Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,43
it. I might have lost her the first time, but she’d been gracious. The possibility of losing Marse—even then I knew that she could be my friend for life, this obstacle notwithstanding—was unthinkable to me.
I slept uneasily, and dreamed about playing poker. In the dream, I felt the queasy satisfaction of a person who wins by cheating, though I didn’t know how I’d managed it. I collected my money—stacks of torn and faded green bills—and when I looked up to face my opponent, I saw that I’d been playing against a grown-up Margo. Her freckles had receded and her chin was sharp like Dennis’s mother’s; there was a beauty mark on her neck. I’d never before imagined so clearly what she might look like when she was older.
I woke Dennis by saying his name until he opened his eyes and looked at me, appearing not curious or irritated, but matter-of-fact, as if he’d been listening all along. I whispered, “Why didn’t we bring her? We could have brought her.”
“We needed some time alone,” he said in his gruff half-asleep voice, sounding unconvinced.
“We’re not alone.”
“We’re with adults. It’s different. We’ll bring her next weekend.” His face was no more than an inch from my own. He said, “Aren’t you having a good time?”
I didn’t want to say no, but to say yes would have been a lie. I understood that for whatever reason, I wasn’t made for this kind of weekend, two couples on an island. I was too consumed by every little thing; it would’ve been impossible for me to enjoy myself. “It’s gone well,” I said, and felt Dennis relax. There would come a time, long after he and Paul were no longer friends, when I would tell Dennis that Paul had noticed my bruise. I would transform the story from what it was—discomforting but also thrilling—into just another anecdote. Did he watch us? Dennis would say. Or did he hear us from bed? Maybe he’d gotten up for a glass of water, I would say. Maybe he heard us sneaking back to bed and guessed where we’d been.
I never told Dennis what I believe happened, what I imagine when I recall the scene: Paul heard us rise from bed. He followed us. He stood in the kitchen window the entire time, watching us—watching me—from the darkness.
We were standing on the dock, getting ready to head out to Soldier’s Key for some snorkeling, when the Cessna returned. It was late morning, and we’d eaten breakfast and packed up in anticipation of leaving that afternoon. Dennis shushed us. “Listen,” he said.
The low hum turned into a louder hum with a putter in it, and then the plane appeared in the blue sky. “Holy shit,” said Paul.
Dennis didn’t say anything. There was a fierce, protective quality in his expression. The plane started to circle.
“It won’t drop anything with us standing right here,” said Marse. “Will it?”
“No way,” said Paul.
“I’ll get the binoculars,” I said, but Dennis caught my arm.
“Wait,” he said, as if he knew that at that moment, after circling the Becks’ house only two or three times, the plane would drop another rectangular white package. It did.
“Unbelievable,” said Paul.
“Call the Coast Guard,” I said to Dennis.
“I told you—the boat registration.”
We looked at each other, and suddenly I realized that I didn’t have the whole story. Something inside me seized up and brought to surface a fear I would experience only a few times during our marriage: What if everything was not as it seemed? What if all the walls fell away and revealed a world turned upside down, inside out, defiant of everything I’d taken for granted? Before that moment, I would have said that Dennis had no secrets from me at all. The sound of the Cessna’s engine faded as it headed, once again, out to sea. Dennis stepped onto the boat and I stepped after him, feeling it totter with my weight. Paul and Marse went inside.
“What?” I said, fighting the urge to cross my arms, to treat the moment like a standoff. I reminded myself that Dennis was my husband, whom I loved.
He flipped a switch to let fuel into the carburetor. “It’s no big deal,” he said, “but there’s a chance that if we call the Coast Guard, they might impound the boat.”
“This boat?”
“Yes, Frances.”
“Is it drugs?” I couldn’t comprehend why it would be, but these were my natural associations: boat, Coast Guard, drugs.