The Cove (25 page)

“Wow,” Ben said, rubbing a spot in the center of his forehead. “I never …”

“You still take your coffee with milk and three sugars?”

“Uh-huh.”

The flood of sunlight that lit up the kitchen dazzled Ben. Everything looked so homey, so picture-perfect normal, but darkness nibbled at the edge of his mind. A myriad of questions filled his head, but his stomach started to growl, so he pushed everything aside as he stared at the breakfast waiting for him. He smiled at his sister, but his smile turned into a grimace of pain from the mere motion of pulling a chair out and sitting down.

After leaning the frying pan in the dish rack, Louise poured a cup of coffee for herself, added milk and sugar, and sat down across from him. When she stirred it with a spoon that clinked on the side of the cup, the
tink-tinking
sound made him wince again.

“Quite a night you had last night,” she said, eyeing him over the rim of the cup as she took a sip.

Ben grunted but resisted the impulse to nod. The slightest motion would hurt too much. He was angry with himself because he wasn’t able to look her directly in the eyes. He might not remember everything he had said and done last night, but he certainly remembered what he suspected —
and knew
— about her husband. It was only a matter of time before he would have to confront her about it.

“Pete was at The Local when you were there. He said you were pretty wasted when you left.”

“I guess to Christ I was …”

He picked up his fork, filled it with egg, and started eating. The tastes exploded in his mouth — especially the orange juice, which he gulped down.

“He says you left with that Meadows woman.”

“Julia … Yeah.”

“You gonna tell me what happened?” she said.

After he’d swallowed a mouthful, he held up his hand with the bruised knuckles and shook it.

“I’m kinda wondering how I did this.”

“That’s easy. You punched my front door.”

“Not Tom?”

Louise shook her head, her mouth pinched shut. Without makeup, her lips were thin and bloodless. Like him, she looked like there were things she had to say that she would just as soon not say. She made eye contact with him but couldn’t hold it for long. Instead, she shifted her gaze to the window that looked out to sea, her eyes filmy and blank.

“Kinda wish I had,” Ben said, smiling weakly.

“Hit Tom you mean?

“Yeah.”

“This has something to do with that Meadows woman, doesn’t it?” Louise said, blinking back tears.

“Julia … Her name is Julia.”

Ben felt compelled to try to comfort her, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t like the disdain in her voice when she talked about Julia. Instead, he picked up a strip of bacon and bit into it. The crunching sound filled his head like clacking rocks.

In the bright morning light, Louise looked so small, so vulnerable. All his life, he stuck up for his little sister, being a big brother, vetting all of her boyfriends; but for the first time in his life, he realized she had grown up. She looked like their mother, with her soft hazel eyes and careworn face.

And like their mother, Louise was going to have to put up with her husband’s infidelities the same way their mother had put up with Wally’s numerous indiscretions.

It pained him to see this fate for her, and he prayed that she had the brains and fortitude to get out of the marriage now before there was irreparable damage.

After a long silence, she said, “I know Tom’s been screwing her … Julia.” Her voice was low and shaky.

The expression on Ben’s face froze as he tried to hide his reaction. He had to stop himself from banging his fist on the table and shouting at her that he knew Tom had jumped him out behind The Local and slashed his tires to scare him away from Julia. Fighting to suppress his anger, he said, “Yeah. He has.”

“She told you that?”

Ben nodded.

“That lousy son-of-a-bitch,” Louise whispered without turning away from the window and looking at him.

“Lou-Lou Belle. You know me. You know I’d never tell anyone what to do or how to live their life. For God’s sake, my life’s so messed up, who’d take my advice? But I think —”

He stopped when she raised her hand and flicked it at him like she was brushing lint from her shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter. I saw all I needed to see last night,” she said.

Tears leaked from her eyes, streaking her cheeks. Ben’s heart went out to his sister, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to her and give her a reassuring hug and kiss on the cheek. He’d had so much practice stuffing his own emotions deep inside that it felt like they’d never come out. That was one of the things he liked about Julia. She made him believe there might be a possibility he could actually
feel
again.

Was that the fate of all the women in his family?

Were they supposed to suffer their sorrows alone and in silence, and carry on as best they could, living with men who repeatedly deserted them emotionally?

“If I … in any way … had anything to do with —”

“Shut up, will you?”

The strength in Louise’s voice startled him, making him sit back and stare at her. He forgot all about his breakfast and the throbbing pain in his head.

“Why do you think it’s always about you, huh?” Louise said. “Can you answer me that?”

She wiped her face with her fingertips and slowly rotated her head to look at him. Her eyes were glassy, but the look of determination on her face amazed him.

“You’re just like Dad. You think everything revolves around
you
. Why do you think you’re responsible for everything?”

“No way,” Ben said, raising his hands and pulling away from her. “I don’t think it’s always —”

“You don’t know
anything.
” Louise’s face flushed. Rosy spots appeared on her cheeks. “You don’t know diddlysquat about what’s going on between me and Tom. Okay?”

“Uh-huh … Sure … Okay.”

Ben wanted to tell her that, oh, yeah, he
did
know … more than she realized, but he leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the table. He was prepared to let her rage. She obviously had a lot of pent-up emotion she needed to vent.

“Even before you got home from Iraq, I knew he was screwing her, okay? He never came right out and admitted it — even when I confronted him, the chicken shit. But he didn’t have to. A woman knows when her man’s not being faithful. And once you started seeing her, he … he changed even more. That’s when he —”

Her voice choked off, and she raised her hand to her cheek and rubbed it as though soothing a fresh injury. After a long, silent moment, she turned and looked out the window again. Her body was wracked by tiny tremors as she twisted her clasped hands in her lap and took short, noisy sips of air through her mouth. Ben was afraid she was going to hyperventilate.

“I want to know what any of this has to do with what happened last night,” Louise said after a while. “You came over to the house, drunk on your ass and spoiling for a fight with Tom.”

“I did?”

“You did. And you made a complete ass of yourself.”

Ben speared another clump of scrambled egg and was about to put it into his mouth, but his stomach suddenly lurched with a sick, sour flood. He didn’t think he could eat another bite as he weighed whether or not to tell her that Tom had sandbagged him and then vandalized his car. He didn’t want to add to her misery, and he certainly didn’t want to add more confusion to an already messy situation.

“I … I’m not sure if there’s a connection,” he finally said. “I … I got fed up with seeing the way he was treating you, and I wanted to have it out with him.”

Louise sniffed with thin laughter and shook her head.

“Really?” she asked.

Ben looked down at his hands in his lap.

“Really. I haven’t got the faintest clue. I don’t remember a goddamned thing after I left The Local. I don’t even know how I got to your house.”

“Apparently you walked. At least your car’s in the driveway. And what — if anything — did this have to do with your car. You were railing to Tom about your tires.”

Ben shook his head even though the slight motion sent splinters of pain through his neck.

“You’re not the only one, you know,” Louise said.

“What do you mean?”

“You and Tom … You’re not the only ones who have been sniffing around that woman’s door.”

“What are you talking about?”

Louise started to say something but then stopped herself and pursed her lips like she had bitten into something sour.

“It’s none of my business,” she said, turning away from him and staring out the window again.

“Lou-Lou. Come on,” Ben said.

He almost got up from the table and confronted her directly, but he knew he couldn’t force her to talk. Like their mother, when she wanted to be stubborn, she excelled at it.

Still, it pained him to see how hurt she was under all the tough talk. But then she squared her shoulders and turned back to face him squarely.

“By the way. I’ll be wanting my bedroom back. You’ll have move in with Pete.”

“No fucking shit,” Ben said, smiling. “Good for you, Lou-Lou.”

But he couldn’t help shaking his head at the thought of sharing a bedroom with his brother. As if he didn’t need further proof that he was sliding backwards, not going forward.

T
he sun was as hot as a blast furnace on Pete’s back. He had his Red Sox cap on backwards so it shaded his neck as he and his friend Dwight “Horse Lips” Brackett worked their way along the clam-flats. Each of them was wearing thick rubber gloves and carrying clamming forks and two plastic buckets — a small one for bloodworms and a larger one for sandworms.

Digging for bloodworms was back-breaking work, but the prices local fishermen paid for bait — especially tourists who didn’t know better — was one of the few things that kept Pete and several other locals financially solvent these days. Still, it was a hell of a way to earn a couple of hundred bucks, especially when he’d rather be out on the ocean on a hot day like this. But since Ben got home from Iraq, he wanted to be out of the house as much as possible. He had already hauled all of his lines over the last few days, so he and Horse Lips had decided to make some extra cash.

“Watch yourself over there,” Horse Lips called out as Pete wandered over to a wide, flat area. “I ran into some wicked honey pots
t’other
day. Lost one ’a my goddamned boots trying to get out of it.”

Honey pots are sinkholes in the sand that don’t look as dangerous as they are. Inches below what looks like smooth, wet sand flattened by the retreating tide are sinkholes that are a lot like quicksand. If you step into one, you might lose a lot more than a boot. Over the years, up and down the Maine coast, there have been stories about people being sucked in … even drowning, if the honey pot was deep enough.

“Honey pots, my ass,” Pete muttered.

The expression had always carried gross sexual connotations that amused him, but hearing Horse Lips say the words made him think —
again
— about Julia Meadows.

Anger seethed inside him, making him grip the handle of his worm bucket so hard his palm and wrist began to ache.

Who the hell did she think she was? … Why did she have to go and start screwing my brother? … It isn’t fair.

Growing up, Ben had always gotten the newest and best things while he had to settle for hand-me-downs and second best … sometimes third best, if you counted Louise. But when it came to toys and clothes and, later, cars and women … it didn’t matter. Ben was always favored. He got whatever he wanted, and Pete was always left in the dust.

Hell, Horse Lips should be pissed at Ben, too. After all, he had shacked up with his wife Kathy before he married her, and word around town was Ben had fathered her baby when he was home on leave two years ago.

“
Fuckin
’-a-
tweety
!” Horse Lips suddenly shouted.

Pete looked in his direction and saw him scooping up one of the biggest bloodworms he’d ever seen. The dark red worm had to be at least six inches long. Its stubby, centipede-like legs were thrashing wildly. It twisted like an angry rattlesnake in Horse Lips’ gloved hand before he plunked it into his bucket.

Pete turned and walked further away, looking for a good spot to dig, but he wasn’t really paying close attention to where he was going until he felt a sudden sinking sensation. Looking down, he realized that his left foot had sunk into the sand to the ankle. Before he could shift his weight back, his leg was sucked in deeper until it was halfway to his knee. When he pulled back, his boot came free with a loud wet, sucking sound.

“
Tole
yah to be careful,” Horse Lips said. His weathered face looked as wrinkled as an old leather suitcase when he laughed at Pete.

Pete sneered and shook his head, not sure if he was disgusted more with himself for stepping into a honey pot or Horse Lips for laughing at him. He frowned when he looked into his bucket. It was less than half-full. He didn’t have anywhere near as many worms as he hoped to have by this time.