The Pickle Boat House

by Louise Gorday

  Stop, slow down, and think it all through, Ryan said to himself. He was in it deep. There had to be a way to fix this. If he could noodle through it, there might be something he could salvage of the situation.

  And then all the troubling thoughts that had been nagging at him suddenly coalesced. HYA and Van—they couldn’t coexist in his life. He was at a point of no return. He would have to make a choice.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RECAPITULATION

  The fire now burning in Van’s gaze scared Jean. In Van’s mind, Ryan was just one more lying cheat. She may have been gullible, but she didn’t plan on sitting back and taking it. She immediately sat down with Jean and created a list, dividing up Nevis’s residents according to whether they would sell or hold out. Inevitably, some would sell because of the obscene amount of money HYA was going to throw at them. But others would resent HYA in general, and especially for the way it was trying to buy its way into Nevis. And it was this second group that Van and Jean were going after.

  “Why don’t we meet with the more influential residents first?” Jean asked. “We can’t do this all by ourselves.”

  “I agree. Once we get a few key people to agree not to sell, we can sway some of the others. We just have to stick together, help each other. I think we …

  The doorbell interrupted her. “Be right back.”

  Van pulled the front door open and found herself face-to-face with Ryan.

  “Go away,” she hissed, and tried to slam the door in his face, but Ryan slipped his foot inside before she could get it closed.

  “Van, wait, please,” said Ryan. “I need to talk to you. Please. Look, I’ll even just talk to you through the door. Just hear me out.” Van opened the door, folded her arms across her chest, and waited.

  “You were right last night,” he said. “I owe you an apology, an explanation. Please hear me out. When I came to Nevis it was all just about business. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to meet someone like you. It’s true. When I spoke to you the first time on the boardwalk, I only saw you as an opportunity to help move along what I had to do here so I could get back to my life in New York. But you have to know, I’ve never used you. When it’s been anyone else, yes, I’ve used them. I’m really good at using people. Getting what I want and need has never been a problem for me. But I never used you. I need for you to understand that. And when I kissed you the other night, my feelings for you were genuine.” Ryan paused. “Are you going to deny that you felt something, too?” he whispered.

  “Are you finished? The only reason you say you haven’t used me is because your plan isn’t far enough along. Look, you must have some good qualities, somewhere. I’m not usually wrong about people, and I’ll admit I am—was—drawn to you. I’m baffled by that. But you see, Mr. Thomas, I’m not used to playing the victim, and I’m not going to start now. Any credibility you had with me is shot—zero, zip, gone. I don’t have any need for someone I can’t trust. So you can be on your way. I don’t need a forwarding address. Don’t bother me anymore.” She unfolded her arms and grabbed the door.

  “Wait,” said Ryan, shoving his foot back in the door. “See, like you said, we have a connection; we’re drawn to each other. I can tell you’re as surprised by it as I am. You do things to me … make my head spin. I tried to tell you before Jean interrupted us. I think I understand the connection. There’s something deeper here than meets the eye, because we’ve met before.”

  “We never met before that day on the boardwalk.”

  At this moment, the little boy Ryan had been laughing with at the crab feast yesterday raced up the porch steps. “Mr. Ryan, Mr. Ryan, would you teach me the song you told Janet? She won’t let me play.”

  Ryan sighed. “I’m sorry, Jason,” he said. “Ms. Van and I are having a big-people discussion right now. Tell you what: I’ll teach it to you once, but then you have to run along and play.” He turned to the little girl standing nearby. “Janet, would you come here, please?” She came up the stairs with her head down, but he could see she was fighting to keep a grin from spreading across her little face. “Do you remember the song I taught you?”

  She looked up at him, nodded her head, and began to sing in a clear soprano child’s voice. “Birdies up in the trees, singing in the breeze, I like the birdies.” When she was finished, she blushed and went back to studying the rubber toes of her sneakers.

  Ryan smiled. “Janet, you have the voice of an angel. Now,” he said to the little boy, “can you two run off and play?” She nodded with a huge grin, socked Jason on the arm, and fled down the steps with Jason close on her heels.

  Ryan turned to Van and said, “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

  “Where did you learn that song?”

  “It’s just something that floats around in my head. Old memory, I would guess. Why?”

  “My son made that song up.” Van put her hand over her eyes. “How much digging into my personal life have you done, Ryan? What game are you playing?” She turned and glared at him, her eyes burning with hurt and misery.

  Ryan shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not trying to pull anything. I’m leveling with you. Ever since I came to Nevis, I’ve been having dreams, strange ones, over and over again. All this useless information that I’ve begun to accumulate in my head: names without faces, faces without names, dates … places I’ve never been.”

  Van continued to stare at Ryan, a series of emotions flitting across her face. She could feel her fingernails digging into the porch railing, and when she spoke again her voice was controlled and deliberate.

  “Describe one of your dreams,” she challenged.

  “Most are about a young boy. I think it’s me. And in many of them, there’s a woman. The woman … honest, Van, she looks and feels like you.”

  “Dreams don’t have to relate to reality. What on earth would make you think it was me?”

  “I didn’t say it was you, only that she looked like you.”

  Van swayed, and goose bumps rose on her arms, as if a cold breeze had sent an icy chill down her spine.

  “Did your son die on May seventeenth?”

  “Jesus! You have his death certificate? Is nothing sacred to you people?”

  “Was your son treated by a Dr. Phillips?” Ryan asked.

  “His medical records, too?”

  Ryan continued with his interrogation. “On the day your son died, were you wearing a red dress?”

  “Red plaid. Who have you been talking to?”

  Beethoven’s Opus One-twenty-three?”

  “James’s funeral mass. You’re going to rot in hell, Mr. Thomas.”

  Ryan stopped. “I don’t know how else to say this without being blunt.” He paused. “I think I’m your son.”

  “Say what?”

  “I may be standing here in the body of Ryan Thomas, but I am thinking with the body and soul of James Hardy. I know the specifics of James’s life because that’s who I am. The pieces in my memory are coming back. Drowning … an out-of-body experience … waking up in the hospital as Ryan Thomas—someone I didn’t even know. There, I’ve said it. I’m pulling my elephant out into the center of the room.”

  Van’s eyes never left Ryan’s face, and she didn’t even blink an eye at his bizarre statement.

  “Van, say something. Anything.”

  And then she laughed. “No tunnel or bright light at the end?” she asked. “Write it all down. It’s a prize winner. But you didn’t do all your homework. My son was twenty-four when he died. How old are you—pushing thirty?”

  “I’m thirty-five, but I don’t think that matters.”

  “When you die you go to heaven, Mr. Thomas—or, in your case, somewhere a lot warmer. You don’t come back as someone else! Not only are you an asshole, you are a thoroughgoing, greedy, good-for-nothing, shameless asshole. You would do anything to acquire Nevis land. I have no idea why you are having dreams about us unless it’s because you’re crazy! Now, get
off my property before I call the police!”

  Ryan ignored her and kept babbling. “I can’t remember if there was a tunnel. I don’t think I died. It doesn’t seem like reincarnation—just switched into a different body. Maybe the real Ryan Thomas died and I came back into his body instead of mine. I sure as hell don’t have a clue why God brought me back. Maybe I still had important things left to do.” Ryan was quiet for a moment, frowning to himself. “The ring—did they give it back to you?”

  “What ring?”

  “The signet ring. I remember seeing Granddad’s signet ring rolling around on the floor as the nurse dropped it in her haste in the emergency room when they treated me. Did they return it to you?”

  “You talked to the emergency room staff?”

  “Well?”

  “Yes, damn it. They found it the next day on the emergency room floor.”

  Ryan smiled a big glorious, triumphant smile. “Good. Grandpa Diggy would’ve wanted that.”

  “Diggy?”

  “I think that’s what I always called him. I used to help him with his garden. Jeesh, where are these thoughts coming from?” Ryan rubbed his face. “I can’t remember, though. Was he your father, or Dad’s?”

  “I can’t listen to any more of this. Go!” Van yelled at him, doubling over and putting both hands over her ears.

  “I can’t go any more than you can turn around and go back into your house and leave me here. Go, prove me wrong,” he challenged. “Leave me here, right now.”

  Van remained rooted to the spot where she stood.

  “See? You can’t walk away from me. From our very first meeting, I’ve felt a profound connection to you that I have never understood. I have felt closer to you, a stranger, than to anyone else in my life, and I’ve struggled to come to terms with you since the day I met you. It’s love—lasting, eternal love—and it binds forever. I can’t shake it, and you can’t shake it. It’s a tangible, living thing. It’s just as strong whether we are mother and son, or lovers. Don’t run away from me, Van. Acknowledge what you are feeling. Acknowledge me.

  “I know this is a lot. I can see you don’t believe me, but deep down, I think you know it might be true. If you don’t believe, then tell me how I know all these things. Why is there such a deep connection between us that I am right now willing to throw away all that I have in this life to pursue a relationship with you? I have Hector all over my back, and I’m destroying my career. I’m torn between what I’m used to doing and what, deep down inside, seems the true course to take. Tell me, Van, why would I do and feel that?”

  Van slumped into one of the porch chairs. It was a question that she couldn’t begin to answer. She looked up at him, into his eyes. He looked nothing like her son, not even the expression in his eyes. And yet, he was right: she still couldn’t walk away.

  They looked at each other in total silence, and time ticked by, feeling like a powerful emotional bomb ready to explode. Van rocked in her chair, staring as if she might bore a hole through him, and he stood watching her eyes as she absorbed all that he had said.

  Van knew that the human heart’s deepest desires sometimes overrode what the mind thought impossible, and she wanted her son back more than anything else in heaven and earth. Rationality and need fought quietly within her for the son she couldn’t be happy without. Her heart told her that her feelings for Ryan were real and deep. Like flip cards in a mutoscope, her memories began to flash by: recognizing Richard, skydiving, fear of water, the angel coin, left-handedness, a childhood song no one else knew, the signet ring … On and on they went. They were just snapshots in time, but viewed together in rapid succession, they created a moving story. And the story they created was her son James. She blinked, and Ryan could see that she had made the connection.

  “James? You’re telling me you’re James? Oh, my God,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “It’s not possible. I’m having an affair with my son? Why did you lead me on?”

  “Lead you on? I have never led you on,” said Ryan. I’m just now seeing all these pieces fit into place. Every emotion I’ve expressed has been honest. I’ve told you, I was infatuated with you from the first moment I saw you. The longer I spend with you, the deeper the connection I feel. How could I possibly know … You think I planned … I’m happy about this—this sordid whatever you want to call it? I may be dating and fantasizing about my own mother! My life is screwed all to hell and back. I can’t begin to tell you how many demons I’m trying to exorcise here! Since I met you …”

  As the words refused to come out of his mouth he continued to try to talk with his hands, but they, too, were at a loss for words. Failing this, he dropped his hands and became still and silent. Without another word, he turned and walked off in the direction of his car.

  Van watched him walk off and didn’t try to stop him. She was without offense or defense on her lips—cold, alone, and empty.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CONSEQUENCES

  Her son. Alive. Van turned their last conversation over and over in her mind. Ryan had given her so many details that would be almost impossible to dig up—things that only her son would know. But he couldn’t be James. That was unfathomable. Still, every objection she silently raised, her gut instinct shot down with overwhelming force. The more she ignored the feeling, the stronger it grew.

  She hadn’t heard a peep out of him since they argued on her front porch. As minutes turned to hours, she could hardly sit still, but since he was the one to stalk off, she was not going to call him. Inside her gnawed the feeling that he would return to New York and she would never see or hear from him again. She wasn’t sure she could handle that.

  No matter what their relationship, Ryan was responsible for all the current evil in her little world of Nevis. She hated his duplicity. If he was at all sincere and who he claimed to be, he would have to fix things with HYA.

  And so she went, around and around in mental and emotional turmoil. Finally, desperate to escape the torment of her own thoughts, she picked up the phone and dialed Jean. “Time to walk,” she said.

  “Yeah, sure. Meet you out front in about fifteen minutes.”

  If there was one constant that Van could rely on, it was that the beauty of Nevis grew with every change of day and season. Twilight had its own special quality. As the human world began to settle into silence, Mother Earth filled the sleepy coastal town with the sounds of croaking toad, piping bird, and rustling reed, with the soft breeze bringing in the warm scent of the bay. It was the time when Van and Jean could open their hearts to each other, whether rocking on Van’s porch or taking their nightly walk along the big loop around the town.

  Nevis was a safe little town, and Van didn’t give the time of evening or the distance a second thought. People here still left doors unlocked and the keys in their car ignitions. As she and Jean met on the street, a quick glance at the sheer curtains in her neighbor’s house told her that Mr. Pickett could probably attest to her whereabouts should anyone need to know. She felt a little twinge of pity that a person’s life should be reduced to watching others live theirs. Everyone deserved the opportunity to live out their individual destiny. Mr. Pickett’s life had shrunk considerably since the death of his wife, Alice, but he had managed to survive. Still, he deserved more than a life with a little white poodle and a paranoid outlook. Van had been thinking a lot about destiny lately. James had been taken much too soon.

  It was a short quiet walk down around the main part of town. Darkness had chased most of the locals inside. Jean and Van compared notes on which neighbors seemed willing to go for HYA’s jugular.

  “I haven’t seen any more of Ryan,” Jean said as they walked past the darkened hardware store and Mac’s Pharmacy. Did he return to New York, or did you hire someone to kill his sorry ass?”

  Van gave Jean a quick glance and decided that being less than forthcoming about Ryan’s latest personal revelations was the best way to handle her friend’s overexuberance. “I neither know
nor care where he is. And no, I didn’t hire someone to put him out of my misery. For a minute there, I probably could have. I never saw that coming. He seemed so perfect.”

  “They all do. That’s what makes them such insidiously evil creatures.”

  Van burst out laughing. “No, they aren’t! Stop playing the woman scorned. You had a bad run of it, but they aren’t all bad.”

  “Just remember what I said about a man complicating your life.”

  “Oh, I haven’t forgotten. But Ryan is an opportunist, and what he did is unforgiveable. He says he wants to make things right. We’ll see. There’s no room for negotiation. It’s my way or the highway out of town and back to New York.” Van decided to change the course of the discussion into a less explosive area. “How’s it going for you? Has Marla called?”

  “Mmm. I left her a message the other day inviting her over, but she hasn’t returned my call yet. So much resentment for one so young.” Jean shook her head sadly. “I can’t do anything right. Every time she blows me off, Pete wins—the bastard.”

  “It’s not a game, Jean.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I’d at least like to feel like I’m winning some of the time. Her dad can do no wrong, yet she just refuses to have a relationship with me. Life is so short.” Suddenly, Jean stopped and put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Van, so sorry! I’m a thoughtless twit. Forgive me.”

  Van put her arm around Jean and gave her a gentle squeeze “It’s okay. You don’t ever have to bite your tongue for me. Listening to you doesn’t make me feel any worse than I usually do about James. You have a beautiful daughter. Of course you want a relationship with her!”