Last Resort (17 page)

Ahead of her now Molly could see Henry’s Beach House, which was not a beach house but a famous restaurant. Its fame, however, was restricted to a select clientele. Though the place was often featured in expensive magazines, most Key West tourists never saw it. It was on an out-of-the way street of large private homes, and marked with the most discreet of signs. When Howard was alive he and Molly used to eat there two or three times a month, enjoying the excellent seafood and elegant camp decor: sea-green-and-white umbrellas, sea-green china, and linen napkins. The restaurant had also appeared in several of her watercolors, embellished with the Victorian gingerbread icing for which she was so well known.

Molly, somewhat against her own best judgment, was on her way to Sunday lunch with Jacko’s aunt, Myra Mumpson. Though she had dressed carefully for the occasion, in pale-pink flowered silk and a silk-flowered straw hat, she felt uneasy. According to Jacko, his aunt was a terror. It was true that this terror was not visible on the surface: rather, Myra’s outer aspect was conventional, even reassuring. Knowing that she was Dorrie Jackson’s elder sister, Molly had expected a fierce elderly lady. But Myra seemed at least a decade younger than her sister—more from across the room. She was a handsome, healthy-looking woman with expertly cut and rather too bright reddish-brown hair. Her skin was glossily tanned and tight, like expensive leather luggage packed to capacity (one face-lift at least, Molly decided).

“But why should your aunt ask me to lunch?” Molly had inquired when Jacko conveyed the invitation. “We’ve hardly met.”

“Why not? Aunt Myra always wants to know the important people in town wherever she goes—”

“But I’m not—” Molly tried to interject.

“I told her you were a famous artist and a power on the local scene.”

“Jacko, really! You know that’s quite untrue.”

“I talked all my friends up,” he explained. “I don’t want her to think I know only riffraff.”

“Yes, but even so—”

“Maybe she wants something from you,” Jacko suggested. “Aunt Myra always wants something.”

Probably I should have said no, Molly thought. But curiosity, and her wish to get out of the house after days of total confinement, had overcome her suspicions. Anyhow I’ve got nothing Myra Mumpson could want, she thought, limping along the uneven sidewalk under the huge old sapodilla and mango trees. When Howard was alive he was on the Historic Preservation Board, and a lot of other boards having to do with history and literature and education, and people often wanted things from him, but that was years ago.

Four years now. Sometimes it seemed like yesterday: it seemed that at any moment Howard would come in from the garden, holding the
Times
with its white wings spread, smiling and reading out some item that had caught his attention. At other, darker moments it seemed as if their fifty-four years of marriage had been only a long happy dream—as if Molly were still a lonely, awkward art student, an excess person in any gathering of couples. Because now again she was a lonely awkward excess person. The only difference was that now she had no dreams of a brighter future.

As Molly followed the hostess through the restaurant and out onto the brilliantly sunny deck, she saw that Myra Mumpson had somehow secured a most desirable table, with an uninterrupted view of the shimmering turquoise sea. Perhaps the hostess had been impressed by her clothes: white sharkskin resort wear of the most obviously fashionable sort, and much gold jewelry.

“Lovely to see you,” Myra cried, half rising from under the green-and-white umbrella. Her manner was breezy and slightly gushing, with a touch of brisk down-home charm. “Now why don’t you just sit right here by me, so we won’t have to shout over all that noise.” She gestured at the salty, foam-glazed waves sloshing against the piers below the railing.

Though the restaurant was crowded, something about Myra evidently attracted instant service. Almost at once a slight, handsome young Chinese man in a crisp white shirt and brief denim cutoffs appeared. “My name is Dennis,” he announced, smiling winningly and offering menus the size of tabloid newspapers. “I’ll be your waiter today.”

Myra ordered a bottle of Asti Spumante, insisted that Molly join her, and began on the usual tourist topics: weather, travel, restaurants, and accommodations. She pronounced the Casa Marina, one of the most expensive hotels in town, “surprisingly comfortable.”

“All I ever knew about Key West was that old film with Burt Lancaster,
The Rose Tattoo,”
she confided. “Dirt streets and shacks and chickens running around. But it’s not really like that.” She gave a loud musical laugh.

“Oh no,” Molly agreed.

“Only thing I can’t understand is, why are there so many T-shirt shops?”

“Well, people say there aren’t, not really,” Molly lowered her voice and her wine glass, which to her surprise was nearly empty. “What I’ve heard is that some of them aren’t real shops. They’re actually laundries, for laundering drug money, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” Myra leaned forward with interest.

“The idea is, nobody can really tell how many hand-painted T-shirts they sell, or how much they mark them up. So the owners can claim hundreds or thousands of dollars more than they take in legitimately. That’s what people say; I don’t know if it’s true. But rents on Duval Street have gone up incredibly over the last few years.”

“Uh-huh.” Myra nodded knowingly. “I’ve seen that sort of thing back home. It brings in a lot of cash for a while, but in the end it can’t help but lower property values.”

“They’ve ruined all that part of town, really. Most people I know never go there if they can help it.”

“Yeah, that figures. But of course there’s more than that to Key West, praise God,” Myra said, brightening. “There are some very nice residential areas. Big lots, very attractive construction and landscaping. You have a beautiful home here, for instance. Of course I’ve only seen it from outside, but I really admired the tropical planting, and those elegant double verandas.”

Was Myra angling for an invitation? Was that what she wanted? Molly resolved not to extend it; for one thing, she wasn’t physically up to entertaining yet.

“And you certainly deserve a lovely home,” Myra continued, raising her second—or was it her third?—glass of wine. “You know, I had no idea you were M. Hopkins until my nephew told me. Those wonderful, wonderful
New Yorker
covers, with the Victorian houses and gardens, and all those funny cats!” She gave her rippling laugh. “They were so much more attractive than the ugly cartoon covers they have now.”

“Thank you.” It was what Molly thought too, but would never have said.

Their waiter reappeared and began to recite the specials of the day. “Creole shrimp salad,” Myra repeated, looking at him brightly. “That sounds real good. Or should I have conch fritters? I hear they’re the Key West specialty. What’s your opinion?”

“The shrimp is excellent today,” he said with what struck Molly as an ambiguous Oriental smile.

“I get you.” Myra laughed. “Okay, I’ll have the shrimp.”

“That’s my kind of waiter,” she said when he’d gone. “The conch fritters are terrible, I take it.”

“Well, I think so.” Molly heard herself giggle. Was it the wine? She never drank at lunch anymore, or on an empty stomach.

“I wanted to thank you,” Myra said, pouring herself another glass. “For being so kind to my poor confused daughter.”

“It wasn’t—”

“Taking her in off the street, literally, when you hadn’t even met her. Barbie told me all about it.”

“It was only for one night.” Maybe she doesn’t want anything from me after all, Molly thought; maybe she’s just paying me back.

“I don’t know why she couldn’t have gone to a motel; she has credit cards,” Myra continued. “But that’s how Barbie is. She’s never really learned to take care of herself. Or how to manage a husband, poor child; I hear she told you all about that.”

“Well, a little,” Molly admitted.

“He’s a congressman, you know, so he’s awfully busy, working late a lot of the time. But Barbie got the idea he was playing around, so she ran home to Mother.” She sighed. “You’d never think she was thirty-six years old.”

“No,” Molly agreed, wondering if Myra’s version of the story were the correct one. After all, the events described were the same. It was like one of those modern sculptures, she thought: you turn the thing a few degrees and it looks wholly different.

“I figure you do always worry about your kids, though, no matter how old they get.”

“Mm,” Molly murmured noncommittally, for she no longer worried about her children, who were all in their fifties and well established in life. Instead, ever since Howard died, her children had worried about her.

“And now Barbie’s got this idea in her head about some kind of endangered walrus, except in actual fact it’s not endangered. I asked the concierge at the Casa Marina this morning.” Myra gave her cheerful loud laugh.

“The manatee,” Molly suggested. “But you know, even if it’s not officially endangered, I think its numbers are declining in Florida.”

“Exactly. It’s not fitted for the modern world.” Myra laughed again, then gave a little fizzing sigh. “Barbie’s always been more comfortable with animals than with people ever since she was a little girl, you know. In college she was mad about whales. She was always playing records of the funny noises they make, like balloons popping and squeaking underwater, till I practically went out of my mind. And then she had to fly to Alaska and go out on a boat and look for them.” Myra rolled her eyes upward, signifying baffled exasperation. “What I’ve never been able to understand is, why couldn’t she get het-up about some animal or plant that’s endangered in Oklahoma?”

“Perhaps there aren’t any,” Molly suggested.

“Aw, I’m sure there are. Or if not, those environmentalists will invent some. But it doesn’t matter, because I gave her a talking-to, and she’s going back to Washington with me in a couple of days ... Oh, thank you. That looks real lovely.” This was to their waiter, Dennis, who had just set an elaborately decorated shrimp salad in front of her.

“You want to know the truth,” Myra continued after the first few appreciative bites. “I’m glad to be getting Barbie out of here. There’s an atmosphere about Key West I don’t like. All those bars, and drunken bums and stray cats everywhere. It’s a godless place.”

“Oh, I don’t really think that’s true,” Molly said, wondering if Myra was one of those Christian rightists they were supposed to have so many of in the Midwest. “Why, there’s forty-four churches in Key West alone, I counted them once. And that’s not including the Jewish temple and the Zen Buddhists.”

“Where there is great need, there will be many temples,” Myra said, as if quoting. “All you have to do is walk down the main street after dark and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Well, you said you never go there, but let me tell you, it’s disgusting. The drinking and fighting you see, and the expensive property defiled with excrement and vomit.”

“That’s just the tourists,” Molly explained, slightly disgusted herself by Myra’s description, which took no account of the conventions of mealtime discourse. “They do get a little wild sometimes, but after all they’re on vacation.”

“That’s no excuse. I realize everyone needs a break once in a while. But there’s a loose, perverse atmosphere here, like you never get in most American resorts. You know what I saw yesterday on the beach at the Casa Marina?” Myra leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I saw two men kissing each other, smooching right out in public. And they were both half naked. They wouldn’t dare try that in Tulsa, let me tell you.”

“I suppose not,” said Molly, who had never been to Tulsa and now had even less desire to go.

“No. And honestly I don’t care for the scenery,” Myra confided. “Everything so damp and overgrown.” She gave a little head-shake of distaste. “And there isn’t even a good golf course.”

“No,” Molly agreed. She was reminded of a theory of her husband’s, that travelers were always drawn to landscapes that echoed the internal geography of their minds. Calm, even-tempered, slightly lazy people felt most comfortable in the plains or beside clear, placid lakes. Somewhat more active types were at home among rolling hills and sparkling streams; while the extremely adventurous and intense responded instinctively to alpine cliffs and crags and deep ravines and the pounding of towering cascades. Perhaps there were also people who preferred their scenery wet or, like Myra, dry.

While they ate Myra reverted to the topic of real estate. Once Molly would have joined in with interest, but she was past that now. Probably she would never rent, buy, or remodel a house again. She let her attention drift to the sun-bleached sky, the sea lit with sparks of light like bits of broken mirror, and the toasted triangles of her excellent turkey sandwich, each one pierced with a toothpick fizzed with red cellophane.

“... So when I heard about poor Perry’s condition, I realized I had to come,” Myra was saying when she refocused. “I was real relieved to find that he’d inherited such a substantial piece of property, praise the Lord. Barbie’s so vague, especially on the phone, and my baby sister was hysterical with anxiety. And God knows, when it comes to practical matters she’s totally out to lunch, poor dear.” Myra raised her glance to the underside of the canvas umbrella, as if calling upon the heavens to confirm this incapacity.

“Ah,” Molly murmured. It occurred to her that it was Myra who was literally out to lunch, and not her sister. Where was Dorrie, and what was she doing all day?

“Of course if Perry needed it I’d try to help him out somehow,” Myra continued. “Though frankly my resources are limited. My husband passed away very suddenly about ten years ago, and he wasn’t exactly a good provider.” A shadow passed over her face, and a corresponding shadow over Molly’s. She’s a widow like me, Molly thought. I’d forgotten that.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, hoping Myra would realize that her regret was for the loss, not the lack of provision.

“As soon as I saw Perry’s place, I knew I didn’t have to worry about him—financially speaking, that is. He’s sitting on a gold mine. There’s already three good condo units in the compound, and space for at least two more, even with the ridiculous zoning laws they have here. Luxury area, big pool, mature landscaping, off-street parking; it’s a natural. Of course the property needs some work, but I figure two million minimum at current prices.”