Randy White: Gone

That’s when I turned and saw it.

“Oh dear,” I said, jumping up onto the dock. “My Lord! Maybe if I get her to apologize, they won’t call the law.” Even before her stroke, no one would have described my mother as “sweet,” but neither had she, or anyone else in our family, behaved like trailer park drunks. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing.

Arlis was still laughing. “Tell ’em it’s modern art and send ’em an invoice. Don’t apologize. Folks who’d dig up an Indian mound to build a big-ass dog kennel might be trashy enough to believe it.”

The old man was right about what Loretta’s neighbors had done. Our village sits on a paw of waterfront that is dotted with the remains of shell temples built three thousand years ago by Florida’s first people. “Indian mounds,” some call them, but they’re more than that. When tourists think of the Sunshine State, they picture Mickey Mouse, not pyramids, but that’s what the mounds were, and a few dozen still remain between Tampa Bay and Key West.

There was one less pyramid now, which was the main reason Loretta was mad enough to combine her painting skills with her knowledge of profanity-neither top-notch, which her only daughter was now ready to confess in a court of law.

“You’re gonna need some help,” Arlis said, rubbing his bad leg before swinging his boat alongside the dock. Arlis had been bitten by an animal of some sort a while back-a giant reptile, he claimed-and never missed a chance to rub his wound to remind people he had survived.

I was still gaping at the stuff Loretta had written. The sentences were neatly spaced, I had to admit, and easy to read even from a long distance because Day-Glo orange is like a magnet to the eye.

“Some of those words, you don’t hear every day,” I remarked, keeping my voice low. “Where in the world you think she learned them?” It wasn’t that I really wanted to know, but it was important to make clear she hadn’t learned the words from me.

Arlis replied, “Hannah One chopped wood for a living, and I suppose they’d come natural to a lumberjack who also hunted wild hogs. Could be your mamma learned them in the cradle. I was jest reading something about that: parents got this computer program, recites foreign words to their sleeping babies. By the time they’re off the teat, those babies are talking whole sentences in French, Italian, you name it.”

I turned and started toward the house because the old man would have stood there jabbering all day if I’d let him.

Arlis couldn’t let it go, though. By the time I was off the dock, stepping through mangroves, he was still offering possibilities, calling, “Lock up her computer at night, that’s my advice to you. And check with the cable company-make sure Loretta ain’t watching HBO!”

–

TWO HOURS and a gallon of turpentine later, Arlis and I were just getting the last of the mess off the stucco when the brain-damaged artist appeared. A daughter doesn’t need eyes to know when her mother is charging up from behind. Loretta pushed a wall of tension ahead of her that had a brittleness like glass. It made my stomach knot and set off an alarm in my ears.

“Hannah! What you and Arlis think you’re doing? That paint cost your Uncle Jake four dollars a can, and I was up writing past midnight! Not that you care. Or that I hurt my ankle real bad when I slipped off that damn ladder.”

The last part, she said in a self-pitying way as if she’d broken a bone and would soon die.

“Loretta,” I replied, wiping my hands on a rag, “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Seasons at noon, as I’ve told you more than once. That gives me less than two hours to clean up, which is not much time for a woman who smells like a pine tree and has orange fingernails-” I turned and looked at Arlis. “Is it in my hair, too? Please tell me my hair isn’t orange.”

The old man appeared nervous, and was backing away, as Loretta informed me, “I’d of used lavender, if we’d had it. Aquamarine can be nice, too-so blame your uncle for his poor taste in paint, not me.”

Then her tone suddenly became suspicious.

“As for Lawrence Seasons, that man has been coming here to catch tarpon and snook for twenty years, but I don’t trust him. Never did. Never will.”

My mother and I had been over the subject umpteen times the previous night, and I didn’t want to cycle through it again. Her brother, Jake, had died the year before, and I’d been taking out his fishing clients for almost two years, which is when my sweet, funny uncle first got sick. Now Mr. Seasons was my fishing client, along with about twenty of Jake’s regulars. Combined, it brought in enough money for me to rent my own place, and also pay for the nurses Loretta needs-one of whom would soon be explaining why she’d let a crazy woman escape with a can of spray paint and a head full of swearwords.

Actually, fishing came up a little short in the money department. It almost always does for people who depend on saltwater for a living. It was now late June, and tarpon season was about over. Soon, we’d be in the dead months when tourists avoided the heat of hurricane season. By Thanksgiving, my savings account would be drained, and I’d have to find a part-time job, as I’d done for the last two years, to see us through until Christmas.

I turned and headed up the shell mound, toward the old tin-roofed house where’d I’d grown up. Loretta had to hustle to keep up, still fuming.

“Why’s that old snob want to see you? Is it about fishing?”

I shook my head, and reminded her, “It’s unprofessional to speak badly of clients-Jake warned you more than once. Mr. Seasons brings interesting people on the boat, he’s polite, and he tips nice. That’s all I care about.”

“Sure, sure, but why’s he want to see you if it’s not about fishing?”

I shook my head again, meaning it was none of her business. Truth was, I still didn’t know, only that I was to meet him at his estate on Captiva Island, which was a ninety-minute drive by truck but only fifteen minutes across the bay in my fast little boat.

“That man’s got as much personality as a bucket of ripe mullet,” Loretta said. “Did I mention he made a pass at your Aunt Hannah?”

“Yes, I believe you did,” I replied, staying calm. Mention it? My God, she’d told me a hundred times.

“And Hannah Three, well… I’ll bet the old snob got more than he bargained for if he made it past that girl’s front gates. Right to your face, Hannah would admit she liked men as much as some men like women. And she had an eye for the rich ones especially. Not that your aunt ever took money-that I know of.”

I said, “Don’t start, Mamma.”

“’Course, most men were scared of Hannah Three-but those were the ones she’d hop into bed with, once she had ’em buffaloed. There was a term she used to excuse her raw behavior”-Loretta had to think about it as she clumped up the hill-“‘Womanly hormone something,’ as if a naked man was a type of vitamin pill. She was sort of like a spider that way. You know about female black widows, don’t you?”

I was on the porch, holding the screen door open, saying, “Yes, Loretta. Now, go on inside where it’s cool, and let Mrs. Terwilliger bring you some sweet tea. I need to shower and wash this paint out of my hair. Tonight, I’ll give you a call and make sure you’re okay.”

Loretta didn’t move, though. She stood there staring up into my face. “He just wants inside your panties, I hope you realize.”

“I’ve got no interest in Mr. Seasons, so just quit.”

“Darling, that’s not what I’m saying. There hasn’t been a man in your life for years. And that one was only around for a day after you was married, so it hardly counts.”