by Luanne Rice
Josie had stopped eating. She pulled out her right hearing aid, fiddled with the control.
“What’s wrong?” their mother asked, dropping her fork to lean clear across the table.
“It’s broken,” Josie said. Only the words came out sounding like, “Eh bwokah.”
“Here,” Cass said. She wiped her hands on her napkin, then took the hearing aid out of Josie’s hand. To T.J., Josie’s hearing aids had always looked disgusting, like blobs of shapeless flesh. He didn’t know how Josie could stand them. The sight of one out of her ear made him gag. He put down his fork and concentrated on not throwing up.
Josie, tapping her left ear, started to whimper. “Eh, eh, eh,” she said urgently, like a hurt puppy. “Eh, eh, eh.”
“Oh, please!” Belinda said.
“Eh, eh, eh, eh …”
“Hang on, Josie,” their mom said. “Please don’t start that. I’m trying as hard as I can. Just a sec … Jesus, just hold on a minute.”
T.J. had the feeling their mother felt she was alone at the table, under her own pressure to fix the hearing aid before Josie launched into a bad fit. The realization filled him with rage. He felt tempted to bolt, leave them all alone, let Josie throw one of her super whoppers.
“Eh, eh, eh,” Josie went, getting louder, screwing her face into a knot. “Want it back! Want it back!” She clapped her left ear over and over, as if trying to clear it, like a diver who’d gone too deep.
“Please, Josie!” his mother said, a horrible pleading tone in her voice. “You’ll hurt your ear. Stop!”
T.J. still felt like splitting, but instead he took Josie’s left hand. “Hey,” he said sharply. “Cut it out.”
“Eh, eh, eh …”
“I said cut it out. Mom’ll fix it.”
Josie’s face stayed twisted and scared, but she stopped her whimpering. He stared at her for a minute, until her face relaxed. Then he stuck out his tongue, making her laugh.
“Battery,” his mom said, dashing to her desk and back. She unscrewed a piece of the hearing aid with a miniature screwdriver, inserted a tiny silver battery, and wiggled the hearing aid back into Josie’s ear.
Josie nodded without speaking and resumed eating.
Cass smiled at T.J. “Thanks, buddy,” she said. “You saved the day.”
“No big deal.”
“I mean it. I think I’d have flipped out if we really got going here.” She nodded at Josie.
“No sweat.”
“I noticed that, actually. How do you and your father do it? I have to talk till I’m blue in the face.”
“Hey, Mom,” T.J. said. “Lighten up, will you?”
She nodded. But instead of lightening up, her face got all cloudy again, and she went back to what she’d been thinking. “Shit,” T.J. said under his breath. No one seemed to hear him. At least, no one said anything.
8
One night in August, when the kids were in bed and Billy was at sea, Cass left the house. She thought she was simply taking out the garbage, but after she’d dropped the plastic bag into the trash can, she just kept walking. The whole neighborhood was asleep. Streetlights hummed overhead. She passed from one circle of light into the next, listening to the electric buzz. It reminded her of someone blowing low into a pitch pipe.
She passed Bonnie’s dark house, the Sullivans’, the O’Tooles’, the Barnards’. John’s truck was parked in the driveway. He hadn’t gone fishing with Billy this trip; he was sleeping in his own bed. Cass sneaked down the driveway and peeked in his truck window. Cassette tapes, coiled line, empty soda cans, marine-supply catalogues covered the seat. She remembered dating John in a truck like this about twenty years ago.
She wondered what life was like in the Barnard home. Rachel lived the fishwife life, just like Cass. She rode out John’s absences, probably as lonely for him as Cass was for Billy. Unlike Cass, though, Rachel did aerobics. Cass had seen her coming out of the High Step Fitness Studio in turquoise spandex tights and hundred-dollar aerobic shoes. To Cass, Rachel seemed as if she didn’t have a care in the world beyond keeping her butt tight. Cass and Rachel kept their distance from each other. Being married to fishermen was all they had in common.
Cass had never told Rachel about her daughter Joyce’s making fun of Josie. Bill was right: What good would it have done? Joyce was just another kid. Before having Josie, Cass had always laughed at overprotective mothers. She remembered Carol O’Toole calling up, miffed because Belinda, in first grade, had told Tanya her winter coat was ugly.
“It’s a very expensive coat,” Carol had said. “From Lord & Taylor. And Tanya feels very hurt, because she picked it out herself. We want Belinda to apologize.” Of course, Cass made Belinda say she was sorry. But she remembered laughing with Billy for a month at the way Carol had sniffed, “It’s a very expensive coat.” At Carol, for making a mountain out of a first-grade molehill.
Cass continued down the street. It flashed through her mind that one of her kids might wake up and need her. That Josie would. But it felt so good to walk, to enjoy the summer night while everyone else slept, that she just kept going.
Cass didn’t understand what was coming over her. She was turning into one of those women she despised—an overprotective mother. She had known a hundred of them, and she could see them now: armed with Kleenex, extra sweaters, galoshes, batting helmets. Fretting that their children would want to play contact sports, try mountain climbing, cross the highway, swim out too far.
Cass and Billy had never planned on having a third child. Life with their first two had been a dream. T.J. and Belinda were the easiest, happiest babies imaginable. Any fears Cass had had about losing herself in the process of raising children had flown out the window. She couldn’t imagine not being a mother.
Then Josie, her third baby, arrived. Cass and Billy had played sex roulette. She couldn’t say they’d taken a trip, forgotten her birth control. Or that they had misread the calendar, misjudged her cycle. No, Josie had been conceived out of sheer passion, Cass’s and Billy’s inability to stop their lovemaking long enough to open the drawer, squirt on the jelly, insert the diaphragm. Lust.
It had come over them a thousand times—a lust so strong they would tempt fate, lock legs, French-kiss, rub bodies, whisper love stories, touch, tease, fuck wildly without a thought for opening the drawer.
Cass knew her parents and sisters felt sorry for her, thought her life was difficult. They knew she had to cope with Josie’s acting up, her misunderstandings, her frustration. When Josie threw a tantrum in public, they admired Cass’s patience and determination. Her firm grip in those public situations lessened their own embarrassment. “I don’t know how you do it,” they all said to her.
Well, Cass didn’t know, either. She just did it. Here came another parade of women from her childhood: the women with burdens, the ones you’d feel sorry for. Mrs. Muldowney, who had to push her husband around in a wheelchair, wiping the drool off his chin; Mrs. Vetrano, who used to bring her middle-aged son everywhere she went, a gray-haired man who wet his pants and read comics all through Mass; Mrs. Cray, whose only child, a girl Cass’s age, had been born blind.
“Poor Mae Muldowney,” “Poor Ginger Cray,” everyone would say. Cass figured people probably looked at Josie and said, “Poor Cass Medieros.” That made her more furious than anything. Cass loved Josie with a passion. Josie felt terrors Cass couldn’t imagine. Cass could see it in her eyes, the panic of not being able to hear right. She’d give anything to take away her deafness, but she didn’t love her less for it.
When she reached the Alewives Park playground, Cass walked across the grass. There was the sandbox where her children had played. She could practically see Belinda building sandcastles. There was the swing set T.J. once toppled over, he’d gotten himself swinging so high. The tall shiny slide.
This playground scared Josie. Other little kids moved too fast, seeming to come out of nowhere, because she couldn’t hear them. Sometimes they did it on purpose. Sh
e didn’t like to swing because she didn’t trust what was behind her. Being so high in the air and falling back into the unknown was too frightening. Once Cass, pushing Josie, stepped back for one beat in midswing to tie her shoe. Josie, expecting to feel her mother’s hand, instead felt nothing. The sound Josie made was inhuman, and now it echoed in Cass’s mind.
Life without Josie. Cass imagined what it would be like. The thought sneaked up on her, out of nowhere: What if she’d never been born? She pictured this playground, T.J. and Belinda playing, surrounded by an aura of contentment. The way things had been. She tried to remember what Josie had been like before her hearing loss, but she could not. The hearing Josie did not exist.
At that exact moment—she couldn’t have said why—Cass looked up. She saw a shooting star, and then another. Her head tipped back, she reached behind her for the dangling metal chain, pulled the swing underneath her. She sat down, her feet in the scuffed, sandy path, and pushed off. She swung gently, in a slow rhythm. One more, she said to herself, watching the sky. One more star, and then I’ll go home.
Her heart pounded at first as she waited. Summer meteor showers always excited her, made her feel that anything was possible. Looking up, she hardly blinked. As a kid, keeping count, she would beat Nora and Bonnie every time.
“One more,” she said out loud, and then she saw it: a star trail blazing straight from Arcturus to the Pleiades—bright white fire through the night. She swung a few seconds more, letting the motion calm her heart.
Cass headed home. Because she had been gone for so long, she cut through yards, passing directly beneath her neighbors’ bedroom windows. She heard men snoring, a couple fighting, a radio playing low. Coleridge Avenue was silent, empty of traffic. Cass crossed without looking both ways, then entered her house. She climbed the stairs. Outside each bedroom door she stood still, listening to the steady breathing of each sleeping child, and then she went to bed.
Meteorologists called the summer the hottest in years. Going into Providence was like stepping into a clay oven. A mysterious sandstorm whirled through Hartford, depositing a massive sand dune just behind the Wadsworth Atheneum; local car dealers sold more dune buggies and dirt bikes than ever before. After dark each night, kids came from all over to leave their tire tracks on the dune. People trying to sleep complained that the engines sounded like giant chain saws, so police imposed a curfew on the city until enough steam shovels could be commandeered to clear the dune away.
By some thermal fluke, a shift in the winds, or a combination of the two, Mount Hope was experiencing slightly cooler temperatures than the surrounding areas. People came from as far away as Newark, just to spend the day at Spray Cove. The ferry from Block Island carried islanders to Mount Hope, hoping for relief from the airless heat.
In Little League, Keating & Daughters won game after game. Driving by the field one day, Bonnie Keating Kenneally stopped to watch and reminisce about the days when her kids had played; it almost seemed unfair to Bonnie, watching her team slug triples and homers into a field full of tired players whose home fields were too hot for batting practice. She missed Gavin, but he was making them a fortune scallopping. He and the O’Tooles had tapped into a rich bed on Georges Bank where you’d trawl and trawl and never come up empty.
Lobsterville sold so many frozen daiquiris during the last Saturday in July, the blender broke. People slept with their windows open, lightweight blankets pulled to their chins. Sheila Keating, grandmother of Cass, Bonnie, and Nora, wore a flannel nightgown all day long, if she wasn’t going out; she tried to sleep as much as possible, because Eddie visited her dreams more and more. One night, when Cass Keating Medieros fell asleep on the living-room floor, Josie snuggled close for warmth, talking in her sleep about her father coming home from sea.
Mary pressed close to Jim every night. Snoring, she slept like a log. She never heard Sheila yelling, “Oh, shut up,” from down the hall. She dreamed of herself as a young bigamist, a pretty girl married to both Jim and Ward, and she never knew that Jim lay awake beside her, counting the times the beam from Minturn Ledge Light passed across the ceiling.
Billy Medieros returned from his brief fishing trip. He came in late from longlining off Block Island, hot and sweating, and felt the air turn cool just as he passed Minturn Ledge Light. He’d missed fishing with John this trip. His crew hadn’t gotten along, and the heat didn’t help. Pulling into port, he couldn’t wait to get home.
Driving up the hill, he checked his watch. It was nearly eleven, and there was a good chance all three kids would be asleep. He wondered if he’d find Cass in bed, naked and waiting. Not that she knew for sure when he was coming home. In their early days, at least, that element of surprise would add to the anticipation, would drive them crazy waiting to be together.
Now he felt a different anticipation. He never knew what to expect with Cass. Would she be too drained to talk? Angry because her mother had suggested North Point again? Thrilled to see him, ready to seduce him anywhere but in their own bed?
Tonight he didn’t care. He wanted to drink a beer with Cass in the back yard, then go upstairs and fall asleep together, nude.
Driving down Coleridge with the truck windows open, he felt himself starting to relax. But then he heard it: Josie screaming. Her voice pierced the muggy air, though Billy couldn’t make out one word she was saying. He thought of Cass, of how tired she must be, dealing with Josie so late. It could be anything, he thought. Maybe she’d had a nightmare, maybe she had a heat rash. He tried to tune in, to tell from her pitch how serious it was.
He parked across the street, where tall pines in the Camarras’ yard blocked the yellow streetlight. Billy climbed out of his truck. He stood hidden, his arms folded across his chest, watching his own house. He imagined going home, trying to sort out the problem, saying the wrong thing or not saying enough.
He found he couldn’t make himself go inside.
Split down the middle by love and shame, he climbed back in his truck and yanked the wheel around. He sped down the hill, toward the harbor. For the first time in his life, he was going to sleep onboard the boat instead of going home to his wife.
Willis Randecker gave up his room at the Ramada Inn and rented an apartment on Abalone Street. His real estate venture in Providence kept him busy all day, but every night he’d wait for Nora to finish work at Lobsterville and dine with her at her Benson’s Mill condo. He would tell her about the properties he’d been looking at, and he’d tell her his ideas for development. Half the contractors in Rhode Island ate at Lobsterville, so Nora would set him straight on who had a good reputation and who didn’t.
Nora had cooked every chicken recipe in her Dining for Lovers cookbook, and still Willis hadn’t taken her to bed. They would kiss for hours—sometimes on her balcony, sometimes on her leather sofa—but that was it. He never even tried to touch her breasts.
It was two o’clock one Wednesday morning, with the harbor lights slanting in the condo windows. They had been kissing since midnight. Her mouth bruised and a fire between her legs, Nora pulled back from him. They gazed, panting, into each other’s eyes. She guided his big hand to her hip, pushed it up her silky caftan to her breasts. No man had ever made her feel this way; she didn’t want to beg, but she would if she had to.
“Willis …”
As if mesmerized, he stared at his hand caressing her breast. Cupping its full curve, rolling the nipple between his fingers right through the caftan. Suddenly he stopped. “It isn’t right, Nora,” he said.
“It is, Willis. You have no idea how right this is …” Nora rubbed against him. “Please,” she said, her eyes closed.
He stroked her cheek, passed his smooth fingers over her lips. When she opened her eyes she found him watching her with such tenderness that she momentarily forgot her lust. She couldn’t remember ever seeing such a loving expression on any man’s face before.
“You see, I don’t believe in it,” Willis said.
“In what?” Nora’s
sex still felt hot and liquid; her nipples tingled. If anything, what he was saying excited her more.
“Sex outside of marriage. I’ve only been with one woman my whole life, Nora—my ex-wife. I can’t explain this to you; it’s how I was raised.” His eyes looked troubled; he touched his temple.
Nora had been rejected before. She had come on too strong with guys who were married, guys who didn’t want her; it had always hurt her to the quick when a man said no. But this was different. Willis looked so unhappy about what he was saying, Nora cared only about comforting him. She took his head in her hands, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“It’s not okay,” he said. “I want you so much. I’d give anything if I didn’t have this problem with my conscience.”
“Don’t worry, Willis,” Nora said.
“Nora, I care about you very much.”
“But why?” Nora asked the question she’d been wondering about all summer, when Willis had first appeared at Lobsterville.
Willis gave a little laugh, held her hands between his. “Who can explain chemistry? I felt it the first time I laid eyes on you. There you were, marching back and forth through the restaurant with a cross little frown on your face, and I said to myself, ‘I would like to cheer that girl up.’”
Nora laughed nervously. Was that it? He wanted to cheer her up? She straightened her caftan.
“I’ve been lonely, Nora, and I’ll bet you have, too. I can see it in your eyes. You act like a tough lady running a famous restaurant, but you’re just a little girl. You’ve been lonely inside. Am I right?”
Two tears squeezed out of Nora’s eyes. She wiped them away, but more followed. To finally be understood!