When she was in her twenties, Roy’s mother enjoyed shooting skeet at a club on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago. This is a form of trapshooting in which clay targets are sprung upwards in such a way as to duplicate the angles of flight found in wing shooting. Skeet was a very popular pastime in the 1940s and ’50s, and Kitty often went shooting with one or another of her boyfriends when Roy was a young boy, occasionally taking him along.
When she shot skeet Roy’s mother wore a club jacket with a padded right shoulder that afforded protection from the kick of her shotgun. “Pull!” she’d shout, and the clay bird would be launched into the sky. Kitty was a pretty fair shot, regularly outscoring her mostly male partners. Roy would watch her for a little while, then wander off by himself and walk on the nearby beach.
He was seven years old on a Saturday afternoon while his mother was plugging pigeons with projectiles when Roy came upon a woman standing knee deep in the water staring into the distance. Roy guessed the woman was younger than his mother but not too much younger. She let the waves roll gently over her legs, she hardly moved. It was a sunny day in late September, Indian summer, still warm with as yet no hint of the violent winter certain to come. Before the first snow, Roy knew, he and his mother would head south to spend the cold months in Key West, Florida, the southernmost point in the United States.
Roy stood on the sand and watched the woman. She was wearing a thin black dress, the lower half of which was already wet, but she did not seem to mind. Two coastwise freighters and a barge were visible in the distance; the freighters, Roy figured, were headed north toward the St. Lawrence seaway. He had gone sailing on Lake Michigan several times with his Uncle Buck, his mother’s brother, on Buck’s sailboat, the Friendship, before it split almost in half during a severe storm. The wreck occurred while Buck and his wife, Marguerite, were competing in the annual race to Michigan. A large wave crashed into the Friendship’s bow as the boat approached the apex of a preceding swell at an angle that caused its hull to crack. Buck and Marguerite were rescued by a passing freighter after taking down the sails and spending twelve hours below deck wrapped in blankets, but the Friendship was lost. It had been a beautiful yawl, built in Sweden, and Roy missed going sailing with his uncle.
“Your dress is getting wet,” Roy shouted to the woman.
She turned and said, “It feels good. Take off your shoes and socks and roll up your pantlegs and come in. You’ll like it.”
She motioned with her left arm for Roy to join her, so he did as she suggested and stood near her in the water allowing the waves to soak him from the waist down.
“Do you live around here?” he asked.
The woman shook her head. “No, honey, I don’t live anywhere at the moment. I’m free as a bird. What about you?”
“I live with my mother. She’s shooting skeet over there.”
Roy pointed toward the club.
“You’re very pretty,” he said. “So is my mother. Your hair is dark red, like hers.”
The woman looked more closely at him and smiled.
“I’m sure she is. What’s your name?”
“Roy.”
“My name is Florence, like the city in Italy.”
“Where do you sleep at night?” he asked.
“Oh, I have many choices, Roy. I suppose it depends on my mood.”
“Do you have a boyfriend? My mother has a lot of boyfriends. They buy her lots of things and sometimes take her on trips to other countries. She can speak French and some Spanish. I can speak some Spanish, too.”
“Your mother sounds like an interesting woman. What’s her name?”
“Kitty. Everybody calls her Kitty but her real name is Katherine.”
“Roy! Roy! Time to go, boy! Get out of the water!”
Roy and Florence both looked behind them and saw a man with thick, shiny black hair and a big black mustache standing on the beach. When he saw Florence’s face he came closer.
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you, miss,” he said.
“This is Rome,” Roy told Florence. “He drove us here.”
Roy walked onto the dry sand and picked up his shoes and socks.
“Her name is Florence,” he said, “that’s a city in Italy.”
Rome smiled at her and said, “We have something in common, then, both of us being named after Italian cities. Do you live around here?”
“She doesn’t live anywhere.”
“You’re quite beautiful, Florence,” Rome said, still smiling.
“Her hair is the same as my mother’s, isn’t it?”
“Can I help you with anything?” Rome asked her.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m fine just as I am. It was nice meeting and standing in the water with you, Roy.”
“I liked meeting you, too. Maybe you’ll be here the next time I come back.”
Florence smiled at Roy and waved at him.
Rome kept smiling and said, “I hope to see you again sometime, too.”
Florence turned away and looked out at the lake. The freighters had disappeared but the barge was still in sight.
Roy walked barefooted toward the shooting club with Rome, who no longer was smiling.
“Florence didn’t tell you her last name, did she? Or where she lives?”
“I told you, she doesn’t live anywhere. She said where she sleeps depends on her mood.”
“I’m sure it does,” said Rome. “These beautiful dolls are all a little mixed up in their heads, some more than a little.”
“Is my mother mixed up in her head?”
“Here’s a bench. Sit down and put your socks and shoes back on.”