Chapter1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

Members of the Colfax family shared three traits: immense wealth, liberal(ish) politics, and a tendency to behave like stereotypes. Most of the Colfax men golfed, gambled, smoked cigars, and sailed. Most of the Colfax women served on charity boards, read popular novels, and flew to London for week–long shopping sprees at Harrods—the main exception being Stannie Colfax's mother Jean, who drank all day and lay in bed wearing wraparound sunglasses so dark that sometimes she forgot where she was, and whether it was day or night. Nobody paid Jean much attention except her "girl," Ida, and her twin sister Jacquie, who had entered a convent 30 years ago. Sometimes it got confusing, knowing what to call a sister who was, really, a sister. Sister Mary Sebastian lived in Pensacola and drove over to the Seaborough resort every Thursday during the winter and spring, but Jean rarely called her by any name at all, if she could avoid it.

Stannie had arrived at Seaborough this week, very pale from living up in Washington, and very snarly, too, but nobody knew exactly why. He had two younger sisters, Mary Beth and Linda Kate, both in their early twenties, and both eager to please him. In December, they'd made a trip to D.C. to celebrate his twenty–ninth birthday. They'd come away very, very impressed: impressed first of all with Stannie himself (so handsome and well–dressed, well–groomed, chatting up the three or four actual Hollywood celebrities who had come to his party just to listen to him say things like, "So, if Charlton Heston wins the Irving J. Thalberg award at the Oscars and he keeps talking and refuses to leave the stage, should we shoot him?"); and also impressed with Stannie's girlfriend, Rose, who hardly ever laughed at his jokes and yet seemed to tolerate him better than most people. Rose, they knew immediately, was their natural superior. She wore no makeup, she dressed in t–shirts and khaki pants, and yet she was lovely.

Stannie said one day in his typical way that Rose was the only smart woman he'd ever met, probaby as smart as he was, himself, and the comment made Mary Beth and Linda Kate so angry that they wanted to beat him to death right then—thrash him to a bloody pulp with the fireplace tools and hurl his body into the empty pool outside his Washington apartment. But Rose, putting film in her camera at the time, just said, "Girls, when your brother talks like that, the thing to do is ask for his college transcripts."

"Hah!" he laughed. "I wouldn't want to break their hearts."

Rose gave him a sly half–smile. "Put your grades where your mouth is, pal. Show us those transcripts." She turned to the sisters. "We'll never see them, you know. He's burned the evidence. He's covered the trail."

They nodded, and loved the fact that a woman of such obvious charm and substance could see right through their brother.

But now a few months had passed, and Rose wasn't at Seaborough, and the sisters felt afraid of Stannie, as usual, and couldn't keep themselves from trying to please him. On his third morning at the house, he woke up at ten, put on a baseball cap, and meandered out to have a cigar on the seaward side of the second floor balcony. He leaned over the rail for a good look at the tide, which was rough this morning. The sky was a light purple, the water a heavy, almost oppressive green under ridges of white.

Stannie felt oppressed, too, though he couldn't have said exactly why. Just being here, maybe. Being bored (he wasn't used to it). Being with people who did nothing useful, ever. He didn't understand what his father and uncles and male cousins saw in golf—driving around sterile grass fields at two and a half miles an hour with middle–aged rich guys (putters on knees, guts bulging over beltless slacks). Golf involved no physical exertion that he could see (maybe that's exactly what his father saw in it). Stannie missed his running club. Real exercise. He missed the Tops office in Washington: the celebrity put–downs and political arguments; the back–and–forth bullshit that went on all day every day—he being the quickest, wittiest bullshitter of them all.

"Hey Stannie," his editor, Tom McLeesh, would say, "what's your take on Gates this week?" Stannie had noticed that it never really matter what he said about Bill Gates or George W. Bush or the National Rifle Association or Erectile Dysfunction. People listened, they nodded, laughed. It didn't seem to matter whether you had a point of view or not: tone was everything.

About halfway through her brother's cigar, Linda Kate appeared from the French doors, smiling, with whole wheat bagels on a glass tray. Mary Beth followed her with the lowfat strawberry cream cheese and orange juice. Stannie looked up in sympathy. Poor things. What could be more boring than life on the Florida coast? Plenty of white beaches and rhododenrons and magnolias. But not a word of intelligent conversation.

"Hungry?" Mary Beth said, smiling. She was the younger sister, soft–faced and small–boned. Her eyes were deep blue, but only because of contact lenses. Both girls had freckles and black hair.

"You eat it," he said.

Stannie's sisters looked at each other and then sat down slowly, in green patio chairs. They didn't say anything at first. Mary Beth yawned and stretched, pretending to be half–asleep even though she'd been up since 6:00 doing aerobics and waxing her legs. She lifted her black Birkenstocks onto the balcony rail and admired her newly painted, silver toenails. A large blue sapphire glittered on the second toe (was there such a thing as a "foretoe?") of her right foot. Unlike Stannie's toes, hers were unwebbed. Otherwise she could never have gotten the ring around it.

"Have you even talked to Mom since you got here?" said Linda Kate to her brother in a cool voice (why hadn't he wanted the bagels?).

"Nope." Stannie sucked in sea air and tobacco. "You think she knows I'm here?"

"I have no idea. I don't talk to her anymore."

Mary Beth shook her head. "Me, neither."

"It's not natural," said Linda Kate.

"No, it isn't," Stannie said.

"But it's not your fault, Stannie," said Linda Kate. "Or ours, either. I mean it's not natural for a person to abandon their family totally. It's like she's already dead or something. I mean, if I found out she was just lying up there in her room dead, I wouldn't even be surprised."

"It is like that," said Mary Beth sleepily.

"What does Pops think about her?" asked Stannie.

"The mysterious Bill Colfax?" said Linda Kate. "What does he care as long as she's medicated? He doesn't like trouble on the airplanes. That's the only time we see them together, actually."

Mary Beth nodded and began to spread cream cheese on a bagel.

"She's all puffed up," said Linda Kate, "just like a drowned person. I'm sure she's an alcoholic."

Stannie laughed. "And that idea just occurred to you for the first time?"

"No, I'm not stupid."

He put his lips tight around his cigar. He sucked it deep into his mouth and then spat it out as hard as he could. It lifted in a gentle arc, soared down like a missile, and landed 20 feet below in the sand, straight up. Stannie imagined his father stepping on it as he came in from his bass boat: "Damn tourists! Money can't buy privacy anymore!" He'd yell at the handyman, Ed Flint, to throw it away and put up a few more PRIVATE BEACH signs. And sometime soon, probably day after tomorrow, he'd deliver a whopping lecture on what a real man does with his trash.

"I'll pick that up," said Mary Beth.

"Ed'll get it," said Stannie.

* * *

Ed Flint squatted in a corner of the basement at that moment, changing the filter on the air conditioner. This was hard for a man with no hands. But then everything was hard for a man with no hands. Ed managed. He had strange forearms: each shaped like a Y where the skin had grown around the remains of the bones. They looked like hillbilly slingshots (Bill Colfax joked about strapping rubber bands on them and shooting rats), but the shape made it easy for Ed to attach and control his artificial hands. With his smooth, pink skin and metal claws he reminded people of a lobster, at least the unlucky few who'd seen him without his white skipper's cap pulled down low over his scarred face. He'd been hired for indoor jobs only, since his burn wounds made it impossible for him to sweat. His hearing was bad too. One ear was nothing but a nub of smooth pink tissue: the other looked all right, but didn't function well. This and the fact that he rarely said anything made him the perfect indoor servant for a rich family with political connections. Uncle Jim, the Democratic Senator from Florida, held secret meetings right here at the Seaborough house from time to time, with Ed setting up chairs, bringing fresh towels to the hot tub, and even serving at the bar (a hard job which he'd always done with grace—except for the time he squeezed too tight and shattered a bottle of Jack Daniels).

Ed heard something. He stood up and looked out the nearest basement window: Stannie was passing by just on the other side, walking down the steps from the whitewashed balcony to the small area of grass below. He strolled through the blue foam of hydrangeas and appeared out on the shimmering white beach beyond. It hurt Ed's eyes to look outside for too long without sunglasses. Nevertheless he continued to look and even stared, keeping his eyes on the young man as he disappeared into the blue–green surf. Soon he could just make out Stannie's arms spinning rythmically through the water like the spokes of a wheel. Mary Beth had followed her brother down and stood on a wet stretch of sand near the water, doing absolutely nothing. These people wasted time better than they did anything else, thought Ed Flint.

* * *

On the third floor of the large house, behind a window which faced the forest preserve to the north rather than the beach to the south, Jean Colfax lay with a heating pad pressed to her abdomen. She heard the telephone ring again and again. "Anybody going to get that?" she whispered. "Anybody?"

She didn't know which names to call out loud and she didn't want Ida making fun of her later for calling the wrong ones. Not that she couldn't remember her own husband and children: she just couldn't remember what state she was in—and again, not what state as in drunk or sober (she was usually clear on that), but what state as in Virginia or Florida or somewhere else, which made a difference as to exactly which members of the family lived here other than Ida and nice Handyman Ed, who brought her bourbon on the sly. Maybe this was Washington. She had a vague idea that somebody lived in Washington, D.C. Was it Bill Jr., her husband's son from the first marriage? Or a brother–in–law? Or one of the girls? Anyway, that phone kept ringing. She put the heating pad around her head and started to cry.

Outside, on the balcony, Linda Kate punched the talk button on the portable phone. "Yes?"

"Stan Colfax please," said a husky male voice.

"I'm sorry. He's not here at the moment."

"Still in bed, huh?"

"No, he's up. He's just gone."

A snicker. "That's too bad. This the mother? This Mrs. Colfax?"

"No."

"Well, tell him Tom called. And, I've got some questions. We're a go on the Madonna interview, but he's going to hate what I did with it. Actually I—no, actually don't tell him anything. I'll call back. Where is he, anyway?"

"Swimming."

"Oooh, swimming. A woman showed up here yesterday. It had to do with the webbed toes piece. God, I wish he'd been here. The poor thing claimed she was related to Stannie. She walked, I mean it's not possible, but she actually walked here from Alabama or something. I still think it was a prank. I think Corbin arranged it. Have you met Corbin?"

"I'm just Stannie's sister. I came to D.C. once, but all I did was hang out at the apartment."

"Have you met Rose?"

"Once."

"Your brother doesn't deserve Rose. Has he ever told you about me? Stannie ever mentioned Tom?"

"I think I've heard of you." She was lying. "You must be his boss. The nice one, right?"

"Sort of. Editor. I'm the guy he wants to kill half the time. Hey, I'm thinking of coming to see him next week. I might give you a ring—but don't mention that, it's a surprise. Just tell him I'm called."

The line clicked and Linda Kate let the phone slip down her cheek and onto her lap. She sat for several minutes all alone in the shade of a green awning, its fringe flapping like a wild heartbeat in the Gulf Breeze. She had a sense of a busier world out there: men and women moving forward on fixed paths, paths either predetermined or simply determined at the moment, according to necessity and desire and will: Tom, and Madonna, and an old woman walking from Alabama, and somebody named Corbin who played pranks. All so thoroughly themselves, so thoroughly real.

She, meanwhile, sitting on the balcony of this lovely but completely unreal Southern mansion (Fiberglass by the Sea) with no plans of her own, aside from a little shopping and sunbathing. She'd have her eyebrows tinted, maybe day after tomorrow. If she was still bored on Saturday she might start planning a trip to Europe—maybe to Amsterdam, which was supposed to be a shocking city. She needed a shock. Maybe she'd meet a man there, somebody Stannie couldn't laugh at and make her fall out of love with. She imagined this lover, six feet five inches tall with golden muscles and huge, beautiful feet, saying, "Linda, vy does your broder intimidate you so much? You are his superior in every vay."

Or maybe this guy Tom would show up next week and there'd be some fun here. Linda Kate put her head back and brought her arms out of the sleeves of her shirt and up through the neck, hoping to keep her suntan as even as possible, in spite of her freckles. She stretched her hands to either side, one to the glass table and the other to the balcony rail, and in this uncomfortable position she had a sudden vision of an old, toothless woman walking up out of the sea in a slippery orange diving suit. The woman padded up in flippers—just padded and padded across the sandy beach until she reached the house. Then she stared up at the balcony with a great big toothless grin, and said "I read about that boy with the webbed toes and I want to see him. I think we're related."

Linda Kate gave a little giggle.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.