Harbor Lights

by Theodore Weesner

  She was stepping from the office when Lori let her know from the front counter—hand over receiver—that Mr. Hudon was on the line, and Beatrice took the call, ready to deal with him once and for all.

  Even before she could speak, though, Warren was saying, “You said you’d let me know—it’s been hours!”

  “Warren, don’t snap at me, or I won’t talk to you at all!”

  “I’m not snapping. I just want to get things settled.”

  “That’s exactly what I want.”

  “I’m having a bad time—please, don’t be hard on me.”

  “I don’t mean to, Warren—but I am going to be straight with you. I don’t know what it is you want, this favor you’re talking about. I’m sure I’d grant it if I knew what it was. But I am not going to meet with you in a public place. That is not going to happen. So please, tell me what it is you want, tell me now, and I’ll do the best I can.”

  Warren, sounding like he was suppressing gravel in his throat, said, “What I want, is just for us to meet. That’s the favor. I can’t just say what I have to say over the phone. The favor is to meet and for you to hear what I have to say. It has to be in person.”

  “Well, I can see you at home tonight—though it’ll have to be late because I’m taking Marian out to eat.”

  “We can’t meet now—for ten minutes? Beatrice, I gave up my traps and fishing grounds. I’m having a hard time here. I only want to make up a bit, while I have a chance, that’s all. Can’t you bend a little? I just need to see you. Just ten minutes.”

  She paused, holding the receiver, tightening her jaw and resolve. Sensing she had to pull a difficult trigger, she said, “Warren, listen to me now. I don’t mean to be unkind—I don’t—but I’m not going to let you manipulate me. I’m sorry, but it’s what I believe you’re trying to do. I’m sorry you’re sick—but I can’t let you use that to make me do something I don’t want to do or that I find threatening. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Warren took in a breath. “I only need to see you, so I can”—he coughed—“so I can speak my mind, that’s all.”

  “Warren, I think you’re trying to get back at me. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  “For God’s sake, Beatrice, I’m sick.”

  “You could have gotten treatment,” she said at last. “You said yourself you’ve been sick for months. Warren, I’m sorry about all of this, but what I think is happening is you’re trying to drag me over the coals. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right,” he said after a moment. “You’re always right, aren’t you?”

  “Another problem is I’m scheduled for a late lunch; it would have to be another day in any case.”

  “Today’s the only day. I don’t know if I’ll have other days.”

  “Warren, please—I can’t listen to this.”

  “Is Virgil there?”

  “He’s not, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he was.”

  “You know I can tell when you’re lying.”

  “Well, tell what you like.”

  “It changes your voice.”

  Beatrice held silent.

  “You don’t have to lie,” Warren said. “Not anymore. I’ve wondered, you know, if you have any idea how I’ve lived with what you’ve done to me all these years. Being by myself, while you were with him. Do you know how it feels to be all alone? I was your husband, and you lied to me every day, even when you didn’t say anything.”

  His words stung. She didn’t speak for a moment. And then, after all the years of looking away, her impulse was to purge it all. “You’re not completely innocent yourself,” she got out. “I knew, a long time ago, I knew things wouldn’t work for us, and I’m sorry—but Warren, you had to know what was going on. You can’t blame everything on me for how your life has gone. That may hurt, but it is the God’s truth.”

  After a moment, Warren said, “You did know, didn’t you—you knew, years ago, that we didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Warren, I can’t go on with this.”

  “You both knew. You knew how it had to be for me. Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you let me go?”

  “For that I am sorry, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Well, I am, too, if you want to put it that way. That’s some of what I wanted to tell you—I’m sorry for thinking, back then, that I owned you. It’s what I felt, but I didn’t know it was wrong. It’s what I thought it was to have a wife. I didn’t mean to hold you down, if that’s what I did. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, it’s history,” she said, and blinked against weeping. “There’s no need to call it up.”

  “It’s what I thought marriage was.”

  “Warren, please, let’s just let it go.”

  “Did you give yourself to Virgil—like you never did to me? Is that something you can tell me?”

  “Warren, I don’t care to talk about any of this.”

  “I wish I could understand why it works for some and not for others.”

  “Warren, please.”

  “I’ve never asked you these things, but it would’ve helped if you’d told me how you felt a long time ago.”

  “I can’t talk anymore. It’s history—nothing can be done about it.”

  “Maybe I could have done something with my life.”

  Beatrice hesitated before saying, “Warren, if this is the favor you wanted, that’s my answer. I can’t say any more.”

  “What I wanted to tell you, one thing, is if you hadn’t been my wife, I’d have admired you at a distance, like a lot of people do. I wanted to think you didn’t give yourself to Virgil either, that it wasn’t just me who was treated like that. I don’t know if that’s something you can tell me, but I’d like you to if you could.”

  “Warren, I can’t talk anymore. I’m sorry. All this does is bring up sad feelings, and I have to get back to work. I’ve listened to you now; it’s the best I can do. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Is Virgil there?”

  Beatrice sighed. “Warren, I told you twenty-five years ago Virgil was here.” Warren did not respond, and she added, “You weren’t listening then, and you’re not listening now.”

  He still did not respond.

  “Warren, I’m going to tell you something that’s hard to say: I’m sorry you’re sick, but I’m not responsible for the decisions you’ve made in your life. I hope you understand that. You’ve made your choices. Blame me if you like—I deserve some of the blame, I admit it—but you’ve made your own choices.”

  She replaced the receiver. Steeling herself, she took up papers and pen from her desk, trying to move elsewhere in her mind, trying to get her heart to settle down.

  Virgil

  He pressed the horn of his Stealth bomber and uttered under his breath, “Kindly get out of my way!” And as a mint green Tercel with out-of-state plates dragged its indecisive butt from the narrow right-of-way, Virgil squeezed by, and a hundred yards along, nosed into the lot of York Village Guaranty Trust. He hated to rush, but had no choice if he was going to be back in time for his luncheon date with Beatrice.

  Closing his car door—what happened to that weather they’d been having? —he made his way through the bank’s rear entrance and past its ATM machines. His double life was rearing its head and disrupting his balanced eye. It was a two-step he had danced adeptly for decades, from Kittery to Augusta to York Village, from properties and accounts receivable to conferences and his quiet office with a view. Each family knew of, and ignored, the other—so long, really, as cash and power continued to be available—and each believed its bond to be special, one by blood, one by affection, and neither was wrong. Nor did Virgil mind the patriarchal quicksteps he had danced for years, of a mind that they had kept him on his toes and young at heart. When one or another pressed too hard or too close, he had always been able to get out of town, or give himself to days of work in his office, studying briefs and taking calls in the third floor space
overlooking Portsmouth Harbor, occasionally passing a night or two on the foldout couch.

  Only when he was pulled both ways at once—as he was today—did his teeth clamp down. That fool Warren, and now the second of his two daughters, waiting for him to provide down payment and cosigning of a note—in an enterprise he had not believed in for a second and knew would be his to assume within two years, three at most. Virgil both loved and disliked his two daughters, bearing a weaker spot for this youngest of his three children (thank God for Bruce, his oldest, away at Sherman Adams Law School), while all concerned knew that the transaction about to take place had more to do with blackmail than the securing of a thirty-year note. “You have to do this for Tessie,” his wife had told him eye to eye. Tessie, mischievous, undisciplined, chunky as always, had said, “Daddy, it’s your duty to give us a dowry to squander—why do you think Robbie married me?” Tessie always made him grin and snort, if forlornly, and allow her passage into his guilty heart.

  The down payment was $18,000 to secure a note of $162,500, to acquire a convenience store and attached three-bedroom home for Tessie and her acne-scarred husband of eleven months, each of whom had exhausted any visible means of income—she, recently, from part-time gift shop clerking, he as a temporary vinyl siding applicator. Robbie made super subs, and they’d work all the hours themselves, Tessie had assured him. At least they have a dream they’re willing to work for, Abby had added. They wouldn’t even think of hiring part-time help until they were well on their feet, Tessie had said.

  To help with what? Virgil had wanted to say, given that the previous three owners, over a seven-year period, had closed due to lack of business. And yes, the sub of Robbie’s creation that he had taken to his office for lunch had been wonderful—but what had been the cost of the multiple layers of hard salami, prosciutto, roast beef, and two kinds of imported cheese? Whom would they be catering to … Rockefellers taking the wrong exit from the Interstate, or local working stiffs willing to pay thirty dollars for a sandwich to gobble with their Pepsi?

  “Daddy, you have to give us a chance; it’s the least you can do,” Tessie had said, giving him her knowing smile and tear-filled eye. Poor Tessie. Virgil knew she didn’t stand a chance in life, and he melted every time. No dirty little secrets where she was concerned; she was a lovable loser and a father’s, and politician’s, scary dream.

  The mortgage officer had them waiting at a large table, and when he entered with documents and a pretty assistant, sixteen minutes late by Virgil’s watch, he avoided eye contact, neglected to greet them—Tessie and Robbie were homely, there was no getting around it—and continued an anecdote he had been addressing to his young assistant about a colleague having had his car towed for illegal parking. Virgil took it as roostering for the benefit of all (women were so superior at working with the public, he couldn’t help thinking) and wished he had dressed casually, even worn blue jeans, for the small power-surprise he could inflict on unsuspecting bankers and clerks. The young mortgage officer, for his part, was wearing green sailboat suspenders, having left his suit coat elsewhere, and was taking his time with his story as he separated documents into neat piles before his place at the table.

  Virgil could resist it no longer and said, “Any time today.”

  “Sir?” the young man said.

  “You didn’t hear me—would you like me to write it down?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “As well you should. You arrive fifteen minutes late, now you dally around and ignore our presence. Has it ever occurred to you that some of us might have other things to do?”

  “Daddy, we’re here to ask for a loan,” Tessie stage-whispered.

  “Sir, the bank gives careful attention to mortgages.”

  “Well, let’s call the bank’s president and ask his opinion of your careful attention—shall we do that?”

  “Sir, you are?”

  “I’m Virgil Pound, who might you be?”

  A crimson flush climbed the young man’s neck, and he said, “Sorry, Mr. Pound, I didn’t know who you were. Very sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Let’s just get on with it,” Virgil said.

  Back on the highway, Virgil was pleased that his son-in-law had been witness to his little display of authority. It’ll get him working, he thought. It won’t keep either of them working—they were as easy to read as a comic strip—but it might scare them into heightened activity for at least a while. Soon, though—Virgil was certain—there would be reports of business not being as good as they had hoped, the cost of inventory being higher than expected, the hours being oppressive, and, surprise, of a rankling between the two of them from spending so much time together. Then, before another spring bird chirped from a branch in the north, there would come the tearful confession from Tessie that they could not pay the mortgage, that she was terribly unhappy, that she didn’t know what to do.

  Tomorrow’s heartache, Virgil told himself as he drove along. He knew only that when the time came he’d tell them no, they had had their chance, and his personal life, and Mrs. Hudon’s personal life, had nothing to do with how anyone else conducted their affairs. Adulthood was a world predicated on work and money, on earning enough to pay one’s way and to sustain one’s balance of health and happiness, which realities many young people, to their dismay, took for granted and had no choice but to learn the hard way, which way they themselves had obviously chosen. When teachers warned of living to regret not doing one’s work, he would tell them, this was what they had had in mind. Nor was it going to get any better. They could kid themselves, or they could dig in and make the best of a bad situation. Or they could step in front of an eighteen-wheeler on 1-95. Scramble or be splattered, he would tell Tessie and her husband. Those were their choices.

  Not that he hadn’t made mistakes himself, Virgil thought, because he had. His good fortune, though, was that his mistakes had occurred earlier rather than later, and there had been time to become resourceful, which he had done while stronger boys were driving cars and fighting over girls, all of whom—like his daughters and their husbands—would prove to be spoiled, dependent, overweight missers-of-the-boat. All through school he had been bullied by stronger boys, and attractive young women like Beatrice Scott had had nothing to do with him. But his day had come and his confidence had grown, while the confidence of many of the strong boys had atrophied by age twenty-five. In that respect Beatrice had been a godsend to him for the heightened confidence she gave him, though she may not have known what a neophyte state representative he had been when she first came into his life. To think of the terror he had known as a schoolboy when older boys had pushed him around. No dirty little potency for him in those affairs of give-and-take, for they were all give. It was a time in his life he would never reveal to Beatrice, in awareness that it could only diminish him in her penetrating eyes. She who was a creature more gifted than she herself might ever know. It might stimulate him to know her husband was locked outside the bedroom door, but he wouldn’t gain her vote in telling her so.

  Beatrice

  She had not told Warren off but had come close enough to feel some satisfaction. She had declared, as she had long wanted to, that Virgil was the man in her life. Her words may have been unkind, given his condition, but at least they were true. There had been another time, early in their marriage, when she had tried to have him know what was true, and he had refused to hear her then, too. Her mistake—her cowardice, she had always believed—was that she had failed to say outright that she was enamored of the Maine State Representative from the thirty-sixth district, that though both were married and he had three small children, they were together every day, at meetings, lunches, in cars, and on walks—that they had fallen in love and there were ever more crossings of the line, by him, by her, touches, looks, caresses, small kisses that had grown enchanting—a flowering intimacy she wouldn’t risk violating by attempting to explain, but which, she imagined, only a blind man could fail to see.

 
; Warren’s perception had remained dim, however, and she still blamed herself for not having been more clear, notwithstanding Virgil urging her at the time not to rock the boat. The initial storm came to a head on a Sunday afternoon when they were at a cookout at her family’s place in Portsmouth, though Warren’s mother and an uncle from Casco Bay were also there. The time to leave had arrived, and Warren, young and more strapping than he would ever be again, had carried Marian, asleep in the baby carriage basket they used as a car crib, placed her in the backseat of the car, and returned to where Beatrice remained in conversation, caught up in talk having to do with her job, with excitements of life long since forgotten. Warren told her a second and third time to come on, the baby was in the car, and she raised a hand to say just a minute, to please let her finish what she was saying.

  She had followed Warren’s lead in those days despite her growing infatuation for her boss. It had yet to become an affair—which word alone terrified her. At the same time she was also growing infatuated with her work, where deeper responsibility, small doses of authority, and even political leverage had begun to intoxicate her just as they intoxicated Virgil Pound of York Harbor. Still, she had taken into marriage a belief of women deferring to men, as had Warren, though she had begun—a certain embarrassment to them both, as her boss was not ungenerous with salary increases—to easily outearn her husband in his scrabbling enterprise as an independent lobsterman.

  And, deep into that backyard cookout conversation, she once again raised a hand to him when he said “Beatrice!” and added, she would always remember, “Just a minute, Warren!” and wasn’t really irritated, nor was he when he said something of her becoming a state legislator herself, to the amusement of all.