Kathleen Valentine (6 page)

Hugh looks up startled and then smiles slowly. "What kind of a question is that to ask your own son? I’m a virgin, Pop."
"Yeah," Guy says, "Me too."
Hugh tips back in his chair and roars. "Jesus, can’t some of them make you feel that way though? I swear, the badder I want one the easier it is for her to make me feel like a thirteen year old peckerhead."
"When I was thirteen I was a peckerhead. I don’t think I even knew what sex was then. You kids today know more in junior high than I did after twenty years of marriage and four kids. I swear if Bonnie hadn’t died I’d ........" He paused. "I’d probably still be pretty ignorant."
Hugh’s expression changes and he looks out of the window. He’d been the only one still at home when Bonnie died—the rest had gone off to college or to change the world. Guy and Hugh were the ones to share the day to day sorrow of her decline. It binds them in a way that the others will never understand.
"Were you a virgin when you married Mom?" Hugh asks after a long minute has passed.
Guy swallows the last of his coffee and rises to pull the blinds and close the shop. By now Lindy is on Route 3 heading south. She is listening to tapes as she drives—she likes the songwriters who perform in the coffeehouses around Cambridge. He knows a few of their names—Greg Brown, who he likes, and Garnet Rogers, who he thinks is even better than his brother was. The songs are poignant and real—like Lindy herself. Fog or no fog he is very glad she is coming tonight. He wants her more than ever.
He turns out the lights except for the pink bulbs in the display cases.
"Technically no," he says in answer to his son’s question. "Your Mom was pregnant with Sylvie when we got married. But we were each others’ firsts. I expect I was your mother’s only. Things were different back then. I guess people screwed around as much then as they do now—they just didn’t talk about it. Things were more private."
He starts to empty the cash register then decides to leave it for later—there isn’t much worth worrying about.
"Bonnie was pretty shy. Maybe things would have been different for both of us if I hadn’t gotten her pregnant—but maybe not. Back then girls were pretty much all alike—some a little taller, a little plumper, a little spunkier. Not all this career and independence stuff. I wouldn’t say it was better—just simpler."
"Were you happy married to Mom?"
Guy flips around the CLOSED sign and lifts the empty coffee pot. "Should I make another pot?"
"I’ll have some if you are."
He measures French Roast into the pleated paper liner and pours water from the plastic jug into the back of the machine. It’s fully dark out now. The only sound is the incoming tide sucking at the pilings, the moan of the foghorns, and the drip of the coffee.
"I did love your Mom, Hugh. And I expect we were happy most of the time. We fought some and there were times when I wondered what in hell I’d gotten myself into. But I was off on Georges Bank a lot. It was pretty much always the same... When I’d be heading out I was happy as hell to get away from the house and by the time I got back I was damn glad your Mom and you kids were there waiting for me. It wasn’t perfect—but it was good."
Hugh swivels back and forth in his chair. "You never cheated on her?"
The coffee hasn’t finished dripping but Guy decides he can’t wait—where the hell did that come from? Swiftly switching an empty cup for the half filled pot he pours steaming coffee into his mug switches them back and adds the little bit in the cup to his mug. He opens his bottom desk drawer and fetches the bottle of bourbon he keeps there for emergencies. This is starting to feel like an emergency. He adds a shot to his mug.
"Kicker?" he asks offering the bottle to Hugh.
"Sure." Hugh offers his mug. He puts the bottle down by the coffee machine and settles back into the rocker.
"What kind of a question is that to ask your own father?"
"You don’t have to answer."
The street is quiet now. All the traffic has gotten wherever it is going. He wonders if she is as far as Plymouth. He wonders if she stopped to get a Starbucks and is sipping it as she drives thinking of him. Thinking of his kisses. They are both coffee addicts. She says that her first cup of coffee in the office each morning now brings the memory of tasting coffee on his lips.
Hugh is watching him.
Guy nods. "Once. Only once. I wish I could tell you I felt bad about it but I thought about that girl for years and it got me through some pretty bad times. There were times I thought I’d’ve gone nuts if I hadn’t had her to think about."
"No shit?"
"No shit. It was pretty much of an accident that it even happened at all—I didn’t go looking for it. Sylvie was only three, Guy was still in diapers and Bonnie was pregnant with Marie. That was a real bad time. We had been fighting a lot and the fishing was lousy."
"Christ," Hugh shifts uncomfortably. "It sounds like a nightmare."
"Yeah, well, me and Beany Fonteneau and the McCutcheon brothers were fishing together at the time. You wouldn’t remember that old wooden tub but she was a good one. She brought us through a lot of rough weather. Anyway, we followed a run of cod up past Stellwagen bank—first really good run of the season—when a hell of a nor’easter blew up. At first we were going to ride it out but I had a bad feeling so we headed for Cape Ann as fast as that old girl could carry us. Hell, I was younger then than you are now."
Hugh rolls his big eyes. "Just thinking about having two kids and a pregnant wife makes my nuts shrivel up."
Guy grins. "It wasn’t so bad. But I was just too hot blooded back then. We all were—bunch of young pissants. Anyway we put into Gloucester and settled in for three days. Never knew a nor’easter to pass sooner than three days. I guess we were just looking forward to three days of drinking and carousing away from the women. I never thought I’d meet someone..." He trails off remembering.
Hugh is listening with interest. He has the same rapt expression he always had listening to stories as a child. "Do you remember what she looked like?"
"God, Hugh, for years I didn’t go a day without thinking about every detail of her. It wasn’t that I thought I’d be happier with her, it’s just that she was something that was all mine. Something I didn’t have to share with everyone else crowding my life. I don’t know if you can understand that. I only spent two nights with her and she wasn’t any kind of raving beauty. She had this real long curly hair though.... But it was the first time I ever knew that a girl could want me as much as I wanted her—and I just loved her for that. After I left I kept thinking I’d get back up that way sometime and look her up again but I never did. It wasn’t until after your Mom was gone that I ever touched another woman. So—well—she was all I had to go by for what it could be like with a woman who really loved having sex with me. Maybe that sounds selfish but I just never stopped being grateful to her for that."
"She sounds great!"
"Well, she was—great for me anyway."
"But Mom never knew about her?"
It was so like Hugh to worry about his mother’s feelings even now. "No, I never let on. Sometimes I thought she suspected but Marie was born and then you came along and we just never talked about things like that—I couldn’t have told her."
"That’s good, " Hugh says. He pushes up out of his chair and walks to the window. "We should go get some dinner. Fog’s thicker than chowder out there. My truck’s down on the fish pier, I rowed over here. Want to go down to the Tides for fishcakes and beans?"
Guy looks at his watch. Lindy might be crossing the Bourne Bridge by now. She’s humming to the music and wondering about him, too. "I’d rather not tonight, son. I’ll give you a ride to your truck though."
"Naw, it’s probably safer walking." He shifts awkwardly with his back to Guy. "You waiting for someone, Pop?"
Guy considers how much more talking this day can stand. "Yeah," he says, "I am."
Hugh fills their mugs with coffee and bourbon. "I’ll sit here for a little while longer then and talk but you tell me when you want me to go. Don’t want to cramp your style."
"I’m not worried about that."
The tide continues to suck at the pier and the fog horn seems closer—much closer.
"So," Hugh says, "you going to tell me about her? I know you’ve been giving these city women something to write about in their vacation diaries."
Guy laughs and recalls one of Bonnie’s favorite sayings—‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ He wonders how much tonnage he has bitten off this evening. "I’ve sowed my oats. Didn’t know you were keeping an eye on me."
"Geez, Pop, why should you be different from me? You know how it is around here—tourist season brings plenty of easy opportunity." He grins. Guy thinks that grin probably drives women crazy but to him it just looks like a beloved little boy stuck in a body grown out of control.
"Well, opening this shop sure made me popular." He chuckles. "It was pretty exciting for awhile. I couldn’t believe the offers I got from some of the women that came in here and I took advantage of it. I don’t know what they thought they were going to find...."
"I know. It’s weird. Do you think there’s something wrong with those city guys that the girls all want to come down here and get laid proper? I was with a girl who said all the guys she went out with screwed like they were working out at the gym."
Guy laughs out loud—that sounds like something Lindy would say. They haven’t talked about it that much but he has asked himself the same thing regularly since she came into his life. Why would a beauty like her drive a hundred miles to spend a couple nights in his bed? His mind drifts to the Saturday night just past when he woke deep in the night to watch her sleeping all warm and soft beside him. That’s what it was about for him—her warmth and sweetness. The sex was great but just a bonus. He had slipped his arm under her and lifted her still sleeping into the shelter of his body enfolding her like a child, brushing her hair back from her face. In her sleep her bare, silky legs wove together with his and she sighed and snuggled close. That was what he wanted, he realized, to wrap himself around her and keep the pressures of the world away from the fragility she struggled so hard to hide. He loved her because she let him protect her—if only deep in the night when the rest of the world went on without them.
The first luminosity of sunrise was teasing the horizon far out to sea when she stirred and burrowed into him, pressing kisses into his throat while still sleeping. He stroked her hair and whispered, "Sleep, baby, sleep."
And she sighed and whispered, "You make me feel so safe" before slipping back into slumber. That was when he had fallen the rest of the way into the love he had known was waiting for him. That was when he knew there would never be any turning back from this.
"Pop?"
"Hmmmmmm?"
"Whoa! You were way gone," Hugh laughs.
"Just thinking."
"Yeah. I could tell."
"I know less about what women want now than I ever did. But taking advantage of what a lot of them have to offer isn’t a bad way to kill time—if you don’t mind feeling like a whore." He stretches his legs and looks at his watch again.
His son was frowning—thinking. "I don’t mind feeling like a whore at least not right now. Maybe in a few years I’ll have my fill but, aw, shit, Pop, some of these girls are so insulting, y’know? They come wiggling up to you smelling great and wearing their new tans all hot to trot and you’re supposed to just drop dead with gratitude like you couldn’t ever feel anything more for a woman." His scowl is painful to Guy. "I’ll tell you one thing—when I get ready to settle down it will be for a woman with some self-respect."
Guy nods. "Good idea. A relationship ought to be built on more than a tan."
Hugh’s bright smile returns. "‘Relationship’, Pop? Now don’t go talking about relationships or I’ll really get confused."
The conversation is headed in a direction he hadn’t planned on and suddenly the air in the room seems much warmer. Hugh is looking at him with those eyes that never failed to get him what he wanted from the time he was three—a look of sublime innocence and confidence in his father’s devotion to him. It always worked.
"The outer Cape is buzzing, Pop." Here it comes. "Everyone keeps asking me about you and this blond babe. How long has this been going on?"
So, Guy thinks, this is it, then. "I met her in April. Her name is Lindy." He realizes he has never said her name to anyone but her, he has never even spoken of her to anyone. "At first I thought she was just another girl looking for a good time and she was so gorgeous I couldn’t resist." He grins feeling bashful. "But she keeps coming back. She sure makes me feel great...."
"Yeah?" Hugh is plainly surprised. "You really got something going?"
"I don’t know. I don’t know why she keeps coming back and I haven’t had the balls to ask her." That’s as much truth as he can handle.
"Christ sake’s, Pop." Hugh is staring at him amazed.
"What?"
"You’re about the most terrific guy I know. Why the hell wouldn’t she come back?"
Guy shrugs. "None of the others did."
"Maybe she’s smarter than them."
"Maybe." He looks at his watch again. It can’t be long now. Sometimes he thinks he can feel her approaching—like there is a radar between them that connects once she is flying out the Cape Highway being drawn by his desire for her.
"Should I go?" Hugh asks. "I don’t mind. I’d like to meet her but I’ll wait until it’s okay with you." He stands and carries his coffee cup to the tiny sink in the bathroom.
Is he crazy? he wonders. He swears he can tell her headlights out on the main road. He had been thinking he would take her up to Provincetown tonight—maybe someplace with music where they could dance after dinner but right now all he can think of is the lavish warmth of her body in his arms deep in the faraway country of his bed. He wants to wrap her up in the desire that has filled this week, to stroke her skin, and tell her how rare and precious she is. He wants her to know tonight—to not let another week of longing go by—how much he wants her in his life.
Hugh clumps to the harbor door and slips the bolts back. "I’ll just go out the back way. I left some gear on the dock."
Guy turns and leans against the front door. Headlights diffuse through the fog and turn down the lane. He meets Hugh’s trusting and hopeful eyes. What a kid this son of his is. What a great kid.
"I want you to meet her, son. If it looks like it’s going to work out, you’ll be the first to know."
Hugh nods. "Anytime you say, Pop."
Guy’s knees are suddenly weak. "I love you, son. But I don’t want to make a fool of myself. Christ, she’ll probably get tired of the drive down here any day now and decide I’m not worth it."