The Whiskey Sea (20 page)

His tone was devoid of emotion when he said, “Don’t flatter yourself, Frieda.”

It was like a blow to the chest.

He gave her a look as dark as coal, then stood up and went inside.

Don’t flatter yourself, Frieda.
She sat without moving as darkness came out of the earth and the lights across the water began to wink awake. She slowly drew her arms around her and hugged herself tightly. She’d never been one to flatter herself, but Charles had been doing plenty of that. What did he want from her, anyway? She could go in after him and demand to know the meaning of his slight. She should have at least told him how his comment hurt. The old Frieda wouldn’t have hesitated, but she had to be careful with Charles now. She shuddered against the incoming night breezes. She didn’t know what was in Charles’s heart; she didn’t understand him, and maybe she never would.

The telephone rang and she heard Charles answer. Of course she had known there was a telephone in the house, but she hadn’t heard it ring before. Though curious as to who was calling, she stayed out on the veranda. She wouldn’t eavesdrop. For now she had to go on playing the part of someone whose world had not been shaken to its core. Charles hated any pressure; that much she knew, and she had to be sure not to apply any more weight to what he saw as his burdens.

When he came back outside, any ill feelings toward her seemed to have been swept away by other concerns.

“Dear old Dad,” he said as a way of explanation.

“Oh? What did he want?”

“To talk some sense into me.”

“About what?” She was pulling teeth.

“You don’t want to hear about it.”

“Yes, I do. I want to know everything about you.”

He shot a guarded look her way. “I thought we had an agreement. No talk of the future.”

“I’m not talking about the future. I’m talking about the here and now.” Hicks’s words were coming out of her mouth.

He settled back into the chair with his scotch and lit a cigarette. “It’s not important.”

The pale light and smoke masked his features, veiling the face that she thought she had been learning to read so well. But tonight she found him indecipherable, and a sense of retreat came up in the air.

Maybe that was the first night she felt Charles slipping away. Or maybe it had started earlier, on her first night here at the house. Or maybe he had never been anywhere near her grasp from the very beginning. So it was no surprise that during the night, in her dream she tried to cup water in her hands, but as hard as she attempted to contain it, the liquid slowly but surely fell through her fingers.

She awakened before dawn the next morning. Charles was still sleeping, oblivious to the anguish he had caused, and she slipped into her clothes and let herself out of the house without a sound. She didn’t want to see him in the harsh morning sunlight. Did she want to see him at all?
Don’t flatter yourself, Frieda.
She walked back to Silver’s house, her body as flimsy and her bones as fragile as a fallen bird’s, and she wondered how long the sheets beside Charles would stay warm.

Why did the tides always turn?

When she arrived home, the sun was up, and slanted beams of light made their way inside the house, illuminating floating dust particles in the air. Polly quickly left, although Silver hadn’t been fed or readied for the day. Frieda did the morning chores, dressed Silver, and fed him eggs she scrambled soft in the frying pan. He was weaker today, or had he been growing weaker each and every day, only she hadn’t noticed it? She had been too consumed with her own life to recognize the facts. Silver, too, was slipping away from her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

August came to the shore with a heat wave, dazzling white sunlight, and cloudless skies, along with hordes of tourists escaping the city. Frieda hadn’t stepped but a few feet away from the house, and that was only to take a short walk and stretch her legs while Silver was sleeping. She’d sent word to Dutch that she had to stay with Silver and for the time being couldn’t work on the boat or go on runs. Each day she saw more weakness in Silver’s body and a duller light in his eyes. He barely ate, and even getting water in him had become a chore. She’d called the doctor, who, after examining Silver, pulled Frieda aside and told her to “prepare for the worst.”

She had written to Bea twice, informing her of Silver’s decline and asking her to come visit before it was too late, but so far she hadn’t received a letter in return. If Bea had had a phone, Frieda would’ve been calling her sister daily. She moved through the days alternating between a sense of panic and a strange sense of calm. Panic when she wondered what Bea was doing to keep herself so busy in the city; calm when she sat with Silver and held his good hand and let the happy memories he had provided for her sink into her soul. Hicks visited, sat with Silver, and told him fishing stories. Seeing those two men together brought on such choking emotion, Frieda thought she might have to step outside to breathe. Both men had wanted only the best for her. She almost suggested that Hicks go to the city to get Bea, but in the end she couldn’t ask for any more from him.

A full week and two days had passed since the morning she’d let herself out of Charles’s summer house without a word. Of course her mind drifted to him, especially as she sat during the quiet hours between household chores and looking after Silver. Each night, when the sun finally sank behind the hills, it struck her particularly hard that he hadn’t sought her out. She’d seen with the binoculars that he was still going out on runs with Dutch and Rudy, along with another person, whom she assumed was the mechanic Dutch had hired in her absence. So Charles was around; he simply hadn’t come to her. At night, if not overcome with worry about Silver, Charles’s treatment of her—his words and his distance the last time she’d seen him—ran through her thoughts like a swift and dark current.

When Silver slept, she stepped out on the porch and turned toward the bay. The view was the same—the Hook, the lighthouse, ferries crossing, gulls flying—but she had changed. She had lost herself somehow with Charles. His happiness had become more important than hers. His moods had to be danced around. His vagueness had to be tolerated. But she had let him get away with it. Silver had allowed her to grow up independent and strong. He would hate to know how she had subjugated herself.

She had just begun to feel a slow return to something resembling normalcy when she looked up one day from the porch and saw him walking down her street. The sight of him brought with it an unbearable aching hope; she hadn’t begun to heal after all. She had to grab hold of a chair and sink down into it as Charles approached. She curled herself into Silver’s favorite spot. This morning Silver had been too weak to get up; his eyes had pleaded with her to let him be, in the bed.

Charles was soon standing before her, and still she couldn’t make herself meet his gaze. Instead, she studied his fine leather loafers, now water ruined and salt encrusted from spending his summer down here.

He pulled in a couple of breaths and let them out with a heavy sigh. “I heard about Silver,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry.”

He came up the porch steps and took a seat beside her. “I didn’t know whether to leave you alone or come keep you company.”

She looked away.

“Did I do the right thing by coming here?”

Finally she made herself turn his way and look at him, really look at him. His eyes were misty and pleading. This was the side of Charles that weakened her, body and spirit. He was more beautiful, inside and out, when he allowed himself to be vulnerable. She wanted to touch his cheek, where she saw the very slightest quivering. She wanted to claim the pain she saw in his eyes and then do everything in her power to wash it away. She wanted to rush into his arms and simply hold still in that wonderful space. When it was wonderful . . .

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Did you?”

“I hope so,” he said, and squinted into the sunlight. “Look, I know I hurt you. I suffer from foul moods; it’s been a lifelong challenge at times. I didn’t want to show that ugly side of me, and so I did my best to conceal it from you. But it was never a realistic ploy; you were bound to see me for what I am.”

The hope in her chest bloomed bigger. “I do see you for what you are, and I lo—” She stopped herself. “I care for you. I told you once I wanted to know everything about you, and I meant it.”

“I know,” he finally said, holding his hands between his knees and studying them with seeming intensity. Then he turned to her, and the sunlight brightened him and her world. Oh, to be the subject of those marvelous adoring eyes again. Was this the way it was going to be? Their relationship like a bellows: times of closeness alternating with times of distance?

“I never expected to find such a jewel as you in a place like this. I never expected to find such a jewel anywhere. Perhaps I don’t know what to do with the discovery. Perhaps I don’t know what to do with you.”

She pulled in a stunned breath. “I want to help you figure it out.”

“You push, Frieda. You expect so much.”

“I won’t—I’ll try not to.”

He set that lovely gaze on her, and he smiled wryly. She extended a hand and he grasped it.

“I’m sorry.”

Nodding, she was about to say she was sorry, too, when he straightened up, as if gathering strength and digging himself up out of some deeper place.

His voice rose in a small show of determination. “But this is not a time to be thinking and talking about someone as worthless as me. You have your father to think about now.”

“You’re not worthless.”

“Let’s not go on about that—”

“You’re not worthless,” she said again. “How could you say that?”

He passed a hand through the air. “Enough about me. You have no idea how silly my little concerns feel to me at this moment. I want to help you. What can I do?”

She fought off tears and instead let a smile open her face. “You’re already doing it.”

From then on, whenever Dutch wasn’t making a night run Charles came over and brought food, spirits, and cigarettes and seemed perfectly content to let the hours slip away in Frieda’s company, and occasionally Silver’s, as the sun went down. He told her that Dutch’s interim engineer wasn’t pulling his weight on the boat, and Dutch was all too eager for Frieda to return to the business. But he also told her that everyone understood and reassured her that she was doing the right thing to stay at home for now.

Silver was slipping away slowly but steadily, like seawater sinks into the sand. Every day he appeared more gaunt and pale, and bones were pushing out the fragile skin in his face. Several times a day he fell into a coughing spell that exhausted him so much that he had to sleep for a few hours afterward. He had no appetite and had lost interest in sitting on the porch, only doing so when Frieda and Charles insisted that he needed to get fresher, more cooling air. Surprisingly, Charles didn’t shy away from illness and what Frieda had been told was impending death. If anything, he seemed at his best, and Frieda wondered if perhaps medicine was his true calling rather than law. But she saved that suggestion for later, better times. The important thing now was that he wasn’t abandoning her. When she thought of Bea, a powerful sense of disbelief dawned on her, and she didn’t know how she would’ve made it through without Charles.

On a dark night, when Charles was away on a run, Frieda saw a marked turn for the worse in Silver and sent for the doctor. Silver’s breaths were coming in gasps, then pausing for moments before resuming, and she considered having him taken to the hospital. She didn’t know if she could do that, however, because she knew that Silver preferred to spend what were probably his last moments of life in his own home and not in a hospital bed.

He looked at the ceiling and moved his lips on the good side of his face, as if trying to speak. Yet he wasn’t trying to speak to Frieda. Instead, he was either trying to talk to himself or to some spirit that had appeared to him as he approached the end. Then he stopped trying to form words and lay still without moving. The peace in his eyes told Frieda he was not in unbearable pain, maybe no pain at all. The fingers fluttered on his good hand, and she took the hand in hers.

Frieda stared at the floor and then back at his face. He closed his eyes and appeared to sleep peacefully for a few moments. Then his eyes flew open and sought out Frieda. He took his hand from hers, reached up, and rubbed his chin, the same mannerism Frieda had seen thousands of times, the gesture he made when he was about to say something funny or clever or share a memory. It was a movement that indicated pleasure and anticipation, and his eyes again found the ceiling or perhaps what he believed or hoped might be beyond it. He laid his arm at his side, and the sheets over his chest stopped moving. Frieda went to take his good hand again and found it still warm but without a reciprocating squeeze. She stayed there in the stillness, listening to the sounds of boats coming and going, a ship’s horn, some distant fleeting music from a resort, then a hush as the tide flowed out to sea.

She thought of better days, of Silver in his boat, squinting in the sunlight, showing her how to bait a hook, teaching her how to stand in the boat without falling when swells rolled under them, pointing out constellations at night, telling her and Bea that all over the world people were gazing at the same stars, joining everyone together in this strange state he called humanity.

Frieda had no idea who her blood father was, and yet this man had given her a loving home. She pressed her lips to his hand, already blanching of color, and laid it back beside him on the bed. Moments later she walked from the house to where she would stay until the doctor arrived: under the stars in the middle of the street.

Hicks took the ferry to the city to fetch Bea while Frieda made funeral arrangements. Silver wouldn’t have liked what he called a “fuss” made over him, and he wasn’t a religious, churchgoing man, so she decided to bury him without a lot of ceremony. At least she didn’t have to worry over the cost of things, and she purchased the nicest understated casket at the local funeral home, then let the funeral director put Silver in a room for viewing for just one day.

In a rare moment of clarity, she decided to bury Silver next to her mother. He’d never purchased a plot, and now she was left to make decisions. Her mother and father, never lovers, laid to rest side by side . . . It gave her a small comfort.

After the simple burial, she chose to hold a small service outside the house that Silver had loved, under the scorching sun in full view of the sea. Silver didn’t like to let anything wait that could be done soon, so she planned the funeral for the day after the burial. Hicks had found a kindly Methodist minister to conduct a simple ceremony in the front yard of the house, using the front porch that Silver had so loved as a pulpit.

The day was still, bright, and hot. An eerie silence spilled over everything; not even sounds from the beaches drifted near. Silver would have liked the sounds of beachgoers’ merrymaking, but Frieda didn’t know if she’d be able to take it.

People began gathering, and there was still no sign of Bea. Finally, just moments before the minister was to begin, Hicks drove up in his old Runabout, with Bea and another man beside her. All three slipped silently out of the car and went to the back of the gathering. Hicks wore what Frieda knew to be his only suit. Bea was dressed in a new black, sleeveless frock, a straw hat adorned with a black ribbon sitting smartly on her head, as calm, poised, and pretty as a photograph. The other man held close to Bea, his hand at her back, indicating that they were together, and Bea made no move to join Frieda at the front of the crowd. Frieda took in the man in one long glance. He looked to be nearing thirty and wore shiny wire-framed glasses and a waxed moustache that curled up on both sides. Slight in build and dressed in a brown suit, he looked like a teacher—or a snake charmer masquerading as a teacher.

Frieda turned toward the minister and did not look back throughout the ceremony. Hicks stayed with Bea and the unknown man, while Charles stood next to Frieda, keeping a respectful distance from her and listening to the minister. He had his feet planted, holding so still that Frieda once glanced his way to see how he was handling all this. She had no idea what experiences he’d had with death before.

Frieda was gratified by all the people who’d come to pay their respects to Silver, including almost all the fishermen he’d once worked alongside, Dutch and Rudy, Polly and her family, the Bahrs family, and some of Bea’s former teachers and classmates. A few bar owners, shopkeepers, some kind churchwomen. And Hawkeye. She was surprised Hawkeye would have the nerve to come, but today all of her anger had stood up and walked out of the door. The minister kept it simple and didn’t preach but also managed to paint the hope of a better life beyond as a final message to those who stood in the sweltering sun. When he finished and said a final prayer, the wind picked up and blew the heat away.

The women set out casserole dishes, cakes, and pies in the cluttered kitchen Frieda had yet to clean well enough for visitors, and they made coffee and tea. Frieda glanced out the window. Bea was sitting on the porch with the man she’d brought, but Frieda was too busy to join them. There would be time to catch up after the others left. Too late she realized that she didn’t have enough plates, silverware, and cups for the group, and so Charles drove quickly to his summer house and returned with enough for everyone.

“A fine fisherman,” “A fine man,” “We’ve missed him,” “God rest his soul,” and “May he find his eternal peace now” were some of the comments that the well-wishers made. People conversed in small groups, but no one made mention of the rumrunning that was likely on many of their minds, as if out of respect for Silver, who’d never made an illegal dime in his life. They all knew what Frieda did of course, but since many were in one way or another participating, too, no one needed reminding.