"I know, I know. It sounds weird. But I've been watching them since, and even though I know he likes her, I don't think anything is really going on. I mean, it would be weird if it were, right? Almost like incest."
"But oh so different in all the really important ways," he says. "The ways that get the state interested."
I laugh again.
"Listen," he says as we pull up to where his motorcycle is parked. He looks serious for once. "I just want to say one thing. I got a really strange vibe at your dinner party with those two, and I gotta say that what you've just told me hasn't made it exactly go away. So I just want to tell you that if you ever need a place to go—you and Simon—you can stay at my apartment."
"What? I would nev—"
"Shhh. Listen to me." He puts a finger on my lips. "You might. I don't have a beach to offer you, I'm afraid, but I do have tons of room now that Anneliese has decided to room with her dad. And, right this minute being a notable exception, I'm at work virtually all the time, so I wouldn't be in your way. Three bedrooms, a living room, a deck, the finest in bathroom towels and linens—and it's all furnished with massive old-lady furniture from the previous tenant who died but who I swear does not haunt the place. And I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that I won't molest you while you sleep."
I start to say something, and he leans over and gives me a brush kind of kiss on the forehead, a grazing of lips on my skin, hardly even touching me. "That's to say I'm sorry for that horrible day at Starbucks, which I will apparently never live down, and also for today, when I embarrassed you by telling my sister we have a little thing going. Now one business question and then I will get out of your car and let you get on with your life: Are you even considering coming to work at the radio station? Should I talk to my boss?"
"No," I say. "Yes." I think harder. "Well, maybe. The truth is, I don't know."
He searches my face. "You may need to work on a more definitive answer," he says. "How is it that you can answer other people's questions so cogently, but you don't make a damn bit of sense when you talk about your own life?"
23
I pull into my driveway and sit in the car for a moment, admiring my new dazzling brown, shiny hair in the rearview mirror, and just for entertainment purposes, going over everything that Alex has both said and implied over the afternoon—when it suddenly comes to my attention that all is not right in Scallop Bay world. It's still midafternoon, way earlier than I usually get home, and I can't tell right away exactly what's amiss, but when you live in a place for your entire life, you know when things are the least bit off.
Something is not right.
I get out of the car, catlike, and stand there on the sidewalk, looking down at the half-dead red geraniums and the straggling daisies still in puddles from the morning's rain. I trace a crack in the cement with the toe of my sandal and listen. Then I hear it: a man's voice coming from inside my house. And it's not Teddy and it's not Sloane.
In fact, it has a Southern accent.
I push open the door, my hand on my cell phone as though it's a weapon, and I go in. I hear my sister saying from the kitchen, "Oh, you. You know you're just like some big ole gorilla when you want to be, baby. I'm gonna get us a couple slices of this pound cake right here and fix us up some Southern Comfort, and we'll go right back upstairs. You know, I've got everybody up here drinkin' these—" She sees me then and freezes with her hands in midair. She's wearing a cowboy hat and black bikini underpants, and a man's denim shirt, unbuttoned. She starts laughing hard.
"What's so funny?" the guy says and turns around. He's big and red-faced and he's sitting at the counter island on a stool that looks as though it's going to sink from the sheer avoirdupois of him. He's not so much fat as he is humongous. It's like having a camel in the room or something. A very large, muscular, potbellied, jeans-wearing camel who's mindlessly, blankly chewing on something.
His face takes on one of those big, good-ole-boy grins, the kind that Northerners all know doesn't mean anything good. And then he gets up off the stool and gives me one of his hands, which is the approximate size of a baseball mitt and is damp and squishy. I have the urge to dry my hands on my pants after we shake.
"Ah'm Randy Slattery, from Texas," he says. "And you must be Lillian."
"Lily, actually," I say.
"Whoa, this is sort of embarrassin', ain't it? We weren't expectin' anybody. Button up, sugar, why don't you?"
This, embarrassing? I want to tell him. Why, I've been in this situation with her lots of times. This wouldn't even make the top ten of embarrassing walk-ins. At least he's dressed. That's a nice change from the early years.
"Don't worry about it," I tell him. "Dana, I'll have one of those Southern Comforts, too, if you don't mind."
"Sure," she says brightly, but she looks a little scared.
I look Randy over. He's dark-haired and vacant-eyed, a little on the dumb side, you can just tell, and friendly enough, but with something in his eyes that makes you know he could just go off if he feels like he's getting disrespected. I can't help but wonder if Dana has a plan here. How did he track her down?
I smile at him. "Wow! Long drive for you, from Texas. Did you just get in?"
"No, no. I got in yesterday. Dana's been takin' me all around, showin' me the sights. What's that lobster place we went to, hon?"
"Lenny and Joe's," she says, not looking at me. I fix her with my most penetrating stare. He got in yesterday? And just why hasn't she said anything? The last time I asked her about him, she said he'd decided she could keep the truck, and that they were better off apart, blah blah blah, and that everything was fine. Now she won't meet my eyes.
"So I got me a lobster roll, and come to find out they make it with butter—on a hot dog bun!" he says, as though this is the most amazing thing ever. "I always thought a lobster roll had to have mayonnaise and celery and onion all mashed up with it, like tuna fish salad or sumpin'. But no. They just butter 'em up like any ole lobster tail you'd order in a restaurant." He says it rester-awnt. "Say, Dana tells me you've got some lobster pots right out there in the water, yourself."
"Yep," I say. "Yes, sir, we do." I feel myself taking on my own version of a Southern drawl.
"Nice place you two own." His head very nearly scrapes the ceiling. He could never live here. He'd knock himself unconscious going up and down the stairs. "But I'll tell you what. Y'all don't seem to have any idea of what an ocean is supposed to be like," he says, laughing. "Y'all got to get you some waves if you want to attract the surfin' crowd. Why, you could really be sumpin' here if you just had a wave or two every now and then. Get you some tourists in here and get some revenue."
On the chance that this is Southern humor at work, I throw back my head and give a hearty impression of a laugh, and he does, too. Ah. So it was a joke.
"Randy just loves New England!" says Dana.
"Well, I'm a Texas man who couldn't ever live anywhere else, but I say you can't go wrong in a place where they put butter on lobster on a hot dog bun," he says. "I'm gonna suggest that to the folks back home." He looks at me. "Now what do you do, Lillian?"
"Lily's an advice columnist for a newspaper!" says Dana brightly.
Oh, my, he says, an advice columnist. Oh, my! Well, then. He guesses I have just about all the answers. Must be nice! But, hey, could he get some on-the-spot advice, ha-ha-ha, from one almost– family member to another? Gratis? He gets up and goes over and puts his arm around Dana and smiles down at her. Like maybe I can tell him what the appropriate penalty is for a bride who jumps up in the middle of the night and disappears on the man who loves her and is about to marry her, takin' his truck and half his CD collection, and all the Southern Comfort in the house. Huh? What should a guy do when that happens, huh, Lillian?
"Oh, Randy!" she says and kind of twirls out of his grasp and pokes him in the arm.
He pours us all a drink. "Think about it," he says to me with a big dumb grin. "You don't have to come up with sumpin'
right away."
***
I forget at what point I start feeling kind of sorry for him. He sits there drinking and talking, and by the stories he tells, it becomes clear that here he is, just a guy who was kind of a loser and not doing so well in the world, and then his sister says to him that he can stay at her place, and oh, by the way, there's this gal staying there who's Willems's old girlfriend, and can you show her a good time? Be nice to her and make her feel special? (Subtext, I'm sure, is: Get her off our hands.) And so he does. He takes her to play pool and to parties and to the beach and to a couple of hotel rooms in San Antonio, and one thing leads to another—wink, wink—and pretty soon he's living in the back bedroom with this little gal at his sister's house, and sleeping with her in a double bed that's way too small for the two of them, so they get to know each other pretty well, ha-ha-ha, but things are good, she's fun to go out with, and all his friends think he's really lucky. And they go on like this and then suddenly his sister tells him it's time he got married to the girl—and well, that's okay, too. You can't just keep sleeping with people without it comin' to somethin'. Everybody eventually gets married, don't they? And he loves her; she's cute, even though she's got that Yankee accent to her and she gets pissy sometimes. ("You know you do, sweetie pie. You get pissy like all get-out.") He buys a cherry red pickup truck and tells this little ole wife-to-be that she can drive it all she wants—and damned if she doesn't up and take it to Connecticut to see her sister, and then she never comes back.
So he's come for her.
She belongs in Texas now, he says. She's been up here cattin' around long enough, and he's sick and tired of bein' lonely and puttin' up with this. Plus, there's a weddin' to plan and she's supposed to be helpin' out Dreena Sue—the baby's gettin' big now, and there might be another on the way. He reaches over and taps her on her flat, bare stomach, and says, And we just might git us one started, too, right? When you git back. Nice to get a bun in the oven even before the weddin'. He looks at me. Y'all will come down and see us all. Be the maid of honor.
Dana winces and puts her hand where he's tapped her. I start thinking: How are we going to get him out of here—without Dana in the passenger seat?
He pours himself another large one, and she says, "Lily, I've got somethin' in my eye, darlin', can you come into the bathroom and help me get it out?" and she and I fly upstairs and close and lock ourselves in the bathroom, our conference room of old. She leans against the door and closes her eyes.
"What the hell?" I say.
"A little mismanagement, that's all. Not to worry. We've just got to figure out how to get him out of here."
"That's easy. Say, 'Here are your keys, buddy, sorry for your trouble, but I'm not going with you, and don't let the screen door hit you on your way out.' "
"No, I'm keepin' that truck."
"You're keeping the truck? What about his CDs?" I say sarcastically. "Can he take those with him on the Greyhound, or are we keeping everything the guy owns? Maybe we could get him out of his clothes and keep those, too, why don't we?"
"I like the CDs, but I'm willing to turn them over to him if he'll just get out and stay out," she says. "We can use them as leverage."
"Are you insane? This man has come here with the idea of getting a, you, and b, his truck—maybe not in that order—and we're giving him the consolation prize of six of his own CDs and sending him packing on the bus?"
"Dana!" he hollers from the kitchen. "Baby, I kinda wanted to git on the road before rush hour, and it's already gittin' past that."
I give her my one-raised-eyebrow look, but she pats my hand. "In a little while, he'll be drunk and he'll just fall over wherever he is and pass out, and we won't hear from him for the rest of the night. You'll see."
"He looks like somebody who can hold a lot of liquor. It could be quite a long time before he falls over."
"Don't worry. I know this guy."
"Also—not to put sort of a damper on things, but I don't really want a passed-out Neanderthal in my kitchen. Call me crazy."
"Well, what do you suggest?" she hisses.
"Gee, I might have suggested that you not invite him to my house without some advance warning. And then that you not have sex with him. What good did that do the cause?"
"Mellows him out. He's one of those guys who only speaks sex. He doesn't understand any other language of persuasion."
"I hardly think—"
"Listen," she says. "You don't know men. Okay? Try to keep that in mind. Your experience of men is not going to help you in this case. Teddy is a different ball game altogether."
"Hey, I'll have you know I've known more men than Teddy. Lots more."
She just laughs. "Shhh. I've gotta think."
"And what about Teddy?"
"What about him?"
"Does he know this Neanderthal is even here?"
"Hell, no. Nobody knew. If you'd come home when you were supposed to, even you wouldn't have known. I woulda had him out of here and had the place all cleaned up, with Randy on the Greyhound, and life woulda been fine."
From downstairs: "Daaaaay-na. It's five o'clock! We got to go, hon."
I shake my head.
"What?"
"The way you live your life. I can't believe this. You're whoring for a truck!"
"Oh, stop it. I'm not whoring for a truck. It's my truck."
"Is your name on the title?"
"Oh, who the fuck knows, Lily? Stop helping so much. I've gotta think." She paces to the window and back.
"I think the best bet would be to just give him his truck and say sayonara," I say.
"No. No! I'm not gonna do that. It's my truck."
"Is your name on the title?" I say again.
"Lily. He gave it to me."
"Your name is not on the title. Million bucks it's his truck."
"He. Gave. It. To. Me. What part of that don't you understand?"
"What part of it doesn't he understand, is the question. If I had to guess, I'd say the choices in his mind are: one, take you and the truck with violence or, two, take you and the truck peacefully. He strikes me as a very black-and-white thinker."
To my horror, this flips some switch in her brain, and she says, "Okay, then, we have to fight," and she purses her lips together and pushes her way out of the bathroom and downstairs. I trail along far behind her, my cell phone at the ready, and watch her go marching out onto the porch. He's out there, apparently sizing up the possibility of removing the porch swing. Perhaps he thinks it would make a nice hood ornament for the truck. Or else he's visualizing just the right little spot for it at his sister's house. I hear him say, "You ready to go, sweet stuff?"
That's when she goes into gear. I sit down on the kitchen stairs, out of range, and hear her take him on. First she cries, tells him how just being home has reminded her of all the tragedy of her life, with her parents dying when she was so young—and now he's betrayed her, too, cheating on her with that dog trainer, and, well, it just flipped her out completely, set her right back to that bad place she'd been in. She'd thought over the last couple of days that she'd be able to put the past aside and forgive him, but seeing him again has broken her heart all over again.
He says something about how the dog trainer has gone now, he's sorry—
No, she says. It's over.
"So you're saying you want me to just get in my truck and go back to Texas and not have anything to do with you? Is that it? You're not ever coming back?"
There's a long silence. I hear her sniffling. I lean forward, straining to hear this next part, which, when it comes, is spoken oh so softly. The night he cheated? Well, he couldn't have known, but that was the night she got the call. Yes, from me, her sister she hadn't talked to in years. I wouldn't have called, but... well, the boy... the four-year-old son... yes, him... well, that was the day he was diagnosed with leukemia.
Yes. Leukemia. And she looked and looked for Randy, to tell him. To be comforted by him—but where was he? Where? In Lu
rlene's back room at the dog place. Fucking Lurlene. In her hour of need. That's why she had to go the way she did. That's why she couldn't explain.
(More tears.) And so she's been back here helping out, driving back and forth from the hospital, where the boy is having his treatments—painful, horrible treatments—and he's so weak he just lies in the bed and doesn't complain. He looks like a little skeleton. A little brave ghost. The prognosis isn't so good, and, well, anybody can see that her sister is putting on a brave front, but it's so sad, really. Dana's the one holding things together right now. She has to. She's in that truck all the damn time so she can be there at the hospital when she's needed, and also to go and get things for me... there's no money for a second car, not right now, not with all the uncertainty.
I can't take it anymore. I've been sitting on the stairs, but now I go the rest of the way up to my room. The place is a mess: the bed is unmade, with the sheets all damply twisted up, and the comforter and the pillows every which way. Two glasses are on the bedside table, making wet rings on the wood. A man's watch and a pair of cowboy boots, approximately size fifty-seven, are on the floor. Next to them is the worst thing of all: a damp, wormlike condom is curled up on the carpet, obviously flung off in haste.
Recoiling, I go across the hall to my mother's old study and sit in the desk chair, quietly staring out the window at the empty street. I feel cold all over, that feeling like when you have a fever and your skin is hot to the touch but you're freezing just the same. I will my mind to stop thinking. After a while, I hear Dana come up the stairs and go into my bedroom. The closet door opens and closes, the toilet flushes, and then she comes down the hall and pokes her head into the study. She's dressed now, in jeans, and she's holding his boots in one hand.
"Hey, what are you doing in here? I just wanted to tell you that I'm takin' Randy to the bus station. I'll see you later. Don't mind the mess in the bedroom. I'll clean it up when I get home."
"Okay," I say without looking at her.
"Everything worked out fine. I did it! And guess wha-ut! I'm keeping the truck," she sings, doing a little victory shimmy, pumping her fist in the air. "Yesssss!"
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