Tigers in Red Weather (3 page)

The bungalows sat in rows on either side of a dusty drive, each separated by its own plot of land. All the kitchens looked out onto the drive and at any time, any number of the servicemen’s busybody wives could be seen peering out. Nick had made it a habit to walk out to the drive in her bathing suit at least once a day, just to watch the kerchiefed heads quickly disappear, one by one, as she stared them down. It had become something of a game, to see if she could catch one polka-dotted head frozen in the beam of her racy bathing suit, cut higher at the thighs in the French style. This brightened her day.

Each bungalow on her side also had a good-sized backyard stretching all the way down to the salty canal, which served as a byway for St. Augustine’s fishermen and, from time to time, kids fooling around in rowboats.

But theirs had one thing all the others didn’t have: a dock, tethered into the silty bank, which swayed with the movement of the water. Unlike the rest of the development, it didn’t have the look of better times to come, of new lives being started over in cheap boxes. The wood was gray and perfectly weathered, perhaps rescued from an old piece of siding or a fisherman’s ramp. Nick loved the dock, like nothing else in that Florida town. Sometimes when she was lying there with her eyes closed, she was almost sure the hammered planks had come free from their soft purchase and that she was floating away, down the canal and out to sea, back home to her island up north. Then she would open her eyes and see the ungainly house at the other end of the lawn, and realize it had only been a passing fishing boat causing the dock to pitch from side to side.

Nick passed her days stretched out there in the Florida sun, listening
to the records that had arrived from Cambridge in a trunk lined with old newspaper, and trying to shock her neighbors. Sometimes, she tried out new recipes from a book she had bought in town,
The Prudence Penny Regional Cook Book
. It was divided into chapters: Pennsylvania Dutch, Creole, Mississippi Valley, Minnesota Scandinavian and Cosmopolitan, and called for ingredients whose presence on the page continued to startle her.

Before they left Elm Street, Nick and Helena had made a small bonfire and burned their expired ration books. Helena had always had a hard time figuring out which stamp went with what food, and would sometimes return with a can of spinach instead of chicken because she had mixed up the days. And while Nick had liked the challenge of rationing for a while, it had eventually grown tedious, like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece. Now, she could cook whatever she liked, without having to figure out a substitute. But she found it difficult to concentrate on the recipes, and sometimes would give up halfway through the honeyed ham or oysters Rockefeller, and go lie on the dock in the sun. Later, she would throw the remaining ingredients together into some kind of casserole.

Hughes never said anything, but she knew he was dismayed by her uneven cooking. Listening to the shower, she tried not to think of dinner, once again left undone. She also tried not to think about her husband, who had himself become something rationed.

The orchestra’s horn section broke in and she slapped her foot in time against the coming tide, making little splashes of canal water fly up onto her calf. Her eyes were shut and her yellow bathing suit was losing the heat it had absorbed from the afternoon’s sunbathing. A breeze was whispering up from the water and she could hear a small rowboat passing.

In the house, the water stopped running. Silence, except for the sound of the music and the children a few houses down, complaining
about being called to dinner. Nick turned her face to the west to catch the last heat of the day on her cheek.

“Hello.”

Startled, she lifted her head. Shading her eyes, she saw Hughes standing on the lawn, freshly showered and wearing the white shirt she had ironed earlier in the day.

“Do you want me to make you a drink?” she asked, not moving.

“No, I’ll make it myself.” Hughes walked over to the tiki bar and, pulling a bottle of no-name gin out of the cupboard, poured two fingers full into a tumbler.

“There’s no ice out here,” Nick said. “Too hot.” She laid her head back on the warm planks and shut her eyes again.

“You haven’t forgotten that Charlie and Elise are coming for dinner?” There was a note of resignation in his voice, as if he knew she had forgotten, as if she couldn’t but have forgotten. As if all she did was forget and not remember.

Nick stiffened, but kept her eyes closed.

“Who? Oh yes, your friends,” she said. “No, I haven’t forgotten.” She had. “I bought shrimp from the shrimp boat.”

She heard Hughes sigh into his drink.

“Well, I know you’re bored of it, but for a dollar a bucket, it’s really all we can afford until the next paycheck.” Nick got up and dusted herself off. “Especially if we’re entertaining.”

“I thought you said you missed having dinner parties,” Hughes said quietly.

He stood facing her, holding his glass. His blond hair had turned dark from the shower, and the setting sun lit him from behind. To Nick, it seemed as if his shoulders were almost squared against her, like a fighter.

“I do,” Nick said. “I mean, I did say that. Darling, it’s just that I don’t know them and you …” She broke off when she saw Hughes staring at her like she was some kind of slow child.

She felt the strange juxtaposition of emotions, so familiar now. She wanted to take his drink out of his hand and smash it into his face, grind the glass against his skin. She also wanted to beg for forgiveness, and then be forgiven, the way she had been when she was a child and her mother’s cold punishment would pass into clemency.

“Never mind,” Nick said. “I’ll go in and fix the supper. What time did you tell them?”

“Eight sharp,” Hughes said.

Nick didn’t go in and fix the supper. Instead, she stood smoking in the kitchen, letting cold air leak out of the icebox as she studied the vegetables. Cucumber salad, she decided. It would go well with seafood. She shut the door, leaning against it. She looked down at her legs, which were getting brown from her daily doses of sun. She’d had to buy the bathing suit in town, for a small fortune. She hadn’t realized the heat would still be strong in winter. On her island up north, the sun would already be a muddy, washed-out color, her bathing suit long packed in a cedar trunk to hibernate.

She heard Hughes turn off the record player and head toward the kitchen. Nick began busying herself with the shrimp, peeling and deveining the pink moons. She used to love them. Now, they ate them almost every other day.

“Why don’t you turn on the radio?” Hughes asked.

She held up her slippery hands. “You do it, I don’t want to hurt it.”

Hughes had bought her the radio the week before and Nick had a vague feeling of animosity toward it. He had taken a Saturday-afternoon drive alone and returned with a box. She didn’t ask why he drove without her on the weekends, or where he went. He would just stare at the sky through the screen door and then pick up his keys. The first time, she hadn’t even realized he was going until she heard the engine start. She walked to the door and looked up at the cloudless expanse, the dusty drive, the road beyond, to see what in
it had made her husband want to drive away. But as far as she could see, there was nothing. Only the old green Buick flatlining down the straight Florida road.

Then one day, the radio had appeared, like a spy, from wherever it was he went to get away.

“I thought you’d want to hear something other than your records,” he had said by way of explanation. “You may even be able to hear programs from London.”

“London?” she had asked, wondering why he thought that was important to her. But he was already on his way to the shower, her voice echoing in the empty kitchen.

Nick looked up from the shrimp. Hughes hadn’t switched the radio on, but he was fingering the silver knobs. He had elegant fingers with neat, square nails. Everything about him was like his hands, tailored and clean, the color of pine. Nick watched him gaze at the dials, run the tips of his fingers over the brown covering of the speaker. She wanted to eat him, he was so beautiful. She wanted to cry or melt or gnash her teeth. Instead, she peeled the skin off another shrimp.

“They look good,” Hughes said, coming up behind her and putting his hand on the small of her back.

Nick had to grip the counter with one hand to keep herself still. She smelled him, Ivory soap and bay rum, so close to her skin, but not touching it. Touching it through the fabric of the bathing suit. She wanted his hand on her neck, or her arm or between her legs.

“I’m sure it will be delicious,” he said.

She knew he was sorry he’d been nasty about the shrimp. “Oh well,” she said, suddenly feeling lighter again. “I know it’s awfully repetitive. I suppose it’s partly because I sleep so late and can’t seem to get up in time for that early market. Are you sorry you have such a lazy wife?”

“I have a lovely wife,” he said.

She was about to turn to him when he took his hand off her back.
She would have caught it, pulled him to her, maybe even begged him, but he was already moving away.

Nick watched him head for the screened-in porch, his long legs moving like a sleepwalker’s. The invisible imprint of his hand burning into her.

When she had finished with the shrimp and put them in the icebox to cool, Nick went into the bedroom and carefully removed her bathing suit. She showered in the small bathroom off the bedroom. When she opened the closet, a cockroach as big as a sparrow came flying out, ten times bigger than any she’d ever seen up north. Water bugs, one of the servicemen’s wives had called them. Nick didn’t scream; she wasn’t even surprised by them anymore.

Running her hand across her dresses, she stopped at a cotton sundress with cherries and a sweetheart neckline. Slipping it on and surveying herself in the mirror, she took out her sewing scissors and cut off the straps. Without them, her breasts sprang to attention, the heart-shaped top just clearing her nipples. She brushed back her dark hair, still glossy despite the sun. She looked strong and healthy, and a little less severe with her new nut-colored skin setting off the yellow flecks in her eyes. She felt proud of the effect. She dabbed her wrists and cleavage with perfume and went barefoot back into the kitchen.

She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the icebox and brought it out to Hughes, who was sitting on the porch, looking out over the canal.

“Would you open this for me, darling?”

Hughes looked up at her and took the bottle and the corkscrew out of her hands. He began peeling away the foil.

“That’s quite revealing,” he said to the bottle.

“You took me to the yacht club dance in this dress, don’t you remember?”

He looked up, a half smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No, I’m sorry, Nicky, I don’t.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “There was that funny, ugly little man leading the band who thought he was Lester Lanin. And he made some comment about the cherries and you almost hit him.”

“Did I?”

Nick sucked in her breath. “Well,” she said. “It is a bit different. I did cut off the straps. But I think it’s more sophisticated this way.”

Hughes pulled out the cork and began freeing it from the screw. “Won’t you be cold?”

Nick stared at him, her head pounding out a hot little rhythm, like the angry horns in Count Basie’s orchestra.

“Goddamn it, Hughes,” she said slowly. “It’s goddamn Florida. I will not be cold.”

Hughes didn’t look up, didn’t even flinch. He handed her the bottle. She took a swig, not bothering with the glass, and walked out to the lawn.

Nick wasn’t sure how long she’d been there when she heard voices coming from inside. Only that the bottle was almost half-empty and her dress was damp from the grass. With some difficulty, she roused herself and moved unsteadily toward the porch. Walking through the house, she saw Hughes was already shaking hands with the couple at the front door. Nick didn’t realize she was still barefoot until she reached them.

“Hello,” she said, laughing and looking down at her feet. “Well, you have a shoeless hostess. I do hope you won’t take it as a sign of indifference. I was out in the yard. It’s too damp for shoes.”

“I’ve always thought a barefoot hostess is a mark of the highest regard,” the man said, extending his hand. “Charlie Wells. And this is my wife, Elise.”

His eyes were round and black, like the jet beads her mother used to wear to the theater, but his brown hand was warm, if a bit rough to the touch. Nick knew it was from the ship, and that Hughes’s
hands had also hardened from the chipping and painting, preparing the
Jones
to be docked. But Charlie’s calluses also reminded her that he’d been an enlisted man. He’d eventually gotten a battlefield commission, but he hadn’t started out that way. Not like her husband. A mustang, Hughes said they were called. “One of the brightest men I served with, though,” Hughes had told her. “They were smart to bring him up.”

While the man was dark and slender, his wife looked blond to the point of albino. And she was wearing a pale pink dress that, in Nick’s opinion, wasn’t doing her any favors. Still, she had a sort of soft femininity that gave Nick a small prick of envy.

“What can I get everyone to drink?” Hughes asked.

“Come out to the porch,” Nick said. “Our silly bar is outside, so Hughes won’t have to walk as far to bring you your scotch.” She led their guests through the house back to the porch. “Really, we live out here. That’s the lovely thing about Florida. Do you have a porch, Elise?”

“We do,” she said. “But I’m hardly ever out there. I’m not really … well, I’m not crazy about the outdoors.”

“That’s a shame,” Nick said, rolling her eyes, but only inwardly. “Do you like Count Basie? I’m on a sort of kick at the moment.”

“I don’t really know. Charlie’s the one who knows about music in our house.”

“Do you have ‘Honeysuckle Rose’?” Charlie asked.

“I do indeed,” Nick said, skipping off to the record player. “Are you a fan of the blues? Hughes always says it’s too melancholy.”