Fishermen's Court

by Andrew Wolfendon

  The idea lashes me in the heart like a stingray’s barb. But then I think of all the lies, all the hurt silences, all the drunkenness-in-place-of-intimacy that took place in and around that old husk. The ghosts of those things will be going out to sea too. And maybe that’s not so terrible.

  We remain wordless for several minutes, and then at last I cast her a line. “So you had something you wanted to tell me last night?”

  Silence resumes as we watch the old wreck rock and groan on its great slate bed. I don’t want Jeannie to speak until she’s ready. Maybe I don’t want her to speak at all.

  She finally says what’s on her mind. “When you told me last night about Miles throwing that bottle, I was... surprised.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Angie told me about the accident, Finn.”

  “Jesus. When?”

  “Years ago. When you and I were living together, here. She told me you had thrown that bottle—because, well, I guess that’s what she believed. But she told it to me in confidence and made me swear I would never tell you.”

  “How the hell did it come up?”

  “You and I were having... issues. I used to talk to Angie about them sometimes. She knew you better than anyone else did. I just wanted to understand you.” We watch another wave assault the wreck. Not the big one yet. “I always felt there were things... kinda major things... holding you back from really being in a relationship with me.”

  “Those things were named Stavros, Captain Jim, and Peter,” I point out. I have never named her secret lovers aloud in this way. It feels pretty good, actually.

  She allows my remark to pass unchallenged and says, “I was on the phone with Angie one night and we were talking about it. She was drinking...”

  “Do tell.”

  “...And she let it slip that you had this... burden you were carrying around that had been weighing on you for years. I asked what it was. I probably had no right to ask, and she probably had no right to tell me. But she did. On the condition I would never tell you.”

  “But you just did.”

  “I called her last night. After you left. Told her I might need to rescind my promise. I couldn’t talk to you till I told her that.”

  So Jeannie was the “everybody” Angie was ranting about in her drunken voicemail.

  “This certainly puts a new face on things,” I say. “Half the time we were living together, you were going around thinking I was a killer?”

  “Not the ‘malice aforethought’ kind.”

  “But still... You’ve known about these deaths for years. And I’ve only known about them for—what?—three days. Things might have been different for us if you’d told me.”

  “I made a promise to Angie, Finn. What good is a promise if you don’t keep it? To my credit, I did try to pry it out of you several times.”

  Thinking back, it’s true; she did. She used to harp, to the point of genuine annoyance, on this theory that I was carrying some old secret that was dragging my life down like an anchor.

  “I was actually a lot more surprised to learn you didn’t throw that bottle,” she says.

  “Why’s that?

  “Well, because I remember the bizarre way you were acting the day you said goodbye to me in ‘99 and left for California. And because it explained so much. I thought guilt was the whole reason you were so... What was the term I used to use?”

  “‘Insufficiently entitled.’”

  “Right. I figured you were a textbook case of Catholic guilt. You believed you should have been caught and punished for your crime, but you weren’t. Therefore, you didn’t think you deserved to have good things happen to you. Therefore, you would never ask for anything you really wanted. Even if it walked into the room naked and gave you a lap dance.”

  “I don’t think you were wrong about that part.”

  “I don’t either. It’s the degree of guilt I don’t understand,” says Jeannie. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating your role in this thing? Miles threw that bottle. You didn’t do anything.”

  “Exactly. I didn’t do anything. I was the one—the only one—who had the power to act, but I didn’t. Miles passed out. He had no idea he caused any harm.”

  “Neither did you.”

  “Because I chose not to know. I heard sounds that night, Jeannie. Sounds of glass and metal. After he threw that bottle. But I never followed up to find out what they were. In fact, I fled the freaking state so I’d never have to know for sure.”

  “And if you had known, that would have changed the outcome how? You said yourself the cops sped off, blue lights flashing. They must have been going to the accident scene. Everything was handled. The only thing that would have changed if you had come forward is that blame would have been placed on Miles. And you didn’t want to see your friend’s life ruined. I don’t see how that makes you the devil. But I do see how it makes you an insanely loyal friend. You took on the moral burden that should have been his.”

  “Neither of us took on the moral burden. That’s the point, Jeannie.”

  She emits the most rueful laugh in the history of rueful laughs. “Riiiight.”

  Thinking back on my life over the last eighteen years, I have to laugh too.

  Part of me desperately wants to accept the shot at exoneration Jeannie is trying to offer me, but my conscience—that infallible inner calculator—tells me a debt is still owed. It seems Jeannie’s inner ledger is coming up red too. I can see in her downcast eyes that she has not said all she needs to say to me tonight.

  “What is it, Jeannie?”

  She stares at the wreck as if she was personally responsible for its ruin. “I kept my promise never to tell you what Angie said… but she never asked me not to tell anyone.”

  As I wait for her to complete this revelation, we both turn our heads at the exact same moment. The horizon is rising eerily to meet the cloud-covered moon, and we know what we are seeing. A mammoth wave is rolling in. Instinctively, we scramble up the cliff-side several yards and watch it advance, mesmerized.

  I brace myself for the drama that will be unleashed when the killer wave breaks—the violent clap of water, the bomb-blast of exploding spray, the shriek of hull-metal on rock...

  But the wave doesn’t break. It arrives instead as a gigantic swell; black water rising quietly up the cliff-side by fifteen feet or more. The Shipwreck silently lifts off its stone berth, straddles the water’s surface for a few seconds, and then sinks out of sight with a sigh of bubbles. The massive swell retreats to sea.

  When Table Rock becomes visible again, it is a literal blank slate. The wreck is gone.

  A tear runs down Jeannie’s cheek. But I don’t think it is for the K.C. Mokler, off on its final mail run. Jeannie squeezes my fingers as if she wants to break the bones.

  . . . . .

  For reasons I can’t quite fathom, it now seems a foregone conclusion that Jeannie and I will sleep together tonight. This tacit understanding fills the cab of the truck like secret perfume as Jeannie drives to her house. It gels into a certainty when, halfway there, the lights go out on Musqasset—eleven o’clock; lovers’ hour—and Jeannie lays a finger on my hand, ever so lightly.

  Why, oh why, is it that life only gives us the things we crave the most when we no longer crave them? Not that I don’t want to sleep with Jeannie. I do. Oh fuck yes, yes I do. But now I care about the reasons. I don’t want it to be a one-and-done thing, an impulsive act committed for reckless or poetic causes. I don’t want a farewell fuck. I don’t want a closure fuck. I don’t want a “two lost ships in a storm” fuck. I don’t want Jeannie sleeping with me out of abandon, pity, grief, despera
tion, existential loneliness, or even good ol’ glorious randiness. Two days ago, I wouldn’t have given two shits about the why. Now I do.

  So I must navigate these waters mindfully. The conditions, the understandings, will need to be right, or I won’t be able to go through with it.

  Jeannie steers Pete’s truck down a meandering, unmaintained dirt road and parks in the woods behind Fishermen’s Court. It’s a token stab at privacy that will fool no one, least of all Goslin’s gang if they’re watching for us, but I tip my hat at the effort.

  We approach her house, treading softly, without flashlights, and slip into its cinnamon-scented darkness. I still know by touch where the rechargeable battery-operated lamp is located, but before I can turn it on, Jeannie presses me against the wall and kisses me. Her lips have a wet, silky warmth that dissolves all reason. I kiss her back without a nanosecond’s hesitation. The idea that I was going to dictate the rules of this engagement—via a mutually agreed-upon set of emotional parameters, stamped in triplicate and duly signed by both parties, grumble, ahem—now seems as absurd as the idea that I could dictate the course of the ocean storm that has stranded me here on Musqasset.

  Before a coherent thought can even begin to form in my head, we are pulling at each other’s clothes and lurching toward the nearest horizontal surface, which, in this case, happens to be the living room sofa/rug combo.

  I’ve always been a “lights on” kind of guy when it comes to lovemaking, especially with Jeannie. I never wanted to be robbed of the visual feast of her nakedness or the flush that comes over her face and neck when she is in the throes of lust. But tonight, darkness is the perfect milieu. It makes the tactile exploration of each other’s bodies all the more pressing, the moments of touch-meeting-touch all the more mysteriously synchronized.

  Every cliché ever written about lovemaking applies here. Jeannie and I proceed to consume one another sexually with a hunger and ferocity I’ve never imagined even in my most debauched fantasies—and yet each urgent, darting movement is feathered by an exquisite gentleness of touch that turns it into art. Time disappears. Individuality disappears. There is only the act of love, performing itself, with Jeannie and me as the stunned and grateful witnesses. God enrapturing Godself and inviting us along for the party.

  And stuff like that.

  Somehow we end up in her bed. And that may be the best part of all. Jeannie, naked, soft, and warm, wrapped around me like a blanket as sleep comes prowling for us in the dark. Still not a word spoken since we stepped out of the truck.

  A thought intrudes. I wonder if the men are standing outside the house right now, watching, waiting. I don’t even care. As long as they leave Jeannie and me alone right now, they can do whatever they want. Fuck them.

  But of course, my mind can’t rest, now that I’ve thought about the danger. I slink out to the kitchen and fumble around in a drawer until I find a sharp knife. When I come back to bed, Jeannie is curled away from me on her side.

  Fuck them. Fuck them and the ferry they rode in on.

  . . . . .

  It’s been years since anyone served me a hot breakfast without expecting a tip. I awaken to the smells of coffee brewing and eggs cooking in the rain-washed island air. For a moment I am able to pretend life is just good. Here I am, with Jeannie, on a Sunday morning, in the home we once shared, my concept of lovemaking recalibrated to new heights—and now coffee and eggs await. A man can dream, can’t he?

  When I enter the kitchen, the dream evaporates like water on a hot griddle. Jeannie is sitting at the table, staring out the window, her back to me. She doesn’t turn to greet me. I know she has rowed away to her own private island, the one with no visitors’ dock.

  I grab a cup of coffee and sit behind the plate of toast and eggs she has made for me. If I detect even a whiff of regret from her over what happened between us, I’m going to jam a fork into my neck.

  “I’m not going to say last night was a mistake,” she offers at last, still turned, “because clearly it wasn’t that.”

  “Clearly,” I say. At least we agree on one thing. “But...”

  “But...” Here it comes. “I hope it hasn’t raised any unrealistic expectations on your... on either of our parts.”

  “And by ‘unrealistic expectations,’ you mean...”

  “Once the ferry is running, you need to be on it and we both need to just... resume life as normal.”

  I have to chew on that before responding. First of all, there is no “life as normal” for me. Hasn’t been for years. But especially not since a trio of strangers showed up in my parents’ house and tried to boot me permanently from the good ship Lollipop. But that’s beside the point. Do I have a right to ask Jeannie to change her life for me, based on one night of intimacy? Do I even want that myself? We have not remade enough ground with each other to be entertaining such thoughts. I haven’t even met her daughter, for God’s sake. So I certainly cannot argue with Jeannie’s logic. And yet, why close doors?

  “I’m not going to make any awkward suggestions,” I say. “Don’t worry. But at the same time, I’m not going to pretend, for the sake of convenience, that last night was only a casual hookup. It wasn’t. And I’m not going to lie and say it was. I’m done with lying.”

  “Finn, please, can we...?”

  “That’s all I’m going to say about it, Jeannie. The end. Let’s just enjoy each other’s company this morning. No demands. No promises. No heavy silences. You and I pissed away enough of our time together that way.”

  That seems to mollify her, and she lightens up. We eat our breakfast and chat for a while, mostly about Bree, who’s due back on the Tuesday morning ferry. I steer Jeannie onto the topic of writing and convince her to read me a short story she wrote. It’s good. I mean holy shit good. Wow. Jeannie has become a bona fide writer, with her own voice.

  I ask what happened to the paintings I left behind. She leads me out to the storage shed I converted into a mini-studio, and I’m surprised to find it largely as I left it. A manual lawnmower and some boxes have been moved in, but my paintings are still here, and the place still looks like a studio. Just laziness on Jeannie’s part or something else? I’m afraid to ask.

  Looking at my paintings—both the finished ones and the eternally frozen works-in-progress—is like reading a forgotten diary. When you’re a painter, stumbling upon your old paintings can release more stored memories than an electrode to the brain.

  I point at a canvas of a dry-docked boat with a hole in its hull. “That was the week you had your breast cancer scare.” No symbolism there, doc. Flipping through a leaning stack of canvases, I find a good one of a Musqasset meadow blowing in the wind.

  The day I did that one, I recall, I was wandering around the island with my French easel, looking for something to paint. I spotted a guy in a straw hat working on a canvas near Tucker’s Field and asked to join him. We had a memorable day together. He asked my advice on a few things and gave me a tip or two. We laughed a lot.

  Weeks later, I was thumbing through an art magazine and I learned the man was Jamie Kent, quite possibly the world’s most famous living representational artist. And he had been asking my advice. I’d almost forgotten about that. Maybe I wasn’t crazy to believe I had some genuine talent; maybe I was crazy to believe otherwise. Delusions of mediocrity, is that a thing?

  Looking around my old studio, I realize I didn’t leave just one lover behind when I walked away from my life on Musqasset. I feel a physical, almost sexual urge to hold a paintbrush in my hand again and spar with a canvas.

  I notice Jeannie studying one of my pieces, trying to decide whether to share it with me or not. I signal give it up, and she reluctantly angles it toward me. It is a nude. Of her. The one and only attempt I ever made
to paint her, to bring my two lovers together. That was an arrangement that didn’t work out—for one embarrassingly simple reason: when she posed nude for me, I couldn’t keep my mind on my work. I’d painted other nude models before and had never had any trouble maintaining artistic detachment. But not with Jeannie. I couldn’t look at her naked without getting all riled up. We had a lot of fun in the studio that week, but we more or less agreed it was not a workable long-term solution.

  Jeannie must be having the same memories I am, because she drops the canvas and stares at me baldly. Time elongates. She unbuttons the top button of her denim shirt, eyes never leaving mine. I stare back at her, transfixed as always, powerless before her beauty. But as I step toward her, she breaks eye contact and scuttles out the door.

  Chapter 30

  I find Jeannie outside, sitting on a sawhorse in the wet grass. Whatever “moment” was about to happen—as the Viagra lady in the TV commercial might say—is now a fleeting memory. I try to sit beside her, but she waves me away.

  “I didn’t realize I still had a thing for you,” she says. “Obviously my self-awareness needs some work in that department. But I have to act like a sober person now. For my daughter... and for myself. The bottom line is this: you and I are not going to ‘be together.’ Na ga happen. There are some... barriers to that, which we don’t need to get into. But if I make love to you again, I’m going to start talking myself into believing it actually could happen. And I’m going to make myself miserable. For months or years to come. So we need to pull the plug right now. Cauterize the wound instead of making it deeper.”

  Somehow I knew she was going to say something like this.

  “Maybe I can have a say in what’s a ‘barrier’ and what isn’t,” I tender, insisting myself onto the sawhorse.

  “No, you can’t, because you don’t know all the facts. If you did, you would turn your back and walk away without saying a word... again.” A dig about the way I left last time.