Duma Key(4)

"She says I tried to choke her."

"And if so, being choked by a one-armed invalid must have been a pants-wetting experience. Come on, Eddie, make her pay. I'm sure I'm stepping way out of my place, but I don't care. She should not be doing what she's doing."

"I think there's more to it than the choking thing and the butter-knife thing."

"What?"

"I can't remember."

"What does she say?"

"She doesn't." But Pam and I had been together a long time, and even if love had run out into a delta of passive acceptance, I thought I still knew her well enough to know that yes - there had been something else, there was still something else, and that was what she wanted to get away from.

iv

Not long after I relocated to the place on Lake Phalen, the girls came to see me - the young women. They brought a picnic hamper. We sat on the piney-smelling lakeporch, looked out at the lake, and nibbled sandwiches. It was past Labor Day by then, most of the floating toys put away for another year. There was also a bottle of wine in the hamper, but I only drank a little. On top of the pain medication, alcohol hit me hard; a single beer could turn me into a slurring drunk. The girls - the young women - finished the rest between them, and it loosened them up. Melinda, back from France for the second time since my argument with the crane and not happy about it, asked me if all adults in their fifties had these unpleasant regressive interludes, did she have that to look forward to. Ilse, the younger, began to cry, leaned against me, and asked why it couldn't be like it was, why couldn't we - meaning her mother and me - be like we were. Lin told her this wasn't the time for Illy's patented Baby Act, and Illy gave her the finger. I laughed. I couldn't help it. Then we all laughed.

Lin's temper and Ilse's tears weren't pleasant, but they were honest, and as familiar to me as the mole on Ilse's chin or the faint vertical frown-line, which in time would deepen into a groove, between Lin's eyes.

Linnie wanted to know what I was going to do, and I told her I didn't know. I'd come a long distance toward deciding to end my own life, but I knew that if I did it, it must absolutely look like an accident. I would not leave these two young women, just starting out in their lives, carrying the residual guilt of their father's suicide. Nor would I leave a load of guilt behind for the woman with whom I had once shared a milkshake in bed, both of us naked and laughing and listening to the Plastic Ono Band on the stereo.

After they'd had a chance to vent - after a full and complete exchange of feelings, in Dr. Kamen-speak - my memory is that we had a pleasant afternoon, looking at old photo albums and reminiscing about the past. I think we even laughed some more, but not all memories of my other life are to be trusted. Wireman says when it comes to the past, we all stack the deck.

Ilse wanted us all to go out to dinner, but Lin had to meet someone at the Public Library before it closed, and I said I didn't feel much like hobbling anywhere; I thought I'd read a few chapters of the latest John Sandford and then go to bed. They kissed me - all friends again - and then left.

Two minutes later, Ilse came back. "I told Linnie I forgot my keys," she said.

"I take it you didn't," I said.

"No. Daddy, would you ever hurt Mom? I mean, now? On purpose?"

I shook my head, but that wasn't good enough for her. I could tell by the way she just stood there, looking me in the eye. "No," I said. "Never. I'd-"

"You'd what, Daddy?"

"I was going to say I'd cut my own arm off first, but all at once that seemed like a really bad idea. I'd never do it, Illy. Leave it at that."

"Then why is she still afraid of you?"

"I think... because I'm maimed."

She hurled herself into my arms so hard she almost knocked us both onto the sofa. "Oh, Daddy, I'm so sorry. All of this is just so sucky."

I stroked her hair a little. "I know, but remember this - it's as bad as it's going to get." That wasn't the truth, but if I was careful, Ilse would never know it had been an outright lie.

A horn honked from the driveway.

"Go on," I said, and kissed her wet cheek. "Your sister's impatient."

She wrinkled her nose. "So what else is new? You're not overdoing the pain meds, are you?"

"No."

"Call if you need me, Daddy. I'll catch the very next plane."

She would, too. Which was why I wouldn't.

"You bet." I put a kiss on her other cheek. "Give that to your sister."

She nodded and went out. I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes. Behind them, the clocks were striking and striking and striking.

v

My next visitor was Dr. Kamen, the psychologist who gave me Reba. I didn't invite him. I had Kathi, my rehabilitation dominatrix, to thank for that.

Although surely no more than forty, Kamen walked like a much older man and wheezed even when he sat, peering at the world through enormous horn-rimmed spectacles and over an enormous pear of a belly. He was a very tall, very black black man, with features carved so large they seemed unreal. His great staring eyeballs, ship's figurehead of a nose, and totemic lips were awe-inspiring. Xander Kamen looked like a minor god in a suit from Men's Warehouse. He also looked like a prime candidate for a fatal heart attack or stroke before his fiftieth birthday.