When she was done, had packed up her stuff and stood to leave, Robert took out his wallet and asked her how much she charged.
“Two dollars for a shine, and then you can tip if you like,” she said, smiling. “Most of the guys tip a dollar.”
He walked closer, so close that he could smell the oily scent of polish on her skin, and the candy-sweet scent of watermelon from her lip gloss. “Here, for the two shines.” He wrapped a twenty around his business card and slipped it into her apron pocket.
“Thanks,” she said. “Wow, that’s generous.” She stared back at him, but he could not tell what she was thinking—she was, after all, paid to be friendly.
“I want to send a shine to Wilton Henry at A, L and W,” he said. “And to Mario Saldana. And Barry here is going to send one to me.”
Barry opened his eyes as if awaking from a trance. “Yeah, yeah, how much?”
“It’s mine,” Robert said.
“You can’t pay for your own gift shine,” Sally said.
“Sure you can,” he replied, leaning closer, slipping another twenty into her apron. “Haven’t you ever heard of giving a gift to yourself?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Everybody into the water
Sweetheart, don’t do that,” Crea said, jumping up to pull the little girl back as she put her two small palms on the instrument panel. “Come down here on the bench with Mommy.”
“She’s not bothering me,” Tracey replied, “a regular little captain.” He had taken off his Yankees cap and put it on Gwen Vishniak’s head. The child, five years old, sat on a small seat near him in the cockpit, pulling the hat down lower. Then she waved to her father, yelling, “Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!”
Robert waved from the opposite end of the deck. “Ahoy there, first mate Vishniak,” he called back. He was sitting on the generously apportioned bench of Tracey’s new sailboat. Tracey jokingly referred to the area as the “lux salon”—that had been the phrase employed by the salesman who persuaded him to buy the fifty-footer. Mark Pascal’s new wife, a former Texas deb and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who went by the unfortunate moniker of Biscuit, sat to Robert’s right, between himself and Crea. Mark was on Crea’s right, with Claudia next to him.
“What a magnificent child!” Biscuit announced.
Robert smiled at her. He thought Mark’s wife a fool—Pascal could have done better—but he never tired of hearing his daughter complimented.
“That hair!” she added.
The drama of the child’s hair elicited endless comment, even from strangers. The black locks tumbled to her shoulders and framed her face in Pre-Raphaelite curls that now peeked out from the red and white cap tilted on her head.
“I only worry,” Crea said, lowering her voice, “about the —” She pointed to her nose, though it was not her own that worried her. “We may have a candidate someday for Dr. Green.”
“He did my cousin’s lips,” Biscuit replied.
“Her nose looks just lovely to me,” Claudia Trace mumbled. She stood up and lit a cigarette, then left their group to stand on the starboard side and smoke.
In the cockpit of the boat Gwen grew bored with talk of tacking and wind velocity, and jumped off her perch, then ran down the three steps to the group of adults. Around her middle she wore a harness that had been tied to a railing on the deck; like a leash, it allowed her only so much slack, but she took every inch, straining on her tether. Now standing in the center of their circle, she used her hand as a microphone, sticking her butt out and shimmying back and forth as she sang, “I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it / Umabout to lose control and I think I… !”
“She’s got a thing for the Pointer Sisters,” Robert said, and shrugged. “The nanny’s taste.”
“Gwen Vishniak!” Crea yelled, just as the boat lurched and the child fell on her behind. “What did Mommy say? About sitting down or standing still?!” She went over and picked up her daughter, but Gwen screamed for her father. Robert, right behind Crea, swept Gwen up in his arms and carried her a few steps to his seat. “She didn’t sleep well last night,” he said. Gwen, entering kindergarten in the fall, had figured out early how to spell N-A-P, a word they now conspicuously avoided. “Gwen-Gwenny-Gwendolyn, you want to take a snooze? Down below?”
Her response was a loud wail. “I thought not,” Robert said. “If I unhook you from this thing, you have to stay with Daddy. Will you do that?”
She nodded, taking a piece of hair and curling it again and again around her finger, the usual sign that she was tired. Having gotten her out of the harness, he lifted her back into his lap. Soon, he knew, Gwen would be too big to sit with him like this. She leaned back against him and he hoped she might nod off, worn out by the sea air and the lulling movements of the boat, though this afternoon cruise had turned out to be more turbulent than expected. He put his face to her hair and inhaled the smell of salt and baby shampoo.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Crea whispered.
“She’ll be fine,” Robert replied, then raised his voice. “Our captain is a highly competent sailor with an excellent assistant. You need any help over there, Captain Queeg?”
“No, I wouldn’t want to bother you!” Tracey replied, and then quickly gave Robert the finger, violating his own rules about this being a G-rated cruise. They were practically a Memorial Day traveling circus, that was what Tracey had said when they started out, complete with a child in harness and a dog off leash and now seasick down below. Mario Saldana moved around the upper deck, checking the tension on the ropes. He was a semiregular weekend visitor at the Traces and had been for years. He kept Tracey occupied, as Claudia so often put it. The two raced together in local regattas, and the year before they’d trained for the New York Marathon. When Mario was not in residence, the Traces hosted one of several young tennis or sailing partners of Tracey’s. The week before they’d all been forced to endure the company of a nineteen-year-old ranked tennis player who used the word like so often that he seemed to be speaking a foreign language. Mario’s appearance was always a welcomed relief.
Gwen squirmed in Robert’s lap, but he bounced her up and down as if she were a baby, and she giggled, then settled herself, finally nodding off. Behind him, Robert heard heavy footsteps clomping up from below.
“Finally!” Pascal said loudly, then lowered his voice as Crea pointed to the child, whose eyes were now closed. “We were about to send a search party for those beers —”
“Hold your fucking horses!” said Barry Vishniak, emerging with four Coronas that he held by their necks. “My dog was sick down there.” Mark took a beer, as did Robert, who handed it to Mario and took another for himself. Everyone else drank gin and tonics.
“I’m not going to warn you again to watch the language,” Robert said softly.
“She’s asleep,” Barry replied. “And she’s smart enough to know I’m not a role model.”
Claudia, silent all this time, suddenly laughed, then threw the rest of her cigarette overboard and returned to her spot on the bench.
“You should consider a Portuguese spaniel,” Mario said from the cockpit. “We had them growing up. They love the water.”
“I’ll never switch breeds,” Barry replied. “Nothing better than the English bull. His problem is that he’s old now and low to the ground.”
“I know how he feels,” Pascal said.
“Speak for yourself, honey.” Biscuit looked into a small compact, redoing her lipstick.
“Anyway, I gave the dog some Valium. He’ll be out for a while,” Barry said, as the boat suddenly lurched with the swell.
Crea put her hand on Robert’s arm. “When the sea calms, you should put her downstairs,” she said. “But do be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” Robert replied, whispering over their daughter’s soft mass of hair. “A person would think you’d never been on a boat before.”
“Don’t start with me, Robert. I didn’t think we should go out today
at all.”
“That was something else entirely.” Crea was no fan of Barry’s; she didn’t trust his success and resulting social ascent. It made her feel, she said, as if the world had gone haywire.
When the wind calmed, Robert stood up, holding Gwen in his arms, ignoring Crea’s obvious anxiety. Down below, the accommodations were as spacious as many people’s New York apartments. There was one round double bed blocked off by a screen, and one small single across the room. On the floor next to the single bed was a towel on which Vishniak the dog lay snoring like a motor. The room had an antiseptic smell—Barry had obviously given some elbow grease to cleaning up after the animal. Robert laid Gwen on the bed. She opened her eyes momentarily. “Ahoy there, Daddy,” she mumbled. He smiled, kissed her forehead, then drew a curtain around her to give the illusion of privacy.
Robert had not expected Crea to get pregnant within their first year of marriage. She had never actually consulted him, and at the time he felt betrayed, taken by surprise. But from the moment he’d laid eyes on his tiny daughter he’d been besotted, his emotions so powerful that they almost knocked him over. From then on, he’d been a goner. His daughter held his heart in the palm of her small hand, and she knew it—and so, unfortunately, did her mother.
He went to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water as Claudia came down the steps, Barry following behind her. Robert put his pointer finger over his lips to remind them to be quiet, but they barely seemed to notice him. Barry went into the tiny bathroom and Claudia waited outside, pacing back and forth. The bathroom was compact, with only enough space for one person at a time. Claudia was thinner than average, but Barry more than made up for it. He emerged a few minutes later. “All ready for you, kiddo,” he said.
“And to think,” she said, laughing, “a few months ago I didn’t even like it when water went up my nose at the pool.”
As Barry walked by, Robert grabbed him by the arm. “You only have to look at her to see she’s fragile.”
“Calm down, Nancy Reagan,” Barry said, shaking him off. “Everyone here, last I looked, knows how to ‘just say no.’” And then he was gone.
When Claudia finally emerged, she found Robert bent over, searching through the small refrigerator to see just how many brands of beer the Traces kept on hand.
“Hey, handsome,” Claudia said, and made an unladylike sniffling sound. “Stand up.”
Robert turned around, holding a cold Corona.
“Want some?” She motioned with her head toward the bathroom.
Robert declined. As if on cue, Mario Saldana came down the steps, nodded to both of them, then crossed the room and entered the bathroom.
“Gwen asleep?” Claudia asked. Robert nodded. Claudia leaned across a small counter in front of Robert, lifted herself up and momentarily swung her legs, then dropped to the floor.
“Take a load off,” he said, pointing to a chair that, like everything in the room, was bolted down. “You want a beer?”
She shook her head. Robert took a cup and filled it with water, then handed it to her. “You’ll be happier later if you drink some water.”
“I’m darned happy right now,” she said, as Mario left the bathroom mumbling something under his breath.
“You didn’t leave much for anyone else, my dear,” he said, as he passed by.
“Then go ask him for more!” Claudia snapped, and Mario walked silently up the stairs.
A few minutes later, Biscuit came down, her flip-flops slapping the teak wood. Mark followed behind. She waved and he nodded as they made for the open bathroom door. Robert wondered how on earth they would both fit in there, but somehow they managed.
Claudia, in white jeans and a roomy blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, once again bent over the counter, supporting herself on her elbows. Robert could see the deep tributaries of her collarbones. Her hazel eyes blazed green with intensity. “You know what I thought of the other day?” she asked. “I thought of that time when we were kids and you tried to stick your hand up my dress.”
He nodded, and then took a long swallow of his beer, avoiding her glance.
Through the wall, they could hear a low moaning, and then a loud intake of breath. Claudia rolled her eyes. “They only have like ten bedrooms onshore.”
“Mark just wants to show us that he finally got the girl.”
“Biscuit looks like Crea, don’t you think?” Claudia asked. “The red hair, the eyes?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it. You want to go up on deck, avoid the theatrics?”
“No,” she said, coming around the counter to stand with him, almost toe-to-toe in the narrow alcove. “Maybe I’ll learn something.”
“You don’t need to learn anything from them.”
“I wish you’d screw me now,” she whispered, “like you wanted to then.” She began to kiss him, placing his hand firmly between her legs, but he shook her off, holding her by the shoulders. She smelled strangely, overly sweet, but her breath was acrid.
“I worry about you, Claudia.”
“Well, don’t!” She shook him off, then walked back around the bar, doing a graceful ballet turn as she went. When she stopped, she began to pull her shirt over her head, revealing her belly button and narrow waist, and the first few jutting bones of her rib cage.
He came over quickly and pulled the shirt down. “You really think I would start something with Tracey’s wife? With my daughter asleep five feet away and Crea upstairs? Sit down.” He motioned to a chair. “We’ve always been able to talk. Let’s talk.”
“Nothing to talk about. Crea’s not coming down here. She has that wonderful self-protective quality, you know, like those monkeys? See no evil, hear no evil?”
“People could say the same thing about you.”
“Oh, I see. I hear. And I don’t buy for a minute that Tracey would care if we went to bed. In fact, he’d like nothing better. As long as he could watch.”
The sounds from the bathroom got louder. Robert felt trapped in the relative smallness of the space and the smallness of his own circle. He knew too much about these people. He glanced anxiously to the back, where his daughter slept behind the curtain. “Tracey would be very angry and you know it,” he said. “Not to mention jealous.”
“Maybe he’d be jealous,” Claudia said, “but it wouldn’t be of you, Robert, it would be of me.” She stared at him, fidgeting from one foot to the other, hands now in her pockets, with the self-satisfied look of a child who had blurted out a truth that none of the grown-ups would say aloud. She began to walk the perimeter of the room, putting heel to toe as if measuring it, all the while staring at her feet. “Why do you think he married me in the first place? Because he knew something had happened between you and me. He asked me about it once, when we first started dating. And back then it struck me as so very strange that he’d care, such ancient history. But I get it now. If he had me, it would be the closest he could get to—well, you understand the transitive property.”
“Claud, I hardly remember what I had for breakfast, let alone that many years —”
“Sure you do,” she interrupted. “You never forget anything. You think women fall for you because you’re so handsome, but the world is full of handsome men, and anyway, I’ve seen better-looking than you. The truth is we like you because you listen; you pay attention.” She walked the other way now, her back to him. “You think all the girls at Gardner House were downstairs that night? You had a whole upper floor of wallflowers waiting for the party to end. All it took was one whisper and it spread, like wildfire.” Claudia, too, seemed on fire, enthralled with her own story. She came up close to him again, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her narrow body against his. “He tried in the beginning, you know?” she whispered. “About the only time we ever really had a sex life were those first weekends when Crea started bringing you around. That’s when I started to make the connection.”
She began to kiss him again, and Robert gently unwrapped her arms. “Very dramatic,
” he said, sitting down, trying to pretend he was not unsettled by what she’d said. “But if you’re so unhappy, leave quietly and be done with it. Stop bad-mouthing your husband.”
“You have it all wrong,” she said. “I adore Tracey! And leave him for what, exactly?”
“Another life. A man who loves you the way you want to be loved.”
“What way is that?” she asked. “I did the great, complicated romance—once was enough. Anyway, I’m lazy. Tracey lets me do what I want and I extend him the same courtesy.”
“You don’t have to be married for that.”
“But marriage has such benefits!” she said. “The magic ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ keeps the neighbors from talking and other women from guarding their husbands. And then there’s all that wonderful public approval.”
“We eloped,” Robert said. “I don’t remember much public approval.”
She ignored him, talking faster now, back to walking around the room. “Tuxedo is a small, gossipy village. I’m past forty and have no plans to leave it, or Tracey. Being married is the best way in the world to get people to leave you the hell alone.”
“That’s a bumper sticker if I ever heard one,” he said. Then all further conversation was cut off by the noise on the other side of the wall—Biscuit called out Mark’s name in a rhythmic sort of chanting. Robert stood up, more than ready to go up on deck.
“You had enough yet?” he asked.
“This room is exactly twenty feet wide,” she said. “Does that sound right? Twenty of my feet, I suppose. I take rejection well, don’t I, Robert?”
“Is that what it was? You’ve been talking so long, I’d forgotten,” he said. She kicked him in the rear then rushed up the steps. Robert let out a long breath and started climbing, happy as he’d ever been to see the light of day.
On deck, everyone was restless, ready to go back. Crea went below to wake Gwen, and a few minutes later Mark and Biscuit came back up, looking a little too pleased with themselves. Tracey steered while directing his crew to slowly let the sails out. “Try to keep them at a ninety-degree angle,” Mario said, as Robert pulled harder on the sheets. “Barry, stay out of the way of the boom,” Tracey yelled, “or you’ll get hit in the head!”
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