The Outer Cape

by Patrick Dacey

  Not more than twenty yards away he stumbles forward, exhausted but pierced with urgency and, like a boy who stumbles often and never tires, runs faster, with awkward movements, the sand shifting beneath his feet. He dives into the ocean and grabs the woman’s hand and pulls himself into her, lowering and leveraging himself against the thickened sand beneath him, and swims her to shore.

  He drags her on his shoulder, falls, and rolls her onto her side, so that she collects sand in her hair and on her skin. He is exhausted. But, with his adrenaline pumping, he turns over and pushes away the strands of hair stuck to her face, puts his lips to her mouth and pumps her chest, then turns her onto her side so she can spit up.

  He is breathless and tired, and rolls over onto his back, feeling the blood beat throughout his body.

  Then he hears her, like some faint sound from a dream about to be gone forever.

  “Nathan?” his mother says. “Nathan.”

  THIRTY

  Chapter 2

  “The past is a bomb; idleness its ignition.”

  There are three kinds of fortune: good fortune, bad fortune, misfortune. I have experienced them all, and survived. I am a survivor of the unappreciated diseases that make for good gossip. I have had money. I have had no money. I have been cheated out of money. I have lived in a mansion, a studio apartment, a stinking motel room. But no longer will I go against my purpose in life, to live in, what I like to call, the sphere of the every-moment.

  Sure, it was horseshit, but, maybe, given his father’s recent congenial attitude, the calm manner in which he spoke, the brief embrace each time Andrew stopped by—and he was stopping by more often than he ever thought he would—maybe there was something to this new age, present-living crap. Maybe the sphere of the every-moment, or whatever, is just what he needs right now.

  His breath quickened and his lungs contracted and tightened. He slowed and walked the shore with his fingers clasped behind his head. There were no other runners on the beach. It was late and the bugs were out, nipping at his shoulders. The water crested over his shoes. He took them off and unrolled his socks and stuffed them in his shoes and held them in the crooks of his fingers. In the distance he could see the Tidewater Hotel, the frame already set, the rooms defined. He saw them occupied with lovers old and young, families, and loners on reprieve. The sign still stood like some kind of legend to his childhood. Maybe it should stay. Keep one thing from the past. Because there is history here, tradition; he is preserving an institution of proper etiquette, impeccable service, and savoir faire. He is challenging his own reckless self, the boy who cut up the sod on the putting green outside the hotel’s casino entrance; who, when he was fifteen, watched as his father, dressed in a fine stitched sweater and pleated, plaid pants, accepted an award from the local charter for businessman of the year. He listened to the applause echo in the high-ceilinged dining room with the green felt spread and nailed to the floorboards. He took in, from the children’s table off to the side of the room, the waiters standing back behind the table with a cloth over their arm, eyes scanning the room for whichever table needed their attention.

  A year later, Robert had brought Sharon Price here on their first date. Red had told him to tell the waiter to put the meal on his account and gave Robert a ten-dollar bill to leave as a tip. When they were seated, the waiter placed napkins across their laps. Another waiter came and filled their glasses with sparkling water, and yet another placed a basket with warm Parker House rolls and whipped butter in the middle of the table. Robert was confused which waiter to tip. He and Sharon shared a house salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, and both ordered the same meal of clams and linguine in a red sauce. The first waiter described the desserts, and Robert let Sharon choose, hoping she wouldn’t pick the crème brûlée, which tasted to him like nothing more than expensive pudding. She chose the crème brûlée. For the rest of his life, the women he went for always chose the crème brûlée. At the end of the meal, the manager asked to speak with Robert privately. He walked ahead of Robert toward the men’s room, and while a man was groaning loudly from inside the stall, the manager explained that Red’s account hadn’t been paid in six months.

  “Quite a high number,” the manager had said.

  Robert, not yet bold enough to challenge authority, asked if he could pay his bill by working at the restaurant.

  “When can you start?” the manager asked.

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Tonight, then.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Or we can ask the lady if she’d like to take care of the bill.”

  Later that night, after he dropped Sharon Price off at home, he drove back to the Tidewater and washed the pots and pans and dishware, mopped the kitchen floors, wiped down the tables, pushed the vacuum cleaner over the green felt flooring, and took a dozen black bags of garbage out to the dumpster in back.

  * * *

  The money had come through. But there were stipulations. First, Andrew had to handle the account along with Dennison. His father would take a small finder’s fee and be paid a minimum salary, just enough to prove to the government that he was working. The plan, simple; the execution not so much. The stigma attached to the Kelly name has made it nearly impossible to bring a reputable contractor on board. Not so different from someone bouncing a bad check in a convenience store and having the check and photo taped to the register, the framers and electricians and plumbers have since lodged the Kelly name deep in their minds, equated the sounds of the letters together with distrust, dishonor, and general hatred. Even Andrew, who was known in town to be both dependable and accountable, was forced to pay up front for the lumber needed to build the additional wing.

  Dennison has been unhappy with the stagnation, deeply invested in something he doesn’t know much about. But Andrew’s father has staved him off awhile longer. And Andrew isn’t planning on going anywhere soon.

  Even though it’s more costly, Andrew has hired private contractors from out of state—Pennsylvania and Connecticut and New York. Travel expenses and housing off-Cape cost more than the construction itself. Dennison has brought in another partner, an off-putting man with a face like a waffle iron, who hails from Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, and is as silent as a silent partner can be.

  In these last days, before the winter cold sets in, the old Tidewater Inn is torn down, the land bulldozed over and raked back. Then the foundation is set, and though neighbors complain about the constant banging during the day and the hum of the lights and generators at night, the same as they had complained about the wind turbines out in the bay, the hotel is back on pace to open next summer. The town council cannot complain about how grand it will look, the business it will bring to town, state congressmen, local retired athletes, judges, CEOs, CFOs, COOs. The old Cape feel emitting from the stained clapboards to the copper-lined rooftops and the circular entrance, where Andrew’s father has added a towering flagpole to the plans, another hefty piece, for which Andrew cut a check, handed it to him before he even finished explaining why it was so important to represent the country in such a manner.

  The site is grand, glorious, and tangible. Andrew and his father stand on the stiffening earth, the cold early December air blowing off the ocean, dismissing the steady beep from the monitoring device around Robert’s ankle.

  “Not to be overly dramatic, son,” his father says, in an overly dramatic fashion, “but this hotel will resurrect our name. The Kellys will live in the halls and rooms and elevators, for a hundred years or more, or until the ocean finally swallows us whole.”

  Later that afternoon, as Andrew and his father approach the cottage, Andrew sees Rudolph sitting obediently, as though awaiting his father’s return. His father crouches down to greet the dog, while Andrew goes inside to use the bathroom, passing by pages of the manuscript flung about the floor, drawers opened, cushions upturned. Perhaps his father was letting off some steam. Perhaps the present isn’t as peaceful as his prophecy asserts.

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nbsp; Pissing, thinking about “Securing Thy Self,” Andrew hears, from outside the window, a flurry of steps along the pebbled drive, and his father shout, and then quiet.

  He walks tentatively down the hall, lowering, looking out the window, where Millie, the red-haired girl with the dog, Rudolph, is holding in her hand the ship’s-wheel lamp his father had made in prison. He looks to his right and sees his father struggling to get to his feet, slipping on the rocks and falling onto his side. Rudolph licks the wound in his head.

  “Rudolph!” Millie shouts. “Stop that, Rudolph.”

  Andrew, heart pounding, blood rushing up to his face, full of fear and raw instinct, closes in on the front door, in order to hear what Millie is saying.

  “Jesus. This is really pathetic, you know. All right. You can get up. I didn’t even hit you that hard, for crying out loud.”

  “You think a man living like this has something to steal?” his father says, on his knees now.

  “Crooks are usually unassuming,” Millie says. “But I didn’t come for money, necessarily. I just figured what the hell, might as well get all I can, which, apparently, comes to approximately three tanks of gas, enough to get me back to Spartanburg.”

  Robert stands and backs toward the deck chairs on his patio, sits down, positioned now to see Andrew in the window if he were to raise the blinds.

  “You probably never heard of it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Spartanburg. South Carolina.”

  “Oh. Sure. The Spartans.”

  “You probably never even looked at where the checks were coming from. Just cashed them and stuffed your pockets, let the faceless idiots suffer.”

  “I see. Listen—”

  “I have to say, that little self-help book of yours is just about worth all the aggravation it took to find you. I’m both slightly impressed and seriously disgusted. I mean, really, I’ve never laughed and cried so hard in my life.”

  “A person can change. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done.”

  “You always hear people say that when they get out of prison. But then, you read about the recidivism rate. Something like seventy percent, I think, end up back in prison.”

  “But what about the other thirty percent? That’s where I am. Somewhere in the thirtieth percentile.”

  “I might take your sincerity to heart if you were honest with me. Perhaps I should consider not hitting you in the head again.” Millie makes like she’s going to place the lamp down, but when Robert instinctively thrusts his hand out to grab it, she quickly raises her hand, steadies the lamp like a ballplayer holding a bat, and whacks him in the head again.

  Robert falls off the chair, groaning.

  “Damn it,” Millie says. “Now I got to tie you up. I really didn’t want to exert myself like this.”

  Millie pulls Robert’s hands together and tightens them with vinyl straps, then fixes another set of straps around those ones and ties them to the deck chair. She does the same to his ankles, pulls the strap tight above the bulky home monitoring device.

  “At least you know you’re being monitored,” she says.

  “I have some things in the works here,” Robert says, his head ringing, voice sounding like an echo in his skull. “Things you can be part of if you have any sense.”

  “Any sense? Wow. My father had sense. He had sense enough to give you his life savings for a mud pit in Tennessee. Now he lives in my kid’s room. He was a dedicated and loyal man. Luckily my mother died before she could ever see how sad it got for him. He used to be a fighter pilot. He has a bunch of medals. My kid pinned them to his backpack. When I get home from lunch I hear my father crying in the bathroom. He sits on the toilet and cries. He worked at a power plant for forty years. He can’t even get me a discount on my electric bill.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I mean, that was a long time ago, and I wasn’t the only one involved. Honestly, my intentions were good.”

  “Fuck your intentions,” Millie says, and levels the lamp, which is now missing the ship’s wheel.

  “Okay, wait,” Robert says. He bows slightly. “My son. He’s well-off. He can help you and your father, and your kid. What’s your rent in Spartanville? He’ll pay your rent for a year.”

  Millie turns. And, for a moment, Andrew believes they are looking right at each other, as though to affirm the next logical step. Then, he sees she is crying. She can’t be more than thirty years old, face round and pink. Her eyes are crossed. She has braces. Her breasts are flabby and her belly hangs over her waistband and pulls up her shirt at the sides. There’s a tattoo on her arm of Winnie-the-Pooh, which she must have gotten when she was much younger, because now it looks like a spread of honey with a daub of blood in the middle.

  He feels sad for her.

  “You know this is bigger than money,” Millie says, wiping her tears with the back of her hand, then turning away from Andrew toward his father.

  “I know,” his father says.

  “This has to do with the soul, with good and evil, heaven and hell. Are you starting to get the picture?”

  “I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  Perhaps here, in this moment, Andrew thinks, his father has finally accepted blame. Though Andrew is unable to tell from the bare expression on Millie’s face whether or not his apology is enough. Either way, something has to be done. Andrew fires out the door and sacks Millie, pulling her to the ground. Turning, he sees his father has flipped the chair over so that he is on his side. Andrew hooks Millie’s leg, and together they perform some lunatic dance before crashing to the deck boards.

  When the police and paramedics arrive, they find Millie inside the cottage, hands and feet bound in rope tied tight with a bowline knot. Andrew is icing his hand in a bowl. His father is sitting on the couch, pressing a bag of frozen peas to his head. He can’t thank Andrew enough, and so he doesn’t thank him at all.

  * * *

  Later, in the emergency room, Andrew, his hand wrapped and pulsing like another heart, wonders how someone could hate his father so much, she’s willing to go to prison. She barely knew him.

  The nurse wheels his father out.

  “Two Kellys in one week,” she says, and snorts and covers her nose.

  His father’s eyes are lowered, dulled by morphine. His forehead is wrapped in gauze, one hand pressed to the square patch covering the stitches, his other hand holding the tall, beak-nosed nurse’s forearm. Andrew helps him from the chair and out into the front passenger seat of his car.

  Andrew will want to tell his brother. After all, Nathan is a true hero.

  He drives back to the cottage slowly, careful to maneuver around bumps in the road. When his father begins to snore, Andrew drives faster, glancing over to see if his father might wake. At a stop light, he reaches over and presses his thumb into the gauze. His father shoots forward. Blood begins to spread to the ends of the padding. He looks at Andrew, who passes through the intersection, slightly gratified.

  PART III

  THE OUTER CAPE

  THIRTY-ONE

  Glimmering specks of dust lift from the couches and tabletops and cupboards as they walk past into the kitchen. The boys sit with their coffee at the kitchen table as their father sets the cribbage board down and deals the cards along the smooth wood surface of the table. All that can be heard inside the house is the hum of appliances and the faint voice of a sportscaster on TV. The three of them bend over as if in some silent prayer, examining their cards and the small cribbage board on the table.

  “You spend so much time dodging death,” their father finally says, setting down a spread of cards and moving his peg up the board. “Then the smallest thing, you know, the thing you can’t see, it creeps right up inside you and steals you away.”

  Their mother starts coughing in the other room. They have left the door open through the night, taking posts in the living room, newly appointed watchmen.

  They take their eyes from the board and
listen until her coughing ceases, as though punishing themselves with the song of the sick.

  Everything is in memory now. The red-painted candy store, the fishing pier, the dry spot beneath the Wequaquet Bridge where Robert had brought the boys to talk about manly things, the beach that had become smaller as the water drew farther inland, the way Irene shaded her eyes from the sun and looked out at the ocean her husband and children watched and wondered what went on inside her head.

  “Let’s call it a night,” Nathan says, and folds up his hand, placing the cards on the table.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Andrew says.

  Robert gathers the cards and slides them into the wooden pocket of the cribbage board.

  * * *

  Robert spends the night sleeping on the couch. His legs stretch over the armrest. He cracks his toes with immature pleasure until a boom of thunder shakes the house and the rain cascades hard and fast from the sky. Lightning splits the sky like a gleaming ax blade, thunder booms, the continuous rain. That’s it, Robert thinks, loneliness. That’s what keeps you in the past for so long, thinking of all the people you had known and come across and those that were locked away, the key waiting in a scent or touch.

  He sits up and rubs his eyes, then inches slowly toward Irene’s room. He watches her sleep, arms crossed above her head as though falling. Then, her eyes slowly open, adjusting to the pale light in the hallway coming through the open door.

  “Don’t hover,” she says.

  Robert sits on the edge of the bed and takes hold of her hand.

  They love each other in the way that two people who have shared a past will always love each other. But he knows he has failed her, failed the children.

  “Did you stay the night?” she asks.

  “I slept on the couch. I thought my days of sleeping on couches were over, but I guess not.”

  “My legs are all swollen. It feels like I’ve walked to Ptown and back. Do you remember when I was pregnant, when I used to have to soak my feet for hours?”