Hemingway's Girl (26 page)

Mariella admired Gavin in the late-afternoon sun. He was shirtless and sweating as
he leaned over the bow of the boat and loosened the ropes that held it to the pier.

She walked down the dock where he had told her to meet him for her birthday present.
She wore a striped boatneck shirt Pauline had given her, and a pair of khaki pants
she had rolled up to her knees. She carried her fishing pole and a paper bag of bait.
She enjoyed watching him when he couldn’t see her, and hoped she’d be able to behave
herself.

“Hey, soldier!” she called. “Is that any way to dress for a date?”

He stood up and broke into a smile. “I’m sorry; that’s the rule: No shirts allowed.”
He grabbed a towel and wiped himself off.

“Ha,” she said as she climbed into the boat. He swept her into his arms and kissed
her, then took her supplies to the cabin. She reached for the line to help loosen
the boat, but he insisted she sit. “You look too pretty to do dirty work. Just relax.
Have a beer.”

Mariella stepped into the cabin and saw that Gavin had set some beer on ice in a tub.
He also had a box of spices for the fish, a lemon, and a loaf of bread.

“Wow, you really prepared for this,” called Mariella. “Are you going to ask me to
marry you?”

He laughed from the front of the boat. “Yes, damn it. Now, don’t spoil it.”

She smiled and cracked open two beers. Gavin walked to the steering wheel and started
to motor the boat away from the dock. She kissed him on the side of the neck and put
his beer down next to him.

“I’m really touched that you did all this,” she said.

He smiled at her and took a long drink of his beer. They pulled away from the dock
and out to open water.

Gavin went straight out to the sun and then headed west into the gulf. The sun was
hot and glaring on the surface of the water, but they knew it would sink fast and
then they’d be chilled, so neither complained about it. And their attraction to each
other made everything around them shine with goodness. The sun wasn’t scorching them;
it warmed them. The wind wasn’t rough; it was brisk. Their hunger didn’t weigh them
down; it reminded them of the fish they’d fry in a little while. Their poverty was
merely simplicity, and living simply was good.

Now she understood what Papa meant.

They found a place where the tuna were running and dropped anchor. The swells rolled
under the boat in regular patterns as they bobbed on the surface of the water. Gavin
set their chairs together, and they leaned on each other while they held their own
fishing lines.

Mariella closed her eyes to firmly place the moment in her memory: the smell of the
salt water mingled with Gavin’s aftershave, the feel of his skin on her arm, the soothing
lull of the boat. When she opened her eyes, he was smiling at her from inches away.

“What?” she said.

“I will always think of you here, like this.”

“This is a perfect moment,” she said.

“Rare and beautiful,” he said. “It’s hard to believe that moments like this exist
after loss and war.”

Marielle knew he was ready to tell her about his past, and she stayed quiet and looked
back out at the water to make it easier for him.

Gavin spoke of Argonne. He was a sixteen-year-old kid from Pittsburgh who’d enlisted
under the lie that he was eighteen. His father worked coal; his mother stayed home
with him. His time in France was his first time out of Pennsylvania. He’d broken up
with his girlfriend when he went to war to save himself the trouble of her doing it
once he was gone. He, John, and Jordan became tight and planned to move to Florida
after the war to build their lives under sunny skies. John had told them about his
parents’ place in Key West, and they all decided they’d rent there until they could
afford their own places.

“The winter came on quick and miserable that October,” he said.

Mariella looked over at him and saw his face drained of color and his eyes blank.
The change alarmed her, and she had to look back at the water.

“It was freezing outside, but not cold enough to snow, so we were soaked through by
frigid rain with scratchy, cold, wet wool on our skin week after week. I thought influenza
would kill us all before the Germans could. With the big battle looming we were all
pretty edgy. Then I got the telegram that Dad died. I couldn’t even go to his funeral.”

Mariella felt numb. She couldn’t imagine not being able to bury her dad and get that
chance to honor him. There were no words of comfort she could offer him, and it made
her feel small and inadequate.

Gavin stood suddenly and started reeling. After a few moments
his reel spun out and the line went slack. He lifted it out of the water and set the
pole in the holder. He looked back at her and shrugged. She smiled at him and motioned
for him to come over to her chair, where she stood, eased him into the chair, and
sat on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and helped her hold the pole.

“Do you want me to keep going, or am I ruining everything?” he asked.

She turned until she faced him. “You could never ruin anything. Please keep talking.”

He kissed her nose and continued.

“Our general, Pershing, began an offensive that most of the guys thought was crazy.
He just kept pushing and plowing us through the Germans. It ended in November, when
we finally crushed the enemy, but we lost twenty-six thousand guys in the process.”

Mariella felt her mouth go dry. She knew it had been a bloodbath, but hadn’t realized
exactly how many Americans had lost their lives.

“It’s an out-of-body experience at that point,” said Gavin. “You’re inhuman. You haven’t
slept or eaten properly in weeks. You’re soaked to the bone. You’re killing and killing,
and crawling over the dead and dying. Your mind is blank. Purely fixed on a target.
No emotion. No fear. Until your guys—your close buddies—go down. Then your mind turns
on and you can’t think of the target, only of getting them out of there. Only of helping
preserve them so you can get to that sunny place and start your business together,
and raise your kids together, and tell your war stories.

“I kept thinking of all that when the shell went off. I saw Jordan fly backward, and
when I got to him the whole front of his body was gone—just gone. His face was gone.
But I wanted to pull his body to a safe place, because I knew he had a girl at home—a
girl who loved him, who’d want that body to bury—so I
got him to a ditch. I pulled him perpendicular to all the action—they were all going
forward and I was pulling this body sideways, and I had a hell of a time getting him
to a safe place.

“But then I heard John screaming and knew he was alive, and I should have found him
first. When I got to him, he was hyperventilating over his missing legs. There they
were—severed almost neatly above the knee—but there were explosions everywhere, so
I couldn’t save the legs, too. I just pulled what was left of John along the same
path I’d pulled Jordan. When I got us there, something exploded in the path we’d just
come from and everything went black.”

Mariella turned her head so she could see his profile, and reached up to run her hand
down the scar on his face. He flinched, but didn’t move her hand away. She leaned
in to kiss where it ended near his lip, and he closed his eyes. After a few moments,
he started again.

“The next thing I remembered, I was in a hospital. Then the war was over. While John
recovered in the vet hospital, I went home to Mom. I had some bad times. I was drinking
too much to hold down a job, and the insomnia was killing me. I was edgy and mean
and I knew I was hurting her, but I didn’t know how to stop. Then she was diagnosed
with ALS and something clicked for me. I realized I needed to take care of her and
grow up. Lots of guys went through what I went through. Without my dad, I had to support
us.

“We stayed there for a while, but I was getting claustrophobic in that small town.
All the girls I’d grown up with got married. I had a few girlfriends, but I was still
no good in the head. I didn’t trust anyone. I mostly just worked in the steel mill,
ate dinner with Mom, and kept to myself. Then the crash came, and Mom started getting
really bad off. I lost my job at the steel mill and couldn’t find another job.

“Winters in PA are bad, and I’d been writing John all along.
He’d since moved to Key West. Mom didn’t want to go that far south, but she said she’d
go live near my uncle in Miami. So we packed up and left. My uncle’s business was
struggling, so he couldn’t hire me, so I got a job working on the Overseas Highway.”

“And then you met me,” said Mariella.

“And I lived happily ever after,” said Gavin.

Mariella let him hold the pole and ran her hands over the tattoo on his forearm. Then
she saw the line jerk. Mariella grabbed the pole and started reeling. He let her go
and cheered her on while she struggled with the fish. It dived down hard several times
before she felt the control shift to her hands. She stood up and reeled faster until
she could pull it up. Finally, with a great tug and a splat, she pulled in a fat,
flipping grouper. She pulled the hook out of the grouper and tossed it into a bucket
of salt water next to a baby tarpon Gavin had caught earlier.

“Perfect distraction,” he said. “I’m done talking now. It’s your turn.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and she reached up around his neck.

“Let’s find a little island all to ourselves first,” she said, “and then I’ll start
talking. I know a good one near here.”

“Deal,” he said, kissing her full on the mouth.

Mariella opened the throttle and led them to an island near a stretch of the old railroad,
where her father used to take the family. The Keys were made up of hundreds of tiny
islands surrounding the larger islands. Some were only thirty feet from tip to tip.
Many locals enjoyed using the islands for fun. Others were rumored to be used for
more sinister purposes, including the hiding of drugs and weapons.

It wasn’t long before they anchored the boat and splashed through the shallows to
the beach of the small, uninhabited island. They gathered dry wood and made a fire.
Gavin cleaned and seasoned the fish, and they baked it and toasted the bread over
the
flame. They rubbed the smell of fish off their hands with wet beach sand and lemon
and rinsed their hands in the water. When the fish and bread were ready, they ate
and drank beer.

While the sun slipped into the horizon, Mariella told Gavin about her family. She
spoke of her mother’s family disowning Eva when she married Hal. She spoke of never
having met her grandparents, her parents’ close relationship, her sisters, and her
father’s death. She regretted that she hadn’t gone out on the boat with Hal that day,
and wondered aloud whether, if she had, her father would still be alive.

“I always wonder things like that,” said Gavin. “If I hadn’t tripped when we started
out, I’d have been in front of Jordan and blown to pieces. Then he’d have been able
to come home to his girl.”

“But then the man on the beach would have died,” said Mariella.

“Who?”

“The man you saved when we went to the beach with the girls,” she said. “Maybe he
had a wife and six kids. If you’d died in the war, he’d have died here.”

“I guess we could go on all night with ifs and thens,” he said. “We just have to accept
what happened.”

“And move on.”

It was easier to talk of these things in the dark, with only the firelight and the
starlight. It felt good to get it all out. Then Papa came up.

“I know you don’t want to hear this from me,” said Gavin, “but watch yourself with
him.”

Mariella was glad he couldn’t see her roll her eyes.

“I’m not sure why everyone feels the need to tell me that,” said Mariella. “I’m a
grown woman. He’s a married man.”

“Surely you aren’t naive enough to think marriage stops people from pursuing relationships.”

“He loves his wife.”