Twillyweed (7 page)

Claire

I hung around, spent the day poking around the town, exploring the shops and the library, thinking I might run into Jenny Rose, but I never did. The low clouds had moved along and the evening was sunlit by the time I made my way down to the marina. It was a good way by foot and I was reminded again just how out of shape I'd become. There was a parking lot and then seven or eight rows of boats. I went into a restaurant called the Hideaway that catered to the sailors and occasional townies. It wasn't serving dinner yet but someone who looked like he might be the owner—collared shirt and mildly prosperous looking—was sitting there with another man, a delivery man in a route uniform.

“Excuse me.” I approached their table in the sudden dark and asked if they knew Noola's son's boat. They both shrugged. Behind the bar a wiry old fellow in an undershirt was carting a full pail of calamari entrails. He dumped the slimy lot into a bin, covered it, and shut it tight, then pulled a stogie from his mouth, and said to no one in particular, “That'll be Morgan Donovan's boat.”

“Oh,
Morgan
!” they both said at once, sitting taller with the sure air of respect. They pointed me over toward the third dock. “He's got that forty-foot sloop out there, the
Gnomon
. She's docked right next to the schooner, the
For Sail
. Get it?” The route guy spelled it out. “For
S-A-I-L
?”

“Ha-ha. I get it. Thanks.” I took off down the walkway and checked off the names of one pretty boat after the next. I don't know anything about boats except I like to be on one. This sloop was navy blue and white and clean as a whistle. The
Gnomon
. It rocked gently in the flood of evening gold. “Hello!” I called. “Mr. Donovan!” There seemed to be no one there. I didn't like to peek below deck. There was a bell, a big brass one, up on the deck and I climbed on board and pulled its cord so it clanged.

A man's head popped up, surprised, and whacked on the beam. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted, rubbing his head. He was a onetime redheaded, now amber-haired fellow, weathered tan from years of sun and fuzzed with gold. My first thought was,
Uh-oh, he looks like a golfer
.

“What the hell's wrong with you?” he yelled, and in what sounded to me like a Scottish accent he raved on, “Can't you give a cry out before you come on board? You scared the crap out of me!”

“I did.” I took two steps back. “You're wearing earphones!”

“What?” His eyes were greenish gold.

“I said you're wearing earphones!”

“Oh!” He slipped them off and threw them violently down on his bench. “Well, you've done a fine job messing up me varnish!”

I looked down and behind me and saw my own footprints. “Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry.”

“Women.” He shook his head scornfully. And with that he picked me up bodily, flung me over his shoulder, and put me over the side.

“Hey! Let me go!” I protested, but he already had.

“It took me two hours to finish that job!” he flashed angrily.

“Well, you should have put up a sign!” I shrieked with injured pride.

He held up the pertinent sign he must have been working on when I'd surprised him. Only the last
N
and
T
were missing. His face was all sucked in with fury. “What the hell do you want, anyway?” he growled.

I spat on a tissue and wiped his red paint print from my arm. “I was wondering what you're doing with the cottage up on the cliff.”

He searched my eyes for a long moment and held them. Then with this crushed look he turned from me. He sort of sagged.

I remembered what the neighbor had said. His mother only dead three weeks. “Look …” I stammered, “I'm really sorry. I sure know how to start off on the wrong foot. I'll come back later.” I don't know what I thought he'd do. Say something conciliatory, I guess. But he whirled on me and shouted, “Just don't come back at all. Just leave well enough alone!”

“Okay. Okay.” I tried to sound soothing and I tripped, backward, away up the deck.
Sheesh
, I thought, rubbing my arm,
what a grouch!
I cleared the marina and stomped back up the beach road, but for the life of me I couldn't remember which cliff stairs I'd come down. All I could think was what an unnecessarily rude, cantankerous man he was! And so strong, picking me up like that! He'd made me feel like a foolish little girl. I realized I was trembling. I stopped walking and sank down onto the nearest bottom step and as I did so I heard a harsh ripping sound. It was my pants. Or should I say, Carmela's (that I hadn't yet mentioned to her that I'd borrowed) good interview pants. They were split soundly up the back. If I'd have had a cigarette, I think I'd have smoked it. And now the best part, Carmela's fancy shoes—the ones she was so finicky about—were absolutely crusted with varnish. They looked caramelized. It all seemed to catch up with me. My marriage. Now Enoch. I let my head down and this time I did cry, cried my heart out, my face cradled on my knees at the bottom of the dock shelf. I just collapsed and crumpled into a mush of mascara raccoon eyes and tears. Then, just to make everything perfect, the man from the boat, Morgan whatever his name was, came up the road. He was carrying my purse.

“I believe this belongs to you,” he said and plunked it down at my feet, removing his eyes from the sorry sight of me. But I was beyond caring. My nose, he didn't have to tell me, was running like a hose. A hose! I collapsed again into wretched sobs.

He handed me his handkerchief and squared his fists to his hips, seemingly oblivious to my hysterics. “I keep telling you people to leave me alone. Don't you have any respect?” he went on. “You people think all I'm interested in is the lure of your money.”

I reared up in dismay. “Hold on a second.” I snorted disdainfully, for I, too, am (or was) a hotheaded red-head. “While
we people
demystify our-our-our tantalizing allure.” I gave a meaningful good honk into his pristine handkerchief, dredged up what was left of my shreds of dignity, and stood to go. My feet, however, were already stuck to the ground with his quick drying varnish and I fell like a tree on my nose.

Jenny Rose

She hung up the phone. No answer. Again. All evening she'd been calling, and here it was night. This was odd. She wouldn't have pegged Auntie Claire as one to let you down. She went upstairs to the kitchen. Wendell was still sitting at the table with Patsy Mooney. He was eating creamed corn with a spoon and picking at a saucer of torn-up little bits of deli ham. He was having trouble with the spoon, however, and the creamed corn leaked onto the tablecloth.

“Not like that.” Patsy Mooney picked his little hand up and smacked it.

The little boy did nothing. Said nothing. He was locked in a shell.

Jenny Rose strolled in. “Hello.” She smiled and sat down next to him.

“He don't like to be talked to while he's eating.” Patsy Mooney leaned over and mopped the table around Wendell's plate. “Don't you get up until you finish every bit of what's on that plate, mister,” she said, aiming her pointer finger at the boy.

“Oh, go soak your head,” Jenny Rose said.

“Excuse me? What was that?”

Jenny Rose batted her eyelashes innocently. “What? No, nothing. So. Wendell. Would you like to go for a stroll?”

“A walk?” Patsy Mooney shrieked. “In the dark? He gotta finish his supper!”

“Where's your jumper, cookie?” Jenny Rose took the boy by the hand. “Your sweater?”

“And he got his programs to watch!”

Wendell slipped to the floor and they went out into the hall where he pointed to the mackintosh hung on the coat tree.

“Close enough,” Jenny Rose said and unhooked the thing and put it on the boy. It practically reached the floor, but he'd be warm.

Patsy Mooney trotted after them and ranted on, “I'm not taking this crap just because Mr. Cupsand is in the city and isn't here to see! You doing whatever you feel like! Radiance taking off without even asking! Mr. Piet taking the car! What the hell do I look like? What'll Mr. Cupsand say?” She sank onto the hallway chair. “Now Noola's dead it's all gone wrong.”

He wasn't sure what would happen next, the boy, but Jenny Rose had the distinct feeling he was game. He watched them both from behind his thick glasses, his bad eye dancing with the stress and his lips pulled tight, like closed purse strings. Jenny Rose put her own soft beret on the boy's feathery hair and out they went, down the great steps. They walked along, hand in hand, under the glittering branches. Jenny Rose could smell the earth, rich and loamy. She wasn't going to bring up the stones. Not yet. One thing at a time. There were plenty of houses to look into. The moon was a sickle but bright. “That's an American sky, Wendell. And a new moon,” Jenny Rose informed him, remembering her Sikh driver. “Good luck.”

She began to hum. And then, just when she thought the kid had started to cry and she felt her heart sink, she heard the shred of a tinny sound of a sort of a hum. Like a song. Not a song, but almost.

Claire

He'd driven me very swiftly, I must say, to the hospital. I'd telephoned my mother on the way to tell her I'd be staying out here with Jenny Rose.

“Jenny Rose, is it?” My mother flew into a rage. “You've been drinking! I can hear it in your voice. Drinking and driving! What kind of a good influence is that?!”

I'd shifted the paper towel wad soaked with blood from my nose so she'd understand me. “Yes, Mother,” I'd agreed, just to spare her a sleepless night, “that's why I can't be driving anywhere. I'll call you tomorrow.”

Morgan had stuck me on top of a blanket in his car—his precious upholstery to be protected—maneuvered me into the emergency room, stayed at my elbow while they'd signed me in, and then he'd walked out and left me there. He should have called an ambulance because then they take you first. I was good and sorry for myself, let me tell you, and I wanted, for the time being, to stay that way.

They did their battery of outlandishly expensive, agonizingly long tests that go on sporadically through the night and always just when you're dropping off. I checked my cell phone. Not one message! I yearned for a toothbrush and a change of clothes. It was my second day, now, in Carmela's go-to-the-city-look-for-a-job clothes. But I couldn't call her. Both my sisters were in Italy, remember, dining on anchovies and Gorgonzola. Drinking wine from Orvieto. I was all alone.
Nobody cares
, I thought as I sniveled. I waited and waited, crackers from painkillers, for the plastic surgeon to come and have a look at me. Sprawled on my creaking gurney, I floated in and out of a doze while the night passed in white emergency light North Shore noise.

Jenny Rose

She woke up with a start. Something … God! What was it? From the scant green luminescence of the clock she could make out the form of the big cat on her chest. He was standing on top of her, looking into her face. Sam. For one groggy moment she looked back at him. “Jesus!” she cried out and knocked him off her. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

She'd been dreaming she was standing on a chimney and the chimney was going to give way. There'd been a squirrel in there, making a terrible sound. The chimney had melted, sort of, and then crumpled beneath her. It must have been the cat making that sound. She looked at the clock. Five thirty-three. She'd never get back to sleep now. She sat up, swinging her legs over the side. Was it morning or night? She hated this room. Hated it. You couldn't tell if it was dark or light out! She threw off her bedclothes and shivered, then dressed in a pair of jeans and a warm sweatshirt.

She crept up the stairs and creaked open the door. It was almost morning but too early to go bonking around the kitchen. She'd wake someone for sure. She put her socks and sneakers on. The cat streaked past her, almost knocking her over. She went to let him out the back door, bumped into a stool, tried again for the door, but then a sixth sense made the hairs stand up on her neck. “Hello?” she whispered. She waited. No one. Outside the wind sent up a pale whistle. “Shite, I'm daft!” she cursed and went to open the door. The knob would not turn. She looked over her shoulder then tried the knob again. The cat waited and slunk between her legs. She remembered you had to turn the lock left. It made a crunching sound and opened. The fog slipped in. The cat went out and disappeared into the dark and she followed. For some reason she felt safer outside. She kept a cap crumpled in her sweatshirt pocket and popped it on her head, then stood still for a moment getting her bearings. The rose garden was loopy with fog shrouds. She found the cliff with her eyes and went the other way toward the road. It had rained and a sense of relief filled her as her feet sunk into the drive; she broke into a run. That was it. She'd have a fine run before the day began, one up on the rest of the world. She took the beach steps down and wangled her way over the salmon-bright rafters of buoys left out there to dry, then trod with heavier footfalls along the sand.

Jenny Rose ran for as long as one could go without coming to the outward jut of the marina, the end of the point, then circled and made her way back to the cliff. A wisp of light in the east congratulated her. She was in fine shape. Wherever she'd lived, she'd run whenever she could. You had to make yourself—that was the thing. The madder you were at the world, then the faster you ran. She scanned the marina for
The Black Pearl Is Mine
but it wasn't there. Good. A loose sailor, that's what he was. She must have been out of her mind. She hoped to God he hadn't given her syphilis. Of course it was better this way. What kind of a girl would he think she was? The kind she indeed was, it turned out. She laughed out loud with caustic unfamiliarity and heard herself. The light was coming swifter now, a dull and unconfirmed color. A dog was out in the bay swimming in the lapping waves. A golden. She smiled, running, and sparked her step. No, it wasn't a dog. She stopped where she was, bent from her waist, gasping hard now. She was tired. It wasn't a dog. She stepped forward, her head before her, trying to make it out … A momentary flash of something. It looked like … a person!