Hemingway's Girl (23 page)

“It’s good you’re here, Mari,” said Pauline. “We’d like you to
join us in Bimini if your family can spare you. We’ll still need help with housekeeping,
food, and organization.”

Mariella couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe Pauline wasn’t suspicious of her
and Papa. All it took for Pauline to glow was attention from him. It blinded her to
everything else.

“I’ll have to talk to my mother,” said Mariella.

“Please do,” said Pauline. “I don’t know how we got along without you.”

Mariella thought she’d burst if she stayed in the cottage a minute longer. When Pauline
had her back to Mariella, she shot Papa a look of severe reprimand and excused herself
back to the house. At least he had the decency to look ashamed.

She was a bundle of nerves all evening, eager to get off work and away from that house,
and miserable at the thought of telling Eva about Bimini. When it was time to go home
she thought of stealing some of Pauline’s letter paper to write to Gavin, but thought
she’d taken too much from the woman already and asked her for the paper. To her surprise,
Pauline agreed with a smile, still high from Papa’s attention. At least Mariella didn’t
have to add personal property theft to her growing list of misdeeds.

Eva was in a dark mood when Mariella got home. She seemed catatonic again, and Mariella
wondered whether her mother’s grief was a cloak she’d wear forever. She hated the
nights Eva couldn’t cope, because they reminded her of her own pain and cast a shadow
over the house.

She sat up that night long after the girls were in bed, working on her letter to Gavin.
She used one whole piece of paper, front and back, for all the starts and stops she
knew she’d need, and then copied what she finally wanted to say on a fresh piece.
She hoped he couldn’t read her turmoil between the lines. She hoped he’d just see
her feelings for him and not all the darkness that lingered from the grief and hopelessness
and now lust for Hemingway that she felt pursuing her and threatening to overtake
her, especially in the night.

Mariella walked in from the yard she’d just mowed and went to the kitchen for a glass
of water. She drank in long, thirsty gulps, then put her fingers in the glass and
flicked the cool water on her face and neck. She walked over to the door into the
living room and watched John paint and wondered what it would be like living alone,
accountable to no one and perfectly free. She envied his solitude.

The red paint sliced through the browns and yellows of the dead grass on the canvas.
The brush was drying, so it left rough edges on the sides of the line. It was effective
for showing how the blood would have looked on the ground.

“You’re a morbid son of a bitch,” said Mariella as she walked over to where John sat
painting in watercolors the scene from Argonne that still haunted him, when he left
his legs in another country.

“I do
dwell,
don’t I?” said John.

“With good reason, I suppose.”

John put the painting on the floor beside the couch. A sketch of the lighthouse on
Whitehead was behind it on the easel. John dipped the red-tipped brush into an old
soup can, and the color was absorbed by the murky water.

“I’ll replace that for you,” said Mariella. She picked up the
water and walked it to the kitchen, where she dumped it down the sink and rinsed it
out. The color stained her fingers and slipped down the drain as she ran her hand
along the lip of the cup under the water. Her eyes scanned the counter and she saw
a line of dirty plates like orderly soldiers waiting to be washed. Behind the plates
was a broken coffee cup. She saw where it used to hang with three other cups in a
row under the cabinet. It was the third one missing. She pictured John reaching for
it, knocking it down, and it shattering along the counter.

Mariella filled the can with cold, fresh water and returned to John. She set it down
on the table next to a half-empty bottle of whiskey with a half-full tumbler and an
ashtray full of butts next to it. Her romanticized notions of being alone didn’t include
scenes of maimed veterans smoking and drinking without company. She shook the image
from her mind.

“Did you forget Gavin’s not here this weekend?” he said.

“I know he’s not here,” she said. “Why do you think I only want to come here when
Gavin’s around? I can visit you, too, can’t I?”

“You can do anything you’d like with me. Just so we’re clear.”

Mariella laughed.

“Actually, you’ll have to get over me,” he said. “I’ve never seen Gavin so crazy over
a girl.”

This was good for Mariella to hear. She was trying to focus on Gavin to stop thinking
of the other one. But underlying that thought was how much easier life would be if
she stayed solitary. If you didn’t put all of yourself into loving someone else, you
could never get hurt by them. Her mother, Pauline—both depended on their husbands
too much. One was left a widow, and the other’s future marital happiness wasn’t looking
good.

“Is this worth getting into?” she suddenly asked. “With Gavin?”

Mariella didn’t like the look John gave her in reply. It looked like pity.

“Of course,” he said. “What—you think being alone is better?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just see you in your house, painted the way you want,
full of your hobbies, with the beer you like in the fridge. You’ve got no one to answer
to, no one to check with, no one to judge you, no one to take care of.”

“No one to touch me, share dinner with me, no one for me to play my guitar for—you
fail to mention the rest and, I’d argue, the most important.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the pain of losing is worse than not having it to begin with.”

“Really?” he said. “So you wish you never knew your father?”

She had no response.

“I didn’t think so,” he said.

She thought of the way Gavin made her feel the first night at Sloppy Joe’s when he
made her dance. She thought of the day he took her and the girls to the beach, and
when they hung out at John’s house. It was undeniable that it felt good and that she
wanted to feel that way again.

John dabbed the wet brush on a rag and dipped it into a smudge of black paint. He
turned away from her and began filling in the top of the lighthouse.

“I never had anyone to dote on me,” he said. “My parents were cold and distant before,
and now don’t know what to make of half a son. My girl sent me a ‘Dear John’ letter
the week before I got blown up. I know
alone
, Mari, and believe me, it’s not better.”

He dipped the brush into the water again and dabbed it on the cloth. He mixed some
blue and white and began work on the sky in the background. They were quiet for a
while; then Mariella spoke.

“I’m sorry about your parents and the girl.”

“Me, too,” he said. “We were engaged.”

“Where is she now?”

“Married to my best friend from high school. He couldn’t
fight in the war on account of his poor eyesight. They have two kids.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” said Mariella, “I’ll bash her face with a bat if
I ever meet her.”

John laughed and shook his head.

“Gee, thanks, Mari. I’m glad you’re on my side.”

Mariella stood to go.

“Hey, let’s just talk about the weather the next time you stop by,” said John. “You
know, small talk. I don’t know how it always gets to this stuff.”

“Deal,” said Mariella.

“Thanks for cutting my grass,” he said.

“Anytime.”

On her way to the door, she saw Gavin’s tool belt hanging off the couch and felt a
sudden longing to see him.

“Hey, how do you think Gavin would take it if I showed up on Matecumbe?”

“I think that’s like asking how a beached marlin would like a drink of seawater,”
said John. “If you go up to Matecumbe tomorrow, there’s a pickup baseball game. Gavin
plays when he stays up there. You should go watch him.”

“Watch?”

Mariella stepped outside, enjoying the sound of John’s laugh behind her.

Lower Matecumbe Key

Mariella tilted her head so the brim of her baseball cap shielded her eyes from the
glare of the sun. She wore her dad’s old cutoff fishing pants and shirt—the same outfit
she’d worn the night she met Gavin at the boxing match.

“I wonder if he’ll recognize you,” said Bonefish, a tall, lanky
vet with a slow Southern drawl. John had set her up with Bonefish by telegram to meet
her at the ferry and drive her to the game so she could surprise Gavin.

“I hope not at first,” she said. “I want to watch him when he doesn’t know I’m here.”

Bonefish smiled at her. “You’re kinda hard to miss,” he said. “In spite of the getup
you got on, there.”

She smiled back and then looked out the window.

“It’s nice to see a lady around here,” he said. “Even if you are dressed up like a
guy. The kind of females usually hangin’ around here are…” His voice trailed off and
he looked embarrassed.

“Gotcha,” she said.

As the pickup bumped along, Mariella stared out the window. The flimsy shacks and
crude wooden buildings provided a stark contrast to the beautiful tropical scenery.
The water stretched for miles in every direction, and mangroves and palms dotted the
sand.

She glanced back at Bonefish, and noticed that he wore a wedding band.

“Your wife down here with you?” she asked, nodding at his finger.

“Naw,” he said. “My wife and two boys live up in Macon with her parents. I’m tryin’
to make some money to get us back on our feet. I miss ’em bad. I’ve actually got a
job up there startin’ in October. It’s in maintenance at the school where my boys’ll
go. It’s a new school and they’re a little behind schedule. They were supposed to
open in August, but you know how that goes.”

“That’s great,” she said. “You’re lucky to be getting out of here.”

“Don’t I know it?”

When they arrived at the ball field, Mariella got butterflies in her stomach. She
stepped out of the car and immediately spotted Gavin. He was talking to a man who
looked like the umpire; then
he went back to the dugout and told his team something. She could tell he was in charge
by the way the men responded to him.

It took all she had in her not to run toward him, but she wanted to prolong her anonymity.
Bonefish walked her over to the other team’s dugout and told the captain he had a
walk-on. She walked over to the end of the bench and sat in the shadows so no one
would be able to tell that she was a girl.

Her team was first at bat, but since she was last, her turn didn’t come up. Bonefish
sat between her and the guys so she wouldn’t be found out, though judging by the state
most of them were in, Mariella didn’t think they’d notice her either way. They were
a rowdy, drunken, foulmouthed group, and were getting rowdier by the minute. Bonefish
apologized to her after one of the men made a particularly disgusting comment about
the whores on the floating brothels that serviced the men, but she assured him she’d
heard as bad at the docks in town. He seemed to relax after that.

Gavin seemed a different breed from the crude men around them. It reminded her of
the conversation in
A Farewell to Arms
between Frederic Henry and the priest about the difference between men who were meant
to lead as officers and men who were meant to follow and fight. Gavin was certainly
cut from the former, but seemed compelled to the latter.

Suddenly they were switching sides.

Mariella ran close to Gavin on the way out, but he didn’t notice her. It gave her
a thrill to be so close to him without his knowing it. He was first at bat, and she
was on second base.

His first hit was a foul, but the second flew high over her head. Bonefish was behind
Mariella in the outfield. It went over his head, too, so he had to chase it. When
he got the ball, he threw it to Mariella. It landed square in her glove, stinging
her hand with its force. She turned just in time to tag Gavin out as he slid into
second base.