Amelia was trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. She could not fathom why Will was forcing himself into her family, nor could she understand why Doc let him slip into the role of eldest son without a thought to her feelings and wishes. She always felt she was second place to the military, then the police department, and now to a six foot tall, red-headed stranger from the teenage world of Doc and Beth Jackson. She was realizing that she was never to be in first place in Doc’s life.
Later in the week Doc came to the conclusion that he had to call Beth to explain himself. He went online to find her telephone number in Spokane, but there were several Jeffersons and he never asked Will what his stepfather’s first name was. Doc took a chance that his mother would know the husband’s name or recognize the street address since Anna mentioned running into Beth occasionally over the years. He punched in John and Anna’s number hoping John would answer. A bit of small talk would build up Doc’s courage before John put Anna on the telephone. Anna picked up.
“Mom, how are you?”
“Fine. How is everyone there?”
“You might want to sit down. I have some news for you.”
Anna panicked, “Did someone get hurt?”
“No, Mom. You have a new grandson.”
Anna was clearly confused. Doc made the explanation as brief as possible as a segue to asking for Beth’s contact information. He could read Anna’s disappointment in her voice. She would not have been surprised if Steve had come up with a grown child out of the blue, and she always wondered if Jack left a part of him behind before he died, but she counted Doc’s family stability as his great strength.
She sensed that Doc was more interested in an address than in a discussion. Anna recollected an encounter with Beth while Christmas shopping a couple years back when Beth and her husband were excited about building their dream house in Nine Mile Falls, a subdivision just north of Spokane. One of the boys with Beth that afternoon was probably her grandson.
Doc had the information he wanted and eased out of the telephone call. He punched in the number from the Nine Mile Falls address. If a man answered, he would hang up, but it was Beth’s voice on the other end of the line. The illusion of Beth at eighteen years old was carried in her voice. It was better not to see her in person and let reality scar the first conversation in twenty years.
“Hello…Who’s calling?…Is anyone there?” she pulled the telephone away from her ear to check the caller ID: Harrison, W. Her first impulse was to hang up, but curiosity got the better of her.
“Hello, Beth. It’s Doc.”
“It’s good to hear from you, Doc. Are you and Amelia and the kids in town?” She assumed he was calling on his cell phone.
“No, I’m still in Fort Worth. Will’s here visiting.”
Beth’s heart broke silently. She was afraid that her cozy life was about to unravel. “Why is he visiting Fort Worth? He’s supposed to be camping with friends here in Washington.”
“He knows I’m his father, Beth. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He wasn’t supposed to find out. He was never supposed to know. Is he there? Can I talk to him?”
“No, he went back to his motel. He’s coming home Friday.”
“I don’t want you in our lives, Doc. I mean it. We have a great life here and we’re happy. We don’t need you. Please send him home.” She hung up abruptly and the line disconnected. Beth was very clear that the past was not a place she cared to visit. She trusted Doc as far as she could spit - and that was all over her chin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By spring break all four of Doc’s sons and daughters were congealing into a blended family on their own terms. Ben and Will e-mailed elaborate plans for spring break in Spokane; the girls planned the vacation around time with Anna and John. Doc made plans of his own.
Doc was looking forward to a vacation with Amelia. In all their years of married life, they were never alone for twenty-four hours straight, and now they were about to spend seven glorious days on a cruise ship out of Galveston. His three omnipresent children were about to be offloaded for a week into the loving hands of both sets of grandparents in Spokane. He was looking forward to missing them for a few days - a full week of being a childless couple lost in the idyllic, timeless magic of the Caribbean. This was the trip they promised themselves before Doc enlisted, before Ben and his sisters, before their youth slipped away.
He was hoping that all the emotions, distrust and hurt of the last six months would be tabled for a week while he and Amelia were at sea. Although Ben and his sisters seemed to mention Will every five minutes in the months since they met, Doc and Amelia considered the matter to be an elephant in the room. They were brazenly aware of Will, but couldn’t summon the courage to talk about the significance of how Will’s existence skewed their relationship. Spring break could not come soon enough.
Ben and his sisters were packed and ready to fly away when school got out on the Friday of spring break. The girls had selected, washed and folded every conceivable fashion needed for a teenage week in Spokane while Ben shoved a half dozen shirts and an extra pair of jeans into a backpack. Amelia followed up by culling the luggage of the former and expanding the variety of the latter in time to set them loose at the security gate of the airport.
When Doc arrived home, they had a quick dinner and packed for the morning drive to Galveston to board the Caribbean Sunset for a week. By early afternoon they were aboard the mega ship with three thousand other vacationers. The sheer size of the ship was daunting. The brochures never emphasized the fact that passengers would be herded into huge dining rooms and public rooms while elevators and stairwells were often packed with men and women crushing together in exasperation.
Doc was not enthused about shipboard dining. A casual pass at the informal buffet behind the sports deck would have suited his every need for all six or eight daily meals aboard the Caribbean Sunset. Amelia brought not only every nice dress she owned, but a couple new purchases as well so as to not repeat a meal in the same costume. From experience he knew that a wise man would dress for dinner rather than invoke the lady’s displeasure.
He had to admit that Amelia was radiant on the first night of the cruise in her long aqua dress and elaborate hairstyle. Aqua was an exotic enough color although a well-dressed female could easily name and distinguish several dozen nuances of blue-green hues. Doc though she looked elegant in a color of simply four letters.
They hurriedly walked the length of the ship to the formal dining room. The narrow hall forced them to proceed single file past opposing foot traffic and carts. Doc planned to take her hand when they reached an open deck, but Amelia was making good time toward the formal dining room. Their tablemates were prompt and waiting for them, but not waiting long enough to invoke a trace of impatience.
Everyone introduced themselves with gentlemen rising and hands reaching across the table to greet the other men. The ladies leaned forward toward the introduction to be sure to catch the name and home town of their peers. The table was set with smooth white fabric over circular cutouts from 5/8 inch wooden decking from what Doc could tell in a quick feel under the table top.
It was set with plates, glasses and silverware to cover any culinary experience known to man. Generally speaking, Doc could navigate any foodstuff with a fork and possibly the assistance of a steak knife. The test would be whether the old adage about using the outermost silverware for each successive course was actually true. There were also some unidentifiable implements that must be reserved for experienced diners only.
Amelia and the lady to her left were immediate friends through the medium of the motherhood experience. Doc overheard Amelia referring to Will as her husband’s son by his first wife. It was news to Doc that he had been married before, but he would never see those people again after the cruise. If Amelia felt that Will was easier to explain as a product of his first failed marriage, he had no objection. He would need to make a mental note of the revisionist history in c
ase the subject came around at dinner again.
The man to his right spoke of nothing but golf. Doc would have preferred to be up on deck with the wind in his face watching the sun dip into the broad expanse of the cobalt horizon against the rouge and orange sunset. Perhaps he would have been lucky enough to catch the storied flash of green light at the exact moment the sun sank below the waves.
Amelia was droning on with her tablemate about their children. The lady spoke of her children’s extensive allergies and illnesses while Amelia attempted to one-up her with an account of Ben and Will requiring expensive corrective orthopedic shoes when they were learning to walk. Doc was amazed how much the boys had in common in spite of growing up two thousand miles apart.
He dropped his fork on the plate with a clatter loud enough to pause the conversation at the table. Suddenly, he realized that Amelia had known for years about Will and kept him at a distance. Perhaps that was why she so readily agreed to stay in Texas rather than return to Spokane after his enlistment was up. She kept in close contact with her best friend from high school for twenty years and rarely went more than a week without calling her in Spokane where Will was growing up. It explained why there had been no immediate and severe ramifications when he told Amelia that Will materialized at work unexpectedly.
Amelia looked in his direction. “Is the rocking of the ship getting to you, Bill?”
“Yeah, I think I’ll get a little fresh air if you all will excuse me.” Doc got up and left without waiting for a response. He heard the conversation resume behind him and was certain he would not be missed.
The Caribbean Sunset was generating foam along the hull and chasing it away from the ship as it cut a groove in the black water. Although the water was invisible in the dark, the white foam crests stood out as they fanned away from the white sheet metal of the hull. The teak rail was clammy with condensation. Doc put one foot up on the lowest rung and leaned into the teak rail. The lights of Galveston had long faded to the west and a new moon made the cruise ship an incandescent island far out to sea.
He wondered if he was jumping to an unwarranted conclusion about Amelia. Already she invented a failed first marriage for him to fit her conversational needs. Perhaps the comment about the shoes was just table talk. Even John and Anna in Spokane didn’t suspect that Will was his until Doc told them. Yet if Amelia knew about Will since the beginning, she might have been afraid of the expense of child support or of having Doc’s attention stretched between the two boys. There were some lean years when he enlisted.
He stared down the stars in the constellations above him. Each point of light exuded a clarity equal to the ones in the night sky in the mountains around Coeur d’Alene. If there existed a passage to see from earth to Heaven, it would certainly be through the wondrous black vacuum above him.
Doc ruminated over Bogie’s line from Casablanca about the insignificance of the problems of two people in a chaotic world. Unfortunately, the problems of Doc and Amelia increased exponentially as Ben and the girls were added, Will and Beth and her family were included, and John and Anna and Amelia’s parents weighed in. It was an unknown debt from twenty years ago silently incurring compounded interest until being presented for immediate payment in full the night that Will found Doc in the office. If Doc had known twenty years ago, steps could have been taken to assuage the guilt and pain before it took so many innocents by surprise.
Amelia appeared at his side steadying herself with her palm flat against the teak rail. She looked much younger than thirty-eight with the wind in her hair, her eyes closed and the muscles of her face relaxed as if life’s worries were left behind on the dock in Galveston. He decided not to ask her when she knew about Will just yet. The objective of the cruise was to escape real life for a week.
Presently Amelia spoke in a reflective voice. “We should have taken this trip years ago before we gave up being anything but Mom and Dad. I was trying to remember back to when it was just you and me, but it was so long ago and for such a short time.”
“It happened pretty fast,” Doc agreed. “There was a big chasm between us for the first six months we were together with you in Spokane and me in boot camp and tech school. I wish you could have joined me earlier during the months of tech school. We could have had an apartment off base like some of the other married guys. I could have been with you when Ben was born instead of two thousand miles away. It was almost as if I was watching another man’s life unfold from a distance. How did I end up missing out on so much?” Sullenly he reflected to himself that during the same months he was missing out on his new family with Amelia, he was missing out on his first months with Will.
Amelia was quietly trying to compose a response. She kicked around ‘everyone has hardships, it’s what makes us stronger’ and ‘you may have missed out when Ben was born, but where were you when the kids were growing up?’ Any aggressive response would provoke an argument and they always avoided arguments like a plague. Every disagreement involved someone caving in and chalking up another grievance on the lists they kept locked deep in their souls. In the end the victorious party would never know the long term price of winning a round. After twenty years the lists had turned into volumes with neither person suspecting the extent of the grievances logged against each other. Amelia feigned a chill as an excuse to retire to the stateroom. Doc followed.
The next day was announced by the trill of the telephone in the stateroom. Amelia fumbled in the dark to lift and drop the receiver. Doc stretched and sauntered the few feet to the heavy curtains blocking the window. Blinding sunlight just over the eastern horizon scorched their retinas when Doc yanked the curtains open. Amelia was not pleased and yelped in pain, but resisted the urge to criticize him. They dressed for the beach and hurried up to the sports deck buffet for a quick breakfast of fresh fruit and slightly stale bread.
Doc was ready for a morning of power snorkeling in Grand Cayman. From the deck he saw a long, flat island floating like a leaf on the water. The white sand and clear water were perfect for snorkeling. The crowds encouraged a brief dining experience, so in short order they took the crowded stairs to level seven where they were crammed into the theater to be sorted by the colored tags and numbers slapped on their shirts for embarkation of shore tours. The guide for tour B4 brought them down the stairs to the gangway and out into the warm morning sun where a fleet of minivans were waiting to disperse the foreigners to every corner of the small island.
A short van ride landed them at a beachside dive shop down the coast. For three hours they studied the coral and colorful tropical fish. Doc read that many Caribbean coral reefs were dying and losing their glorious colors. He expected to see the colors and varieties of coral and fish that inhabited the television travel documentaries and was slightly disappointed. The sheer magic of being in a foreign tropical island was enough for the tourists to let down their guards and share the experience of warm water and undersea adventure. It promised to be even more exciting later on when they bragged about Grand Cayman to the folks back home.
They returned to the Caribbean Sunset for lunch, then walked around town for a couple hours while Amelia scouted out deals for souvenirs. Doc picked up items at random, turning them over to see if there was a made in Asia logo stamped on the bottom. Too often there was. The clerk eyed him suspiciously from the far end of the counter where she was trying to convince Amelia that the jewelry on display was a once in a lifetime bargain. She returned her full attention to closing the sale with Amelia when Doc locked onto her stare. She was young in an island sort of way. She could have been seventeen or twenty-seven, although she dressed like most young American girls in knockoff fashions.
With the long fingers of her right hand she caressed the necklace she was showing while the tips of her left middle and index fingers lightly held Amelia fingers against the glass of the display case. Although Amelia was free to come and go, the subliminal message of the clerk’s fingers on top of hers was that the entire pitch must be heard befor
e Amelia was excused. Amelia made the purchase without realizing she had been manipulated. Doc admired the clerk’s subtle technique more than he was offended by the manipulation of his wife.
The shops had different names, faces, and loss leaders, but the core of each store was generic souvenir fluff apparently imported by the same supplier. The feverish pitch of the pitchmen grew more intense as Doc and Amelia approached the sanctuary of the ship. The anguished pleading for Amelia not to miss her chance at world class values met with resistance from Doc’s hand at the back of Amelia’s waist, coaxing her on to the no man’s land between the security gate and the cruise ship.
The Caribbean Sunset pulled out about five o’clock in the afternoon to a great fanfare from the panhandlers of a steel drum band and the ruckus of excited tourists on deck. It was clouding up to the west. Doc thought that Amelia went down to start dressing for dinner while he watched Grand Cayman fade away. When Doc didn’t follow, she settled in a deck chair thirty feet from the rail watching him breathe in the damp salt air. She searched for reasons to keep him.
Doc gazed out over the rail at the distant collision of heavy thunderclouds against the spring sky over Grand Cayman. Under the unsuspecting clear weather lay a field of wet green sheets racing to shore and culminating with a thin, foamy splash as it overlapped the beach. Closing in quickly from the west was a dark line of showers drawing a curtain insistently across the stage of the tropical paradise. It roiled the waves as it closed in on the island leaving only the destructive line of pummeling sheets of rain as a view.
The storm was racing the evening in. The forbidding dark blue thunderclouds were pockmarked and crackled like the texture of the skin around the eyes of a centegenarian woman’s face. The water was alive with depth and brilliance, the violet and indigo waves absorbing and enhancing the hues of the advancing storm. The gathering storm reflected on the water like a smoked glass mirror in sharp contrast to the perfect lines demarcating the intricate sections of the clouds pieced together above the island. There was rain on the horizon, and the portending show of strength was looming as sure as the promise of approaching darkness. At the furthest west edges of the storm a dark pink fire of clouds covered the sunset.
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