She moved to go around him, and he stood in front of her again.
He said, “You think I can’t accept a decision? I’m a captain. I drive a sizable boat and run a crew. I take responsibility for that boat and those people, and if those people don’t do what I say, the boat’s in trouble. You drive this company. I respect that.”
That wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. Or it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was what Parks had guessed.
She looked past him and said, “Right now I’ve got carpenters framing the lunchroom and setting in lockers.” She was beautiful outdoors, not that she wasn’t beautiful indoors.
He said, “I’m sorry I sounded angry. I was angry, but not at you. You were there, so it came at you. I was a jerk to you, and I’m crazy sorry for that. I ain’t happy about the toothfish, but it’s your decision, and it’s done. I’m at my oar.” And that wasn’t what he meant to say either.
She said, “Thank you, Easy,” and moved to go around him again, slower though, a good sign. He could walk and keep up beside her.
“You know what this means?” he said.
He wondered if she thought because he was still angry at her and she was angry at him that there was no going back. He’d never been angry at her, though he knew he’d sounded that way. Then Parks had started singing. It wouldn’t be hard at all to tell Carol that she meant more to him than toothfish.
Carol said, “Tell me what it means, Easy.”
He said, sounding as sure of himself as he could, “Finding the toothfish means we can afford to take a day off.”
It was a Friday morning. He had the boat cleaned up, and they were supposed to go to dinner. He bet she’d forgotten about that. He said, “And dinner. Remember?”
She said, “You expect me to believe Parks was singing at you?”
“Of course he was. He wouldn’t needle you like that.” Easy took a deep breath. This was what he had to say, and he said it so she’d have to understand. “Parks gets it how much I like you.”
He took hold of her arm with both of his hands. She didn’t pull her arm away. He said, “Once you open the doors of that place, we won’t have another chance for months.”
Easy was ready for her to tell him to let go, but he had to hold on. They were at the door into the plant and he turned her away and kept on walking.
He said, “I want you to take the day on my boat. You should know, in your business, how a stern dragger drives.”
They walked all the way around to his boat without either of them saying anything more. He kept both his hands on her arm as if she might run away, and he looked at her the whole time.
He let go for the climb down onto his boat and up again into the pilothouse. She followed. It wasn’t anything difficult, but he was glad she had on flat shoes. Then when she was up in the pilothouse, he found himself wondering why she didn’t ever wear high heels. She had nice legs, even in her suits with pants.
He started the engine and untied and backed out. She stood beside him at his wheel.
When you first pulled into the inner harbor and shut down and the air was still, the smell of fish could be strong, but the guys had hosed down, and he and Carol would soon be to the outer harbor. He feathered his engines and played the wheel. It was something he did every day, short radius changes of direction, the slides, but Carol was watching closely, and he remembered picking up that she was a car person, or had been as a kid. So he took his boat into the channel for the thousandth time and felt like he was showing off.
It was a beautiful day. Briny wind, the sky as blue as God, the sides of the cabin open, and already they were to the outer harbor. He throttled up, and he could tell she was listening to the good engines that he had in the boat and that he kept good. Easy always liked what he did, but it was work, and when you were working, you took things for granted. Today, he felt like Carol would feel, the boat underfoot and the water carrying the boat.
She looked past him at the mansions of the richest summer people, along the shore of Eastern Point. She stood close enough that their elbows were firm against one another. There wasn’t any kind of swell, no roll to the boat, but maybe she wanted to be ready, and he wasn’t going to argue. He liked having her near.
She looked through his salted windshield, squinting into the glare off the water. Ahead was the breakwater, and outside, the ocean rolled with swells. They weren’t big, but Easy wasn’t going to take her outside anyhow.
She looked at him now. She seemed about to say something important but she didn’t say it; she just looked.
So he said, to his windshield in his pilothouse, “When I was a kid, I joined the Army, and they sent me to the South. I followed a girl to the Mississippi coast, and we got married and were happy head to toe, and she died with our baby giving birth. Long time since. That’s the only other woman I ever felt this way about.”
He hadn’t planned to say that about Angie, but he believed it was the kind of thing people who loved one another talked about. He realized he’d also pretty much told Carol that he loved her, not just liked but loved, and he hadn’t planned that either, though he felt as if he’d been trying to say it all morning.
He glanced over at Carol. She was staring at him as hard as if her life depended on it, but she looked deaf.
“Oh no,” he said. “Stand outside on the deck. Hold to the rail.”
She didn’t move. She mumbled about liking his cabin, but she was looking again at the swells beyond the breakwater.
He spun his wheel, and the boat turned in a slow, weighted slide to aim back toward town. Then he got her out of the pilothouse. She didn’t have time to make much of a mess on his deck, a deck that had seen a lot worse messes. Most of it went over the rail, and she said, “I’m sorry.”
Easy held her with one arm all the way around her waist. With his other hand he kept her hair clear. He liked holding her, but he could think of better times to do it. He wasn’t going to blame her that she got seasick. It happened. But it was as if he’d never told her he loved her.
She retched, and he braced her sideways against his leg and his hip. She hung over the rail and asked in a tiny voice, “Who’s steering?”
He should tell her again, just say it, but probably not now. It couldn’t be good to say you love somebody while she’s vomiting, though that was probably better than telling her and having her vomit as soon as she heard.
Still holding to the rail, she stood up and looked down herself. It was on her shoes.
He couldn’t possibly tell her now. He handed her the handkerchief from his back pocket. It was clean. He said, “You may need some new shoes.” He said it in fun, to distract her. He’d had sick people on the boat, out for day rides. Sometimes a joke helped. “Does this mean you don’t like cruising on a ninety-two-foot Elizabeth Island stern dragger?”
She said, “I’m fine.”
She wiped her mouth and couldn’t seem to decide what to do with the handkerchief, so she threw it over the side. He didn’t care about the handkerchief, but he said, “Why don’t you throw the shoes, too. Come on. Get some new shoes.”
She said, “I should get back to work.”
He drove the boat and she waited for shore.
He tried to help her get off, and she shrugged him away. When she was off, she looked and saw, for the first time he guessed, the name of the boat.
She said, “Your boat is named Beauty.”
“If that’s what it says.”
He was mad, and he sounded mad, and that wasn’t fair to her. She was the one who’d thrown up; she was supposed to get mad, not him. She was walking away again, and he had to run after her again and begin all over. He wanted to. He didn’t blame her for walking off. He tied the boat in a hurry, terrified he wouldn’t catch her.
He ran after her shouting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorr
y,” wishing he could say, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Heels
Carol didn’t feel queasy anymore, and she was not so weak she couldn’t walk. She looked back once to be sure the name of his boat was what she’d seen, but she couldn’t tell because he was running up with his sorrys as if she still needed help. Hardly touching her, which was more than she wanted, he guided her to his truck and opened her door, and as soon as she got in, she was glad not to be walking. She would have been glad even if she weren’t covered in vomit. She was also glad they didn’t speak. Before she threw up, he had as much as said he loved her. She wished she felt more excited. Today, her company was almost open for business, and they’d wandered into a couple million dollars of free fish, and Easy Parsons had said he loved her. But right now, she couldn’t wait to get out of his truck and away from him.
She looked out the window and didn’t understand why he was going the long way around, down Main Street. She felt like she was emptied of everything, including anger, and she wondered if he would be able to say he loved her again.
He double-parked on Main Street, put down her window, leaned across her, and called to a group of women going in Elizabeth’s expensive restaurant for lunch. He called, “What’re the best women’s shoes?” The women curled their shoulders and pushed at the restaurant door. Carol sank down in her seat like an embarrassed teenager, and Easy shouted at the women in the voice of someone picking a fight. “What are the best women’s shoes in the damn world?”
“Manolos,” one of them said over her shoulder, and Easy turned around to stare at whoever had honked behind the truck.
Carol told him, “You aren’t going to find Manolos anywhere near Elizabeth.”
“So they are good?”
“I know that much.”
“I’m getting you Manolos. My boat makes you sick, I replace the shoes.”
“I’m changing my clothes and going back to the plant.”
“What, are you too embarrassed to go into Boston, into a flashy store, with one of your company’s fishermen?” At which point he left the truck where it was and ran into Elizabeth’s one expensive restaurant and came out with the name of a store in Boston called Harry’s.
He let her change her clothes, and she was tempted to run out the back of her place and through the graveyard, past Emily Ingersol, to get away. Only now she wasn’t sure she wanted to get away. She put on a skirt instead of pants.
Harry’s was four stories of Boston brick at the fancy end of Newbury Street, and if it had only been expensive, she would have been fine—Manolos she guessed would run seven or eight hundred dollars, which she hoped would be enough to make Easy regret his project. But after he pushed open the door and Carol walked in, it was clear that Harry’s was more than just expensive. It was the height of chic. And Carol was too tall and too plain, a plague on chic.
Easy tugged her toward a young and beautiful saleswoman and shouted, “We need a pair of heels.”
Carol wanted to apologize for him. She also wanted to hide her feet, but the saleswoman would not look at them anyway.
Easy said, “Manolos.”
The saleswoman heard that and gazed at Carol’s feet. It was the kind of change Carol had seen when people didn’t realize at first who Baxter was. She was amazed to find herself thinking of Baxter, though of course he shopped in places like this.
The saleswoman said, “Yes,” slowly and thoughtfully appreciating Easy’s decision.
The saleswoman said to Easy, “Come this way,” and smiled. She said, “I’m Amanda.” She was very pretty, and Carol, who was not pretty, didn’t believe she was entitled to follow along. She was ready to give up and tell Easy to go on with Amanda by himself.
Easy, in his khaki pants that were clean but not pressed and his denim shirt that had its pocket beginning to tear loose, said with quiet authority, “Glad to meet you, Amanda.” It was the delivery of somebody who could buy the building, and it surprised Carol and perked her up a little bit and got another look from Amanda.
Carol was a little over six-one and would be taller than that in heels. She held her shoulders back and followed Amanda and Easy into a room that looked nothing like any shoe department she had ever seen. She sat and let Amanda remove her flats so that anybody including Easy could look at her naked feet. Carol looked at the ceiling, which was high and elegant.
She continued to look at the ceiling when she stood to have her feet measured. She sat back down and ignored the styles of shoes Amanda showed her; she pretended to be someone who had other people choose such things, and then she hated herself for playing along with the store’s snobbery.
Amanda took hold of her foot, and the touch was so intimate Carol got clammy, and then the first pair, when she stood up, hurt Carol’s feet, and she said so and was glad she didn’t have to look. She sat back down without looking at Easy either. She wouldn’t have looked at anybody if the room had been packed.
The heels on the second pair were so high that if Carol didn’t have good balance and strong legs and strong feet she wouldn’t have been able to walk. She could walk, though, and the shoes didn’t hurt. They felt all right. She walked to the grand, old Boston window and looked above opulent cars to Newbury Street. The window and the elegant ceiling made the contemporary chic of the store more chic.
She looked down.
They were red shoes, and she was already proud of herself for being able to walk in them. She was proud of the courage it would take to wear them out of the store. She hoped they did cost a gazillion.
She turned to Easy now and said, “Okay? Are we done?”
Easy sat in a plush armchair as solidly as if he belonged in the Harry’s shoe room. Or at least he looked as if he knew who he was regardless of where he was. She guessed he had known that in more difficult places than Harry’s. He looked at her and didn’t say a thing about the Manolos he was so determined to inflict on her, so she turned back toward the window and pulled up the skirt she had worn in anticipation of his god-damned shoes. She pulled it up far above her knees, and turned around in a circle twice and faced him again.
Easy leaned forward in his chair and grinned and said, “We’ll take them.”
She liked his grin. She knew that shoes were not going to make her any prettier than she already was. But these shoes made her stiff posture feel more graceful.
Also, Easy’s grin was sexy and made her feel sexy.
She walked to the mirror and looked at Easy in the reflection and said, “Thank you.” He looked back at her in the mirror and down to the shoes and back up at her, and he didn’t lose his grin. You would have thought he was the one who was able to stand up and walk in the shoes. “I love my shoes, Easy,” she said. And then, not exactly out of the blue, “I want a dress to go with them.”
He said, “Good.”
She faced him and said, “I’ll buy the dress.”
He said, “Better,” and stood up out of his chair as if he hadn’t forgotten he could buy the building, and Carol laughed.
Amanda, whom both of them had nearly forgotten, said, “Yes,” slowly and discerningly, speaking to Carol now.
Up the grand staircase, shamelessly playing along with Harry, Carol said, “Something to have a martini in.” Carol figured if she were going to make a fool of herself, she should do the full nine yards. Maybe she’d actually have a martini. Amanda got them near what might have been dresses and looked at Easy, and Easy was shy. Shoes had been his limit.
Amanda was ready. She said, “Von Furstenberg.”
It wasn’t as if Carol had never read a women’s magazine. It just had never occurred to her to wear the clothes. Now she missed Easy’s authority. Carol nodded, and Amanda gathered three or four dresses. One of them was navy with a bit of red piping, and Carol worried that navy was the color of the suits she had already, but this dress was short, and the fabric w
as nice and would hang well. She thought the red piping would work with her shoes. She took it to the dressing room.
She looked at herself in the mirror in her own suit, and she was who she was. She took off the suit, and in her underwear, she was who she was, not awful, but hard to imagine as a prize. She was all bone and elbows and knees, without even a chest to speak of.
She put on the new dress, and she was still who she was, and for a moment she was disappointed. She had not expected to be different, but she had hoped.
Amanda called, “Carol. Come look in a mirror out here. The light is so much better.”
As soon as she heard that, she realized her knees. They were below the hem of the dress, and they glowed like blue knobs in the dressing room light, uglier than God ever imagined. She pulled open the door and ran from the dressing room before she chickened out.
When she’d gone in the dressing room, Easy had been standing by a chair. He had not moved since. He stood there and looked at her, and she was paralyzed. She could not make herself walk around. She could not make a model’s pose, whatever that would have been. She smiled at him. She could do that. She loved him. She believed he loved her. He was smart and strong and capable and did real work and was kind and believed in his life, and no matter what she thought about herself, he thought she was pretty.
She looked over at Amanda for a clue, but Amanda was watching Easy, and now Amanda was preening like she’d won something Carol had no idea about. Carol looked at Easy again, and he was trying to sit into the chair and had missed and gotten the arm of the chair and now slipped off that into the seat.
Amanda said, “I think that’s a yes.”
Easy righted himself in the chair and grinned again like with the shoes, only more. Carol could feel his hands everywhere the dress touched her.
He said, “Jesus, Carol.”
Amanda wrapped Carol’s old clothes in tissue and hid them in a chic bag and said where to go for a cocktail.
After Carol and Easy had sat for an hour with their one martini apiece, laughing about Harry and Amanda, the bartender said where to go for dinner—Italian, crusty bread, white tablecloths, candles and waiters in long aprons.
Beauty Page 16