Storm Tide (39 page)

The second week in August, David showed up at her office just as she was about to leave. He stood close to her, his eyes insisting she meet his gaze. She remembered that intensity of desire, from before Crystal. Searching for a way to keep her distance from him, she brought up the dike letters.

“When I confronted her, she said she felt sorry for the animals and birds, and she thought that area where the houses were going up was just beautiful and perfect for families. That’s a quote.”

“Did you think to point out to her that it is contradictory to save the land for herons and foxes, then destroy it by building houses there?”

He winced. “I asked her as long as she’s living in my house please to show me any more letters she writes to the local papers.”

“She’s working for Mr. Politics and she’s living with a selectman …. I hope this doesn’t mean you’ve changed your stand on the dike.”

“The more I try to understand the dike issue, the more complex it gets. Now the state’s involved too.”

“David …” She risked touching his cheek for a moment. “Don’t turn against the people who worked so hard to elect you. Don’t turn this town back to business as usual.”

“You think Crystal can make me do that?”

“We haven’t come to the end of what she can make you do, David Greene.” She picked up her purse and her briefcase.

“Are you leaving? I thought we might have tonight.”

“David, you’re living with Crystal.”

“I am at the moment. I’m working on that.”

“I’m not someone you can have on the side. I didn’t do that to you. I tried to be clear that this was a major commitment for me—not some fling. Would Crystal approve of your spending time with me?”

“She hates it. But she knows I won’t give you up.”

“David, you already have.” She headed for the door and Gordon. If she drove quickly, she could just make it across the bridge before the 6:45
P
.
M
. high tide covered it. When she pulled into the street, she could see him in the rearview mirror standing in the parking lot, handsome and forlorn. Heat touched the back of her eyes as if she would cry, but she had cried too much this summer. She squinted hard and regained control. As she crossed the rickety bridge, she felt safe. This island was where she belonged, with her only love, her husband.

D
AVID

    Letters from Florida addressed in Vicki’s hand had a way of turning my stomach inside out. I usually tore them open immediately, right there in the post office, to get the bad news over with. But this one was from Terry.

Dear Dad,

Mom said to write you to tell you I’m a pitcher now. Not like you were but just in softball. I pitched for the color war in my camp (we were the Blue team) and I won the game. I miss you. I can’t wait til November when you come to visit. I still have the books you bought me at Epcot last time. My cownslor’s name is Ted and he says if my real father was a baseball pitcher then I have a strong arm in my jeans to be one too. Granpa Wynn died of a heart attack. We were all crying and stuff. Mom had to sell Valiant Prince. She says maybe I can visit with you if you want but school is starting soon and she says your probably busy but I miss you. If you want to write me back we’re moving to an apartment. Mom says she doesn’t know the address yet. The baby and Suzi cry a lot but mom says the new apartment will have a pool. Please write me back as soon as you can. I miss you and want you to teach me to be a pitcher like you.

Your son,

Terry

I didn’t go back to the nursery from the post office. I went straight to my house. Crystal was working and Laramie was at the summer rec program until three. Vicki should have been at work, but I don’t why, I had a feeling. I dialed her home number. “It’s David,” I said when I heard her voice, bracing myself as always for an unpleasant response.

“Oh,” she said, more surprised than annoyed. “Hi. You got Terry’s letter. That was fast.”

“He said your father … Wynn … I’m sorry, Vic.”

“Well, it was his second heart attack. Then he had a third one in the hospital.”

“I didn’t know.”

Silence. How would I?

“Anyway, Terry sounds like he got through it okay.”

“Oh, he’s great. He told you about his baseball?”

“Is something wrong, Vicki? I don’t want to pry into your life or anything.” The truth is, I never had. The less I asked, the less I got hurt. As the conversation went on, however, Vicki’s voice seemed to soften and almost die away. “The letter said you were moving?”

“Well, there’s legal stuff. Some bullshit lawsuit. They were hounding Daddy. Anyway, yeah. We’re moving. Me and the kids. Mom had to sell the house. She’s moving in with my brother, Junior.”

I don’t know why it was so hard to ask. I thought I’d gotten over Vicki a long time ago. But pain sticks, I guess, like the question itself in my throat. “And your husband, Cesar. How’s he taking all this?”

“Cesar and I split up in May.” She sounded annoyed, as if I was indeed interrogating her. “He moved up to Jacksonville.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Right.”

“Listen. Terry said in the letter he might want to visit. That would be great with me. I’ll pay the airfare. It wouldn’t cost you a thing.”

“Not right now. I think the little ones need him around. He’s a really good big brother.”

“I know he is,” I said, but the truth is, I had no idea.

“I think we should make the move,” Vicki said. “Get settled. Then we’ll see.”

“Is he there?”

“He’s at camp. They’re doing this overnight thing in the Everglades. Him and his cousin Justin are in the same group.”

“I bet he loves it.”

“I’ll tell him you called, David. All right? He’ll be excited.”

“He can call me anytime.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Collect!” I said, but Vicki had already hung up.

I didn’t go back to work right away. I did something I hadn’t done in years: nothing. I simply sat there on the couch. No TV, no radio, no one arguing, no Laramie sprawled in the living room or Crystal rubbing my back. The quiet seemed to wrap around me like a blanket. I read the letter over and then over again. I even laughed: a strong arm in my jeans. I felt so full of hope I actually knocked wood the way my mother did—three knuckles against the coffee table to ward off the evil eye. Judith had said she could help me bring him home. Part-time, vacations, summers, it didn’t matter, it was a start. For years Wynn had built a wall around my son and there was no way through. I’d always hoped Terry would reach out to me; and now he had. I wouldn’t hound Vicki, but I wanted some real time with my son, finally. But not here, not in this house. I thought I understood what kept me with Crystal: pity, guilt
about leaving Laramie, the complete submission of a woman and her body. But I couldn’t subject my son to my mistakes, to a woman who used pleasure and pain as hard currency. Not if I ever hoped to have my son with me. If I was going to make a move, it had to be now.

“Please, Crystal, put your clothes on. We have to get Laramie up. You have to get to work.”

“What do you care? You’re leaving. You don’t love me anymore. You think I’m fat, is that it? I disgust you? That’s why you don’t want to make love to me?”

“That’s not true, any of it.” It was impossible for me to speak my mind. My eyes kept drifting over her breasts, the little gold rings in her nipples, even her belly, which she hated, the delicate hill of soft flesh. “Just please get dressed.”

“Why should I? It’s my bedroom. Oh. Sorry.
Your
bedroom. Which I took away.”

“No, it’s still your bedroom. Our bedroom. I’m only moving over to my mother’s for a few nights a week. I’m trying to keep her off her ankle. You know what the doctor said. Until it heals.”

“She has help.”

“Mrs. Falco is only part-time. She doesn’t get there until after nine. My mother wakes up early. Crystal, this is no big deal.”

“No big deal? That you don’t like to make love to me anymore?”

“I love to make love with you. We made love last night.”

“With a condom, David. You could hardly feel me. We have to stop everything to put it on. You think I’m trying to trick you? You think I want a baby with a man who doesn’t want it—or me?”

We’d fallen asleep last night after the same argument. This morning I’d awakened at five
A
.
M
. in the midst of an erotic dream that turned out to be a very real Crystal between my legs, sucking me. She sensed I was about to come and began to mount me, when I rose and got out of bed. I did not lie. “I want you so much.” I did. Even now.

“Then why are you packing? Why are you leaving our home?”

“We talked about this. It’s not right the way it is. You work for Johnny Lynch. You write letters to the newspapers for him—”

“I’m too stupid to have my own opinions, so I do it just for him? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying I’m an elected official. I’m saying you are economically dependent on a man who stands to gain by my vote. I need a place for my notes, a private place to do my work.”

“I’ve never looked at your stupid notes.”

“What was your little Donkey Sparks speech about last night?”

Crystal covered her face, the way she did when buying time to think. When she dropped her hands, her eyes looked bloodshot and sore. “I said he had his faults, but was a good manager. That he could handle a rough bunch of guys because he’d earned their respect.”

“Now where would you hear that?”

“I work in an office. People talk. Don’t you come home and tell me what kind of trees you planted? Sorry, didn’t you used to come home and tell me things? You don’t anymore. You hardly talk.” Crystal sighed, crossed the room and scooped a tee-shirt off the floor. Even as she stretched it over her head and shoulders, I glanced at the perfect shaven lips between her thighs.

“Crystal, I don’t think you do it purposely, but Johnny’s trying to get to me through you.”

“I know that, David. I’m not stupid. But we can use him. Don’t you see? Why can’t you give me credit for anything?” Her voice broke. Tears collected in the corners of her eyes. “You’re a good man. The best this town has ever had. You won’t let yourself be fooled. So what if he offers us things?”

“Damn it, three-quarters of an acre is a huge bribe. He wants me to have a financial stake in an issue I’ll have to vote on. Don’t you see what he’s doing?”

“You said you weren’t sure about voting to open the dike. You said you had a lot of questions.”

“Is that what you told Johnny?”

“This is really because of Judith, isn’t it? She’s the reason why you’re leaving me. She tells you not to trust me. Do you honestly think I’m spying on you for Mr. Lynch?”

“I’m not leaving you,” I said, even as I threw clothing and books into a cardboard box. “I’m setting up a space for myself with a desk and a mattress …. In case I want to work late. Or if my mother needs me. I’m not leaving you.”

“You’re not?” Crystal said, pulling the hem of her tee-shirt down to cover herself. “Then tell him.”

Laramie stood in the doorway. When I lifted him in my arms and touched his cheek to mine, it was utterly cold.

J
OHNNY

    Johnny laid his hand on Donkey’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. The kid isn’t going to vote against you out of spite, just because you once had an argument. I’ll call out the troops for you. Never doubt it.”

Donkey still looked worried, his long face drooping. “I’ve done a good job, for you and the town, Johnny. I’m not ready to be hung out and dried. Jeez, who’d have expected the little kike to get in. I never did.”

“Sit down, Donkey. Have a touch of scotch.” He poured them each a shot and sank back in his BarcaLounger. “People like ex-sports heroes. They’re heroes, one, and two, they’ve come down in the world. Makes people feel good. But you have friends here. And so do I.” Johnny thought that Donkey always looked as if he had stayed in the sun too long: his face was permanently pink and his eyes popped. Donkey’s father had suffered from high blood pressure, and so did Donkey. The whole Sparks family had it. Donkey’s father had died of a sudden heart attack at fifty-two, dropping dead right in the middle of Main Street chasing a tourist who had walked out of his shop without paying. Donkey was forty-nine. “Don’t get yourself hot under the collar. You’ll keep your job.”