TWENTY-TWO Tiny Intimacies
R oman came around from behind the meat case and slipped an arm around my waist. “How’d it go?” he asked after he kissed my cheek.
We were ‘out’ now, as a couple. From the reactions of most of the people we’d seen who’d mentioned it, I understood that we’d been ‘out’ since our first date. Town gossip doesn’t really allow for casual dating; once you’re seen together in anything approaching a romantic situation, the grapevine brands you a couple, and, like an actual brand, it’s nearly impossible to remove.
In a brief moment over lunch, when Jessie was handling a business call and Erin had scooted off to the bathroom (I suspect to avoid being alone with me), I’d texted Roman about the ambush lunch had been. His immediate response had been to ask if I was okay, which is a pretty good indication of how damaged Erin and I were as friends.
So I’d stopped by the carniceria afterward.
“Promising but not life-changing,” I answered, brushing a scatter of dried herb flakes from the front of his apron. He must have been working on pre-seasoned cuts. “I wouldn’t call us friends again yet, but there was no violence, and we did share a meal together. We even did some talking.”
He grinned and kissed me. “That’s great! I knew you two would work it out.”
“We’re not there yet,” I stressed. “No violence is a pretty low bar for friendship.”
“But talking,” he insisted. “That’s good.”
Our talking, where it bore on the state of our friendship, had been me explaining my reasons for leaving without a word and staying no-contact all that time, my apologies for doing so and a carefully worded plea to understand that at eighteen, growing up as I had, my fears about my mother’s power were outsized and my understanding of how important I could be in anybody’s life was undersized.
Erin’s reaction had been mainly stony silence, not a single question asked, not even a challenge made. But when I was done, there had been a measurable thaw between us—largely, I’m sure, out of love for Jessie—and we’d eventually managed a lighthearted chat among the three of us, with even some laughter. So a détente, but not yet a rekindling. Promising but not life-changing.
“Yeah, talking is good,” I conceded. “Enough to keep hope alive, anyway.”
A customer, someone I didn’t know, stepped up to the counter and looked over at us with an unspoken question—he wanted to buy some meat.
Before he let me go, Roman kissed my head.
Tiny intimacies like that are important to me. I guess you could say they’re my ‘love language’; I’ve always felt more love in a touch like that than in the spoken words themselves. Roman and I hadn’t talked about that, but he either recognized it in me or shared the feeling himself.
It was too early to speak of what was between us as love, of course. I needed to make sure I was strong and steady on my own, for both myself and my son. I didn’t want to be rescued and end up swallowed up in someone else’s life again. I had very rational, carefully considered reasons for proceeding with caution.
My heart, however, is a wild thing with a mind of its own. When Roman pressed his mouth to my head and held there long enough that I knew he was filling his senses with the aroma of my shampoo, my heart did a little pirouette and threw its arms wide.
“My house tonight, yeah?” he asked as he went back to the business side of the meat case.
Since we’d moved into the physical phase of our relationship, we’d started something like a paradigm, where we did ‘family’ stuff—that is, with Wyatt—at our place, and Roman and I did grownup stuff at his place. But Roman had surprised me last night by suggesting we do our little first-day-of-school ‘celebration’ at his place.
It seemed important to him; I hoped the reason wasn’t that he was tired of spending so much time at the Sea-Mist. We’d gotten it into livable shape fairly quickly, but it was a work in progress and would be for some time. It was the place we were trying to make our home, but even in its best possible condition it wouldn’t compete with Roman’s lovely, comfortable home.
Though they both were haunted in their own ways.
“Yep, your house,” I confirmed. “I’m going to Sprinkles before I head out to pick Wyatt and Bailey up. Do you have any cupcake requests?”
“Mexican hot chocolate for me, please.”
“Those sound amazing!” Sprinkles was Bluster’s answer to the cupcake-shop craze of about ten years ago. This would be my first time getting any of their product, but everybody talked about how great they were.
“They are,” Roman replied with a wise nod.
“I like the Boston cream, myself,” injected the customer at the case. He had the look (and smell) of a commercial fisherman, with a sun-roasted, leathery complexion. He wore weathered jeans, salt-kissed deck boots, and a faded t-shirt over a long, lanky frame. Ancient, washed-out tattoos covered his arms. A regular rubber band held his long, iron-grey hair in a ponytail.
He was old enough—he looked in about his sixties, though the ocean aged a body quickly—that I should have known him from the before times. In Bluster as, I think, in most coastal towns, commercial fishing tends to be generational work. As a rule, people don’t suddenly quit their white-collar jobs and up and move to the coast to embark on the laborious and primarily thankless work of hauling in fish. Commercial fishermen are born to it.
I should have known this guy, but he did not look familiar to me—and he didn’t seem to recognize me, either.
“Boston cream sounds good, too,” I offered, still trying to figure him out.
“Percy, do you know Leo?” Roman asked.
That name was not familiar to me.
The fisherman named Percy smiled—he needed a dental bridge where he was missing two teeth on the left side of his mouth—and held out a work-rough hand. “By reputation only. I’m Percy Cantorini.”
I put my hand in his. “Hi, Percy. I’m Leo. I hope my reputation isn’t too tarnished.”
“Not at all,” he said. Then, with a sideways nod toward Roman, he added, “Mostly people are talking about how this guy’s walkin’ around town with a big ol’ goofy grin these days. That’s a good thing.”
Roman might actually have blushed. “Percy worked a crabber up in Alaska for a long time. He bought Jimmy Buck’s vessel after Jimmy passed on. About what? Eight years now?”
Percy nodded. “Yep, about that long.”
I remembered Jimmy Buck. He was a generally decent guy who turned into a fiercely mean drunk. And, of course, he was an alcoholic. My recollections of the man seesawed from the nice guy who’d buy all the kids in the market a sweet when he saw them and would stop traffic on 101 to help a turtle cross, to the psycho who tore up O’Grady’s three times a month.
“Is it still The Buck Stops Here?” I asked, remembering the name of Jimmy’s boat.
“Bad luck to change a vessel’s name,” Percy reminded me.
“Of course. What drew you to Bluster from Alaska?” The thing about living in a small town: everybody you don’t know is either passing through or somebody to get to know. Though for years I’d lived in a city big enough for anonymity, it didn’t take long to fall back into the small-talk patterns of small-town life.
Percy knew those patterns as well. “The cold and rough up there had me feelin’ older than my years. Had some savings, so I started looking for a vessel of my own, somewhere a little bit warmer, where the world itself isn’t always tryin’ to kill ya. This part of the world is perfect.”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful here,” I agreed.
“That what drew you back?”
I hadn’t yet formulated a way to answer that question from a Bluster resident who hadn’t known me before, and I only right in that moment realized I didn’t have a ready answer.
Into my pause as I tried to create one, Roman said, “What’ll you have today, Perce?” and pulled Percy’s attention away.
That was a rescue I was unambiguously grateful for.
As Percy placed his order for four hefty rib-eyes, I said, “Well, I need to get scooting. It was great to meet you, Percy!”
“And you, too, Leo. See you ‘round.”
I put my fingers to my lips as a wave to Roman; his hands full of raw meat, he returned a wink.
Tiny intimacies.
OUTSIDE THE SHOP, ABOUT to open the door of my Golf, I happened to look over the roof. I’d parked around the corner and was looking directly into the alley.
I was looking at Ned O’Grady, Erin’s father, strolling unsteadily toward me down the middle of the alley. Barefoot and wearing nothing but a pair of striped pajama bottoms and a saggy undershirt.
Jessie had told me that Daddy Ned had Alzheimer’s. It was why Erin had given up her career as a music teacher in SoCal and come back to Bluster. I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but now I wondered how Erin had been able to get away for our lunch. Or how she was able to get away for any reason ever. She must have help of some kind.
That help had apparently let her, and her father, down.
I hurried to the alley. “Daddy Ned?”
His head jerked to me, and he squinted, looking confused and suspicious at once. Then his expression cleared, and he grinned. Apparently he wore dentures now. Or he was supposed to, at least. He was not wearing them at this particular moment.
“Leonora?”
Surprised he recognized me after so much time, I grinned. “Yep, it’s me.”
I went up to him and hooked my arm around his waist. I remembered Daddy Ned being a big, strong Irishman, with thick auburn hair and a barrel chest. This version of him had a head of messy white wisps and a chest that curved in on itself. Alzheimer’s is a bitch of a disease.
“Hello, lass. You should be in school. Marilyn won’t be happy if she finds you playing hooky.”
Ah. He didn’t recognize me. He remembered me—as I was when he’d known me. That added an extra dollop of both bitter and sweet to our reunion here.
Figuring it wouldn’t help him to try to correct him right now, I went with it. “I’m on my way back to school right now. Can I offer you a ride to your house before I do?”
This was an alley behind a full block of businesses. Dumpsters lined the pavement on both sides. He was barefoot, and broken glass, in grains and shards and chunks, glittered on the cracked concrete.
He looked around, confused again. “I ... I had an errand, but I can’t remember what it was.” I could see fear begin to catch in his eyes.
“Come on, my car’s just there.” Holding him close, ready to hold tight if he resisted, I started walking toward the street, trying to pick a path around those nasty bits of biting glitter. He didn’t resist at all.
Meek as a lamb, he let me help him into the passenger seat and buckle him in. O’Grady’s was only a couple of blocks away, but I felt much better driving him that distance.
“You’re a good girl, Leonora,” Daddy Ned said as I stopped at the intersection that would put me on Marina Street. “I’m sorry your mother doesn’t see that.”
Every organ in my body seemed to flash freeze at that softly uttered sentiment.
Here was Erin’s father, who maybe knew as much as I’d let anyone know about the life I’d had with my mother, thinking he was talking to Leonora, the girl who’d lived that life, and telling me something he’d never said to me in those days: that he understood—at least enough to know that my mother had believed I was no good.
I did not know what to do with that bizarre combination of sudden truths, but they made me feel frozen solid.
But then I saw Erin on the sidewalk up ahead, clearly looking for her father. I gave a couple of quick toots of the horn to get her attention and pulled over to park at the nearest spot.
She saw her father in the car and came running. I got out of the car.
“Daddy!” Erin cried, ignoring me as she hurried to the passenger side. “Daddy, where did you go?” She ripped the door open and dived in to check him over. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Where did you go?”
Now Ned was fighting. He didn’t like Erin fussing over him, and he showed it by slapping and pushing and wriggling, like a toddler fighting a car seat. I ran around to help, and we got him out of the car.
A hefty woman in a set of scrubs with colorful balloons scattered over the top came trotting up. “Mr. Ned! We were so worried!”
Erin shot the nurse a positively lethal look and otherwise ignored her. I knew better to get in the middle of that in any way, so I simply asked Erin, “Do you need any help?”
For a second, she glared at me, and I expected her to tell me to fuck off out of her business. But then she blinked, and the steely set of her jaw gave way. As briefly as that blink, her mouth quivered. Then she sucked in a breath and steadied her composure.
“Will you help me get him back upstairs?” she asked. I saw fear, weariness, and naked need rioting in her eyes.
“Of course.” Since Ned was clearly angry at the people who were his actual caregivers, I asked him, “Will you show me up to your house, Daddy Ned?”
I heard Erin gasp at the name and wondered if Jessie didn’t call him that anymore.
“Happy to, lass,” her father said—and turned a look on his daughter like she was Nurse Ratched and he’d finally gotten one over on her.
“Go home, Wanda,” Erin barked at the nurse. “You are extremely fired.”
Wanda looked like she wanted to say something back, but she thought better of it and only nodded. “My backpack’s upstairs.”
“I’ll send my friend here down with it.” Erin looked at me, and I nodded.
We got Ned up to the apartment and settled into bed. I made an effort not to gawk at the surroundings, but I couldn’t help noticing that Erin had packed most of her father’s belongings from the moderately-sized house I remembered into this two-bedroom apartment.
Erin checked his feet, which were filthy and bloody. When she went to get the first-aid supplies, she gestured that I should follow. So I said goodbye to Daddy Ned, got a kiss on the cheek and a “There’s a good lass” (Ned is a Bluster native and I don’t think ever saw Ireland, but he enjoys calling younger people ‘lads’ and ‘lasses’), and followed Erin out of the room.
“Thank you,” she said when we were in the cramped living room. “Where did you find him?”
“Behind Roman’s shop, in the alley. He hadn’t gotten far.”
“He’d been gone three hours, Len. Almost from the time I left for lunch. Wanda didn’t let me know he was missing. I got back and they were both gone. Even then, I thought she’d taken him to the park. He likes the park. Three hours ! I had to call her to find out what was going on. Who knows what could have happened!”
My concern for the nurse was greatly diminished by that account of her neglect, but my concern for my friend throbbed. Without thinking if she’d abide it, I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close.
She cringed at my first touch, but then softened and set her head on my shoulder. At that sign of friendship, I nearly fell into sobs. I hadn’t comprehended how much I’d hurt not to have Erin’s friendship until I got it back again.
I maintained enough composure to say, “He’s okay. And everybody in town would have looked out for him. It wouldn’t have been much longer before somebody else saw him and helped.”
“Three hours!” she said again, clearly near tears of her own.
“I know.”
Erin sighed, and her arms came around my waist. For a while, we stood there, arm in arm, giving each other comfort.
The way friends do.