Heart of Palm

By Laura Lee Smith

“A spirited Southern family saga” from the acclaimed author of The Ice House: “Fans of Fannie Flagg will enjoy this novel” (The Plain Dealer).
 
Once enlivened by the trade in Palm Sunday palms and moonshine, Utina, Florida, hasn’t seen economic growth in decades, and no family is more emblematic of the local reality than the Bravos. Deserted by the patriarch years ago, the Bravos are held together in equal measure by love, unspoken blame, and tenuously brokered truces.
 
The story opens on a sweltering July day, as Frank Bravo, dutiful middle son, is awakened by a distress call. Frank dreams of escaping to cool mountain rivers, but he’s only made it ten minutes from the family restaurant he manages every day and the decrepit, Spanish moss–draped house he was raised in, and where his strong-willed mother and spitfire sister—both towering redheads, equally matched in stubbornness—are fighting another battle royale. Little do any of them know that Utina is about to meet the tide of development that has already engulfed the rest of Northeast Florida. When opportunity knocks, tempers ignite, secrets are unearthed, and each of the Bravos is forced to confront the tragedies of their shared past.
 
“An incandescent first novel set in the small town of Utina, Florida, whose inhabitants struggle to balance tradition and progress.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
 
“Intelligence, heart, wit . . . Laura Lee Smith has all the tools and Heart of Palm is a very impressive first novel.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9780802193568

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Laura Lee Smith

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Grove Press

New York

Copyright © 2013 by Laura Lee Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [e-mail].

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9356-8

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Chris

A costly delicacy indeed,

when to get to the heart you must kill the tree.

PROLOGUE

March 1964

Most people never understood why Arla went and married a Bravo. The world genuflected before her. She was beautiful, then: skin like white linen, blue-blooded and hot tempered, stood a full six feet tall in her pink Capezio flats. She could have had so much more. Leon Fontaine, that sweet young man, perfectly lovesick over her and set up so nice like he was in his father’s law practice. He bought her a diamond ring; she thanked him and had it made into a pendant. Donny Pellicier, who took her to the senior prom, got to second base, and then went off to seminary at Our Lady of Perpetual Help up in Savannah. He wasn’t there even a week when he nearly went crazy with longing for her. He embarked on an aggressive and frantic spiritual reckoning, reevaluated the munificent bodily benefits of lay service, then hitchhiked back home to be with Arla, who wouldn’t have him.

When she told her parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Bolton of St. Augustine’s Davis Shores, that she intended to marry Dean Bravo, her mother put her hands to her face, and her father went for the Scotch. This was 1964, the day before Arla’s eighteenth birthday. Just off the lanai, the azaleas were in full bloom, a wash of magenta against the somber green weave of the lawn.

Oh, Arla, Vera said. Don’t do this to us.

Are you knocked up? James said. Vera began to cry.

I am not knocked up, Arla said. My Lord, you people. She stood before them, all lightness and promise and sass, with that soft red hair that made you forget what you were going to say.

But, Arla, Vera said. He’s a Bravo. He will ruin you.

Mon dieu. You’re so dramatic. Arla had lately adopted an affectation of using French colloquialisms, enjoying the way they slid off her tongue, the way they suggested some vague seduction, some abstract sensuality that she’d learned was a powerful currency. Men don’t ruin women. Daddy didn’t ruin you, did he? She opened her eyes wide, stared at her mother, tilted her head a bit.

He wants your money, James said.

Don’t be ridiculous, Arla said. He wants me. Her eyes narrowed when she said this. James ran a hand across his eyes, and Vera hunched over on the chaise, clutching her shoulders.

You might could congratulate me, Arla said. Here I’m going to be a married woman and all. She sat down and picked at a scab on her knee. James stared at her and jumped when an ice cube in his glass shifted position. Vera wept.

I love him, Mother, Arla said.

Oh, Arla, Vera said. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose. Dean Bravo? Love won’t be enough.

Vera had a point. The Boltons were St. Augustine’s finest, pillars of the community, champions of industry, transplanted from Connecticut during Arla’s infancy, when James Bolton inherited an insurance franchise and decided there could be no better setting for natural disaster, property loss, and financial gain than the sparkling shores of the Sunshine State. He was right. Business had boomed, and the Boltons had prospered accordingly. James pursued his ambition relentlessly, with the focus of a man for whom success was all and sentiment was a nuisance for which he had no patience. He was a cold man, stoic and aloof even from his wife and daughter. Arla had watched over the years as her mother’s desperation grew, as Vera became ebullient and cloying when James was in the house, despondent and weepy when he was not. But the money kept coming in. James bought a house on the Matanzas Bay, drank whiskey sours with the city council, and slept with his secretary. Vera joined the Garden Club and played bridge on Thursdays. They had a cleaning lady. Arla had grown up knowing she was special, she was different, she was better. A Steinway piano in a formal living room. Pointe class every Wednesday, private French lessons every Friday. Chenille bedding. Sleepover parties. Waterskiing at Salt Run.

The Bravo family, on the other hand, lived twenty-five miles north of St. Augustine, in the tiny town of Utina on the east bank of the Florida Intracoastal Waterway. They were Menorcans, settled in Florida not direct from Menorca like most sensible people, but by way of Tennessee, which might have explained a few things. They were descended on their maternal side from the famous Admiral Farragut, whose father Jorge Farragut came to Tennessee from Menorca in 1783, and who is best known for his pithy, if boneheaded, battle cry: Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead! It might as well have been the family slogan. The Bravos bullied and bollixed their way from Tennessee to St. Augustine around the turn of the twentieth century. They probably would have stayed there, but as luck would have it, Alger Bravo, grandfather of Arla’s betrothed Dean, had been chased out of St. Augustine by a collective of rumrunners he’d double-crossed. Alger had cut his losses and retreated north into the thick piney woods of Utina, where the Bravos had lived ever since, dispersing like shadows into the scrub.

Thus the Bravos were cut from a different cloth than the Boltons. The Bravos had never seen the inside of a country club, frequenting, instead, such establishments as Utina’s Cue & Brew, the cold case at Soto’s Discount Beverage and the county drunk tank. They weren’t poor, not by the broadest standards; the Bravos made money when they needed to and quit when they didn’t, but they found themselves, to a one, unfettered by the distractions of ambition that seemed to plague other families.

And then there was Dean—third son of Tucker and Margie Bravo—best of the lot, give Arla that. Dean had the Spaniard’s dark charm, a brooding chill in his blue eyes and sinews in his forearms that made Arla think impure thoughts. He was cocky and mouthy and comfortable in his own shortcomings in a way Arla found astounding, arousing.

He’d been raised, along with his brothers Huff and Charlie, in a culture of recklessness, neglect, and some mild thuggery. The Bravo brothers had run wild through Utina since they were old enough to walk. As a teenager, Huff went downhill pretty quickly, following his parents’ twin examples of alcoholism and lawlessness; he was twenty-four when he earned his first sentence for theft, forgery, and capital battery. Dean and Charlie got wise. They stayed, for the most part, just this side of the law, steering clear of actual felonies—at least the ones that were prone to get them caught. At twenty-two, Charlie got a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant and settled down to family life. At twenty, Dean met Arla.

He’d been driving to St. Augustine and had seen her from a distance late one afternoon in ’63, a tall, pale figure walking on a deserted stretch of A1A in the scalding rays of Florida’s September sun. The road ran parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. A few houses dotted the shoreline, but mostly it was a lonesome road, the main thoroughfare, if you could call it that, between St. Augustine and Utina. The scrub extended hot and barren for miles north and south; the ocean over the dunes pushed a searing wind across the road. She’d been wearing nearly nothing: a sky blue bikini, a pair of thin sandals, a silver locket, a canvas tote over her shoulder. He pulled over.

You look like you need a ride, darlin’, he said. She shielded her eyes and peered into the cab of his truck. Her red hair was woven into a thick braid, and delicate beads of sweat shone on her brow. Her eyes were rimmed by pale gold lashes; her white shoulders were tinged with pink.

She blinked, regarded him, and he watched the flutter behind the eyes, the moment’s hesitation, the assessment, the decision. Something jumped in his stomach, and he had—he remembered this later, very clearly—the feeling that for the first time he was seeing a being of complete perfection, of flawless beauty. In a moment most uncharacteristic for him, Dean could think of nothing else to say. But then she blinked again, opened the door, and climbed in.

You’re Dean Bravo, she said simply.

I am, he said, surprised. How do you know?

We all know the Bravos.

Who’s we?

Me and my friends, she said, watching him. He pulled back onto the road, headed south.

What are you doing out here all by yourself? he said.

She sighed, rolled her eyes.

My boyfriend, she said. We had a disagreement.

He put you out on the road?

I got out.

Some boyfriend, he said.

Well, she said. He’s really my ex-boyfriend. She leaned forward and picked a sandspur off her ankle, and he watched as the bikini top gapped and the tiniest edge of pink areola was exposed. He tightened his grip on the wheel.

You need to get to St. Augustine? he said.

Sure, she said. That will do, though she sounded as though it didn’t matter much one way or another.

What’s your name? he said. She turned to face him, and he felt the strange jumping in his stomach again.

Well, she said. I’m Arla. And she smiled a funny, guarded smile, haunting, really, as though she knew something all along that he’d only just now begun to understand.

By Halloween he’d slept with her. By Thanksgiving he’d told her he loved her. By Christmas he’d started to panic, so consumed was he by desire, so obsessed with wooing her, winning her, keeping her forever. They made love in the woods, in the truck, in a cheap motel off US1, once in her own pink bedroom while her parents sailed the Matanzas with the mayor. Her pillows smelled like talc and made him crazy with passion. He marveled at her height, the way she could look him straight in the eyes, the way her white legs stretched the length of the pink sheets, her perfect toes hanging off the end of the bed. He wanted her all the time, every day, every minute. He drank like a fiend. He brawled at the Cue & Brew. He crashed his truck into the wall at the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine when he’d seen a college boy making eyes at her at a party. Then he spent a night in the drunk tank, hammered out the dents in the truck, and drove back to wait outside her bedroom window at dawn on New Year’s Day.

Marry me, he said, when she came out to the lawn in a white robe.

Don’t be silly, she said. I’m seventeen. I’m in high school.

Marry me, he said on Valentine’s Day, and she rolled her eyes.

Marry me, he said on St. Pat’s. Marry me. Marry me. Marry me. They were sitting on the seawall, overlooking the Matanzas. He was nearly weeping. He slid his hand between her thighs, pressed his face against her chest.

She pulled away and looked at him.

Okay, she said, finally. But get a steady job.

And he did, too, signing on full-time at the Rayonier paper mill up in Fernandina, where he’d worked intermittently before but now had a reason to show up regular. He quit drinking by midnight every night, set an alarm clock, and got up early. He drove fifty miles north every day, wore steel-toed boots and a hard hat. He clocked in and clocked out and ate bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread. Inside the plant, he lowered himself into the belly of the boilers to spray them with sealant, descended eight hours a day into a hot, hellish dark chasm swirling with dispersants and adherents and God knows what else, but it was worth it, holy Jesus it was worth it, to have Arla.

Arla knew how people felt about the Bravos. She wasn’t stupid. She knew she was disappointing her mother and embarrassing her father. She knew her girlfriends were planning college, shopping for pencil skirts and sleeping with athletes. But there were other things she knew, too. She’d grown up an only child in an elegant home on the water, but her parents had long ago closed their hearts to anything other than their own cherished pain, and Arla knew this. Arla’s house was cold, always, despite the elevated temperatures outside. Inside lived three people who were nothing, nothing at all, like a family.

Arla knew about loneliness. She knew about resignation. She knew about despair, and about the way her mother stared at her hands when her father was speaking. And Arla knew how she felt when Dean ran his hands down her body and breathed into her hair. He was terrifying and dangerous and wild. He was everything James was not. One night in the woods of Utina, as they lay naked on a worn burlap sack spread under a sweet gum tree, Dean told Arla he would die without her. I will kill myself, Arla, I swear I will, he said, and she was moved by the power she held and frightened by the audacity of his devotion. She’d been wanted, desired, pursued all her life, but nobody had ever needed her like this. Nobody.

You’re giving up everything, Vera told her, the day Arla announced her engagement.

I don’t need everything, Arla said. I know what I need. That night, Dean drove her south to Crescent Beach. They parked at the end of a dirt road and spread a blanket in the bed of his truck, where they clung to each other and gasped until the gnats and no-see-ums drove them up into the cab. There, she sat close to him in the darkness, listening. He promised a little house to tend, food in the pantry, babies in the bathtub, and love in every room. He promised.

The wedding was in September, with a full Mass at high noon in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. The bride wore an ivory silk A-line gown with a ruched bodice, an empire waist, and a chapel-length train. The groom wore a borrowed suit and a splash of Old Spice. The bride’s mother wore a black veil of Italian lace.

James paid for all of it, but he had stopped looking his daughter in the eye. He walked her down the aisle and Arla took his arm awkwardly. She could not remember the last time she’d touched her father. She was embarrassed by the contact, the intimacy, the way he stiffened when her fingers closed around his elbow. It was a relief when they reached the chancel, and she could let him go.

At the altar, Dean was calm, his dark hair slicked smooth, his jaw clean-shaven and set. He was flanked by his brother Charlie on one side, best man by default given Huff’s extended sentence in the Florida State Penitentiary, and his cousin Ronald on the other. Three Bravo men, the most the cathedral had ever seen.

Do you? the priest said to Arla.

I do.

Do you? the priest said to Dean.

Damn straight, Dean said, winking at Arla. Her breath caught at the sight of him, the way he looked right at her, that clear and perfect desire in his eyes, as if nobody else was there in the church watching. She thought briefly about disappointment and ruination and all the rest, but it was no matter. With Dean here before her, the world was a fine place, and life the prettiest adventure indeed.

The newlyweds booked a week’s honeymoon on Lake June in Winter Haven, at a chalet perched on the south shore, just a short walk from a pizzeria and an outfit that rented water skis.

They stayed indoors for two days. On the second afternoon Dean left Arla napping and emerged onto the chalet’s porch with a six-pack of beer and a slight limp. He worked his way through the beer, watching the boats and water-skiers, then stretched, squinted into the sun, and called back into the chalet to Arla.

Let’s do it, he said. He walked along the beach to the ski rental stand, where a pair of rumpled Cubans stood in the dappled shade of a Sabal palm, a rack of water skis parked behind them on a rusted trailer. Thirty feet away, a pair of motorboats bobbed in the lake.

Morning, Dean said.

Afternoon, one of the men replied. He was stocky and thick and looked at Dean with dislike.

Is it now? Dean said.

The Cubans looked at each other.

You’ll rent me a boat? Dean said. And some skis?

They nodded. Dean paid them and walked over to one of the boats, a sixteen-foot Chris Craft with an oversize outboard. The stocky Cuban followed him. Dean looked up in time to see Arla picking her way up the beach. One hand held down an enormous straw hat. The other hand clutched a woven sarong at her hip. She was aware that Dean was watching, he could tell, and she moved in that sultry, theatrical way she had, slowing her pace just a bit, pausing, looking back over her shoulder and then advancing again, her chin held high. He wanted to eat her for lunch.

Instead, he helped her into the boat, watched her kick off her sandals, and handed her a pair of water skis. He climbed in behind the wheel.

You got three? the stocky Cuban said.

What? Dean said.

You need three. One to drive, one to ski, one to spot. The man articulated carefully, counting off on his fingers.

We got two, Dean said. We’ll be fine.

You need one to spot, the Cuban said, looking at Arla. His eyes traveled over her bathing suit, across her breasts, down the one long leg emerging from the sarong. Her feet were perfect—angular and freckled, a dusting of fine sand coating her heels. Her toenails were painted a bright coral. Somebody gotta watch her, the man said. The other Cuban snickered. You wan’ me come watch her? he said. Dean fought the desire to climb back out of the boat and pummel the man. Instead, he started the engine.

We’re fine, Dean repeated, though he noted that Arla did not move her leg out of view. She gazed across the water, making no attempt to reposition her sarong. Dean grasped the wheel. His head buzzed. He waved off the Cubans. He pointed the bow northward and sliced out across the water.

Oh, man, the stocky Cuban called out from the shore. You need three, man.

The sun was hot on Dean’s shoulders as he cut the engine and as the boat, now in the center of the lake, slowed to an idle. A dragonfly landed on Arla’s knee, then flitted away again. Dean untangled the tow rope.

This is pretty, she said mildly, looking across the lake.

You ready? he said, and he felt a twitch of adrenaline in his veins. Dean had never driven a boat with an outboard this size. He and Charlie had once liberated a dinghy from a yachtsman who’d had the misfortune to drop anchor in the Intracoastal just off Utina rather than pushing southward toward the more civilized waters of St. Augustine. They’d outfitted the dinghy with a pitiably small motor that they’d similarly liberated, but the dinghy could never do more than putter lamely along the water’s edge. Dean had never water-skied. In Davis Shores, Arla’s parents had belonged to the ski club. She’d grown up in a damp bathing suit amid the blended smells of cigarettes and martinis, salt water and coconut oil. She’d won a couple trophies in the local ski leagues.

They’re probably right, she said. We should have a spotter.

We’re fine, he said, annoyed. We don’t need anybody else.

She looked at him for a moment. All right, she said.

Dean shifted his weight, then moved toward Arla’s feet and grasped them. He ran his hands up her calves. Let’s go, he said. Let’s see you.

Let me get in first, Arla said. She pulled off the sarong in one quick movement and stood up to her full height, towering in the small boat before squatting again to stop it from pitching. She shimmied over the side into the water. Oh! she said, sounding childlike. It’s cold!

Dean handed her the skis, and she slipped her feet inside the boots.

Now start slow, she said. Until I get up. Then you can go faster.

Hang on, he said. He moved to the throttle and looked back.

Arla sat bobbing in the middle of Lake June, a ridiculous picture, the skis jutting out in front of her like cattails and her knees drawn up awkwardly. Her red hair flared against the water. Her breasts, straining against the bikini top, emerged, sank, reemerged, and she blew a thin spray of water out of her mouth and smiled.

Okay! she said.

Dean advanced the throttle. He moved slowly, watching the slack in the towline dwindle. Get ready, Arla! he shouted.

The line went taut, and she was up, moving, her full height traveling above the water, the look on her face triumphant and delighted. Dean shouted, waved to her. She nodded, clutched the rope, laughed.

He turned back to the throttle and gave it more power. The boat moved faster. Arla stayed up, her long white legs taut, shimmering, strong. She was gliding across the water like a bird now, her red hair extended behind her like plumage. Dean went faster. He was conscious of another boat on the lake, and he veered westward to give it a wide berth. He gunned the little boat’s engine, felt the spray on his face and the buzzing in his head and the beer in his belly and the ache in his groin, and he pictured Arla behind him, flying, holding the rope that bound her to him—forever, forever, forever, this wild tropical bird, this strange, colorful, perfect girl who had given up everything and everybody to be with him. To belong to him. Mine, he thought. Mine.

When he glanced over his shoulder again she was gone. He stared stupidly for a moment, watching the tow rope’s wooden handle dance like a water bug above the lake. He let off the throttle, spun the boat around. He could not see Arla. The lake was suddenly very quiet. The second boat, the one he’d been trying to avoid, bobbed in the distance, by now probably a half mile away.

Arla! he yelled. He puttered back in the direction he’d come. Arla!

After a moment, he saw her, a soft shape drifting like a sodden piece of fabric. Her hair fanned out into a crimson halo. She was waving at him.

Dean gunned the throttle again and raced toward her. She was bleeding from a gash above her eye, and her face was pale. The buzzing in his head intensified. One of Arla’s skis floated, untethered, thirty yards away.

I think I hit a piece of wood, she said. She was treading water with one bare foot, struggling to remove the other ski. I can’t get this ski off. Dean slowed his approach, but he overshot, moved past her, had to turn the boat around again to return to her. He finally pulled up alongside her and reached to pull her into the boat.

But he’d missed her again. His hands grasped air. She dipped under the water once and came up choking. Then she passed out, and her face slipped below the surface.

Arla! he screamed. Arla!

He spun the boat around a third time and tapped the throttle to move closer to Arla. He leaned out to reach for her again. The propeller was still spinning. His head was still buzzing. He thought he might throw up. He leaned farther out of the boat, reaching. With Dean’s shift in weight, the stern tipped toward Arla, and then the boat jumped slightly—a blunted, soft jolt, as if the prop had made contact with something malleable.

He cut the engine, jumped in, and swam to Arla. He pulled her to the boat and dragged her up behind him, aware that he was operating with the bizarre strength of some sort of colossus, and yet when he lowered her body into the boat and heard her begin to sputter and cough, and when his eyes drifted down the length of her legs, past her ankles, to the place where something was wrong, and where the blood was beginning to fill up the bottom of the boat like bilge, he felt like a very, very weak man.

Her left foot had been cut in half. The tissue had been severed cleanly, but the bones had resisted, so that even after two hours in surgery the repair was sloppy, disordered, made difficult by the task of trying to organize a series of abbreviated metatarsals that had to be coaxed back into their rightful positions. What remained was a foreshortened adaptation of a foot, with a solid heel and enough extended musculature to be moderately useful for balance and posture, but not much use for unaided walking. A cane, if not a crutch, would always be in order. That’s how the doctor explained it to Arla, and to Dean, the morning after the accident, when she awoke in a musty hospital room with a fat bandage on her forehead, a view of a commercial laundry out the window, and a pale version of Dean at her side.

The toes on her left foot itched terribly. She told Dean, but he looked at her and shook his head. She looked once at her bandaged stump of a foot and then did not look again.

Did you call my parents? she said.

No, he said. She winced and shifted position.

Where are they? she said.

At home, I suppose.

I mean my toes, she said.

Oh, them. He drew a breath. I suppose they’re at the bottom of Lake June by now, Arla, he said. I guess we gotta consider them gone.

They were quiet then. The doctor signed the discharge papers, and then the nurse came along with a wheelchair and helped Arla get dressed. Arla looked into the bag that Dean had brought, and she saw her pink ballerina flats. And though she tried to ask the nurse for the pail, she didn’t make it in time; she vomited all over the front of her best honeymoon sundress. Then she started to cry.

Shhhhh, said the nurse. Hush now, baby. Don’t you take on so. They’s only toes, you know.

Dean left the room, his footsteps fading as he strode down the hall to get the truck and bring his new wife home.

Vera wept when she saw Arla.

My God, James said. His face was white. His hands shook. They stood in the middle of the newlyweds’ rented efficiency off US1 in St. Augustine, staring at the peeling linoleum, the rusted range, their daughter’s hideously fat, bandaged foot. Dean was at work. Arla sat in a rented wheelchair.

How could you let this happen? Vera said. Oh, Arla, I can’t cope.

You don’t have to cope, Arla said. It’s not your foot.

Come back home, Vera said. We’ll take care of you.

Arla rolled across the kitchen, reached into a drawer for a bottle of aspirin, and shook two into her hand. She put the bottle back and rolled backward into the center of the room. I am home, she said. Dean will take care of me.

James shook his head. He looked at her again, and Arla saw the shift, saw the decision and the closure, so what he said next was less a surprise than a vaguely expected regret.

This is madness, he said. Self-destruction. I won’t stand by watching. He walked to the door, then turned back. Come home today, he said to Arla. Or not at all. There’s nothing we can do for you here.

James, Vera said.

No, he said simply. No. He nodded at Vera. I’ll be in the car, he said. The doorframe was swollen with moisture, and he had to kick at it to get it to open. After a moment, Arla heard the car’s engine roar to life and then settle to an idle.

Arla, Vera said.

I’m not coming home unless Dean comes with me, Arla said.

Well, that’s out of the question.

Well, then.

Outside, James revved the engine. Vera walked over to Arla and bent to kiss her, but they connected awkwardly and bumped faces in a self-conscious way that left Arla’s cheek unpleasantly damp with her mother’s tears.

Will you hand me a glass of water? she said. She looked at the aspirin, flat on her palm.

It hurts? Vera said.

It hurts, Arla said, though now she looked at her bandaged left foot in amazement, feeling the pain far beyond the flesh that remained, a throbbing pulse localized, impossibly, in her five missing toes. Phantom pain. She’d read about it. Hurting for something that wasn’t even there.

I’ll call you tomorrow, Vera said. He’ll settle down.

Her tone was unconvincing. Arla did not reply. When her mother left the kitchen she squeezed her fists against her ears to drown out the sound of her parents’ car revving angrily backward into the street.

That night, Dean announced it was time to buy a house. In Utina.

Utina? Arla said.

It’s where we belong, Arla, he said. They sat close together on the couch in the apartment’s tiny living room, his fingers threaded through hers. When she turned to look at him, her damaged foot, covered in a thin sock, brushed his ankle, and he jerked his leg away, as if it burned.

Who’s we? she said.

We. Us. The Bravos, he said. And for the first time, she felt the weight of the name, felt it heavy and cold across her shoulders, around her chest, into her heart.

What’s wrong with St. Augustine? she said.

Utina, he said, and she was startled to hear that, although her hand was still warm in his, his voice was final and cold. She sensed an odd shifting of balance at that moment, a bobble in the dynamics of their relationship, and she felt something odd, something she’d never felt before. She felt cowed.

The house was a Queen Anne, once regal, built in 1927 by a reclusive sugar mogul from Miami who’d retired up to Utina after that God-awful Dade hurricane in 1926. The land he’d chosen had a pristine stretch of Intracoastal Waterway frontage and a thick cluster of slash pine and sweet gum trees, with a handful of showcase magnolia. The house was three stories, with a towering corner turret and a porch that circled the ground floor like a moat. Downstairs, a long hallway cut like a channel through the center of the house, past a cavernous living room and into an expansive kitchen overlooking the water. The middle floor had four bedrooms; the top floor had three. In all, there were five bathrooms in the house, though two of them had been locked and unentered since the toilets gave out years before. From the back porch, the view of the Intracoastal was unobstructed and commanding. If you sat on that porch, on the back of that house, you couldn’t avoid looking at the water.

Which is what Dean was doing in October of 1964, five weeks after Arla’s accident, on one of her first outings without the wheelchair. Arla was inside the house, talking to the owner, a soft-hearted widow who took a shine to Arla’s red hair. Oh, it’s just like mine! the widow said, though the old woman’s hair was the color of dust and had the consistency of twine. But my dear, what have you done to yourself? She looked at Arla’s left foot, wrapped tightly in a compression bandage, and at the thick wooden cane Arla clutched. The woman looked closer, saw the foreshortening of the bandaged foot, the odd blankness where there should have been the outline of five petite toes. She blinked rapidly, looked away.

Since her husband had died a decade earlier, the widow had not maintained the house. She had not swept the porch. She had not pulled the oak vines or the creeping jasmine off the siding. She had not sealed the leaks or fixed the rotting lumber at the foundation or replaced the collapsed steps of the front porch. She hadn’t even been up to the third floor in several years, she confessed. Oh, and I used to love it up there, she said. You can see the tops of the magnolias outside the back bedroom. That’s where all the pretty blooms are, you know, up at the top. But my knees are not so good, she admitted. It’s all I can do to get up the one flight. And really, maybe you shouldn’t either, dear, the old woman said, glancing at Arla’s foot, but her voice trailed off and she looked away again.

Arla was growing accustomed to people noticing her foot and then hastily looking away. She understood. She’d looked at her unbandaged foot only once since the accident. A week after it had happened, Arla had sat naked and cross-legged on the apartment’s tiny bathroom floor. She’d slowly unfurled the long strip of bandages until her left foot, what was left of it, lay bare and iodine-stained across her right thigh. She’d examined it from every angle, noting the way the surgeon had carefully folded a flap of skin down across the ball of her foot like an envelope. She ran her finger along the thick, bloody stitches. She’d stared at it for more than an hour, until Dean had banged on the door and told her to come out. She’d rebandaged her foot, dressed herself, and opened the bathroom door. She would never look at her bare left foot again.

But Dean would. To Dean, Arla’s foot was like a scab he couldn’t stop picking. In the days after the accident, he changed the dressing on the wound, steeling himself for the vision of the mutilated foot with the bizarre curiosity of a rubbernecker. After the wound had healed, and even while Arla herself averted her eyes as she slid a sock over the stump every morning, Dean could not look away. He watched the stump crust, and then scar, and then atrophy into the unusable nub of flesh that would remain. And though in the beginning the sight of Arla’s stump was a reminder of his own shortcomings, his own mistakes, his own catastrophically impaired judgment, over time it became, to Dean, simply a reminder of the general sting of failure, of pain, of dissatisfaction, and the lines began to blur for him as to who, exactly, was at fault for all that. His new bride was disabled, marred, truncated. He was pained by the wheelchair, embarrassed by the cane. He found her stoicism heroic at first, then mildly contrived, and—finally—purely indulgent, her silence about the accident and her obvious disability feeling like some sort of twisted hubris, some sort of pride that she hoisted on her shoulders, carried like a cartouche. He was shamed by her clomping gait, irritated by her limp. He wondered, at times, if she was exaggerating it. As often as not, the disability was a reflection of everything that was not perfect, after all, about Arla, despite his initial convictions to the contrary. In short, looking at Arla’s foot, Dean felt cheated.

Now, in the strange, sad house off Monroe Road, Arla left the widow in the kitchen and slowly ascended the stairs to the third floor, leaning heavily on her cane. Her right foot did most of the work now, and she could manage to keep the pain in check as long as she didn’t put too much weight on the tender stump of the left. On the third-floor landing, she peered into the darkness. Something scuttled along the baseboard, and as she heard the rumble of Dean’s voice through the floorboards, talking to the widow, she felt a fear in her chest that had nothing to do with vermin.

She pushed forward, into the west-facing bedroom, where there was a view out to the waterway, just beyond a tangled mass of magnolia branches. The broad white flowers, which as the widow had said bloomed only at the top of the tree, had already begun to turn brown in the October sun, and they drooped piteously from the branches. We’re too late, Arla thought. They’re already dead. She limped back down the stairs.

It’s perfect, Dean was saying to the widow.

Dean, Arla said. Are we sure?

We want to make you an offer, he said to the widow.

Dean, Arla said. He held up a hand.

Well, all right, the widow said, slowly, looking at Arla. If that’s what you all want to do.

They took a mortgage and closed on the first of November. Vera sent a gift of monogrammed tea towels but didn’t visit. Daddy’s got the conference in Atlanta, she said to Arla on the phone. "We leave tomorrow. I’ll

Reviews for Heart of Palm

[jgoto_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Written in a style that brings to mind Richard Russo, Laura Lee Smith's story is set in a dilapidated town in Northern Florida. The heroes of the book are a hard-scrabble, hard-drinking family, The Bravos. They are a quirky, dysfunctional, and, in the end, likable lot. We see their marriages, indiscretions, jealousies, and guilt over an incident twenty years in the past. The main thread of the plot involves their indecision as to whether or not to sell their crumbling family property to a developer who plans to build a high class marina on the spot. This is one of those stories, however, where plot seems almost secondary. The real heart of the novel is about getting to know the characters and the ties that bind them to one another.

[kappadeemom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brand new author - loved this book. It revolves around the Bravo family of Utina, FL (near St. Augustine). As someone who has lived in this area, it was great to read about life in the small Florida town where the Bravo's have lived for generations. Alma, the tall, beautiful redhead who comes from money and marries the wild, blue-collar Dean. Right off the bat they have trouble. Lots of drinking, running around, crazy behavior that makes for a great story. My only regret is not having it on my Kindle. Lots of funny one-liners that I would have loved to highlight. I am looking forward to her next book!

I received this book from Goodreads as an Advanced Reader Copy.

[mchwest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a really good first write and the plot and characters held me to the end!

[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Simply a good story about a family in a small North Florida town. We first meet Arla when she's 18 years old. After she marries Dean, we jump forward about fifty years and meet Arla's children. This isn't really a book with action, it's just a story about a small-town and the Bravo family. There were a few slow moments, but I was always interested in learning more about the Bravo's tough times -- both past and present.

[bookdivasreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Bravo family has a history of tragedy and heartache. The matriarch, Alma Bolton Bravo, was raised in a well-to-do family and never wanted for anything. Alma decided as a teenager that she wanted to be different, so she chose to marry a man that was as different from her family as she could find, Dean Bravo. The first tragedy in their lives occurred on their honeymoon, when Alma is in a boating accident that causes the amputation of her toes and splits her foot. Of course it doesn't help that the cause of the accident was Dean's refusal to have a third party as a spotter to go out with them so Alma could water-ski safely. Years pass, Alma and Dean have four children and are barely making ends meet and the second tragedy occurs with the death of their youngest child. As the years pass, it is evident that their eldest, Sofia has mental health issues (she was diagnosed as manic-depressive with OCD). Dean, a heavy drinker, winds up deserting the family shortly after the death of their youngest child. Alma makes do and eventually buys out her brother-in-law's business, a local bar and grill. Carson Bravo, the eldest son, marries and moves away from home and starts his own business. Frank Bravo, the youngest son, still lives in Utina and runs the restaurant, a job he's had since he was nineteen years old. Sofia lives at home with her mother and helps her brother out by cleaning the restaurant every morning. On the surface it appears that the Bravo family is just a family dealing with the usual family issues and dysfunctions, but the Bravos are dealing with more than tragedy, heartache and mental health issues. Frank is in love with his sister-in-law and wants to move away from Utina and live a quiet life. He knows this won't happen as long as his mother and sister are around and need him. Carson has made a mess of both his marriage and his business and needs to find a quick fix for both before he winds up divorced, in prison or worse. Sofia struggles with her mental health issues, but she is surviving and has found love for the first time in her life at age forty-three. Alma, as the matriarch, worries about her children but knows that she can no longer control them. The family is offered the chance to make a large sum of money and leave Utina behind, something they think about or say they want until the opportunity is presented to them. Ms. Smith has captured the essence of family in all its dysfunction in Heart of Palm. As I read, I was reminded of the line from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The Bravos are unhappy in their own special way. There aren't any true bad guys in Heart of Palm, as each Bravo family member deals with their own secrets and guilt. Dean and Alma aren't the best parents, but they did what they could for their family to the best of their abilities. Sofia, Carson and Frank aren't loving siblings but they are there for one another when needed. Carson's wife Elizabeth, and daughter Bell, add their own idiosyncrasies to the family. Sofia's love interest, Biaggio, works with and for the Bravo family and he considers himself a family member even before he and Sofia decide to marry. Heart of Palm is filled with angst, drama, greed, guilt, pain, suffering, forgiveness, and love . . . all the things that make a family a family. If you're looking for a well-written story about family and small-town living, then I strongly recommend Heart of Palm.

[librarian1204 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a marvelous first book ! I hope Laura Lee Smith is writing another. A southern novel set on the coast and intercostal near St Augustine, Fl , with a dysfunctional family that all love and hurt each other continually . Good family story telling, good characters and a sure feel for the places and people this author brings to her readers.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The worst thing about this book is the title. If I had gone by that alone, I probably would not have chosen the book because it sounds like just another romance, but the description drew me in.But this Southern saga of the Bravo family is so much more than a romance, even though there is some of that involved, and even though the first few pages made it seem just another romance.You just don't want to get mixed up with those fellas. Just ask Arla, who fell in love with Dean when she was just a teenager.I loved the characters in this book. They had depth and originality and a great deal of heart. Arla, whose life didn't turn out at all as she expected. Dean, her charismatic husband, and the first Bravo we meet. Frank, who just tried to hold things together. Carson, who was so easy to dislike. Sweet, damaged Sophia. And a cast of others who made me care about them. Biaggio, whose whole existence was due to spite. And even Drusilla, only a headstone hidden in the palmettos, but a good friend to Arla.Of course, there is a tragedy. There has to be a tragedy other than just the everyday waste of so many lives.This is a sweet, wonderful book, bittersweet like the best chocolate, and a lovely summer read.I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review, for which I am grateful.