Duma Key(55)

Ten minutes later, Wireman and I were standing at the end of the Palacio boardwalk again. He had left the lady of the house with a slice of key lime pie, a glass of tea, and the remote control. I had two of Wireman's egg salad sandwiches in a bag. He said they'd just go stale if I didn't take them home, and he didn't have to press me too hard. I also hit him up for a couple of aspirin.

"Look," he said, "I'm sorry about that. I was going to ask first, believe me."

"Relax, Wireman."

He nodded but didn't look directly at me. He was looking out at the Gulf. "I just want you to know I didn't promise her anything. But she's... childish now. So she makes assumptions the way kids do, based on what she wants rather than on the facts."

"And what she wants is to be read to."

"Yes."

"Poems on tapes and compact discs don't cut it?"

"Nope. She says the difference between recorded and live is like the difference between canned mushrooms and fresh ones." He smiled, but still wouldn't look at me.

"Why don't you read to her, Wireman?"

Still looking out at the water, he said: "Because I no longer can."

"No longer... why not?"

He considered this, then shook his head. "Not today. Wireman's tired, muchacho, and she'll be up in the night. Up and argumentative, full of rue and confusion, liable to think she's in London or St. Tropez. I see the signs."

"Will you tell me another day?"

"Yeah." He sighed through his nose. "If you can show yours, I suppose I can show mine, although I don't relish it. Are you sure you're okay to get back on your own?"

"Absolutely," I said, although my hip was throbbing like a big motor.

"I'd run you in the golf cart, I really would, but when she's this way - Dr. Wireman's clinical term for it is Bright Going On Stupid - she's apt to take it into her mind to wash the windows... or dust some shelves... or go for a walk without her walker." At that he actually shuddered. It looked like the kind that starts out as burlesque and ends up being real.

"Everybody keeps trying to get me into a golf cart," I said.

"You'll call your wife?"

"I don't see any other option," I said.

He nodded. "Good boy. You can tell me all about it when I come to look at your pictures. Any time'll work. There's a visiting nurse I can call - Annmarie Whistler - if the morning works better."

"Okay. Thanks. And thanks for listening to me, Wireman."

"Thanks for reading to the boss. Buena suerte, amigo."

I set off down the beach and had gotten about fifty yards before something occurred to me. I turned back, thinking Wireman would be gone, but he was still standing there with his hands in his pockets and the wind off the Gulf - increasingly chilly - combing back his long graying hair. "Wireman!"

"What?"

"Was Elizabeth ever an artist herself?"

He said nothing for a long time. There was only the sound of the waves, louder tonight with the wind to push them. Then he said, "That's an interesting question, Edgar. If you were to ask her - and I'd advise against it - she'd say no. But I don't think that's the truth."

"Why not?"

But he only said, "You'd better get walking, muchacho. Before that hip of yours stiffens up." He gave me a quick seeya wave, turned, and was gone back up the boardwalk, chasing his lengthening shadow, almost before I was aware he was leaving.

I stood where I was a moment or two longer, then turned north, set my sights on Big Pink, and headed for home. It was a long trip, and before I got there my own absurdly elongated shadow was lost in the sea oats, but in the end I made it. The waves were still building, and under the house the murmur of the shells had again become an argument.

How to Draw a Picture (IV)

Start with what you know, then re-invent it. Art is magic, no argument there, but all art, no matter how strange, starts in the humble everyday. Just don't be surprised when weird flowers sprout from common soil. Elizabeth knew that. No one taught her; she learned for herself.

The more she drew, the more she saw. The more she saw, the more she wanted to draw. It works like that. And the more she saw, the more her language came back to her: first the four or five hundred words she knew on the day she fell from the cart and struck her head, then many, many more.

Daddy was amazed by the rapidly growing sophistication of her pictures. So were her sisters - both the Big Meanies and the twins (not Adie; Adie was in Europe with three friends and two trusty chaperones - Emery Paulson, the young man she'll marry, had not yet come on the scene). The nanny/housekeeper was awed by her, called her la petite ob ah fille.

The doctor who attended her case cautioned that the little girl must be very careful about exercise and excitement lest she take a fever, but by January of 1926 she was coursing everywhere on the south end of the Key, carrying her pad and bundled up in her "puddy jacket and thumpums," drawing everything.

That was the winter she saw her family grow bored with her work - Big Meanies Maria and Hannah first, then Tessie and Lo-Lo, then Daddy, then even Nan Melda. Did she understand that even genius palls, when taken in large doses? Perhaps, in some instinctive child's way, she did.

What came next, the outgrowth of their boredom, was a determination to make them see the wonder of what she saw by re-inventing it.