Dewey reached below and opened a desk drawer. He brought up a plastic plate, a plastic knife and fork. Ready now to eat, he looked at Brenda.
“Do you know whether they performed an autopsy?” The guard frowned. “I just wondered,” Brenda said. “With suicides, they do that as a matter of routine in Michigan. That’s where I’m from.”
Dewey nodded and began unsealing the pie. “Here in Florida, you need consent of family first,” he said. “She has a niece, but no one could find her.”
As he ate, Dewey added details. We keep track of our residents, he said. When Hilda Frieslander didn’t answer her call button on Friday, Dewey had used his pass key just before his shift ended at eight. He had called the Marco police, then All Hands on Deck. As he cut another slice of pie, Brenda thanked him and left.
She headed back, feeling pulled in opposite directions.
Reason told her it was all plausible. Even logical. Two old, sick All Hands on Deck clients had died a day apart. First, an intelligent, sensitive woman who had suffered strokes, undergone surgery, and faced other serious illnesses. In despair over going blind, she had turned to the Hemlock Society’s handbook on suicide. According to the guard, she had taken pains to dress nicely, to look her best when she was found. The following day, a World War Two veteran—also with many health problems—had been left alone for a few minutes by his All Hands attendant. He had drowned accidentally in his son’s swimming pool.
Bullshit.
What tipped the scales for her was the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It had served the same purpose on Thursday as key lime pie today. Frieslander was diabetic, and Rivera, her caregiver, had to know it. And how convenient, having a spoon ready. He had planned the whole thing in order to ingratiate and familiarize himself with the guard. To create a bond free of suspicion.
Added to that was how James Rivera had re-invented himself. She had listened to him, watched him in action. Wasn’t her first impression unqualified? Completely favorable? The good looks and preppy clothes, the perfect command of English—didn’t it all make her feel proud of James Rivera? Legal or not, wasn’t he the embodiment of what America liked to think about itself?
But: if you stepped back from your first impression, if you treated Rivera as an individual, not as a poster boy for your conventional, liberal take on things, you began to wonder: Could there be something too impressive about Quinto Rivera? Too capable?
Or: if you doubted that a Mexican from the barrio could transform himself so completely before the age of thirty—wasn’t that just garden-variety racism?
◆◆◆◆◆
Back at the villa, she tried typing it all down.
Impossible. She closed her laptop. She wanted Charlie to hear it all, to help her know her own mind. All the talk of clean breaks no longer seemed grown-up to her, just cowardly. Kettle Falls didn’t matter, and clean breaks were nothing new. She hadn’t felt worthy of him, that was all. Whenever she got involved with a good man, she felt cornered. She turned all the men who mattered into commuter lovers, held at a safe distance. It had been that way since college.
Still restless at four, she ate a cup of yogurt, changed clothes and drove to the beach.
She parked in the lot at Twelfth Avenue and crossed Gulf Coast Boulevard. Ahead, the Naples Pier receded in perspective, out into the Gulf. She passed under trees she couldn’t name, then through a group of tourists speaking French. On the pier, fishermen were using jigs or live bait. At their sides stood shopping carts rigged with PVC pipe to hold their fishing rods upright. It was easy to think of Charlie with such a rig. He would be patient. Take his time and learn the ropes of Florida fishing from the regulars. She imagined him deeply tanned, standing at the railing.
She walked back, but at the stairs to the beach, Brenda slipped off her boat shoes and stepped down. Carrying the shoes, walking amid sunbathers and children, she thought of Charlie in his Minnesota cabin. A wasteland, she thought. The Boundary Waters in February. It made her ache to think of him there alone. She shook her head, facing the Gulf of Mexico’s improbable emerald-green water.
In South Truro, on Cape Cod, the beach sand felt the very same underfoot. But the water there was deep blue. Black at night. It had been black and choppy under moonlight the night her father died. Those moments had grown familiar to her over the years, seeing his death. How many times had she knelt beside him and touched his hand, tapped it as though trying to get his attention, then stood and run, scared but feeling an odd sensation as her legs pumped, cool air on her inner thighs, looking down as she ran, seeing blood—
She scuffed her way back to the pier. Near the steps, children were playing with inflatable toys—sharks, a turtle, a dolphin. Toys like those set out with Patrick Sweeney’s trash.
When she looked up, a pelican offshore was just then banking in flight. Now it dropped, a dead weight, like a plane in free fall. It struck the water, and for a second the bird looked broken and dismembered. But now it gathered itself back into recognizable shape.
Patrick Sweeney was next to her on the plane. He was leaning against her shoulder, smiling, talking. And all the while in his own wasteland.
No lights were on in his front windows. Brenda crossed the lawn and moved between the houses. At the back, she stepped to the pool cage. Inside, two pairs of sliders stood open.
“Anybody home?”
The house had been closed for months, and Sweeney was airing it out. He was off running an errand, eating somewhere. Feeling relieved, Brenda turned away.
“Just a minute,” he called.
She shuffled her thoughts for a
