CHAPTER 8

Our boat hung on davits so it wouldn’t become home to a colony of barnacles. I lay on its deck, listening to the canal, the lapping of the sea walls, the occasional gulps under the dock, the thumps and rubbery screeches of other boats colliding into the tyres thrown over the half-waterlogged, half-scorched poles of their docks.

I smelt lighter fluid on the breath of the hot breeze hitting my face. I stared into the setting sun until I could project small suns wherever I looked. The Minsky family had arrived and Joseph was pulling in the cord of the crab trap. The first few feet were white followed by the slimy green part of the cord that usually remained beneath the waterline. That’s when whoever did the pulling was less enthusiastic.

With tongs, Joseph grabbed the first stone crab by the big claw. The second crab hooked itself onto the bottom of the trap, and he was pulling it up, upside down, by a back leg. I projected a sanguine spot onto the back of his dark curly hair, and bang, shot him. Sharon held a bucket near to the trap so Joseph could knock the third obstinately clinging crab off the grille and into it.

“De children? Where dey dis’pear?!” my mother asked, with regal offence.

As long as the three of them were having martinis, she hadn’t really cared but now it was time for dinner to be served.

“Oh, they’re taking a look at the new house, they’re not doing any harm,” answered Sharon.

A new house in Florida means one in mid-construction. It is common practice for neighbours to tour these whenever there aren’t any workers around, count the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, calculate the ratio. People generally know which state up north the owners will come from, but nothing more about them besides the real estate agency that made the sale. During the two to three odd months it takes to build the new house, the future inhabitants are subject to debate. Anyone having a chimney or a high dome ceiling installed is made fun of and probably will never fit in. A built-in bar makes potential friends. A sunken living room is taboo, since most Wachovi citizens are past their prime. After a few drinks, their hips break easily. When the owners finally move in, and shortly thereafter offer their new neighbours a tour of their house, they do not realize that the oohing and aahing imposters know their house better than they do, and were the first to use their loo.

My mother commenced the tour of her lawn. Whether Sharon and Joseph wanted it or not, they were about to get a review of every plant, tree, bud and sprout. The avocado tree, as by now everyone alive must have known, started as a pip a few years back. My mother had stuck toothpicks in it, submerged it in a cup of water and roots had sprung. The resulting lanky tree, heavy with free avocadoes, was once a brown orb, no bigger than a golf ball.