Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  “They were doing bird watching over there looking through binoculars, so he had a good view. I think I should go talk to him.”

  What were the chances that a Boy Scout counselor, an unimpeachable observer, would be looking out into the bay for birds and see a man fall in the water? What else had he seen through his binoculars? And why hadn’t Garrity mentioned such a credible eyewitness?

  “Sure, Joe, go interview him and find out exactly what he saw.”

  She said, “Why did you send Tom Garrity to me?”

  He was kneeling in the garden, yanking handfuls of weeds from around the spindly tomato plants, barely two feet high in July, and with only a few yellow flowers on them promising fruit. It would be another lousy year for tomatoes. He had thought that leaving work early to do something outside with his hands would help him forget for a while the predicament he was in. But there was Amy standing over him, demanding an answer.

  “Hello to you, too,” he said sitting back on his heels. “I suggest next year we just throw some wildflower seeds in the garden and forget trying to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. It’s wasted effort.”

  “You do the weeding, so plant what you want.” She moved away a step, letting the late afternoon sun hit his face. “Could you tell me why you sent the police chief to me?”

  Simon yanked more weeds, spraying her shoes with dirt. She brushed off her shoes, lifting one foot up at a time to do it. Bits of dirt still stuck to her tan shoes like purposeful specks of contrasting color. He thought they looked interesting that way. “I saw him at Red’s at lunch,” Simon said, “and he started asking all these questions about the missing guy, Paul. Since you saw him a couple of times …”

  “You’re counting on me not saying anything, aren’t you?”

  “I know you’re not supposed to talk about people you see. But I didn’t think I should hold back that he was your patient since he’s missing and may have committed suicide. I didn’t actually say you were seeing him anyway. I implied it. I figured you’d sort things out with Tom.”

  “Well, he’s sorting it out. Apparently once I called 911, it became a police matter.”

  “You mean you can talk about him?” Simon tried to portray only casual surprise, a kind of ethical inquisitiveness in his voice, but he was sure she could sense something more.

  “I can talk about how a man who said his name is Paul Chambers prevented me from leaving my office this week, but I won’t reveal anything he told me during our sessions. That’s what’s important to you, isn’t it, that the police don’t know why he was in Red Paint?”

  Simon straightened a limp stalk to its pole and re-fixed the tie holding it. He had little hope a tomato would grow on the plant, but he thought he should give it the opportunity. In his garden, everything had its fair chance. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “It probably would be better if they didn’t know that.”

  “They could get a subpoena. Then I’d have to decide what to do.”

  “Would you cooperate, if you were subpoenaed?”

  “I might,” Amy said, “if they just want information to help find him.” She noticed the dirt still on her shoe and bent down to rub it away, but the dark brown just rubbed deeper into her tan sandals. “You don’t want the police to find him, do you?”

  He yanked a dead leaf off the stalk. “Why do you say that? Of course I hope they find him.”

  She shifted side to side, blocking the sun and then letting it strike him again, a strobe effect. She said, “Do you know where Paul Chambers—Paul Walker—is?”

  He shielded his eyes to see her. “How would I know that?”

  “That’s not answering my question. Do you know where he is?”

  Simon didn’t, exactly. The last he’d seen the man he was sinking into the dark waters of the bay. Perhaps he climbed out when Simon dove under looking for him. Perhaps he floated away unseen to a different shore. Perhaps he did drown. There were several possibilities at least. Without a body, who could say he was really even dead? “No, I don’t know where he is.”

  “Why would it take you so long to answer, Simon? You either do know or you don’t.”

  “Like I said, I don’t.”

  “Then why take so long to answer?”

  “What are you doing, timing my answers to see if I speak fast enough for you to believe me? Is there some two-second rule I don’t know about?”

  “The rule is we tell each other the truth.”

  “Are we talking about Jean Crane again? Because I explained that to you, I didn’t force her to have sex.”

  Amy cocked her head, adjusting to the shift in subject. “This isn’t about Jean Crane. It’s about her husband who came to Red Paint to get revenge on the man he thought raped the woman he married—that’s you, Simon. Now he’s disappeared.”

  “And you think I had something to do with that?”

  “Did you?”

  He stood up to face her, just a few feet between them. It felt good to be so much bigger. “Now you’re avoiding the question,” he said. “Do you think I had something to do with this guy’s disappearance?”

  Her eyes narrowed, trying to bore into his soul where surely the truth must lie. Souls should come with protective armor, he thought. They shouldn’t be open for inspection. Four seconds, five, six …

  “Why are you taking so long to answer?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I think you know something about him being missing.”

  “I can’t tell you how comforting your faith in me is,” Simon said. “Makes me realize how strong our marriage is after sixteen years.”

  “I haven’t been living with a secret. I’m an open book to you. But for our whole married life you hid from me the rather important fact that a girl accused you of raping her.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. Apparently in your mind I’m Simon the husband who doesn’t tell his wife he’s a rapist. And now you can add to it that I’m Simon the husband who may have done what? Killed a man? Is that what you think?”

  “I didn’t say anything about you killing him, Simon.” She squinted at him, as if to see more clearly. “Tell me you didn’t kill him.”

  He would have liked to declare that he hadn’t, make her feel bad for even considering the idea. But there was the nagging possibility that he may have caused the death of another human being. Killed him, at least in some sense of the word. With this possibility in mind, he found it incongruous to be outraged at her suspicions, but he felt outraged nevertheless. She had no good reason to think him guilty. It was her inherent distrust of him that brought her to this conclusion. A failing in her. He said, “If I tell you I didn’t kill the guy or do anything else to him, you still won’t believe me, will you?”

  “Try me.”

  He turned back to the garden and dug his hands into the hard, dry dirt.

  He came inside to a familiar scene: Davey sitting on the hot seat, the leather-covered stool in the family room, his feet still unable to reach the floor, with Amy circling him like a cop in an interrogation room. He wasn’t needed for this performance.

  “Dad!” Davey said at the sight of Simon and jumped off the stool.

  Amy grabbed the boy’s arm at the thin bicep and squeezed.

  “That hurts,” he said, twisting out of her grasp.

  “Then get back on the stool. We’re not done here.”

  Davey climbed back on.

  “What’s going on?” Simon said as he pulled off his work gloves.

  Amy turned toward him as if addressing a jury. “It seems that your son was playing with knives at his friend Kenny’s house, and according to Dora Reed, who just called, he threw a knife at her son’s forearm and drew blood. She had to rush him to the emergency room for a tetanus shot. It’s just a day full of good news around here.”

  Simon glanced at Davey, sitting behind his mother, and the boy spit on his hand and flashed it in the air
. The message was clear.

  Amy turned her attention back on their son. “So I’m asking you again, did you throw a knife at Kenny?”

  “No, Mom, he threw it at his own stupid arm.”

  Amy squinted at him. “Why would he do that?”

  “He was showing off how close he could get without hitting it but he missed—I mean he didn’t miss, he hit himself and started bleeding. I’m the one who said he had to tell his mother to take him for a shot so he wouldn’t get lockjaw. He was going to just put on his sweatshirt and not tell her. I saved his life, didn’t I?”

  She ignored his plea for praise. “Then why did he tell his mother you threw the knife at him?”

  “He always says I do stuff that he did so he won’t get in trouble because his father would kill him for something like that.”

  “His father isn’t going to kill him.”

  “He’ll hit him for sure, he does that all the time for the littlest little things.”

  “You’ve seen Mr. Reed hit Kenny?”

  “Not exactly, but he yells a lot, I know that ’cause I heard him lots of times.”

  “I imagine Kenny deserves to be yelled at, just as you do more times than I can count. The point is that you and Kenny were playing with knives and he got hurt.”

  “No, Mom, cross my heart, I wasn’t playing with knives. Dad told me not to touch them because they’re dangerous. It was just Kenny doing it.”

  Simon watched his son’s right hand crisscross his chest, the thin index finger extended, a surprisingly delicate gesture. The boy stared up at Amy, his expression unwavering, so innocent, so convincing. Then he looked toward Simon. “You believe me, don’t you, Dad?”

  A clever move, trying to lure him into the scene. But Simon wouldn’t let himself get drawn in. He was just an observer to this little courtroom drama where the savvy interrogator went up against the cunning suspect. Whom would the jury believe? “It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said, heading toward the kitchen. “It’s your mother you have to convince.”

  That evening, Simon waited till Amy closed herself in their bathroom for a long soak in the tub, carrying a stack of Psychology Todays with her. She’d be an hour at least. He went to Davey’s bedroom, where she had banished their son for the night on the premise that at the very least, he was on site when Kenny knifed himself. Guilt by proximity. The boy was lying on his bed, staring upward, with Casper curled on his chest. Simon turned his head up to see what was so interesting on the ceiling. Nothing. To be eleven, lying on your bed, a cat on your chest, staring at nothing. Was this to be envied or not?

  “It isn’t fair,” the boy said, his gaze fixed upward. “Mom grounded me for not doing anything.” He glanced over at Simon with his sad brown eyes and their incredibly long eyelashes. “Can’t you talk to her, Dad?”

  “You did do something, remember? You were playing with knives yesterday with Kenny.”

  “She doesn’t know that. She shouldn’t punish me for something she doesn’t know I did.”

  “She knows, Davey, believe me. She just doesn’t know she knows.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. When we made our pact, you didn’t tell me Kenny got hurt with the knife and his mother had to take him to the hospital.”

  Davey grasped Casper and then rolled over, pinning the cat on her back. “You didn’t ask, Dad, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “Mom asked if you were playing with the knife, and you lied to her.”

  The boy held the back of Casper’s neck with one hand and rubbed his belly with the other, a hard massage. “That’s because I didn’t want to get her all upset, you know, because she wouldn’t understand.”

  The old cat twisted from side to side, trying to free herself. “Don’t hold Casper that way,” Simon said.

  “She likes it. I do it all the time.”

  “You don’t know she likes it, so let her go.”

  Davey released his grip, and Casper jumped off him and bolted toward the door.

  “Why wouldn’t Mom understand?” Simon said.

  “She’s a girl. Girls don’t play with knives.”

  Girls don’t play with knives, girls don’t shoot off guns in the street, girls don’t rape, girls don’t murder. It seemed like a simple life to Simon, being female. He almost wished he could try it for a while. “You still shouldn’t lie to her.”

  Davey leaned back on the bed again, his hands behind his head. “You lied to her.”

  It took a moment for Simon to process the full meaning of the words—You, my father, the one who is supposed to teach me to be honest, lied to her. “What do you mean?”

  “When you came home all wet. You didn’t really spill a soda on yourself because you’d never get that wet. You don’t know how to lie, Dad. You try to sound like you’re really really telling the truth. If you want people to believe you, you got to act like you don’t care if they do.”

  “Seems like you’ve thought this out.”

  Davey nodded. “Yeah, lying takes some thinking ahead of time. Then you just do it.”

  “You sure you want to be telling me this? I am your father.”

  “That’s okay because you lie, too. You didn’t want Mom to know how you really got wet, right?”

  “I didn’t want her to know because—”

  “It doesn’t matter why, Dad,” Davey said. “You lied, just like me.”

  It was true. He was a liar, the same as his son, and worse because his own lies were about life and death. “Listen to me, Davey, lying doesn’t solve things. It just makes them worse.”

  “Not if they don’t catch you.”

  “It’s not about being caught. It’s what people believe. Mom doesn’t believe me. She knows I lied to her.”

  “You lied to me, too, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come, Dad? I don’t care if you did something wrong.”

  Simon sat on the bed, his hand inches from his son’s. He felt like picking it up, stroking the palm as he had done when Davey was a baby, loving the way the small fist closed over his index finger as if it would never let go. I don’t care if you did something wrong. Not forgiveness for whatever was done, just unquestioned acceptance no matter what. One liar to another.

  “You’re right,” Simon said, “I shouldn’t have lied to you or Mom. I’m going to change that starting right now, no more lying.”

  Davey shifted on his side and propped his head up with one arm. “So how’d you get wet?”

  “There’s a man, his name is Paul, he’s been sending me postcards for the last month.”

  “The ones on the refrigerator?”

  “You know about them?”

  “Yeah, since we’re telling the truth, I kind of knocked the fish magnet off when I shut the door too hard and it broke on the floor. You can take it out of my allowance, if you want to.” He batted his eyelashes, a feminine trait, but apparently natural in his son.

  “What did you do with the postcards?”

  “They’re probably still on the floor next to the refrigerator.”

  Such a simple explanation for the disappearance of the first two cards. Nothing mysterious, nothing sinister. “The reason I lied to you about getting wet is that I was out on the dock at Bayswater Inn that afternoon with the man sending the postcards and I got into an argument with him. I thought he’d hurt Mom, and I was very upset, so I hit him and he fell into the water.”

  Davey rose up on the bed. “Wow, you mean that guy who’s missing, you knocked him into the water?”

  “That’s the one. I jumped in to look for him, but I couldn’t find him.”

  “So like he drowned?”

  “I don’t know for sure what happened. They haven’t found him.”

  “Wow, Dad,” Davey said again with what sounded more like excitement than worry. “They’re not going to arrest you or anything, are they, because you just hit him, you didn’t drown him. You even jumped in to save him, right?”

&nbs
p; He had jumped in, dove to the bottom several times, the water so thick that he had to feel around in search of a body. Would that make a difference, his attempt at saving his victim, even if it came late?

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, kiddo. It’ll be up to the police when I tell them what I did. But people will know about it, I’m sure, and some kids might say things to you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Things about me.”

  Davey balled up his small fists. “They better not or I’ll punch them.”

  “No!” Simon said more loudly than he intended. “Aren’t you listening to me? That’s how I got into this trouble, punching someone. You have to be smarter than me.”

  “You want me to turn the other cheek?” Davey said with disdain in his voice.

  That was what Simon had meant, but he realized it was useless to phrase his advice that way. “I want you to be strong enough to walk away if kids hassle you, that’s what I’m telling you. Can you do that?”

  “What if they keep walking after me and saying stuff about you, then can I punch them?”

  “Under no circumstances are you to get into a fight over this, understand?”

  “It’s awful hard not punching someone who deserves it.”

  “I know,” Simon said, “believe me.”

  Confessing once, Simon thought, would make the second time easier. But he didn’t find it so when the second person he had to confess to was Amy. He took her hands across the small round table in the back corner of the Surf Club, Red Paint’s finest fish restaurant, and most expensive. That’s why there were only a few couples sprinkled throughout the dining room overlooking the Common. You could count on a secluded table at the Surf Club on a weekday.

  “You proposed to me like this,” she said.

  Her comment confused him. “No, it was at that place on the harbor in Portland with the huge wreath made out of corks. Real classy.”

  “The restaurant was different, but it was candlelight like this, a seafood place, the waiter had just cleared away our plates, and you reached across the table to take my hands. I knew you had something important to say.”

  He remembered bringing out the engagement ring, the best $195 could buy, and trying to slip it on her. It was way too small. He couldn’t believe how much he had underestimated the size of her finger. “You said yes right away, no hesitation.”