Twillyweed (6 page)

“Yeah. Real talented. Couldn't even pay the rent it turns out.”

“Jenny Rose! I can still remember that painting of three fish you did! So full of imagination and color and depth! Please don't tell me you're not painting all the time!”

She shrugged. “I'm painting. I've just lost my cocksureness, I guess.” She grinned, looking me dead in the eye. “That would be a good thing, you'll be telling me.”

“No. You need to be brash in this world of hope dousers.”

“Yeah.” Her voice was bitter. “There'll be plenty a them.”

Together our heads turned to the empty piazza across the way.
Funny
, I thought,
she doesn't have Carmela's knockout beauty, but she's captivating
.
She has charm. She's not burdened with self-consciousness but has that sporty, boyish way about her—not masculine, though she is graceful as a young boy is graceful
. She just didn't have girlish airs, probably because of the ways of those two Irish lesbians from the countryside who had raised her. There was something about her. It made me furious to think she'd been hurt. I knew Jenny Rose was quick to answer back. She had a sassy edge and a fresh mouth that was sure to get her into trouble, but she was a good-hearted kid. You could never say she wasn't.

I thought of something else. I ventured, “There was a guy, I seem to remember?”

Jenny Rose shook her head. “
Ach
. There was him and there was me and there was the girl I was painting. This all was in the south of France, mind. Him speaking French and me not.” She gave a false laugh of bravado, then her eyes clouded, childlike and vulnerable. “Aw, I might as well tell you. I'd been having a terrible time of it, got turned down by a gallery in Cannes, the one gallery I really wanted. Like I had this dream my stuff would hang there in the window, you know? The gallery owner held my paintings up and ridiculed them.” Her eyes glazed over in misery at the memory. “And then I came home, really down, see, only to come in and find them not talking. You know what I mean … that loud silence that says something's been going on before you walked in. Then there's the bed made that's never been made before.” She shrugged. “And the smell of it. It was there in the room like a thing.
Ach
. I just knew.”

“What did you do?”

“I beat her up.”

We looked at each other for a long moment and then I burst out laughing. I love the Irish part of my family with all my heart. I really do. I wiped my eyes. “So where is he now?”

“Oh, wait. Here's the best part. He was so worried about the poor dear—Chantal, that's her name—when I knocked her about, he drove her to the hospital. And there's me standing there watching him drive her away.”

“Well … er … how badly was she hurt?”

“Sure, it was nothing. A couple of teeth. It was my hand he should have been worrying about, my selling my pictures was what kept us in baguettes and Brie if the truth be told.” She looked at her fist. “I was dead certain I'd busted it.”

“But it's all right?”

“Yeah.” She turned it around admiringly. “No harm done. It was his ring knocked her teeth out, not me poor knuckles. I left the fuckin' thing in one of his shoes and the both of them to it. Took my painting stuff and hitchhiked around the Mediterranean, got a job as an au pair down there with a lovely Turkish family, on the southern coast near Ephesus. Side, the town was. I thought he was out of my system by Christmas and I went home. Don't you know he was there in Skibbereen with her! They'd opened a pub. A pub!” She snorted with disdain. Then she muttered, “His mother had set them up. She never did like me, the mother. Never thought me good enough, me coming from a house of raging lesbians and no money to speak of. And him with all his talk of becoming a great chef! I couldn't bear to walk past their bloody love nest. And there's everyone boasting about how grand it was. Even my own adoptive mum, Deirdre. ‘Ooh, you'll get the tastiest salmon in three ports at the White Tree!' She'd rave about the place! That's what they called it: the White Tree. After his mother's family.” She paused and added, “Protestants,” and I hoped she wasn't going to spit. But she only gave a morose shrug and said, “That's when I got to thinking it was time I looked up my blood mother.” She put her tongue in her cheek and winked. “She might be bad and all, but I can't imagine her eating at the White Tree. I had this feeling it would stick in her throat.”

I said a silent prayer that when Jenny Rose did meet Carmela, she wouldn't be too disappointed. Carmela had a way of making you think you were going to be best friends and then you might not see her for months. I suppose it would have been the perfect moment to confide what had happened to me with Enoch. But I didn't. I'm not sure why. Still very raw, it was, I guess. And—you know me—a part of me feeling guilty, maybe, like I was involved in a conspiracy. I kept it in.

Jenny Rose busied herself with her pencil. “And here I am. So.”

“Well, how did you come upon Sea Cliff anyway?” I changed the subject.

“That was because my adoptive mother, Deirdre, is pen pals with the rectory lady here, and Mr. Cupsand—that's my boss—needed someone because the wife took off with another man!”

“The old story,” I interjected bitterly.

“Yeah.” She lowered her voice. “And on top she made off with the family jewels!”

I gave a low appreciative whistle. “Want something to eat?”

“Nah.” She made a face.

I leaned across to the neighboring table for some more of the tasty honey. But with the gesture I caught sight of what Jenny Rose was doing. She'd dashed off the whole other side of the restaurant in deft strokes, capturing all the curious paraphernalia in perfect detail.

“Your turn,” she was saying. “Did you make your comeback as a photographer like you planned?”

“Well, no. I guess you heard about my divorce and my catastrophe of a bed-and-breakfast?”

“No.” She looked up, frankly interested. “Not a bit of it.”

“Nothing's turned out exactly as I'd planned, either. The truth is, I'm unemployed. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my life and I just found out my fiancé is gay.”

“You don't say!”

“I do.”

“Couldn't you tell, Auntie Claire? How daft can you be?”

I'm embarrassed to say my mouth quivered. “It seems you can live with a person and never know a single thing about who they really are!” I could feel the tears getting ready to let loose down my cheeks.

But Jenny Rose encouraged, “That's it. Cry. It will do you good.” With permission, it's almost impossible to cry so I did not. I blew my nose into my napkin. Jenny Rose made a face. “We're a fine pair, we are.” But my news seemed to have cheered her up. Together we had a rueful laugh, and I knew things were going to be all right between us. I noticed the young fellow who'd served us the tea was banging his tray lightly against his knees while he stood watching us. He had a handsome face with light blue eyes and dirty blond hair.

“British, are you?” he asked us.

“Fuck, no.” Jenny Rose scowled. “We're Irish.”

“Oh,” he said.

The other customer, disgruntled that the server was paying him no attention, threw his left arm out to examine his watch in a display of irritation, gave an adamant call for his check, paid, and left. Then three more customers came in so the young man didn't say any more, but when we were about to leave, he came over and asked Jenny Rose if he could see the drawing she'd done.

“Sure,” she said, handing it over as she stood.

“But,” he marveled, “this is wonderful!”

“Keep it.”

“Oh, but I didn't mean—”

“No, really. Keep it.”

“Thank you,” he murmured wonderingly. He stood watching her go, she oblivious to his admiring expression. She sauntered off in that way she had, generous and carefree and good in her skin, unself-conscious­, a kid on a soccer field.

“He was very keen,” I remarked when we stood squinting at each other outside in the sunshine, “and good looking.”

“Sweet.” The way she said it explained him away with all the world-weary offhandedness of the young. I looked back at the young man, conscientiously returned to his work now. He wore no earrings or tattoos or other bad boy accoutrements to signal and lure a young girl artist like Jenny Rose. He wasn't cool, but serious and intent. Nice. The kiss of death.

“Well …” Jenny Rose hoisted her backpack up onto her shoulder and smiled. “It was grand to see you. Do you think you'll come out here again?”

“I was thinking I'd poke around Sea Cliff.” I remembered the cottage but decided it would be silly to mention it. It would most likely come to nothing. I shrugged. “Wait around for you to get off tonight. Take you to dinner, if you're not too tired.”

Her hazel eyes lit up. “I thought you said you had no money.”

“Oh, I have money. I just don't have
money
.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah, that'll be great.”

We traded cell-phone numbers and the both of us hurried off, the young man watching us go from the window.

Jenny Rose

She took the long way down to the pier. Her knees were trembling, and her heart thudded with disappointment. She'd just lollygag pointlessly around the marina, she told herself, having no heart to go shopping or visit the rectory. Aunt Claire was great, a real doll, but—Jenny Rose stopped on the shore and lit a cigarette—she'd been so sure she'd get to meet her mother. So sure! She pressed her back against a piling, sank down onto the dock, and looked up at the moving sky. There was no comfort. She felt nothing but desolate. If she'd had a joint, she'd have smoked it. Feeling herself watched, she looked up. There was that guy again. That cute guy on the pirate ship, now tethered to the dock. With something like rebellion, she jutted her chin out and stared right back at him and with no more encouragement than that, he hoisted himself over the prow of his boat and came across to her, moving with an elegant, catlike poise.

“What's your name?” was the first thing out of the side of his mouth. The emphasis was on the
your
. Like she was next in line.

“Jenny Rose,” she answered, her eyes on the level of his worn, black jeans, “Jenny Rose Cashin. What's yours?”

“Malcolm McGlintock. But you can call me Glinty.”

She looked him up and down with more coolness than she felt. He was, she smirked to herself, right up her alley.

“Here on vacation?”

You could get arrested for working without papers. “Sort of,” she replied, smiling.

He tipped his head. “Irish?”

“Yeah. Scots?”

“That's right.” His eyes circled her slowly, assessing her, taking in the tattoo, the devil-may-care eyes. She was thin, but curvy. Suddenly the sun broke through. Liking what he saw, he said, “Wanna see my boat?”

She let him pull her up. “Why not?”

They walked together across the reach, the glare so bright you could hardly see. Jenny Rose followed him along the heaving dock and onto his sloop. The boat was a two-master, painted all black,
The Black Pearl Is Mine
, with a white stripe of a railing, pine-colored wood on the deck with faded Moroccan red sails when they were unfurled, tied up neatly now. Jenny Rose felt herself go weightless with the ebb and flow of the deck, the sound of the bay sloshing against the prow. She followed him, this perfect stranger, beautiful as he was, down the hatch and into the cabin, with his long, lustrous black hair, and for a moment she thought of her mother, never there, never there for her, not even now after she'd come so far across the ocean. She touched his sleeve and he turned around and she raised her chin and opened her mouth and, understanding what she wanted, he kissed her. Through the grinding cloth she felt the stirring of his erection. Their eyes caught in the dark and now, winding into the rickety tight galley and before she could catch her breath, he fell with her onto the bunk, pinning her under him, kissing her neck while they undid each other's jeans. His skin was milky white and dense, almost silver, with a fray of black hairs in a silky trail leading down. She saw him only swiftly, his pendulum toward her, as he lifted her leg and moved forward into her, his wet eyes catching hold of hers in the dark cabin. There was a moment when she flew away, propelled, and then, brought back to that elegant moment of staggering bliss, erupted. She'd felt that before, but never with someone, always alone under covers in her bed, and she pivoted into a frenzy of stillness, a clenching and then a gush without warning.

“Jenny Rose,” he whispered and flinched.

She was still in a spasm. She locked her knees up and she rattled again. “Oh, my God,” she breathed out, trickling down.

“Wow,” he said, turning her face. “Most girls don't get there so quick.”

And she shuddered again.

“That was awesome,” he said, getting up. He went into the head.

She got sober quick. “Fuck,” she said, remembering. Patsy Mooney would be waiting, wondering what she was up to. She reached for her jeans. He was still in the loo. “I've got to go,” she called in.

“Okay,” he called out. No
Hold on, I'll walk you home
.

She felt in the dark for her boots, grabbed her jacket, still trembling with the spinning of it, into the blinding brilliant sunlight. Just get away quick was all she could think. On the ladder over the side she hesitated. Just in case he would call up to her. No. No sound. She'd left her panties on the floor. Damn. Nobody around. A crass sound made her jump and she looked up on the prow, but it was only a crane, a small rangy one, watching her. A baby one, maybe. She buttoned up her jean jacket. She ran, footfalls muffled on the deck, past the spot on the beach from where she'd first seen him, alluring and smirking. The wind hit her and she was cold again now, so she continued running, under the cover of sunlight and end-of-May wet wind, up the hill, way, way up the hill to somewhere else, anywhere but here and who she knew she was.