by Winton, Tom
Who the hell could that have been? I wondered, the fresh snow mashing beneath my wheels as I rolled into the driveway.
I killed the ignition, climbed out and closed the door ever so gently. Then I trudged through the five inches of white stuff to where the car had been parked. With a cold mist now escaping my nostrils with every quickening breath, I noticed there were footprints on the front yard. About the same size as my own, just one set, they were fresh as can be – and those tracks led from the front door to exactly where I was standing at the curb. Whoever had been inside the house had been there a while.
With my mind whizzing around in all different directions, I made my way across the small front yard to door, carefully avoiding the footprints as if they were HIV-positive. I climbed the three steps, entered the house and closed the door firmly – making sure the act was audible. Then I just stood there. I didn’t move a muscle or make another sound. All I could hear was the ticking clock in the living room and the sound of my molars grinding. In the excruciating silence my heart thumped hard against my ribs, and I felt hot blood pulsating in my temples.
God, I hope she has a legitimate excuse! She must have! But how can that be possible? Hayley and Marlene are the only of Wendy’s friends who ever stop over here. Neither of them could ever afford to drive a Lexus, and their feet, they must be six sizes smaller than those prints outside. Ohhh shit, no! She’s my wife, my mate, my confidante and partner. We’ve been together all our adult lives. She’s been part of me the whole time – the best part of me. Why would she ever ....
Abruptly, my thoughts ended there. The sound of creaking springs cut them short. It was Wendy, climbing out of our bed.
Padding up the short hallway toward the living room, still out of sight, she said, “Steve? Is that you? Did you forget something?”
It had been her boss, Steve Silverman.
My heart stuttered as I stood there, breathless now. My wind-chilled face contorted as if I were experiencing some horribly painful physical torture. I’d have preferred that any day. That I could take – anything but this!
I stood there motionless, my back against the door, listening to Wendy’s steps as she made her way down the short hallway.
Then she stepped into the living room – completely naked.
Seeing now that it was me, not Steve Silverman, the smile on her face instantly drooped. Her lips parted slightly, as if she were going to say something, explain, but she didn’t. She just froze.
This was it – I was living out the worst nightmare any caring husband could imagine. Some men may think of this dreaded scenario often, others rarely, but, no matter what the frequency, if and when it happens, if a man truly loves his women, it is the most devastating of all human experiences. It can cripple the ego, no, worse than that, far worse, when the husband worships his wife the way I had.
Through glazed eyes I stood surveying my wife, who stood there, totally undressed for another man. My eyes moved to all the places that, before today, only I had ever touched, fondled, kissed and entered. The creamy flesh of her soft, erect breasts; her impossibly trim waist; the tantalizing curve of her hips; the triangular patch of silky, auburn hair where the inside of her thighs met.
“My good God, Wendy! What have you done? Why would you ever do something like this? How in the hell could you?”
She said nothing. Arms still at her sides, she turned her palms out and opened her mouth to speak. But nothing came out.
A long moment passed, an agonizing moment neither of us would ever forget. Then, startled by my own calmness, disappointed by it, I began to weigh my few options as I continued to stare at her in disbelief.
Do I kill her, right here and now? Do I go get that bastard Silverman? Should I kill them both?
Slowly but deliberately – as if in a trance, I approached her. With each small step my tormented eyes cut deeper into hers. They spoke to her – cried out to her, and she understood them. They told her what she had done to me. They told her my heart felt like it was being wrenched by a thousand savage hands.
Face to face now, close enough to smell the familiar scent of her bare skin, the shock, hurt, and profound sense of loss I’d felt suddenly vanished. Contempt kicked in. I was now working – working hard to fight back my rage.
Through quivering lips, with my voice breaking, I managed to say, “I hope you enjoyed yourself, Wendy. You’ve given me one hell of a birthday gift.” After that I dropped my eyes from hers and gave my wife one long, last look – head to toe and back again. In a tone drenched with hurt, sorrow, regret and a host of other miserable emotions I said, “Have a nice life ... Wendy.” Then, as I brushed past her, I shouted so loud that the fogged-up windows vibrated, “NOW, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!”
I stormed down the hallway, into the bedroom, and started packing everything except my business suits. Those I would leave behind.
“That’s it, I’m finished with these!” I muttered to myself, realizing I needed to do something else with my life. But still, as I struggled to lock the two overstuffed suitcases lying on that tainted bed, I felt like I might vomit. Strengthened by my rage, I managed to close the luggage and snap them shut. There would be no coming back and I knew it.
On my way out the front door, I stopped to look at her one last time. Still stark naked, she looked so pitiful. Slumped down on our plaid sofa; streams of tears and mascara networking down her cheeks, she sobbed, “Sonny ... I am so sorry.” She then hung her head and shook it as she reflected, “It’s just ... just that with you working evenings and weekends all these years and with all the money problems we’ve had, we ... we’ve drifted apart, somehow.”
It was true.
Outside, with the snow still falling, I loaded my belongings into the van. I opened the garage door, grabbed all my fishing rods, threw them in the back of the van, cleared off the windows, cranked up the engine and, for the last time, drove away from 902 New Bridge Street. Looking into the fogged-up rear-view mirror, I watched my home and my past life shrink out of sight.
Then I lost it. I wept profusely, tasting the saltiness of my tears as I drove on.
Chapter 2
I didn’t confront Steve Silverman. I knew if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself. I’d have gone absolutely crazy. Probably would have killed him, gotten locked up, who knows what after that. In modern society, repressed emotions and actions may be considered signs of mature male behavior, but that didn’t mean a thing to me. My instincts sent me different signals. I didn’t like holding back. Deep inside, it didn’t feel natural. The only thing that kept me from paying Silverman a visit was the consequences I would have paid.
I didn’t talk to or lay eyes on Wendy for three solid months. Oh, there were times, plenty of them, when I thought, Damn it all! I don’t want to go on another minute like this. I can’t. Without her there’s nothing in front of me. Ten minutes from now, tomorrow, a year from now – none of it means a damned thing without her. If she’s truly sorry; if she wants to get back together, who knows, maybe I could eventually get over what she did to me. Maybe things could someday be the same again.
But, bad as I wanted to, I never did jump into my van, speed out to Smithtown, bust into 902 New Bridge, and take the love of my life into my arms. Bad as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t. Because every time I reached the end of that reoccurring thought – the part about eventually getting over Wendy’s infidelity – I’d listen to my heart. What was left of it told me, Forget it Sonny, things can never be the same. You and I will never get over this thing, but we will learn to live with it.
During the course of those first few months, I’d taken a temporary job painting apartments back in Queens. Bobby Slap, a divorced buddy I grew up with and my closest friend not only put me to work but opened his apartment to me as well. Then, on the last afternoon of my stay, after we’d knocked off of work early, I thanked my good friend one last time.
It was just a few days before Memorial Day weekend, a Tuesday, a
glorious Tuesday with a perfect sky and mild spring weather. I was sitting opposite Bobby in his bare-bones living room, sipping Miller-Lite with my lifelong friend. On the opposite wall, above the television’s black screen, two pennants hung. White letters on the navy-blue one read “Yankees”, the royal-blue and orange one shouted “New York Mets”. Between the two was a framed photograph of the 1971 Bayside High School “Commodores” football team. Front and center, standing on the field side by side, each of us holding a football were Bobby and I. He played quarterback, I was a wide receiver, and we were the team’s co-captains.
Through an open window leading to the fire escape, a pleasant spring breeze ruffled the sheer curtains. Coming in with the fresh air were the excited shouts of children playing on the wide sidewalk three stories below. Being city boys, neither Bobby nor I noticed the occasional honking horn or the nonstop, gurgling co-roo-coo of pigeons perched on the iron fire escape.
Keeping my elbow on the arm of the chair I was in, I tilted my beer can in my friend’s direction and said, “You know, Bobby ... I owe you one for all you’ve done for me.”
“Don’t be a jerk, man. What’d I do for you?”
“Come on. You know what I’m talking about. How could I ever have saved enough to go south without your help? You put me up, for free. You put me to work. I won’t forget that.”
Bobby took a long gulp of a fresh cold beer then brought his eyes back to mine saying, “Getouttahere, I needed a helper. You needed work. It was a win-win. Besides ... it gets kind of lonely living alone. I hate to say this, but you’ll find that out soon enough.”
I reached for my cigarettes lying on the garage-sale table alongside the chair, took one out, and without lighting it said, “You know, Bobby, if I made it through these past three months, I think I can make it through anything. You’ve been there. You know it isn’t easy. And don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’ve tried to make it easier for me to handle all this time.”
“You’re nuts,” Bobby said, waving me off, turning towards the open window for a second. “I treated you the same as I always have. All we did was work, hang out here and go out for a few beers now and then. I wasn’t babying you.”
“Yeah, sure, tough guy. Like you never tried to clear off the road for me, did you?”
“Look, I did whatever I did. That’s all there is to it. How’s your beer? You need another one? And by the way, you never should have gone back to smoking. “
“Yeah, yeah, I know. What can I tell you? I’ll get myself a beer in a minute.” I said, before lighting up the cigarette, taking a drag and blowing the filtered smoke towards the sixty-year-old ceiling. “You know I’m leaving right after court tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know. Tomorrow’s D-day. I’m gonna kinda miss you being around here, always being in the way, you pain in the ass.”
With a broad smile rising beneath my new moustache, I said, “Yeah, I know. But this is what I want to do right now. This is what I need to do right now. You remember when we were kids – those times my parents took me to Fort Lauderdale. I had the time of my life down there. The eternal sunshine, all that blue water full of fish, palm trees, suntan oil, it was great. Then when ... when Wendy and I went to Key West on our honeymoon, well, that was it. I was hooked.”
“Hell yes, I remember you going down to Lauderdale.” Bobby said, purposely not mentioning the part about Wendy and me. “I hated you for it. I was one jealous SOB.”
“Do you remember the time my parents offered to take you with us?”
“Sure do. I’ll never forget that one. We were about fourteen. It took me weeks to talk my mother into letting me go. Then what happens! Two days before we’re supposed to leave she changes her mind. She said she’d worry herself sick. Guess it was a good thing I didn’t go. It was only about a month later that she had her first nervous breakdown.”
“Yeah,” I said, “thank God she’s doing better nowadays.
My best friend, this man I shared a thousand memories with, looked at me pensively. My look at him lingered as well. Nodding my head ever so slowly I knew exactly what he was thinking when I said, “Look, man, I’ve got to give this Florida thing a shot. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be back.”
“If you do, you know you can stay here as long as you have to.”
“Thanks, man. You’re the greatest.”
“Oh stop! Don’t be getting all sappy on me now because you’re gonna be leaving”
Shortly before ten the next morning my divorce was finalized at a courthouse in Hauppauge, Long Island. And not once during the proceedings did I allow myself to make eye contact with Wendy. I just couldn’t. Angry as I was at her, I knew if our eyes met it would only have intensified the hurt I was just learning to live with. Sitting in that cold, legal, strictly-business courtroom wasn’t easy. I wanted to scream at Wendy, so loud that the walls would shake. I wanted to jump up from my wooden chair and give her all kinds of hell. I wanted to dash past the judge’s bench, shove my wife’s damned lawyer on his ass, throw my arms around her and whisk her the hell out of there. I wanted to take her home and go on with our lives just the way we did before the morning of my birthday. But none of that happened. I stayed in my seat and did what I had to. When it was finally over, I simply stood up, about-faced, and strode to the exit door.
It took me five minutes to walk to the parking lot where my van was waiting – gassed up, tuned up, and loaded up. I turned the key, took one long deep breath then began my 1500 mile journey south, to Key West, Florida.
Chapter 3
Down in the lower reaches of the Florida Keys, a bit south of Big Pine, there’s a speck of an island called Wreckers Key. Roughly 100 miles below the mainland – linked to it by a long chain of bridges, it lies inconspicuously between the Atlantic Ocean and The Gulf of Mexico. A one-square-mile island full of lush tropical flora and a just handful of residents, it was originally settled on by a ship-salvaging hermit named Thaddeus Bell.
Legend has it that on stormy nights, during lean times when wrecks were scarce, Bell would ride his horse along the white, sandy shoreline while displaying a bright kerosene lantern. To the wooden ships offshore this moving light appeared to be another ship, and seeing its glow in the darkness, the light gave many a hapless captain a false sense of security. Since there were no lighthouses marking the shallow, treacherous reefs back in the 1830’s, this trick worked far more often than one would think. Time and time again an imprudent skipper, thinking he was still in deep water, would steer his vessel too close to shore, only to run helplessly aground on the shallow coral reef that stretches the full length of these Florida Keys.
When the sun would rise the morning after each wreck, old Thaddeus
would take his salvage boat out into the Atlantic and proceed to claim its cargo. And only after the survivors loaded everything of value onto his boat would he take them to safety in Key West. It was all perfectly legal, except of course the part with the horse and lantern.
Almost two centuries later the few inhabitants of Wreckers Key still enjoyed the rare sense of freedom that lawlessness and detachment from modern society affords. This state of mind, along with the key’s unfettered beauty is what attracted each and every independent soul who called this subtropical utopia home. Other than Pa Bell and his son Buster, all the other residents of the tiny island had drifted down from states “up north.” They’d done this for personal reasons and, collectively, to escape what they saw as the meaningless, robotic existences they had been living in other places.
Fall-down-tired after two-and-a-half days on the road, I steered my minivan into the marl parking lot of a shabby convenience store on Wrecker’s Key. With crushed shells crunching beneath my wheels, I slowly pulled up to a 1950’s era Texaco gas pump – the one without a scrawled, cardboard “out of order” sign on it. Squeezing the nozzle’s handle, starting to pump unleaded, I leaned back against the van and studied the gray, weathered, clapboard building before me. Looks like one of those ol
d feed stores they have up in New England, I thought. Side by side, two businesses sat beneath the same roof. The faded plywood sign over one read, “Wreckers Key Grocery” the other, “Barnacle Bell’s Bar”. Dragging the palm of my hand across my already damp forehead, I squinted through the blinding sunlight, watching heat vapors dance upward from the old shingles on the roof. Shifting my eyes a bit, I saw some huge gumbo limbo trees to the side and behind the low-slung building, dwarfing it, giving it an oasis-like appearance. The peculiar trees held my attention with their red flaking trunks. I’d never seen them before and had no idea the locals called them “Tourist Trees” because of the bark’s resemblance to peeling sunburnt skin.
After filling the tank, I hung the nozzle back up and went inside to pay. With the wooden screen door creaking closed behind me, I saw a young girl with long, sun-bleached hair standing behind a worn counter. Wearing faded denim cutoffs and a pink halter, with her back to me, she was slowly refilling a cigarette rack. I stood there a moment, seemingly unnoticed, surveying the low-beamed ceiling and sparse shelves. She still didn’t turn around or acknowledge me so I just let my stiff, tired legs carry me to the back of the store. From the cold water of “Coca Cola” cooler far older than I was, I fished a bottle of Gatorade out from beneath two miniature icebergs then creaked across the wooden floor, back to the counter where the girl was still stuffing cigarettes. Her back was still to me.
“Excuse me,” I said, “can I have a pack of Carlton 100’s in a box ... please?”
Though she turned around slowly, indignantly, she seemed to blush slightly when she looked at me. Then, with a bit of interest, she said, “Oh sure, how much gas did you pump?”