He could hold his breath underwater for a few minutes, and holding it now while he watched Jimmy press himself into her, like a hummingbird jabbing at a flower, but not as pretty, just dark and murky, Jimmy's body rising and falling as he plunged into her, not gently the way she would want it, but like he was a jackal tearing apart some carcass.
Chapter Three
The Morning Swim
1
“The Salty Dog,” Owen said, lifting himself from the swimming pool. “Waiting tables. Since Memorial Day weekend. Lifting weights, too.”
“That must be delightful,” Mrs. M said.
She stood near the changing rooms, swathed in a red bathrobe, dark glasses covering her eyes. She looked like a movie star. She had a cigarette in her hand, which she waved dramatically.
“I imagine you meet lots of girls and boys your age at that dive.”
“Some.”
“You're still very young for your age,” she said, and then caught her breath for a moment. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that in a negative way. I meant it as…as…you're so innocent compared to the boys at that school she goes to. They've already begun those patterns they'll have for life.”
She exhaled a lungful of smoke. She was like a beautiful dragon, he thought. A jade dragon with sparkling eyes.
Owen drew himself up over the pool's edge. He exhaled deeply; coughing.
“My smoking bother you?”
“No,” he said, swiveling to sit down more comfortably, his legs still in the water. “Just holding my breath. Trying, anyway.”
“Trying to reach some goal? Underwater?” She took her sunglasses off, and dropped them carelessly on the tiles.
He nodded. “To beat the Guinness Book of World Records. This guy, he held his breath. Thirteen minutes.”
“That's impossible.” She walked casually over to him. He could see her sapphire bathing suit top, and her breasts cupped within it as her robe fell open. She stepped out of her sandals.
For a moment, he imagined what she would look like with her suit ripped from chin to thigh, with him pressing into her—no, not him, Jimmy, the way he had torn into Jenna.
Mrs M, a smile on her face, could not read his thoughts, he hoped.
“No one can hold his breath that long,” she said. “It must've been a cheat.”
“If you believe in something, maybe you can do impossible stuff, Mrs. M.”
“That’s magical thinking, sweetie. And Mrs. M, good lord,” she laughed, dropping her robe completely. She shimmered. “You're a man now. You'll have to start calling people by their first names, Owen. I feel like a schoolmarm when you call me that. Is that what you want me to feel like? A haggish old schoolmarm? I'm forty, not seventy. Catherine. Or Cathy.”
“Oh, yeah, okay,” he said, grinning. “Cathy.”
As she walked along the edge of the pool to the far end, she pulled her hair back and tucked it into her white bathing cap. She lifted her arm in a certain way to him, like a salute. Then, she dove into the pool, graceful as a mermaid.
He watched her do laps while he caught his breath.
2
When he went to shower off, Owen saw the other boy's towel hanging from the bathroom stall.
Steam began to fill the changing room. Owen pulled his wet trunks down, and tossed them on a chair. He grabbed one of the long white towels that the Montgomerys' maid kept neatly rolled in the cabinet over the toilet. Then, he walked the narrow hallway to the large shower.
All three shower heads were running, and Jimmy stood there rubbing soap along his arms, his face frothy with white soap foam.
Owen ignored him, and -- stepping beneath the furthest shower head -- grabbed a bar of Ivory from the holder.
“Mooncalf,” Jimmy said, as the foam rinsed from his face. His hair stuck up high on his head. The smell of soap was overpowering. “Haven't seen you in awhile.”
“I know,” Owen said, his voice husky.
He didn't feel the way he did in school with the other boys, not with this Jimmy, this eighteen-year-old who he had watched deflower Jenna. He felt disgusted.
“Been busy.”
He turned his back on Jimmy for the rest of the shower, hoping the other boy would leave to go swim in the pool. But Jimmy toweled off, and began dressing just as Owen turned off the water. He slipped his shorts on, and reached for his t-shirt.
“You've been working out a lot. Me, too. I run every morning. I play tennis.”
“Swim,” Owen said. He walked back to the toilet to take a leak.
“Swim?”
“I swim.”
“Ah, a complete sentence out of the Mooncalf,” Jimmy chuckled. “That's the first thing I noticed about you, you know.”
Owen said nothing; flushed the toilet. Sat down on one of the chairs, and reached for his shirt.
“You talk in bits of sentences. Well, that and your hair.”
Owen twisted back to look at him, his t-shirt shirt half over his head. “My hair?
“You've got pretty hair. It's soft, too. Most guys' hair is like bristles.”
“Weirdo,” Owen said, then, “Sleep in the guest room much?”
He pulled the shirt down, and then went to grab his socks. Jimmy followed him, sitting down on a short bench.
“No. That bother you?”
“No. It's weird that her parents don't care.”
“They don't. Well, her mother doesn't. Her father's still down in the city. And I thought you were hot for Jenna. That's the third thing I noticed about you.”
“We're friends. That's all.”
“Boys can't just be friends with girls.”
“Okay,” Owen said. He laughed, but it was a fake. It echoed off the turquoise tile and sounded less genuine as it went. He looked at Jimmy, who was watching him with a sort of paternal take—the way Owen's father would look at him when he didn't understand him.
“You know, Mooncalf, you comb your hair to the left a little more—make the part slightly higher and you'd look top drawer. You really would. Your chin's strong, your body's in excellent shape. You need to get rid of these,” Jimmy pointed at Owen's red t-shirt, “and start wearing some oxford cloths, button-downs. With sleeves. Short sleeves are for kids. It would show your best side. And maybe some khakis. When you grin, don't show all your teeth.”
“Bite me.”
Jimmy laughed, and reached out, pressing his hand against Owen's shoulder in what could only be a casual and friendly—even brotherly—gesture.
“Good. Some spirit. I'm just trying to help. You look good, but you look too island. You need a little charm. All guys do. Swimming only goes so far, after all.” Jimmy, ever-annoying, kept up the jabber. “I'm not much of a swimmer. I sail, but the idea of water, well, let's just say I do a passable dog paddle. But you've got those biceps. Amazing shoulders for such a Mooncalf runt. Pretty good. How much you bench?”
“Who cares?”
A brief silence.
Then, “I do.”
“Well, not all that much,” Owen said. “I just stack the weights on and push. I don't notice how much.”
“Don't notice? My god, sport, you mean to say your goal isn't the weights?”
Owen shrugged. “I never think about it. I just want to be powerful. I mean strong.”
“You said powerful.”
“Same thing.”
Another brief silence.
“You ever up for tennis?” Jimmy asked.
“Not really.”
“I can teach you if you like. It would be fun to a doubles match one day. Early, before it's too hot. You, me, Jenna, and maybe you could find a friend to bring. We could have a good match. It's always fun to play doubles,” Jimmy said.
Owen noticed the combination of arrogance and nonchalance, as if none of this mattered. Even this small talk was something to fill some empty space. Jimmy probably screwed Jenna on a nightly basis. But he never thought about Owen, or Owen and Jenna. He probably lived in the moment. Completely.
Owen glanced up. “Her birthday?”
“Yeah, you know, the whole crowd's coming from the Cape, and then we'll just do tequila shots till dawn. You got a girl off-island?”
Owen began to lie, just to fill that emptiness between them. Yes, he had a girl. Yes, he was excited about Jenna's birthday party, even though he had not been invited to it. Yes, he was considering his options as to which colleges he was looking into—Middlebury looked promising, he didn't think he had quite the grades for Harvard, but his uncle had been a Dean at Middlebury, and yes, they could all go skiing in the winter up there in some distant holiday.
The whole time, Jimmy reached into his shaving kit; went over to shave at the mirror, and then applied some kind of lotion to his face. He finished it off with a spritz of the most obnoxious cologne that Owen had ever smelled. While they small-talked it, Owen knew, standing there in the diminishing steam of the changing room, he knew.
Owen knew just by standing there with Jimmy in the shimmering mist.
Jimmy had a weakness.
He began spending time, after that, thinking about that weakness.
Thinking about how he could get Jenna back.
3
Owen's shift at the Salty Dog began at three and lasted until eleven, six days a week. He emerged sweaty and stinking of grease, because half his job was cleaning out the fryers and grease pits at the end of the night, and when he got off shift in early July—it was nearly two a.m. -- he went down to the jetty to stare out at the early morning mist of the Sound, smoke some cigarettes, and chill.
He didn't turn around when he heard the footsteps coming up behind him.
“Mooncalf.”
“Hey Jimmy.”
“Got a cig?”
“Take one,” Owen tossed a cigarette back.
“Thanks. I guess you want to be alone.”
“Didn't know you smoked.”
“I don't. Not when anyone looks, anyway.”
“That's nice. Anything else you do when no one's looking?”
“If I told, you'd know my secrets.”
“How's Jenna?”
“She's okay. She fell asleep early. I just needed to wander a little. How's the job?”
“Good. You can smell it on me. You wander late. It's almost morning.”
“In Manhattan, I wander at all hours. I like this time of night. You meet all kinds of interesting people. I kind of miss work. I used to work summers in one of my dad's stores. It was fun sometimes.”
“Seems like more fun to run around the island all summer. Like you two.”
“It gets old. I take that back. Yeah, it's fun. I guess you want to be left alone.”
“You guessed right,” Owen said, cricking his neck to the left a bit.
“Your neck hurt?”
“It gets stiff. Leaning over a mop half the time. On my knees cleaning out all kinds of shit.”
“Here,” Jimmy said, and Owen felt hands at the back of his neck, gently massaging. “Better?”
Owen let him continue. “This fog depresses me.”
“I think it's peaceful.”
“You would.”
“Mooncalf, you hate me, don't you?”
“Not really.”
“How does this feel?” Jimmy pressed his thumbs into Owen's shoulders.
“Oh yeah,” Owen said. “Right there.”
4
Before dawn, he had gone to the pond. He knelt beside it, and reached down among the algae and slimy rocks until he found it.
He drew the statue up, and set it down on the wet grass.
“I guess you're just made up,” he said aloud. “I guess I'm just a screwed up guy who made you up. Maybe when I was twelve I was warped. But you're just some cheap souvenir someone lost. No one believes in gods.”
Still, the itchy thought touched him somewhere between his eyes and scalp—he could practically feel the fire crawling on him.
But if you're not.
If you're real.
I'll do what needs to be done.
5
Mrs. M, in her own words:
Here's what I thought of it all: my daughter Jenna had been trouble from the day she was born. She was pretty and plain at the same time, and I say that as a loving mother. She inherited her father's face, not much of mine, although I guess she got my eyes.
Lucky her—my least favorite feature since my own mother always told me I had sad eyes. When Jenna was four years old, she told me that no man was going to do to her what her Daddy did to me. Definitely wise beyond her years, but just not special enough to handle what life would deliver to her, that's for damn sure.
It was her trust fund. It made her trouble. Look, there's something that everyone pussyfoots around but no one ever talks about. That's money. Pure and simple.
Money.
When a girl has some, she can be elevated to the status of goddess.
The most ordinary—even homely—creature can become ravishing with just a portfolio or a trust fund.
That island—in summer—is full of trust fund widows who should by all rights be considered blemishes, but instead are constantly sought out for parties and gatherings and literary events.
For Jenna, there's always been money. And I've watched it feed her in a way that can't be healthy; but what could I do? She has access to money. Lots of money. Money clothes her. She was ruined because of it, basically.
She could never learn how to survive. She could never learn how to rely on herself and her own character to get through a difficult or challenging situation. She could always buy her way out of things.
This isn't true of me. I was raised solidly middle-class. My father had died when I was six, and my mother didn't have too many options, not back then.
In many ways, I feel for Owen because of this. His life is a lot like mine was as a child. Yes, there was some inheritance later for me, but when you spend most of your childhood wanting things you never really get over it.
And money becomes a prison, too. When you know what it's like to live without it, and when it's within your grasp, then you know what it's like to not have it.
So, you cling to it. Pure and simple. You hang on for dear life.
I suppose people will say things about my marriage to Frank that reflect this, but my marriage is a different kettle of fish. We've got our way of living, and yes, you can assail it all you want, but it works for us nine times out of ten, and those times when it doesn't quite work, well, we have places to go where he can live his life and I can live mine, and the breather is well-needed. On both our parts. I'm not the easiest woman in the world to live with. And he's no saint.
I sat down with my little girl when she was just learning about sex, and I told her that men have different ways of dealing with love and usually it's through the one part of their body that seems to cause others the most damage.
“But it's just his body,” I told her.
She cried over all of this. She cried when she found out her father had another woman. A mistress.
But you have to cry at first, don't you?
To get all those little fairy tales out of your head about how life gets lived, about how there are a few good men, how some men don't cheat. And it's not true.
All men cheat, and all women marry cheaters, and to not look at that square in the face is like not looking at the good side of marriage, too.
So she cried off and on for a few years, and I held her sometimes; I was cold to her at times—I knew she needed to work this idea out in her mind.
When she fell in love for the first time, she told me that she was grateful for what she'd had to go through with her father.
“I don't know why men do what they do,” she told me.
“If you did, you'd have solved the greatest mystery of life,” I said t
o her. Or something like that.
But for my money, she should've avoided that Jimmy McTeague. He was bad news. I know every little deb and sorority girl east of the Mississippi thought he was just the end of the world, but they were such goofy little virgins it was hard to have patience with them.
Jimmy McTeague is the devil incarnate. I know that's an over-the-top way of putting it. He wasn't evil, but he was cold. I knew a little about his family, and none of it was very good. His father had some bad business deals going, and even if he had all the stores, Frank told me some things that alarmed me.
With Jimmy, I felt it the first day I met him, which was sometime before summer. Perhaps Easter break?
She brought him by the house in Greenwich, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Hello Catherine. I've heard so much about you, I almost feel like we've had an affair.”
He thought that kind of thing was funny, that off-the-cuff jokiness. Within minutes, he'd given me some nickname, which of course he had to repeat five or ten times to truly annoy me, and within an hour of chatting with him, I knew more about that boy than I cared to know.
He is dangerous.
And so yes, I think it all has more to do with Jimmy McTeague than with anybody.
At her birthday part in late July, he told me that he thought the world was meant to be owned by people like him.
I believe those were his exact words.
Yes, he had money.
Yes, he was extremely good looking for a boy his age. Extremely. Only a fool wouldn't notice that.
But he had no spirit. What he had was pure badness. He was absolutely pure in his badness.
I once had a dog like that. Beautiful. Completely bad. Jimmy McTeague's like that. I really began to hate that boy at Jenna's birthday party.
Chapter Four
Coming of Age: Three Novellas (Dark Suspense, Gothic Thriller, Supernatural Horror) Page 4