“Exactly,” said Grady. “So we idled up to it and I cut the engine, and when our wake hit it, it turned a bit in the water”—he made a gesture with both hands, like rolling a log—“and there was his eye looking straight up out of the water, this blue face.”
“Blue?” said Stuart.
“Black and blue,” said Gloria. She waved her hand around her face. “Beaten. It was horrible.”
Grady said, “Gloria covered the kids’ eyes, but they saw—we all saw.”
“I lost my cool, you might say,” said Gloria. “Here you are, in your boat, with your family, on a Sunday afternoon—”
“And suddenly—” said Grady.
“And suddenly you’re faced with this gruesome thing, this news story.” She shook her head. “We’re used to it now, but Miami was still just a small town then. The drugs were small potatoes, and the mob was a country away, in New York.”
“Obviously not,” said Stuart.
“No, that’s right, obviously not. It was like the end of innocence, that day. That was the year that both these lots were built up.” She pointed on either side of the house. “And that was the year they built the expressway.”
“My grandparents left Florida,” said Stuart. “Then my parents left.”
“Everyone left,” said Grady.
“You didn’t,” said Stuart.
Grady shook his head. “This is my home. This is where I was raised. This is where I raised my family.”
I didn’t know I was going to speak before I spoke. “Lots of people leave their homes,” I said. “I left mine.” It felt strange to put it that way, strange to recall that there had been a time when Georgia was my home, and Miami had been just another distant city where I’d never been. Over the years, every time my mother had visited, usually in the winter months for a week at a time, she’d commented on the transition I’d made. “Miami suits you,” she would say. “Too harum-scarum for me, but it suits you.”
Grady looked at me. “Sure, but where would I go? Where could I dock my boat behind my house year-round? Where could I fit in a round of golf after getting off work?”
“True,” said Stuart.
We were quiet for a moment, and then Marse started talking about a man she’d met, a man who owned a chain of car washes, but I had trouble paying attention. Beside me, Dennis was taking long, slow bites, as carefully as a child who didn’t want to spill.
After clearing the table, we opened gifts in the living room. I sat cross-legged at Dennis’s feet. Dennis’s family were gift-givers and always had been, no matter how trivial the occasion. Gloria had once brought me a ceramic garden toad when I’d been promoted at work. They kept the gifts simple, at least, and I suspected that Gloria had a place where she kept a stockpile of possibilities to pull from when events (or semi-events, like Valentine’s Day, which Dennis and I had never celebrated) came up. This was a practical birthday, it seemed from the start. Margo and Stuart gave me a new Speedo swimsuit, a swim cap, and a pass to her health club, where I was signed up to take water aerobics once a week for two months. I wondered, meanly, if this was a hint about my weight—if I’d gained, I hadn’t noticed—and I kept myself from mentioning that there was a pool in my backyard. (I’m glad I stayed quiet, because I realized later that Margo had become fond of her water aerobics classes, and meant for us to take the classes together, even though to me they seemed like an older person’s exercise.) Gloria and Grady gave me a gardening service to come twice a week and water my roses. This was a generous and helpful gift, as watering the roses—Dennis had given them to me for our anniversary, to replace the ones we’d lost in Andrew—was a huge chore that Dennis and I had once shared. I was less and less available for chores that took me away from Dennis. I had been neglecting the roses—Gloria had noticed, surely—and so this was a small weight off my shoulders.
Marse saved her gift for last. She handed me a large pink envelope. “You can’t take it back,” she said. In the envelope was a gift card from a local catering service—I knew the name from weddings and other events, and knew that this caterer was not only good but considered the best in certain circles. Inside the card was a sheet of office paper with my gift typed in black lettering: two meals a day, six days a week (no delivery on Sundays), for six weeks. Marse patted Dennis’s knee after I finished reading. “I told them soft food,” she said. “They said that was no problem. Pumpkin ravioli, chicken casserole, things like that. It’s all set up.”
“How helpful,” I said. I tried to sound appreciative, but I was suddenly sad about something I couldn’t quite name, possibly the delegation of one of my principal wifely duties. I folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. “Does everyone want carrot cake?”
Marse followed me into the kitchen to help clean up. “You didn’t say anything about Paul,” she said.
“What?” I turned off the water and dried my hands. It was starting to rain. This was what happened in the summers in the subtropics: it was beautiful, clear, and sunny until mid-afternoon, then rained heavily for an hour, then the clouds cleared and the sun came out again. I loved this and always had.
“I thought maybe you’d have some words on the subject,” she said.
She was standing with her hand on her hip, wearing one of my aprons, a red checkered one I’d had since moving to Miami. It was too short on her. I looked at her, trying to recall the conversation from earlier. Marse didn’t often ask me to pay attention to her love life. Maybe I was out of practice. “Should I?” I said.
“He told me you might not think very highly of him,” she said, and that was when I realized that she was speaking about Paul of years past, Dennis’s old friend whom she’d briefly dated. Once again, Miami’s close boundaries, its intimate circles, flared. In twenty-five years, I’d come to understand that people bounced around their social stratum like pinballs, knocking into one another.
“I thought he owned a nursery,” I said.
“He did, but now he owns that car wash chain, with the big one on Dixie.”
“With the purple sign?”
“Yep.”
“Is there money in washing cars?”
“Apparently. He owns a condo on Fisher Island.”
I often passed the car wash on my way downtown; there were always dozens of black and Latino boys in purple shirts and black pants dashing to and fro with chamois in their hands, each attending to one part of a hulking SUV. “You like him?” I said, but I said it nicely.
“Very much.”
“Bring him over. We’ll have a meal. It will be good to catch up.” Since Dennis had started to lose his voice, we hadn’t entertained anyone but family. But once upon a time Paul and Dennis had been good friends.
“We’ll do that.” She had a look in her eye I hadn’t seen, or had seen only once: she was smitten. I’d been too wrapped up to notice.
“How long has it been?” I said.
“About two months.”
“And?”
“And it’s good.”
“This,” I said, “is wonderful news.”
That night, Dennis read and I lay in my bed, fidgeting, unable to relax. We’d put his bed next to a wall and lined it with pillows so he could hoist himself up and turn on a lamp when he wanted to read. The light barely reached me on the other side of the room. “Dennis,” I said. He put down his book. “Did you realize that the man Marse is seeing is Paul whatshisname?”
He made a sound like a snort and said, “Yep. I say good for her. Nice guy.”
Years earlier, after its edges had dulled in my memory, I’d told Dennis what had happened between me and Paul. I’d gotten the feeling he didn’t entirely believe me, or believe my interpretation—Dennis would have a hard time believing that a friend would ever make a pass at his wife—and I suppose his reaction had rubbed off on me, and I didn’t entirely believe myself anymore. “Would it be awful to have them over?” I said.