Kathleen Valentine (5 page)

WAITING FOR LINDY

He walks through his shop and tugs back the harbor side door. It is too late in the year to keep the doors open but at least when he is looking out over the harbor he isn’t watching for her blue Thunderbird. Business is dead. A dense October fog rolled in at noon swaddling the pastel tourist shops along the Neck in a blanket of gray. Fog horns moan through the swirling wall of dampness and he wishes he could see his son’s boat. He taught the boy how to fish and how to navigate—he taught him well—but he still worries. Worrying, he thinks, is one of the humiliations of growing older—he worries about everything now it seems. At the moment he is worrying about Hugh being out on the ocean in this fog, about Lindy driving down from Boston, about the lack of customers ... about Hugh arriving at the same time Lindy does...
He pours himself a third cup of coffee and carries it to the rocking chair by the front door. From there he can watch the street in front and the harbor behind the shop—at least for as long as he can stand the cold. He wears the woolen sweater his wife knit him that last winter before he knew how sick she was. She’d been a sweet little woman. Sometimes now when he thinks about her he wonders what he actually felt for her all those years ago. They were only eighteen when they married—she’d never even been off-Cape. Their oldest, Sylvia, was two and Guy, Jr. was on the way before she crossed the canal to the mainland. And she hated it. Couldn’t wait to get back on Route 6 and wouldn’t stop fretting until they passed the windmills in Sandwich.
Poor Bonnie. She’d had such a little bit of life. Her old man, like most of the men in their Outer Cape town, had been a fisherman and, like too many of them, a drunk. Now Guy thinks he mostly felt sorry for her back then. Sorry—and happy when she let his eager young hands wander over her solid roundness. He feels sad and guilty sometimes if he lets himself think too long. He’d been a good enough husband and never let on that he probably wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t been pregnant. Not that it wasn’t his fault—he never doubted that. Even if he wasn’t sure that he was the only man she had ever been with, one look at Sylvie’s gray-green eyes and stubborn jaw would convince anyone who knew him.
In those days he hadn’t known enough about life to expect anything more than marrying Bonnie, playing with the babies—Sylvie who was now a nurse down in Providence, then Guy and Marie both of whom had married and moved to the West Coast where they visit each other regularly and sometimes remember to call him. And finally Hugh, who is out in the fog somewhere worrying him foolish.
Back then he only wanted to fish, make love to Bonnie, and get a little drunk now and then. God, he thinks, was he young in those days? What if he had met Lindy back then? Stupid thought considering she was three years old when he and Bonnie were married. Oh well, he thinks, she’s a big girl now alright.
A flash of blue passes the doorway and his head snaps up—just a little Honda. He checks his watch. It is only three-thirty and she likely won’t be leaving Boston for another hour or so. But when he knows she is coming he can’t help looking for her all day long.
The big question is what does a woman like her see in an old fart like him anyway? It’s his favorite question to torment himself with ever since the day she first walked into his shop and knocked him off his feet.
The first time—well, that was easy to understand. It was Spring and the air smelled like desire. She was indulging herself in a weekend getaway—meandering down the street in a loose white shirt that fluttered in the sea breeze. And those kind of strategically tight and faded jeans that made men glad to be alive. He noticed her first when she stood looking in the window of the batik shop across the street. He must have been impressed—he spilled iced tea down the front of his pants and was swabbing idiotically when she entered his shop. She looked at him sideways, smiled slightly, tossed her hair. Of course she tossed her hair—she had to have. Well, even if she didn’t, in his mind she tossed her hair and that was good enough for him.
"Pretty clumsy," he mumbled, "grown man and still spilling things all over myself."
She laughed but it was a sweet laugh. She was the sort of woman who knew how men reacted to her and loved them for it. He tried not to be too obvious watching her as she moved around the shop picking up seashells and turning them over, tracing the swirls of a nautilus shell with her finger, holding bits of coral up to the light. The breeze wafting through the harbor-side door carried the scent of jasmine and lilacs and female warmth to him—made him light-headed and giddy. When she reached up to tap the bronze wind chimes above the window the sunlight seeped through her blouse and the silhouette beneath made his knees weak. Girls like that, he thought, girls like that should be locked up—but thank God that they weren’t.
He was dying to say something witty. He was damn clever when no one important was around—down at the Legion hall he had a reputation for his quick comebacks. Right now his tongue was being a traitorous bastard.
"Is this your shop?" she asked turning toward him.
"Yeah." He swallowed and tossed the tea-soaked tissues toward the waste basket. Naturally he missed. "I quit fishing when my wife got sick a few years back. After she passed away I opened this place—never felt much like fishing again." Well, that sounded pathetic—now she’d think he was a love-lorn old fool.
"That’s too bad," she said.
"Oh, it’s been a good enough living—lots of tourists these days."
She smiled softly. "No, I meant it was too bad about your wife."
"Oh." Christ. "Well, that was awhile ago. Are you on vacation?"
"Sort of—yes." She picked up a curtain of mussel shells and held it up to the light. "I live in Arlington. Woke up with Spring fever this morning and just called in sick and got in the car." She turned toward him. Her eyes were teasing. "Sometimes you just have to do something crazy, y’know?"
Up close he realized she wasn’t as young as he had thought—late thirties maybe. Possibly forty. And the Spring fever was contagious. The fever was rushing through him and pounding in his head. Pounding in a lot of places.
"Like that?" he asked as she toyed with the shells hanging from a long, slim piece of driftwood strung with fishing line. "The Wampanoags make those. They’re good in windows—give you a little privacy, make a nice sound when the wind blows, and turn the sunlight blue."
"Wampanoags?" She tilted an eyebrow—she was damn good at that.
"Local Native tribe," he said relieved they were finally talking about something that didn’t make him sound like a moron. "‘Course these days they make more money with their casinos than crafts. Interesting people. I like hearing their dune lore stories."
She smiled as she put the screen on the counter and opened her handbag. "Dune lore? What’s dune lore?"
"Sorry," he said finally managing to smile back at her, "I don’t tell dune lore stories on company time. You have to be out in the dunes after dark for them to get the effect, y’know?" What the hell, he thought, there’s no fool like an old fool and he’d been down this road before.
She lifted an eyebrow—she could kill a man with that eyebrow. "That so?" The rest of the conversation was hazy after that eyebrow trick but the point was he had wound up offering to take her for beer and cuyhoags and a walk in the dunes that evening. Her name was Lindy which had a lovely lilting sound on his tongue.
He knew she was just looking for adventure. Well, he thought, if she was looking for adventure he wasn’t above letting her use him for that purpose. He’d misused himself for worse purposes.
The Tides attracted a local crowd. He usually knew everyone there—he and Bonnie had attended the Sunday night ham and beans dinners for years. He and Hugh often stopped for a sandwich and a beer and the chance to catch up on the local goings-on. But the crowd went silent when he walked in that night with Lindy. At least for a moment or two. But she fit right in. She had a hearty appetite and could keep up with him when it came to drinking. She was fun and friendly and not afraid to laugh out loud. He decided he liked her. She was a knockout but she was also nice. He was happy just being with her.
Later deep in the moon-washed sands and sensuous shadows of the dunes he recounted some of the stories told by the old-timers when he was a boy. By the time they reached the red and white striped lighthouse they were leaning against each other laughing. Just drunk enough. When he finally did what was expected of him—took her solid waist in his big hands and kissed her uplifted mouth—she didn’t close her eyes but let the starlight dance off of them. The spring peepers were singing as they climbed the stone steps to the wooden platform at the lighthouse’s locked door. He sat down on the wooden floor washed smooth and silver by decades of salt spray. She leaned over, the veil of her moonlit hair settling around him. Neither of them pretended that they were there for any other reason. He unbuttoned her blouse flicking fireflies aside and rubbed his face in the deep, lush hollow between her heavy breasts and when she slid down onto him, head thrown back, eyes filled with stars, she groaned as deep and long as the in-rushing tide.
Most men could live for years off the memory of that night—rolling together like savages in the dunes and then again back in her hotel room Most men wouldn’t even expect such a night in an ordinary lifetime. If he’d never seen her again he would have lived happily with those memories. It would have pleased him to think of her back in the city having lunch with her girlfriends and telling them about her night in the dunes with a horny old fisherman.
He hadn’t expected her call. She asked for his number—offered hers. He’d tucked it in the corner of the mirror in his bachelor’s bedroom, his only souvenir other than the embarrassing ache in his scrotum that haunted the next few days. When the phone rang two weeks later and she said, "Hi there, handsome, got any more dune stories?" he was darn near speechless.
That’s how it worked now—the phone rings and she says, "What are you doing this weekend?"
"Spending it with you, if I’m lucky," he says.
She purrs in that throaty way of hers and says, "You’re in luck then."
And that’s that. She drives in Friday night with her backpack and assorted city treats—expensive coffee and bread—sometimes a homemade fruit pie. He tends the shop during the day while she toasts herself golden on the beach. At night they eat fresh scallops and bluefish in the local bars and play pool before meandering off into the dunes again. He has nothing to complain about—only the uncertainty of it. But he’s given up worrying about that.
People notice. You can’t live in a Cape fishing town all your life without knowing that privacy is non-existent. But he keeps his own thoughts and when someone asks what’s going on he says, "I’ll let you know as soon as I find out."
He hasn’t mentioned her to his kids. With the older ones it doesn’t matter. Sylvie has inherited his talent for worry and he is afraid to believe the affair will last long enough to concern her with. But Hugh lives two towns away—not out of gossip range by a long shot. True he is off fishing for days at a time and off wenching in Falmouth or Hyannis between trips. Guy has decided to worry about it when the time comes.
Jingle.
The door opens and a young couple come in wearing matching nylon bar jackets. Holding hands. They browse aimlessly, being silly—being in love. Then with a slight nod they exit into the fog. Guy looks at the gray wall where the harbor is supposed to be. Where the hell is Hugh?
Maybe he should call Lindy and tell her not to drive down in this weather but she always leaves straight from work and he has never called her there. He sighs. He’ll wait another half hour and then call around to a few of Hugh’s buddies. It is getting colder—too cold for romance in the dunes tonight.
He wonders what Bonnie would think about sex in the dunes. She wouldn’t have done it. She could never even relax and enjoy it in the morning light. He wonders, not for the first time, if Bonnie liked having sex with him. He knows she never did it with anyone else. She was agreeable and usually accommodating but when he thinks of Lindy’s abandoned moans and writhings he can’t imagine Bonnie getting that excited. She’d been his first, too. And—except for one brief transgression—his only, until long after her death.
After he opened the shop and started spending his days among tourists instead of the fishing companions he’d known all his life he discovered a new world of sexual opportunity. He was big and healthy and his rugged seaman’s looks caught the attention of women down from the city for a few days. They passed him hotel room phone numbers scribbled on the backs of sales slips and for awhile he called them. For awhile it was exciting...
"Jesus, you look like you’re thinkin’ nasty thoughts."
He jumps catching his coffee mug in time. Hugh’s husky shape fills up the harbor-side door and interrupts the faltering light.
"Hugh—bout time. I was starting to worry about you."
"You don’t look worried," Hugh says clumping toward the coffee pot oilskins flapping. "You look horny. Some babe just drop in and get you all fired up?"
Guy chuckles. Hugh looks like his mother with his round fairness but none of them—not Guy, nor Bonnie, nor the other children—have Hugh’s humor, warmth, and sheer joy in living. Guy would never admit it but Hugh was his favorite. A happy baby, he had grown into a mischievous child, and then a good-natured, easy-going man. It was Guy’s secret delight that, of all his children, it was Hugh who had stayed close to home and continued the family fishing business.
"I’m not over the hill, yet. Don’t want to shock you, son, but I still think about that stuff."
Hugh grins spooning sugar into his mug. "Hell with thinkin’, Pop, what about doing?"
"That’s none of your business. Close that door, will you?"
Hugh kicks the sliding door shut, snaps the bolts into place and drags the leather office chair from behind the desk to sit across from his father. "Come on, Pop, you can talk to me. What do you like—the long, lean, quiet ones or the fat, sassy, giggling ones?"
Guy grins at his coffee mug. "Yup."
"Yup?"
"Both."
Hugh’s laugh brightens up the dusk-filled room and chases out all the fog. "Yeah, well, like father like son, I guess—me too. As long as they smell good and are a little cooperative. I met a cunning little darling in Chatham last week. Whew."
Guy waits a minute and then surprises himself by saying, "Have you slept with a lot of women?"