Chapter 15
Ray and Marcella continued to see each other several times a week. They ran together. They went fishing in Ray's boat. Occasionally they had dinner at Cap'n Dick's or, occasionally, one of the nicer restaurants in town.
After their close call with intimacy in the Keys, Ray expected their relationship to progress. Marcella, however, pulled back from him. It was as though they were back where they started. Things seemed almost strained between them. Ray told himself that the traumatic way her marriage had ended would, of course, make her very nervous about embarking on a new relationship. He admitted to himself he was disappointed because he knew he was falling in love with her and he felt ready to move forward at the same time she was pulling away from him. He tried, with difficulty, not to let his impatience show. He was certain that if he rushed her, he would risk scaring her away altogether.
A couple of weeks after they came back from the Keys, she told him she had to go out of town. As usual she did not say where she was going or when she would be back. For some reason those trips bothered him. He tried to shake it off because he knew part of the reason it bothered him was because he was used to talking to her almost every day and she never called him when she was away. He tried calling her cell phone a few times when she was away and he always got her voice mail. She did not return his calls.
One afternoon the weekend before Thanksgiving she phoned to let him know she was back. They talked for a few minutes. She did not say where she had been or what she had done. Ray didn't ask. He was just glad to have her back.
Before they hung up, Ray asked, in a tone he hoped to hell sounded casual, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
She didn't answer immediately. She sounded a little surprised, “I don't know. I honestly hadn't even thought about it.”
“What do you usually do on Thanksgiving?”
She laughed. “When I was a kid, we went fishing on Thanksgiving. We often got charters on the weekend after Thanksgiving but Thursday and Friday were almost always totally dead. On Thanksgiving Day Dad and I would go fishing if the weather was good; sometimes we would go with other captains, but usually it was just us. We could typically stock the freezer for the winter with our catch from the day. Friday was a heavy work day; we spent the whole day doing maintenance and repairs on the boat.
“Between my dad's death and my marriage, I tended to spend Thanksgiving as a guest of whoever invited me to share their holiday. Roland and I always spent Thanksgiving with his family. That ruined Thanksgiving for me forever, I fear.”
“Do you still keep in touch with his family?”
She laughed out loud saying, with a tone of bitterness bordering on hatred, “Hell, no. They could scarcely manage to be civil to me when he was alive, and then they only bothered to so much as acknowledge my presence when he was in the room. They didn't know where I came from, but they could tell I wasn't 'one of them' if you know what I mean. His mother hated me from the minute we met, which meant the rest of the family was forbidden to accept me no matter what. No one from his family so much as spoke to me at his funeral nor have I seen or spoken to any of them since. I don't expect that to ever change.”
She paused, and changed her tone, “What do you do on Thanksgiving?”
He laughed. “You're going to think I'm weird.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I usually go out on the water in the morning. There is hardly any boat traffic. In the afternoon, I watch hours and hours of football on TV.”
“What do you eat for Thanksgiving dinner?”
“Not turkey. I don't like turkey. Usually I either grill some fish or, more often, I eat chips and salsa all day long while watching sports and I never actually eat a meal.”
She laughed, “I don't like turkey either, but I don't think I could eat chips and salsa all day. If you would like, why don't you take me fishing in the morning. I'll catch us something to eat for dinner. I'll cook dinner while you watch football.”
“Hot dog! A woman who fishes, cleans the fish and cooks it while I watch TV. I must be living right!”
She did not respond. He cleared his throat and changed the subject because evidently he had overstepped that damned line again.
On Thursday it did not take her long to pull in a very nice catch. They returned to Ray's house and decided to go for a run before the first football game started. Before they turned around to go back to his house, they ended up at the public beach which was nearly deserted. They slowed down and walked along the shore to the end of the beach. She was quiet. He felt awkward with her for some reason. He decided to ignore that feeling. He took her hand. He was encouraged by the fact that she did not pull away.
They walked in silence for a while, hand in hand. Finally, he got up the courage to say, “I'm sorry if I came on too strong in the Keys. I don't know what got into me. Since we've been back, I noticed you have been a bit distant. I hope you are not upset with me.”
She was very tense. For just a fraction of a second it seemed to him she was about to recoil. He expected her to let go of his hand and pull away. She did, in fact, let go of his hand. He felt his whole body deflate. He had blown it!
But she surprised him. Instead of pulling back and telling him she wasn't ready for a relationship, she slid her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder. He circled her waist with his arm. They slowed even more and walked along the shoreline, staying just far enough away from the water to avoid getting their feet wet, but close enough that their shoes squished in the wet sand. They walked to the end of the public beach, and then paused to rest on a bench near the jetty. She was very tense but she never let go of him. He put his hand on her hair and then it fall to her shoulder.
He whispered, “I know you are not ready for a relationship yet. I promise to try to be patient and give you all the time you need. I guess I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance when you're ready.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and tightened her grip around his waist, “Oh, we are way too far down the road for that. I guess that's the problem. That night in the Keys when we sat outside and talked, I felt something I haven't ever felt with a man before.”
“What was that?”
“Safe. I guess it scared me a little.”
“Forgive me for pointing out an obvious fact: that makes no sense.”
“Since when do matters of the heart make sense? Actually, it makes perfect sense to me. I am used to always being on guard. I am used to having to be on the defensive all the time. I have never had anyone in my life, at least not since my mother died, with whom I could completely relax and who I felt I could trust without reservation. After Mama died, I never felt that way again until that evening with you. The reason it scared me was because I didn't know what to do next. I still don't.”
He leaned his head against hers and whispered, “When the time comes for us to do something different than what we are doing now, I think we'll both know.”
She looked up into his eyes, “Did I not recently brag about being utterly fearless?”
He smiled back at her and said, “I believe you did.”
She looked away and smiled with her mouth, but not her eyes, “I think I finally found something I am afraid of.”
“What?”
“You.”
“I thought you trust me and feel safe with me.”
“I do feel safe and trust you. That's what scares me: What if I'm wrong?”
“You aren't wrong.”
She chuckled, “Worse still: what if I'm right?”
He laughed too, “Then I guess we'll sort of be stuck with each other and we'll have to deal with that.”
She sighed, but it didn't strike him as a contented sigh at all. It struck him much more as frustration. He didn't quite know what to make of that. She shook him out of his worry, though, by tilting her chin up and kissing him – softly and quickly – on the lips. Before he had a chance to kiss her back, she stood up and said, “Come
on. Your football games await you and there's a stringer of fish waiting for me that isn't getting any fresher.”
They walked for a short distance and then started running back in the direction of his house. When they arrived she suggested he take his shower first while she cleaned the fish. He usually did not catch fish, so he had no permanent cleaning station. When he bought whole fish from the market, he cleaned them outside on a piece of wood he laid across a couple of saw horses. He set her up under a tree and hooked up the hose so she would have water. Then he went inside to shower.
He was amazed at how quickly and efficiently she worked. By the time he came back outside, she was finished cleaning the fish and had the fillets bagged and on ice in a small cooler. The rest of the carcasses were bagged just as neatly and ready for the garbage. She was hosing down the cleaning station when he came outside. She looked up at him and laughed, “Maybe you should bring me some soap and just squirt me off here. It would avoid messing up your bathroom.”
He smiled and said, “Hand me the hose!”
Instead she turned it on him and sprayed him. He jumped over the railing and wrestled it away from her, soaking them both as they struggled for control of the nozzle. Eventually, she managed to turn it off. She looked up at him and said, “Well, that was mature.”
He pulled her close and pushed her wet and tangled hair from her face. “You will have to admit it was kind of fun.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I think you need another shower..... a cold one.”
He said, “You want some company?”
She pulled away, “No thanks. I think I can manage.”
She was back from her shower in a flash, bustling around the kitchen, making an unholy racket, in his opinion. He went into the kitchen to fetch a beer and said, “I take it your husband was not a football fan.”
She thought about that for a minute and said, “I think he enjoyed the game, but he was not what you would call a fan. We went to a lot of games, but usually for business reasons. He watched games on TV, but I think mainly for the purpose of knowing what happened in order to talk about it at work the next day. He never yelled or hollered. And he never made those horrible faces if I made noise during the games. I will note here that we had kitchen help and the kitchen was very far from the TV room. I'm sorry for disturbing you. I'll try to be quiet.”
He grinned at her and handed her a bottle of beer, “Why don't you do even better. Why don't you sit down and watch the game with me?”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I don't know. I guess I always thought football was a guy thing. I was hauled along to Super Bowls with other spouses, but I was never invited to sit down and watch televised games.”
“Well, this is Florida, honey. Florida gals, of which you are one whether you like it or not, are expected to paint up, tease their hair and holler and scream along with the menfolk. Football is a family event in my world.”
She took the beer, looked around the kitchen and satisfied herself she was in good shape and then said, “Okay. Lead on. It's been ages since I sat actually watched a whole football game. You may have to explain things to me.”
She didn't know the players or the current standings, but it quickly became apparent that she understood the the game well indeed. She always knew who had the ball. She spotted penalties before refs did and she understood all the intricacies of the rules. Ray said, “I thought you said you hadn't watched football before.”
“I said I hadn't watched football in a long time. I didn't say I had never watched it. My dad was a big football fan. Unlike you, he didn't really want company when he watched games, but I had to be quiet and the only other thing to do on Sunday afternoons when we didn't have charters was homework, which was the bottom thing on my priority list. So I'd sit quietly in a corner of the room and watch the games, too.”
They watched the Lions game until they got hungry. It wasn't much of a game, so they turned off the TV and Marcella finished up in the kitchen while Ray manned the grill. They finished eating about the time the Dallas game came on. They curled up on the couch together with coffee and enjoyed the game. At half-time she called her driver to pick her up when the game was over.
About mid-way through the fourth quarter Ray saw the headlights of her car pull in the driveway. Immediately the driver turned off the lights and the engine. He would wait until she came out, whenever that might be. Ray wondered what the driver did sitting out there in the dark. He thought it must be a hell of a boring life. He would have got up and invited the driver inside, but Marcella didn't appear to have even noticed. The driver was her employee so Ray did not butt in.
When the game was over, Ray walked her to the door. As she reached for the knob, he put his arms around her and drew her to him. Her arms went around him as well and they clung to each other for a long minute. She kissed him quickly and said, “Thank you for perhaps the best Thanksgiving I have ever had.” He held her tightly for a moment, but she pulled away and murmured, “He's waited a long time already.”
Baiting & Fishing Page 15