Reef Dance

by John Decure

  “We talked a lot. Business. Politics in Rome. The novels of Marquez. He was her favorite.”

  I looked away. “I know.” The fact that he was right galled me.

  “I went back and read One Hundred Years of Solitude just for her.

  And some of Pablo Neruda’s poems.” His lips looked dry and cracked when he smiled. “But it wasn’t all talk. I could make Marielena laugh.”

  My fists were tight at my sides. “Heartwarming.”

  “Hadn’t felt anything special for a woman in so long I couldn’t remember.” His tone was somber. “Haven’t felt that way about a woman since.”

  He sniffled, then puffed on his cigar too hard and coughed horribly. The servant appeared and glared at me as he glided in to attend to Mr. Pace. “I’m all right,” Jackie’s father said hoarsely. “Leave us.” The servant vanished again.

  “You gave her a leather portfolio,” I said. “I found it in the attic with some of her old things. Brochures for Sea Pointe.”

  “The infamous Sea Pointe.” He grinned through teeth cigarstained a soft yellow. “That idea came and went a long time ago.”

  “Where was it?” I said. “I’ve been asking around, and—”

  “You’re looking at it, son,” he said with a laugh, waving his hand in front of the railing. “Not exactly the money-maker I envisioned. I was trying to develop some of this wonderful view you see.”

  “Provencal Limited.”

  “Oh.” He looked impressed. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “She did some accounting for you?”

  “That’s right, at first. But I wanted to see her more, so I made her a salesperson.”

  “You what? My mother never sold anything in her life. She was the quiet type.”

  “I know, but you have to understand, I was in love with her. Had to have some pretense to keep seeing her. So I paid her an advance, paid her handsomely just to spread the word about Sea Pointe. Even hired that idiot friend of hers.”

  “Grog—Greg Baker?”

  He nodded. “Shot my mouth off a little too much about needing to get the word out locally, to build interest. She brought him over one day, practically begged me to hire him.”

  That was my mother, always trying to help a friend in need.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why did you need to build interest, as you said? This place is gorgeous. Why not put some flags in the ground, set up a trailer, and sit back? This land would sell itself.”

  “You don’t understand what was going on back then, how many problems I was having. Soil tests were coming back poor, the city was set to re-zone, but they kept waiting for the okay from the Coastal Commission. The hearings were a nightmare. That little trickle of a creek”—he waved his hand to the north—“got designated a tributary. Goddamned activists with their signs, ‘Save the Back Bay.’ Save it from what? We were talking about a very small development, twenty-two lots. Damn birds would’ve still had plenty of room to spread their wings.”

  “It never got approved.”

  “Very good,” he said.

  “Why did you call Greg Baker an idiot?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “He talked me into subdividing a smaller parcel and selling it to him. Said he planned to build on it, but I knew he could never afford to. He was going to turn around and sell it, try to make a quick killing.” Jackie’s father laughed hollowly. “As you can see, he never got the chance.”

  “How much did he lose?”

  “Twenty-five, thirty grand, I don’t remember. Whatever it was, it was his life savings.”

  That explained Pam Baker’s bitterness at my mention of Sea Pointe the night at the gallery. She had suffered through quite enough of Grog’s quick-buck schemes and could stand it no longer.

  His smirk was beginning to annoy me. “You really had it in for Grog, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. Likeable fellow, but he was in love with your mother, too. You could see it in the way he looked at her.”

  “Jackie told me she’s dead,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. “Your mother and I had, how should I say this? We ran into some complications.” He stopped, as if that was all he planned to tell me.

  I thought of the letters and Carmen’s translations.

  “She was pregnant,” I said. He sipped his martini as I glared at him. “It couldn’t have been you.”

  “It was . . . me.”

  Something was terribly wrong about the way he said it, as if he’d admitted to having done something ghastly. I had a sudden instinct. “You raped her.”

  “That’s not altogether fair. I never intended—”

  “You sick son of a bitch,” I said, standing over him, now. “I ought to throw you over this balcony.”

  “Don’t . . . now please,” he said. “Please, sit down.” His hands were shaking. He tried to set his cigar into a glass ashtray on the table but missed, and the cigar rolled off the far end of the table and onto the decking. “Jesus Christ!” Scrambling to put it out.

  I stepped around the table and squashed the cigar with my left foot. “Keep going,” I said.

  He eased back into his rocking chair and wet his lips. “It was only the one time. She was here one night, delivering some numbers I’d asked her to work up for a new prospectus,” he said. “I asked her in. We talked. I showed her the view up here. The Santa Anas were blowing out of the desert that day. The sunset was magnificent.”

  “Then you raped her.”

  “It wasn’t like that. I . . . wanted her so much. I loved her, I really did. She didn’t exactly welcome my advances, but she didn’t say no, either.”

  “What happened after that? How did she die?”

  He studied the Back Bay vista. “That’s a little more complicated.”

  “Then explain.”

  “My second wife, Jackie’s stepmother, was a powerful woman, a woman of means.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, “you married her for her money.”

  “I did,” he admitted. “My father’s fortune was all but wiped out during the Great Depression. Now, when your mother became pregnant, she stopped seeing me, stopped doing any work for Provencal or Sea Pointe. I had to go to her church to find her. She said she never wanted to see me again.”

  I frowned. “Good for her.”

  “Yes, well . . . but that’s not the point. She said she didn’t love me, but she was probably going to keep the child.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. She didn’t believe in abortion.”

  “It caused a problem for me,” he said.

  “A problem? You know, you’re a pig to even say that.”

  “Wait, wait, listen,” he said. “I told you about my second wife.”

  “What about her? You were afraid she was going to find out?”

  “Not exactly. She was dead. But it didn’t matter.”

  I’d lost him. He noted my expression and started again. “Leonora was the jealous type, always suspected I’d snared her for her bank account.”

  “Which was true.”

  He raised a hand in oath. “I admit it. I told her I loved her, and for years, I tried. Tried to be faithful, too. But she knew I only wanted the comfort her wealth could provide.”

  “What’s this got to do with my mother being pregnant?”

  “All this and then some was Leonora’s before we met,” he said. “I was just a sailing bum down at the Long Beach Yacht Club, a single parent with a good name, an old car and not much savings. The bulk of her estate was separate property, all hers. Stayed that way through the entire marriage. I never brought in a dime. She supported me for years.”

  “Even though you didn’t love her.”

  “That’s right. She was bitter about me—and about Jackie—before she died. Jealous.” He stared over the railing into the afternoon glare.

  “What do you mean about her being bitter about Jackie?”

  “He was a handsome, charming kid,” he said slowly. “Leon
ora was spellbound by his guile.”

  It was an unusual situation, but my dependency experience helped me process it quickly. “She wanted Jackie.”

  He nodded. “I could never tell if she did it to get back at me.”

  No wonder Jackie never spoke of his family. “What did Jackie do?”

  He looked away, over the dunes. “He didn’t reciprocate, not as often as she wanted him to, at least.”

  “He gave in.”

  “Never said a word about it.” He shivered and took a drink. “But I could tell. Eventually she drove him away. Boy practically lived on the beach, from the time he was fifteen or sixteen. But that was all well before Sea Pointe.”

  “I’m missing the connection to my mother,” I said.

  “Leonora’s trust. When she died, I got a call from a fellow in town at First Fidelity, her bank. Apparently, she’d created an inter vivos trust that was designed to persist after her death. It allowed for a generous monthly payment to me, but with a condition subsequent that if I was to remarry or father a child by another woman, I’d be cut off.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said, “and wills and trusts aren’t my specialty, but that sounds illegal.”

  “Oh, I fought it! Took it to court and spent a lot of money to have a judge tell me it was legal. As long as the purpose of the trust wasn’t ‘void as against public policy,’ he said. Can you believe that?”

  “So if my mother kept the baby . . .”

  “And Leonora’s executor found out, both Jackie and I would’ve been out in the cold. The only asset in my name was this land.” He swept his hand across the balcony.

  “That’s why you were trying to develop Sea Pointe,” I said.

  “To free myself from Leonora’s grasp.”

  “Why would she want to cut off Jackie?” I said. “He didn’t marry her for her money. He didn’t cheat. She used him.”

  “Leonora never quite got over his rejection of her.” He shook his head. “He was the one she really loved. So she left him with nothing. I always took care of the boy, so he’d have no interest in the outcome of this, I made sure of it.”

  “But Jackie was a surf star by the time he was eighteen.”

  Mr. Pace chuckled. “Sure he was. But I was pretty much paying his way.”

  “What happened to my mother?”

  “I had to persuade Marielena to terminate her pregnancy,” he said, “which at the time seemed near impossible. She didn’t want to see me in the first place, much less talk about an abortion. Jackie’s the one who got through to her.”

  “No . . .” I said. Not my best friend.

  “He dug around, talked to some of the people she knew in town. Heard about some of the unusual things she did.”

  “Her superstitions.”

  He nodded. “He knew about your father’s death, the heart problem. So I cornered your mother after mass one Sunday, to talk to her about the pregnancy. Lied to her. Said I’d had a vivid dream that the child was born with a heart that wouldn’t beat, as punishment for what I’d done. I told her the dream was a sign that she had to abort the fetus.”

  “So she did.”

  “No.” He held up a finger as if to redirect my thought. “She was torn right down the middle, said it was against her beliefs, but maybe my dream was a sign. She was in a quandary that day.” He closed his eyes. “It was the last time I ever saw her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Jackie gave her the sign she was looking for. Your father was a famous surfer, too, I guess.”

  “Around here, but nothing like Jackie.”

  “Right. Jackie knew your mother used to walk on the beach, to the spot where your father died. That day, the last day I saw her, he went out surfing on a board just like one your father used, in trunks like these ones he’d seen in an old magazine photo of your father.”

  It was as if a trap door had swung open beneath my feet. I held the railing and concentrated on my breathing. “Jesus.”

  “He waited for her to take her walk. When she got there and saw him, he rode in on a breaker, did it in the style your father used to ride the waves. Jackie knows these things. Then he went down, boom! Fell right where your father did years earlier.”

  “She didn’t recognize Jackie from around?”

  “He was pretty sure she wouldn’t know him. His appeal was with a younger crowd. Turned out he was right.”

  “Just like he was right about the draft board.”

  Jackie’s father’s teeth flashed. “Kid’s got a special genius for knowing who he’s playing to.”

  My earnest, conflicted, unsuspecting mother had gotten the Jackie Pace hustle, right when it mattered most. Probably never had a chance. I stared into the sun without blinking. “Go on.”

  “There’s not much more to say, really, if you—”

  “Go on!” I shouted.

  He tried to take another drink, but his hand was shaking. Suddenly he was just a withered old fool who’d carried a painful secret too long. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then rubbed his eyes hard.

  I looked on him impassively. “You were saying.”

  “Your mother ran out to help him, asked him if he was all right. She was suitably terrified, I guess. Poor thing. Jackie clutched his chest, told her it was the strangest thing, but when he looked up and saw her walking on the beach, it was as if his heart gave out.”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to breathe evenly. “Another sign. That did it. She had the abortion.”

  “She did,” he said. “Damn tragedy. I would have paid for it of course, gotten her the finest medical care. Apparently she had other ideas. Went down to Mexico by herself one morning, met up with some religious woman in Rosarito Beach who claimed to provide some sort of absolution through prayer during the procedure. Ridiculous. They butchered her.” His eyes were red again.

  “How do you know this?” I said.

  “I sent Jackie down there to look after her. He’d asked around at the church, figured out something was wrong.”

  “A little late,” I said.

  “She bled to death right on the table.” He gazed at me. “You understand, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “No, you sorry sack of shit, I don’t understand. You killed her, both of you!”

  “Go ahead, hate me,” he said, “but don’t blame Jackie. I’m entirely to blame.”

  “How’s that? He was in on it with you.”

  “No, not by choice. He’d tried to make it on his surfing, was the best in the world, and is that just the damnedest thing? He still couldn’t pay his way.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s no excuse.”

  “Say what you want, but he needed my money. How do you think he paid for all those trips to other countries? The contest people knew he wasn’t making enough to support himself. He had too much pride to hang around with them, so he went off on his own. I could understand his shame, what with his image, and all.”

  “Jackie knew everyone,” I said. “He didn’t need you.”

  “Yes, he did. Had quite a lifestyle going, too. Real taste for the high life. Inherited that from yours truly, I suppose. You were too young to know him then.”

  This was true. What I knew about Jackie in his early heyday was mostly recycled old stories I’d heard years later on the beach and in the water.

  “When the problem with your mother came up, I told him he’d better help me or he could kiss his little endless summer good-bye.”

  I gazed out into the mud flats, following the low flight path of a solitary white heron. “All he’s ever done is lie to me.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him. The whole experience changed his life, it did. He’s had a shadow hanging over him ever since.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hates his father,” he said. “Never visits, won’t take a cent of my money.”

  “What about his real mother, your first wife?”

  He stared at the far-off glint of t
he sea. “Jackie’s real mom was a gold-digging little bitch, if you must know. Such a fool. Too dumb to realize I’d already blown what was left of my family inheritance by the time I married her. She never gave a damn about Jackie. You know,” he said, dabbing his eyes, “I still don’t know how he makes ends meet.”

  I did. Jackie had become a small-time con artist and moocher to survive.

  “He’s always felt bad about you losing your mother that way. Feels responsible for you. He’s tried to watch over you.”

  I knew now why Jackie had been there to save me from drowning that day at Holy Rollers, and why he’d always been so visibly uncomfortable with my gratitude.

  I felt woozy. The sight of Jackie’s broken-down father was more than I could take anymore. “I have to go.”

  “Wait,” he said as I walked to the sliding glass door. He slowly stood up and hobbled along behind me. “Damned arthritis. I should be in the desert.”

  “I’m picturing a salt pit in Death Valley,” I said.

  He laughed lightly. “I can see how you two are friends.”

  His words halted me. “He’s no friend of mine.”

  “Let me show you something before you go,” he said. “Please.”

  He took me downstairs again, and we walked down a long hallway just off the living room to the only door that was closed. It was a bedroom, with a single bed in the far corner and a modest maple dresser and desk in the other. The wall above the desk was lined with bookshelves holding more surfing cups, plaques and trophies than I’d ever seen before in one place. Behind me, on the wall above the door, was hung the surfboard my father had named Honey Child, the board I’d ridden at Holy Rollers the day Jackie pulled me out. I’d always assumed it was lost, washed out to sea in a heavy rip. Jackie had never uttered another word about that day, or Honey Child.

  Mr. Pace flipped a light switch and two recessed ceiling lights popped on, illuminating the board, which looked flawless, more perfect than when I’d ridden it on that rainy, gray morning thirteen years ago.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “He had it restored. I’m keeping it for him.” He studied the board’s sleek outline ruefully. “It’s his prized possession. Used to come by just to look at it.” He spoke as if he knew he’d never see his son again.