Open Water (17 page)

Willis said, “The house looks fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?”

“Nothing. Nothing essentially wrong with it.” Rennie took a butter knife from a drawer, but Willis shook his head about the butter. From habit, she rubbed her thumb over the blade before she put it back. It was good to feel the dull blade of a knife when it was supposed to be dull.

“The house needs paint,” Willis said, stuffing a pillow of cake into his mouth. “It’s those vines. They have little sucker feet and they eat right through the trim on the window frames. I can pull them down and get a pressure cleaning kit at the Rent-All.”

“The greenery has nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s the only thing holding the house up. It’s me.
I
should have the
sucker feet.” She wasn’t laughing. “Munro wants me to have a condo at Château-sur-Mer. His treat.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

“We can’t afford this house unless he chips in. It’s blackmail. He won’t let us stay here.”

“How much has that drone been giving you?”

“Just about everything.”

Willis stopped chewing. He went over to the sink and spit out his mouthful of fluffy cake so he could talk. “What? You never said he was paying that much. He’s been paying everything?”

“Everything.”

“He pays my way? I’m going to throw up.”

“Don’t eat so fast.”

“Don’t joke. Are you saying we have money problems? Am I blind or something?”

“It didn’t make any difference until now. Now he wants to make decisions.” She hid her hands behind her apron as she talked.

“I didn’t think it was about money. I thought it was about philosophy.”

“We have plenty of that. We’ve got loads of philosophy.” Willis looked stunned. Rennie rummaged through some drawers while he found his legs. She said, “I’ve been getting dunned by Marcy Oil. Narragansett Electric. Even Ma Bell has her knickers in a twist. My household budget is hanging by a thread.”

“But you have the house. It’s waterfront property.”

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”

Willis walked into the next room and through to the front parlor, then he turned around and came back.

Rennie said, “Munro says he’s not going ahead with the property taxes. It’s blackmail. He wants me to sell the place. Century 21 was over here but I chased them out.”

“Taxes? How much?”

“Next year I get Social Security and that would almost cover the taxes on this house, but then he’d freeze me out some other way. He won’t pay my grocery bills at Almacs. He wants me on the inside looking out.”

Willis said, “It’s not going to happen. Not a chance.” He marched through the room thinking how to back it up.

Rennie said, “Château-sur-Mer is supposed to be better than those motel-style nursing homes. What’s the difference? Once you admit defeat, you might as well live over a grate on the sidewalk. Château-sur-Mer is where the upper crust crumbles.”

“It’s for millionaires. We aren’t millionaires,” Willis said, but he waited for her to confirm his assumption.

“Not exactly.”

“That’s the place next to Salve Regina, right? That big setup on the Cliff Walk? I know someone who works in there. A candy striper or something—”

“You mean that little nurse? That’s what I’m saying. Candy stripers are for hospitals. I’m not going back to a hospital. The brochure says it’s ‘
resort
retirement.’ The last resort.

“First, they put you in something called a ‘villa,’ then they cut you back to an apartment if for some reason you can’t walk across the lawn to the dining hall. Too many cricks or tummy troubles and it’s into the infirmary you go. Where it comes on a tray. The last thing, it’s a tube through your nose. The shortcut, you don’t have to chew it. You know—”

“Come on.” Willis didn’t want her to continue, but she was building momentum.

“It’s the Last Supper every night. Enter at this
villa
level, then its downhill all the way. It’s the last stop. Everybody off the train. They don’t even try to pretend.”

“Munro’s crazy. That’s years from now. What are you? Fifty? Sixty? You aren’t ready for all of that.”

She looked at him; she was touched that he tried to deny her failing health. He didn’t really want to know her age. He had never really figured her in chronologically; she was a constant, her age didn’t matter. He could have told her Wydette’s age, down to the minute. Wydette would have been fifty. Willis remembered Wydette’s theoretical age, year by year, because she never reached it. Wydette never fulfilled the obligation of those years. Where was Wydette when Willis was sick with throbbing pains and Rennie washed the ochre vomit stains from his sheets and towels? Who took care of him now? Rennie even sliced his meat. He couldn’t handle a knife with his broken arm. She carved the meat, giving extra attention to how she arranged the rare slices across his plate, creating an attractive fan, rose-colored fingers of beef. He was a grown man, but a broken arm made him like a child again. He could hardly zip his pants. He left the brass rivet unbuttoned unless he asked her to do it.

The house belonged to Rennie, but none of her three husbands had left her enough money to keep it up. For years Rennie made souvenir jewelry, lighthouse pins, sand-dollar earrings, lobster-claw and sailboat charms which she had sold from her “eight-month” shop. Sometimes, Rennie went to the flea markets where she displayed her old clothes, her extra teacups, which brought good prices, but she didn’t have the energy anymore. She could have unloaded Wydette’s things, which Lester had tried to salvage. Wydette’s shoes were still lined up in the attic along with her stirrup stretch pants folded and sealed in white Jordan Marsh boxes. In a small envelope, Rennie discovered the calcified stub of Willis’s umbilical clamp which Wydette
had saved. Willis had seemed disappointed when he examined the tiny relic. He told Rennie that he had always expected the cord to look like the frayed painter on a rowboat.

Willis had the kitchen faucet disassembled. The chrome escutcheon, the tiny O-ring, the packing washer, and stem sleeve were lined up on the counter. He needed a seat wrench, and he went through the kitchen closet until he found what he wanted.

“It’s a tiny leak,” Rennie said. “I can live with it.”

“You shouldn’t have a hot-water leak,” he told her. “The furnace kicks on.”

She sat down at the kitchen table and watched him. She couldn’t remember just how much water had been dripping. She figured Willis was making a point. He would take care of the house until the bitter end.

It was the first time she noticed his boots. She examined the marled, smoke-damaged leather. He hadn’t mentioned where he found these secondhand boots, so she kept quiet. Perhaps he had arrived at those boots through private circumstances.

Willis replaced the faucet and tightened the retainer nut with a cloth-covered pliers. With his left hand he threaded the tiny screen onto the spout. He reached under the sink to turn on the connection. He pulled the tap open and the water convulsed twice, then flattened into a steady line. He twisted the handle shut. The spout bled a few drops. Then it was dry.

B
etween the two houses, there was an oil drum for burning trash. Nicole and Rennie shared it. Holly saw Willis Pratt at the edge of the cliff standing over the trash barrel. Standing beside Willis was another young man; a lean and nervous type was shivering, sinking up and down, as Willis lit matches and tossed them into the drum. Willis lowered something into the fire. He stepped back. He looked up at the sky. His face showed a strange, undefinable disturbance. Willis reached into the rusty barrel to strike additional matches out of the wind. Cooking grease sputtered where it was heavy on the paper sacks. He had the fire going and he added some dirty swatches from the rag box. He lifted another heavy bag of kitchen scraps and put it on. He moved back and threw the remaining pack of restaurant matches into the barrel.

Holly came out of her house. She skirted the stranger and ran up to Willis. She looked inside the barrel. A small, compact mound prickled with sparks. She knew it was the puppy. “What are you doing—” she hollered. She rose up on her toes to get a better look, but the smoke lifted in a heavy screen and she couldn’t see through it. “You can’t burn that dog out here where the children might see it.”

She was standing in the smoke; she moved to the other side of the barrel, but the wind shifted again. Her stomach was clenching and she felt her saliva increasing.

Willis looked at her. He scratched the tip of his nose with the white cuff of his cast. He looked like he was trying to understand Holly’s non sequiturs. She could see him
pretending
to make the leaps.

“This is sick!” she said.

He looked at the fire.

“Put that out. Put that fire out right now.”

He turned to face her square. His eyes looked wide, then they grew distant. He said, “That dog? That dog is around the house. I dug a hole. You can have your bow-wow funeral when the kids come home from school.”

“Are you saying you made a grave?”

“Over there—see that hole?” He shoved his arm in the direction of the little grave.

Holly saw the trench in the sandy yard. “Oh,” Holly said. “I see it.” Her eyes were swimming, her confusion and shame washing higher. She looked at the fire again.

Willis told Fritz, “This is Holly Temple.”

Fritz said, “A Christmas baby?”

“Close enough,” she said. Her face was stinging.

“This here,” Fritz said, “is Rennie’s garbage. Just the ordinary.”

“I thought I saw that puppy go in,” she said.

“You wear contacts, Miss Temple?” Fritz said.

“Shit,” Holly said.

“You wear glasses, Miss Temple? How’s your prescription? EyeWorld can grind some new lenses in an hour.”

Holly said, “Will you cut out the ‘Miss Temple’ routine.”

“Excuse me. Miss
Holy
Temple.”

“I was waiting for that,” she said.

Willis let Fritz have his say.

Holly didn’t wear glasses. She marched back into her house and slammed the door. She shut the window, which was opened a crack. Already her rooms smelled of smoke, like a landfill incinerator—burned grapefruit rinds and pork-chop bones. She felt incredibly stupid. Then she realized she couldn’t hang her wash. How could she hang her wash if people were burning their garbage on the only sunny day? She allowed herself to feel this new insult; she was happy to shift it over.

In five minutes she came back outdoors and got into her car. Willis was still there with the skinny outsider. Willis was standing in the trench he had made for the dog. It came up to his shins right below his knees. He stood there, keeping a silent, horrible posture. She didn’t acknowledge the little grave he had made and she looked away. He was crazy. Of course, he was crazy. She tossed her hair away from her face and squinted in her rearview to back down the driveway.

Holly couldn’t think about it now; she and Robin had to cook for a hundred and fifty. There were big sheets of stuffed peppers to bake, and they could be tricky. The peppers along the outside edges of the wide pans always blackened while the middle ones were too soggy. The kids hated stuffed peppers anyway. The students would eat stuffed peppers or they would starve. She received her paycheck either way.

Until the summer season started at Neptune’s, Holly was pleased to work with Robin in the big kitchen at Saint George’s. She knotted the cord of her full-length
rubberized apron which fell to her shins. The front bib stopped at her collarbone. It didn’t matter how she looked underneath. The peppers were roasting and she liked the sweet tinge it gave to the chalky hallways. In this manner, she reached out beyond her tiny station, and the kitchen assumed power over the academic workings of the place.

The kitchen had modern equipment, but she liked best the grey marble slabs where she could slap bread dough and tug it back under the heel of her hand. The big stainless sinks had tall gooseneck faucets, and she filled ten-gallon speckled kettles until they were almost too heavy to lift over to the big double range, where eight burners could go at once.