FIVE

He could say that because he didn’t know. All he knew was to get into his boat with Aunt Smaro and head up north away from Mooney’s Key. And all I knew was to stand there and watch. And have a sick feeling about it because he could come back in five years or ten or fifty for that matter, and I’d most likely still be standing there, old and beat-up and sour like Lettie and Hilaria.

That was when I knew that the worst thing that could happen was to have everything stay the same all my life. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to do something about it. And what I wanted to do most was go north to Fairmount, Indiana, where Jimmy would be, and then maybe across country to Hollywood, because that’s what Jimmy would want me to do. And I wasn’t a fool like most girls about getting to be a big star in Hollywood right away. The movie magazines were always saying how hard that was. But deep down inside I knew I was even prettier than those girls, so it wasn’t the same thing. And I knew I could be a good actress, if somebody showed me how.

I didn’t go to school any more after that. That wasn’t wrong because I was old enough not to go if I didn’t want to. Anyhow, the only reason I kept going at all was Lettie. She never had much schooling so she thought it was some kind of big deal sitting there and trying not to fall asleep in class. And there was no way of telling her different.

So I took the outboard into town same as always every morning, but then I’d hang around the library or beach or cemetery until the movies opened. It cost a lot, but what with Yeager, and the cigarettes I could sell, and any money from tips I could keep back from Cole I got in almost every day and saw the show, and afterward I would pick up Lettie’s groceries and go home without telling.

It was the school told them, and then there was a fine to-do with Cole yelling his head off about how much of his good money I wasted and Lettie chasing me around the house hitting me with her fist until I got away down the beach and waited until she cooled off. After that it was worse than ever. I could never go to town week ends because that was the biggest time for the restaurant, and the rest of the time either Lettie went with me for the marketing or she held a watch on me if I went alone. She was sure I was fooling around with sailors any time I went to town without her, but I wasn’t. That wasn’t the sailors’ fault either, or later when I got to be eighteen and nineteen the officers’ fault. In Key West when you’re sixteen it’s just sailors, but after you’re eighteen it’s officers, too, so you’d swear they all had a calendar with your birthday marked on it.

But I knew how Jimmy would have felt if I fooled around with them, so I didn’t. Not even the ones that didn’t try to act so smart but were real nice. None of them were like Jimmy. I never saw anybody like that until Egan.

Still and all, Lettie was always at me about it, and it got so that I hated to go to Key West at all. When I had time off from the restaurant I just stayed by myself, or I went over to the cove to talk to Sebastiano and Suzie Rios. Then after a while it was only Sebastiano because Suzie got married. Felix brought home some Cubano who worked as a porter in a motel, a squinty little thing looked as mean as a barracuda, and a month later there was a party for them in the restaurant with Hilaria doing most of the cooking so it stunk from garlic for a week afterward, and then they went to Key West and got married. But Suzie left the picture of her pilot in my album, because she was afraid her husband would ask about it. She said to take care of it for her, so I just left it in the album. Then when she visited Felix and Hilaria she would come down to the cove with me and would kiss it and hold it against her, and I knew how she felt. I wanted to ask her how it was to be married, what happened with a man and all, but I didn’t. So we just talked about other things, and then when the baby came she wouldn’t visit any more because she was afraid to take it out on the water, and I never saw her again.

Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to break open the cash drawer and run away, but I was scared to. It wasn’t only that Cole and Lettie would sure enough have the cops after me, but I had the feeling that everybody up north would be like the tourists, and I didn’t see how I could stand that. But I thought about it. And I thought about other things. About what it was like to be married so that a man could do whatever he wanted to you. And about Jimmy, so that he and the married thoughts got all tangled up together, and almost every day I had to do what Sebastiano caught Suzie doing. I didn’t want to, because afterward I would feel so ashamed and know I might even go crazy doing it so much, but I couldn’t help it. And sometimes I would lie on my back on the beach with the sun so hot that it made your heart beat loud, and I would listen to it beating and wonder what made it keep going like that. It didn’t matter to me if it stopped once and for all, but it just kept going all by itself.

That’s how I was when Avery came along. I was real low and not caring, and no matter what else happened between him and me, he made things different.