Just Add Water (1) (5 page)

A persistent thump on my pillow heralded
an
après
Chardonnay kind of day. The
logjam of dog hair in my hot tub dictated my morning’s main activity.

Jan wisely decided to abandon my place
and snitty attitude for her own BDR-less abode.

RJ watched, with the irksome smugness of a
teetotaler, from a safe, splash free distance while I drained, washed,
polished, and refilled the tub.

Adding insult to self-induced
injury was my discovery of several loose deck planks, a leaky water pipe under
the tub, a suspiciously slow drain in the basement sink, and two hanger-uppers
before I could figure out how to use my new caller ID. An epic headache, hairy
hot tub, disintegrating house, nuisance caller, and dying dog pushed me to the
tottering edge of a severe pity party. After a morning of hard work laced with
liberal doses of self-loathing, I gratefully set the tub controls to HEAT,
turned on some Pavarotti, and collapsed on the couch with a half liter glass of
cold wine. It didn’t taste as good as it had the night before. And I don’t
really like opera all that much, but I have a deep affection for anything of value
featuring fat people. Sumo wrestling is my all time favorite.

It was time to whine.

“Mama,” I blubbered into the phone,
“why me?”

“Hetta Honey, are you intoxicated?”
Mother drawled.

“I’m not drunk, but I’ve been drinking. My ship has
not sunk, but it is sinking,” I singsonged, quoting a poem a friend composed
one tipsy night at the beach.

I could picture Mother giving my father her
“Hetta’s on the phone and it isn’t good news” look. Although it was
midafternoon in Texas, I also knew she was perfectly coifed, she had her “face”
on, and her petite form was adorned with something linen by Liz Claiborne.
Pressed. I’ve long suspected I was adopted.

“And I plan to drink more,” I
sniveled. “My life is the pits.” I would have said my life was shit, but one does
not use the word “shit” when addressing my mother. “Pits” was even pushing it,
as it could be construed as referring to a body part.

“Oh? May-un problems?” Mama asked,
trying to sound sympathetic even though she and my father had to be sick of my
historically histrionic love life.

“No, no man this time” I wailed. “I
wish it was only that. RJ’s got cancer and he’s gonna die.”

“Oh, dear. I’m putting your father
on.” Mother, like me, doesn’t do well with bad news. That’s Daddy’s job.
 

My second sip of wine tasted
better. I blew my nose and waited. RJ, upon hearing his name, had put his head
in my lap so I could scratch his ears. Mother covered the phone’s mouthpiece
with her palm, but I could catch muffled snatches of conversation.

“Hetta . . . upset.”

“What . . . another . . . hope . .
. real job,” I made out before Daddy took the phone. “Hetta, are you all
right?”

“I am, but RJ’s dying.”

“What of?”

“Bone cancer.”

“Too bad. Can’t they do anything?”

I explained the options. Daddy was
silent for a few moments, then said, “Best dawg I ever had was an ole Red Bone
hound with three legs. Lost one to a bobcat when he was just a pup. He got
around mighty fine. ‘Course he fell on his nose when he tried to point, but he
was still a fine fella.”

I smiled. A little homegrown homily
goes a long way to boost the spirits of a displaced Texan.

“What did you
call him? And don't give me that old ‘Lucky’ joke.”

“Tripod.”

I laughed aloud,
then sighed. “Daddy, I wouldn’t mind having a three-legged dog, but taking his
leg off won’t buy us anything. And he’d have to go through all the pain. I
mean, he’s bound to suffer anyhow, from the cancer, but it doesn’t make sense
to cut off his leg and still have him die in six months. I wish I didn’t have a
choice. Like with people.”

“I’m not so sure
about that. There’s a few folks woulda put down Grandmaw Stockman if they’da
had a chance.”

I snorted into
my wine. My great grandmother had died at one hundred and one, some say of
disappointment. After claiming to be fading away from every known disease for
fifty years, she finally succumbed to old age. Very mean old age.

“I guess it’s
true, only the good die young. In our family we live long and get meaner with
each year. There’s a depressing thought. I’m doomed to feel like this for
another fifty someodd years?”

“Beats the
alternative. Wish there was something I could do to help you and RJ.”

“You already
have.”

“Hell, I didn’t
do nothin’.”

“You were there.
I needed to whine and you listened. Thanks. Let me say good-bye to Mama, then
I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

“Okay. Love
you.”

“Love you, too,”
I said, then waited while my mother took the phone.

“The thing to do
is keep busy,” she advised. “It’ll take your mind off RJ’s problems and let you
enjoy him while you can.”

“I will, Mama.
Actually, I was thinking of taking sailing lessons.”

There was a long
pause. “Mama?”

“Use sunblock,
Hetta. Boating is very bad for your ski-yun.”

I hung up and
decided to take her advice about keeping busy. And the sunblock. Sitting
around, moping all afternoon or getting drunk, wasn’t going to get me anywhere
except mopey drunk. I fired up RJ’s car and we went for a drive. Three hours
later, I called Jan.

“How’s you?” I
asked.

“More
importantly, how are you? I called twice and when you didn’t answer I thought maybe
you’d decided to end it all after I left.”

“I felt like it
when I saw that hot tub. But I’m too much of a coward to kill myself. Death
hurts, I’m sure of it. Besides, if I didn’t commit
harikiri
in Japan when Hudson jilted me, I never will. Stupid, ain’t
it, how you think something is so damned tragic you can’t possibly live another
day. Now, years later, I’m facing a real loss and the thing with Hudson doesn’t
amount to a hill of beans. Although,” I said, fingering the key hanging around
my neck, “I would like to know what happened to the dirty rat bastard.”

“We’ll probably
never know. When was the last time you heard from Interpol?”

“At least a
year. Anyhow, enough of that. RJ and I just got back from the library. You
should see all the books I’ve got on sailing. Oh, and I’ve signed us up for a
U.S. Coast Guard boating safety class.”

Jan groaned.
“Why can’t you have a hangover, like I do?”

“Well, I do, but
I decided to take RJ to the park and the library was right there and one thing
led to another. We start in two weeks.”

“Start what?”

“The Coast Guard
class.”

“Hetta, I’m not
going. No way. No how. Not a chance. And that’s that.”

“We can buy real
cool sailing gear.”

“No.”

“There’ll be men
there.”

“What kind of
cool gear?”

8

A snowy-bearded man in smart whites
waved us to school desks at the front of the room and wrote his name, Russ
Madden, on the blackboard. Well, the board was actually green, but I’m a
traditionalist.

The classroom, decorated in a blend
of high school rah-rah and “don’t do drugs” signs, flags of the world, maps of
the rapidly changing global scene and a wide screen TV, brought back memories
of days long past at Richland Springs High, Richland Springs, Texas. Home of
the fighting Coyotes. Well, scratch the wide screen. Our one-horse town didn’t
even have decent television reception.

I had a sudden urge to pass a note
or throw a spitball. Or buy a pair of straight legged jeans, soak them in a
number ten galvanized tub of hot water and starch and then let them dry to a
life-threatening fit on my sixteen-year-old body. But I wasn’t sixteen. I was,
uh, something more than that. I was making mooneyes at a gray-haired man, for
crying out loud. When did I develop this Kenny Rogers syndrome? At what point
did I lose my attraction for hardbody cowboys in skintight jeans, and start
gawking at old men?

Kenny, uh, Lieutenant Madden, burst
into my thoughts by throwing a stack of booklets on my desk. “Since you’re
early, maybe you’d help me by passing these out? Put one on each desk, please.”

“Will it affect our final grade
point?” I vamped. I love a man in uniform.

He grinned. “You don’t get a grade.
You either pass the test or you don’t. If you pay attention, you’ll pass.”

Jan and I went about our assigned
task, then perused the pamphlets while other would-be mariners filtered in.
Most of them, my crabwise vision recorded with satisfaction, were men. In fact,
by the time the class began, the only other women in the packed room were a
Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer and a sour-faced matron who huffed down into
the desk next to me. Her ample derriere had no more than touched the seat when
she told me this boat thing wasn’t her idea and if her husband thought this
silly toy wasn’t going to cost him big time, he had another think coming. Why,
just this morning she’d called her decorator, Dion, for an estimate to get the
entire house redone….

I was spared her plot for spousal
punishment by means of the dreaded Dion, when Lt. Madden cleared his throat,
welcomed the class, and turned out the lights.

For the next fifteen minutes we
were subjected to a video tape reminiscent of a chainsaw flick featuring bigger
than life photos of what appeared to be boat and body parts. Nautical disaster
leftovers of those whose horsepower exceeded their IQ’s by a factor of four.

Jan breathed, “Oh, Lord, Hetta, I
told you boats were dangerous.”

Lt. Madden heard her. “Boating can
be dangerous, but not to the informed and cautious. Now, let’s get down to
learning how you can avoid being a star in my horror movie. It isn’t all that
hard if you know the rules of the road, use common sense, operate a
well-maintained vessel and keep in mind one important thing. Boats don’t got no
brakes.”

They don’t? This was a worrisome
piece of information, but it faded to fast second when we got to the part about
navigation. After an hour of hand to hand combat with a protractor, a pair of
dividers and a map—nix that, a
chart
—of
the California coast, we tackled the art of dead reckoning. I dead reckoned
that, with my skills, we’d end up as flotsam. Or was it jetsam? Whatever, we’d
end up beached.

“Jesus,” Jan grumbled as we left
the classroom, “I guess this crap is easy for you. You’re an engineer. And
what’s with this ‘north’ thing? How can there be a
true north
and a
magnetic
north
? Why not a true north and
un
-true north? Oh, I knew this was going
to be a disaster. First time on a boat we’re gonna hit the rocks.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Oh, and what is going to prevent
it? Your exceptional navigational know-how?”

“GPS, my dear. A global positioning satellite
receiver, that’s what. Clever little buggers bounce a signal right onto a chart
or map, telling you within a few feet exactly where you are. We use them to
survey these days.”

“Like the ones in cars? They work
on boats, too?”

“
Ab-so-lu-ta-mente
.”

“Cool. Then why are they teaching
us to navigate the hard way?”

“Well, for one thing, just because
you know where you are doesn’t mean zip if your don’t know how to read a chart.
I suppose there’s also a remote possibility the satellite could fall from the sky
when you’re half way to Tahiti. We ain’t going to Tahiti in anything smaller
than the QEII, but we gotta learn this
merde
anyhow so we don’t come off as complete idiots when we take our sailing
lessons.”

“Hetta, I’m not taking sailing
lessons. And I don’t want a boat.”

“Did you see the blonde hunk in the
green turtleneck sitting in our row?” I said, directing the conversation toward
more positive ground. “Don’t look now, but he’s coming our way. Dammit, I wish
we weren’t in RJ’s crappy old car.”

“Let RJ out. It’s dark and the guy
could be a masher.”

“Masher? Where do you get words
like that? Hush, here he comes,” I said as I coaxed a reluctant RJ from his
nice warm car. He had a sleepy dog smell that reminded me of freshly baked
bread.
 

“Nice dog,” the hunk said, patting
my vicious guard dog’s head and receiving a grateful lick. He pulled keys from
the pocket of his snug Dockers and opened the Mercedes next to us. “Yellow
Lab?”

“Yeah. His name is RJ. Mine’s
Hetta. This is Jan. How did you like the class?”

“It’s okay, but I already know all
that stuff. I need a certificate of completion to get a discount on my boat
insurance.”

Jan perked visibly. “You have a
boat?”

“Still shopping. You?”

“Oh, we’re still looking, too. But
we hope to find the right vessel soon,” says Jan, the flexible.

“Yeah,” I said, suppressing a
guffaw, “we’re still looking.”

With a gleam of white teeth, the
man quipped, “I’m thinking a nice fifty-foot gaff rigger that’s spent its life
in a little old lady’s garage.”

“How can you get—” I elbowed Jan
before she made her own gaffe.

“Good one.” I tittered like a
teenybopper, trying to think of something clever. From the puzzled look on
Jan’s face, I knew I was on my own. “One with sails?” How clever was that?

Evidently clever enough, for the
hunk laughed. “Good one, yourself. Well, see you next week. When I do get
something, you guys wanna crew for me one day?” As we nodded like those goofy
dogs in the back windows of old ladies’ cars, he drove away, giving us a good
gander at his designer license plate:
Wetdrems
.

We dissolved into giggles.

“Oh, we’re still looking,” I
mimicked. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t. I guess we’d better do
some more boat shopping this weekend so we have a clue,” Jan said, wiping laugh
tears from her cheeks. “I still don’t want to take those damned sailing
lessons, but if I want to be good crew, I guess I’d better.”

“Now see, isn’t this more fun than
sitting around waiting for some a-hole to call? Speaking of which, anything
heard from BDR?”

“Nope. Well once, but I told him to
take a hike. I didn’t even tell him I’d seen him with the fat broad. I said I
wanted someone on my own intellectual level.”

“You did? Fantastic. What’d he
say?”

“He wanted to know if he could
have the Armani jacket.”

“You’re shittin’ me? Please tell me
you’re joking. Even
he
couldn’t be so
shallow. What’d you tell him?”

“That you gave it to a wino,” she
told me with a shrug.

“What! Are you nuts? Richard is,
you know. Jesus, I hope he doesn’t do anything to even the score.”

“He won’t, Hetta. He’s scared of
you. He told me so.”

“He’s scared of me? I like it.
Why?”

“Maybe you don’t want to hear
this.”

“Hey, I’ll consider the source.”

“Well, okay. What he said was,
‘Hetta’s unbalanced and it’s only a matter of time before she goes off the deep
end.’ ”

“He said that, did he? Well good,
I’m glad he thinks so. A fearsome reputation is a good thing to have when it
works to your benefit. Unbalanced, huh? I should have rubbed the inside of that
Armani with poison ivy and let you give it back to him.”

Jan eyed me warily. Okay, maybe I
am slightly demented.

She dropped us off and took the VW
home with her since she was returning the next day to stay with RJ while I went
true
north, to Seattle. See what a
fast study I am?