Stephen King - Duma Key

It was my ears I didn't believe, but when a spontaneous spatter of applause erupted from the doorway, where the real aficionados had gathered to chat and take a little fresh evening air, I understood why Jack and Wireman had been late.

v

"What?" Pam asked. " What? " I had her on one side and Illy on the other as I moved toward the door; Linnie and Ric bobbed along in our wake. The applause grew louder. People turned toward the door and craned to see. "Who is it, Edgar?"

"My best friends on the island." Then, to Ilse: "One of them's the lady from down the road, remember her? She turned out to be the Daughter of the Godfather instead of the Bride. Her name's Elizabeth Eastlake, and she's a sweetheart."

Ilse's eyes were shining with excitement. "The old gal in the big blue sneakers!"

The crowd - many of them still applauding - parted for us, and I saw the three of them in the reception area, where two tables with a punch-bowl on each had been set up. My eyes began to sting and a lump rose in my throat. Jack was dressed in a slate gray suit. With his usually unruly surfer's thatch tamed, he looked like either a junior executive in the Bank of America or an especially tall seventh-grader on Careers Day. Wireman, pushing Elizabeth's chair, was wearing faded, beltless jeans and a round-collared white linen shirt that emphasized his deep tan. His hair was combed back, and I realized for the first time that he was good-looking the way Harrison Ford was in his late forties.

But it was Elizabeth who stole the show, Elizabeth who elicited the applause, even from the newbies who hadn't the slightest idea who she was. She was wearing a black pantsuit of dull rough cotton, loose but elegant. Her hair was up and held with a gauzy snood that flashed like diamonds beneath the gallery's downlighters. From her neck hung an ivory scrimshaw pendant on a gold chain, and on her feet were not big blue Frankenstein sneakers but elegant pumps of darkest scarlet. Between the second and third fingers of her gnarled left hand was an unlit cigarette in a gold-chased holder.

She looked left and right, smiling. When Mary came to the chair, Wireman stopped pushing long enough for the younger woman to kiss Elizabeth's cheek and whisper in her ear. Elizabeth listened, nodded, then whispered back. Mary cawed laughter, then caressed Elizabeth's arm.

Someone brushed by me. It was Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, his eyes wet and his nose red. Dario and Jimmy were behind him. Rosenblatt knelt by her wheelchair, his bony knees cracking like starter pistols, and cried, "Miss Eastlake! Oh, Miss Eastlake, so long we're not seeing you, and now... oh, what a wonderful surprise!"

"And you, Jake," she said, and cradled his bald head to her bosom. It looked like a very large egg lying there. "Handsome as Bogart!" She saw me... and winked. I winked back, but it wasn't easy to keep my happy face on. She looked haggard, dreadfully tired in spite of her smile.

I raised my eyes to Wireman's, and he gave the tiniest of shrugs. She insisted, it said. I switched my gaze to Jack and got much the same.

Rosenblatt, meanwhile, was rummaging in his pockets. At last he came up with a book of matches so battered it looked as if it might have entered the United States without a passport at Ellis Island. He opened it and tore one out.

"I thought smoking was against the rules in all these public buildings now," Elizabeth said.

Rosenblatt struggled. Color rose up his neck. I almost expected his head to explode. Finally he exclaimed: " Fuck the rules, Miss Eastlake!"

"BRAVISSIMO!" Mary shouted, laughing and throwing her hands to the ceiling, and at this there was another round of applause. A greater one came when Rosenblatt finally got the ancient match to ignite and held it out to Elizabeth, who placed her cigarette-holder between her lips.

"Who is she really, Daddy?" Ilse asked softly. "Besides the little old lady who lives down the lane, I mean?"

I said, "According to reports, at one time she was the Sarasota art scene."

"I don't understand why that gives her the right to muck up our lungs with her cigarette smoke," Linnie said. The vertical line was returning between her brows.

Ric smiled. "Oh, ch rie, this after all the bars we-"

" This is not there, " she said, the vertical line deepening, and I thought, Ric, you may be French, but you have a lot to learn about this particular American woman.

Alice Aucoin murmured to Dario, and from his pocket, Dario produced an Altoids tin. He dumped the mints into the palm of his hand and gave Alice the tin. Alice gave it to Elizabeth, who thanked her and tapped her cigarette ash into it.

Pam watched, fascinated, then turned to me. "What does she think of your pictures?"

"I don't know," I said. "She hasn't seen them."

Elizabeth was beckoning to me. "Will you introduce me to your family, Edgar?"

I did, beginning with Pam and ending with Ric. Jack and Wireman also shook hands with Pam and the girls.

"After all the calls, I'm pleased to meet you in the flesh," Wireman told Pam.

"The same goes back to you," Pam said, sizing him up. She must have liked what she saw, because she smiled - and it was the real one, the one that lights her whole face. "We did it, didn't we? He didn't make it easy, but we did it."

"Art is never easy, young woman," Elizabeth said.

Pam looked down at her, still smiling the genuine smile - the one I'd fallen in love with. "Do you know how long it's been since anyone called me young woman?"

"Ah, but to me you look very young and beautiful," Elizabeth said... and was this the woman who had been little more than a muttering lump of cheese slumped in her wheelchair only a week ago? Tonight that seemed hard to believe. Tired as she looked, it seemed impossible to believe. "But not as young and beautiful as your daughters. Girls, your father is - by all accounts - a very talented fellow."

"We're very proud of him," Melinda said, twisting her necklace.

Elizabeth smiled at her, then turned to me. "I should like to see the work and judge for myself. Will you indulge me, Edgar?"

"I'd be happy to." I meant it, but I was damned nervous, as well. Part of me was afraid to receive her opinion. That part was afraid she might shake her head and deliver her verdict with the bluntness to which her age entitled her: Facile... colorful... certainly lots of energy... but perhaps not up to much. In the end.

Wireman moved to grasp the handles of her chair, but she shook her head. "No - let Edgar push me, Wireman. Let him tour me." She plucked the half-smoked cigarette from the holder, those gnarled fingers doing the job with surprising dexterity, and crushed it out on the bottom of the tin. "And the young lady's right - I think we've all had quite enough of this reek."

Melinda had the grace to blush. Elizabeth offered the tin to Rosenblatt, who took it with a smile and a nod. I have wondered since then - I know it's morbid, but yes, I've wondered - if she would have smoked more of it if she had known it was to be her last.

vi

Even those who didn't know John Eastlake's surviving daughter from a hole in the wall understood that a Personage had come among them, and the tidal flow which had moved toward the reception area at the sound of Mary Ire's exuberant shout now reversed itself as I rolled the wheelchair into the alcove where most of the Sunset With pictures had been hung. Wireman and Pam walked on my left; Ilse and Jack were on my right, Ilse giving the wheelchair's handle on that side little helping taps to make sure it stayed on course. Melinda and Ric were behind us, Kamen, Tom Riley, and Bozie behind them. Behind that trio came seemingly everyone else in the gallery.

I wasn't sure there would be room to get her chair in between the makeshift bar set-up and the wall, but there was, just. I started to push it down that narrow aisle, grateful that we'd at least be leaving the rest of the retinue behind us, when Elizabeth cried: " Stop! "

I stopped at once. "Elizabeth, are you all right?"

"Just a minute, honey - hush."

We sat there, looking at the paintings on the wall. After a little bit, she fetched a sigh and said, "Wireman, do you have a Kleenex?"

He had a handkerchief, which he unfolded and handed to her.

"Come around here, Edgar," she said. "Come where I can see you."

I managed to get around between the wheelchair and the bar, with the bartender bracing the table to make sure it didn't tip over.

"Are you able to kneel down, so we can be face to face?"

I was able. My Great Beach Walks were paying dividends. She clutched her cigarette holder - both foolish and somehow magnificent - in one hand, Wireman's handkerchief in the other. Her eyes were damp.

"You read me poems because Wireman couldn't. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, ma'am." Of course I remembered. Those had been sweet interludes.

"If I were to say 'Speak, memory' to you, you'd think of the man - I can't recall his name - who wrote Lolita, wouldn't you?"

I had no idea who she was talking about, but I nodded.

"But there's a poem, too. I can't remember who wrote it, but it begins, 'Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may once more taste the green cup of the sea.' Does it move you? Yes, I see it does."

The hand with the cigarette holder in it opened. Then it reached out and caressed my hair. The idea occurred to me (and has since recurred) that all my struggle to live and regain a semblance of myself may have been paid back by no more than the touch of that old woman's hand. The eroded smoothness of the palm. The bent strength of those fingers.

"Art is memory, Edgar. There is no simpler way to say it. The clearer the memory, the better the art. The purer. These paintings - they break my heart and then make it new again. How glad I am to know they were done at Salmon Point. No matter what." She lifted the hand she'd caressed my head with. "Tell me what you call that one."

" Sunset with Sophora. "

"And these are... what? Sunset with Conch, Numbers 1 through 4?"

I smiled. "Well, there were sixteen of them, actually, starting with colored pencil-sketches. Some of those are out front. I picked the best oils for in here. They're surreal, I know, but-"

"They're not surreal, they're classical. Any fool can see that. They contain all the elements: earth... air... water... fire."

I saw Wireman mouth: Don't tire her out!

"Why don't I give you a quick tour of the rest and then get you a cold drink?" I asked her, and now Wireman was nodding and giving me a thumb-and-forefinger circle. "It's hot in here, even with the air conditioning."

"Fine," she said. "I am a little tired. But Edgar?"

"Yes?"

"Save the ship paintings for the last. After them I'll need a drink. Perhaps in the office. Just one, but something stiffer than Co'-Cola."

"You've got it," I said, and edged my way back to the rear of the chair.

"Ten minutes," Wireman whispered in my ear. "No more. I'd want to get her out before Gene Hadlock shows up, if possible. He sees her, he's going to shit a brick. And you know who he'll throw it at."

"Ten," I said, and rolled Elizabeth into the buffet room to look at the paintings in there. The crowd was still following. Mary Ire had begun taking notes. Ilse slipped one hand into the crook of my elbow and smiled at me. I smiled back, but I was having that I'm-in-a-dream feeling again. The kind that may tilt you into a nightmare at any moment.

Elizabeth exclaimed over I See the Moon and the Duma Road series, but it was the way she reached her hands out to Roses Grow from Shells, as if to embrace it, that gave me goosebumps. She lowered her arms again and looked over her shoulder at me. "That's the essence of it," she said. "The essence of Duma. Why those who've lived there awhile can never really leave. Even if their heads carry their bodies away, their hearts stay." She looked at the picture again and nodded. " Roses Grow from Shells. That is correct."