By “explaining herself,” Isolde imagined telling Woody something like, “Woody, my love, it’s this: I met Perry and we got married and had a baby girl, Fiona, and one day when Fiona was almost two years old, she was playing with, of all things, a pair of rabbit-ear television antennae, and her daddy, who was supposed to be watching her for just five minutes while Mommy takes a shower, decided to shoot up. While Daddy’s nodding off in a chair, Fiona sticks the broken end of one of the antennae into an electric outlet, so when Mommy comes back and sees... what she sees, she goes clean off her rocker.”
She’d practiced telling Woody this every day since she fell in love with him. When she ran away to Key West, it wasn’t because she was shocked to learn he’d been married. It was because she saw that either she told him the truth about herself, or she was lost. But she worried that if she told Woody the truth, she might, probably would, lose him. How could Woody love her, once he found out about Fiona? How could Isolde find words to explain, to make acceptable, her desolation and her nervous breakdown? How could Woody believe she would ever be a fit mother again?
She felt that by not telling Woody, she was continually denying Fiona, who had the right to a public place in Isolde’s heart. But no amount of practice made it easier for her to say to him, My baby died. After she got married, she thought, I’ll wait until I get my degree in Early Childhood Education. It might help convince Woody that I’ll make a good mother. Every day brought a moment when Isolde yearned to tell Woody. And every day, for fear of losing him, she decided to wait for a better moment.
Now, in the Publix parking lot, Isolde dried her eyes and turned the ignition. She checked the fuel gauge. Half a tank. Not enough. She needed a full tank of gas. A Texaco station was just around the corner. That would be her final stop.
Woody, Chip, and Perry began putting up the remainder of the metal shutters on the front and back porches. These faced south and north, respectively, and had tall jalousie windows on three sides. The three men set to work exchanging hearty remarks such as, “That’s it! Great! Okay. We’ll soon get this sucker done,” but the afternoon was hot and windless, the sun oppressive. Chip and Perry soon tired. They paused, smoked cigarettes, scratched themselves, wandered into the yard to stare at the road.
Woody finished the metal shutters by himself, while the others set up the wooden saw horses and carried out the plywood from the garage. Woody had five big sheets, which, cut in half, would cover ten windows.
“Men,” he said, “here’s the plan. We cut the plywood with this electric saw. With this,” he held up an electric drill, “we drill holes in the four corners of each sheet. We hold the plywood sheet up over the window and mark the holes on the wall. Then we drill half-inch holes in the masonry and insert expansion anchors. We bolt the plywood over the windows with these three-eighth-inch lag bolts and then we tighten them with this—” Woody held up a wrench and saw that neither Chip nor Perry was paying attention.
Woody tested the electric saw and the other two flinched. They laid the first plywood sheet onto the wooden horses and Woody began to saw it in half.
When Isolde came back, everybody helped her unload the supplies and carry them into the kitchen. Chip and Perry drifted into the yard and exercised the cell phone.
A little while later, Woody went into the kitchen to drink water. Isolde was filling every container she could find at the tap. She embraced him, saying, “You don’t know how much I love you.”
“As much as I love you, I hope.”
“More. Much more.”
Woody pointed toward the yard. “Our junkies be waiting for The Man.”
Isolde said, “Not in my house.” Then, realizing that she wanted Perry happy, not strung out, for the next few days, she said, “Maybe we’d better let them.”
“We don’t want them freaking out during the hurricane.”
Isolde said, “They can smoke and whatever in the guest room.” Woody nodded and drank three glasses of tap water.
On his way outside, Woody paused at his desk in the living room and stared at a partially opened drawer. He’d shut it three weeks before. He pulled the drawer out farther. Inside were four unused checkbooks. Woody picked them up, telling himself, Think like Chip. He opened the fourth checkbook. The last check was missing.
Woody put back the checkbooks, closed the drawer, and went outside, calling for Chip and Perry. They came running around the corner like little boys and halted in front of him, winded and laughing. He asked them what was so funny.
Chip said, “We just made sure that Mrs. McCracken’s still alive.”
“Oh shit,” Woody said. “The alligator’s out of the pool?” Chip and Perry looked at Woody and broke into fresh fits of laughter and coughing and shook their heads, and then lit fresh cigarettes. “You bozos,” Woody said. “That alligator’s no fucking joke.” He reminded them that they had a lot of hurricane shutters to put up.
But the three of them lacked coordination. They messed up the first two windows, drilling extra holes in the plywood and in the stucco before they managed to bolt the plywood to the wall. Chip and Perry were weak, clumsy, unfocused, and they stank. They gave off a sharp, sweet, rotten odor, a mixture of stale sweat, tobacco, and God only knows what else that startled Woody every time he got close.
What Chip and Perry did best was watch Woody work. This allowed them time to talk in their jittery way, chain smoke, scratch themselves, dial the cell phone, wander out to stare at the road, or fade inside the house. Woody finally suggested that only one of them at a time help him. Chip and Perry could trade off. They liked this idea.
Isolde was at the kitchen table, listening to the weather channel on the radio and filling their hurricane lamps with kerosene, when Perry came in. His beautiful blue eyes locked onto hers and he said, “Darling, I’ve been searching for you everywhere.”
She felt a thump of dread. Had she loved him? Not this Perry. This one was like a Martian to her, strange and dangerous. She said, “I’m sorry you were shot. I didn’t know about it until today.”
Perry said, “It was Hoyt and his posse. They shut me down.”
Isolde said again that she was sorry.
Perry said, “You disappeared.” Isolde said she’d wanted to. Perry said, “Your mother told me she didn’t know where you were.”
Isolde said, “That’s right.” Isolde picked up a wine bottle she’d filled with cool water.
Perry frowned at it as if he didn’t recognize it and said, “I lost everything.”
Isolde said, “So did I.” She carried the bottle of water past him and outside to Woody.
Woody took Chip aside and said that he was missing the last check from his checkbook. He told Chip to give it back. Chip said, “What?” He looked offended. He said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Woody said, “Don’t bullshit me.”
Perry came into the kitchen and said to Isolde, “Woody doesn’t know who I am, does he?”
Isolde, chopping tomatoes for the pasta sauce, said, “He knows you’re a junkie.” A voice on the radio was saying, “... now expected to come ashore between Palm Beach and the Florida Keys some time around 3 a.m.”
“I mean to say, you haven’t told him anything about us.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Isolde said.