The Summer Wives

by Beatriz Williams

  “Anyway what?”

  “Anyway nothing.” I turned back. “So long, then.”

  “Wait a second. You’re not walking back, are you?”

  “I made it down all right.”

  “By God’s mercy. Come on, into the boat with you. Chop-chop.”

  “Now how is that any safer than walking?”

  “Because Pops and I know this harbor better’n we know our own kitchen, all right? Anyway, it’s faster. Now get in.”

  We were speaking in quick, quiet whispers that sank into the haze around us. The air was full of Joseph’s smell, of the essence of the sea, of the interested gazes of the lobstermen hiding in their foggy boats. I thought of Isobel, who had handed me this note after lunch yesterday, as she fussed with her pocketbook getting ready to leave, and said, “You don’t mind, do you? The sooner the better.” She was dressed for the mainland, natty in a yellow frock that reminded me of buttercups and a hat like a small daisy. She was thrilled to get off the Island, you could feel it shimmering off her skin.

  Now, according to my vow, I hadn’t delivered any more notes to Joseph since that day in July, and Isobel hadn’t asked me. She and Clay seemed to have reached some kind of equilibrium, some understanding, the nature of which I didn’t dare to guess, although I imagined it had something to do with those squeaking springs in the front seat of the Lincoln, something to do with Clay’s adoration and Isobel’s lust for danger. So the sudden appearance of this note surprised me, after a month of silence. I stared at the white square in my hand, and I glanced back up at Isobel’s animated face, and I thought, Well, it’s the end of summer, isn’t it? What trouble could possibly arise?

  I tucked the note in the pocket of my sundress and said, Of course not.

  But I hadn’t gone out to meet the incoming fleet that afternoon, and I hadn’t waited for Joseph to bring his mother to church, and I hadn’t sent any signal with my flashlight from the dock at midnight. Instead I’d risen before dawn to carry Isobel’s message to him now, at the beginning of a fresh, whole new day. Joseph, as a matter of courtesy, now offered me a lift home in his lobster boat. The fog curled the hair around my hot face and dampened my skin. I pushed back a few strands and tucked them behind my ear and said, Okay.

  2.

  So maybe, deep inside the unconscious matter of my brain, I had it all planned out. Or maybe I just felt it was inevitable, what happened that day; that some tide had arrived in my affairs which I must take at the flood, or remain bound—I heard my father’s solemn voice among the dust motes of the study—in shallows and in miseries. I guess, like everything else on this earth, the nature of the affair depends on how you look at it.

  Joseph led me to the boat, though I knew exactly where it lay at its mooring. Could have reached it blindfolded, which I almost was, stuck inside this swirling mist. Joseph called out to his father and helped me aboard, while the slow, grinding thud of the engine filled the air with exhaust. At the wheel, Vargas stood without expression, clenching a cigarette between his lips, not even looking at us. He was shorter than I thought, not much taller than I was, and his face was as lined and as deeply tanned as an old saddle. In the strange dawn light, I couldn’t tell if the shirt beneath his yellow oilskin was blue or gray or white. His stumpy arms, covered with coarse black hair, gripped the wheel. As soon as my second foot touched the deck, he shoved back the throttle and yanked the vessel away from the dock. I lost my balance, and Joseph, still holding my elbow, pulled me upright.

  “Steady,” he said, and I stepped away, burning, to stand near the bow, away from all the lobster cages stacked in the stern. Joseph turned to his father. “We’re going to give Miranda a lift back home, all right?”

  “All right,” said Vargas.

  “Unless you want to stay out with us.” Joseph raised his voice to me. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Want to stay out on the water. Fog’ll burn off soon. Be a nice day.”

  “I don’t know. You’ll be out for hours, won’t you?”

  “What, have you got better plans? Bridge and iced tea at the Club or something?”

  He was grinning, swirled by mist, and I grinned back. “I guess not.”

  “Well, then.”

  “I’m not exactly dressed for hard labor, though.” I gestured to my sundress.

  “That’s all right. We’ll handle the lobsters. You just sit back and look pretty, that’s enough for two old salts like us. Enjoy the cruise. Right, Pops?”

  Vargas shifted the cigarette to the corner of his mouth and said something that sounded like Portuguese. He wasn’t looking at me, he was clearly concentrating on the intricate problem of navigation, the buoys and the lights from the other boats, all of us puttering for the harbor point and the wider sea beyond. Now the sun was nudging upward, rendering the thinnest possible line of pink on the horizon, and though the air was still cool, the streaming fog more chill than I imagined, my insides were warmed by the simple ignition of the word pretty. Of course he didn’t really mean it, of course he was just tossing out a friendly compliment. I wore no lipstick this morning, no brief Polynesian garment; I was plain and untidy in a white dress and navy cardigan, I wasn’t sensational by any rational description. Nonetheless, the word ignited me. We rounded the harbor point, and the first thing I saw to the east was the Fleet Rock light, penetrating the gray-pink haze, though I couldn’t see the lighthouse itself.

  I folded my knees up to my chin and said, “Where are we headed today, Mr. Vargas?”

  Mr. Vargas tossed his cigarette stub into the water. “East.”

  Joseph had settled down to bait the wooden traps in the stern. He laughed and said, “Pops means we’re headed to the eastern end of the grounds, off Orient Point.”

  “Don’t the Long Island lobstermen mind?”

  “We have a little arrangement between us.”

  “Because I don’t want to get myself harpooned.”

  Joseph glanced at me, still grinning a little. “You know I’d never let that happen.”

  I unfolded my legs and rested my elbows on the wooden bow while the wind tossed my short hair about my face. As if by design, the sun edged higher, brightening the air, and I closed my eyes and smiled. I had spent this past month in perpetual motion, spinning from sport to sport in Isobel’s restless wake, swimming, dancing, locked in tennis combat. I felt strong; I felt as if my firm, tanned limbs were ready for any adventure.

  Under the fog, the water was so still as to be made of thick, gray glass. The boat skimmed across its surface, passing Fleet Rock to the right, making for the unseen point of Long Island that lay between us and the broad Atlantic. The salt air rushed up my nose and stung my lips. When I closed my eyes, I thought I was flying, I thought I was free.

  “There’s coffee in the thermos,” Joseph called from the stern. “Sandwiches, if you’re hungry.”

  “What kind of sandwiches?” I asked. “Lobster rolls?”

  “Not us. Ham and cheese all right?”

  “Maybe later, when I’m hungry. I wouldn’t mind some coffee, though. Where’s the thermos?”

  Joseph put down the trap he was holding and started for the deckhouse. “I’ll get it.”

  “No, don’t get up,” I said, too late, and for an instant we faced each other, Joseph and I, in some kind of standoff I didn’t quite understand. He wore a plain white T-shirt over his dungarees and his oilskins, stained work gloves on his hands, no hat, and his arms reminded me of ropes, plaited with lean, strong muscle. The draft kicked at his hair, but he was otherwise still, legs braced slightly against the rhythm of the boat.

  “No trouble.” Joseph continued to the deckhouse, shucking off his gloves, and poured coffee from a large, battered thermos into a pair of tin mugs, which he handed to each of us, me first and then his father, no ceremony. As he did so, he said something to Vargas in a low voice, and a moment later the boat began to slow and curve to the northeast. Joseph returned to the traps, put his gloves back
on, and resumed the baiting from a large metal bucket full of fish guts or something. I drank my coffee for a minute, watching the deft movement of his gloved hands, and then I stepped forward, leaned against the deckhouse wall, and addressed Mr. Vargas at the wheel.

  “How long have you been lobstering?” I asked.

  He reached for the battered cardboard pack of cigarettes on the deckhouse ledge. “About twenty years now, I guess.”

  He spoke with an accent. I supposed it was Portuguese, and so I asked him when he arrived in this country. He waited until he’d lit the cigarette and taken a long first drag before he replied.

  “After the war,” he said. “The first one.”

  “Oh, so you didn’t start fishing right away.”

  He shifted the cigarette to the other side of his mouth and didn’t reply.

  Joseph called from the back of the boat. “Go on, Pops. Tell her.”

  “I messed around a little first,” he said. “Before I got married.”

  “C’mon. You were a rumrunner, isn’t that right?” said Joseph. “That’s what Tia Laura told me. But you gave it up when you got the lighthouse appointment.”

  Mr. Vargas shrugged and grunted.

  Joseph turned to me. “He used to take his boat out to Rum Row at night and haul in booze to order, for everyone on the Island. Champagne, whisky, gin, whatever you wanted, direct delivery. Greyfriars had a nice hidey-hole in the boathouse. Isn’t that right, Pops? You kept the Families nicely pickled throughout the Scourge. Or at least until you met Mama and went clean.”

  “That’s a terrific story,” I said. “I’ll bet you could tell us a lot of adventures.”

  “Nah, he won’t do it. I’ve tried to drag it out of him, but the lips are sealed. Huh, Pops?”

  Vargas shrugged his shoulders. “Not much to tell.”

  “Sure there isn’t. Just dodging the Coast Guard every night, the supply gangs, the pirates. Anyway, it was a living,” Joseph said cheerfully. “A nice nest egg to live on when the trade went south in the thirties.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  “It was bad everywhere. A lot of lobstermen left the Island back then, according to Pops. I don’t know, maybe they were just looking for an excuse. Winters are rough in the best of times.”

  “At least you had the lighthouse,” I said. “Doesn’t that pay some kind of salary?”

  “Some, I guess.” Joseph turned back to his traps. “It sure helps.”

  I warmed my hands around the coffee cup and looked at Vargas. I thought he wore a little smile around his dwindling cigarette. “Are you sure you didn’t take in a little trade afterward? I mean, a lighthouse makes for good storage, doesn’t it? And the location is just about ideal.”

  “No. I gave it up,” he said.

  “Mama made him,” Joseph said. “She didn’t want to take any chances. They had me right away, and you don’t want unsavory types coming and going when you’ve got a baby around the place.”

  I opened my mouth to ask whether he’d had any brothers or sisters, but my gaze happened to fall on Vargas’s stocky shoulders, his jaw locked, his cigarette burning from his mouth, and the question died. Instead, I turned back to Joseph and asked if he wanted coffee.

  “Sure, thanks. More cups in the deckhouse.”

  I went inside and found the cup on the shelf, which had a slat along the open side to keep all the dishes from tumbling out. When I emerged a moment later, I noticed that the fog was thinning. The shadow of Long Island appeared on the horizon, and the climbing sun stretched out its rays to burn through the mist.

  “The other thing was Mama,” Joseph continued, matter-of-fact, taking the coffee from me. “She had a hard time with me. Nearly died. There was a storm and they couldn’t get to the mainland, so Pops had to deliver me.”

  It took me a moment to absorb this sudden information. “Oh my goodness!” I said softly, looking at Vargas.

  “He did all right. Didn’t you, Pops? All’s well that ends well. But she was sick for a long while. Couldn’t get out of bed. Pops took care of us both, kept the lighthouse running. By the time Mama was on her feet again, they’d passed the Twenty-first Amendment and the liquor stores were back in business.”

  “But how terrible for you,” I said to Vargas. “Your new bride. When you were still so much in love.”

  This time Vargas was moved to pluck the cigarette from his mouth, to make his words clear in the warm, moist draft. “What else was I going to do? She was my wife. He was my son.”

  3.

  In another twenty minutes or so, we slowed and drifted toward a slim green buoy. “First we lay the new traps,” Joseph said, putting his gloves back on, “and then we pick up the ones we set yesterday.”

  “You do this every day?” I asked.

  “Except Sunday.”

  Vargas put the boat in reverse and looked over his shoulder at Joseph, who was reaching over the stern with a thin metal cable, which he clipped to the buoy. The boat’s wake made it bob crazily to one side and then another. Joseph turned back and lifted the first trap and clipped it to a loop on the cable.

  “All right,” he called forward, and Vargas touched the throttle, drawing out the cable a few yards, while Joseph clipped the next trap.

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “If you like. Hand me the next trap, will you? It’s already baited.”

  I bent and lifted the trap, which was heavier than I thought, though I wasn’t going to show it. I waited until we reached the next buoy, until Vargas eased the throttle and Joseph reached expertly to snatch the cable, and I passed over the wooden cage into his large, gloved hands.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You’re not getting your dress dirty, are you?”

  “Oh, I don’t care. It’s an old dress.”

  He clipped the trap to the cable and sent it down. “You’re a good sport, Miranda.”

  “Me? I’m just here to look pretty. Isn’t that right, Mr. Vargas?”

  Vargas shrugged a little, but I thought he was smiling again, sharing the joke, at least as much as you could smile around the cigarette stuck permanently in the corner of your mouth. The sun was really starting to get going, or maybe it was just the effort of lifting the cages, and before I reached for the next trap I drew off my cardigan and tossed it on the bow, so my arms were mostly bare. This time the trap felt lighter between my hands, and we began to develop a rhythm between us, Joseph and me, buoy after buoy, cage after cage, until I handed him the last one and said, “I think I’m ready for my ham sandwich now.”

  “I’ll bet. Didn’t eat any breakfast before you left, did you?”

  “It was five o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t hungry then.”

  “Greenhorn.” He clipped the cage and committed it to the deep with a solemn splash. “Pops, where’d you put those sandwiches?”

  The ham was thick and juicy, the cheese sharp. Joseph took the wheel so his father could rest his legs and eat. I sat in the bow, facing the now-blazing sun, while Vargas settled carefully in the stern, as if he wanted to keep some distance between the two of us. I asked if we were headed back to the harbor now.

  “Nope,” said Joseph. “Got to pick up some lobsters first.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “Pick up some lobsters and get them back to the harbor. You don’t mind if we stop at the harbor first? You get the best price if you’re in early.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. Just do your job and pretend I’m not here.”

  “Don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  Joseph popped the crust of his sandwich into his mouth and stared straight ahead. “Hate to have to tell you this, Miss Schuyler, but you smell like bait. Bait and lobster.”

  “So do you.”

  He lifted his arm and sniffed his shirt. “Blow me down. How about we go for a swim?”

  “What, here? Now?”

  “Why not?” He reached for the throttle. “Pops, you don’t mind, do y
ou?”

  Vargas shrugged and leaned back in his seat. He’d finished his sandwich, and beneath the shelter of his hat he looked as if he might be falling asleep.

  “C’mon,” said Joseph, pulling off his oilskins, yanking off his boots. “Last one in.”

  “Last one in is what?”

  “I guess you’re going to find out,” he said, and he climbed on the bow and dove like a dolphin into the water. A moment later, he came up again, and I cupped my hands around my mouth.

  “What about sharks?”

  “You just punch them on the nose, Schuyler. Don’t you know anything?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at Vargas, who sat with his arms folded, watching me curiously, as if he was making a bet in his head about what I might do or not do. Swim or not swim.

  “What about my dress? I can’t swim in a dress like this.”

  “Excuses. Take it off, then. You’ve got a petticoat or something, right?” He was swimming in place, looking up at me, his wet hair plastered over his head. I saw the white of his T-shirt under the water, his churning legs.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  “C’mon. I won’t look.”

  “Turn around.”

  He turned. I reached back and found the buttons of my dress, and when I started to struggle Vargas came up and helped me with his gnarled, thick fingers. The dress gave way and I kicked it off, kicked off my sandals too, and I leapt in my short petticoat into the water.

  It was colder than I thought, much colder than the swimming pool at Greyfriars. I came up gasping. The first thing I saw was the sun, and then Joseph’s grinning face below it. I thought his hair was like a helmet, shining like that.

  I called across the water. “You looked!”

  “Aw, can you blame me?”

  He dove back in, like something had swallowed him, and I stared at the gentle chop of the water while my heart beat and beat. A moment later he came up beside me, closer than I thought. His grin wasn’t so wide now, more like a question, and I said, a little raspy, “Race you back to the boat?”

  “But it’s right there.” He pointed.