Porch Lights (10 page)

Later still, as Charlie and I were drying the last of the silverware and dropping it into the drawer, Miss Deb came sailing through to say good night.

“That breeze out there on that porch is something else!”

“It always was and ever shall be thus—especially on high tide,” I said. “If we could bottle it, we’d all be filthy rich.”

“Thanks for the pie, Miss Deb,” Charlie said. “It was so good.”

Charlie’s hair was back in his face by then, and he looked just like who he was—a very vulnerable little boy who ought to be up to some mischief but instead carried the weight of the world all over his face.

“Anytime you want a pie you just let me know, okay? In fact, have you ever had a chocolate pecan pie?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, then, that’s next. When this pie plate is empty, you let me know, all right? Night, y’all.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said. I could hear how tired he was in his voice. My poor baby.

I walked Miss Deb to the door and gave her a hug. I watched her go down the steps, and she stopped halfway, turning back to me. I could see she wanted to say something, but like most people trying to offer encouragement in the wake of disaster, she was at a loss for words. So I said it for her. “We’re gonna be all right, Miss Deb. I don’t want you to worry.”

“Of course you’re going to be all right. You have to be. Besides, this island cures what ails you.”

“This island and a slice of your pie. I hope we’re right. Thanks again, huh?”

She nodded her head and turned again, this time making it to the bottom of the steps. I watched her as she crossed our yard and made her way toward her house. She was thoughtful and kind. There was a lot to be said for those qualities.

When I got back to the kitchen, Charlie was arranging our dish towels over the oven handle to let them dry. Show me another ten-year-old boy who did that, and I’d show you one who was imitating his parents’ behavior. I rinsed the sponge out again, thinking about how hard Jimmy and I always tried to set a good example. It was amazing what stuck and what didn’t. I wiped down the counters for the final time of the night.

“Mom? Can I go to bed now? I have to go to work in the morning, you know.”

Priceless. How old was he?

“Of course. Go kiss Glam good night, and I’ll come tuck you in.”

“Okay.”

I turned out most of the lights, and a few minutes later I wandered to his bedroom and found Charlie under the covers. Mom was perched on the side of his bed. She was telling him a story about Edgar Allan Poe and how back in his day there had been illnesses that caused deep comas that resembled death. Sometimes people were accidentally buried alive, so they put little bells in the coffin that could be rung by the breath of the not exactly deceased.

“You’re kidding, right?” Charlie said with a mounting panic in his voice.

“Why, no. But it was a long time ago and—”

“Charlie! Did you brush your teeth?”

He jumped in surprise, not having known I was there until that moment. “Yes.”

“So if I go touch your toothbrush, it will be wet?”

He shimmied out from under the covers and ran to the bathroom.

“I’ll just go check,” he said and slammed the bathroom door. “Sorry!”

“Mom? What are you doing?”

“What do you mean? I’m putting my grandson to bed.”

“And telling a little boy who hasn’t slept right since we buried his father a story about people being buried alive? I mean, do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Oh, honey, Charlie’s old enough—”

“You are unbelievable. Do me a favor? How about we don’t tell him any more stories like that for a while?”

“Really, Jackie, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what. When he gets up ten times in the middle of the night, I’ll send him to you.”

I turned and went to my room. And this time
I
slammed the door.

Chapter 6

“In supposing it to be a bug of real gold” . . .

“This bug is to make my fortune,” he continued, with a triumphant smile, “to reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder, then, that I prize it?”

—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Gold-Bug”

Annie

S
he was wrong. Charlie slept like a stone. But I felt so perfectly horrible about what Jackie had said that I was up half the night myself checking on him and checking on him. I knew that Charlie had been having trouble sleeping, but I hadn’t realized he was so impressionable or I never would have told him anything at bedtime that might have frightened him. Never in a million years. Why, I wouldn’t hurt a
hair
on that child’s head. Didn’t Jackie know that? Lord, this was giving me some terrible anxiety. The worst part was that she was probably right. Oh, hells bells. No more death stories from me!

It was getting on to seven when I called Deb. “You ready to walk off some pie?” I asked.

“Sweet Mother of Mary! Am I ever? I ate for two people yesterday. I’ll meet you at the bottom of your beach steps.”

“Sounds good.”

I tied my walking sneakers on, and minutes later we were off at our usual pace, that being walking as fast as we could while still being able to carry on a conversation. There were clusters of dog people at Station 26, Station 22, and farther down the beach. (Station numbers were a carryover from when we had a trolley car on the island, which was way before my time, thank you.) It seemed that the same dogs showed up every day but I never recognized their owners, probably because they changed clothes and, after all, two lively chicks like Deb and me traveled at a pretty spritely clip.

“I did something really stupid,” I said.

“What?”

I told her about Poe and his obsession with people who were accidentally buried alive, and she shook her head.

“It’s simply a literary fact,” I said.

“Yeah, one better imparted in the light of day. You have to watch yourself with kids.”

“Well, he slept just fine, but now I’ve got an issue with Jackie.”

“You worry too much, and anyway, Poe was a crazy nut,” she said.

“People think that, but it’s really not true.”

“What? You gonna tell me that he wasn’t a drunk?”

“No, of course not. He was a bit of a binge drinker. The poor thing had that kind of genetic structure that when he took one or two drinks he was trashed.”

“That
is
unfortunate!”

“Right? Awful. Anyway, he certainly had good reasons to become a drunk if he wanted to, but he didn’t drink himself to death like the world thinks he did.”

“Like what? God, this is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

It was a picture-perfect day, as though it had been ordered up by the Department of Tourism—blue skies, sparkling water, nice breeze, what else could you want?

“Gorgeous. First of all, his parents both died when he was just a toddler. They were actors and actually performed at the Dock Street Theatre downtown! Isn’t that funny? Anyway, right away he was separated from his siblings and made to live with this man John Allan and his wife, Fanny. All the Poe children were left destitute. Now, the Allans? They were Yankee Protestants,
if
you know what I mean.”

“No, actually, I don’t have a
clue
what that means.”

“Well, they lived a very stern and strict Calvinist life of emotional deprivation—”

“Emotional deprivation? What in the world is that? You mean they didn’t love him?”

“Well, Fanny loved Edgar, but the old man was brutal. He was this great big hulk of a guy who believed that hard work and sacrifice should rule the day. Frankly, little Edgar was as soft as a grape and wanted to be a poet from the time he knew what poetry was.”

“Soft as a grape? Annie? You’re speaking in code. Do you mean he was gay?”

“No. Well, maybe. There’s no hard evidence of it, but he was extremely effeminate and had almost courtly manners, I guess a bit like an Oscar Wilde kind of character? Anyway, he was terribly affected, which was the kind of thing that would have driven his macho stepfather right up a tree.”

“Jeesh. Hard to imagine Edgar Allan Poe as effeminate. Peculiar, yes. But not girly.”

“Want to talk about peculiar? He married his thirteen-year-old first cousin, but there’s no reason to believe it was ever consummated, which is probably a good thing.”

“Ew. Just the thought . . . I mean, this guy wrote some dark, scary stuff. How is it that I run a library named for him and never knew all of this?”

“Because you read novels and I live, eat, and breathe history and biographies. It’s no crime. Just a difference in preferences. Anyway, do you know that he—”

“Probably not, Miss Poe Expert. And don’t tell me you don’t read novels. I’ve seen some of your books with those covers.”

“So shoot me, but listen to this. With all the stories that he published he only ever made six thousand dollars from his writing in his whole life.”

“What? That’s crazy! So how in the world did he support his child bride and himself?”

“And her mother, who was both his aunt and his mother-in-law.”

“That is so nasty.”

“Yep. It sure is. Literary criticism. Basically, he skewered other writers his whole career and it earned him puh-lenty of enemies. I’ll get you a copy of his obituary. You won’t believe it! The guy who wrote it said no one would care if Poe was dead. It’s the meanest thing I ever read. But sorry, I could go on for hours yakking about his screwed-up life.”

“Hey! You know what?”

“What?”

“You should! We could do a lecture series at the library to raise money. Would you do that? Talk about Poe, I mean? I could get some of the ladies to make sandwiches and cookies, and we could have a tea. What do you think?”

“Really?”

“Why not? They do it at the library downtown all the time. It would probably be better to start after Labor Day. You know, when everyone’s back from vacation and settled back into their routine?”

“That sounds like fun to me. Yeah, I think I’d really like to do that.”

I thought about it more and realized it would give me some purpose that I felt like I’d lost when I retired. It would be awfully nice to be recognized as a qualified-but-not-exactly-an-expert on something even if my reputation was limited to just our little island. I wouldn’t be merely a retired fussbudget, I’d be a
guest lecturer
. Would Steve come? What would he think?

“What are you thinking about, Annie?”

“Well, I was wondering what people would say if I stood up in front of the whole world and gave a talk on Poe. You know how this island is, Deb. All the old biddies will say, ‘Oh, she thinks she’s so smart.’ You know how they are.”

“You listen to me, honey, not them. If Thomas Edison had worried about what small-minded people thought when he was trying to invent the lightbulb, we’d still be in the dark.”

“You’re right. I need to just gather up some courage and take the plunge.”

“That’s the spirit! Now, you haven’t told me. How did our Dr. Plofker wind up at your dinner table last night?”

“Because earlier in the afternoon he took one look at Jackie and practically invited himself. I think he was attracted to her.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. He was just being nice. Shoot, Annie, they’ve both lost their spouses and they’re both young. Jackie’s only thirty-five, right?”

“Yes. And he’s forty-three, I think.”

“He probably feels a kindred spirit with her, don’t you think? I mean, I’ve decided that he’s definitely not gay. But I don’t think he’s interested in anyone.”

“No. He’s got the total hots for Jackie. I caught him looking at her with that stupid expression men get when they’re thinking about dicky dunking.”

“Honey, the frost ain’t on the pumpkin quite yet. And how do the total hots compare with the partial hots? On fire versus a little sizzle?”

“Oh, you! Stop!”

“I’m just saying, from what I saw? Nobody’s got the hots for anybody. Y’all just looked like three grown-ups having fun. And besides, he’s the kind of guy who knows how to make people feel good.”

Part of me hoped she was right, and the other part, shame on me, hoped she was wrong.

“Probably why he became a doctor in the first place. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Anyway, I don’t know if you caught the part about him giving Charlie a little job watching his dogs?”

“Yeah, Charlie told me about it while y’all were talking. Listen, boys need dogs for a whole lot of reasons. I think it will do him wonders.”

“That’s what I’m hoping. And it won’t hurt to have a man in his picture either.”

“I was thinking that too, but what’s going to happen if Charlie gets all attached to Dr. Wonderful and then Jackie takes him back to New York? Wouldn’t that be painful for him?”

“We’re putting the cart a mile before the horse here.”

“Right.”

“Charlie has yet to even walk his dogs one time, and he only just met Steve yesterday. Anyway, I have to cut our marathon short this morning. I promised Charlie blueberry pancakes again. And I’ve got to get his adorable bahunkus out of the bed.”