She asked the salesman to deliver the sedan to First Street, drive it in the back carriage gates, and drop the keys at the Pontchartrain. The convertible they would take with them.
She drove it out of the showroom and up St. Charles Avenue, to a crawl in front of the hotel.
“Let’s get out of here this weekend,” she said. “Let’s forget about the house and the family.”
“Already?” he asked. He had been dreaming of taking one of the riverboats for the supper cruise tonight.
“I’ll tell you why. I made the interesting discovery that the best white beaches in Florida are less than four hours from here. Did you know that?”
“That’s right, they are.”
“There are a couple of houses for sale in a Florida town called Destin, and one of them has its own boat slip nearby. I picked up all this from Wheatfield and Beatrice. Wheatfield and Pierce used to go to Destin at spring break. Beatrice goes all the time. Ryan made the calls for me to the real estate agent. What do you say?”
“Well, sure, why not?”
Another memory, thought Michael. That summer when he was fifteen and the family drove to those very white beaches on the panhandle of Florida. Green water under the red sunset. And he’d been thinking about it the day he drowned off Ocean Beach, almost an hour exactly before he met Rowan Mayfair.
“I didn’t know we were so close to the Gulf,” she said. “Now, the Gulf is serious water. I mean like the Pacific Ocean is serious water.”
“I know.” He laughed. “I know serious water when I see it.” He really broke up.
“Well, look, I’m dying to see the Gulf.”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t been in the Gulf since I was in high school and we went to the Caribbean. If it’s as warm as I remember it-”
“Yes, that is definitely worth a trip.”
“You know, I can probably get somebody to bring the Sweet Christine down here, or better yet, buy a new boat. Ever cruise the Gulf or the Caribbean?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I should have known after I saw that house in Tiburon.”
“Just four hours, Michael,” she said, “Come on, it won’t take us fifteen minutes to pack a bag.”
They made one last stop at the house.
Eugenia was at the kitchen table, polishing up all the silver plate from the kitchen drawers.
“It’s a joy to see this place come back,” she said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Michael. He put his arm lightly around her thin shoulder. “How about moving back into your old room, Eugenia? You want to?”
Oh, yes, she said she’d love to. She’d stay this weekend, certainly. She was too old for all those children at her son’s house. She was screaming too much at those children. She’d be happy to come back. And yes, she still had her keys. “But you don’t never need no keys around here.”
The painters were working late upstairs. The yard crew would be there until dark. Dart Henley, Michael’s second in command, gladly agreed to oversee everything for the weekend. No worry at all.
“Look, the pool’s almost finished,” Rowan said. Indeed, all the patchwork inside had been done, and they were applying the final paint.
All the wild growth had been cleared from the flagstone decking, the diving boards had been restored, and the graceful limestone balustrade had been uncovered throughout the garden. The thick boxwood had been taken out; more old cast-iron chairs and tables had been discovered in the disappearing brush. And the lower flagstone steps of the side screen porch had been uncovered, proving that before Deirdre’s time it had been open. One could once again walk out from the side windows of the parlor, across the flags, and down and onto the lawn.
“We ought to leave it that way, Rowan. It needs to be open,” Michael said. “And besides, we have that nice little screened porch off the kitchen in back. They’ve already put up the new screen back there. Come, take a look.”
“You think you can tear yourself away?” Rowan asked. She tossed him the car keys. “Why don’t you drive?” she asked. “I think I make you nervous.”
“Only when you run lights and stop signs at such high speeds,” he said. “I mean, it’s breaking two laws simultaneously that makes me nervous.”
“OK, handsome, as long as you get us there in four hours.”
He took one last look at the house. The light here was like the light of Florence, on that score she had been right. Washing down the high south façade, it made him think of the old palazzi of Italy. And everything was going so well, so wonderfully well.
He felt an odd pain inside him, a twinge of sadness and pure happiness.
I am here, really here, he thought silently. Not dreaming about it any longer far away, but here. And the visions seemed distant, fading, unreal to him. He had not had another flash of them in so long.
But Rowan was waiting, and the clean white southern beaches were waiting. More of his wonderful old world to be reclaimed. It crossed his mind suddenly that it would be luscious to make love to her in yet another new bed.
Thirty-six
THEY RODE INTO the town of Fort Walton, Florida, at eight o’clock after a long slow crawl out of Pensacola. The whole world had come down to the beach tonight, bumper to bumper. To press on to Destin was to risk finding no accommodations.
As it was, the older wing of a Holiday Inn was the only thing left. All the money in the world couldn’t buy a suite at the fancier hotels. And the little helter-skelter town with all its neon signs was a mite depressing in its highway shabbiness.
The room itself seemed damned near unbearable, smelly and dimly lighted, with dilapidated furniture and lumpy beds. But then they changed into their bathing suits and walked out the glass door at the end of the corridor and found themselves on the beach.
The world opened up, warm and wondrous under a heaven of brilliant stars. Even the glassy green of the water was visible in the pouring moonlight. The breeze had not the faintest touch of a chill in it. It was even silkier than the river breeze of New Orleans. And the sand was a pure surreal white, and fine as sugar under their feet.
They walked out together into the surf. For a moment, Michael could not quite believe the delicious temperature of the water, nor its glassy, shining softness as it swirled around his ankles. In a strange moment of circular time, he saw himself at Ocean Beach on the other side of the continent, his fingers frozen, the bitter Pacific wind lashing his face, thinking of this very place, this seemingly mythical and impossible place, beneath the southern stars.
If only they could receive all this, and hold it to their breasts, and keep it, and cast off the dark things that waited and brooded and were sure to reveal themselves …
Rowan threw herself forward into the water. She gave a slow, sweet laugh. She nudged at his leg with her foot, and he let himself tumble down into the shallow warm waves beside her. Going back on his elbows, he let the water bathe his face.
They swam out together, with long lazy strokes, through gentle waves, where their feet still scraped the bottom, until it was so deep finally that they could stand with the water up to their shoulders.
The white dunes down the beach gleamed like snow in the moonlight, and the distant lights of the larger hotels twinkled softly and silently beneath the black star-filled sky. He hugged Rowan, feeling her wet limbs sealed against him. The world seemed altogether impossible-something imagined in its utter easiness, its absence of all barriers or harshness or assaults upon the senses or the flesh.