“It’s a lot of oil, apparently,” she said, rubbing her face with her hands. Her pilot didn’t know about the shoals, and now her biggest yacht was polluting a rare bird reserve upon which the United Nations had just put a protective stamp.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, thinking of the birds. She’d be fine. Her insurance would pay for what God couldn’t replace.
“Right,” she said, slapping the desk and standing. “Let’s go.”
Cold resistance filled my veins. “But the marina. We’ve got clients. They’ll be coming by soon.”
“Piss on the clients. I need you to help me pack.”
Quickly I glossed over the client problem with bigger ones that might arise were I to abandon the post, though I was careful to leave out Max’s reservation. The fuel ship arrived today. Two wedding parties were checking into the club. And of course someone had to sign out the watersports equipment, a side business Laureen had regretted as soon as she launched it because it took up too much of my time.
“Right. Bloody hell. I just want to pull out all my hair by the roots.”
After Laureen reluctantly agreed I should stay, I trotted behind her to her car as she breathlessly rattled off all the other tasks I’d have to handle if she was kept away for more than a week (maybe two!). As she listed them I nodded and nodded, seemingly making a bargain with myself to say yes to everything she asked for in exchange for a blessed week (maybe two!) of her absence, a most excellent trade-off.
She started her car and rolled down the window to bark her final orders.
“I almost forgot! Max Winter’s coming for that boat this morning.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I said, laying a gentle hand on my clavicle.
“He’s accustomed to special touches. Make sure the bar is stocked. He likes plenty of ice in the coolers and lots of beach towels. Get the club to supply sparkling water, lemons and limes, and don’t forget a sharp knife. And make sure they charge his bungalow for all this shit, not me. Ask John-John to check if the backup radio’s working. He’s in charge while I’m away.”
“Yes, got it,” I replied. John-John was her longest, most loyal employee.
“And fix your goddamn hair.”
I propped my bun back in place on top of my head and she squealed away, black smoke spewing in her wake.
By then the sky was fully awake, a wide blue expanse, the light so bright it took a second for me to figure out from which direction the sun was coming. Under my hand visor, I saw early club members crowding grotesque piles of food set up al fresco for breakfast. Cracked red crab legs jutted out at all angles from two overflowing platters, and fruit cups lay in a vivid pattern waiting to be plucked by women watching their weight and children who never finished them. It was the smell of bacon mingling with the salty wind that did me in. I became faint with hunger, unable to remember my last meal. I walked defiantly over to the hotel tack shop, a place usually off-limits to staff, but Laureen was the only real hawk about it and she was gone. Gone! I was a prisoner let out of her cage, so ecstatic that a bottle of warm water, a granola bar, and a desiccated orange, the last in the basket, was all I wanted in life.
“Run along,” the cashier whispered, waving away my money. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
I blew her a kiss and dashed away. I’d finished the stale bar by the time I got back to the office, where Max Winter was already waiting for me, calmly reading a pamphlet.
“There you are,” he said, smiling, sitting next to a large basket covered with a white napkin.
“Good morning, Mr. Winter,” I said, the joy in my voice a little alarming. It had felt like an eternity since we’d said good night to each other not fifty feet from where he was now standing, looking tanned and relaxed, a completely different person than yesterday.
“Call me Max.”
“Max,” I said.
His eyes drifted to my hands.
“I hope you haven’t ruined your appetite,” he said, taking the plastic wrapping, the shriveled orange, and the bottle of water from me, carefully placing them on the desk. “I brought you breakfast. I figured room service didn’t come down here.”
He was standing close to me now, eyeing the large knot of hair on my head, which I could feel had tipped on its side again.
“Let me . . . there,” he said, gently centering my bun.
“Thank you,” I said, blushing. “I can get the radio signal out of Miami now.”
“Oh, good. What are they saying about the weather?”
“Clear morning, rain in the afternoon.”
“So it’s best if I not pilot the boat alone.”
He reached into his basket and handed me a soggy fried egg sandwich.
“Thank you . . . Max.”
It was the best soggy fried egg sandwich I had ever eaten, the right amount of salty, the toast pliant with butter, the lettuce wilted to perfection, a red tomato wedge giving it a tart bite. Same with the fruit cups, chilled but not to the point of hurting my teeth, and served with silverware. He poured hot coffee from a thermos into the fancy china cups the club only used for dinner service. There was no doubt Max Winter was flirting with me. I wasn’t the type to imagine such things. And yes, I was flirting, too, there was no use pretending otherwise. That thing in me that was let out of its cage had begun to stretch its legs.
As we ate he told me he’d been coming to the Caymans every year for about twenty years, except for last year—the reason, I assumed, having to do with the death of his wife. But he didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press. He asked me how I ended up here, his assumption being that I wasn’t born here. I told him I was American but that lots of folks who look and sound like me were born and raised here. The island was a cultural mishmash, its uniting industry international banking.
“Ah, capitalism. The great equalizer.”
“For some,” I added, feeling clever.
He handed me a linen napkin and removed my empty plate, and I felt tended to in a way that confused me, warmed me, made me want to cry. It would be a lie to say in the past twenty-four hours I hadn’t imagined what might be possible between someone like him and someone like me, that Max’s ministrations didn’t tug at that dark part of me that fantasized about being rescued from an uncertain future, perhaps in exchange for rescuing him from a sad past. Being plain and forgettable didn’t exempt me from his stupid, intractable fairy tale.
“How old are you?” he asked, placing the dirty breakfast dishes in the basket. My face flashed hot with the idea that our minds might have been fixating on the very same potential obstacle at the very same time.
I told him, quickly adding, “But I feel ten years older. Especially when I sleep on that cot.”
He laughed. “Even if you were ten years older, you’d still be quite young.”
I asked him how old he was.
“Old enough to be your father, I guess. Your young father.”
His eyes lingered on me as I did the math, seemingly searching out my reaction, as though to ask, Do you mind? Am I too old?
Truth was I didn’t mind. He was about as old as I thought he’d be. Yet I had always assumed, being fatherless only a few years, that I’d be immune to those unconscious paternal tugs that seemed to draw young, aimless women (mostly beautiful) to older (mostly wealthy) men. I saw that dynamic play out all the time at the club. The more pronounced the age difference, the more it seemed to stunt both parties’ growth, the women with their babyish voices, the men, with their tufts of white chest hair and fat tanned shoulders, growling at them. Often all that remained between these mismatched pairings was a permanent sense of disappointment in each other, one for getting older and one for never having been young in the first place.
“So. Where’s my boat?” He peered through the blinds into the marina.
“Oh, right!” I leapt to my feet and fetche
d the keys from the locked cupboard in the back room. “I’ll bring it up to the dock. It’s fully stocked with all the things Laureen told me you liked. The big key’s the ignition. Little one is for storage under the seating in the stern, where the fishing poles—”
“Actually,” he said, pressing them back into my hand, “I won’t be able to do the driving today. It turns out I do have some work to do. So I’ll need a captain after all. And I’d like to put in a request for you.”
Before I could disappoint him, John-John entered the office, breathless with the news about the oil spill. At fifty-five, he was still spry. As we caught each other up, my eyes darted over to Max, who seemed to be figuring out how this news affected his day, our day.
When John-John’s attention drifted to the picnic evidence, I quickly introduced him to Max. They remembered each other from previous years.
“So as you’ve probably figured out, Mr. Winter,” I said, “I can’t help you today. We’re all that’s holding down the fort until we can pull in some backup.”
Max looked sternly at John-John, giving the impression of a customer trying to stay calm. “So are you saying this young woman can’t pilot my boat? I booked this yesterday. Should I call Laureen?”
I stared at my shoes as John-John reassured him.
“That’s not necessary. Of course I’m not saying that, Mr. Winter.” To me he hissed, “You’ll have to go.” He said he’d man the office the rest of the morning until he took a wedding party out for their lunchtime cruise. If there were drop-ins, too bad, he said, they’d just have to go somewhere else. “We can’t do the impossible,” he said, shrugging. And one of us would be back in time to lock up at night.
Max went to the kitchen to order a cold lunch while I ran to my quarters, navigating around the remnants of the previous night’s party. I took a fast shower, threw a clean uniform over a bathing suit, and let my hair loose.
By the time we returned, John-John had brought around the boat. Max and I hopped aboard. I started up the engine. I could see him behind his sunglasses smirking a little as I slowly steered the boat out of the marina. In full command of the vessel, I let out the throttle once we passed the last buoy.
FIVE
What can I say about the four weeks that followed that wouldn’t sound ripped from a paperback romance? That’s how long Laureen was away, and to this day I count those weeks as the luckiest and happiest of my life. Except for two quick trips Max made to New York, we saw each other nearly every day after that first foray, when I took him for a half-day cruise around Grand Cayman, he insisting I point out landmarks related to my childhood. There’s where I went to school, that building with the white bell tower; we lived there in Bodden Town, before I had to move to staff lodging when my father passed away; here’s Spotts Beach, where my mother taught me how to swim.
Strangely, talking about my parents didn’t tip the mood to maudlin or sad, even when Max gently pressed for more about what happened to them. I knew too much about the nature of grief to think mine was gone for good, but that morning I was momentarily relieved of a heaviness that had dogged me for years, a gift which I wholly attributed to Max Winter.
I threw down anchor off the coast of Rum Point, where we ate our lunch in the helm out of the sun. I began to try to see the island through the eyes of a grateful tourist rather than a disappointed inhabitant who felt jailed rather than liberated by all that blinding water. Buildings that looked shabby up close glowed white with promise from a distance. Even the red-roofed shops dotting the harbor looked like a pretty foreign canton, and not a cheesy tourist trap.
“Born on a boat, lives on an island, now an orphan, working for a witch. You’re a Grimms’ fairy tale set in the Caribbean.”
I laughed. It was an odd compliment, considering how those stories generally ended. I hadn’t talked about myself that much in years, not even to my more inquisitive roommates.
“What about you? Tell me about you, your home. Laureen says it’s stroyt atava Deezney movay.”
“Yes, Asherley,” he said, busying himself with attaching a long lens to an elaborate camera. “You do a great impression of her. What else does Laureen say about me?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want him to think we gossiped about him. “Well . . . she said you’re an important man who’s been through a difficult time.”
His face softened. “Seems we have something in common, both of us orphans.”
“But you have your daughter.”
He smiled. “Yes. Dani. She’s full of life, that one. I try, but she’s a complicated little thing. Very brave. Or maybe just reckless.” He focused his camera on two seabirds climbing and diving into the surf.
“She’s a teenager,” I said. “Aren’t they supposed to be reckless?”
He dropped his camera and turned to look at me squarely. “You don’t seem the type that has ever been reckless, with anything or anyone.”
Despite the essential truth of his observation, it was one of those compliments, again, that I puzzled over. Did he mean discerning and mature, or dull and stable? To counter the possibility of the latter interpretation, I replied, too quickly, “Well, I wish I could be reckless sometimes, do whatever I want, say whatever I’m thinking, go anywhere I please, with anyone I want, and never come back here if I don’t want to. To be honest with you, recklessness is a luxury to someone like me.”
“Please don’t say that.” He said it as though he’d asked this of me before, to no avail. “I like you just like this. Dependable. Hands on the wheel. Keeping everything afloat, so to speak.”
To punctuate this plea he snapped a picture of me before I had a chance to protest, or even pose in some flattering way, which I found mildly alarming.
“You’re looking at me like I stole your spirit. I shouldn’t have done that without asking.”
I stepped forward and placed my hand on his camera. “It’s okay. I’d like to see it.”
He flipped back to the shot. I veiled the tiny screen and we crowded in to look. Lit from behind, my hair a whirl of dark waves caught in the wind, I barely recognized myself. It was an arresting photo; I couldn’t hide my pleasure.
If anyone were to have passed us that day on the boat, what would they have seen? A regular couple enjoying a bounty of good decisions they’d made in life, to be together, to afford to come here, to take out a boat, to pack good food to eat on a cloudless day? Up close would they have noticed my nervousness? How I hoped my driving seemed fluid and expert. How every time my eyes darted around to find Max they seemed to catch him looking at me. Or perhaps they would have thought this is the father and that is the daughter, and she’s manning the boat on her own for the first time, and his smile indicates more a paternal pride than an older man wooing a young woman.
His phone rang. Turned out he did have work to do that day, banking, the kind I imagined was usually conducted in windowless rooms, at long tables surrounded by men in suits. Yet there he was, leaning casually on the handrail, legs crossed, squinting at me while he openly discussed his business, using terminology that had little to do with money but everything to do with wealth, which, my father taught me, were two very different things. One bought you shoes, he said, the other power; one attention, the other secrecy, which was the most important commodity of all, because that’s how rich people stayed that way.
His mood was lighter after getting a bit of business out of the way and he began, unbidden by me, to finally talk about his life; his daughter; his sister, Louisa, with whom he was close (“We bicker like old married people, but we’re partners in crime”). He even cued up a recent photo he’d taken of Asherley in the distance, probably the only vantage point from which one could take in the entirety of the house. The photo was recent, from a few weeks ago, so the grounds were covered in snow.
“It’s called Queen Anne, this style of architecture. Quite different than the classic center-hall
designs you see up and down the Gold Coast.”
I nodded as though I had any clue what constituted Queen Anne architecture or where one might find the Gold Coast. To me Asherley simply looked like a remote winter palace, its turrets topped with a dozen red snow-capped spires, its windows deep-set like old eyes.
“It’s very beautiful. How old is it?”
“The house itself is around two hundred years old. My great-great-grandfather Ashton Winter built it for his bride, Beverley Daneluk. Of the Massachusetts Daneluks,” he added jauntily, as if to emphasize the hoity-toityness of the match. “That’s where Dani’s name comes from.”
Max explained how the house took years to build, the labor mostly provided by bound boys, indentured servants who lived and worked the land to pay off family debt.
“Ha, like me with Laureen,” I said, only half kidding. I prodded him for more. He confirmed what Laureen had said, how Charles I had granted the island to his family. For three of the four hundred years they’d lived there, the Winters were farmers, until his grandfather and father worked on Wall Street and he eventually went into politics.
“A lot of the original structures are scattered here and there. Stone ruins from the first house, foundations from a barn built in the 1700s, parts of the bound boys’ quarters. People come and tour the island every once in a while, conservationists and the like,” he said. “And except for some updates, the house had been pretty much untouched until Rebekah decided to make renovating Asherley her life’s work.”
It was the first time he’d spoken his late wife’s name. Did I imagine his shoulders sinking a bit, sadness creeping in around his features? Or was that happening to me? I tried to change the subject to something benign, asking him why he’d gone into politics, but she lingered there, too.
“Oh, that was Rebekah’s idea. She was canny like that,” he said. “Always thinking of next steps, always thinking of things that might benefit the family, or Asherley, pushing me to make more of myself. No one knows more about local politics than you, she said, and owning Asherley means you want to have a say in the decisions made in the county. And she was right.”
The Winters Page 3