Dirty Love (21 page)

He didn’t know her name and never saw her again, but in the last ten years her skeptical face would sometimes come back to him, the way it came to him now, along with the question to which she seemed to have the answer:
Was
he? Was he a blowhard?

“Mr. Doucette?”

Robert raised his head. It was the same man from before, his curly hair matted from the surgical cap he now held in his hand.

“It was a placental abruption, but we’ve stopped the bleeding and your wife will be in recovery soon. Your daughter appears to be healthy as well, though we’ll have to monitor her pretty closely.”

“Daughter?”

The doctor told Robert he could see his child in the neonatal unit, and his wife would be going to ICU after the recovery room. He said congratulations and offered his hand. Robert, still sitting, reached out to shake it, then stood quickly and squeezed; the man’s hand was small and soft, and Robert was acutely aware that it had just performed two miracles: saved his wife, and delivered their baby. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you.” Robert did not want to let go, but the doctor stopped squeezing and glanced down at Robert’s shirt. He said it would be a little while before his family was ready for a visit, and he should feel free to go home and change if he’d like. The doctor let his hand slide out of Robert’s, offered his congratulations once more, then disappeared back behind the swinging door.

Robert did not want to leave. He wanted to find the neonatal unit and see his child. His daughter. Be with her. Let her hear his voice. Smell his skin. But what would she smell? Jackie’s scent? Coconut oil? Old bourbon and her mother’s blood? And later, when he visited Althea, would he want to show up in the same clothes he wore when everything went wrong? No. He would drive home, shower, shave, change his clothes, and buy flowers on the way back.

J
ACKIE WAS SITTING
on the porch step of her cabin when Robert drove over the shell lot and parked alongside the marsh. She was smoking a lighted cigarette this time, and she still wore the baggy Patriots T-shirt she’d slept in—that, and a pair of shorts, Robert noticed, her hair pulled back. She was barefoot, and when Robert turned off the engine she sat up straight, blew smoke, and waited; she was a beautiful woman, her thick red ponytail hanging straight down her back, her thighs and calves hard- and supple-looking, covered with tanned freckles. Robert’s cheeks became warm, his throat dry, and he took a long drink off his Coke before he got out of the Subaru and walked over to her.

She was looking up at him, her eyes empty of mischief. Instead, Robert saw fear in them, and something he could not begin to name. But he must have been smiling because Jackie said, “Everything’s okay? The baby? Everything?”

“A girl. We have a little girl.” He was conscious of the word
we
, the exclusion of her in that, and, as if to make up for it, he sat on the step next to her, their hips touching.

“You’re smoking.”

Jackie nodded, took a final drag off the cigarette, and flicked it out into the broken shells of the lot. “How’d she find out?” She was looking at him, her eyes full of sorrow, as if
she
had been betrayed, and he knew then Jackie would never have told anyone.

He shrugged. “She saw me come out of your place. I snuck in to see you, but you were asleep, so I let myself back out again.”

The screen door opened behind them and Kimberly said excuse me and didn’t wait for Robert to finish scooting over before she stepped between them and off the porch. She was dressed for work, the early lunch crowd, her white blouse and black skirt freshly ironed, her bare legs lean, disciplined, and moral. She walked straight to the Whaler’s service door and didn’t turn around once.

“She hasn’t talked to me all morning.” Jackie looked halfway over at Robert, her eyes fixing on his shirt, his bloody shirt. “I feel really bad.” Her voice broke and Robert put his arm around her. She seemed to be crying, her shoulders bobbing slightly, though he couldn’t be sure because he didn’t hear anything. He could smell her hair, the natural oil in it, the linen of her pillowcase. He began to get hard, and he pulled away.

“I should get my vest.”

She looked at him, her green eyes shiny and dull. She blinked twice, as if she were trying to focus on what he’d really just said. She sniffled, wiped under each eye with one finger, then stood and led him inside. His vest lay on a towel on her bunk, the top sheet balled in a heap at the foot of the bed.

“I rinsed it in cold water.”

“Thank you.”

“Why weren’t you wearing it?”

Robert picked up the vest, damp and dark. “I was carrying it. Just forgot about it.” He didn’t like lying to Jackie; he should not lie to at least
somebody
. He could hear the beach traffic out on the boulevard, the clown horn of a motorcycle or truck. The air in the cabin was still and hot, and he smelled the sewage, all of theirs, his and Jackie’s and Kimberly’s, all the other barbacks and waiters and waitresses, the ones who waited. And Jackie seemed to be waiting too, her face sad but open to spontaneity, her nipples erect beneath her shirt.

“I’m sorry about what happened, Jackie.”

“Me too.”

Robert moved toward her to give her a hug, he told himself, that’s all, but she stepped back and held up her hand. “Don’t.”

Disappointment and relief twisted inside him. He nodded, thanked her for the vest, then left the cabin and walked back to his own where he showered and changed into khaki pants and an oxford shirt Althea had ironed and hung in their tiny closet under the loft. He was sweating a foul sweat: bourbon and desire and a profound weakness; he was almost certain he would have done it with Jackie one more time, a final time. All the windows were open, but there was no sea breeze at all, just the smell of sewage and salt water from the marsh, the faint scent of garbage from the dumpster on the other side of the lot, rancid fried fish and clams, hot metal and dried soda, and he could not imagine bringing his wife and baby back to this.
If
she would come—there was the way she’d turned her head away from him as she bled on Jackie’s floor, her placenta “abrupted.”

He wiped his forehead, slipped on his loafers, combed his hair back, then crossed the shell lot. It seemed an entire night and day had passed since he’d closed up, but it was still early, the lunch staff pulling chairs off tables, running the vacuum over the sea green carpet, setting each plate with silverware, cloth napkins, and a Whaler’s placemat menu. Kimberly was drinking coffee at the window table with three other waitresses who were taking a cigarette break, and Robert didn’t have to guess at the topic of conversation. Still, he waved to them on his way to the manager’s office. One of them, Dotty, a small-hipped woman who owned her own video store a few miles west, asked if his wife was doing all right. Robert nodded and smiled, though he felt as if he were lying again.

His manager, Danny Sullivan, was sitting at his cluttered desk with a clear glass of creamy coffee, smoking a cigarette and studying last night’s receipts. He had a thick red mustache and a wide double chin. He wore reading glasses. A small paper clip holder was turned over on the blotter at the edge of the desk, and Robert remembered Jackie’s hand bracing herself there. He’d forgotten this was the last place they’d done it. He felt like a house burglar walking by one of his victims in the grocery store. Dan Sullivan glanced up at him, then back at the receipts, the smoke from the cigarette wafting in front of him.

“We’re switching over to Sprite on the guns, Bobby. When you lock up tonight, have the barback put all the 7UP canisters outside, all right?”

Sullivan flicked on his adding machine. Robert scanned the desk for any more evidence of last night, but there was none, just the general paper clutter of beer and liquor orders, the only hint a clear semicircle of space at the front edge of the desk where Jackie had rested her ass.

“We had our baby today, Danny.”

Sullivan looked up, his eyes suddenly empty of numbers. “Already?”

“Eight weeks early. Everything’s okay, though.” Robert felt himself smile, and now, telling the news to a man, a father, though twice divorced, Robert felt genuinely happy. “We have a little girl. She’ll be in the hospital for a while, I guess.”

“Your wife?”

“She’s good.” Robert’s forehead felt like plastic.

Dan Sullivan stood and offered his hand. “Good for you, kid. Sit down.” He waved at a sawed-off barstool, its upholstered seat sealed with duct tape. He left the office and was back before Robert had even sat. He was carrying a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey and two highball glasses, still steaming from the machine. It was the last thing Robert wanted, his bourbon-dry gut already shrinking back at the news, but when Sullivan poured him three fingers and put the glass in his hand Robert knew he would drink it. His manager raised his own glass, said something in Gaelic, then tapped Robert’s, and Robert drank the Bushmills slowly, enough for his insides to acclimate themselves, and when they did things weren’t so bad: it was a warm, amber day on the beach and his gut was lolling in the water. His manager must’ve seen something in Robert’s face and poured them each one more, though this one was shorter.

Sullivan raised his glass again. “A girl’s the way to go, Bobby.” His manager drank down the Bushmills and Robert followed suit, the second glass feeling a bit shy in kick and weight, Robert remembering something about Danny’s grown son tending bar here till his father had to fire him for stealing from the register. Sullivan sat back behind his desk and took a deep drag off his cigarette, the numbers back in his eyes again. “I’ll get Davey to cover for you till you’re all set. Give yourself a couple of days, all right?”

Robert thanked him and left the office. He’d meant to give his notice too, to tell him he was done for the season, but Sullivan’s gesture of the Bushmills and toast had thrown him. The aftertaste of the Irish whiskey was a bit coarse in Robert’s throat, and he walked to the bar and filled himself a glass of ginger ale from the soda gun. The waitresses were gone from the window. It was set now with napkins and silver and clean water glasses. Devon, one of the bus girls, was setting a table at a corner booth, and it was hard not to stare at her young ass in her black pants, but the word
daughter
was in his head and he made himself look away. Outside and across the boulevard, the beach was already full of people sunbathing, others throwing a Frisbee or football back and forth, still others wading out into the green and white surf. He was exhausted, the glass in his hand heavier than it should be, his legs stiff and unsure. And he felt the toast too, his face and head a wide reckless expanse with no borders, and there was the feeling of being left behind, something important going on someplace else he really should not miss.

Then he was in his car backing over the broken shells, perhaps breaking more himself. Though the windows were rolled down, the inside of the car was hot and he began to sweat beneath his ironed shirt. A screen door slammed back on its jamb and there was Jackie standing on her porch in her sunbathing bikini, holding her folded lounge chair and a glass of something iced. She’d pulled her hair out of its ponytail and now it hung thickly just past her shoulders. He didn’t wave or acknowledge her in any way, mainly because the car was moving forward, he told himself, but in the rearview mirror he watched her watch him go, her lovely face looking small and sad with resolve, her breasts as ample and inviting as two peaches on a limb on the other side of a steep gorge.

In Exeter, Robert stopped for coffee and flowers. He parked across from the small gazebo off the main square and stepped up under the awnings of the shops and restaurants that filled the old mill buildings all the way to the river. The air was warmer here than on the beach, no breeze, and his mouth was dry, his shirt sticking to the middle of his back. Down a side street was a florist. He went inside and ordered a dozen long-stemmed roses but then changed his mind; red wasn’t the appropriate color for the occasion and, under the circumstances, he didn’t want Althea to think he was trying to romance her. He asked the lady behind the counter to make up a fifty-dollar mixed bouquet, then stepped outside to escape the earth-strangled odors of all those green stems in the water. Across the road was a Mexican restaurant, its doors open. In the dark bar two men sat laughing. Robert considered a quick beer, but the Bushmills had worn off, leaving him sleepier than ever, his eyes burning slightly, the terrible all-nighter behind him like a faraway sound. The sight of the two men bruised him in a way he couldn’t pinpoint, and when he walked into a newsstand at the corner for a cup of coffee, he saw the humidor of cigars and knew not only was he genuinely afraid of Althea leaving him now, but he was lonesome too, lonesome for at least one male friend to whom he could hand a cigar.

He immediately thought of calling his father. It was almost noon in August; he’d be putting up the hay, driving the baler while a couple of hired hands caught the bales, then stacked them onto the trailer. At this moment he was a grandfather and didn’t know it, and as Robert paid for the wrapped flowers he told himself to make the call from the hospital, though he hadn’t seen or talked to his mother and father in over four years. What would they have talked about? Robert’s tips? The tuition money he still owed them? The poetry he wasn’t writing? But now there was something to show, something worth his mother calling his father from the fields to the phone for. But the notion of his baby girl being identified as his father’s granddaughter left Robert feeling naked and weak, like the better man would get picked to step in and finish a job with which Robert, of course, could not be trusted. That poet-in-residence had told Robert he should start looking at
other
people instead of expecting everyone to look at him. There was the week of drinking and skipping all his classes, then leaving school, and then his father standing in his bedroom doorway saying, “You’re all talk, aren’t you, son? Nothing but talk.”

Robert thought of Althea’s anemic face and dark dry eyes. Jackie in her bikini watching him go.