Frank leans in the doorway of my room, clucking. “Namin’ the names.”
“What?”
“Callin’ spades spades.”
He’s wasted. I’ve seen him high, but not like this.
“Puttin’ on the labels. Big white and red Campbell’s soup labels. Splat. Right on the ‘rents. You should have seen them wriggling under the pin. Fucking eels. Someday we’ll cut off their heads and their tails and see if anything grows back.” He undoes the button on his jeans and starts unzipping his fly and I’m just about to slam the door on him when he rolls around the doorjamb and heads for the bathroom.
In the taxi we watch the sun seep up over the water. It is still dark on the roads, but the water and the sky just above it are starting to glow. My father is up front, talking to the driver, who is a black man about his age. My father is turned toward him, fully awake. “Holy smokes, you can’t beat that!” he’s saying, and the driver is laughing. My father is wearing bright red cotton pants, a white oxford shirt, and blue blazer. His smell of Barbasol, Right Guard, and Old Spice fills the van. It is his morning smell, the smell that obliterates the A-1-cigarette-vodka smell of the night before. He is close-shaven, squeaky clean. We all admire him. We cannot help it.
The airport doesn’t have walls, just a long red roof and palm trees on all sides. The driver unloads our bags onto a long cart. My father hands him a thick wad of money and the driver smiles and pats my father on the arm. My father pats him back and tells him to take care of himself and his family. The man cannot seem to take his eyes off my father and stands there by the side of his car long after my father has moved away.
Beneath the roof it is chaotic, with one check-in counter open and about fifty families trying to leave the island. We stand in the same place for a long time. We are hungry and it is starting to get hot. Our sunburns begin to throb beneath the stiff New England clothes we have not worn in thirteen days.
Patrick goes to sit on Frank’s duffel bag and Frank swats him hard.
“Sit on your own fucking suitcase,” he says.
Catherine’s head snaps around and she fixes her meanest stare on Frank. “Chh,” she says, spraying my arm with spit.
There are several boys my age in line but I do not look at them. I worry the blond boy is here somewhere or is about to arrive. I look down at my suitcase. It’s my mother’s old blue suitcase. I remember her taking it when she went on trips with my father, and then, when they returned, there would be presents nestled in it for me: an enameled ring from Venice, a cloth doll from Acapulco. I drape my parka over it, just as I did on the way down, hoping my father will not recognize it.
Another line opens up, then another, and we are through— our bags tagged and tossed down a chute — and sent to security. It’s not like regular American security with one guy taking your ticket and asking you to step through the metal detector. Here there are many men in uniform with big gold badges and dogs on complicated leashes, dogs not panting in the heat but eyeing us seriously.
One of them twitches and the other two bristle in response. Their ears lift and their wet black noses flare and tremble. Then they are all barking at once, showing their long yellow teeth, straining on their leads, yanking the men who hold them across the brick paving to Frank. The dogs surround him. The rest of us watch from the other side of the metal detector. Frank and his duffel are taken out of line immediately and led away. The dogs follow, their barking drowning out all other sounds except one loud brief, “Mom!” before Frank is shoved around a corner and disappears.
Catherine stands with her hand over her mouth. On the loudspeaker our flight to Miami is announced.
“I’m getting on that fucking plane no matter what happens, you hear me?”
Catherine nods her head slowly.
“This is not my fault. I have nothing to do with this. Nothing.” My father looks down the corridor and laughs his disgusted laugh. “Jesus Christmas. What kind of idiot would—”
“Shut up.” Her voice scrapes viciously, like she learned it from my father.
“You,” he says quietly, sifting through the pile of tickets he is holding with shaking fingers, “have a nice trip home.” He hands her four tickets. “C’mon, Daley. I’m getting you out of here.”
We follow the flow of people out across the tarmac, up the flight of metal stairs, and inside the small plane.
My father stops halfway down the small aisle and points to two seats on the right. “Here we go.”
“You can have the window,” I tell him.
“You take it.” He is trying to be nice but he looks like he wants to lift me up and shove me in the seat.
I slip in and buckle up.
My father pushes the stewardess button next to the light above us, but she is busy directing traffic up front and doesn’t come. He pulls down the tray even though he’s not supposed to. He puts his hands on the tray and wipes it with his palms in wide sweeps. The backs of his hands are wide and brown, with veins bulging up, crisscrossed around the fine bones that connect to his fingers. I remember what it feels like to hold his hand, something I always did— crossing streets, walking through stores, driving in the car — but now never do. And then to my surprise he reaches down and takes my right hand in his. It is as warm and large as I remember.
“We’s going to be okay,” he says, and pushes the button again.
Nearly an hour later, after there has been an announcement about mechanical difficulties, after the stewardess has brought me a Coke and my father three tiny bottles, two of vodka, one of vermouth, Elyse comes running down the aisle.
“Gardie!” she says, and climbs carefully into my father’s lap without knocking the tray with the bottles on it. I’ve never heard her call him that before — I’ve never heard anyone ever call him that.
“Hello, little peanut,” he says, and pushes some hair back into her headband.
Catherine and Patrick appear at the front of the plane and look down the aisle nervously until they see us. Patrick’s face relaxes immediately and he nudges his mother toward us. Despite all the sun she’s gotten, her skin has gone sallow, dark gray beneath the eyes. She takes the seat across the aisle from my father but does not look at him. Elyse climbs off my father and takes the window seat next to her mother, and Catherine fusses with their seatbelts much longer than necessary. Patrick sits in front of me and I see his eye peering through the crack in the seat. I stick my finger in and touch his cheek. “Ow,” he says and we laugh. And then Frank slumps into the seat beside Patrick, rattling everything on my father’s tray. My father reaches out to steady the bottles, then lifts the plastic cup, still half full, and hands it to Catherine.
“I bet you could use this even more than me.”
Catherine snorts a laugh and takes the drink. Then she reaches for my father’s hand.
“Big pussy,” she says.
“Little pussy,” he says.
“What happened?” I whisper to Patrick when we are in the air.
“They couldn’t find anything. They made him strip twice, they sent his clothes through this machine, the dogs were going wild, but they couldn’t find a thing.”
I peer through the crack at Frank. An unwashed, unbrushed clump of hair covers one eye. The other is shut. The skin of his face is blighted with zits and the scars from zits. His thin lips are bunched tight. Even in sleep, he looks like he’s scheming something.
I’ve saved most of my last book for the two flights home. It’s by Edith Wharton. Paul gave it to me for Christmas. He said it was just the beginning of the edification of Daley Amory. I’d had to sneak off and look up the word edification. When I get home from St. Thomas, my mother will tell me that Paul has asked her to marry him.