Seasons' End

by North, Will

“Emma!”

  “Okay, okay. But Jeez, Mom, sometimes it’s like she has him on a leash or something, like he’s her pet. The Mascot of Madrona Beach!”

  Patsy sighed. “Look, sweetie, it’s dead simple, okay? He loves her.”

  “You know what, Mom? I don’t believe that. I don’t think you do, either. Maybe he did once. Maybe they were soul mates once. Okay, I get that. But after all this time I think it’s just a habit with both of them. And not a good one.”

  “Emma, he found her at dawn, unconscious, in the middle of Vashon Highway. She was trying to kill herself.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “No, I mean there’s no way she would kill herself; she’s too self-absorbed.”

  “You planning on going into psychiatry?”

  “I’m serious. Look, Colin taught me to swim on that beach, right? I spent a lot of time with those people. I watched her, partly because it seemed to me they all led a kind of charmed life. Pete…she’s like the scion of the Petersen clan, upholding…well, I don’t know what. And she and Colin are close, it’s true. But it seems pretty one-sided to me. I mean, you know… Pete gets someone thoughtful and caring to talk to, at least for two months in the summer, but what’s Colin get out of it? I can’t figure it out. It’s like she lives off of him. Like an emotional parasite! And he actually wants to be the host body.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And rude.”

  “Come on, Mom. Don’t tell me it’s never occurred to you. Hell, I’d live off Colin, too, if I was married to Tyler Strong.”

  “What’s got into you today?” Patsy had never heard Emma be so outspoken before, especially about Colin, who she knew her daughter loved. Maybe it was the newfound financial independence and her dream of a life in medicine coming true. Or maybe she’d just made another of her developmental plateau-jumps, like she did as a child, and this time she’d gone from being daughter to advisor.

  “Mom, Tyler Strong’s a letch! He was after me the moment I got boobs. Don’t you even notice these things? The fact that Pete continues to live with him and put up with him tells me she’s just plain lazy. Or in denial. She doesn’t want to upset her cushy life.”

  “She lost a son, for heaven’s sake, Emma. Maybe she’s had all the upset she can handle.”

  And as she said this, Patsy wondered whether she’d been wrong about doubting Pete’s attempted suicide. Maybe Pete had simply had enough.

  “Okay, forget about her,” Emma continued. “Look what she does to Colin: here’s this guy who’s one of the sweetest, most centered men on the planet, and then, in July and August, it’s like he’s been taken over by aliens.”

  “I think you’ve been watching too many science fiction movies…”

  “You don’t see it? The way he gets all anxious and hyper-vigilant about her?”

  “That’s enough, Emma! That man has been as good as a father to you. Maybe better. He loves you. You have no idea…”

  “Yes, I do, and I love him, too. That’s why this makes me crazy! It should make you crazy, too!”

  It did, of course. Colin’s relationship with Pete drove Patsy quietly, seasonally wild, year after year, the way that the Mistral, that summer wind in southern France, was said to make people crazy. For years, her strategy had been simply to wait the season out. Come autumn, he’d become his gentle, caring self again. You could set your watch by it.

  “Why should it make me crazy?” she lied. “It’s his life.”

  “Because you love him even more than I do, Mom.”

  “We’re not getting into that.”

  “Why not? Why do we never get into that? You said it yourself; he’s been like a father to me. Why aren’t you his wife?!”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am. I’m really happy about your news, sweetie; I’m over the moon. But it’s time to say bye-bye for now.”

  “Mom, this is important! This is about you! Honestly, I don’t know which of you is crazier…”

  Patsy hit the red “End” button on her phone. The sun had cleared the island’s center ridge and it was hot as a sweat lodge in her car. Still, she didn’t move. And she didn’t pick up when, almost immediately, Emma called back. She’d listen to the rest of the rant on her voicemail. Patsy would kill for her daughter, but she couldn’t tolerate being lectured to by her. There were times she wondered whether Emma had ever truly left behind that “My mother is an idiot” phase that seemed to have started, like an alarm clock going off, the day after the girl’s thirteenth birthday.

  She sat in the baking heat and thought, for the millionth time, about Colin Ryan. He was a brilliant and intuitive veterinarian. But he was dim as a post when it came to women. Pete wasn’t the only woman about whom he was blind, oh no. And it didn’t help that he had no idea how attractive he was to women. Patsy saw it every day. They sensed his gentleness as if it were a fragrance in the air; those who were clients saw it at work with their animals. But he never relaxed his professional distance, never let anyone too close, as if he could not separate the personal from the professional. Or didn’t want to.

  He’d done that once, Patsy knew. And it nearly did him in.

  Eight years after he’d taken over the veterinary practice, Colin had been sitting on a high stool at the end of the bar at the Hardware Store bistro early one summer evening, finishing off a fragrant bowl of local mussels steamed in white wine with apple, bacon, thyme and shallots, and was savoring a perfectly chilled bottle of Oregon Pinot Gris that sat in a condensation-beaded metal ice bucket beside him. Dinner at the Hardware Store was a present he gave himself every Friday after he closed the clinic. He liked the warm light, the babble of voices as the weekend got started, the clients and friends who stopped to chat with him on their way to a table. On these Fridays he could almost believe he knew everyone on the island.

  He was just pouring himself a second glass when a voice at his elbow said,

  “You gonna monopolize that bottle?”

  Colin looked to his left to find a petite woman of about thirty standing by his chair. Her hair was dark brown and cut in a bob that angled up and back from her chin to a point high on the nape of her neck. He remembered that the Japanese believed that the nape of a woman’s neck was deeply erotic, and, in this case, he agreed. Hers was smooth and pale, with fine wisps of hair that caught the gleam of the spotlights above the bar. Her creamy skin was emphasized by the standing collar of her quirkily geometric jacket in white rayon that was folded and pleated like an origami sculpture. Below the asymmetrical tails of the jacket, she wore narrow black Capri pants and strappy, high-heeled sandals, also black. There was also a black and white ikat weave scarf rolled and tied, pirate-style, around her forehead, its tails cascading down to her left shoulder. She managed to look simultaneously unorthodox and fashionable.

  “It is, after all, mine,” he answered finally. “Unless you are my date.”

  “Were you expecting one?”

  “No, but one is ever hopeful of good fortune.”

  “Does fortune follow you?”

  “On occasion.”

  “Then perhaps this is one of those, but a gentleman would offer the lady a glass of his wine.”

  “Am I a gentleman?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “Are you a lady?”

  The woman stood on a rung of his chair, hoisted herself over the counter, and grabbed a clean wine glass from the drying rack behind the bar.

  “Only when I have to be,” she answered, taking a seat beside him and holding out the glass.

  It took him a moment to recognize that he knew the woman. He had encountered her some weeks earlier while he was kayaking on the mirror-still water of outer Quartermaster Harbor just before sunset. She was in a single rowing shell, pulling hard on the oars, intent on her form. She was also on a collision course with his kayak.

  “Hey!” he’d yelled to the rower.

  A pretty
head turned. “Oops! I guess I was just in the zone!”

  “That’s what I don’t get about rowing,” he called, maneuvering his kayak out of her way. “You can’t see where you’re going!”

  “It’s not about the view; it’s about the workout,” the rower cried as she sped past him, never missing a stroke. Within moments, she was a hundred yards distant and pulling away fast. He let her go.

  Now, at the bar, he eased the pale straw-colored wine down the inside slope of her glass.

  “I trust you will find this Lange Estate Reserve Pinot Gris an exemplar of its type: refreshing acidity and hints of apple, kiwi, and pear. That will be nine dollars.”

  “What? That’s robbery!” Her eyes, green with flecks of gold, flashed like sparklers.

  “No, that’s quality. In life, you get what you pay for. Or do you make it a habit to badger strangers for free drinks?”

  “You’re not a stranger; you’re that vet.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Your picture is in the island newspaper this week; you brutalize quadrupeds.”

  It was true. The paper was running a series on island businesses. A reporter had followed him for a day and taken pictures as he neutered a pair of goats on a farm call. The reporter was male and left early, pale and unsettled by the procedure.

  “And you’re no stranger to me,” Colin countered.

  “Oh?” She paused, one delicately sculpted and deftly shaded eyebrow lifted in skepticism. But he knew he had her.

  He ducked his head and leaned toward her. “I have certain powers,” he confided, “and these powers tell me all your secrets.”

  Then he sat upright, took a sip of his wine, and returned to his dinner.

  She watched him. He waited.

  “Meaning?” she said finally.

  He put down his fork, finished the wine in his glass, and signaled to the bartender, Bert, who owned a slobbering black Newfoundland with a penchant for eating whatever household items might be lying about—in short, a regular customer at the clinic.

  When Bert arrived with the fresh bottle, he poured a measure into both their glasses.

  “Show me your hands, palms up,” Colin ordered. There was a trace of boredom in his voice, as if he did this all the time.

  She thrust them toward him as if in silent challenge.

  Colin took the hands, noted the absence of a ring, turned them over and back again, and then closed his eyes, as if receiving information from the cosmos. Finally he let them go.

  “So?”

  “You wish me to tell you what I know?”

  “Only if it gets me more wine.”

  “Very well.” While he topped her glass she snagged a crostini from his plate.

  He was having a wonderful time. “I may be frank?”

  “Of course.”

  “You are a lady of taste.” Here he lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “But also of reduced circumstances.”

  He sat back. “And you are not from the Northwest.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Is it?”

  Colin may have left New York City and London behind, but he hadn’t left behind his appreciation of urban fashion, or of beautiful women. He elaborated:

  “You are wearing a highly unusual jacket of exquisite tailoring. It is, I believe, an Issey Miyake original or, if not, an excellent copy. It is also, I might add, a perfect choice to pair with those pencil-thin slacks: architecture above, simplicity below, nothing to draw attention from the main event. However, Miyake has not had a collection in that fabric for nearly a decade and the edge of the right cuff is frayed, suggesting either that you have been careless with something beautiful, or that you acquired it second-hand. I suspect the latter since, judging by the way you hold your glass, you are left-handed. And by the way, a woman born and raised here in the Northwest would never appreciate the artistry in that jacket, as it is made of neither fleece nor Gore-tex. I compliment you.”

  The woman smiled, but said nothing.

  “And then there is the matter of your heels: very high quality sandals—from Nordstrom’s Rack, I suspect—and very possibly Blahniks. But the lifts are worn almost to the shank. Carlessness? Neglect?”

  He regarded the hands again. “Your manicure, by the way, is perfect, and, thankfully, free of those gaudy inserts that seem the rage among a certain class of women these days. You have had a pedicure, too. These are, to my mind, quiet signs of taste and visible expressions of self-respect. What’s more, manicures and pedicures are an inexpensive indulgence, well within your budget. Shall I continue?”

  “I should probably have slapped you by now, but I haven’t, so do go on…”

  “I believe it is also the case that you are an athlete of some kind. Let me think about this.”

  He gazed over her shoulder for a few moments, feigning concentration.

  “You are trim, your shoulders square, your posture upright. Though petite, I suspect you are strong. Your sport involves your hands,” he continued. “Your fingers, while graceful, are calloused. You are, I believe, a rower.”

  He dropped her hands, took a sip from his glass, and waited.

  The woman beside him set her glass on the bar, leaned on one elbow, cupped her very slightly dimpled chin in one hand, and squinted at him.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she said, her voice barely audible above the rising clamor at the bar.

  “The vet?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Colin smiled. “I’m the guy in the kayak you tried to run over in your rowing shell a couple of weeks ago.”

  “You cheated!”

  “Isn’t it more important that I remembered?”

  “You have a point. You’re gonna tell me how you worked out all the rest of this stuff, right?”

  “Right.”

  “At my place?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now?”

  “If you wish.”

  “I do.”

  Her name was Morgan Madison. She was born in Chicago, raised in Seattle, and went to Evergreen State College, a “progressive” school in Olympia, Washington, where she studied sociology and art. After two years, she dropped out and moved back to Seattle, where she made and sold costume jewelry and worked part time at a succession of leftist “social change” organizations. When she finally got bored with causes, she married an older and quite successful surgeon who practiced at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital and also did volunteer work. Six years and no children later, her husband, Rory, left to volunteer for a month in Somalia.

  “Rebels shot him dead the first week,” she told Colin in bed later that evening.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her closer.

  “Why? You didn’t shoot him.”

  “I’m just sorry you had to live through that.”

  “That was the least of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Apart from a small life insurance policy, he’d left all his money to Medicins San Frontieres.”

  “Doctors Without Borders?”

  “Yeah. Very high-minded, he was. I had to sell the house on Queen Anne. I came to Vashon to visit a girlfriend, liked it, found a bungalow I could afford off Beall Road, and went back to making jewelry. Haven’t you seen my booth at the Saturday market?”

  “Saturday’s a workday at the clinic.”

  “So that means you’ll be leaving early in the morning?”

  “Um, yes.”

  She climbed on top of him. “Then stop talking and make me scream again.”

  While they lived together, Colin paid most of her bills so she could pursue her art and invested thousands of dollars in renovating and expanding “their” house. A year later, Morgan announced she was moving to Vancouver, British Columbia to live with a resort-builder she’d met while on a skiing holiday with her girlfriends at Whistler Mountain.

  She sold the house, walked away with all the accrued equity, and threatened under Washington
’s common property statute to take fifty percent of the income Colin earned during the year he’d supported her if he ever tried to reclaim the money he’d spent on her house.

  Patsy thought later that Colin’s fiery relationship with Morgan was like being catapulted into the empty sky by a trebuchet, only to fall to earth again. The ascent was thrilling, the landing crushing. It took more than a year for Colin to recover, and Patsy ached through all of it. What he obsessed over, when he said anything, was the deception’s one-two punch: the infidelity and the theft. Why hadn’t he seen it coming?

  One day, she answered him.

  “Look, I know you loved her, doc, and you wanted to save her. Only one problem with that.”

  Colin looked at her.

  “She didn’t need saving; you did. She knew what she was doing.”

  She watched as Colin shook his head in disbelief.

  “Sometimes I think you watched too many of those Lone Ranger shows on TV when you were a kid,” she said. “You’re always trying to ride in on the white horse to save the day. But you know what? While that works fine in medicine, it hardly ever works in life. And you know something else?”

  Colin looked up.

  “They didn’t call him the ‘Lone’ Ranger for nothing. Like the song says, His horse and his saddle were his only companions…”

  Colin smiled at last. “He had Tonto.”

  “I’m sure that was a great comfort on cold nights.”

  ten

  “COLIN!”

  It was the second summer after he had met Pete and Tyler, and he had been summoned to the beach compound again, this time for a ceremony.

  Though he had just turned away from his car, Pete was already airborne. He caught her in mid-air, and swung her around in a wide circle of joy. She was in tennis togs.

  When he lowered her to the grass, she bounced like a child.

  “I knew you’d make it! It wouldn’t be right without you!”

  “It,” was her wedding to Tyler Strong in mid-June. The families had come to the beach early for the event, two weeks before the Fourth.

  His own feelings for her aside, Colin never really had any doubt that Tyler and Pete would marry, though perhaps not quite this soon. That the wedding would be held at Madrona Beach also seemed foretold.