Barefoot Beach (33 page)

“So now you know he's not playing around behind your back, right? You're finally convinced the man is innocent?” I asked Margo at eleven Sunday morning as we toted buckets of water from the ocean. They'd help fill the huge hole that Pete, along with Margo's theater crew, had dug in the sand, the first step in building the medieval castle representing
Camelot
, next year's musical production at the Driftwood.

“He left Baltimore at six this morning to return here in time to start the dig. I give him points for that,” she allowed. “On the major crime—adultery's still a crime in Maryland, believe it or not, with a laughable ten-dollar fine—or his desire for it, jury's still out. Though we did have the Viagra talk.”

I stepped on a starfish but didn't stop. With Margo you had to keep up.

“He was in our bathroom when he went for the Viagra and found the vitamins instead. He came out shaking the bottle. I explained and he explained. He said what you said. That he was embarrassed to admit he had a soft-serve problem with, in his words, his beautiful, sexy wife. He was afraid I'd take it as a personal insult.”

“How could he
possibly
think that?” My tone was on the wrong side of snide.

She ignored me. “I suppose the rest of the evidence was circumstantial. Now I know that the nonstop texting was from the managing editor, the news director, and the lawyers at the station to work out possible terms of a contract. Also that some of them were from Max Cassidy about a possible commercial starring Pete for the casino at Upton Abbey. And the appointments with Dr. Wu were about Pete's possibly getting his face in shape for high-def TV.”

“Lots of possibles,” I said.

“According to Pete that's why he didn't tell me before. Nothing was set in place and he didn't want me to noodge him. Drive him crazy, was the way he so diplomatically put it. He says I get too involved and emotional before I have all the facts, and since he didn't have them . . .” She shrugged, sloshing water on both of us.

“And now he does?”

“After last night, the station got a bunch of positive posts on their fan page. They're ready for him to sign. Now it's up to Pete to make the decision. Or me. Bottom line, it's up to me, he says. We're a team, or at least that's his slick sales pitch.” Her opinion of it was a cynical twist to her mouth. “But I'm not sure how I feel.”

Her expression went flat as Pete dashed over. “Sweetheart, let me take those.” He relieved her of the two buckets. “And I set up your music.” The sound track from
Camelot
. “The Merry Month of May” was wafting through The Grilling Month of August air. “It's really pulling them in. You're collecting a crowd. I'll take yours too, Nora.” He scooped up my buckets.

We watched him swing the water, as light as air to him, as he took giant strides back to the Driftwood dig. “Big suck-up,” Margo grumbled, which was better than Big Cheat. “Can you tell he wants this gig bad? Really bad. But there are issues to consider.”

“Oh, Margo, I can't believe you're still worried about the extracurricular activities.”

“Possible ones, possibly,” she said, pensively. “I've been thinking.”

She was always thinking. When it came to Pete, usually the worst.

“On TV, he'd build a new fan base, not just the old-timers who remember him from the field.” She twisted her wedding band, a diamond eternity ring, around her finger. “Dana Montagne has a theory.” The newscaster who helped Pete choose the ruby bracelet. “She says TV blurs the lines between image and reality. You come into people's homes. You enter dark bedrooms bringing light. You report the eleven o'clock news, and it's pillow talk. All that makes for a false intimacy.”

According to Margo, Dana left her husband for a fan who fell in love with her beautiful talking head and made sure he got to know the rest of her. The affair in three dimensions had fizzled, but only after Dana had divorced the nice husband.

“Dana's a Catholic-school girl, first in her class at Mercy High, and she fell off the marital wagon. On the other hand, Pete Manolis is no altar boy, so what are the odds there? And when he travels with the team for away games? Ugh. That's party time. There will be temptations.”

“Margala!” I used the name her tante Violet called her, standing in for the one voice Margo believed in. “There are always temptations. You've got to trust him. And if you can't trust him, trust yourself.”

“Me? I trust me to work my ass off to protect my marriage.”

“I'm talking about if Pete . . .” She waved me off as the man in question, her big question, came loping back with our empty pails to refill. “Not now,” she whispered. “But we'll talk.”

Of course we would. We always did. Well, she always did. Me, not all the time.

For example, Scott Goddard and our incomplete and inconclusive love affair had not been a recent topic of conversation. Like Pete, I was not
about to share with Margo before all the facts were in. She, for a change, was too caught up in her own angst to bug me about mine.

I would have had nothing earthshaking to report, anyway. Scott and I had gone to Coneheads for ice cream after class Tuesday, where we came face-to-face with Jack. In a rare instance of advance planning, he'd traded work shifts with Stewie in order to be free on the Saturday night when Dirk would be in town.

The conversation between Jack and Scott had been limited to:

“Toppings?”

“M&M'S for me. And for your mom . . .”

“Heath Bar bits and double whipped cream. That never changes.”

Jack handed over the order with his standard smile and parting line, “Enjoy, folks.”

As we spooned our ice cream, Scott said, “Do you get the feeling we're being scoped?” My son's eyes flitted like fireflies from his customers to us.

I smirked. “You think?”

Later, as we pulled into the parking space at my house, I said, “Jack's on until midnight. Would you like to come in for coffee?” Innocent, I swear. No intent to seduce. But Scott may have thought otherwise because he said, “Tempting, but I think I'll take a rain check. I saw my psychologist again yesterday and I've got some homework to do before I'm allowed to . . . Uh, I'm not sure how to explain this without sounding like a doofus, but it's kind of like the peasant having to overcome obstacles before he can win the hand of the princess. Well, I don't necessarily mean peasant, or your hand, but whatever.” He started laughing. “Oh jeez, I'm making this worse.”

“No, I've got it. You've got to slay dragons to claim my whatever.” I was laughing too. When we trailed off, he leaned over and we kissed. One deep, loaded-with-meaning-and-pleasure kiss.

“Going now,” I said when we separated.

“I'll watch you in,” Scott said.

I was maybe three steps down the lantern-lit path when he called softly out the car window. “Nora, I'm making progress. I just wanted you to know.”

There was no right answer for that, so I just nodded and kept walking.

Sunday at three o'clock, and we were finishing up King Arthur's castle an hour before the judging. I was on my knees in the sand carving a turret when Margo trilled, “Norrie, you've got a visitor.”

I raised my head and zip-lined from Margo's wide-eyed gaze to Scott. I felt my heart leap, then crack a little at the sight of him. Because what I noticed first, what everyone would, was his prosthetic leg. He was wearing shorts—not a pair of knee-length walking shorts that might have softened the image, but high-cut athletic shorts that shouted,
“Look at me, look at me!”
And the part of him that had been added wasn't one of those artistically molded limbs, silicone sheathed to look like the real thing. I'd worked with a woman at the VA hospital who had a wardrobe of prostheses, pale for the winter, tan for the summer, shapely duplicates of her other leg down to the freckles. She even had one with an arched foot for dancing in high heels, and one for sandals, its toes painted with a French pedicure

What Scott was wearing wasn't the one he'd uncovered on my deck. That had been a more elegant design. This was your basic stripped-down, in-your-face version, everything exposed: the carbon-fiber socket, the shank—looking like a cadaverous metal bone—the screws attaching that pylon to his sneakered foot. His shirt wasn't going to make any excuses either: no army motto or camo print so you'd link the leg to the service and nod respectfully. I knew, of course, that this was a test, one of the
obstacles contrived by the psychologist to haul Scott and his leg out of the dark closet. I could imagine some cartoon commanding officer barking,
“Show the damn thing; you earned it. Nothing to be ashamed of. A leg short is not a shortcoming. Get over it, soldier.”

I could also imagine the guts it took to do what he was doing, feeling the way he felt after getting clobbered in his marriage, and my instantly repaired heart swelled with pride for him, in him.

Pete, who'd been wetting down the sculpture for a final polish, brushed sand from his hand before offering it. “Hey, Scott. Looking good, man.” I loved Pete for that “looking good, man.” It covered everything.

Margo was on her feet, also dusting off sand in a palm-against-palm sweep. But she was playing Helen Keller in
The Miracle Worker
. Her focus never drifted below Scott's waist.

“You remember the colonel,” Pete said.

“Sure. The veterans' home board. Pleasure,” she said.

The four of us talked. Three did anyway. I just watched and listened, not wanting to give away who I became when Scott was around. Whatever that was, I knew Margo would make something of it.

As the talk trailed off, Scott backed up to survey the sculpture. “Your castle is first-rate. It should definitely cop a trophy.”

Pete said, “That was from someone who knows his battlements, Marg.”

She yawned out, “Sure, good,” but she was just about electrified with curiosity and plans to make my life a misery of questions when Scott said, “My next stop is the Coneheads dig. I promised Claire”—to the Manolises—“who works the soft serve on Tuesdays, I'd stop by.”

I could see Margo doing the math behind a frantic series of blinks: Tuesday plus Coneheads equals an after-class ice-cream date with Nora. Oh, yum.

He touched my elbow.

Blink, blink. Margo recalculated the total with that addition.

“Want to go see the Coneheads' banana split, Nora?”

“Sure. I think I've done my job here. Right, Margo?” She nodded vigorously. “And I was heading over there in a few minutes anyway,” I said.

Scott took my hand. The last I saw of my girlfriend, she was swallowed in sun shimmer. The only bit left of her was a smile hung in the molten air, the Cheshire cat delightedly licking its lips.

Scott and I walked the packed sand of the shoreline toward the Coneheads dig and the next challenge. I knew we were heading for test two as well as I knew my son's name. Claire must have said Jack was going to be out there this afternoon. Now the kid who thought Scott was damaged goods would see his left leg in all its uncovered glory.