Nantucket Nights (24 page)

Carter sucked in his breath. He looked like such a goof, wearing his safety goggles over his glasses. Raoul tried to remember why he had ever hired Carter in the first place. His work was good, but he was very slow. ““Who?” Carter said.

‘Theo,” Raoul said. “My son.”

“Well, shit,” Micky said. “In that case, I wish I hadn’t called the police.”

“You called the police?” Suddenly it felt like Raoul had eaten a pastry filled with cement. “Does anybody have any water? Or coffee?”

Jacob held out a Coke. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Raoul said. He swilled some down. “I can’t believe you called the police. Why the fuck did you do that? You should have waited until I got here.”

“I think a better question is, Why did Theo knock the walls in?” Micky said.

Again, Raoul looked at Jacob. Jacob had his arms crossed in front of him and was staring at the floor. “Have you called Colin?” Raoul asked. “He’s going to have to come in and fix it.”

“Colin?” Micky said. His freckled face reddened. “You’ll excuse me for saying so, Raoul, but you should be the one to fix the walls. You or Theo, but I’d say you, since you’re the one who knows how.”

Raoul glared at Micky. The guy was Irish, and Catholic, and he went to Mass every Wednesday before work. He had a conscience, and that was why Raoul made him foreman so many years ago. Now Raoul wanted to punch him. Except that he was right.

“Fine,” Raoul said. “I’ll fix the walls myself. But it’s not going to happen today, and it’s not going to happen tomorrow. I have to get home to my family. So, Micky, you take a couple of days off, and Carter, you get your ass in gear and don’t leave until bathroom number three is finished. Do you hear me? Finished!” Raoul’s anger was mounting—the vandalism, the newspaper article, Micky—and his head hurt. Suddenly, Raoul was left alone in the room with Jacob. Jacob, who thought it was okay to get high with Kayla.

“Come out to the truck with me,” Raoul said. “I want to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to you, too,” Jacob said. “That’s why I showed up today.”

Raoul got a bad vibe from the sound of Jacob’s voice. “You go first, then. What’s going on?”

“I have something difficult to tell you, man. I don’t even know how to say it.”

They moved outside into the sun. Raoul’s head felt like it was splintering apart. “Can you just break it to me gently, please?” Raoul said. “I’ve had one hell of a weekend.”

“I know. I really don’t want to add to your worries, Raoul, but I’ve got to tell you this one thing.”

“Tell me.”

Jacob took a deep breath. “I quit.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m moving away, actually. I decided last night.”

Raoul grabbed his truck bed to steady himself. “How long have you worked for me?”

“Eight years.”

“Eight years, and you’re the best finish guy I have, and now you’re telling me you decided in one night that you’re quitting and moving away.”

“That’s right,” Jacob said. “Sorry, man.”

“Why?” Raoul said. “Are you going somewhere with Val?”

“No.” Jacob turned his baseball cap forward, then backwards again. He looked up into the sky. “Actually, we broke up.”

“You broke up?”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “Last night.”

“So you’re moving away because you broke up with Val?”

“Not exactly,” Jacob said. “I’m not going to explain the whole thing to you, Raoul. And believe me, you don’t want to know. But basically, now that she’s left her husband she wants me to marry her, and I can’t. I don’t want to. It’s time for me to get out of Dodge. Trust me.”

“I was going to yell at you for smoking a joint with my wife, but I don’t think I’ll bother,” Raoul said. “It sounds like you had more on your plate last night than you needed.”

“Right.”

“So. So you’re moving away. Where will you go?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe to live with my brother. He works on a good crew.”

“In Arizona?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re sure about this? You’re really fucking sure?”

“Yep.”

Raoul glanced into his truck and saw a bottle of Advil on the floor of the passenger side. “Give me your Coke,” he said to Jacob. He downed three Advil and finished the rest of the soda, wondering how long it would be until he felt better. “Okay, come see me in the office on Tuesday, then. To get your check. We’ll have to figure out what you want to do with your retirement account.”

“Can you just send me that stuff in the mail?” Jacob asked. “I want to leave today.”

‘Today?” Raoul was overwhelmed. Nothing was working the way it was supposed to. But before he could figure out what was going on, really, with Jacob, a car screeched into the dirt driveway. It was a BMW. Val. Raoul moved for the driver’s side of his truck. The last thing he wanted was to get in the middle of some crazed, jilted-lover scene between Jacob and Val. He needed to get home.

Raoul waved to Val and then climbed into his truck. “Come see me Tuesday,” he said to Jacob. Raoul started the engine, but Val pulled right up to his front bumper, blocking his way. He cursed at her under his breath. Now he was stuck.

Val got out of the car and marched to Raoul’s window. When she lifted her sunglasses, Raoul saw that her eyes were puffy and red. She had the hic-cuppy breathing of someone who’d been crying for a long time.

“Did he tell you?” she said.

“Yeah,” Raoul said. “He did. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” she said. “You’re
sorry?”
She glared at Jacob, who just stood there, balanced on the balls of his feet like he was ready to dart away. “Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t beat him bloody.”

“It’s really none of my business,” Raoul said. “I’d rather not get involved.”

“None of your business?” Val said. “He slept with your wife, and it’s none of your business?”

At that moment, Jacob dashed for his Bronco. He drove into the brush to get around the BMW. In a matter of seconds, before Raoul could process the words he’d just heard, Jacob was gone.

“Coward,” Val said. “So I guess he didn’t tell you.”

Raoul opened his mouth, but the sounds he made weren’t words.

“They slept together, Raoul,” Val said. “Last night, at Great Point. When Jacob came home, I smelled her on him. And he admitted it. He flat out said he’d had sex with Kayla.”

“He was lying to you,” Raoul said. “He was lying to get out of the relationship. Because you scared him, Val. You fucking scared him.”

“I smelled her on him, Raoul,” Val said. “She’s my best friend. She wears Coco Chanel, and that was what Jacob
reeked of
when he got home last night.”

“Get out of here,” Raoul said. “Get your car out of my way.”

Val started to cry again. “We were just trying to protect her. I can’t believe she’d do this when we were only trying to protect her from the truth.”

“Val!” Raoul shouted. “Aw, fuck it.” Raoul started the truck and he, too, drove into the brush to get around the BMW. Once he was on the road, he felt better. But God, what to do with this news, where to go? Jacob having sex with Kayla, his wife? The mother of his children? Of course it was a lie, a hysterical, dramatic accusation dreamed up by that lunatic woman. As Raoul drove toward home, he tried to remember what Kayla had been like the night before. Crying, insisting that her life was over, the strap of her dress torn, the distinctive scent of marijuana. And Jacob, quitting, leaving the island today without even his last paycheck, running like a fugitive from the law.

Raoul screeched into the driveway. When he stormed into the kitchen he found Kayla, showered and dressed and smelling of perfume, cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

“Where are the kids?” he said.

“Theo’s still in his room. Jennifer’s getting ready to go to the beach. Cass and Luke are outside. The phone has been ringing like crazy.”

Raoul watched Kayla rinse the last sticky plate and put it in the dishwasher. She pulled off her rubber gloves. Raoul was trembling.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said.

She turned and looked at him. Saw his face and knew. Knew that he knew, after nineteen years of marriage, and without a word. It was true.

Raoul took the keys to the Trooper and the Jeep— he didn’t want Theo going anywhere—and he led Kayla out to the truck, tears blurring his eyes.
Jacob inside his wife.
It disgusted him. Kayla had let Jacob touch her. Raoul couldn’t believe it. Not Kayla. They had been married nineteen years, some years better than others, but never once had Raoul questioned Kayla’s fidelity. It had always been the other way around. Kayla was sensitive about Raoul and other women; she had some loony idea that Raoul was one of these contractors who seduced his female clients. But Raoul had played it straight his entire marriage. There was one woman in “Sconset, Pamela Ely, who pursued him, maybe. She used to lie on her deck in a bikini, straps untied, while Raoul and his crew worked around her. When Raoul was nearby, she would lift her head and her shoulders so that he would see her bare breasts; she did this all the time, and Raoul’s crew couldn’t stop talking about it.
She wants you, man, that woman wants you.
One night, Pamela kept Raoul hanging around after his crew went home, saying she needed an estimate on one more project—in her bedroom. She gave Raoul a cold Beck’s and preceded him up the stairs with her bikini bottoms riding up her cheeks. He’d had every opportunity to screw her. It was just the two of them in the bedroom looking at a hole in the plaster (her ex-husband had punched the wall, she said). But what did Raoul do? He gave her a fair estimate for the plasterwork; then he guzzled the rest of his beer and left the house immediately. Because as appealing as Pam Ely might have been, what was more appealing was what waited for him at home: a strong marriage, good kids. The real thing.

Kayla was silent as they drove. Raoul took dirt roads
until they popped out onto a deserted section of beach between Nobadeer and
Madequecham. Raoul didn’t know if Kayla would remember, but this was where they
used to make love the summer they started dating. Raoul had met Kayla at the Chicken Box. She was very thin back then, and she wore pedal pushers without any underwear. She had Farrah Fawcett hair, she listened to Earth, Wind & Fire. Their first date was a picnic of American cheese sandwiches and Fritos that she brought to him on the job site. She liked it when Raoul tossed tiny pieces of bread to the seagulls. During those first few weeks Raoul didn’t call her often and occasionally, when he told her he would meet her out at a bar, he stayed home instead. But then the unexplainable happened. She cut the legs out from under him, and he fell. In love with Kayla. He brought her to this very beach and peeled off her pedal pushers and made love to her on a skimpy towel that was no match for the two of them. They jumped into the waves afterward and washed sand out of the uncomfortable places.

It sounded idyllic, too good to be true, and that was how Raoul remembered it. The summer ended, Kayla decided to stay, and they moved in together for the winter. They lived in an old, rickety cottage out in “Sconset where the only source of heat was the fire place. Kayla chopped wood every afternoon, and they ate, slept, made love, and watched TV in front of the fireplace. Occasionally they ventured into town, once to the Gaslight Theatre to see
Stripes,
and it was so cold in the theater that they could see their breath every time they laughed. Kayla bought three rounds of hot toddies, and by the time the film was over they were silly drunk. To this day, it was the funniest movie Raoul had ever seen. Living with Kayla that winter had been living with love day in and day out; it was that simple, that clear cut. When the first daffodils bloomed in the “Sconset Rotary on the second of April, Raoul asked her to marry him.

Then things moved quickly—a June wedding and Theo born ten months later. Reality, yes, they’d had nothing but reality since then: diapers, mortgage, incorporation, school conferences, chicken pox, big jobs falling through, big jobs not falling through. And then this weekend.

Raoul shut off the engine. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need the truth. I need to hear the truth from your mouth. Did you—?” Raoul wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak the words. “Did you have sex with Jacob last night?”

“I need to explain—”

“No,” Raoul said. “No. I don’t want you to explain. I want an answer. Yes or no. Did you sleep with Jacob?”

Silence.

Raoul was angry enough to hit her, but instead he slammed his hands against the steering wheel, inadvertently hitting the horn, which sent a flurry of seagulls into the air around them. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Raoul extracted his keys from the ignition and tucked them into his jeans pocket. He climbed out of the car, removed his shoes, and sprinted down the beach in his bare feet. He ran as fast as he could, keeping just above the shoreline. He ran over stones and shards of clam shell, he pumped his arms and forced himself to go even faster. When he started to tire, he slowed to a jog, but he kept going. He wanted to go as far as he could; he wanted to be miles away. And then, when he was completely exhausted, he stopped. He was alone on a stretch of beach on his island; the truck was just a red dot in the distance. It was hot, and Raoul was thirsty. His headache was back. He wanted to have a life like Jacob’s that he could run away from, that he could leave with only a day’s notice. But for Raoul, there was too much at stake: his kids, his house, his company, his work. Raoul trudged through the sand toward his truck. And his wife.

To his surprise, she wasn’t crying. She was sitting in the truck bed with her head propped up against the cab, eyes closed. She looked peaceful, although Raoul doubted she was actually asleep. He fought off the urge to slap her. He grabbed her arm.

She started, banged her head. When she saw him, her eyes filled. “How did you find out?”

Raoul watched the waves pummel the shore. He was parched. “Val told me.”

“Val?”

“Jacob told her last night, I guess, and she came to the job site this morning and informed me.”

“So Val knows.”

“Yes. Are you going to explain what happened?”

And so, Kayla told him the story. About John Gluckstern and Antoinette’s daughter, Lindsey. About Val turning the tables to get herself out of trouble, giving the police Kayla’s pills. About how Kayla confronted Val at her house and yes, Val admitted to steering the police in Kayla’s direction because Kayla was a housewife and therefore it didn’t matter if Kayla took the blame.