Duma Key

How to Draw a Picture (IX)

Look for the picture inside the picture. It’s not always easy to see, but it’s always there. And if you miss it, you can miss the world. I know that better than anyone, because when I looked at the picture of Carson Jones and my daughter — of Smiley and his Punkin — I thought I knew what I was looking for and missed the truth. Because I didn’t trust him? Yes, but that’s almost funny. The truth was, I wouldn’t have trusted any man who presumed to claim my darling, my favored one, my Ilse.

I found a picture of him alone before I found the one of them together, but I told myself I didn’t want the solo shot, that one wouldn’t do me any good, if I wanted to know his intentions toward my daughter I had to touch them as a couple with my magic hand.

I was already making assumptions, you see. Bad ones.

If I’d touched the first one, really searched the first one — Carson Jones dressed in his Twins shirt, Carson alone — things might have been different. I might have sensed his essential harmlessness. Almost certainly would have. But I ignored that one. And I never asked myself why, if he was a danger to her, I had then drawn her alone, looking out at all those floating tennis balls.

Because the little girl in the tennis dress was her, of course. Almost all the girls I drew and painted during my time on Duma Key were, even the ones that masqueraded as Reba, or Libbit, or — in one case — as Adriana.

There was only one female exception: the red-robe.

Her.

When I touched the photograph of Ilse and her boyfriend, I had sensed death — I didn’t admit it to myself at the time, but it was true. My missing hand sensed death, impending like rain in clouds.

I assumed Carson Jones meant my daughter harm, and that was why I wanted her to stay away from him. But he was never the problem. Perse wanted to make me stop — was, I think, desperate to make me stop once I found Libbit’s old drawings and pencils — but Carson Jones was never Perse’s weapon. Even poor Tom Riley was only a stopgap, a make-do.

The picture was there, but I made a wrong assumption, and missed the truth: the death I felt wasn’t coming from him. It was hanging over her.

And part of me must have known I missed it.

Why else had I drawn those damned tennis balls?