The Whiskey Sea Page 21

  “What makes you think it’s going to be over?”

  “Everything ends, Frieda.” He tipped his hat back on his head to catch some air on his forehead, a familiar move she’d seen so many times back when he was teaching her to become a mechanic, and he draped an elbow out the window. “Someday they’ll get rid of this damn fool law, and you’ll have to go back to making a legal living. Car engine’s about the same as a boat engine, and cars are more popular than boats. Pretty soon everybody is going to own one, even poor folks.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure.”

  He told her to brake before the road curved, and she followed his instructions. She drove through the town and also many memories. Two years she’d worked alongside this man, learning the ropes of being a mechanic. And he’d asked for nothing in return. At the next intersection she braked and made a turn. “So, what are you naming this contraption?”

  Gazing straight ahead, he turned quiet, his hands on his knees fidgeting slightly. “I was thinking of calling her Della . . . after your mama. I didn’t know her of course, but I do know how much she meant to you.”

  Frieda’s mouth dried. “How do you know that?”

  “You wouldn’t visit her grave if you hadn’t loved her.”

  Frieda could only nod. Hicks was almost too perceptive for comfort.

  “Besides, I like the name. So that’s what I’m calling this baby—that is, if you don’t mind.”

  She smiled at him, even though thoughts of her mother always made her a touch sad. “That’s really nice of you, Hicks.”

  She drove on. “Do you mind if we stop at her grave?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said softly.

  She tilted her head from one side to the other, working out the kinks.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It’s too nice a day for graveyards.”

  Again he said, “Whatever you want.”

  Focusing on the road, she tightened her grip on the wheel. “Someone puts flowers on her grave every now and then. A long time ago I used to think it was Silver, but even before he had the stroke I figured out it wasn’t him. Do you know who it is?”

  He sat quiet, unmoving, facing ahead. “No.”

  “Do you have any idea . . . ?”

  “None. Sorry. Has to be someone roughly twice your age for him to have known her.”

  “How do you know it’s a man?”

  “I don’t. I guess I just imagine it that way. Maybe I’m a romantic type, only you never saw it.”

  She looked over and saw yearning in his eyes. He still had feelings for her—unbelievable. For a moment she was overcome with conflict. She and Hicks shared something like love, didn’t they? Maybe the finer parts of it, at least. They had the love of understanding, compassion, commonalities, and despite the differences in their lines of work, they shared community and passion about the same things. But it went beyond that. She respected Hicks, because he possessed something farseeing about life.

  But her heart belonged to someone else. Her life was with Charles now, and she was too consumed by his kisses and loveliness. She filled with a deep ache at the thought of their nights together, which lifted her above anything she’d ever imagined before.

  He shook his head and said, “I’m not a man for graveyards myself. Don’t ever go into one unless I have to for a family burial.”

  “Do you believe they’re haunted?”

  “No,” he said as if quite sure of himself. “I don’t believe in ghosts, don’t believe in heaven or hell. Don’t believe in any of that stuff.”

  “So, if you don’t believe in ghosts or an afterlife, what do you believe in?” she asked, and couldn’t quite believe how the conversation had turned.

  “I believe in the here and now. I believe in people.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He sighed. “That people show you who they are in the here and now.”

  Frieda smirked and made a chuffing sound. “You must not think very much of me in the here and now.”

  “Hardly true.” He sat still and never took his eyes from the road ahead. “You’re the fish that got away.”

  When she saw Charles that night, right away she could see there was something different about him. He had suddenly sealed himself off again. He made polite talk, but when it came to anything else it was as if he’d built a seawall between them. They were staying in for a quiet night at the summer house and had steamed clams on the stove for dinner. Now they sat on the veranda with a bottle of what Charles said was exceptionally good scotch, poured into crystal tumblers over ice, and the setting sunlight was peach and orange and lit his lovely face with the most luminous color.

  He could’ve been a movie star. He could’ve lit up the screen and broken the hearts of many a young woman. The deep tan he was acquiring set his teeth off like a row of shining, straight tiles. Moments such as this, full of his disarming loveliness, sent Frieda spinning. It was hard to fathom that Charles was spending his time with her, that she was with him. But what was wrong now?

  “You’re quiet today,” she finally said. But he wasn’t exactly quiet. The distance between them, however, was hard to admit and even harder to describe. It was only a feeling, but a strong one nevertheless.

  He smiled, but there was no joy in it. “Many devious thoughts roam inside this mind.” He tapped his temple.

  “Devious?”

  “I saw you out today,” he said. “I saw you out in an old motorcar with another guy.”

  She turned more fully toward him, not knowing yet if his comment amounted to an observation or some kind of accusation.

  “You mean Hicks? He’s not another guy. I’ve known him my entire life.”

  He asked flatly, “Who is he to you?”

  “A family friend. He’s a clammer. He’s the one who bought Silver’s boat, the boat I wanted to be mine.”

  Charles rubbed his chin. “Why don’t you buy her back? Or better yet, get yourself a nice boat.”

  “It was—it is—a nice boat. Simple but solid. Silver built her himself. Maybe I will try to buy it back someday.”

  When Charles stayed quiet, she said, “Anyway, Hicks is just a friend. Well, more than a friend. He also trained me to be a mechanic. He gave me a skill I can always use.”

  Shrugging as if it meant nothing to him, Charles said, “I’m not the jealous type.”

  She reached over and playfully punched him in the arm. “And why not? If I saw you with another woman, I’d be jealous.”

  “Jealousy is a vile emotion,” he said, and took a swig of the scotch.

  “Oh really?”

  He nodded once. “It’s beneath me.”

  She almost laughed but thought better of it. “Why did you mention him, then?”

  After that a leaden silence fell over them, and his body tensed. His lips formed a straight, thin line, and his eyes were like blue ice. A chill filtered through the planks beneath her feet and traveled up her spine.

  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 wh
o 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.