Gone

ONE

MY MOTHER SAYS I REOPENED UNCLE JAKE’S PRIVATE INVESTIGATION agency because I’m always losing men, so it’s natural for me to search for things that are missing. This would offend some women my age, but she had a stroke two years back and now her damaged brain relies on honesty instead of good manners, so I’ve got no choice but to take it in stride. One thing I’ve learned is, don’t argue with the truth on those scarce occasions when you’re lucky enough to know what the truth is.

Mother was heavy on my mind the next morning. It’s because of something that had happened the night before, after the storm. Loretta-that’s Mamma’s name-got into Uncle Jake’s paint shed, then sprayed swearwords all over the walls of a house being built next door. Not a house, really. It’s more of a concrete box the size of a Walmart, and just about as tasteful-which is only one of the reasons Loretta hates the building so. Some of the words she wrote were so foul, they had never even passed my lips-not louder than a whisper, anyway-let alone would I use Day-Glo orange to write them in cursive, exclamation points dotted, t’s neatly crossed, for all the world to see.

Well… as much of the world that ventures down the road to York Island and our little fishing village, which is on the Gulf Coast of Florida, just across the bay from Sanibel Island.

Thank goodness, it was only an hour after sunrise when I discovered what that addled woman had done. I was on the dock, making sure my skiff had enough fuel for the trip to Mr. Seasons’s place, when Arlis Futch whistled and waved to me from the throttle of his mullet boat.

I waited for the man to kill his engine and drift closer before calling, “How you, Arlis?”

“My Lordy, Hannah, you lookin’ more and more like your dead aunt every day-God rest her soul.”

Old Arlis loves to talk, and I had things to do, but it peeves me when men confuse lying with flirting. “Aunt Hannah’s been in the grave ten years, Arlis, so that’s not much of a compliment. Except to her, maybe, but you might be right. Hannah Three in her coffin is probably prettier than me and all the rest of us put together. Don’t you have some work to do?”

There have been four Hannah Smiths in our family, which Arlis knows better than most, so there was no need to explain. My aunt was a pretty woman, and more than a tad wild, which is common knowledge. Along with the stilthouse, which a guilty husband had left her, I had inherited Hannah Three’s name, height, and crow-black hair. Unfortunately, that was about it-until a few years ago, anyway, when my body began showing some of her other assets as well.

The old man started to apologize, saying, “Dang it, I wasn’t comparing you to a dead person-though you are lookin’ pasty since you moved across the bay. Tell the truth, now. You been eatin’ too much that damn hippie food and not enough fried mullet. Ain’t I right?”

Hippie food, I guessed, was anything that didn’t produce grease for gravy or a good old-fashioned heart attack. I was about to suggest this to Arlis by inquiring about his recent double bypass, but the man slipped the hook by staring over my shoulder, with a weird expression on his face, like an image of Jesus had just materialized in the sunrise clouds behind me.

“I wouldn’t’ve missed this for nothing,” he said to himself, chuckling, then began to laugh. “Loretta and me learned cursive from the same schoolteacher, so I recognize her hand. But her spelling used to be better. Tell your mamma the word truckers starts with a t-same t that don’t belong in the word ship.”

That’s when I turned and saw it.

“Oh dear,” I said, jumping up onto the dock. “My Lord! Maybe if I get her to apologize, they won’t call the law.” Even before her stroke, no one would have described my mother as “sweet,” but neither had she, or anyone else in our family, behaved like trailer park drunks. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing.

Arlis was still laughing. “Tell ’em it’s modern art and send ’em an invoice. Don’t apologize. Folks who’d dig up an Indian mound to build a big-ass dog kennel might be trashy enough to believe it.”

The old man was right about what Loretta’s neighbors had done. Our village sits on a paw of waterfront that is dotted with the remains of shell temples built three thousand years ago by Florida’s first people. “Indian mounds,” some call them, but they’re more than that. When tourists think of the Sunshine State, they picture Mickey Mouse, not pyramids, but that’s what the mounds were, and a few dozen still remain between Tampa Bay and Key West.

There was one less pyramid now, which was the main reason Loretta was mad enough to combine her painting skills with her knowledge of profanity-neither top-notch, which her only daughter was now ready to confess in a court of law.

“You’re gonna need some help,” Arlis said, rubbing his bad leg before swinging his boat alongside the dock. Arlis had been bitten by an animal of some sort a while back-a giant reptile, he claimed-and never missed a chance to rub his wound to remind people he had survived.

I was still gaping at the stuff Loretta had written. The sentences were neatly spaced, I had to admit, and easy to read even from a long distance because Day-Glo orange is like a magnet to the eye.

“Some of those words, you don’t hear every day,” I remarked, keeping my voice low. “Where in the world you think she learned them?” It wasn’t that I really wanted to know, but it was important to make clear she hadn’t learned the words from me.

Arlis replied, “Hannah One chopped wood for a living, and I suppose they’d come natural to a lumberjack who also hunted wild hogs. Could be your mamma learned them in the cradle. I was jest reading something about that: parents got this computer program, recites foreign words to their sleeping babies. By the time they’re off the teat, those babies are talking whole sentences in French, Italian, you name it.”

I turned and started toward the house because the old man would have stood there jabbering all day if I’d let him.

Arlis couldn’t let it go, though. By the time I was off the dock, stepping through mangroves, he was still offering possibilities, calling, “Lock up her computer at night, that’s my advice to you. And check with the cable company-make sure Loretta ain’t watching HBO!”

–

TWO HOURS and a gallon of turpentine later, Arlis and I were just getting the last of the mess off the stucco when the brain-damaged artist appeared. A daughter doesn’t need eyes to know when her mother is charging up from behind. Loretta pushed a wall of tension ahead of her that had a brittleness like glass. It made my stomach knot and set off an alarm in my ears.

“Hannah! What you and Arlis think you’re doing? That paint cost your Uncle Jake four dollars a can, and I was up writing past midnight! Not that you care. Or that I hurt my ankle real bad when I slipped off that damn ladder.”

The last part, she said in a self-pitying way as if she’d broken a bone and would soon die.

“Loretta,” I replied, wiping my hands on a rag, “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Seasons at noon, as I’ve told you more than once. That gives me less than two hours to clean up, which is not much time for a woman who smells like a pine tree and has orange fingernails-” I turned and looked at Arlis. “Is it in my hair, too? Please tell me my hair isn’t orange.”

The old man appeared nervous, and was backing away, as Loretta informed me, “I’d of used lavender, if we’d had it. Aquamarine can be nice, too-so blame your uncle for his poor taste in paint, not me.”

Then her tone suddenly became suspicious.

“As for Lawrence Seasons, that man has been coming here to catch tarpon and snook for twenty years, but I don’t trust him. Never did. Never will.”

My mother and I had been over the subject umpteen times the previous night, and I didn’t want to cycle through it again. Her brother, Jake, had died the year before, and I’d been taking out his fishing clients for almost two years, which is when my sweet, funny uncle first got sick. Now Mr. Seasons was my fishing client, along with about twenty of Jake’s regulars. Combined, it brought in enough money for me to rent my own place, and also pay for the nurses Loretta needs-one of whom would soon be explaining why she’d let a crazy woman escape with a can of spray paint and a head full of swearwords.

Actually, fishing came up a little short in the money department. It almost always does for people who depend on saltwater for a living. It was now late June, and tarpon season was about over. Soon, we’d be in the dead months when tourists avoided the heat of hurricane season. By Thanksgiving, my savings account would be drained, and I’d have to find a part-time job, as I’d done for the last two years, to see us through until Christmas.

I turned and headed up the shell mound, toward the old tin-roofed house where’d I’d grown up. Loretta had to hustle to keep up, still fuming.

“Why’s that old snob want to see you? Is it about fishing?”

I shook my head, and reminded her, “It’s unprofessional to speak badly of clients-Jake warned you more than once. Mr. Seasons brings interesting people on the boat, he’s polite, and he tips nice. That’s all I care about.”

“Sure, sure, but why’s he want to see you if it’s not about fishing?”

I shook my head again, meaning it was none of her business. Truth was, I still didn’t know, only that I was to meet him at his estate on Captiva Island, which was a ninety-minute drive by truck but only fifteen minutes across the bay in my fast little boat.

“That man’s got as much personality as a bucket of ripe mullet,” Loretta said. “Did I mention he made a pass at your Aunt Hannah?”

“Yes, I believe you did,” I replied, staying calm. Mention it? My God, she’d told me a hundred times.

“And Hannah Three, well… I’ll bet the old snob got more than he bargained for if he made it past that girl’s front gates. Right to your face, Hannah would admit she liked men as much as some men like women. And she had an eye for the rich ones especially. Not that your aunt ever took money-that I know of.”

I said, “Don’t start, Mamma.”

“’Course, most men were scared of Hannah Three-but those were the ones she’d hop into bed with, once she had ’em buffaloed. There was a term she used to excuse her raw behavior”-Loretta had to think about it as she clumped up the hill-“‘Womanly hormone something,’ as if a naked man was a type of vitamin pill. She was sort of like a spider that way. You know about female black widows, don’t you?”

I was on the porch, holding the screen door open, saying, “Yes, Loretta. Now, go on inside where it’s cool, and let Mrs. Terwilliger bring you some sweet tea. I need to shower and wash this paint out of my hair. Tonight, I’ll give you a call and make sure you’re okay.”

Loretta didn’t move, though. She stood there staring up into my face. “He just wants inside your panties, I hope you realize.”

“I’ve got no interest in Mr. Seasons, so just quit.”

“Darling, that’s not what I’m saying. There hasn’t been a man in your life for years. And that one was only around for a day after you was married, so it hardly counts.”

I knew I shouldn’t bring up my friend Nathan Pace, but I did because he was all I had as a defense. “What about Nate? I have dinner with him two or three times a week, and he’s a man.”

“In the looks department, maybe!” my mother countered, a wicked grin on her face. “I used to think the same thing about Liberace. Only difference between him and that butterfly Nathan is, one of them had nice hair and played the piano.” Loretta’s eyes started to drift. “Nathan don’t play the piano, does he?”

“Violin,” I said, feeling tired. It was how Nathan and I had met-in high school band, two outsiders thrown together less by mutual interests than a mutual fear of not measuring up.

Her eyes snapped back.

“Keeping company with a muscle-bound homosexual is no way to attract a man, Hannah. Not the ones who got no interest in wearing your panties, anyway.”

I tried again, even though it was pointless, by mentioning our good-looking UPS driver, whom I enjoyed seeing in his brown uniform, particularly when he wore shorts. “Christian Rhoades is getting friendly,” I argued. “I suppose you haven’t noticed how often he stops even when he doesn’t have a package.”

“Men in uniforms!” Mamma snapped as if that meant something. “A handsome boy young as Christian, with a good-paying job to boot, he won’t let hisself get trapped by a woman your age. You’re bad as Hannah Three sometimes. I swear you are.”

I looked at my toes, which is something I’d promised myself I’d stop doing-acting ashamed when Loretta got that scolding tone in her voice.

“That Seasons man still married?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, which was not the first lie I had told this woman who had carried me in the womb but was slowly becoming a stranger.

“A wife don’t matter to rich men,” Loretta countered with a sniff. “They collect lonely spinsters like bottle caps. Especially spinsters with mileage as low as yours.” I shook my head and sighed while she added, “It’s a poor hunter who waits for the game to come to him, Hannah Smith. You did the same in high school-sat around moping instead of getting out, meeting boys. How you expect to catch fish if you don’t dangle some bait? You need to stop being so prudish!”

I said, “What?”

“Dress pretty for a change, honey-that’s all I’m saying. Something without too many buttons and straps. Lawrence Seasons is a snob, but he’d probably treat you good for a couple of months just to prove he can afford it. And he might have a workman on the payroll who’s younger and got some money. And less morals than our good-looking UPS driver!”

Finally, it was all too clear what my befuddled mother was suggesting. I stood taller and pointed to the kitchen door. “Go inside right now! I’ll be in after I’ve thanked Arlis.”

“Darling, I’m only saying it’s the rusty hinges that snap first. As wrong as your Aunt Hannah was about her morals, she was right when it comes to a woman’s hormone tensions being dangerous. At the grocery, I read in a magazine that’s why Lizzie Borden did what she did with that axe. And she was a girl in her twenties just like you!”

Actually, I’d turned thirty-one earlier that June, which I was about to point out, but then Loretta became secretive and wagged a finger for me to lean closer. “It’s not like I don’t know what you do to calm your frustrations. But using a plastic gadget can’t be healthy, child.”

My ears were suddenly warm. I said, “Pardon me?”

Loretta lowered her voice. “I found the electric candle you kept hidden in your dresser. That’s not what God had in mind when he gave us hormones, honey.”

My face feeling hot, I turned my back and was reaching for the door but could still hear my mother saying, “First time I plugged it in, the thing went shooting across the floor like a snake on a griddle. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me scream…”

The woman was still talking as I walked, then jogged down the Indian mound toward the dock. I still had almost two hours before my meeting. Time enough to get to my makeshift apartment, shower, change, and then make my appointment-if I hurried.

–

I DID HURRY, cowboying my skiff fast across the flats, running backcountry through the secret cuts and tidal riffs that I had learned as a girl, and was still learning, in truth, because currents can change shallow bottom as fast as wind can change the shape of sand and snow. I was mad at Loretta for invading my privacy with her sneaky ways and her tainted suspicions, so I drove harder than usual, eager to put some distance between the house where I’d grown up and the future that lay ahead. It’s not that I felt bitter about my past. I didn’t-not on a daily basis, anyway. I was just weary of the life I’d lived with my mother, eager to shed the past as cleanly as some creatures can shed their skins. It’s not that easy, of course, but it is doable-or so I’ve convinced myself. All I know for sure is, the only way to leave something behind is to keep moving ahead.

That was easier said than done, though, after some of the things Loretta had said to me. Especially galling was her claim that I’d done nothing in high school but sit around and mope. Had the woman lost her memory along with the best half of her mind? I had gotten good grades, played clarinet in the band, swum on the varsity team, and always had a paying job of some sort, often working for my Uncle Jake-although, as even I had to admit, my teen years weren’t the happiest of times.

I still think of high school as the three long years I spent trying to recover from the upset of acne and middle school. I was the gawky, silent girl in the back of the room who slouched because I was too tall and who used whatever I could to hide my face when someone tried to strike up a conversation. In all that time, I’d had only one date and kissed only one boy-my childhood neighbor, Delbert Fowler-whom I married six years after graduation because he joined the Army and believed he was going off to war where he might be killed by Malls-lums. From the way Delbert pronounced the word, I always suspected he pictured himself plinking away at a bunch of charging Nordstrom hoodlums wearing towels on their heads.

I was in my mid-twenties before another man gave me a second look, and almost thirty before men actually stopped and stared-even then I worried it was because of the few faint acne scars hidden by my hair. Only lately have I begun to suspect the truth. Men look at me now because they like what they see. Not that I’m sure it’s true-I’ll never feel the sort of confidence some have when it comes to being comfortable with their looks. But when I go striding by a group of men wearing jeans and a nice summer blouse, or stockings and a crisp skirt, what I see on their faces is a look of slow surprise. It’s as if they don’t expect to be interested, but then their brain gives them a kick to remind them of what their eyes are actually seeing.

I hope it’s because I’m a big woman, too big for a quick snapshot, so it takes men a while to put all the parts together. I’m beginning to believe it’s true because what I see next on their faces is usually a confused smile, like they’re boys who’ve been caught at something they enjoy but shouldn’t be doing.

Not that I spend my hours worrying about what men think. The last few years have been a happy, comfortable time for me, and I’m content enough not to rush. Some of us mature and blaze early in life. Others take longer to grow into the person they are meant to be. I bloomed very late, which, in truth, has surprised no one more than me. Maybe my brain will never fully replace the person I used to be with the woman I’ve become because, like a lot of people, I grew up feeling lonely and unattractive and that’s the person I wake up with every morning. It’s the same girl who sometimes still bawls herself to sleep at night. But when I get into one of those moods, feeling down, just a stubbed toe away from an hour-long crying jag, I go to my closet, lay out my best clothes, turn the lights down real low, and stand myself in front of the mirror.

The lighting is important, so I take some time and get it just right. Then I feel a lonely girl’s delight as I watch a grown woman change moods as she changes and rechanges her outer skin. That woman is a whole lot different from the homely child she once was. That woman has long, long legs. Her thighs might be a tad heavy, her ankles definitely too thick-but not too thick to wear elegant stiletto heels with peep toes. Or a pair of crystal pumps that the woman found for ten bucks at a Palm Beach thrift shop. Ten bucks! The woman has decent hips, too, and a waist that appears skinny enough, but only because her shoulders are so darn wide from swimming laps. Things get better, though, as the lonely girl’s eyes move up the mirror where the woman spills out of her favorite 34D bra just enough to cause the girl to get teary-eyed and smile, because she, in her own mind, is as about as shapely as an ironing board balancing two peas.

Sometimes it takes a while to convince myself that the woman in the mirror is me. Not a fashion model, nope. That’ll never happen-unless God drops everything else to lend a hand. Or unless shower curtains become some kind of fashion craze. But my body is pretty darn good, thank you very much. And my face is strong and sometimes handsome-even pretty-when the light is right. Good high cheeks, glossy hair, and eyes that are sharp and perceptive when they aren’t focusing on those few old scars that even the little girl realizes helped create the strong woman she has become.

Just being alone on a fast boat improved my mood, feeling the sunlight and smelling the wind. By the time I’d showered and changed, I felt a lot better, even though I had only thirty minutes to get to Captiva Island for my appointment. By car, the drive would take an hour even in the light summer traffic. So I did what I often do when in a hurry: I got in my boat and flew.