Portion of the Sea (42 page)

A journalist also sees the story behind the appearance. His years of fish and song had aged him well. He was handsome in a rugged way, softened
by that cleft in his chin. I ordered another martini and then placed my hand over my chest. My heart was dancing within me.

“Stay objective. Don’t be moved by anything you see up there,” I scolded myself under my breath, then sipped my drink. “You’re a journalist, not a romance writer.”

The band asked if anyone in the audience had any requests. I could stay in my chair no longer. I had to do something. I came to get closer, I reminded myself. No, Ding Dong, I corrected myself. You came to get
closure
. But it was turning out to be harder than I imagined.

I walked around tables that were in my way, rummaging through my mind as I went, trying to think of a song I might request by the time I got up there. A woman should always think up a song first and then walk up to the stage. I stood at the foot of the stage with the band waiting and the audience staring, yet I could think of not a single song. It was as if all the music of the world had died from my mind and never existed in the first place. A song? Music? What’s that?

There was a deadly silence. My stubborn heart didn’t care. I could feel it twirling and leaping inside. And finally my mind started returning to me, conjuring up the names of musical artists. Elvis. Ritchie Valens—he died in a plane crash in 1959. It had been a sad obituary. I wanted to kick myself. But instead I looked Josh directly in his eyes and whispered, “Hi. I just came to say ‘hi.’ Remember me?”

“Of course I do, Lydia,” he said. And a moment later, “Have you got a request?”

“‘Raining in My Heart’?”

“We can do that.”

Josh nodded at the band and I returned to my seat where I ordered one more martini for the night. After six more songs, the band started putting their instruments away, and Josh joined me at the table. We talked. He was sorry to hear of my father’s death. I told him all about my first job writing obituaries. We talked about the weather in Chicago. I asked him what it was like surviving Hurricane Donna. Neither of us mentioned why our letters had ended. I started breezing over things that had happened in the news and things making headlines now. It was a topic I was comfortable
with, even after three martinis, I discovered. I hoped I didn’t sound like a rambling headline:

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES FOCUSING ON ANTI-COMMUNISM. SECRET INVASIONS. THE BAY OF PIGS AND AMERICA BECOMING CUBA’S ARCHENEMY. EVIDENCE OF SOVIET MISSLE SITES IN CUBA. AMERICA AND THE SOVIET UNION ON BRINK OF WAR. ESCALATION IN VIETNAM. ANTI-GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATIONS BY BUDDHIST MONKS PROVOKE VIOLENT REPRISALS AND IN PROTEST, NUMEROUS MONKS COMMIT SUICIDE BY SETTING THEMSELVES AFIRE.

He talked about the news along with me, but I ended the conversation when I remembered why I had come, to scrape my heart clean of Josh so I might return to my life in the city with no remnants of him within me.

“You’re doing exactly what you wanted to do with your life,” Josh said when I stopped bringing up current affairs. “It’s impressive, Lydia. You’re like a real, living, breathing, talking newspaper.”

“Thank you,” I said, covering my mouth with my hands. Then I laughed. “I’m not usually. I mean …” I shook my head. I felt foolish. I didn’t want him thinking that news was my life, my passion, all that I focused on over the last several years. But it was. “I am entrenched in all of this stuff at work,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s hard to turn it off in a short weekend away.”

“What a world to be living in,” he said.

“I know I’ve rambled on about mine. Tell me about yours,” I said.

“No complaints.”

“You live in a quiet world. Quiet and beautiful, don’t you?”

He smirked and looked away. It was then that I saw him as the boy I once loved and the man I wanted to get to know.

“Josh,” I said. “I could use a good dose of your world. Share it with me, will you? Show me a piece of your world tonight.”

His eyes searched mine.

“That is, if you don’t have any other plans,” I added.

“What do you have in mind, Lydia?”

“How about fishing. I’d love to go fishing.”

As we left the Olive Shell together, I feared that maybe my plan for closure wasn’t going the way I intended it to, and I wondered, as he took hold of my hand in the parking lot, if maybe there might be a chapter in
Feminine Mystique
outlining what a mixed-up woman like myself should do next in regard to a man. Or what she ought to do when that rare and wonderful sort of man comes around. Maybe there is an alternative set of rules to follow when a man like Josh shows up, or maybe a chapter I hadn’t read yet.

He wasn’t like the typical man out there. He was impressed by my career aspirations. He always had been, way back on the boat that day when I told him I planned to become a journalist. And still, tonight, he asked with interest about my work and, then, he complimented how far I had gone.

As the boat made its way across the black vastness of water, we talked enough to fill the pages of a newspaper for an entire week, but not about news; we talked about life and nature and things I hadn’t talked about with anyone, ever. And when the boat stopped out in the black depths, somewhere near Boca Grande, there was a comfortable silence as we listened for tarpon.

“Shhh. Over there,” Josh said some time later and pointed to the water in front of the boat. “You hear it? You hear that tarpon breathing?”

I listened. “No,” I answered, only paying attention to his breath close beside me.

I put my arm around him and he then turned and put his hands around my waist and pulled me close for the first time this night, and now I could feel him breathing. He slowly pulled the white gloves I had borrowed from Marlena off my fingers. “Forget the tarpon,” he said, grinning. “How do I go about securing a woman like you?”

I know I should have been able to retrieve somewhere in my mind a quote, a chapter from
Feminine Mystique
, anything that might help me turn from him or slap him across the face, but instead, I simply laughed. “Show me your fishing pole and bait,” I said, well aware that the author of
that book would probably cancel the interview I had set with her had she heard that coming from my mouth.

“I thought you didn’t like bait,” he continued.

And he was right. He didn’t need anything to lure me closer. I was already there within his reach. And I liked it. There was no battle, no acrobats, and the only silver soon to be thrashing about was the chain on his neck. He had secured a silver queen!

As the boat approached Sanibel about an hour before the sun would rise, I knew our time was coming to an end. It was Saturday night, and come Sunday, I’d be flying back to Chicago.

“I’ve got piles of work waiting for me on my desk. Monday is going to be a bad day,” I said. “And I’ve got a big interview with the author of this book called
Feminine Mystique
. Have you heard of it?”

“Nope.” He turned quiet and serious.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “What are you thinking?”

He stared straight ahead, not turning to look at me and said, “You know damn well that tarpons are released after the capture, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “But why are you bringing that up now?”

“Do you regret fishing?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I answered. “I haven’t had a night like this in a long time.” He was quiet as he tied the boat to the dock. “I needed a night where I wasn’t thinking about headlines and deadlines and things I had to do come morning, a night so quiet I could hear a fish breathing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to live in a noisy world like yours.”

“Josh,” I said, disturbed. “Why do you say that? It’s not all bad.”

He shook his head and looked at his watch. “We’re back later than I planned. I’ve got a lot of minutia to take care of this morning,” he said, not bothering to offer me a hand as I hopped off the boat behind him.

“You no longer offer ladies a hand getting off a boat?” I asked.

“Sorry. Didn’t want to offend you.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “Because I make my own money and pay my own bills you assume I don’t want physical help getting off a boat?”

“You’re looking way too into it,” he said. “That’s not the case.”

“Then what is the case?” I asked following him up to his truck.

“I think we’re both tired,” he said. “You should try to get sleep. I’ve got to get going. Like I said, we’re getting back later than I had wanted, and I’ve got a lot of things going on.” He opened the passenger door of his truck for me.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’d rather walk.”

“Fine by me. That’s your choice.” He walked around to the other side and got in. “Look,” he said. “I know the sun will be out in about five minutes, but I don’t feel good letting you walk back.”

“Trust me,” I said. “It’s what I want right now. I’ll be fine.”

“Whatever suits you,” he said, then kissed me on the cheek.

He climbed into his truck and drove away. As I walked in the direction of Bougainvillea, I tried figuring out what had gone wrong. Maybe it was because I was returning to Chicago and work on Monday. The thought of it, mixed with the martinis from the night before, churned in my stomach as I rerouted myself to the beach instead. I sat in the sand, watching the sunrise while feeling unsettled.

What is it about the reliable sunrise? A morning watching it paint the sky into a masterpiece brings my desires back to one thing: wanting beauty in my life. I jumped up from the sand and let my head hang as far back as it would go on my neck, like a flower bent from its stem. I could feel the tension from my chin to my chest as I took a deep breath. “I know exactly what I must do,” I muttered under my breath as I lifted my head upright again and smiled out at the water.

“Marlena,” I called out as I ran through her door. “I’ve got some news for you.”

“It better be good because I was worried out of my wits about you. I know I’m not old enough to be your mother, or am I? Oh, let’s not do the calculations. Where were you all night, young lady?”

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I should have called.”

“Yes, you should have. But did you get the closure you came for?”

“No,” I said. “The other one.”

“Closer? Oh, Lydia, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe you can help.”

“How?”

“I’m thinking of staying. But I don’t know. I’ve got my career back there, which I could also have here. And if I return there, feeling the way I feel about him now, how am I ever going to date anyone else? The last thing I want to do is one day finding myself married to one person while I love another. I don’t want to do what Ava did.”

“Have you told Josh how you feel?”

“He has no idea.”

She stared at me like I was a ding-a-ling. “Then go!” she said. “Go tell him. What are you waiting for? Learn from her, dear. Learn from Ava before it’s too late. Tell that guy you love him!”

I started for the door, and then stopped. “I thought you said stories aren’t passed on from one generation to the next with the intent of telling the younger ones what to do.”

“True, but if the younger ones are at all wise, they’ll pick up on a lesson or two here or there.”

XXXVII

THE MORNING HAD TURNED
humid and sticky by the time I drove up to the marina and parked my car at a sloppy angle. Max was hosing down his dock when I walked up and said hello.

“Look who’s here,” he said, turning the water off to shake my hand. “Josh said he bumped into you last night at the club.”

“Yes,” I said, looking around at the empty boat behind Max and the buckets and fishing gear lined up. “Where is he now?”

“You just missed him. He left about fifteen minutes ago, if that.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “Are you expecting him back soon?”

He looked at me, perplexed. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That he joined the Peace Corps, and he left this morning.”

“What?”

“The Peace Corps, you know, this generation’s answer to Communism. No more of that fifties ‘containment’ talk. Promote democracy and technology in these developing nations.”

“I know all about the Peace Corps.
Where?
Where did he get assigned to?”

“Latin America.”

“Why
there?”

“He’ll be working on fishing techniques and putting together gear and boats in one of the villages there … Lydia … you don’t look good. Are
you all right?”

I stared at him. Often in journalism we need to further ask the same questions to get the answers we’re looking for. “Where exactly in Latin America?”

“Colombia. They say it’s green there. I don’t know much about it, just that it’s a major exporter of emeralds. Oh, and it touches both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Josh loves his water. He’ll love it, I’m sure.”

“He didn’t mention any of it to me.
How
long is he there for?”

“Two years.”

“A long time.”

“Yeah. I miss him already. I’m trying to see this as being an adventure for him, fishing in new waters and catching weird things. But I’m surprised he didn’t mention it to you.”