Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  “A condo on the harbor. Two bedrooms.”

  “That’s a waste.”

  “Jack, be quiet. I’m telling you my story. Two bedrooms. A deck overlooking the water. A nice kitchen. Lots of windows. I can see the sun come up over Casco Bay.”

  “Any birds?”

  “I’m sure there are gulls and ducks and stuff.”

  “Spoken like a true ornithologist.”

  “And it comes with a boat dock thingy.”

  “A slip, you mean?”

  “Right.”

  “But you don’t have a boat.”

  “That’s okay. The guy next door has a forty-foot sailboat. He invited me to come on a sail sometime.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, finishing my ale. “His name is Biff. Or Kipper.”

  “It’s Skip,” Roxanne said.

  I snorted.

  “And another thing,” I said. “It’s widely known that those guys with forty-foot boats are compensating for shortcomings in other areas.”

  “Jack, come on. You have a canoe.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  So we slept just like that, together again, once again. I didn’t awaken until the room was filled with light, and then I turned over to make sure the previous night hadn’t been a dream. Roxanne was there, her hair spread on the pillow. I kissed her on the cheek, looked at her again, then got up and put on a pair of boxers.

  It was six fifteen. The birds were up and at ’em out back, and I stopped by the door and closed my eyes and listened. That cardinal. Chickadees and nuthatches and a hairy woodpecker. A redstart. Tree swallows chittering. Blue jays and a crow. A warbler I still couldn’t identify. Maybe a pine warbler.

  In serious birding, where most sightings are by sound, I had a long way to go. But it looked as if I’d be having more time.

  I put water on for tea and looked around the house. A lot of the stuff would be going: Roxanne’s books, her Bonnie Raitt tapes, which I grumbled about but would miss. Her dresses in the closet and shoes on the floor. I would very much miss her dresses in the closet. Maybe she’d leave one or two.

  The kettle rattled and whistled. I grabbed it, but I heard Roxanne stir. There was a creak, and her head poked up over the railing. Her hair was disheveled and she was beautiful.

  “Good morning,” Roxanne said.

  “Hi, there,” I said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “That’s okay. God almighty, what did you do to my hair?”

  “Rich ladies pay hundreds of dollars to have their hair look like that.”

  “Yeah, and they pay to have their noses pierced too,” Roxanne said, and disappeared back into the bed.

  “That’s where I draw the line,” I said.

  I made her coffee, real coffee from Costa Rica. The smell lured her down the eleven steps. She was wearing one of my T-shirts, and I watched her walk down each step.

  “I hope short hemlines come back,” I said.

  “They are back,” Roxanne said, “and don’t try to tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  We sat at the table and had English muffins and jam and orange juice. I was hungry, and Roxanne was too, and we were halfway through the meal before we really talked.

  “So how was the Observer yesterday?” Roxanne asked, getting up to get more coffee.

  “Hunky-dory,” I said. “I waited until the editor left to file my story.”

  “He doesn’t like your work?”

  “He’d rather be printing wedding invitations than a newspaper. The guy’s a wimp. Likes the waters calm.”

  “And you make waves?”

  “That’s what a reporter does.”

  “I’m sorry it isn’t working out,” Roxanne said. “I feel like I got you into this.”

  “It’s okay. It really is. It’s sort of interesting. I get a kick out of a couple of the people in the newsroom. There’s this kid, David. He’s just like me, fifteen years ago. And some of the court stuff has been pretty good.”

  “You’re seeing my people.”

  “On their best behavior.”

  Roxanne sipped her coffee. Hesitated.

  “So what’s with the bump on your head?” she said.

  I sipped. Considered how to phrase it.

  “I ran into our buddy from the yard.”

  “Where?”

  “His girlfriend’s sister’s house.”

  “What were you doing there?” Roxanne asked.

  “Giving Donna Marchant a ride home.”

  Roxanne’s eyebrows rose, just a millimeter.

  “She was in court and she didn’t have a car because it wouldn’t start and she needed to go pick up her little girl. I got there and he was waiting. For her, I guess.”

  “So he hit you?”

  “A couple of times. Not very hard.”

  “So what happened?” Roxanne asked.

  “I don’t know. We wrestled around a little and the cops came.”

  “They took him to jail, I hope.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, after the hospital.”

  “The hospital?”

  “He cut his mouth a little.”

  Roxanne looked at me knowingly.

  “On what?” she said.

  “On my car keys.”

  She got up from the table, shaking her head.

  “But he had a piece of pipe,” I said as she climbed the stairs. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Jack,” Roxanne said, looking down at me from the top of the stairs. “I just don’t know anymore.”

  So the packing was an even more somber affair than it could have been before our talk. We walked around the house, selecting items one by one like a couple getting divorced. I had to keep reminding myself that we were not. I had to keep telling myself.

  I put rack sides on my truck and we loaded it up to the top with boxes and two chairs and a bookshelf and a bicycle and six pairs of Roxanne’s skis. When it was full, I tied it down with clothesline. It was a beautiful day, which was good because I didn’t have a tarp.

  Roxanne’s car filled fast, even with the seats folded down. By ten o’clock we were pretty much done and I was ready for a beer but settled for a Diet Coke. There were two in the refrigerator and Roxanne had one and I had the other. I gulped mine and went back outside to give the load a last check. As I stood on the bumper, I heard the phone ring inside. It rang twice, and after a minute or so Roxanne came out.

  “It’s for you,” she said coldly. “It’s your friend. Your friend Donna. She sounds very nice. She asked if I was your wife.”

  “Did you tell her you were my girlfriend?”

  “No,” Roxanne said. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  She went to her car, though there was nothing to do there. I went inside and picked up the phone from the table.

  “Hello, Donna,” I said.

  “Jack,” Donna said, her voice soft and familiar. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Good,” I said. “Better. How are you?”

  “Okay. I’m home.”

  She said it as if I had been there. I flinched, remembering that I had been there. I’d seen her in the window.

  “But Jack, Jeff is out.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Out of jail.”

  “What?”

  “The DA lady set his bail at three hundred bucks. He saw the judge this afternoon and bang, he was gone.”

  “Assault and violation of a probation order is three hundred bucks?”

  “I guess it was this time,” Donna said.

  I give you one week, Tate had said. It hadn’t taken her long to start the countdown.

  “How’d you find out?” I said.

  “Marcia called to see when he was going to be in court. The clerk said he’d come and gone. So Marcia’s offered to take Adrianna for a while. Until things settle down.”

  “When’s that? In time for her high school graduation?”

>   “Jack.”

  Donna said it like we were accomplices, almost intimate. A ménage à trois with a maniac. I could understand why Roxanne was chilly.

  She came in and set her Coke can on the counter, then walked back outside without looking at me.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “With your girlfriend?” Donna said. Her voice was wistful.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I heard Roxanne’s car door slam.

  “I’ve really got to go. Take care of yourself. You going to your sister’s too?”

  “I don’t know,” Donna said. “I don’t want him to think he can chase me out of my own house, you know what I’m saying? Marcia says he’s just a big control freak. Like my ex-husband. They want to run every part of your life, you know? My ex used to tell me what to wear, what not to wear. That’s too short, on and on. It’s the same thing as Jeff, when you think about it.”

  “You’re right. Listen, can I call you back?”

  “You don’t have to. I just wanted you to know Jeff was out. I mean, he’s gonna be looking for you. I know him.”

  “Yeah, well. He knows where to find me. And you too. Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, see if you’ve heard anything. How you’re doing.”

  “I’d like that,” Donna said.

  Outside, Roxanne started her car.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Bye,” Donna said, somehow making that single syllable hang in the air.

  “Damn,” I said, and hurried outside.

  “I’ll follow you,” I told Roxanne.

  “Okay,” she said, and pulled out and started down the road.

  I went to the truck and opened the door, then paused and went back inside the house. By the time I’d grabbed the shells and the rifle and stuck them behind the truck seat, Roxanne’s car was out of sight. It wasn’t until I was halfway to Albion that I caught up.

  The condo was a town house, 22 Harbor Way. There were ten cedar-shingled town houses, lined up like overgrown cabanas. They were identical except for the cars parked out front, which were similarly small and foreign and new. When I backed my old truck up to Roxanne’s door, I could almost hear the dead bolts sliding home.

  This was on the South Portland side of Portland harbor. Across the water, four or five office towers gleamed above the city’s redbrick past. The people who worked in those towers lived in places like this. Their boats were worth more than my house.

  I got out and stretched, and Roxanne, who’d gotten ahead of me when we’d gotten into Portland, came out of the front door. She was smiling and pretty and trotted down the walk.

  She was happy here. In spite of me.

  “Leave it and come in,” Roxanne said. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  I followed her inside and onto the carpet. The place was new and white and the carpet was dark green. The condo had a first floor and a second floor and big windows on both floors that looked out on the harbor and the slips and the sailboats, the masts of which bristled like a forest of dead trees.

  “It’s nice,” I said. “Except I’d spend all my time watching the ships go by.”

  “It’s nice at night, too,” Roxanne said. “I came down with Kim and looked. The lights of the skyline and everything.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet it’s pretty.”

  “Well, you’ll find out,” she said. “Hey, there’s Skip.”

  Roxanne slid the big window open and stepped out onto the deck. The air was cool and smelled of the ocean. The deck was pressure-treated wood. A guy stepping off an enormous sailboat, the biggest on this particular block, saw Roxanne and waved. She waved too, and he started up the dock.

  I had a sudden urge to go home.

  “He’s really nice,” Roxanne said.

  “You would be, too, if you’d made your fortune smuggling drugs.”

  “Jack.”

  We waited as Skip skipped along. He was tall and tanned and blond, wearing khaki shorts, deck shoes, and a T-shirt. When he came up the stairs to the deck, he stuck his aviators on top of his head and held out his hand.

  “Skip Hendsbee,” he said, handsome as a soap star.

  “Jack McMorrow,” I said.

  “I live next door.”

  “I heard. Nice place.”

  “It isn’t bad. Mostly it’s a place to keep yon vessel. A boatyard with housing.”

  Skip turned to Roxanne.

  “You need some help?” he asked Roxanne.

  “I’m sure we wouldn’t turn it down,” she said. “Would we, Jack?”

  I smiled.

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” I lied.

  So like a smiling clerk in divorce court, Skipper helped us unload the truck. He was cheerful and fairly strong for a guy with looks. In no time at all, the jumbled mess in the truck was a jumbled mess in Roxanne’s hall.

  “I’ll be right back,” Skipper said, and he trotted out the door and down the dock to his boat. When he came back, it was with three slippery cold Heinekens. He handed them out, then opened each one with a Swiss Army Knife he kept on his belt. The knife had more utensils than my kitchen. The belt was blue with red sailboats. His T-shirt commemorated a LASER REGATTA.

  “Salud,” Skipper said, holding up his bottle.

  “Cheers,” Roxanne said.

  I lifted my bottle and smiled and took a long pull. Roxanne wet her lips. Skipper took a sip. I felt as if I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up at a wine-tasting.

  “So, Jack,” Skip said, turning his looks my way. “Roxanne tells me you’re a journalist. Where’d you work, the New York Times?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How’d you end up . . . where is it? Prosperity?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “After Roxanne told me, I had to get out my atlas and look it up. I thought she was kidding me. Prosperity, Maine.”

  “No, it’s a real place,” I said.

  A lot more real than this, I thought.

  “So, you sail?” Skip said, having exhausted the topic of journalism and life in rural Maine in two sentences.

  “No, I went out in a Sunfish once when I was a kid and the thing flipped over and the do-jigger on the mast hit me in the head. I still have a scar.”

  I smiled at him. Roxanne gave me a kick-under-the-table look.

  “So,” I said, looking at Skip’s shirt. “You play computer games?”

  He looked at his shirt too. And laughed.

  “No, Jack,” Skipper said. “A Laser is a kind of sailboat. Small one. I race them sometimes. It’s a change of pace from the Queen Mary out there.”

  “Is it forty feet long, your boat?” Roxanne said.

  “Actually, it’s forty-one feet,” he said. “But I’ve been looking around for something a little bigger.”

  I looked at Roxanne and grinned. She glared back.

  “I have a canoe,” I said.

  “Hey, that’s great,” Skipper said. “I know people who use a sixteen-foot Old Town for a dinghy. Put it right up on the deck. You can load that thing right up, too. It’s amazing.”

  “I use a dinghy to get out to my canoe,” I said.

  Skipper sniffed his beer for a few more minutes and then shook my hand again and went down to polish the brass or something. He was barely out of earshot when Roxanne turned to me.

  “What was that all about?” she said.

  “What was what all about?”

  “Giving him a hard time like that. He’s a nice guy, just being neighborly, and you’re playing these games. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Where’s his wife?”

  “He isn’t married.”

  “Where’s his girlfriend?”

  “He said he just broke up with his lover.”

  “Why?” I said. “She kept getting between him and the mirror?”

  “Jack.”

  I put my empty bottle down on the counter.

  “I don’t know. There’s just something presumptuous about people like th
at. It just rubs me the wrong way.”

  Roxanne stood in the empty kitchen, hands on her hips.

  “What do you mean, people like that? Is he supposed to apologize because he’s got money? Some people are successful. This is America. They get money for that. They can’t help it.”

  “What does he do? Covers for preppie romance novels?”

  “Jack. What are you—jealous?”

  “No,” I said. “I just don’t like guys who carry pictures of themselves in their wallets.”

  “God almighty. He was being nice. He liked you.”

  “He thinks I’m not a threat to him. But he hasn’t seen me with my makeup on.”

  “Jack, why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. Cutting yourself off. Being so cynical. It’s like you’d rather be off wrestling in the gutter someplace with some . . . I don’t know, some filthy scumbag.”

  “I don’t think Biff would want to wrestle me. Maybe he’d wrestle with you.”

  Roxanne whirled away from me and started pulling boxes off the pile.

  “There’s no need to continue this conversation,” she said, striding by me. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know what’s going on with you, I don’t know what’s going on with your little friend.”

  “She’s not a friend. She’s an acquaintance.”

  “Yeah, right. Who’d like to acquaint you right into the sack. Who’s she kidding? You think I can’t tell? I could tell by her voice this morning. ‘Is Jack there?’ Women like that are as transparent as . . . as transparent as their goddamn sleazy underwear.”

  “Roxanne.”

  She stopped in front of the sink with her back to me. Her head dropped and then her shoulders started to shake and I heard a sob. I went and put my arm around her shoulder.

  “Hey, it’s all right,” I said. And then I said it again.

  “It’s not, Jack,” Roxanne sobbed. “It’s not all right. I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’m going to lose you. We’re going to lose us.”

  “No, we won’t. We’re okay. It’s just . . . I don’t know. I’ve got to figure some things out.”

  “I’m trying to help you. I thought I was trying to help you.”

  “You are.”

  “But I can’t stay up there in the woods all my life,” Roxanne said, turning to me. “I just can’t.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  “And these people. Do you want to live this way? I go to work and I see people and their sad situations, but then I come home and leave it behind. But all this? Shooting at people? It’s crazy.”