Sterling's Reasons (7 page)
They both slipped out of their seat belts and got out of the car. The air just burst with the smell of salt and fish. He put his forearms on the roof of the car
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and looked at her. “Ever heard of natural-grain bread and vegetables…the green ones that are good for you.”
“Ooooh.” She made a face at him and slammed the car door. “Sea kelp and green beans. Not on your life. You can have whatever you like. I’m not opposed to watching someone eat that stuff. Come on, MacDaniels. Let’s look this town over. I’m sure I can find something to spend money on. There’s got to be a few touristy shops mixed in with the basic ones.”
They walked close to each other from the parking lot to the sidewalks of the street. It was fairly quiet. A few visitors milled here and there, cameras hanging around their necks. Locals went about their business of putting dimes in parking meters, unloading delivery trucks, and pumping gas in their cars. An older man sat on a rickety wooden chair in front of the gas station doing absolutely nothing but looking around. Sterling threw her hand up to him and he responded with a nod and a weary smile.
Joe decided it might be a good time to coax some information out of her. The direct approach of demanding to know her game hadn’t worked so he would try a different way. “New York is certainly a different world than this. That old man sitting in front of the gas station could be arrested for loitering.”
“You ought to know. I don’t suppose D.C. is much different. I’ll bet you were a fair but firm cop. Am I right?”
She did it again, changed the direction of the conversation. He put his hands in his pockets to stifle the urge to throttle her. “I was good at my job.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked innocently as she paused to look in the window of a curio shop.
“I don’t miss anything.” He looked away from the shop toward the docks.
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“Really?” She looked at him and reminded herself to be patient—and patiently goad him. “Must be nice to be able to simply cut yourself off from everything that meant something to you.”
“Some things you have no control over.”
She turned her most innocent face to him. “Name one.”
He pretended interest in the shop window now, simply to avoid her eyes. “I merely said I didn’t miss anything. It didn’t call for a lengthy discussion.”
Sterling looked at his reflection in the window.
Yeah,
she thought,
yes you do.
You miss everything.
“Look at that castle,” she cried delightedly. “Isn’t it beautiful? Look at all those little steps. They’re cut so precisely.” She moved to get a better look and squealed again. “When you move around, it winks and sparkles with a rainbow of colors. Emerald. The emerald castle. It makes me really believe in the impossible. It sets my imagination fleeing up the steps and into the arms of my Prince Charming. I love it.”
She scooted around Joe and into the store. She flashed him an excited grin.
He watched her bounce to the young sales clerk and practically drag her over to the three-inch-high piece of cut crystal to inquire about the price. The clerk turned it up and showed Sterling the price tag. A frown creased her forehead and then her face fell in disappointment. She thought for only a second before she shook her head and thanked the woman.
She walked back to join Joe and took one more longing look at the piece of glass, and then the frown was gone and replaced with a shine of expectation of what the next shop might offer.
“You can afford a Porsche but not a chunk of glass?” He fell in step beside her. Her shoulder brushed his.
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“Eighty dollars? It’s wonderful and magical and plays with my mind, but I am sensible most of the time. Now here’s a good place. Probably nothing over fifty-nine cents.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him in behind her, but he didn’t miss the second wistful glance she threw back toward her castle.
It was a real tourist junk shop. Straw hats hung from the ceiling. Plastic sea gulls flew from fishwire between them. Racks on the wall held T-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts and bandanas. Counters ran through the middle of the store filled with gaudy shell art and jewelry. Ashtrays with questionable sayings and toilet paper that played music stood alongside glasses advertising Delaware. He felt out of place and foolish. He wondered for the third time what he was doing here and why he was with this woman. To find out what her reason for being in North Ocean City was, he reminded himself as he picked up an ashtray with a sea gull perched on a pier stuck on it. He set it back down with a decided klunk.
Sterling chattered to everyone. It didn’t seem to matter if they worked there or not, she managed to find something to say to all of them. She ran back to him and tugged on his jacket sleeve.
“You have got to see these earrings.”
He reluctantly followed her to the jewelry case and looked from her to the earrings and back again. “They’re awful.”
“I know,” she said delightedly and turned to the sales clerk. “I’ll take them, and don’t put them in a bag, I’m going to wear them.”
Sterling attached the sea shells with trailing silver chains to her ears as they left the shop. They swung as she walked and tangled in her hair.
“Oh, I forgot my hat. The big straw one. I bought that, too.” She turned and dashed back in the store and came out adorned in a really badly worked straw sombrero.
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“It’s tacky and they’re terrible. You look silly…” he stated, all the while fighting back a smile. He wanted to laugh, but he figured that was what she wanted, and he wouldn’t do it. Either she was an extremely clever woman or she was simply recovering from a frontal lobotomy.
“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” she rattled on. “Now here’s serious stuff. Let’s go look at the ten-carat diamonds and rubies. I love gold. Just the feel of it. Let’s go. I always thought it would be so neat to be in a big fancy restaurant and sit under those lights that make all your jewelry sparkle and catch people in the eye.
Rings on every finger.” She held her hand in front of her and elegantly wiggled her fingers.
She was bouncing rather than walking as they went into the jewelry store. A little bell over the door jangled and two heads turned their way to smile a greeting.
They were the only people in the shop. The obvious proprietors were in their sixties, at least. Both had gray hair, old, tired bodies, and gleaming eyes. They exchanged a knowing, sweet look as they watched the young couple walk around looking in the cases.
Sterling didn’t miss that glance and it plucked at something hidden deep away inside her. A quick assessment of the couple told Sterling that they had been together a long time. They had seen a lot of things in their lifetime, tragedies and comedies, and they had held fast to each other and they had made it…happily.
She sighed as she admired the pretty gems. She and Jerry could have eventually been like the proprietors. She briefly wondered what things would be like now if she had gone out onto the tarmac and simply stopped him from going—
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Joe’s voice broke into her thoughts. “From the looks of you, these people have to know you’re not going to buy anything. Why take up their time?”
“You are such a grouch, Joe. Relax. People browse all the time.” She stopped long enough to look up at him. “Are you just naturally surly?”
“And if I am, it’s my business. Get on with it,” he grunted and turned to another display case and pretended to examine the gold and silver all lined up in neat, expensive rows.
Sterling caught the owners watching them and smiling. Young lovers. Is that what they looked like to the world? Would it be such a ridiculous thing?
“Good afternoon.” She directed her thoughts and herself to the people behind the counter. “I’d like to buy a silver charm for my six-year-old niece.
She’s just started to take dancing lessons. A ballerina. Could I see what you have?”
Joe moved over to the door, leaned against the jamb and just watched her.
She was so lit up. How could she be so happy all the time?
Why
was she so happy all the time? What was that small momentary lapse when they had first entered the shop as she had sighed and a fleeting sadness had darted across her face? It had vanished almost as soon as it appeared…What had triggered it?
The purchase made, along with new friends, they left the store twenty minutes later.
The next shop was a women’s boutique. He stopped when she tugged him by the hand again. “Not this time. I’ll just wander around out here for a little while.”
“Wimp. I think God should have given men the glee it takes to shop. Women would be much happier. You’re not having a good time.”
“I said we’d go. I didn’t say I’d enjoy myself.”
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Oh, well. She was getting him out, circulating his blood, and stimulating the gray matter. Let him sulk if he must. She disappeared into the store between the circular racks of clothing, sporting all colors and sizes.
They were only half a block down from the docks. Joe could see the ocean and hear the sway and bump of ships tied to the docks. He had always loved the sea. He guessed that was why he headed down this way. He did find some kind of peace with it, but he knew he couldn’t accept the solace. So he fought it. It was the same with the tugging that went on inside him when he was with this woman. War. Always war of one kind or another. All he wanted was… He shrugged.
A horn blew close by. Kids rode two-wheelers down the street. A kite bounced in the sky, skittering on the changing breezes. A dog wandered up to him, took one look at him, and wandered on his way. Joe found he had been on the verge of bending down to ruffle the dog’s fur when the animal decided he didn’t look friendly.
Peace. He rolled the word over in his mind. Was that what he wanted? The guilt, the sadness, the total shock of what he had done still overwhelmed him so much that thinking was hard. It was hard to sequence things. It was hard to concentrate and, sometimes when he did, the scenes he played over in his mind only served to tear him up even more. He knew all about physical pain.
Emotional and mental pain were also no strangers. This was such a totally different thing… He couldn’t even think of a word for it. It was easier to be mad, angry with the whole world and everyone in it. It was easier to be mindlessly depressed than to think.
When Sterling whirled out of the shop, Joe laughed heartily, involuntarily, and shook his head.
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She was dressed in an off-the-shoulder bright-yellow blouse and a below-the-knee Gypsy skirt that spotted every color in the rainbow. In a bag, dangling from her hand, were her clothes and her shoes. She turned around twice so the skirt swirled around her knees. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think you’re crazy as hell.” But he didn’t miss the smooth nearly tanned swell of her breasts just where the blouse rested. He didn’t miss the curving sleekness of legs as the skirt settled. And he couldn’t miss the delight in her pretty eyes or not want to catch her smiling mouth with his. He only had time to wonder how all this was happening to him, through the haze of despair, when she caught her arm through his and led him to the little restaurant.
“I see picnic tables down by the docks. We’ll get carry-out and sit down there. What do you say?” She looked up at him with a warmth that touched him.
“Don’t you want to find a nice expensive restaurant that can serve you up that dripping lobster?”
“Not especially. Maybe another time. I’d like to sit at the tables and watch the world go by.”
“The sun’s out,” he said as he squinted upward. “I guess if you promise the sun will shine and it does, I should trust your decision to eat at the picnic tables.”
She casually hugged his arm to her as they went inside. He bent close to her ear and asked, “Aren’t you embarrassed to look this ridiculous?”
“No.” She strolled up to the counter. “You do have carry-out, right? Good,”
she nodded at the young man with the paper cap on his head and scanned the menu on the board above the stove, “I’ll have two hot dogs with ketchup and onions. No make that onion rings and french fries. Do you have the curly ones?”
“No, ma’am,” the boy said as he looked at Joe for help.
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Joe simply stood by silently and watched nonchalantly as the hapless creation of color and sound rambled on. When it was his turn he ordered two slices of pizza with black olives and pepperoni and two long necks.
A little boy burst through the door of the restaurant, closely followed by his fussing mother. The child ran toward the counter, lickety split, and bumped smack into Sterling, propelling him backward and down to the floor with a thud.
Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, the handsome little fellow jumped right back up, but Sterling knew he must have whacked his elbow pretty hard on the floor. She bent and picked him up, cradling him on her hip. “Whoa there, cowboy. Slow down. You’ll tire your horse out before the day is over.”
The knowledge was immediate. It was a mistake. But one she couldn’t recognize until it was too late. It had simply been a natural reaction. Anyone would have done it. The wave of déjà vu hit her hard.
It was so natural to have the boy in her arms. His face was gooey from the lollipop he managed not to drop through all this and he was smiling up at her with a cupid’s-bow mouth and bright, eager eyes. Memories flooded back.
Pictures of her own child wavered before her eyes. A wave of pain washed over her again and again, so powerful that she reeled with it. She felt the hot sting of tears as they tried to force their way out and she squeezed her eyes shut tight for an instant.