The Whiskey Tide (3 page)

     
Zenaide sat on the floor, an undignified pose for a woman who had reached seventy. But apart from her, only Tatia lived in the house these days, and Tatia wouldn't waken to scold
Madame
or to spoil her pleasure.

     
There had been lights down on the beach tonight, late. Maybe men smuggling whiskey. Perhaps it was the thought of it which left her unable to sleep. Next door they'd had a party, but she'd never cared for parties. She preferred the company of the familiar shapes whispering through her fingers — some smooth and round, some strange and knobby — the soft glow of their faces. Most of the faces were white, but some were golden, a few handsome black. Gentlemen from the Orient and gentlemen from Africa. And ladies. Welcomed into society because they were ambassadors. Caressing them with her fingertips she relived the day she had received them, here in this very room.

     
They had heard the day before that Grandfather's ship was expected. For half the morning she'd waited, shifting from foot to foot, until a small hire boat brought him from the harbor. She had hurled down the back path and up, up into the scratch of his beard with its scent of sea spray and pipe smoke. Governess had punished her later for running, but Grandfather had swung her aloft and loosened the bow on her braid like a mischievous boy and laughed his great laugh. At noon she had been allowed to dine with the grownups, where Father predicted there would unquestionably be war between North and South and Mother pursed her mouth at Grandfather's table manners.

     
It was late afternoon, just before teatime, when Grandfather sent for Zenaide to come to his study. She had sat on this same Persian carpet, its royal blue fibers prickling through her dress exactly as they did now through her silk dressing gown.

     
"These are for when you're a mite older, Zenny my girl," Grandfather said. "For when you'll be having beaux and going to balls. But the China Trade hasn't the treasures it once did, and who knows how many more voyages I'll be making?"

     
With that he opened the carved wooden casket he held and upended its treasure of pearls into her spread skirt. Mother protested, of course, saying he couldn't possibly shower such extravagance on a child. Zenaide wondered later if Mother was jealous, even though Grandfather had presented her with a choker of pearls clasped with diamonds and a glittering blue sapphire.

     
As it was Grandfather's house in which she and her parents lived, Grandfather and his father and his father's father who had amassed the fortune into which Mother married, Mother swallowed her objections. Zenaide sat at Grandfather's feet, draping herself in barbaric splendor with bracelets and necklaces, delighting most of all in the odd pearls that scattered loose.

     
They became her friends. The fat Chinaman bigger than her thumb with eyes and a mouth — Grandfather could see the face when she pointed it out. The African gentleman with the high, high forehead. The stunning white pearl that was shaped like a pear; and the misshapen one that seemed to go in all directions as if it had legs; and the one like a dome that she'd always meant to have set in a ring, except she couldn't stand the thought of losing its company; and the fourteen pearls that made up a family, from father down to the newest baby.

     
Grandfather told her they came from the bellies of oysters. He told her that most of them he had bought from a one-armed sailor, which made her shiver. Her Chinaman, he whispered with a twinkle in his eye when her mother looked away for a moment, he had won gambling.

     
She had never lost a one of those rare bits of magic from the sea. She knew exactly how many there were. Their secret companionship delighted her more than showing them off for others. Not that she didn't love to have the strung ones with her, whispering around her as she walked.

     
"Why have you put on such a silly grin?" her husband had snapped once at a party when she was smiling at the thought of them around her neck.

     
It had hurt her terribly.

     
With a sigh Zenaide let the memories fade. The music from the Flying Horses she had always longed to see had ceased its dream notes long ago. It was close to morning. Another day to be defined only by the serving of meals and the cleaning of teeth. When she was young, she had been permitted sometimes to row down the coast with Grandfather or one of the servants. Then Mother had said she was growing too old and should act like a lady. Tyler, when she'd dared the excursion once as a young bride, had called it unseemly.

     
The pearls which had kept her company now murmured to her of a lifetime lost to tedium. Tears stole their way through the crevices in her cheeks. She recalled a story Grandfather had told her about a girl whose tears turned to pearls.

Two

     
Joe fought the urge to kick the steps of the rented row house as he climbed them. In spite of a breeze from the harbor, a faint whiff of sausage and bread still crossed the street from Padilla's market. It made his stomach growl and he wasn't sure what if any leavings he'd find in the kitchen. He should have stopped at a speak along the way.

     
He and the kid had been forced to hitch and hoof it back to town. It had soured his humor. A good chunk of what he'd earned tonight would be eaten up replacing that bow light. He wouldn't even have the satisfaction of landing a punch on O'Malley's flabby chin.

     
He let himself quietly into the front room, careful not to wake his cousins Rose and Cecilia asleep on the couches. As he closed the door, he could feel the energy and caring of the people in the house surround him.

     
Seven adults and six children shared five rooms and an attic, exactly the same as when he'd come to live here. Only the generations had changed. When he'd come here at age seven after his mother's death, Nana and Papa had the downstairs bedroom and their two youngest slept on the couches. Vic and Irene and their three toddlers — one dead a year later — lived in one room on the second floor and Great Uncle João in the other. Joe and his dad shared the attic with Joe's young bachelor uncle, Drake.

     
Now his uncle and aunt, Vic and Irene, had the bedroom of honor and two kids on the couches. His cousin Arliss, two years younger than him, lived on the second floor with four babies under three. The other room was occupied by Nana, now mercifully deaf. Joe and Drake were still in the attic, joined by Joe's cousin Sebastian who was twenty-one.

     
A ribbon of yellow showed under the kitchen door. Vic and Drake were probably rationing a bit of whiskey. Nudging the door open on its well-oiled hinges, he stepped through to join them.

     
"You're prowling later than usual," Uncle Drake observed.

     
It was neither censure nor question. The Santayna men granted each other the respect of privacy. If you needed help they were there. If you had business of your own, it was your business.

     
A bowl of Portuguese beans and a bottle without a label sat on the table. Uncle Vic shoved both toward him.

     
"Broken light on the skiff," Joe said taking a fat bean between thumb and forefinger. In a practiced motion he shot it free of the hull and into his mouth. "I'll fix it tomorrow."

     
Vic grunted. His body was shaped like a barrel and his face was good humored. Even a nose curved sharply as a hawk's and pits from long-ago chicken pox failed to make it forbidding unless he was riled. His younger brother Drake had the lean build Joe had inherited. They sat in their undershirts, the bare ceiling light reflecting off faces creased and toughened by the glare of sun off water.

     
"The Irish aunties sent a message they want to see you first thing tomorrow," Drake said. "They say it's urgent."

     
Joe nodded and fired another bean into his mouth.

     
"They keep you tied to their skirts, those two old biddies."

     
He let it slide. There was no explaining to the men at the table that his spinster great aunts reminded him of bright little songbirds in a cage. If they scolded and fluttered a bit, well, that was their nature. They darted about, cheerful and unaware of a world which could swallow them up. But they added something to life which he couldn't define. There was something rare about them. Even thinking of them made him smile.

     
"They'll turn you into an altar boy yet," Vic teased. "Probably have a nice job in a dry goods store lined up for you."

     
Joe rolled his eyes. You'd think his mother's people and his father's people inhabited two different planets. They heard the same words at mass, drank the same kind of booze, had the same sort of wakes for their dead. But the Santaynas thought the Murrys put on airs; the Murrys thought the Santaynas lacked both manners and ambition. They had fought over him, Joe knew, from the day he was born.

     
"We can get by without one pair of hands tomorrow," Vic said pouring neat whiskey. "No point in a big catch anyway. Price is down for everything — even lobster. We traded Myron Pell cod for a dozen two-pounders for supper and both sides called it a good deal. Go see what the old girls want. Family's family."

***

     
"Why, sweetheart, we didn't expect you so early," Aunt Maggie beamed drawing Joe past a waist-high potted fern and into the depths of a sunny second floor apartment she shared with her sister.

     
Joe suspected she was squeezing the truth a bit since instead of a housedress she was wearing her new tan linen. Aunt Norah was in a navy number she usually saved for Sundays.

     
"Uncle Vic said you said it was urgent."

     
"Well, not
that
urgent."

     
Joe stifled a groan. For a year or more he'd been begging his aunts to let him pay for a phone for them. He'd put most of his army earnings away in the bank and would gladly have given them that small treat. But they argued that it would be wasting; besides, they liked giving little Timmy Murphy pocket change to run messages over. There was no point going around that bush again.

     
"Are you hungry, Joe?" Aunt Norah wiped her hands anxiously on her apron. "There's bacon fried up — and blueberry muffins."

     
Now Joe was certain these girls were up to something. Funny how he always thought of them as girls though both were past sixty and Aunt Maggie had been married once for a year or so to a man who was killed in the merchant marines.

     
"A muffin would be nice," he allowed. Curiosity tickled him.

     
Maybe they seemed girlish because of the way Aunt Maggie primped, and despite her white hair was still trim and pretty, he thought. Or maybe it was because they seemed footloose, unlike other women he knew who were tied down by children and husbands.

     
"How
are
you, Joseph?"

     
Aunt Maggie reached over and patted his knee as he settled himself in the wing chair he knew he was expected to take. Much to Joe's distress she liked to tell everyone in her parish how handsome he was: 'Gets his dark curls from his father's side, his blue eyes from his mother's side and his dimples from the devil.'

     
Aunt Norah reappeared with a dainty cup of strong black coffee and a plate containing a warm muffin fragrant with blueberries. Joe took a bite and nodded the approval which would make her smile.

     
"Delicious."

     
She sat down in the rocker but made no move to reach into the basket of handiwork which she kept beside it. A third clue — as if he needed any — something was afoot.

     
African violets bloomed on the windowsill. The chair where Joe sat and the camelback sofa were covered with a pattern of flowers. Crocheted doilies, washed and starched every week, protected the arms and back. A silver frame containing a photograph of his mother sat on a small polished table. Only the crucifix on the wall suggested any similarity to the Santayna household. Here was a serene, fragile world which Joe always felt the urge to protect.