The Cove (19 page)

“Look … Tom. I don’t want any trouble, okay?” She spoke slowly, patiently, like she was explaining a difficult concept to a child. “And I certainly don’t mean to hurt your feelings or … or insult you or anything, but how many times do I have to tell you? It’s over. We’re done.”

For a long time — seconds that stretched into minutes — he stood there … motionless … staring at her. The flickering red and blue lights behind him haloed his body, giving him the strobe-like illusion of moving even when he was standing perfectly still. Julia had no idea what was going through his mind, but she was still afraid that he would suddenly snap and do her harm.

“I wish you’d give me another chance,” he finally said.

“There was no chance to begin with,” she said. “Don’t you get it?”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“You don’t want to say that,” Tom said, his voice pitched low and as hard as nails.

“Yes I do.”

Julia was surprised that she had found the courage to confront him like this — especially alone on a deserted road at night; but after what had happened between her and Ben today, she had to end this …

Now.

“You always bitched about this town … how everyone shut you out, and how much you wanted to leave, right?” Tom said.

“Don’t start in with that, Tom … Please.”

“But I’ve got
our
ticket out of here.”

“How many ways do I have to say it? I am
not
interested.”

She was tempted to throw in his face that she knew he had vandalized Ben’s car in order to get to her, but she decided to hold back. It would only make matters worse.

“What if I told you I had two hundred thousand dollars?”

Julia shook her head sadly, her hair fanning both sides of her face like wind-blown curtains. During the time she and Tom had been together, they had talked about splitting for the Caribbean or Mexico, but that’s all it had ever been. Something to talk about.

Two hundred thousand dollars might go a long way toward her dream of escape, but she knew, now, it had all been a fantasy.

And she certainly never meant to include Tom.

Even if the sex had been good — and it hadn’t been — Tom had been a diversion, a break in the lonely isolation of her life in The Cove. In a matter of months if not weeks, she would have found living with him limited if not boring beyond belief.

Besides, she deserved better, and Ben Brown
was
better.

A line from Shakespeare drifted through her mind:
I have to be cruel to be kind.
She would have said it now, but it probably would have confused Tom.

“I don’t want your money,” she said. “I don’t
need
it. I have to stay here with my father.”

“That’s not what you said before when you —”

“It’s what I’m saying now.” Julia said.

She was clenching her fists so tightly the heels of her hands were going numb. Her pulse whispered in her ears, blocking out any night sounds.

“It’s over, Tom. Get used to it and get on with your life.”

“What if I —”

“Go back to your wife,” Julia said simply.

Tom let out an exasperated gasp as he stood there, trembling. Julia was afraid he would do something desperate. She had no doubt he was capable of violence. A man who would slash someone’s tires out of sheer jealousy was desperate enough to do just about anything.

“I could make a lot of trouble for you, you know?” he finally said.

Julia lowered her gaze and shook her head even though she knew, given half a chance, he not only
could
— he
would
make good on his threat.

“You know what?” she said, forcing strength into her voice she didn’t really feel. “You’ll do whatever you gotta do. But I’m telling you right here and now — if you make trouble for me, I sure as hell will make trouble for you.”

She was amazed by her words and had no idea where they came from.

“So now you’re threatening me?” Tom snorted derisively and shook his head. He placed his hands on his hips, his shape swelling in the night.

“No,” Julia said mildly. “
You’re
threatening
me
, and I won’t stand for it.”

Tom sniffed and then, twisting to his right, made a raw grumbling sound deep in his throat before spitting into the darkness. “How could you —?” he said, but then he stopped.

That was all Julia needed.

She didn’t have to tell him she would reveal their affair to his wife and his boss and the whole town.

He knew, and she knew.

Sighing and forcing her shoulders to relax, Julia walked around the cruiser and kept going down the road. The flashing emergency lights lit up the roadside with hallucinatory stabs of brightness that threatened to throw her off balance, but she kept going … hoping … praying this was the end of it.

You did it,
she told herself, fighting down a heady rush of excitement so strong she was afraid she was about to pass out.
What a pathetic jerk he is … I can’t believe I slept with him!

The distance between her and the cruiser gradually lengthened. The lights were still shining on her back, prickling her skin like a tanning lamp, but the heat gradually lessened with each step she took. Soon, the cool night air embraced her like she had been plunged into cold spring water. Goose bumps spread across her arms and legs.

As she walked, she strained to hear what Tom was doing behind her, but the night muffled everything around her. The air was dense, as if she were embedded in damp cotton. She hadn’t heard him get back into his cruiser, and there was no indication that he was coming after her on foot.

Was he standing there, trying to accept his loss … or was he debating what to do to her?

As desperate as he was, Julia didn’t think he was so far gone he would actually attack her. He was clearly capable of violence, but she was fairly certain he would have the sense not to turn it on her.

When she was more than a hundred yards away from the cruiser, the flashers suddenly winked off. Then the headlights swung around in a wide arc away from her, throwing crazy sweeping shadows across the road and then plunging everything into darkness so thick it vibrated with rippling afterimages.

Julia fought back the urge to turn and watch Tom drive away, but she knew if he saw her do that, he might take it as a faint sign of encouragement, and she didn’t want that.

She had to keep on walking and not look back.

One thing made her almost giddy with joy, and that was knowing the path was now wide open for her to be with Ben Brown.

And as far as she was concerned, that was all she needed.

Killer Fog

C
apt’n
Wally was ripe, royally pissed.

Nobody …
nobody
told him what to do.

But he was smart enough to know when someone had him by the short ’n
curlies
and was more than capable of twisting his ball right the fuck off if they wanted to.

Mere minutes ago, Richie Sullivan had left the wharf, driving away in his fancy new yellow Lexus — a color Wally thought of as “baby shit gold.” Leaning against one of the wharf pilings, his body tight with rage, Wally watched the dust settle at his feet.

Throughout their talk, Richie had never lost his temper, never once raised his voice. He didn’t have to, but he made it perfectly clear how pissed he was at Wally for not making the pickup the other night. He also wanted reassurance from Wally that he would get out to The Nephews today to meet up with the trawler before it headed back to Gloucester.

While onboard, inspecting the boat he’d financed for Wally, Richie, the damned fool, had even whistled some stupid tune.

Didn’t he know how unlucky it was to whistle on a boat before it headed out?

Hadn’t he ever heard of “whistling down the wind?”

Jesus, Wally didn’t need that!

It was a bad enough morning as it was. Fog had rolled in overnight and — so far, anyway — it didn’t look like it was going to lift any time soon. It was going to be a bitch of a day, no matter how he sliced it, and he sure as hell could use some help. He had no idea where Pete was — probably sucking down beer at The Local. As for his deadbeat oldest son … Ben had let him down yesterday by not showing up like Pete said he would to help him haul. If only he could count on either one of his sons, he wouldn’t have so goddamned many traps to pull today; but as far as he could see, they were both as useless.

Even worse, he need to check his northerly lines today and hadn’t planned on heading south toward The Nephews, where the trawler would be waiting. One top of that, it was low tide, and if this
Christless
fog didn’t lift, he’d run the risk of running aground, fancy electronics be damned.

“Goddamned
son
-of-a-
fuckin
’-
bitch!
”

He knew he wasn’t cursing Richie or Pete or Ben so much as he was cursing himself for getting involved with Richie in the first place. He should never have gotten into a position where Richie had the upper hand and could bust his balls like this.

He should have known better.

He should have seen it … hell, he
had
seen it coming, but what choice did he have?

The bank in town — the place where he’d done business his entire adult life with people whose grandparents had grown up with his grandparents — had turned down his loan request, and all because he lost the
Sheila B.
last spring.

What kind of bullshit was that?

Did losing a boat mark him forever as a Jonah … someone who would lose every boat he captained?

Of course, the bankers told him there wasn’t anything they could do. Loans went to the head office in Boston. Wally remembered a time, before banks were bought and sold like used cars, when a man’s word was the only bond he needed. Losing a boat could happen to the best captain.

Not anymore.

Not when banks in Canada and freaking Bahrain owned the “local” banks.

So really, he’d had no choice but to ask Richie for a loan … even though Richie didn’t have the sense not to whistle on board. He’d probably see nothing wrong with putting a hatch cover upside down on the deck or carrying a black bag onboard, either.

“And now he’s cracking my balls like
fuckin
’ walnuts,” he muttered as he walked down the ramp to the dock and got on board. He was so tense something in his shoulder popped when he hefted his bait barrel and twisted around to set it in the boat. He grunted and rotated his arm as he walked to the wheelhouse.

“Goddamned getting’ old sucks, too,” he muttered and then spat overboard.

The harbor was curiously silent, the fog muffling all sounds as he got ready to cast off. It’d be nice to have a dependable
sternman
, he thought, but that wasn’t going to happen. He’d have to make do on his own.

When he started up the engine, the throaty rumble echoed dully from the granite walls of the harbor. A fish or maybe a seal splashed in the water close beside his boat, but all Wally saw were the ripples that spread out in dark, concentric rings across the smooth water.

He cast off and headed out of the harbor, relying much more on sight and sound than he did on his instruments. He never placed much trust in electronics, and these new ones were useless, as far as he was concerned. He was grimacing as he made his way between some moored boats, and he didn’t start to feel relieved until he rounded the headlands and headed out to sea, toward The Nephews.

T
hat morning, Ben woke up with a hangover that pounded inside his head like a drop forge.

After Julia left the beach parking lot, he’d had to wait over an hour for Skip to show up with the tow truck. Skip swapped the remaining good front tire with the flattened one in the back so he could tow it back to the garage. Once they got there, Ben had to wait another hour for Skip to replace both tires … to the tune of two hundred and fifty dollars. Then he’d gone straight to The Local for a few cold ones. From there, he had called Julia — a few times, as he remembered — and asked her to come down and join him. She had insisted that she couldn’t get away. Her father hadn’t had a very good day, and she was concerned it was because she hadn’t been around as much as she used to be because she was with Ben. She felt obligated to stay with him for the night, and she promised to see Ben the next day for lunch.

The night at The Local had gone on longer and stronger than he’d anticipated. Scores of old friends showed up and kept buying him round after round until he was plastered. He had a vague memory of calling Julia one last time on his cell when he was taking the shortcut home, but he couldn’t remember what either of them had said … maybe something about lunch today.

Now it felt like someone had wound a metal band around his head above his eyes and was twisting it slowly tighter and tighter until his eyes bulged from their sockets.

“Killer fog …” he muttered, a phrase he and his friends had used in high school to describe how drunk they got whenever they stole liquor from their parents or, in a few instances, got lucky enough to convince someone of legal age to buy them a six-pack or bottle of wine from Art’s corner store.

He sighed as he sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the bedroom window. Even filtered through the dense fog that had settled over The Cove, the gray morning light stung his eyes. The sun looked like an incandescent bulb behind gauze as it struggled to burn off the fog.

He winced with every step as he walked down the hallway to the bathroom and relieved himself. Even the slightest motions made his bones and muscles ache. Pain rippled like shifting sheets of dry lightning behind his eyes.

“I gotta remember not to
do
that again,” he whispered to himself as he ransacked the medicine cabinet for aspirin or Tylenol. He found some Advil, shook three tablets into his hand, and gulped them down with several mouthfuls of water.

At least there hadn’t been any dreams last night.

His first and clearest thought was to give Julia a call and find out if the lunch plans were real or a drunken fantasy. He thought they might have plans to do lunch but wasn’t sure. Now he was hoping she couldn’t shake loose until later so his hangover would have time to lessen if not disappear.

What he needed was breakfast and maybe a little exercise. A jog around the block might help … if he could stand the pounding of his feet on the pavement. Or maybe the weights he’d used in high school were still down in the cellar. Now that he was out of the Army, the last thing he needed was to get soft.

He flushed the toilet, staring at the water as it swirled in the bowl. Then he went to the sink and splashed some cold water on his face. The water didn’t penetrate. His eyes were crusty, and his skin felt like it was wrapped too tightly around his skull. When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, leaning forward to study his bloodshot eyes and pale face, he was shocked to see what a wreck he looked, but he smiled and told himself it was almost worth it. Last night at The Local had been a good time, at least the parts he could remember.

After a breakfast of orange juice, toast with peanut butter, and a bowl of stale Cheerios — Pete always left the bag open inside the box — he went back upstairs and took a long, hot shower. That brought him a few notches closer to human. As he got dressed, he started feeling guilty, thinking about how much Julia did for her father while
Capt’n
Wally pretended his wife didn’t exist. In a real sense, she didn’t exist. She had already checked out. He thought maybe another visit to the rest home might be in order if only to assuage his guilt.

He was resigned that he would never accept or get over what had happened … what was happening to his mother. Resentment and guilt stewed inside him with equal measures of anger. Facing rather than avoiding her situation might be exactly what he had to do … in a lot of areas of his life.

W
hen Ben got to “Grave’s Edge,” he smiled at the man at the front desk — a balding middle-aged guy he didn’t recognize — and, without waiting to say what he was doing there, walked down the hall to his mother’s room. He hesitated outside the door for a moment, his gaze fastened on the old snapshot of his mother. He couldn’t get over how young and full of life she looked, and it was hard to accept that, of all the possible outcomes to her life, this was what fate had handed her.

Did she deserve it?

Did any of us deserve what happened to us?

With the suddenness of a rifle flash, memories of Iraqi children and civilians — lifeless rag-heaps lying by the roadside — passed before his eyes. He blinked hard until they went away, and he was left staring at his clenched fist as he rapped on the door.

Then he waited.

When he got no response, he turned the doorknob, feeling its slickness in his moist hand, and wedged the door open. It took only a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light in the room. It was obvious his mother wasn’t there.

Wondering what to do next, he closed the door and was turning around when he sensed motion behind him. He turned and saw Mrs. Appleby, striding toward him. He smiled and nodded a greeting.

“Benny,” Mrs. Appleby said with a tight smile plastered on her face.

“Mrs. A,” Ben said, trying to hide his agitation. He hooked his thumb toward the door like he was hitching a ride and said, “You know where my mom is?”

Mrs. Appleby looked up and down the hallway and then said, “She’s around. She’s quite the wanderer.”

This was the second time Mrs. Appleby had characterized his mother like that, and he wondered if it might be a cause for concern.

“Let’s try the TV room,” she offered.

Together they started back up the hallway toward the front desk. The same elderly people — or perhaps different ones — lingered in the lobby by the front door. Some sat in wheelchairs while others leaned on walkers or sat on the Spartan furniture. Several had expressions that flashed with the desperate hope that
someone
— a loved one — was coming to pick them up and take them away from this place. The lingering smell of feces and disinfectant was enough to dishearten anyone.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this or not,” Agnes Appleby whispered to Ben, leaning close to him as they walked.

Ben tensed, expecting some bad news about his mother, but he wondered why Mrs. Appleby was being so circumspect. If his mother had died or had a stroke or something, she wouldn’t be able to hide it. Maybe there was a problem with one of the staff or one of the doctors on call mistreating her.

Before Ben could say a word, she hooked him by the arm and led him away from the front desk to a corner of the lobby furthest away from any of the residents.

“What is it?” Ben asked.

Mrs. Appleby sucked her lips in, making them thin and pale as she shifted her eyes from side to side. She looked like a paranoid person about to reveal some secret about alien abductions or a plot to assassinate the President.

“It’s … well, I know it’s really none of my business, but sometimes … you know how sometimes you get a bad feeling about something, and you don’t want to talk about it, but you’re also afraid if you don’t say something, and then something bad happens, it will … it’s something you wouldn’t be able to live with?”

“I’m not quite following you here,” Ben said. “Does this have anything to do with my mother?”

Mrs. Appleby narrowed her eyes, her lips pursed as if she’d bitten into a lemon.

“No … No … Not at all.”

“What is it, then?”

Mrs. Appleby took a shallow sip of breath, held it for a moment. When she let it out, her nostrils whistled faintly.