Body Language

‘Want to look at the book?’ Lawton stood stiffly in the doorway.

Alex fumbled the photos back into her fanny pouch, zipped it shut.

Lawton was holding the coffee-table book in his right hand.

‘We’ve got to get you to Harbor House, Dad.’

‘Hell, if I’m late, what’re they going to do, send me to the principal?’

She followed him into the living room and sat beside him on the dark blue velvet couch near the east window, the best natural light in the house.

He opened the heavy book and let it rest half on his lap, half on hers.

Big glossy shots of Seaside, Florida, that carefully arranged clutter of pastel wood houses with tin roofs that had been built along the dunes a half mile from Seagrove, where Alexandra had spent that glorious August. Princess of the Sugary Sands. The Gulf of Mexico spread blue and empty beyond the narrow strip of highway. The same tranquil water stretching away and merging with the sky.

Seaside was only ten years old, but in that decade it had become a famous town. Famous among architects and city planners, who hailed it as a model for the new Florida, a town with the grace and civility of a bygone era. A laboratory for a simpler, more humane community structure, Main Street USA. Famous with travel writers who wanted to take their readers on a one-of-a-kind journey into a colorful fantasy land of the past. The town was a gorgeous blend of modern whimsy and old-fashioned architectural models. Part Charleston, part Key West, part Cape Cod, part sentimental daydream. Narrow redbrick streets, picket fences around every house. Scrub oak and wildflowers and pine-needle mulch for yards. No sod, no lawn mowers.

Brick streets, a town square, fanciful beach pavilions, and all those gorgeous homes, soft purples and sunny yellows with lots of gingerbread and widow’s walks and shiny tin roofs. No two architectural plans were permitted to duplicate each other, but all sprung from the same nostalgic vision, a hundred different renderings of the ideal beach cottage. None of the scruffiness, none of the sagging floors and rusty tin that Alex remembered from her time there. As if all those bright young architects had pooled their imaginations to create a past that had never existed. A place more perfect than the perfect place she remembered.

On the couch, her father paged aimlessly through the slick color photographs, mumbling to himself. Weeks ago, he had spotted the book while they were browsing in a bookstore, and he’d refused to leave the store without it. Now he called for it whenever he was anxious or confused. And just a few minutes of looking at those simple wooden houses seemed to tranquilize him.

‘Know why I like this book so much?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because it’s such a pretty place. So serene.’

‘No,’ her father said. He pulled the book from her hands and clapped it shut. He frowned at her, his eyes full of reproach, then shifted a few inches away on the couch.

‘Well, what is it, Dad? Why do you like the book?’

‘Because it reminds me,’ he said. ‘It stirs my memory.’

‘Reminds you of what?’

He turned his face away.

‘Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. You think I’ve forgotten everything. You think I’m an idiot child. You’d just mock me.’

‘I don’t mock you, Dad. I never mock you.’

‘Never mind. I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s go. I’m going to be late for work.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s not work. It’s that place I go now. What’s it called?’

‘Harbor House.’

‘I know that. You think I don’t know what the place is called, the place I go every damn day? You think I could forget its name?’

He set the book on the coffee table and stood up.

‘What does the book remind you of Dad? You can tell me.’

He looked down at her, rolled his lips inward, and bit down on them, sealing his mouth like a wayward boy refusing to admit his guilt.

‘All right, then, don’t tell me.’

‘It reminds me,’ he said, taking a long breath, ‘of the last place I was completely happy. Right there, on that beach.’

It was a fine October morning; the Miami sky was polished blue porcelain, a steady breeze stirring the palms, the gulls and herons skating across clear heavens.

Going against rush-hour traffic, Alexandra drove her father the four miles to the adult living facility a mile west of Dixie Highway. Half her take-home pay each month went to the fine people at Harbor House who kept her father safe and entertained for six hours a day, five days a week.

Lawton Collins had been a cop in Miami for thirty years. He’d been an excellent police officer, decorated, with steady raises. And he had lots of buddies. A slew of them had gone to his retirement party at Dinner Key Yacht Club, and a year or two later, the same crowd had attended her mother’s funeral. Though these days, they’d stopped coming around – two or three visits were all any of them could stand.

At first, her dad knew what was happening to him. He listened carefully to the doctor, understood the diagnosis. He told everybody that he was going to fight this thing. He’d taken on worse shit in his life. Everyone cheered him on.

With piles of books around him, he’d studied what the researchers knew and what his most likely prognosis was. He decided to put himself on a regimen of high protein and lots of exercise. Almost immediately, he was full of energy and seemed to be more alert and focused than ever. Then a few weeks later, he started getting lost on his jogs. Awhile after that, he abandoned the meat and eggs and started focusing on breads and pastries and beer. In six months, he went from a muscular, funny man to this bloated, unpredictable kid strapped beside her in the Toyota Camry. Like the innocent citizens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, he fell asleep one night and the pod grew outside his window, and now this. Still the same face, but his eyes were tuned to a new channel. Static white noise for hours at a time, then suddenly long stretches of perfectly good reception. The father she’d always loved.

These days, he was lucid about half the time. But it was still early in the cycle, the doctors warned. No telling how steep the slide would be or when it would start. ‘Take pleasure in the time he’s still himself,’ they said. And she tried.

She was at a light near Ludlum when he unfastened his seat belt and reached out for the door latch. But Alexandra had child-proofed it a month ago, and Lawton strained at the latch for a moment, then gave up.

‘Door’s broken.’

‘Where are you trying to go, Dad?’

‘Need to buy some luggage. I’m blowing this town.’

‘You’ve got good luggage now. Your initials on it and everything.’

She started across the intersection.

‘What are my initials, anyway? I forget.’

‘L.A.C. Lawton Andrew Collins.’

‘Where are we going? Where you taking me?’

‘To Harbor House, Dad.’

He tapped on his window and gave a wave to the driver of the car beside them. The young woman frowned and accelerated away. Warmhearted Miami.

Lawton turned back to Alexandra.

‘Is Stan a cop?’

She let go of a long breath.