Kathleen Valentine (3 page)

DAMIAN

The fishing boats are coming in, skimming across the blue waves. You can tell them by the plumes of white gulls that puff out behind each boat awaiting the cleanings the fishermen toss overboard. I lie here on this narrow bed wrapped in late afternoon sunshine and afterglow. Damian is smoking on the porch. Through the open door I can see the rich brown of gnarled arms and the languid wisps of smoke. This is the hottest part of the day and, were it not for the salt-saturated sea-breezes which forever after this summer will fill me with erotic longing, I would not be able to bear being inside. But just now I am too lazy and love-drenched to stir.
Damian’s house is little more than a shack by my reckoning, a wood-shingled house near the wharf here in the fishing community tucked next to the commercial docks. Farther down the harbor are the picturesque wharves where the yachts and sailboats of the privileged are moored. They bobble in the lapping waves bearing legends such as "My Folly, St. Petersburg" or "Blues Palace, Marblehead". But here at the commercial docks there are no such displays of pleasure. Here are working boats—battered, patched and laden with traps, ropes, nets, and other indistinguishable paraphernalia. Here the mountainous piles of lobster traps obscure the view in winter and the overpowering odor of fish fills the summer. This is the third week of August and in less than ten days I will be gone—back to my ivy-covered walls and book-lined apartment. Back to a world where women who have achieved the status of Associate Professor do not spend afternoons lying naked in a fisherman’s cottage waiting for their lovers to finish their cigarettes and return.
A voice is calling in a language I do not understand but which I know is Portuguese. Damian calls back and, rising, passes the screen door. He wears only his tight fitting, faded blue jeans, unbuttoned at the waist. Nothing I have ever taught in any of my art history classes—none of the Davids nor Venuses, not the porcelain work of the Ming Dynasty, nor the Etruscan bronzes—can compare in sheer symmetry of perfection to Damian in his tight, faded jeans—unbuttoned at the waist. I shift to the edge of the bed to watch him. He leans over the railing. His broad, calloused hands clutch the rough wood as they, only moments ago, clutched my thighs. He leans forward and the thick glaze of sunlight quivers over the muscles of his back which my hands know better than do my eyes.
I hear fragments of the conversation and, though I don’t understand the words, I know the content. I am familiar, if only as a third party, with those intonations. Those jesting tones question why a strong, ambitious, young fisherman is being so lazy these days. Why he returns to the dock hours before his friends do. Why he is being so irresponsible when this is one of the best fishing seasons in years. The laughter which follows answers the questions.
I do not know what Damian has told his companions about me. We are not a secret. I have seen the veiled glances, the silent nudges, the knowing smiles as I come and go from his house. In this little fishing neighborhood tall, long-legged blond women in drifting gauze dresses are an attraction. The women here are short and dark—either dressed like the men, or heavy with child, or old.
Damian stretches. He rakes back his thick, black curls with those fingers and I hear the laughter and the clucking sounds amid the din of docking boats. By the rising of the muscles along his jaw line I know he is smiling at them. These days he doesn’t smile so much at me. He looks at me with an expression I cannot begin to explain except that the burning blue of those pale eyes in his dark face are like drops of water on the outstretched tongues of the damned in a medieval mural.
There has been little conversation between us this summer. There has been no need. From the moment I saw his eyes caressing me as I wandered along the docks snapping pictures for the paintings with which I planned to fill my summer we understood each other. Now the summer is almost gone. I have painted very little. He has fished only enough to live. His winter will be hard. I cannot think about winter—not while he is standing there in the sunlight. The sea breeze through the open window carries my hair over my shoulder and veils my view of him.
He turns and sees me watching him. He leans back against the railing and jams his hands into his pockets pulling the denim taut across the swelling part of him that has ruined us both. I ache for him. I bend my head and flip my hair back knowing with my artist’s eye how it will look as it cascades through the sunbeam washing past me. I turn and prop myself up on one elbow so he can look at me. I smile but he will not. He pushes away from the railing and walks toward me through the golden light. As he enters the room, I rise.

FLYNNIE AND BABE

The clouds over the mainland are low and dark. The thin strip of sky that shows between them and the sparkle of lights along the shore is coral and shimmering—that usually means lightning. They must be getting one heck of a storm. I’d say it’s headed this way. The air has that ozone smell that means storm-coming. The gulls are screeching, soaring across the channel in swirling clouds. The lower they fly, the more scared they are. From up here on Flynnie’s bluff they appear to be coming straight at me.
There’s something sad and dreamy about all those gold lights twinkling away over there. I don’t want to be there—I love life on this island. But they make me wonder if I’m missing anything. It’s like standing outside on the sidewalk and watching through a window at people dancing. I don’t like dancing but they look like they are so happy. I wonder if I’ve missed something.
Autumn is definitely here. The flowers in Flynnie’s garden look worn out except for the climbing roses that twine over the picket fence. The heads of the sunflowers droop all the way down as though they were put up before a firing squad. Maybe there was a coup in the garden today and the sunflowers lost. Flynnie’s garden is like a party in the summer—snapdragons and hollyhocks, Japanese lanterns and columbines, moss roses and lilies of the valley peeping out between the marigolds. Fat yellow bumblebees, droopy with pollen, drone lazily between blossoms. The hummingbirds dart nervously in and out of clematis. Flynnie takes a lot of pride in his garden. As many people come up here to look at the garden as come to stuff themselves with his fat, juicy clams, spicy french fries, and crunchy onion rings.
Flynnie’s was the first place I ate at when I moved here all those years ago. During the winter Flynnie’s is filled with the artists and locals who live here year round but when the tourist season is in full swing the artists stay away. Flynnie’s Clam Shack is one of the island’s main attractions. When the tourist ferries arrive and all those determined-looking folks armed with backpacks, water bottles, digital cameras, camcorders, and Chamber of Commerce maps, fill the streets it seems every map has Flynnie’s circled on it.
It won’t be long now until the tourist boats only run on weekends—and after Christmas not at all. Then all of us will get out our fleece or down jackets and tramp the headlands looking for renewed inspiration to paint. We’ll paint all day and gather at Flynnie’s in the evenings to drink and eat and congratulate ourselves for being the lucky ones who get to stay.
The candy pink and white striped umbrellas over the tables on the deck are flapping with increased fury. There’s a storm coming alright. I run around the deck cranking them down. Where the hell is Flynnie? The inside lights are on but I can’t see him.
"Flynnie!" I love this place. It is plain and open with plank floors, wooden tables and chairs, ceiling fans and big, double-hung windows which I begin slamming shut. The wind is getting steadier now and paper-lined straw baskets bearing the remains of clam dinners skid across the tables and topple to the floor. Before the first abandoned clam lands, Mad Max comes bounding out of nowhere to snarf it up. As I close the windows a few more baskets go flying and Max occupies himself roaming the wasteland of the floor in search of fallen goodies. That dog loves clams and makes sure Flynnie’s floors are always clean. Flynnie says Max is the offspring of a female chow he once had who mated with a vacuum cleaner.
"Flynnie!!!" I gather up the baskets, dump the remains in a trash barrel and stack them at the end of the service bay.
"That you, Babe?" Flynnie’s voice comes down the stairs from his upstairs apartment—a slightly smaller and much cosier version of this room.
"Yeah. Want me to come up?"
"Right down," he hollers drowning me out.
I plop on a tall wooden stool by the bar. Two or three nearly empty beer mugs sit on paper coasters among a litter of peanut shells.
"Max," I call, "beer!" And, doing it just as Flynnie has taught me, I toss the remaining beer from one mug with a snap of the wrist. Max bounds across the floor and, with an experienced leap, catches the beer in his open mouth. Max has been known to catch as much as four ounces right out of the air without spilling a drop.
"What happened now?" Flynnie asks trotting down the stairs, "Your knight in shining armor turn in his white stallion for a skateboard." He grins and the gleam of his white teeth against his dark face makes me smile. It’s a good thing for Flynnie that he has that grin because the rest of him is kind of cartoon-like. His gray-streaked, sandy hair sticks straight up and his beard radiates out around his face making him look like a cross between an Aztec Sun God and a Kodiak bear. His eyes are buried under bushy, pale eyebrows. They disappear completely when he laughs. Flynnie’s age is a mystery to everyone. He claims to be really old and there’s nothing to tip you off one way or the other. His skin has been tanned to leather since I’ve known him and it doesn’t get lighter in the winter. His voice is sort of raspy, like he’s getting a cold, and his hands are huge with bulging veins and knobby knuckles. They’re kind of scary looking—like they’ve spent more than a little time wrapped around somebody’s throat. He’s wearing a blue chambray shirt with the neck open and sleeves rolled above his elbows. The veins on his arms stand out thick and hard. The sturdy, dark legs below his khaki shorts are so bowed you could sail a Frisbee between them.
"Men suck, Flynnie," I tell him. Flynnie knows more about my personal life than anyone.
"I know, Babe." He lays his ever-present journal on the bar and draws us each a draft. "We’re bastards."
"Don’t say that!" I hate it when he agrees with me. "That’s just so damn easy for you guys. You say ‘hey, what did you expect, I’m an asshole’ like that’s some kind of an excuse."
He refills a basket with peanuts from under the bar and pushes it toward me. "Well, it is an excuse. A lousy excuse but an excuse all the same."
"Flynnie, this guy worked harder to get me to fall for him than any guy I’ve ever met. I tried so hard not to make the same mistake I made the last time but look what happened!"
He comes around the bar and sits on the stool next to me. "What happened?"
I shrugged. "He’s going back to his wife."
"Yeah? Sounds like you got a better deal than she did."
I kick the toe of my sandal against the bar. "That doesn’t help, Flynnie."
He sighs. "No, I don’t suppose it does."
"Why did he do it, Flynnie?" I promised myself I wouldn’t cry again but I can feel my throat tightening. "Why would he chase me like he did and then turn around and do this? I don’t get it. What’s wrong with me."
Flynnie gives me a hard look. "You know better than to ask that. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re a good artist, you’ve got those big knockers." He gives me a Flynnie wink—at least that’s what I think it is when his invisible eye twitches back in his head like that.
"Let me tell you something, being pretty and having big knockers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be."
"No?" He sips his beer. "I don’t think very many people—male or female—would agree with you on that. I see how the guys in here look at you when you come around. There are a lot of women who would love to have guys look at them like that."
I glance at myself in the mirror behind the bar and then look away fast. That’s the thing I can’t ever explain to Flynnie—I don’t know what in the heck it is he sees when he looks at me but I sure don’t see it. "You know what, Flynnie, that’s just bullshit."
"It is not bullshit. There are girls half your age in town who wish they got the attention you do."
I stare at him. "So what? So what if guys look at my boobs and my whatever else they look at. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean they love me or even like me. It just means I have big boobs. Big deal. It’s not like they’ve done me any good!"
Flynnie laughs and claps his hand over his mouth to avoid spitting beer.
"I’m serious." Now I’m pissed. "I’ve had these monsters since I was fifteen. I’ve been hauling them around for almost twenty-five years now and all they’ve done is make my life miserable. And now they’re starting to go south! Why the hell would anyone want this?"
Flynnie is smiling. He swivels his chair toward me and reaches out one of those big, scary-looking hands to brush my hair back from my face. "I never thought of it that way," he says quietly.
"Well, why would you?" I pull back and then instantly regret it. His hand falls back in his lap.
"I’m sorry," I lower my voice and look up at him. His expression is inscrutable. "I didn’t mean to be gross."
He shakes his head. "You weren’t gross."
"I just want to be happy. All my life I’ve dreamed about having a nice guy and a nice home and maybe some kids. What’s so wrong about that?"
"There’s nothing wrong with it, Babe, it’s just not right for everyone." He turns back to his beer. "Being married and having kids is for people who don’t want to do anything else."
"Why aren’t you married?" As long as I’ve known Flynnie we’ve never talked about that.
He sips his beer. "I have been. I’m just no good at it."
"Really?" Flynnie married is hard to imagine.
"Well, let me rephrase that. I’m real good at getting married. I’m just no good at staying married."
I stare at him. "You’ve been married more than once?"
He smiles slowly and holds up three fingers.
"You’re kidding me?"
"Why?"
"But... no kids?"
"No. No kids—none of the marriages lasted very long."
"What happened?"
He shrugs. "For what it’s worth they all left me. Not the other way around."
"I can’t believe you. You’re such a nice guy. I can’t imagine anyone leaving you."
"You know Suze Crawley that works at the post office?"
"Sure, of course." Suze is a big, energetic woman who wears long, flowered skirts with Birkenstocks, has a thick braid down her back, and grows herbs in the sunny windows of the tiny post office building on Center Street. All the letters that arrive around the world from our town smell like Suze’s thyme and coriander.
"She was my second wife." He reaches over the counter and fills his beer mug from the tap. "Ready for another?"
I let him fill my mug while I try to imagine him and Suze together. Funny thing is, I can. Easily.
"Flynnie, I think you and Suze would be good together."
He nods. "I thought so too."
"But?"
He shrugs. "She said I was too romantic. Lots of women like that idea in theory but they find it hard to live with."
"Because you write poetry?"
That’s one of the more enigmatic things about Flynnie. He is forever sending off poems to these obscure little magazines with odd names and getting back checks for miniscule amounts. When the published piece finally arrives in the mail he mounts the page with his poem next to the magazine cover on tan cardboard. He frames it and hangs it on the wall of the stairway leading to his apartment. He says he is waiting for the day when the check covers the cost of the frame—then he’ll consider himself a success. I glance up at the wall across the darkening room. There must be thirty or more poems there.
"Naw," he says. "She always liked my poems. She thought I’d be a great poet someday." He frowns at his beer letting his mind drift. "No. I’m not sure what it was, really. She said being my Muse was too hard. To tell the truth, I never knew what she meant by that. Suze is a beautiful woman. I didn’t think I ever expected anything more from her than letting me love her for that."
I study him trying to figure out if he is being serious. I like Suze. She’s always friendly and nice but "beautiful"?
"How long ago was that?"
He shrugs. "Ten years, maybe. It always took me more time to get over a woman than I actually spent with her. Figure that out."
"Did you write a poem about her?"
"Every poem I wrote was about her—well, while I was with her. It was like that with all of them..." His voice trails off as a wall of rain crackles against the windows. The lights dim for a moment and thunder rolls in. Mad Max whimpers and crawls across the floor to cower under Flynnie’s bar stool.
"Come on, Max," Flynnie coos sliding off the barstool and hunkering down to stroke the shaking dog. "Don’t be scared. I’m here." Max huddles against him as a brilliant flash of lightning floods the room. Through the windows I can see the waves churning up in the channel.
"Damn. Danny Choate and I were going to go diving for lobsters in the morning. Now the floor will be too murky." He stands up and walks to the window as the lights flicker out but then blink back on. "I’d say business is closed for this night—we’ll be losing power soon." He turns to me. "Want to come upstairs and I’ll fix us some supper?"
"Sure." I stack the dishwasher then wipe down the bar and the tables as Flynnie cashes out and locks up. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. Flynnie the poet. Flynnie the husband of three women. Flynnie the guy who thought Suze Crawley was beautiful and wanted only to love her for that.
As we climb the stairs a loud crack of thunder sends Max flying up the steps past us knocking me backwards.
"What a noble beast," Flynnie laughs as he catches me and sets me back on my feet. "There’s nothing to fear when Max is on guard. Dog-butt stew, Max!" he hollers up the steps but Max is long gone—under the bed for sure. "I’m going to cook up a batch of dog butt stew!"
Sometimes Flynnie and Max remind me of an old married couple.
Upstairs the rain hammers the roof sounding wild and wonderful. Flynnie lights a few lamps and pops in a CD of Celtic music. The violins, flutes and bodhrans, underscored by pelting rain, fill the big open room. I love this space. It always reminds me of an attic belonging to some whimsical grandmother in a fairy tale. The beamed ceiling slants down to a few feet above the floor and the room is crowded with peculiar treasures—pirate’s chests supporting oil lamps and piles of books, old sofas covered in patchwork quilts, a wooden cigar-store Indian guards the alcove that serves as a bedroom. An enormous balsa wood and rice paper airplane hangs from the apex of the ceiling. A fire smoulders in the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room and Flynnie’s still-warm coffee cup rests on the arm of his home-made couch. Flynnie built this place himself, including most of the furniture in it. The foundation is the remains of an old barn—stone stalls and tack rooms where his woodshop is now. But from the first floor on up every board was put in place by Flynnie’s big hands.
"Make yourself at home?" Flynnie mumbles, his head in the refrigerator. "You don’t mind lobster, do you? I can make an omelette."