Border Town Girl (11 page)

“Pretty nice,” I said.

“Yes,” Linda said.

The two cottages were about a hundred feet apart. I asked her which one she wanted and she said it didn’t make any difference. I parked by the southerly one. I unlocked the door and we carried our things in. We unlocked the other one and looked it over. They were alike. The key was narrow there, and there was a long dock out into the bay at the back, and a rowboat overturned on the bank near the dock, above the high tide mark. The pump house was not far from the dock. Both cottages were of cypress, weathered gray. They each had two bedrooms, a living room with furniture upholstered in a vicious shade of green plastic, small gas heaters, gas stove, fireplace, refrigerator, tiny kitchen, a screened porch about ten by ten on the front looking across the sand road toward the Gulf.

I got the electricity going in each cottage, got the pump started, and then drove the car over to the other cottage and unloaded the Jeffries’ things, trying to put them where I thought they would want them. In addition to the usual luggage, they had packed a new badminton set and a gun case. I opened the gun case to see what Jeff had thought he would use. It was a Remington bolt action .22 with a four power scope. It looked new and it looked as though it would be fun for plinking at beer cans.

Linda had the food put away by the time I got back, and had started unpacking our bags. When we were through we took a walk down the beach. The big hot red sun was just sliding into the Gulf. About four hundred yards south of us was a big house with hurricane shutters over the large windows. Almost an equal distance north of us were four small beach cabins that were deserted and badly in need of paint.

“We’re certainly alone here.”

She didn’t answer me. With darkness came more mosquitoes. We took refuge on the porch. Linda made sandwiches. I plugged in our new portable radio and we listened to Cuban music from Havana. The waves made a soft sound on the beach. I couldn’t stop yawning. I went out and moved the car around to the bay side of the cottage so there’d be less chance of salt spray damaging it. When I went to bed Linda was still listening to the music.

WHEN I GOT UP IN THE MORNING, LINDA WAS gone. I put on swimming trunks and went out on the beach. I could see her on the beach, far to the north, a tiny figure that bent over now and then to pick up shells. I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard her under the outside shower. She came into the kitchen in a few minutes wrapped in a big yellow towel, her soaked bathing suit in her hand. “That water must be eighty degrees!” she said. “And there were big things out there, sort of rolling. I’ll bet they were porpoises.” Her eyes were shining, and she looked like a child on Saturday.

I picked up a burn that afternoon that was still uncomfortable when we drove up to Sarasota on Wednesday to meet the plane. It was a small plane that brought them down from Tampa International. It was dark and Jeff said that I better keep right on driving because I knew the road. They said they had a fine trip down. They said it had snowed a little at home on Sunday but it had melted as soon as it hit the ground. Jeff seemed boisterous and exuberant, but I thought Stella was rather quiet. Linda spent most of the trip back turned around in the seat telling them about the layout. We all seemed a little strained with each other, and I guessed it was because we were all wondering how it was going to work out, four people taking a vacation together. It could be fine, or it could be a mess.

Jeff was awed by the primitive condition of the key road as shown by our headlights and by the lurching of the big car. I drove them up to their door with a flourish, and Linda went in first and turned the lights on for them. She had turned on their refrigerator the previous day, and stocked it with breakfast things.

They seemed pleased with the setup, particularly Jeff. That surprised me a little because, as with Linda, I thought he would be more likely to be enthusiastic about a more civilized environment. When they were settled we went over and sat on their porch and talked for a while. Stella said she was sleepy but not to go yet. She went in to bed and the three of us talked some more.

That evening was the last time that the four of us were what I would call normal with each other. It all started the next day. It started without warning and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, or Stella could do about it. Here is exactly the way it happened.

At about ten o’clock we were all out on the beach. We had two blankets and towels and a faded old beach umbrella I had found in the pump house. I remember that I had a program of dance music on the portable radio. Both Stella and I had to be careful of the sun. Jeff had a good tan. Linda, of course, was browner than anybody. Our voices sounded far away and sleepy, the way they do when the sun is hot.

Linda got up. She stood there with her shadow falling across me. I thought she was going to go in swimming. She said, “Come on, Jeff.” I thought she was asking him to go in with her. But her tone of voice had seemed oddly harsh. Jeff got up without a word and the two of them walked down the beach, headed south.

I don’t think I can explain exactly why it created such an awkward situation. Certainly Linda and Jeff could walk together, as could Stella and I, should we want to. The four of us were, I thought, friends. But it was the manner in which they left us. Linda’s tone had been peremptory, autocratic. Jeff had obeyed immediately. It spoke of a relationship that I had not suspected. Had it been done in a normal way, they would have said something about walking down the beach, and coming back soon, and don’t get too much sun—like that. They just left.

Though you could see up the beach a long way to the north, you could not see far to the south. The big house south of us was on a sort of headland, and beyond it the beach curved inward and out of our range of vision.

Each time I looked they were further away, walking steadily. Then I looked and they were gone. Now this is also hard to explain. Their action made me revert to the way I had felt about Linda many years ago. She had walked off, out of reach. She was back with the beautiful people. I was again the Paul Cowley who worked after school and knew so few people in our class.

I could not help glancing at Stella, wondering how she was taking it. She wore heavy sun glasses with tilted frames and very dark lenses. Her eyes were hidden behind them. I thought of any number of inane things I could say, but in the end I said nothing.

After a time Stella got up without a word, took off her sunglasses and watch, tucked her pale hair into a white bathing cap and went down to the water. She swam far out with a lithe power at odds with the frail look of her body. I watched her float out there. After what seemed a long time, she swam slowly in and walked up and sat in the shade of the beach umbrella, arms hugging her knees, looking out to sea. Our silence with each other was awkward. The longer Jeff and Linda stayed away, the more awkward it became. I thought back over the relationship between Jeff and my wife. There seemed to be nothing to justify what they had done—rather, the way they had done what they had done.

A quiz program started and I turned off the portable.

“Well, Paul,” Stella said quietly. She came originally, I believe, from Hartford. Her voice had that flat quality, that special accent that women who come from that area and go to exclusive finishing schools acquire.

“I… what do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know. She could have had a sign painted, I suppose. Or branded his forehead. I don’t think she could have made it any more obvious.”

“I don’t think it’s that way.”

“I don’t think it’s any other way. I didn’t want to come here. I did at first and then I didn’t. I tried to talk him out of it. I could have talked to walls or stones.”

“Now, Stella.”

“Don’t sound soothing. Please. We’ve got ourselves a situation, Paul. A large one. It isn’t pretty. I guessed at something of the sort… but not so blatant.”

“We’re all friends.”

She turned the dark lenses toward me. “I’m your friend, Paul. I’m Jeff’s friend, I hope. Not hers. Not hers, ever again. She made it plain enough. I should pack now. That would be smart. But I’m not very smart, I guess. I would rather stay and fight.”

She picked up her things and went to their cottage. At noon I picked up my things and went in too. I sat on the porch and read and finally they came down the beach. They separated casually in front of our place and Linda came in.

“Long walk,” I said.

She looked at me and through me. “Wasn’t it, though,” she said, and went on into the house.

The was the beginning. That was the way it started. Linda and Jeff were together whenever they pleased. It would, perhaps, have been better if I could have gone to Linda and demanded an explanation, if I could have shook her, struck her, raged at her. But, with Linda, the roots of my insecurity went deep. I tried to use reason.

“Linda, we planned to have a good time down here.”

“Yes?”

“You and Jeff are spoiling it for the four of us. Stell is miserable.”

“That’s a bitter shame.”

“Last night you two were gone for three hours. Not a word of excuse or explanation or anything. It’s so… ruthless.”

“Poor Paul.”

“Haven’t you got any sense of decency? Are you having an affair with him?”

“Why don’t you run along and catch some nice fish again?”

“I can’t get any pleasure out of anything I do, the way you’re acting. I just don’t understand it. What am I supposed to do? What’s going to become of us? How can we go back and live the way we did before?”

“Do we have to, dear? Goodness, what a fate!”

It wasn’t like her, not to get angry and shout and stamp her feet. She was… opaque. I think that is the only possible word. It was acute torture for me. I felt helpless. There seemed to be a cold precision about what they were doing that baffled me. Sometimes I felt the way you do when you walk into a movie in the middle of a very complicated feature picture. The story is incomprehensible to you. You seek a clue in the actors’ words and actions, but what they do serves only to baffle you the more.

One morning I watched Jeff and Linda on the beach directly in front of our cottage. He had a carton of empty beer cans. He had the .22 and he would throw a beer can out as far as he could. He would shoot and then instruct Linda. He put his arm around her bare shoulders to get her into the proper position. I could hear the snapping of the shots over the sea sound, and once I heard their laughter. I sat and watched them and felt ill. When Linda wandered down the beach and Jeff stayed there, shooting, I went down to him. It was the first time I had been alone with him since it had started. When he looked at me his face was very still. “Hi, Paul. Want to try a shot?”

“No thanks. I want to talk to you.”

He looked uncomfortable. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

It made me feel as though I were in a badly written play. “I guess you know what I want to talk to you about.”

“I can’t say that I do.”

He was making it as difficult for me as he could. “It’s about you and Linda, Jeff. What are you trying to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“The four of us never do anything together. You and Linda swim together, go off walking together. You’re making it damn awkward for your wife and for me.”

He seemed to gain confidence. “Have you talked to Linda about this?”

“Yes, I have.”

“What does she say, old man?”

“Don’t call me old man. She doesn’t say much of anything. She won’t explain or apologize. It seems to me like the most thoughtless piece of selfishness I’ve ever seen. It’s spoiling everything. My God, if you want to break up both marriages, at least put your cards on the table.”

He even smiled at me, though his eyes were still uneasy. “Paul, old man, a vacation is where you do as you please. I’m doing as I please. I guess Linda is too. So don’t get so steamed up. Relax. Enjoy yourself.”

He sneered a little as he said the last few words. I didn’t have any tiny fragment of liking for him left. I hated him and what he was doing. Linda’s personal promises had been no good. She hadn’t let me touch her since we’d gotten to Florida.

I was hurt and angry. My hands and arms are hard and tough. I sprang at Jeff and hit him in the mouth. He went over onto the sand and the rifle went flying. He looked at me with complete shock which changed at once to anger as he scrambled up. I was a fool to hit him. He had the advantage in youth, in weight, height, reach and condition. The last fight I had been in had been in a schoolyard—and I had lost.

Jeff charged me with such fury that he knocked me down without actually punching me. I got up and he hit me in the chest and knocked me down again. As I got up, Stella came running between us. Instead of calling out to her husband she said to me, “No, Paul! No.”

Jeff picked up the sandy rifle and stared at me and stalked toward their cabin. I saw at once what Stella meant. It didn’t do any good. It couldn’t do any good. Fighting over Linda was purposeless.

Back on the porch of their cottage, Jeff dismantled the rifle on spread newspapers and cleaned the sand from it with an oily rag. He was as opaque as Linda. It was a game, and neither Stella nor I knew the rules. They were both stronger people, and we did not know what to do about the strange situation. People should not act that way. They were not taunting Stella and me. They were not precisely goading me. They gave us no obvious evidence of infidelity, which would have forced it to an issue. They merely went their own casual way, as though we had changed marriage partners during the day, only to be sorted out again each night, quite late.

Stella and I were stuck with the marketing. Linda would give me a list. I would drive to Hooker and Stella would come along. Forsaking all pride, she had tried to talk to Linda. She had not wanted to weep, but she did, and hated herself for her weakness. Linda had been just as casual and noncommittal with her as Jeff had with me. It made a nightmare of what both Stella and I had hoped would be a good and happy time.

Because it was the two of us who did the shopping, the people in Hooker, as I found out later, were understandably confused as to who was married to whom. And much was later made of the fifth of November. That was the day when, as we were about to leave, Jeff asked me to get the car greased and get an oil change.