A Flash of Green

Three

After Katherine Hubble brought her two waterlogged children home from the Sinnat pool, she let them change into pajamas while she fixed the evening meal for the three of them. They ate at the round table on the enclosed part of the patio. Roy was eight and Alicia was seven. They had Van’s coloring, and already they had a deep tan which she could never achieve.

In one sense it seemed the bitterest blow of all that Van should have lost the chance to watch them grow up. But sometimes she caught herself feeling a ridiculously unfair indignation toward Van, as if he had purposely run out and left her with all the problems of discipline, health, education and love.

And, as always when she was alone with them, she found herself fretting about whether she was handling it all properly.

Van’s death had stunned the children. They had become irritable, whiny, quarrelsome and disobedient. And at just the time when she could feel that they were beginning to make a good adjustment, they had to turn the house over to the Brandts and move down to that small apartment on one of the back streets behind the main post office. Though they seemed to understand why it had to be done, in many ways it seemed a more severe emotional shock to them than the loss of their father. It destroyed the security of the known place. Roy, in particular, was a disciplinary problem during the first weeks of the new school year.

By spring they had begun to handle it better, and when they could at last move back to the Sandy Key house they knew so well, they ran and yelped and grinned the whole day long.

She tried to maintain as many of the ceremonies of being a family as possible, and she was grateful for the shortness of her work week, but it was still an abnormal situation to have them looked after by someone else during the weekdays.

She knew she could have found no situation more ideal than the one Claire Sinnat had volunteered. Claire had the twin boys, four years old, the big beach house and the pool and the grounds, a full-time cook-housekeeper, and a full-time girl — a Mexican girl named Esperanza — to look after her kids. Esperanza was chunky, cheerful and devoted to children. On her afternoon off, either Claire filled in or Natalie Sinnat took over. Nat was spending the summer with them. She was nineteen, Dial Sinnat’s daughter by one of his previous marriages.

“My God, sweetie,” Claire had said. “Shoo them up here every day, or I’ll think you aren’t being neighborly. The place is crawling with urchins all the time, and Di and I couldn’t care less, really. Your two are sweethearts, and Floss will stuff a lunch into them on schedule, and Esperanza will keep them safe. In bad weather we’ve got that huge indestructible playroom.”

After much argument, Claire had agreed to let her pay Floss and Esperanza an additional five dollars a week for the work and the responsibility. Roy and Alicia had begun to think of the Sinnat place as a second home. It was good not to have to worry about them. Van had had both of them swimming by the time they had learned to walk.

The kids were subdued at dinner, their brown faces drowsy, their voices slowed by the exhaustions of the long hot day. Their objections at being told to go to bed were halfhearted.

After they were asleep and the dishes done, Kat hesitated for some time, inventing and discarding plausible excuses, then phoned Sally Ann Lesser.

“I thought you might be at the Deegans’ party,” Kat said.

“Oh hell, no,” Sally Ann said. “Sammy and Wilma go further afield for their weird guests. They find people nobody ever saw before.” Her voice was slightly slurred. “Kat, honey, why don’t you come on down here and help Carol and me destroy reputations? I’ll send my idiot daughter up. She can do her summer-school homework just as well there as here. And don’t let her shill you into a sitter fee this time.”

Frosty Lesser arrived within five minutes with an armful of books. She was fifteen and looked older because of the maturity of her figure and her indifferent, impenetrable poise.

When Kat went up the walk toward the Lessers’ front door, Sally Ann called to her, “Out here in the cage, dear. Come around.”

She went across the lawn and around to the side door to the screened cage. The outside floods were on, and there was a faint reflected glow inside the high cage. Sally Ann reclined in a white chaise. She was a sturdy, muscular, brown woman with a heavy, affirmative jaw, curly gray hair worn very short. She wore swimsuits in hot weather, slacks and work shirts in cool weather. On the rare occasions when she was forced to wear a dress, she seemed to lose her confidence and authority. She had a good deal of inherited money, and she was very careful with it. She had a rasping voice, complete domination over her husband, an offhand, derogatory attitude toward her three children. She drank quietly, slowly, and steadily all day long every day, without evident effect. She worked in her yard, swam every day, and was a ruthlessly efficient housekeeper and cook. She lied constantly and for no apparent reason, and became highly irritable when anyone tried to trap her in a contradiction.

Carol Killian sat in a redwood chair with her long legs hooked over one arm. She was a slender, dark, brooding beauty, just a few years past her prime, but still exquisite. She never had much to say. Her habitual expression was one of thoughtful intelligence, of perception and sensitivity. But when she did speak, her voice was high and thin and childish, and her every remark exposed the dull innocence and inanity of her mind.

Strangers often thought it was an act and tried to laugh with her, but they merely confused her and hurt her. They soon came to realize that she was a decorative object which had learned to dress itself tastefully, move gracefully, give itself good care and maintenance, and perform a narrow range of household duties. It could talk with a certain amount of animation about clothes, cosmetics and household furnishings. Ben Killian had acquired it long ago, and seemed content to live with it. Over an unstated number of pregnancies — Sally Ann insisted it had to be at least ten — she had carried one as far as six months, and it had lived in an incubator for six days before expiring.

“Fix yourself a noggin,” Sally Ann said. “Carol just went in and brought out some new ice.”

There was a weak, hooded light over the drink table. Kat fixed herself a weak gin and Collins mix and carried it over to where Sally Ann and Carol were, and sat on a redwood bench.

“We were saying that Sammy and Wilma Deegan have to keep finding new groups because they wear the old ones out,” Sally Ann said. “Remember how they knocked everybody out when they moved into the Estates? My God, we thought they were the most wildly amusing people in the world. And in less than a year, dears, they ran out of material. They have these eight or nine routines they can do, and by the third time around you have found out they’re very dreary little people. They have to have the laughs and the enthusiasm and the admiration, dears. They don’t give parties. They give recitals.”

“We were invited,” Carol said. “I wanted to go. I think they’re real funny. They keep me in stitches. But Ben had to be at the boat yard. I just hate to go to parties without Ben.”

Kat said, as casually as she could manage it, “I wanted to talk to you about my house, Sally Ann. They say it’s a better time to sell houses now than a year ago. I thought maybe Burt has said something about how houses are moving.”

“But you can’t sell out and leave the group!” Sally Ann said.

“I don’t know. The effort of hanging onto it seems to be more than it’s worth, really. I think that if I could sell it for a good price, I’d move over onto the bay side of the key. There’s a little lot over there I could buy, and I could have one of those little Bender-Bilt houses put on it, and I wouldn’t have anywhere near the taxes and maintenance. It wouldn’t be like moving back into town. I’d be only about a mile from here. And I would have a little bit of bay frontage. I love Grassy Bay. I love to look out at that bay.”

“Hah!” Sally Ann said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Katty, dear, up until as recently as a month ago, I wouldn’t have dropped you even a clue, but now I can tell you, don’t plan on looking out at Grassy Bay very long. I’m dropping a hint for your own good, dear. I wouldn’t want to see you make a terrible mistake.”

Kat said, indignantly, “If you’re trying to tell me somebody is going to fill Grassy Bay, you’re wrong, Sally Ann. We didn’t let it happen two years ago, and we won’t let it happen now, or ever.”

“Dear Kat, you sound awfully fierce, but there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it. We’re good friends, and I hope we can stay good friends, but you must know by now I don’t go all misty about the birds and the trees and the dear little fish the way you do. We’re going to have a nice big development over there, Kat, and Burt and I are going to have a nice cozy little piece of it.”

“But it’s such a... a wicked thing to do, Sally Ann.”

“To warn you about buying a lot over there on the bay?”

“You know that isn’t what I mean.”

“Kat, you’re a sweet girl, but you don’t face up to reality. Somebody is going to fill that bay sooner or later and whoever does it is going to make buckets of money. So be glad your friends and neighbors are going to do it.”

“I can’t be glad anybody is going to try to do it. I’m going to have to spread the word, Sally Ann.”

“But why bother, dear? It won’t do you any good, you know. You and your conservation buddies will just waste a lot of energy and indignation. It’s gone too far to stop it now. For God’s sake, sweetie, do you think I’d be investing in it if there was any chance it could be stopped? Do me one little favor, though. In return for the favor I’ve done you. Don’t let on where you heard it.”

“Gee, you know, those kitchens in those little Bender houses are just darling,” Carol Killian said. “I saw one and it made me want to be just married and starting out.”

Kat Hubble stood up. “Thanks for the drink and the hot tip, Sally Ann.”

“Now I’m getting nervous about telling you.”

“I had to find out sooner or later, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but I think we were all hoping it would be later than this. Dear, do you want me to ask Burt what he thinks he could do about selling your house?”

“Not for a while, I guess. I think I’m going to be too busy to think about it.”

Kat walked slowly home along the dark street. She could hear distant music over the tinny little speaker at the Pavilion, half lost in a soft sound of the waves against the beach. A meager breeze made false rain sounds in the palms. A whippoorwill, far away, made his sound of weary astonishment. A nearby mockingbird made repetitive improvisation, with a silvery clarity and an undertone of anxiety. Bugs skirred and grated in the unsold lots of Sandy Key Estates.

Frosty gathered up her books when Kat walked in.

“They didn’t make a sound,” Frosty said. “I had a Coke. Gee, thanks a lot, but I couldn’t take any money, Mrs. Hubble. I told my mother I wouldn’t. Anyhow, it’s hardly been more than a half hour. Well... thanks. Thanks a lot. Gee, any time you want me to sit for you...”

After the girl left, Kat went to the phone and called Colonel Thomas Lamson Jennings, A.U.S., Ret., the president of Save Our Bays, Inc. Colonel Jennings lived further north on the Key, on the bay side.

“Tom? Kat Hubble. I know it’s an odd time to phone, but I have to tell you this. That Grassy Bay thing is going to open up again.”

“Again? Are you kidding me?”

She quickly explained what she had learned and said, “I got it from Sally Ann Lesser, but that’s not for general distribution.”

“Katherine, I could have used you as a staff G-2 in a couple of wars. Those idiots obviously thought they were going to catch us off balance. Can you come here at five o’clock tomorrow?”

“Let me think. Yes, I can make it.”

“Good girl. I’ll see if I can track down some more information on it tomorrow. I’ll call a meeting of the Executive Committee. The big question now is to find out exactly when they’re going to make their first move, and then we’ll know how much time we have.”

“Maybe... we can’t stop it this time.”

“Why not?”

“These are local men, Tom. They’ll have things pretty much all their own way.”

“Don’t be such a defeatist, Katherine. Of course we’ll whip them, just as we did before. Last time we whipped them in the very first round, the public hearing. We’ll try to do the same thing this time, but if we don’t, there are a lot more things we can do. Remember? We’ll get it into the courts and we’ll stall them until they give it up as a bad job. All we’ll have to do is maintain a united front. I imagine there’ll be some new pressures on our membership this time, local in origin, so it’ll be up to us to keep the membership in line. I promise you one thing, Katherine, I’ll never look out this window at Grassy Bay and see dredges out there.”

After she had hung up it took almost a half hour for the hearty confidence of the colonel’s voice to lose its persuasion. She recalled Van’s sour comment on Tom Jennings. “That’s the type who’d lead the Light Brigade up the wrong ravine, yelling ‘Charge!’ and grinning like an idiot.”

But at the end Van had to admit Tom had organized it well.

It seemed a pity it had to be done all over again.

She finished her letter to her sister in Burlington, sealed it and put it where she would be certain to see it on her way out in the morning. She read two pages of a book and put it aside. She turned the television set on and searched the channels and turned it off. She walked back and forth through the silence of the house in a restlessness all too familiar.

When she went into her bedroom the arrangement of her cosmetics on the top of her dressing table did not look quite right to her. She examined it more closely and saw that several jars and bottles were not as she had left them. It had been Frosty, of course. She examined a lipstick and found it worn down in a manner different from the way she had left it. Balled tissue stained with the same shade was in the bottom of her wastebasket. She was surprised at the extent of her own irritation, and tried to tell herself it was a perfectly normal thing for any fifteen-year-old girl to do.

But somehow having Frosty do it made it less palatable. She did not like Frosty, or Frosty’s seventeen-year-old brother, Jigger, or the twelve-year-old sister, Debbie Louise. They were all superbly healthy, beautifully coordinated children, pale blonds with dark-blue eyes. Toward all adults they exhibited a watchful, impenetrable politeness which somehow had a false flavor, as though it were a mask for a contemptuous amusement. More than any other teenagers she knew, they seemed to confirm the assumption of the marketing experts that this was a new and separate race, a special people with only limited contact with the adult world.

It seemed too simple, somehow, to say they were spoiled. There had always been the pocket money in whatever quantity they seemed to need, and the use of the family charge accounts. Burt Lesser certainly imposed no disciplines on them. He was a big soft balding man with such mild indefinite features that he could be caricatured by drawing an egg and putting heavy black glasses frames on it. He dressed more formally than most of the businessmen in Palm City. He had a loud methodical baritone laugh which he used either too soon or too late, and generally too often. Burt had obtained his realtor’s license soon after they had moved down from Wisconsin, fifteen years ago, the same year Sally Ann had received the final and most massive installment on her inheritance. Through a sweaty, earnest, fumbling diligence he had managed to do quite well at the trade. And Sally Ann had done well too, by buying in her own name those investment bargains which came up from time to time. Burt was an active workhorse member of a wide range of civic organizations.

There were those who said you just had to admire ol’ Burt for the way he gets out and digs when, as far as the money is concerned, he could lay right back and take it easy.

But one night, on the Lessers’ patio, while Van was still alive, Sally Ann, at one of the rare times when she was conspicuously in her cups, had given what was probably an accurate explanation. Somebody had been kidding Burt, asking him when he was going to retire. “Retire, for chrissake!” Sally Ann had roared. “As long as he can walk and talk, he’s going to have an office to go to. I told him when I married him he wasn’t going to clutter up the house all day long. That was the deal. It would drive me nuts having him around here trying to wait on me so he could feel useful.” Burt had laughed, but it had been a hollow effort.

On reflection it seemed to Kat that Burt Lesser was an unlikely person to be heading up this new Palmland Development Company. He did not seem sufficiently directed, or properly ruthless. But he was well known and his reputation was good.

She was in bed by eleven-thirty. After she turned her light out, she stared wide-eyed into the darkness and kept trying new positions, hoping to find one which would relax her. When it was quarter after twelve by her bedside clock she gave up and took one of the green capsules Ray Coplon had prescribed for her. In a little while the familiar feeling of the drug began. The black world began to expand, moving out and back and away from her, leaving her smaller and smaller and smaller in an enormous bed — small and silky and dwindling away.