Chapter 11
He texts me at work on Friday. I called scissors to my dad’s rock and got stuck in the back room, de-veining shrimp. Stewart: Are you off at four again?
Me: Stalker
Me: Yes
Stewart: You’re prompt at replying to texts
Me: Don’t tell me that’s my compliment. No woman wants to be ravaged by a man who calls her prompt
Ravaged. Why did I say ravaged? That is such an actively sexual verb. I am hot with regret with one hand in the shrimp bin, waiting for a response.
Stewart: That’s too bad
My eyes go huge, and I look around the empty storeroom, wishing there was a witness to this. He just flirted. No doubt. I know this because I read the text in his voice, and I feel the heat of it all over my body.
Before I can come up with something to say, he calls me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Now that I’m looking at that text, I think it might be inappropriate. I was joking around, which isn’t something I normally do. I got that wrong.”
“I’m the one who said ‘ravaged.’ Who says ‘ravaged’?”
“Right?” He laughs, relieved. “This one’s on you.”
“I’ll take full responsibility,” I say, wiping my brow with a gloved hand. “I’m in the back room, deveining a mountain of shrimp, and it always makes me think of being ravaged.”
“You just did it again,” he says.
My face goes hot. What is wrong with me?
“How’s the fish business today?” he asks.
“Fishy, I guess. Sold lots of wild salmon to people who were annoyed that the sea bass didn’t come in.”
“Tough,” he says.
“How was your day? Doing whatever it is that you do.”
“Not as fishy as usual,” he says. “Things are looking better for this project I’m trying to do in San Francisco.”
“Because of your new girlfriend? Who knew the business world was just like high school?”
He laughs. “No, we just had a good call. And my parents saw the photos from the Providence gala, and everyone seems to have bought into us as a couple.”
“Even with us not knowing our favorite biking park doesn’t allow bikes?” I ask. “That was a total screwup.”
“It was fine, but they’re asking me a ton of questions about you. I was thinking we should go over some things. Basic facts about each other and our relationship. I don’t even know if you have siblings.”
“I do,” I say.
“Okay, I’ll cross it off my list.”
“Do you really have a list?” I’m picturing him in his glasses, tapping away at his laptop.
“I was going to put one together. Can you come by this afternoon so we can talk some of this stuff through? I don’t even know where you went to college.”
“Community college,” I say. “Early childhood ed and a minor in business.”
“Got it,” he says. “So can you come? I can move my schedule around to accommodate you until six.”
“Before cocktails on the west veranda?” I ask.
“Before calls with the West Coast.”
“Well, I’m meeting the last of the contractors for estimates at four thirty, so I can’t come today.”
“How about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“Does that mean you’re busy?” he asks.
“Do you really want to sit in your office on a perfect summer Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“Busy says you never do anything fun.”
“Well, Busy’s right. She’s got the market cornered on fun, and I sit up here keeping all the plates spinning.”
“Up where? Are you in your grandfather’s office up top?” It’s absurd how much I know about a house I’ve never stepped foot in.
“My home away from home,” he says. There’s a resignation to his voice that makes me feel kind of hollow.
It makes me think his parents might be right about his work ethic not being all that healthy.
I wonder if I’d be like this without Gus, without that little spark of playfulness that comes with being around a kid all the time.
“Do you do anything at all besides work?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Well, I swim.”
I knew it. He didn’t get those shoulders for free.
“Every day?”
“Most days, a mile. In the ocean when I’m here. In Boston I belong to a club with one of those current systems.”
“Like you swim forever, indoors, and never get anywhere?” This is up there with the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
“It’s very efficient,” says the Tin Man.
This is truly alarming. This man needs an intervention more than he needs a fake girlfriend. I wish I could give him just five percent of Naomi’s enthusiasm for the Whitfield lifestyle.
“Let’s have our meeting on your boat,” I say. If I can take a few selfies on a Whitfield yacht, the next decade of Naomi’s birthday gifts will be taken care of—a framed copy for her bedside table, a coffee mug. Maybe a wall calendar.
“No. Why?”
“For fun. For vitamin D. For people to see us traipsing through the yacht club. We can play twenty questions and have a couple of beers. It might really help for the next thing. What’s the next thing?”
“Maybe meeting my parents.”
I let out a breath. “Then we need this,” I say.
I cannot imagine biking up to Eight Oaks or even driving my Jetta past the princess chapel and ringing the front doorbell.
“Hello, I’m here to see my boyfriend, Stewart Whitfield.
Please show me to the correct veranda.” I’m not ready, and he could clearly use a micro-break.
He’s quiet for a beat. I hear a chair scrape the floor, and he sounds like he’s walking around, maybe looking out the window for a change. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay?” I’m brushing a significant amount of recently removed digestive matter away from a clean heap of shrimp, but this time tomorrow I’m going to be on a Whitfield yacht. My dad has Rikki Clark scheduled, so I’m off. “Let’s do it. I’ll make sandwiches.”
“No. Gladys will want to do it, picnics are her favorite. But wouldn’t it be easier to meet here? We could have lunch by the pool if you’re so worried about vitamin D.”
“Nope. Sorry, Stewart. That’s not how negotiation works. You said okay. We have a deal.” I’m about to insist he leave his laptop behind when I get a text from Gus.
Gus: Biking home with a kid I met clamming, we might hang out for a bit
I stare at my phone. This sounds like a friend. A warm burst of something bright fills my chest.
“I’ve got to go, it’s Gus.” I start scraping the shrimp into the refrigerated drawer, only half of it deveined.
“What? Is he okay?” There’s alarm in his voice.
“Yes, sorry. He’s fine. It sounds like he made a friend. I need to get home and act cool.”
“I don’t think teenage boys care if their friends’ moms are cool,” he says.
“No. I know. It’s just.” I take a breath. “Gus has been having a hard time socially in Boston. His friends are into a bunch of stupid stuff, and he’s been hanging back alone.”
“Smart kid. I respect that,” he says.
“Right? Thank you. I mean, totally. But still, it’s awful to be alone and thirteen.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Okay I gotta go. Boat tomorrow. At boat o’clock. I’ll text you later.”
I hang up. I need to calm down. I need to saunter home, like this is nothing. Like this kid is one of a million friends he could be hanging out with.
I text Gus back: Cool
Ridiculous. That is not something I would ever text. He replies with a question mark.
I arrive at Goose Lane, and Christopher waves at me from the porch. “Dolly!”
“Hey, buddy,” I say, just as bike tires hit the gravel driveway.
I turn to see them, and an indescribable well-being washes over me.
My kid rolling in with a friend. I want to grab it with both hands, the half smile on his face and whatever he just said to make the other kid laugh.
I want to put it in a jar and screw the top on tight so that I can get in bed for years and just stare at it.
They drop their bikes and make their way toward us. Gus’s recent buzzcut may have been a mistake but the Red Sox hat can fix anything.
“Oh hey,” I say, like I’m a middle-schooler and I don’t want him to know I like him.
“This is Clay,” Gus says.
“Hi, Clay,” I say. “I’m Dolly, Gus’s mom.” Obviously.
“Where have you guys been?” I ask. Open-ended, casual. If I’m cool, they’ll come back. One wrong move and they’ll start hanging out at Clay’s house. Clay has long blond hair, almost green from chlorine.
“I rode down to the salt pond to check out the clamming. Clay was there too.” Gus takes off his backpack, and I know before smelling it that it’s full of clams.
“Great,” I say. “Clay, are you here for the summer or do you live here all year?”
“All year,” he says. “Starting at North Street in the fall.” Ah, high school. They’re the same age. I start to say something about it being my alma matter, but it tastes corny as it’s about to come out of my mouth, so I zip it.
“We were going to drop our stuff here and head to the beach,” Gus tells me. I think this is the first time his plans have been a statement rather than a question, but I go with it.
“It’d be good to get in the water. Lifeguard camp starts Monday.”
“I’m doing that too,” says Clay, my son’s new friend, a thirteen-year-old answer to my prayers.