For a while we took turns in the mostly vacant parking lot, asking strangers if they could help us find our friend Mr. Pym. Strangers were few and far between. The third person I asked looked at me with so much suspicion that I went back to the truck.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Mãe.
“The snowbirds have flown north,” she said. “It’s a Florida phenomenon. Come May, many condos are deserted.”
She was stretched back in the seat, listening to the radio. Johnny Cash was singing a song called “Hurt,” a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song. By now I knew most of his music. No matter what buttons you pressed on the jukebox at Flo’s Place, you got music by Cash or Nine Inch Nails.
“The Recovery Plan needs a new strategy,” I told her.
“Hmm?” She sat up. Then she motioned for me to hand her my cell phone.
She punched some buttons, asked for the home office of Green Cross. Then she punched some more, and finally she must have reached a voice. “Where’s our delivery?” she said, her voice alarmingly similar to Mary Ellis Root’s. “I’m calling for Mr. Pym on Midnight Pass, Siesta Key, Florida.” She winked at me.
“You did?” she said. “Where did you leave it?”
A few seconds later, she said, “Well, it’s not here. Yes, you’d better do that. We’ll be expecting you.”
She ended the call and handed me the phone. “It’s number 1235,” she said. “And tomorrow, Mr. Pym or whoever lives there will be getting another delivery of who knows what.”
While we waited for the elevator, my mother shifted her weight from foot to foot. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and made a funny noise (half cough, half imitation of the sound made by a surprised cat) in her throat. She hadn’t been nervous around me before. She made me nervous. I lifted my hair from my neck and moved from side to side.
The elevator arrived empty. It had glass walls, and as it rose, the city of Sarasota emerged and shrank across the bay.
“We can go back down,” I said. “We don’t even have to leave the elevator.”
“Yes, we do.” She sounded as curt as when she’d done her Mary Ellis Root imitation.
The elevator doors opened, and we walked down an open corridor — doors on the left, iron guardrails on the right. The wall had no windows. I could make out the roof of our truck far below, parked in a visitor’s space.
The door of unit 1235 was painted white and had a peephole, like all the others.
My mother rang the bell. We waited. She rang it again.
Either no one was home, or the occupants of 1235 didn’t want company.
“Now what?” Mãe said. I didn’t have the gumption to bang on the door.
We retreated to the elevator. I felt deflated, but not surprised. How likely was it that we’d find him, based on hunches and lies?
As we rode down, we didn’t look at each other. I watched the ground rising to meet us — and that’s when I saw her: a short, obese woman, dressed in black. She walked slowly across the parking lot, carrying a paper bag in both hands. No one else on earth waddled as she did. The sun made her greasy hair glisten.
My mother saw her, too. She said, “When did I ever think I’d be glad to see Mary Ellis again.” She didn’t sound as surprised as I might have expected. “I must have conjured her when I imitated her voice.”
“What will we do?” I asked.
Mãe pushed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator had just slid past the sixth. When the car stopped at four, I followed her out. We stood for a moment, facing a tattered notice for ballroom dancing classes taped to the elevator doors. Digital numbers above the doors marked the elevator’s descent. It hit one, paused, and began to rise again.
She said, “This should be interesting.”
What will Root do when she sees us? I wondered. I’d spent my childhood being taught the importance of compassion. But for her I felt nothing but contempt, and I knew it was mutual.
My jaw tightened, my back tensed. “Is she one of us?” I asked my mother.
“Who knows what she is.” Mãe’s lips pressed together tightly.
Then the elevator stopped at our floor. The doors slid open, and we stepped inside.
Mãe moved behind me to block any exit. She said, “Imagine meeting you here.”
Root clutched her paper bag. She didn’t look any older, only greasier. Did she ever wash that dress? But something about her had changed, I noticed at once: she’d trimmed back the three hairs that grew on her chin. They were less than an inch long now, mere bristles compared to their former state.
Neither my mother nor I knew what to say, so we said childish things, obvious things.
“Surprise!” I said.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Mãe folded her arms.
I ended with, “Small world, isn’t it?”
Root’s eyes moved from my mother’s face to mine. Her pupils seemed dark and deep as wells. “Yes,” she said, speaking directly to me. “It’s a small, small world. We expected you yesterday.”
When Root unlocked the door of 1235, a familiar metallic odor floated out to greet us. The smell of the night kitchen in Saratoga Springs, I thought. Whatever stuff she’d brewed in the basement there was being made here.
The condominium itself was modern and minimalist — white carpets and walls, black leather and chrome furniture. We passed the kitchen — and yes, a saucepot was simmering on an electric range — and went down a corridor lined with closed doors. It ended in a large room with an entire wall made of glass; outside it a balcony overlooked the bay. Facing the glass, three men sat on a sectional sofa.
The first to take notice of us was Dennis; as he turned toward us, the other two also turned. My father’s eyes blazed at me, but turned surprised and soft when he looked at Mãe. If I’d been expected, she clearly hadn’t been. I took a deep breath, watching him watch her.
The third man was someone I didn’t know. He was tall and blond, wearing a rust-colored linen suit, and he smiled as if he enjoyed being himself. Next to me, my mother suddenly seemed taller, more rigid.
The stranger stood up. “We’ve met, but we were never formally introduced,” he said to me. He walked over and stretched out his hand. “I’m Malcolm.”
His smile and voice seemed artificial, designed to create a charismatic effect. I knew I’d seen him before, and a second later I remembered where — he was the man who’d sat at the Marshall House bar in Savannah, drinking Picardo.
I didn’t take his hand.
He shrugged and withdrew it. He nodded at my mother, then turned to Root, taking the paper bag from her. I glimpsed the tops of two bottles of Picardo inside. He said, “If you’ll get the ice, I’ll mix the drinks.”
Sometimes the ability to hear thoughts confuses, rather than clarifies. So many thoughts flew across that room, all of them charged with emotion. I looked at my father and thought, I knew you weren’t dead.
None of us bothered to block our thinking — except Malcolm, and Dennis, who didn’t know how. Malcolm sat down again, drink in hand, with an air of satisfaction that I found intolerable. I suspected he’d engineered this meeting, brought us all together for a reason only he knew.
My father’s feelings were the most muted, yet the strongest. He looked exactly the same — dark hair falling back from his forehead, profile as severe and elegant as a Roman emperor’s on an ancient coin. Any relief he felt at seeing me — and I did sense some — was buried beneath disappointment. The sight of me seemed to pain him.
About my mother, his feelings were raw, confused, as were hers about him. The only thoughts I could pick up were bursts of static, flying between them like sparks.
And Dennis? He was easiest to read of all. He felt guilty. He hadn’t said hello, but he looked at Mãe and me with shame in his eyes. He sat at the end of the sofa, a bottle of beer in his hand, ill at ease.
Root handed me a glass of Picardo on ice. As I took it, I saw something in her eyes that made no sense: respect. Root respected me?
The room, ice-cold from air-conditioning, suddenly felt suffocating. I backed away from Root and went outside, onto the balcony. The sun felt more intense, and the air more tropical, than in Homosassa. Far below, the water sparkled, and the sailboats skimmed along like toys. I took a deep breath.
“Did you know I saved your life once?” Malcolm’s voice had a faintly nasal quality to it.
I didn’t turn around.
“You were pretty young then. Much too young to be alone outside after dark. But the others were wrapped up in some experiment — one of Dennis’s efforts, I’d bet, because it ended with an explosion. Wood and glass were flying, and there you were, watching. You could barely walk. I carried you to safety and brought you back when they’d put out the fire. Do you remember?”
I remembered the explosion, and the wool coat of the man who carried me away. And for the first time, I remembered why I’d wandered outside that night. From my window I’d seen fireflies in the garden, and I wanted to touch one.
“So that was you,” I said.
He came closer, and I turned to look at him. I suppose he was handsome, with his smooth skin, wide eyes, and high forehead. But his smile seemed mocking, and in his eyes was clinical calculation. I moved away, next to the railing.
“I didn’t expect you to thank me,” he said. “Oh, it might have been a nice gesture. But it’s not important. Besides, you have too much to thank me for. I’ve made your family what it is.”
“Leave her alone.” My mother stood in the doorway.
He turned to her, looked her up and down. “A lovely dress, Sara,” he said. “Have you missed me?”
“Leave us alone.” She took a step toward us.
Then my father appeared. I’d thought his suit was black, but now I saw its silver pinstripe. “You’re making so much noise,” he said, although their voices in fact were low. “Malcolm, it’s time for you to go.”
“But we still have business —”
“Business will wait.” Although his voice was pitched low, it resonated.
Malcolm looked at me. “We’ll talk again.”
My father took one step toward us. Malcolm left without saying more.
My father sat on the suede sofa, bent forward, elbows on knees, head in his hands. My mother and I sat at the other end, watching him.
Dennis and Root had left us to ourselves. Somewhere, the sun must be setting; our window faced east, but the light outside began to deepen, and a few crimson clouds scudded across the sky.