would get a call from Aunty Mabel. For her daughters she’d buy bakery cake, devil’s food with chocolate frosting for me, and two weeks later, strawberry cream for Marty. Every year Daddy would say the same thing: “Remember, this is not a day to celebrate yourself. This is a day to remember your mother’s pain and your father’s sacrifice.”