I could not fit my mind around the realization of finality. There seemed to be more that would happen for the two of us, more of life to be consumed and completed. My body knew with a dreadful precision all the contours of her, the shapes and fittings, the sighs and turnings, gasps and pressures.
I sought refuge in a child’s dreaming. They had spirited her away, mended her, and would soon spring the great surprise upon me. She would come running, laughing, half crying, saying, “Darling, we were just fooling you a little. That’s an. Mid we scare you too much? I’m sorry, Tray, dear. So sorry. Take me home.”
And on the way home she would explain to me how she had outwitted the green ripper. I had read once about a little kid who had overheard some adult conversation and afterward, in the night, had terrible nightmares. He kept telling his people he dreamed about the green ripper coming to get him. They finally figured out that he had heard talk
The Green Ripper about the grim reaper. I had told Grets about it, and it had found its way into our personal lan- guage. It was not possible that the green ripper had gotten her.
Not possible.
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3
Meyer took care of practically everything. I couldn’t have managed. I was too listless and too depressed. We both remembered that after her brother’s death at Timber Bay, Gretel said she preferred cremation, just as he had. Cremation and maybe a small nondenominational memorial service for close friends. Not many people had attended John Tuckerman’s memorial service in Timber Bay. He had been too closely associated with Hum bard Lawless, the man who had taken all the money and tried to run.
I did not think there would be many people who would want to come to Gretel’s memorial service. Meyer arranged it at a small chapel up beyond
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Lee Green Ripper
South Beach Park, at eleven in the morning on Saturday, ten days before Christmas.
Ten or so people came in from Bonnie Brae. And a lot of people from the Bahia Mar area. Meyer calls it a subculture, the permanents. The great waves of tourists and boat people flood the area and recede, leaving the same old faces, most of them, year after year. I did not see all of them come in. When it was over and we walked out into December sunshine, they were there, moving toward me to touch, to shake hands, to kiss, to say some fumbly words: We’re sorry. That’s what it was about. Together we form a village. And share the trouble as much as we can. Take as much of it upon ourselves as is possible, and we knifer it is not very much. Okay?
There was Skeeter, and there were Gabe and Doris Marchman Gabe’s metal crutches glinting in the sun. From charter-boat row there were Billy Maxwell, Lew and Sandy, Barney and Babs, Roxy and his nephews. There was the Alabama Tiger, and Junebug was with him, looking strangely sub- dued. Raul and Nita Tenero were there, up from Miami, with Merrimay Lane. There were Irv Deibert and Johnny Dow, and Choolcie and Arthur Wilkinson, back together again. And there were others, from the hotel and the shops, the boatyards and the tethered fleet.
My village and my people. They seemed to know what I needed most, a sense of place, the feeling of belonging to some kind of resilient society. A man can play the game of being the loner, moving unscathed through an indifferent world, toughened by the diminished expectations of his place and time. I spoke to them, thanked them, managing to keep myself together. As I did so, I thought of the ones who weren’t there any more. Lois, of course. Puss Killian. Mike Gibson, of the world before I came to the marina. Nora Gardino. Barni Baker, who went down with her 727 into the swamp short of the airfield. Too damn many of them. I could just barely stand losing them, but I couldn’t handle having Gretel gone too. She was destined to be a part of the life that would come after the marina. But she was gone and I was fixed there, embedded in time, embedded in a life I had in some curious way outgrown. I was an artifact, genus boat bum, a pale- eyed, shambling, gangling, knuckly man, without enough unscarred hide left to make a decent lampshade. Watchful appraiser of the sandy-rumped beach ladies. Creaking knight errant, yawning at the thought of the next dragon. They don’t make grails the way they used to. She had deserted me here, left me in this now unbreakable mold, this half-farcical image, trapped me in my solitary, fussy, bachelor hang-ups from now until they turned me off too. I shook hands, I hugged and was hugged, and I tried to smile into reddened eyes, and they left, slowly, car doors chunking, driving away from the sunlit ceremony of farewell to my girl.