by Tina Welling
Daniel enjoyed photography—a skill he’d picked up from his interdiction work—so he helped by documenting the project, not to mention allowing Jeter to model knitted coats and fancy collars.
I’d become excited by my imaginary business. The dog coats were knitted with abundant color and a variety of textured yarns and wild buttons. I got the idea while wondering one day how Bijou was going to hold up in a Wyoming winter and started knitting a warm coat for her. I’d added collars, knitted leashes, toys, and booties—Daniel said the booties were going to embarrass Jeter, but he had photographed him wearing them, anyway.
In return I had taken Daniel out to dinner. We dined away from the beach, at a restaurant in town, on a patio with a fountain and potted palms, guitar music instead of waves as our background sound. I asked Daniel to tell me about a time in his life he remembered feeling the happiest.
He thought for a moment. The fountain trickled soothingly, silverware and ice cubes jingled at tables around us; the guitarist played a slow, lingering tune.
“When I was fifteen, I was sent to my grandparents’ home in Maine for the summer and ended up staying the following school year, because my mother had fallen ill. I helped my grandfather; he was a lobsterman.”
“Tough work,” I said.
“Granddad and I were out there every morning on the Polly—named after my grandmother—checking lobster traps Granddad staked out in coves around the island. Cranked up the traps, emptied them, rebaited, lowered them again. Trap after trap. Cold, fog, sleet like iced needles—nothing stopped us.”
“You describe it with a smile on your face.” I laughed.
“Yeah, I loved it. My grandfather made his living supplying lobster to the restaurants in Bar Harbor, the resort near their bungalow in Seal Cove. I missed my mother and worried about her, but I could have stayed in Maine for the rest of my life.”
We watched the guitarist, sitting on a stool off to the side, and listened to the music for a moment. The melody wafted as softly as the evening’s warm breezes across the patio to us.
“Fell in love with a girl there, too,” Daniel said, as if just remembering. “Allison Waters.”
“There’s your answer, Daniel.”
“Answer to what?”
“Where you go, what you do next.” Daniel had mentioned more than once during our times together that he didn’t know where to go once he was cleared, that he was looking for a place to call home. It wasn’t safe for him in Florida, nor could he return to the places he’d left. “Start with the last time you felt good about yourself,” I said. “Where you were happy and loved. That’s your pattern to follow.”
If I sounded more like a counselor than a dinner companion, the distance that created wasn’t completely unintended. I felt a bit vulnerable, dining with this man while wearing my prettiest dress. And though I chose to look my best with him and even wanted Daniel to notice that, awareness of my femininity sizzled on my bare skin like a eucalyptus rub, both invigorating and unsettling.
Daniel rested his hand on the stem of his wineglass and stared at it, his facial muscles relaxing in a way I hadn’t seen before. Then, to cover up the pause, he lifted his glass, grinned and said, “If it turns out like some of the patterns you’ve created and made poor Jeter wear, I don’t know if that’s good advice.”
We laughed. But I could tell he was riding a swell of hope and I watched it lift him. I suspected he hadn’t enjoyed the throb of optimism for some time.
My hand lay on the table between us, as if I were about to lift my own wineglass, yet I really wanted to touch him, place my hand over his. And I believed he knew this.
He tipped his wineglass to clink softly with mine and said, “Can’t help it, Annie Teague. You knock me out.” He looked me in the eyes. “You are wise as well as beautiful.”
We ate quietly for a while after that. Then Daniel said, “She looked a little like you.”
He sounded surprised, as if he’d just now figured something out, as if two dots of a mysterious outline were joined and created shape and meaning.
“Maine,” he said, and smiled at me. “I think I’m going to be okay.” He warned that we couldn’t talk freely on his boat, since he was fairly certain it was wired now, so this subject would have to stay here.
“But . . . Annie, thank you.”
We were just getting ready to leave when a friend and fishing client of Daniel’s approached our table. Daniel made introductions and asked him to sit. Will Waggoner, a big, tanned, silver-haired man in his midsixties, pulled out a chair while nodding and waving to many of the diners around us. Even I recognized him from the Miami news channel as a well-known divorce lawyer, semiretired, who took on selected cases, based on women seeking divorce from powerful men.
After introductions, Will nodded to Daniel and said, “This guy helps me figure out where the husbands hide their money. With powerful men there is always hidden money.” He sat back in his chair, cocked his leg with an ankle over his knee. “Daniel and I have fun with the treasure hunt.”
Daniel said, “I’ve collected plenty of stories about hiding drug money from working in Customs. I’m happy to put the information to use.”
I wondered how much Daniel had told Will about the shady side of his work and how many of the ideas that Daniel had given his friend he’d used himself, though I’d believed Daniel when he told me he’d funneled his illegal gains back into Mexican housing for the poor.
Will said, “A man that likes to control money often likes to control women, and the desire to do both usually escalates as time progresses. Your information is being put to good use.”
I said, “Women in the hands of somebody like that haven’t much of a chance on their own.”
“That’s where I come in,” Will said.
We talked a bit longer. Then Will made a fishing date with Daniel, kissed my hand in a gracious old-world way and returned to his own table. Daniel and I left soon after.
Raindrops still splattered on palm fronds and drilled the roof. I knitted another row of blue worsted wool on my circular needles. This coat would be trimmed in a fuzzy peach, with three lime-colored buttons on the side where the belly band attached.
I wanted Daniel to succeed in making a good life for himself. I tried not to feel invested in the decisions he was facing, yet I sensed in this man a deep untapped well of sensitivity, a whole side of himself that his work had demanded he shut off. His daughter, Jamie, had picked up on it and had made a life from it, as often happened with our children.
I set the dog coat aside. For my classes I also had papers to write. So I wrote, then knitted, wrote, then knitted. The rhythm worked for me. Bijou lapped rainwater from the screens on the porch, amazed that it kept dripping down to her. Kia flew freely and played with pieces of yarn I gave her. If I didn’t keep her busy she chomped on the edges of my papers with her sharp little beak, plucking out triangles along their edges as fast as pinking shears. Kia’s favorite toys were empty toilet paper rolls, and Bijou’s favorites were empty water bottles with small shells in them, so between the two of them, the house looked like a trash heap, as I tried to keep them entertained while I worked.
As I fulfilled my assignments that morning, I realized that my classes were building confidence in me. I seemed to honor my experiences and thoughts in a new way. Prior to my sabbatical, I’d been known to disregard the evidence of my own eyes if Jess refused to confirm what I had witnessed. Often he put his own self-serving spin on an event, yet to save our sense of closeness—which meant that we shared an experience of reality by sharing our emotional reactions to it—I dismissed my own body’s responses. When the other person one lived with refused to confirm a shared experience, it was crazy making. For me, it created doubt and uncertainty.
I paused with papers in hand, recalling a night Jess and I attended a photography show at a gallery opening. The photos were of Afghanistan villages, exposing extreme poverty and the cruelty that was created. As I took in the flat eyes
of the children, their rib cages stretched tight under dusty skin, I had choked back tears.
Jess noticed and said, “Don’t get taken in, AnnieLaurie. This is art, designed to shock. You think this guy would have a gallery opening in Jackson Hole if he wasn’t an expert at manipulating emotions?”
The only reason this memory stood out for me was because a whole room of people shared my response. The confusion that typically set in when Jess belittled my reactions was absent. I saw that Jess often opposed my perspectives and took on the job of getting me to doubt myself. And I was a willing victim, as I sacrificed my own experience in order to share one with my husband.
The phone rang.
“We’re going, anyway.” I recognized Marcy’s voice.
“In the rain?”
“It’s raining bathwater,” Marcy said. “Besides, there’s a canopy on the boat. So get ready. We’re picking you up in thirty minutes.”
Instantly, the mood of the day changed from one in which I was considering a cup of tea and huddling indoors all day to one of adventure. I lured Kia into her cage with a spray of millet, shooed Bijou outdoors for a potty break and changed into a pair of fast-drying shorts and shirt. I stuffed a rain jacket and a water bottle in my bag. Sunglasses, just in case. Then nestled a container with a dozen deviled eggs on top. Marcy was taking Perry, Sara and me on a meandering boat ride through the Intracoastal Waterway, skirting the river swamps where once the Florida panther hunted and where we hoped to spot manatees lurking in the dark waters near the mangrove props.
With our lunches and gear loaded on the boat, Perry and Sara and I sat under the fiberglass canopy while Marcy went through her checklist. Marcy took the helm and, once under way, turned into the perfect tour guide. She knew the name of every kind of tree— cabbage palm, wild lime, cocoaplum. She pointed to the eyes of an alligator barely above waterline, its body submerged.
“That’s why we don’t trail our fingers in the water.”
I jerked my hand up. Though I knew better, I’d been wiggling my fingers in the water like live bait beside the boat. Marcy had spoken calmly as if unaware she was announcing the possible end of my newly found craft career. The water was as warm as the air, and the air was as wet as the water. Even though we were sheltered from the rain, my fingers stayed damp.
Passing a small island, we stirred up a wild pig and her five piglets and watched them dart out into an open meadow. Around us, the raindrops slicked the air, dimpled the dark silk surface of the river, glistened the palm fronds on shore and made the whole world—river, land, air—seem created of one substance. We rarely spoke, the motor purred quietly, and we took on the slow, silent ways of the narrow, curving waterway as it flowed through the mangroves.
The sky loomed as dark as the brackish water we floated on, a mixture of fresh and salt water, colored a reddish brown by the tannin of the shore plants. Lazy raindrops ticked the boat canopy and bobbed the fern fronds, and the air smelled of the nurturing decay of wet earth. We rounded a curve and were captured in the silver rays of light shining from a slice of blue sky, low on the horizon. We dropped anchor where the grace of watery sunlight had found us and pulled out our picnic supplies, opened wine, passed napkins and sat in silence, eating.
Soon the rain eased and we spread out from under the canopy and draped ourselves over the sides of the boat to watch the fish underwater and try to spot the shy manatees. As the sun broke out more strongly, the river swamp enlivened. Birds waded out and flew overhead—a great blue heron, an osprey. Mullet jumped, piercing the water surface suddenly, making our heads spin in the direction of the splash that indicated the event was already over. We, ourselves, became talkative, when before we had only whispered or pointed fingers when spotting something interesting.
I crunched a carrot stick. “Yesterday in psychology class I learned that psychologists agree on what constitutes a healthy-minded person.” I’d been thinking about this.
“Oh, gee,” Sara said. “I’m afraid to hear it.”
“That’s how I felt. I’ve been worried ever since I did hear it.”
“And now,” Marcy said, “in the role of a loving friend, you are going to pass this worry on to us, aren’t you?”
“I thought if all four of us discovered we were unhealthy together it would help.”
“Okay.” Perry tossed her bangs from her face, held a palm out in invitation, gold bangles clinking. “Go for it.”
“Well, the professor said that a well-balanced person knows which responsibilities belong to her and which belong to others, and she only takes on her own.”
Sara raised her hand, posing as a confident game show contestant answering a thousand-dollar question. “What . . . are . . . boundaries?”
“Somehow it was the way she said it. I didn’t hear it as another reminder about setting firm boundaries, once marriage and motherhood has smashed them to mush. Yesterday, it felt different. As if this were a basic kindergarten first-day-at-school rule: ‘This is yours. This is your neighbor’s. Leave your neighbor’s alone.’ You know? I got it.” I added, “And I am not healthy.”
“I don’t know which responsibilities are mine or which are Guy’s, and when I do, I take his on anyway, just adding a huff and a sneer to let him know that I resent it,” Marcy said.
“Exactly,” Sara agreed.
Perry said, “Well, I can’t do that with Alex. He has to maintain his area of capabilities or he loses ground. And he doesn’t know how to take on mine. Which makes him a sweet person to live with, because he hasn’t a judgmental bone in his body. Though, really, he is just sweet at heart.”
“Perry is healthy,” I announced. And I thought to myself that Jess lost ground every time I took on his stuff, too. Pick up his dirty socks once and I was assigned the job for life.
Perry stood up. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
Perry whispered, “It was a manatee. It just poked its nose up through the water right there and slipped back down.” She pointed toward the shore a few feet away, and we all sat still and hoped for another sighting.
Marcy said, “I don’t think my problems are about boundaries.”
I poured her a bit more wine and said, “What’s up?”
“It’s just that when Guy and I got married our motto was: gather experiences, not things.”
Marcy swirled the wine in her plastic cup and studied the effect.
“But now he wants two brand-new cars every year, plus talks about getting a bigger boat. And he gripes about me working in the college library instead of taking a higher-paying job to build our savings. I said to him, ‘Guy, I thought we were always going to be grasshoppers. Now you want to be an ant. We could spend our whole life getting ready for winter.’ ” She swallowed back tears, set her wine down to pat her pockets for a tissue. “He’s changed his goals, but I haven’t changed mine.”
Perry said, “He needed to be reminded of those early plans.”
“He called me irresponsible. Which I am.” She held up both arms in a hopeless surrender. “I thought that was the plan.” Her voice cracked.
I passed her a tissue from my purse.
“How about some dessert?” Sara rifled through her bag and lifted out a covered container.
I said, “Funny, one of the recommended criteria for choosing a mate is shared values, yet it doesn’t really make sense.” I took a brownie from the plate Sara held, broke off a bit of walnut from the edge and ate it. “Values are personal and subject to change through our different experiences. Just because the person we live with changes his value system doesn’t mean we should change ours to match.” I thought a moment about people who don’t change or grow, like Alex and perhaps Jess in some ways, and added, “Or vice versa. If our partner doesn’t grow, that shouldn’t mean we stop as well.”
I remembered Daisy’s explanation that Marcus frowned on her purchasing books because he wanted to support the library—a value of Marcus’, not Daisy’s. And I realized that thoug
h this problem of shared values seemed unrelated to the problem of honoring each other’s personal boundaries, they were two parts of the balancing act required in a marriage.
Perry said, “Marcy, carry on with your life as a grasshopper.”
“But I use the new cars he buys.”
Sara said, “Get your own car. Whatever piece of junk you can afford.”
Marcy’s face opened at that thought. “I could do that. Or, considering my small salary at the library, I could at least start gathering parts.” She laughed and blew her nose.
I said, “I turned in my rental and bought a used car. It’s been freeing to drive without Jess’ piles of junk rattling around.”
We each took a second brownie and sat quietly eating with far-off looks across the water. Possibly each of us was imagining the ways in which we could keep both our integrity and our marriages, because that was the issue at stake for us.
Soon we tucked our picnic supplies away, pulled up the anchor and continued down the river.
Once again we settled into a silence, this time basking in the sun that steadily burned the clouds away to expose more and more blue sky.
When I had learned about the accident that had killed Jess’ mother, I saw in tall, handsome Jess the little boy who woke from his sleep when help arrived and stood bewildered on the side of the road as all about him struggled to revive his mother. And I saw the little boy who stood alone in the graveyard, the adults of his family moaning and sobbing, occasionally patting his head, as if this child were too unaware to see and hear the death and the sorrow surrounding him. An aunt had handed him a small top to play with; an uncle pulled a quarter out of the little boy’s ear; his own father handed him sugary treats all through the burial.
These were people who could barely contain their own loss and were blind to the loss of the small boy. That boy became invisible to them and even to himself. Feelings, left unacknowledged by the grown-ups around him, became nonexistent to the boy. The grief went on for years with this family, and the invisibility went on just as many years with the boy.
