Washed Up with a Broken Heart in Rock Hall

by Peter Svenson

  Simultaneously extending his hand, he clasps hers warmly.

  “I can’t get over it!” she exclaims. “You’re just what I imagined you’d be.”

  “I sit at my desk and type away. Right over there,” he says, indicating the window facing the beach. “On my computer. Every day.”

  For her I’ll make my vocational life as graphic as possible. If she’s so enamored of writers, she’ll appreciate details. Can the woman drought be ending?

  “If I lived here,” she’s saying, “I’d have my desk right beside the window, too, and I’d write about Rock Hall.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “This is totally uncanny! You’re writing about Rock Hall? What about? The watermen and local characters and such?”

  “No, actually I’m writing about a guy who is getting divorced and winds up in Rock Hall.”

  He wants to add, a sort of fictionalized account of my life, but before he can say it, his interlocutor quickly figures this out on her own.

  “So you’re divorced?” she inquires. “I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Yeah, getting there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  This seems to be the universal response from women whenever I mention my separation. But what are they sorry for? For another woman’s actions? For the pain only they can read in a man’s eyes? It’s as though they’re somehow apologizing for their half of the human race—a blanket admission of guilt, implying that they themselves may choose to inflict similar havoc upon an unsuspecting man at some as yet undetermined point. “I’m sorry,” they say, as if to commiserate but also to remind me that women can be fickle entities, who’ll drop the bottom out of a man’s life when he least expects it.

  “It’s weird,” she’s repeating. “You’re everything I thought you’d be.”

  “I hope I am.”

  For months now, Budge hasn’t been so encouraged. Instantly, he projects to the future, picturing himself hooked up with her, raising her two lovable little ones as stepdaughters. He is not too old to play daddy—he adores kids. He and Julie could make one together if they choose to. A blue-eyed baby with the writing gene.

  “I know it sounds rude and stupid, but I haven’t heard of you,” she’s saying. “What have you written?”

  Casually, he mentions the several titles, adding that at least one of them is still in print and may be available at the local bookseller in Chestertown.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go right over and buy it. I’d love to read what you’ve written.”

  “I’d love to have you read it,” Budge says.

  The word love, bantered so disarmingly, already binds them in unspoken ways, he thinks. Physically, they’re obviously attracted to each other. Aesthetically, they’re on the same page, too. She is married, but what difference does that make? Divorce, the great liberator, can quickly bulldoze such a minor impediment.

  “We’re staying for the week at a rental condo down by Waterman’s Crabhouse,” she is saying. “Me, the girls, and Tidbit, our cocker spaniel.”

  “Well, it sure is a beautiful time of year,” Budge says lamely, thinking to himself, no problem with the dog. I love dogs, too. Ragu doesn’t, but we can work things out. That’s the modus operandi for any extended family—working things out.

  “My husband is joining us midweek when he gets off work. He’s a firefighter.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  Not good at all. All at once, the stream from an imagined fire hose douses me with such force that I’m knocked backward. Figuratively drenched is how I react to this first mention of a husband. Why couldn’t she have kept it to herself? Why do all the really attractive women have one?

  Outwardly, I do my best to show no reaction. Husband? Okay, I figured as much. It’s odd how the mind has a tendency to fast-forward beyond bad news. The main thing is, I’m in the Don Juan mode—any reality check will just have to wait. I’m in the middle of an enchanting encounter on Rock Hall’s public beach. No let-downs allowed. Bummer restricted area. She’s interested in me and I’m interested in her. To hell with this mid-week-arriving interloper!

  Little Naomi has come back dragging a sand-encrusted towel, which she drops at Budge’s feet before wandering off to the water again. Budge picks up the towel and shakes it vigorously.

  “Would it help if I spread this like so?” he asks. “That baby must be getting heavy.”

  Julie bends over, setting Baby Anna on the towel and giving Budge a clear quick glimpse of cleavage.

  “That’s perfect, thanks! Mommy needs a break.”

  She’s a nursing mother—her breasts are pillow plump, inviting more than eye alone. Milky thoughts cloud my reason. I surmise that it’s near feeding time—the baby’s getting cranky. I imagine myself in that lucky kiddo’s place. Mommy won’t make me wait long. She’ll take me in her arms and slip the bathing suit strap down, presenting a nipple to my straining mouth. Grunting peacefully, I’ll suckle one breast and then the other.

  Looking down at the baby squirming on the towel, Budge can’t help but marvel at her pudgy beauty as he shifts to a more ironic viewpoint.

  Babies! It’s been so long since I’ve studied one. They get such bad press, you’d think they’d be outlawed. Babies are almost always depicted as negative entities and nuisances. They’re aborted in restroom toilets. They’re kidnapped. They fall out windows. They die sudden deaths in their cribs. They’re the foci of custody lawsuits, legislation, religious fanaticism. They contribute to the cruel statistics of disease and drug dependency, inner city crowdedness, shotgun weddings, overpopulation in general. They’re left accidentally in cars with windows rolled up. They’re shaken till they’re brain-damaged. They arrive in absurd multiples, thanks to fertility treatments. They’re bought and sold on thriving black markets. What social ill isn’t traceable to babyhood and its appalling ramifications?

  While Budge and Julie make a stab at conversation, Baby Anna manages to work her way to towel’s edge, where she somehow transfers grass to her mouth and is now choking. With quick athletic grace, Julie scoops up her daughter and inserts a finger in her mouth to clear away what foreign matter she can find. Several blades of grass are thus extracted while the baby howls lustily. Because Baby Anna is squirming so, Budge reaches over to help hold her still.

  “I think I see one more to the side of her tongue,” he says. “Mind if I try?”

  Julie proffers the discomfited but no longer choking baby, and Budge inserts his own finger between her gums.

  The silky saliva, the impuissant protesting jaw, the two tender semicircular ridges from which teeth will emerge. The tongue like a little mauve fish, already fugitive and darting with its distressed vocabulary of vowels. My finger probes for the last of the grass and locates it, whereupon I tease it along the liquid lining of the inner cheek and out the now-bellowing orifice.

  “Thanks so much.”

  “No problem. Glad to be of help.”

  By motherly miracle, Julie placates the baby, and as she rocks and sways and cuddles, she begins telling Budge a little about herself. She lives in a suburb of Baltimore. She is divorced and remarried (this gives Budge an opportunity to briefly expand upon his own marital status). She has a stepson at camp right now—his father will pick him up en route to Rock Hall later in the week. This boy, thirteen years old, is a major problem in her life—not only is he out of control, but also he’s extremely jealous of his half-sisters. The stepson’s mother, who happened to be Julie’s best friend, died of colon cancer at age 35.

  Budge listens attentively; he is always on the lookout for plot material. If the people he talked to only knew how he tends to file away the pertinent facts of their lives, they might all clam up. For Budge, true life stories have always been the matrix of his fiction. He will create characters and situations of his own invention, no doubt, but the catalysts of his imagination are real people explaining themselves, sharing their unique slant and unwittin
gly donating their personalities to the cause of literature.

  As he listens, he drinks her in from head to toe, noting with pleasure every facet of her appearance. She could pass for a gymnast, she is so exquisitely proportioned. High on one thigh is a pale birthmark, half-concealed by swimsuit elastic. A fresh mosquito bite reddens the flesh above one knee—she scratches it unselfconsciously. She has put the baby back on the towel—with better results—and all the while she imparts such a bonanza of personal history that Budge wishes he could be taking notes.

  She was a gymnast, as it turns out—in fact, a Maryland state champion—and when her competition days were over, she continued in the sport by giving private lessons. In college, she took a number of creative writing courses and thought seriously about becoming a novelist, but this guy came along who insisted that she marry him. Which was a huge mistake, for he turned out to be a good-for-nothing layabout who abused her physically. He was a “controlling asshole”—to use her term—and she couldn’t get out from under his sway. She started doing drugs, wound up alienating her family and most of her friends, and nearly overdosed right around the time her best friend died. Fortunately, she had the good sense to seek admittance to a rehab program. It wasn’t easy, but she stuck with it. She has been clean now for five years.

  “For the rest of my life, I’ll always refer to myself as a recovering addict,” she says.

  She looks up at him with riveting earnestness before her mouth breaks into an impish grin that he interprets—or misinterprets—as 90% friendliness and 10% come-on.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this crap,” she adds. “Do you mind hearing it?”

  Budge’s mind is in overdrive. Outwardly, he is the picture-image of decorum, but inwardly, he is assailed by lustful thoughts.

  Imagine her in bed! She’ll straddle me like the “horse” or the parallel bars and bounce away on my cock until I beg for mercy. She must know positions I can only guess at. But maybe I can teach her a trick or two myself, since I’ve got an advantage in years. Together, we’ll soar to new heights of sensuality. Both performers and audience, we’ll award ourselves gold medals …

  Budge is falling hard for this pretty stranger with two little daughters. In the space of ten minutes, she has opened the floodgates of his heart—there’s no other way to express it. He gives a silent benison of thanks for the circumstances that brought them together—the cottage, the beach, his vocation that just happens to turn her on, and the timing that appears, for once, to be working with fate and not against it. A woman like Julie Kleczynski is one in a million, he tells himself. Her self-revelation can only be a most encouraging sign.

  “My own life story is dull by comparison,” he remarks.

  She reacts with a wry, “Yeah, I’ll bet!”

  The toddler and the baby are demanding her attention. She hugs the one, picks up the other. “I’ve never met a real writer before,” she adds, “but I can see that writers make good listeners.”

  “You’re worth listening to,” he says. “Not everybody is.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  Both daughters are whining now. Frantically, Budge is trying to figure a way to invite her to come back again. Could he suggest that she hire a baby-sitter? During nap time, say? What if she came by for just an hour—that is, before her husband arrives?

  C’mon, brain! Come up with something original, something that’ll impress her enough to make her want to see me again.

  “You’ve made my day,” he blurts.

  “Well, you’ve made my week!” she replies.

  She has a way with words, and her subtextual message is easily decipherable—or is it? Does this chance meeting have potential, or is it just another passing-ships-in-the-night thing? And why are my words so hackneyed all of a sudden?

  She’s exactly what I need: a younger woman, but not too young.

  “I’ve got a request to make,” she is saying. “If I can find a copy of one of your books, would you mind if I dropped by and had you sign it?”

  “Why, I’d be delighted!” he beams. “Come before the middle of the week, if you can.”

  He wonders if she understands what he is hinting at. It’s a delicate matter, this business of the returning husband. For the moment, he dares not press it further, as she is giving absolutely no indication of complicity.

  “Well, I better be running along,” she says. “It was really fun talking with you.”

  “I hope we meet again,” he says.

  “That would be nice.”

  She offers her free hand and he calculates her handshake’s come hither pressure. It’s difficult to tell, but it could be interpreted as promising.

  With baby in arm and toddler in tow, Julie walks toward the parking area. As Budge watches her go, he experiences an irrational feeling of possessiveness combined with a yearning that causes his mind to reach an altogether unwarranted conclusion. Her next child could be mine, he thinks. It’s more than unwarranted, it’s preposterous, nay, ludicrous, but that’s how he is reacting.

  We’d make a fine family of five—six if the stepson wanted to join us (but he’d have to mend his ways). I’d be one of those mature papas—strict, yet loving to a fault. I’d write a bestseller and provide a comfortable home at the edge of Chesapeake Bay—if not here, then somewhere up the line. I’d teach the kids to swim, birdwatch, groove on sunsets, and respect all living things. Child-rearing would become second nature to me; I’d excel in patience and helpfulness. As a husband, there’d be no finer specimen anywhere on the eastern shore. Julie would see that she’s got a good man, not an absentee loser who doesn’t cherish her the way she deserves.

  In the coming days, Budge is hotly inspired to write down everything he can to further this scenario.

  One afternoon midweek, there’s a knock on the screen door. I’m just finishing up the dishes—I’ve been keeping the cottage spic-and-span in anticipation of her arrival. I’ve already emptied the trash, dusted the windowsills, picked up my clothes, changed the sheets. I want to make a good impression.

  It’s Julie. Alone. She must’ve read my thoughts, my cornucopia of fantasies.

  “I apologize for dropping by so unexpectedly. I hope I’m not interrupting your writing.”

  With a laugh, I assure her she’s not. Should I tell her a writer’s best-kept secret? That writers never write full-time. Usually, we write in short bursts—maybe three or four hours total in twenty-four—but we con the world into thinking that we’re slaving away at our craft, coaxing the reluctant words onto the page in nonstop fashion, wringing our imaginations dry. Nah, I better keep it to myself. A little fictive mystery adds to the authorial allure.

  “I’m so damn glad to see you! I was hoping you’d come back.”

  “Really?” she asks, looking up at me, squinting.

  “Really and truly,” I elaborate.

  “Then I’m glad, because I needed to get away from the little ones,” she says. “They’re both napping. I’m free for at least an hour. Playing mommy 24–7 gets to be too much sometimes.”

  “I can imagine. Is your husband here yet?”

  “He’s supposed to arrive around suppertime. At which point, I’ll have to deal with him, too.”

  She rolls her eyes to illustrate exactly what she means. Clearly, she is not the least bit excited by his arrival; rather, she’s dreading it. Right now she’s serious about taking a break from her familial responsibilities.

  “Well, come in and sit down,” I say, but somehow my words trigger a guilty response.

  “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see you again. I want to see where you work, too.”

  I usher her to the room where my desk is. Dictionary, thesaurus, notebook, scraps of paper all over the place, and at the center, my trusty laptop, currently clammed shut. My little plexiglass-based thermometer reads 74 degrees. Beside the desk is a wastepaper basket (oops, forgot to empty it) and a crate upon which my moody old printer sits. Atop the prin
ter are my binoculars, ready to scrutinize the estuarine birds or babes.

  “This is neat! I’ve never seen a real writer’s workspace.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s no big deal. I’d tell you that I get my inspiration from looking out at the water, but I’d be lying. Between me and the water, as you see, is the portajohn.”

  Julie laughs, but then she turns serious. “I’d give anything to live in a place like this.”

  “What’s it like where you live?”

  It’s the logical question for me to ask—not that it matters, but perhaps she wants to tell me.

  “The very opposite of this. Suburbia at its blandest. No view, no peace and quiet. Obnoxious neighbors. Lots of traffic noise from the beltway.”

  She exhales audibly, as if ridding herself of thoughts of home. Introspectively, she stares out the window. Then she turns her attention to my assortment of recently accumulated thrift store furnishings. Everything’s got a patina of dereliction, everything’s got a past longer than a future. Can she see that I’m poor, that I’m scraping by on the nostalgia of broken dreams?

  “I love this place. I love the way you furnished it.”

  It’s my turn to say, “Really?” I’m incredulous that somebody of a generation after mine and several increments beyond my tax bracket can appreciate this stuff.

  “you’re creative,” she says. “That’s what I don’t have at home—creativity. Everything’s cut and dried, everything’s as it’s supposed to be, nothing’s out of place, not even in the girls’ bedrooms. You can’t imagine how boring it is.”

  I barely suppress an ironic chortle. “Well, if you knew how hard I’ve been working to get this dump squared away, you might compliment me for neatness, too.”

  We both laugh at my joke. The tension—what little there was—disappears entirely. Continuing with the house tour, I motion toward the doorway across the hall. Grandly (and thoroughly facetiously) I announce, “And here’s the bedroom!”

  “Are you giving me a hint?” she asks with a sly squinting grin.

  “Well, not exactly, but if you want …”