|
LILY TUCK
Dream House
Sometimes Isabel dreams she goes back to a house she
has never lived in or set foot in. Yet the moment she opens the front
door, the moment she enters the front hall, everything seems familiar
and, in the dream, she feels enormous relief. They are back together again.
For a trial period. Her former husband is very subdued, he does not shout
or tell stories in his booming loud voice; when he kisses her he kisses
her on the cheek, not on the mouth. Also, he does not make any sexual
advances. It is she now in the dream who flirts with him. When she speaks
to him she puts her hand on his arm for an unnecessarily long time, she
bumps into him accidentally-on-purpose with her hip; she sighs a lot,
she leaves the top buttons of her blouse unbuttoned. In bed, she turns
from side to side dissatisfied and unable to go to sleep while, next to
her, her former husband lies flat on his back and snores evenly, peacefully.
The first house Sam and Isabel lived in together was
not a house but a boat. A thirty-four-foot ketch named Eudora.
They had planned to sail around the world or cross the Atlantic Ocean
but they only got as far as the Caribbean where they stayed a year, island
hopping and living the ideal, dreamed-of, carefree life: cooking fresh-caught
fish, eating fresh-picked fruit, every day wearing the same clothesIsabel
wore a bikini bathing suit, if the wind picked up, she put on a T-shirt.
Every day, too, they dove off the deck of the boat and swam for hours
in the warm aquamarine water. At night, they made love rocking to the
motion of the boat at anchor and listening to the slap-slap sound of the
waves against the boat's hull; if it got too hot down below, they slept
on deck under the stars whose names and positions in the sky Isabel got
to know by heart.
They were fortunate too, they never got into really
bad weathera few sudden tropical squalls that made the boat heel
way over and the keel shudder and groan and that caused all the gear that
was not tied down or not put away to roll noisily to the floor. One time
when they were sailing around the island of Puerto Rico, they got becalmedthe
sea was full of floating bunches of seaweed, the reason perhaps the motor
did not startand for a while they drifted so close to the coast
that Isabel claimed she could identify, with her naked eye, the laundry
hanging out to dry in someone's yard: "Mira, mira," she sang out,
"two pairs of jeans, four white shirts, two bras, one red blouse."
"Come on, baby!" Sam was not listening to Isabel.
He seesawed the tiller back and forth trying to create some momentum so
they could come about.
Sam loved the Eudora"honey," "sweetheart,"
was how he talked to the boat. He scrubbed Eudora's teak deck with
a holystone, he polished her brass until it sparkled. He liked keeping
everything on board shipshape, the sheets coiled, the winch handles stowed,
he liked for nothingIsabel could not leave even a sweater lying
on deckto be out of place.
"I learned my lesson the hard way," Sam told her.
"One summer when I was a kid and I was cruising up in Nova Scotia with
my uncle, I left my brand-new Top-Siders lying on the deck and my uncle
found them and he held up the Top-Siders and asked: 'Whose shoes?' When
I answered, 'Gee, thanks, they're mine,' my uncle tossed my Top-Siders
overboard. But he got his comeuppance," Sam continued. "A few days later
I found his Rolex watch inside the head. He had forgotten it there. I
held up the Rolex watch and said: 'Whose watch?' and my uncle went: 'Gee,
thanksthat's my watch,' and, guess what, I dropped the Rolex watch
in the ocean."
"I can't believe you did that," Isabel said.
And "Captain's word is law," Sam also liked to tell
her especially when they were lying in their double bunk in the bow of
the boat and he was putting Isabel on top of him.
The first time Isabel saw Sam, he was standing in
the middle of a group of people and he was telling them a story. A story
Isabel could hear clear across the room about how one of his relativesSam
came from a large family of sailorshad sailed alone across the Atlantic
Ocean and every evening at six o'clock sharp no matter what the weather
was like, even if the wind was gusting at thirty knots and the waves were
ten feet high, he went down below and put on a coat and tie and made himself
a martini. Everyone, including Sam, laughed, but Isabel stepped in. "I
don't believe you," she said.
"It's true, I promise you," still laughing Sam looked
Isabel over. "A gimlet martini."
Usually they stayed only a couple of days on each
island: Eleuthera, Nassau, a few of the Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbuda,
St. Kitts; but they stayed nearly a month in Jamaica. They anchored out
in Montego Bay and every day they hitchhiked to Negril, a two-mile-long
sandy beach filled with kids. Sam and Isabel didn't do anything special:
they smoked a little pot, they drank rum, they lay in the sun and got
free massages on the beach; also they met Neil.
Like Sam and Isabel, Neil was in his early twenties
and bumming around the Caribbean. He had worked on a couple of charters
and had stories about the goings-on on board. Stories of how the couples
drank too much and switched partners and how one time when they were anchored
off Barbados, one couple went skinny-dipping in the middle of the night
only the couple forgot to put down the ladder so when they tried to get
out of the water and back on board they couldn't. Apparently, the couple
shouted and yelled and splashed water against the portholes before finally
Neil woke upeveryone else he claimed was too drunkand he helped
them climb back in the boat.
"I should have just let them drown or get eaten by
sharks," Neil said. "You should have seen themthe man's dick had
withered to nothing, the woman's breasts came down to here." Neil pointed
to his knees.
Isabel said, "They could have swum to shore."
"Yeah, and then what? How would you like to be wandering
around the island of Barbados in the middle of the night stark naked?"
The three laughed at the idea of it. But, like a bad
dream, the image stayed in Isabel's head. She could see the middle-aged
couple stumbling around on the dark beach, shivering and trying to hide
their nakedness with their hands, then walking to a house where there
still was a light and knocking on the door and a dog barking. The man
would be murdered, the woman raped and then murdered.
Isabel does not remember who asked himor, more
likely, Neil asked thembut Neil went with Sam and Isabel from Jamaica
to St. Thomas, where the charter company he worked for sailed from. Once
on board the Eudora, Neil's stories no longer seemed funny and,
worse, Neil's presence seemed in some way to pollute the atmosphere. Neither
Sam nor Isabel spoke of this but while Neil was talking, Sam and Isabel
avoided each other's eyes and looked out at some distant point on the
horizon. Often too, when Neil was on deck, to avoid him, Isabel went down
below and tried to readshe was reading War and Peacebut
she knew she would never finish it. After a few pages she started to feel
seasick and she had to shut the book. Lying on the bunk, Isabel would
start picturing the middle-aged naked couple again. This time they were
walking along a road in the darkthe woman was holding a palm leaf
to her pubis, the man had cut his foot and was limpingwhen an old
wooden truck rattled by. The old wooden truck came to a sudden stop. Several
men were standing in the back of the truck; the men started to yell and
hoot when they saw the naked couple. Frightened, the naked man and woman
ran into the woods by the side of the road; yelling and hooting the men
who were brandishing machetes and who were wearing shoes jumped off the
truck and ran into the woods after them.
Once, on a particularly hot and airless afternoon,
Isabel was down below taking a shower and washing her hair, when Neil
opened the head door. Isabel was standing with her arms raised, her hands
in her hair which was full of shampoo, and Neil held the door open and
looked at her. They stood there without moving for at least a minutethe
shower splashing out the door on to Neil's footuntil, at last, Neil
shut the door.
When Neil said good-bye, he tried to kiss Isabel on
the mouth but she turned her head at the last minute and he kissed Isabel's
hair.
"I'll get you later, Isabel," Neil said.
After Neil left, Sam and Isabel sailed away the same
day. They didn't want to stay in St. Thomas. Neither Sam nor Isabel spoke
about Neil; they wanted to forget about him. Only at dinner that night,
Isabel said, "You think that story about the man and woman swimming naked
was true?"
Sam shrugged. "Why would he make something like that
up?"
"He gave me the creeps," she said. Despite the heat,
Isabel shivered.
That night Sam and Isabel made love as if they had
not made love for a weekwhich was nearly truefor while Neil
was on board, Sam and Isabel made love quickly, silently, as if afraid
of being seen or heard. Now, they left the cabin door open and made all
the noise they wanted to. The next day Isabel found a soiled yellow cap
with the logo of a hardware store on it that Neil had forgotten and she
threw the cap overboard. The cap floated for a long timeeach time
it disappeared under a wave Isabel thought the cap had sunk and was gone
for good, but then it surfaced again. She watched the cap until it disappeared
from view.
~
"Guess who I ran into? You'll never guess." Sam's
voice was far too loud for their apartment.
"Ssh, you'll wake up the baby," Isabel said. "Who?"
"Neil. Remember the guy who sailed with us to St.
Thomas?"
The baby started to cry and Isabel didn't answer Sam.
The second house Sam and Isabel lived in was a third-floor
walk-up off Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sam was in business
school and they had a baby; another baby was already on the way. The apartment
was too small and whatever available space was filled with cribs, playpens,
strollers, toys. Outside it was always raining or snowing and, alone with
the baby all day, Isabel was lonely. Whenever the baby was sleeping, Isabel
would lie down on their bed. If she tried to readIsabel never finished
War and Peace and she had switched to romancesshe could not
concentrate or remember what she had read. Often Sam came home late, after
Isabel had eaten, and she left his dinner on top of the stove which he
ate with a book lying open next to his plate.
The Eudora was in dry-dock in a boatyard near
Sam's parents' summer house. Once or twice, Sam drove out by himself to
sand and repaint her hull. They had not sailed her in over a year.
"Where did you run into him?" Isabel asked Sam after
she had fed the baby.
Sam did not raise his head. "Who?"
"Neil. The guy from the Caribbean."
"In the Square. In a drugstore. He was buying a package
of condoms."
"You're kidding," Isabel said. "And what were you
buying?"
"Isabel, hey!"
Tired and fat, Isabel no longer wanted to make love.
In bed, if Sam touched her, Isabel shrugged off his hand and turned away.
"Not now," she said.
"When?"
"I don't know. After the baby, maybe."
"Christ," Sam answered as he, too, turned away, "that's
four months from now. Why don't you just say never, Isabel."
"Okay. Never."
The next day Neil telephoned. He must have gotten
their telephone number from information, unless Sam had given it to him.
"Yeah, sure. Sure. That's great. Fine. Give me the
address again," Isabel heard Sam say.
~
The party was in Boston, on Beacon Hill; Neil was
house-sitting. A bar had been set up downstairs in the dining room and
a lot of people Sam and Isabel did not know were milling around the antique
oak table. Isabel got a glass of soda water, Sam got a beer and they went
upstairs. When Neil saw them, he came right over.
"God, I'm glad to see you." He shook Sam's hand up
and down. Again, he tried to kiss Isabel on the lips and Isabel ducked.
"God," Neil said again, "I love pregnant women. Pregnant
women are so sexy."
"Jesus, Neil," Sam said, but he was laughing.
Neil came and sat down next to Isabel on the chintz-covered
sofa. His hairline had receded and he no longer looked so boyish. "You
know what? The first woman I ever made love to was pregnant," he told
her. "The woman I lost my virginity to. She was ten years older than I
was and I had the biggest crush on her."
"Neil. You're full of it," Isabel said.
"No. It's true. I swear. Her name was Elizabeth. She
was gorgeous and she must have been seven months pregnant at least. She
was out to here." Neil held his arms out like he was holding a huge beach
ball. "Do me a favor, Isabelcan I touch your stomach?"
Looking around the room, Isabel once again heard his
voice before she saw him. His back to her, Sam was standing across the
room telling a woman with long blond hair a story"first the father
fell overboard then his son jumped overboard to try and save him, then
the second son jumped overboard to try and save his father and brother,
and finally the third son who was the only one left on the boat jumped
overboard"
The woman with the long blond hair was frowning and
nodding, the corners of her mouth were turned down to show her distress.
The third house Sam and Isabel lived in was a small
house in Westchester County. Every morning Sam took the train into the
city to work in a bank while Isabel stayed at home and looked after the
two little boys. Sam had brought the Eudora to a marina in nearby
Rye, and, on weekends, weather permitting, Sam went sailing. Mostly, he
sailed alone; one time he took the oldest little boy, Sam Junior, with
him. Sam Junior was fair-skinned and small for his age and he was always
sucking on something. On board the Eudora, Sam Junior had the nylon
strap of his orange never-sink in his mouth.
Sam could never explain how it happened exactly except
to say that it happened so fast and to say that when they came about and
Sam Junior stood up to move from the windward side to the leeward side
of the boat and he was still sucking on the strap of the never-sink, Sam
shouted: "Will you take that goddamn strap out of your mouth!" at the
same time as Sam tried to snatch the strap out of Sam Junior's mouth so
that Sam Junior must have jerked away just as the boom swung over and
hit him on the head. Without a sound, Sam Junior went overboard, and by
the time Sam had jibed the boat and headed the boat into the wind and
was able to grab his son out of the water, his son had drowned.
~
Years later and long after Sam sold the Eudora
and after he and Isabel separated and Isabel is still living in the house
in Westchester County with the one boy, she receives a postcard which
has been forwarded to herIsabel can hardly believe thisfrom
her previous address in Massachusetts. The postcard is torn and mangled
and it arrives in a plastic cover; the postmark is several months old
and from the island of Barbados. The picture on the postcard is of a long
white beach with palm trees and the message reads: Wish you were here!;
it is signed Love, Neil. Isabel starts to throw the postcard away in the
wastepaper basket when instead, for no reason she can think of, she looks
at the picture again. The picture reminds her of something but she is
not quite sure of what. Something that has stayed lodged in the back of
her head, like a dream, and only later, a few hours later that same day
when she is in the car on her way to pick up her son from school, does
she remember what it is.
Isabel has remembered the story of the middle-aged
naked couple who swam off the boat at night that Neil had told them about
and how they could not get back on board and she also has remembered how
she had told Neil that they could have swum to shore. Once again, as she
drives her car, Isabel can picture the naked middle-aged couple swimming
to the beach in the dark, then stumbling and shivering and walking to
the house where there is still a light, only this time when the couple
knock on the door and the dog barks, she pictures how the people who open
the door to the house give the couple towels and how the dog stops barking.
And after the couple have dried themselves off with the towels, Isabel
pictures how the people who live in the house also give the couple some
clothesa pair of pants, a clean white shirt, a skirt, a red blouse,
Isabel imaginesand after the couple are dressed and are patting
the dog, how the people who live in the house fix them something to eat
and bring them each a cup of hot tea and when the middle-aged couple are
done eating and drinking, how the people who live in the house give them
a place to sleep. ![](../../images/bug_print.gif)
|
|