“What did you mean when you said ‘acquired taste’?”
“Have a couple of cocktails with him and find out!” Grant grinned at Frank. “Gotta get the bacon before it burns. Could you finish this cheddar for me?” Grant turned toward the oven to remove a sheet tray of sizzling bacon.
Frank ignored the cheese and hurried to a large metal bin filled with ice and beverages over which Dan Jeffries was hunched, reading labels of various bottles. Karen, leaning quietly against the counter by the sink, watched. Frank reached down into the ice for a beer as Dan did. Frank noticed Dan’s expensive-looking loafers, at odds with the Levi’s and faded blue Oxford cloth shirt. Frank was quick to speak.
“Hi, Dan.”
Dan twisted the top off his beer, faced Frank full on, back straight, and said with a huge and friendly grin, “Frank Markstrom! Good to see you!” Dan pointed over Frank’s shoulder to someone who had caught his attention and strode off. Frank turned. There was no one else there. He watched Dan head to the living room and Frank returned to the kitchen.
When Frank caught Karen between conversations, he drew her aside and said, “What do you make of Dan being here?”
She shrugged.
“He’s ignoring us,” he said.
“Yes, exactly as he said he would.”
Karen turned to her left when she saw Anne Sutton waiting. This first year, Grant and Becky had chosen to invite Anne rather than Walter, a decision made easier by Walter’s decision to depart the city for the holidays.
Anne and Karen looked at each other. Anne said, “Helluva year, huh?”
And Karen hugged her hard. Anne had brought a date no one knew and introduced him.
*
Frank lay on the carpet staring at the football game with a few other couples, having eaten as much as he was capable of. He tried to maintain focus, which should have been easy as the second half was coming to an end with a 28-28 tie and Oregon, were they to beat Wisconsin, would get the first Rose Bowl victory for the Ducks in ninety-five years. But Karen appeared suddenly. “Frank?” she said, squatting to speak quietly to him. “I’m not feeling good—would you mind driving me home?” He didn’t ask any questions. He all but leapt for the coat she held out to him. And he didn’t say a word. He didn’t even ask why she wanted him to drive—she always preferred to drive. After they were home, she took a long, hot shower and was in bed by eight and asleep by nine.
The following day, Karen abruptly decided to visit her father in Newton, Massachusetts, and, able to get a midday standby flight to Logan, she arrived at dusk, leaving Frank and Nick to move through the last holiday week on their own.
Two
When Frank, Nick, and Nick’s friend Noah returned from the beach, Karen had just plunged four lobsters into a giant stockpot. “Hose the sand off, please,” she shouted through the screened window overlooking the back deck. Nick and Noah talked so nonstop, and their conversations were to her so inane, she’d ceased to hear the content and only heard it as calming music. She knew exactly what they’d do. As Frank was using the outdoor shower, the boys would shower upstairs, put on old T-shirts and baggy shorts, and head into the woods or go look for sea glass on the beach until they got to the Watson cottage where, if they were lucky, Elizabeth Watson and her friend would be available to flirt with until she texted them to dinner.
The alarm on Karen’s phone vibrated and hummed, the lobsters having been submerged for seven minutes. Using tongs, she placed each lobster in the cooler that had held their lunchtime beverages and still had a layer of ice floating on top. After the lobsters had chilled, she took each to the heavy, moated cutting board and, gripping the blade of the knife the way Chef Garreth had taught her at a cooking class last spring, she drove the blade down through the orange head of the lobster, crunching down through its face, pounding the back of the blade with the heel of her left hand through the remaining shell. She spun the lobster, flattened out its tail, and drove the knife through the back shell and tail, splitting the lobster, then rinsing the halves beneath cold water and leaving them in the sink while she halved the rest. The way she now held a knife, being able to dispatch the lobsters with such authority, gave her a sense of being a capable woman. What else do we bring home alive to eat? she wondered. She couldn’t think of anything. Oysters maybe. She lifted the next cooked lobster, looked it in the face. Oysters don’t have eyes, she thought. Crack! went the knife through the neck and head of the lobster, splitting it.
When all eight halves were back in the fridge, the pot had been dumped off the back deck, and the cutting board had been cleaned of the green lobster innards—the kitchen pristine and cooled from the evening breeze—she undressed, donned a large bath towel, and walked the planks past dune grass for a cool, nude dip from the beach one hundred yards north of their cottage. Few walkers passed at what would then be the early evening. And she could see them from either direction anyway. But she usually waited till Frank appeared, clean in his loose white shirt and faded jeans and bare feet, bearing a sand-free towel to wrap her in. But only after he made her walk nude practically the width of the beach so that he could regard her from the moment she emerged, dripping from the ocean. He enjoyed the perky bob of her breasts, nipples hard and bright pink from the cold water, her narrow hips, and the light brown, neatly trimmed V of her crotch. It was the least she could do, and she had always enjoyed the attention. He wrapped her in the big, soft beach towel. He hugged her from behind, pulled her long hair off her neck to press his mouth and nose to her to smell and taste the ocean on her tanned skin. But that was all. How cleansing these skinny-dips felt.
When she was clean and dry from the shower, she descended the stairs of the old cottage in a cotton sundress. Frank had finished the dressing for the potato salad and was now at the kitchen counter shucking peas.
She hugged his back. He set down the peas and twisted to return the hug. He stared into the brown eyes he had known for so long.
She returned the gaze and said, “Your eyes are smiling.”
“Forever,” he said and kissed her.
They’d been on Martha’s Vineyard for the first five days of August and still had another five left of what had become a heavenly routine. She would help with the peas and at 6:30 they’d have a gin and tonic on the front porch and play a few rounds of backgammon. By seven or so, the grill would be ready, tonight for lobsters (Frank loved to finish them over coals), while she set the table and cooked the peas after summoning Nick and Noah to return for dinner. They would eat in the screened porch to the sound of the surf carried in on a breeze over Lake Tashmoo. They’d clean the kitchen and tonight would watch the news and some more TV perhaps. They’d gone into Vineyard Haven the night before, earlier in the week to Oak Bluffs, all in bed by ten, happily fatigued from the sun and ocean.
Today had been perfect, save for the unexpected wave of nausea that overcame her at the boatyard. She and Frank had begun the day with a 7 a.m. bike ride. Then they’d driven to the Black Dog and put their names in for breakfast. While Frank, Nick, and Noah waded along the beach, waiting for a table, she explored the boatyard. It was filled with planks and great curls of shavings and sawdust and strange tools and scale drawings of hulls in pencil on the floor. The nausea had come on so powerfully and fast that she had to cover her mouth and run outside behind a wood shed to retch, her sickness prolonged as she’d chosen the ditch used as the piss pot by the young boat builders. She assumed it was the early morning ride and the lack of solid food. She couldn’t be pregnant, obviously. She was able to wash up in the restaurant and by the time she had finished, a table had opened up and their name had been called. The food made her feel better. Home to do some painting (she was working on an ink and watercolor portrait of the gray, cedar-shingled cottage as a thank-you gift); and Frank put in a few hours on a story he’d begun. She’d bought a lunch (and the lobsters) after breakfast so that they’d have a picnic and a snooze on the beach.
*
Karen was rockin
g on the porch swing looking off toward the ocean when Frank appeared with their evening cocktails.
They touched the crystal highballs—clink—and sipped.
She inhaled deeply. “We are so lucky.”
This made him start, and when she saw his surprise, she knew what he thought she’d meant. “For the house,” she said. “Lucky for this house.” They sat and rocked quietly in the cool early evening air.
Frank’s friend, Walter Sutton, had given him his share of the cottage. After his marriage to Anne had ended, he was allowed use of the cottage, but the new love of his life was forbidden. Walter accepted this without argument as part of his punishment for destroying his family, but he successfully lobbied to keep his allotted ten days to give to the Markstroms. No one was going to argue about that, given what poor Karen had been through, the whole family—they certainly deserved some island respite after the winter tragedy.
Lucky, though, was something that neither Karen nor Frank dared to think of in terms of the big picture. Threat would always loom. They didn’t like to think of luck even in the little picture. They lived now in the moment—because truth was they had been fantastically unlucky, and it was a fact that they would always carry.
But in terms of physical consequences, having essentially gotten away with two felonies couldn’t be called anything other than lucky. Karen had turned them into strong conspirators and everything, but everything, had worked in their favor—like a complex trip involving complicated transportations and tight flight connections, and every flight turns out to be on time, and their suitcases are the first ones to come out on the conveyor belt. It was that kind of ride—full of anxiety that it would all work, and relief when it couldn’t have gone better. Once Karen committed completely to the story, she had known what to do at every step. Not least had been the unbelievable luck that whoever it was to eventually reach Len Thompson, who was likely trying to ease a brutal hangover with a stiff Bloody Mary the day after the party, had been told by Len himself that Frank, Karen, and Nick Markstrom had indeed been at the party. They didn’t know why he’d said this and they didn’t ask. Len and Melissa had likely been as hammered as most of their friends that night. And after all, they had been there, hadn’t they? Karen had slipped a letter through their slot Christmas Eve day noting their presence at the party and their regret at not having had a chance to catch up. She said that she was writing to inform them of the tragedy that had ensued, and the fact that she, Karen, had been tested by police afterward and alcohol had not been involved. She was writing furthermore to make sure that while the unthinkable had in fact happened, it was being addressed as an accident, and Karen alone was being held responsible for it.
While Christmas was subdued, and the arraignment the following Friday had been nerve-racking, in retrospect, they needn’t have worried. The report went from the DA’s office to a lower office, which passed it on down lower. And Karen’s testimony—from such an upstanding citizen and member of the community—had been taken at face value. The case had ultimately gone to trial at a low-level city court. She was sentenced to thirty days in jail, suspended in exchange for seven hundred of hours of community service and a year’s driving suspension except to fulfill her work and community service commitments. Even this work seemed a kind of gift: giving art lessons to kids in juvenile detention and teaching illiterate adults to read. Work she found so rewarding, she intended to continue it after her hours had been fulfilled.
And Frank, she’d watched him throw himself into his work with such abandon and focus that he’d been promoted when his firm announced a merger with its main competitor in April. It required considerably more hours, but the raise would be enough to put toward Nick’s college fund, substantially easing their financial worries.
So: Lucky.
Karen’s plan had worked. She had been brilliant at every step.
*
“May we be excused?” Nick asked when the lobsters and peas and potato salad had been consumed and they were all wiping butter from their chins with paper napkins.
“Take your plates to the kitchen,” Frank said.
“I got some ice cream sandwiches,” Karen said. “They’re in the freezer.”
“Thanks for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Markstrom,” Noah said.
“You’re welcome, Noah.”
When the boys had left, Frank and Karen smiled at each other. They were further surprised when the boys returned to take their plates. “Thank you!” Frank and Karen both exclaimed. Noah was slight and had yet to grow the way Nick had; he was already filling out and stood a head taller than Noah, who looked two grades behind.
“We’re going back to the Watsons’, okay?” Nick asked.
“Just bring your phones so I can reach you.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said, mock dutifully.
When the boys were gone, Frank said, “God, those were good lobsters. I could eat another.”
“I should have gotten more.”
“Nooo,” he said. “I’m getting fat.”
“Nonsense. And we’re on vacation.”
“Yes, that was my excuse.”
“For what?”
“I bought a pack of cigarettes.”
“Frank!”
“I know, terrible.”
“Vacation. Just don’t bring them home.”
“Promise. Join me?”
“I’ll join you, but I won’t smoke. I don’t trust myself.”
In their bohemian days, they’d both smoked. The pregnancy forced her to quit and she was glad for it, and once the baby was born, he’d quit, too. After many smoke-free years, Frank would occasionally have a cigarette at a party, but never more than a few in a given year, something he was careful about and even thought about when he’d bought this pack, given that his father had died of lung cancer three years earlier.
When they’d cleared the remains of the table—a bowl of lobster shells and emptied claws and balled up napkins, the unfinished bottle of chardonnay and the silverware—Frank reached to a top shelf in the kitchen for the cigarettes and an ashtray. She split the remaining wine between two fresh glasses. “Don’t feel guilty,” she said as they stepped out onto the front porch of the cottage. They sat in two wicker rockers, a wicker table between them.
“I don’t,” he said and took that luxurious long first drag.
“Well, you don’t need to make it look so enjoyable,” she said.
They sat quietly in the balmy summer breeze and stared out toward the ocean.
“We owe Walter big-time for this,” he said. “I think this is the most relaxed I’ve been since.”
“That was the plan.”
“I just didn’t think it was going to be possible.”
“Life goes on, Frank. It has to go on.”
“How are you, my love?”
“I’m fine,” she said, looking away. “Tell me about the story you’re working on.”
“Not yet.”
“Please.”
“When it’s ready.” He smiled at her.
She stared back. His sandy hair had lightened and was thick from the salty air. He looked uncommonly healthy, almost aglow with summer.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling. “You know, Nick’s getting to look just like you. A lucky young man.”
“Our young man.”
Karen brought her heels to the edge of the seat and hugged her knees. “Nick talked to me about it the other day.”
Frank straightened in his chair, waiting.
“It was our first morning here, you were still asleep and I was making us pancakes. He must have sensed the relief of being here, away from home on an island. He asked if we were going to be all right. I said yes, and then he asked if he’d done anything wrong. I hadn’t realized how much it was still on his mind—though how could it not be for all of us? I asked, ‘Have you told another living soul?’ He said no. And I said, ‘Then no, you’ve been a savior.’”
“And?
”
“I told him the truth. That it was something I was still working on, still trying to understand, and that I would likely be doing so for the rest of my life. As would he. And that we are bound to do this. Obligated. And that we are lucky to be doing so together and not separate, that the most important thing was our family, that we can weather anything if we stay strong together.”
Frank nodded.
“And he hugged me. He’s gotten so big. I was astonished at how big he’s become in just these seven months, how hard he hugged me.”
“He loves you.”
“He loves you, too.”
“You know he was angry with me,” Frank said.
“When? You didn’t tell me.”
“The week after New Year’s, when you went to visit your dad. He and I had a long talk. He had the impression that I’d made you do it. That you, we, hadn’t been honest with him. I tried to tell him something along the lines of what you did. But at the time, we were still in the thick of it. I didn’t know how it would end.”
“But it doesn’t end, does it?” she asked him.
He looked north toward the ocean and shook his head.
“I told Nick that he was the most important thing in the world to me,” Karen said. “That our family was, and that I’d done what I did to save the family. And in this we had succeeded. And he said he knew that now.”
Frank took the last drag on his cigarette and crushed it out. He turned to her and said, “You did. You saved us. You turned on a dime and you saved us.”
He reached for her hand. She put her feet down and leaned forward to take his. They looked into each other’s eyes.
He wiped away a single tear that streaked down the side of her nose and said, “Enough. We’re on the other side. Let’s not look back.”
She nodded quickly. “Not look back.” She sniffed hard.
“Tomorrow we’re out on the water.”
“So nice of the Watsons,” she said.
In Short Measures Page 25
