Why hadn’t she ever told me? I demanded. She told me not to worry, she would handle her own problems, and refused to talk about it.
Of course, I realize now, she had handled the problem by not sharing any further incidents with me. I loved her with all my heart, she loved me, too, and it was, I think, her way of defining our relationship. She didn’t want me to be her protector, just an equal in our friendship. And I suppose it worked, because we never mentioned it again.
Now this sudden revelation of pain from her, this hurtful secret that I hadn’t been privy to, hurt me as well, even as I knew it hadn’t been about me.
Of course, I knew she hadn’t been born brimming with resolve and fortitude. She had made, at some point early in her childhood, when she was far too young to have to think of these things, a decision of courage, to carry herself through her wounds and come out better. I knew she was never invited to birthday parties, but neither was I. I knew something had made her mother open her dental practice in Provincetown, instead of Fleetbourne, but it was never discussed. She had left me out of it, or had I just developed a blind spot, happy to forget, embarrassed over the shameful way I had slipped from my own principles? Anyway, it had kept me from truly sharing her life.
“Shay,” I told her now, “I would have wanted to know.”
She gave me a sad smile. “No,” she said. “It would have made it bigger, given it more power. It would have turned into a wedge between us and I wanted us to just be . . . pure . . . friends. You know, without all the crap.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I didn’t want to be your mission, don’t you see? I didn’t want an avenging angel for a friend.”
I didn’t see. “We have to fight for each other,” I told her. “Support and protect each other.” She put a kiss on my cheek and said, “Leave it alone.”
I had to think about that.
“You’ve always been there for me and I want to be there for you,” I told her later. “I don’t ever want to lose your friendship. I don’t want things to change between us.”
She stood in front of me and looked deep into my eyes.
“You won’t ever lose me,” she started slowly, “but, you know, after the baby comes, I won’t be able to work here next summer. I want to spend my time off playing on the beach and raising my child. I plan to keep teaching in the winters, so I’ll want to relax in the summers. Let’s make this the best summer ever!”
Of course. She needed to spend time raising her new baby. It was reasonable. But it meant that everything was going to change. Actually, everything had changed, been changing for two years. There were things that I had lost and things that I had found. But there was nothing to grab on to; I just had to ride it all out.
We closed the Galley. I gave her a hug and she hugged me back. Then she got into her little yellow Fiat and I in my little red Toyota, with the dog in the backseat, and we both drove away home, in opposite directions.
Chapter 13
The dog and I ate a silent dinner together, chili for me, dog food for him. I picked at my food, pushing it around the bowl with my spoon while he gulped his down at record speed and then sat at my side, volunteering to help me finish. I declined his offer. Spicy foods do funny things to pit bulls; it turns them into lethal gas weapons.
The day, reflecting my mood, was graying around the edges. Of course things change. I know that. Shay was going to be a wonderful mother, and she needed to be with her family. I would have to make plans for someone to help run the Galley. I know that. I had always known that.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said to the dog. “I am undone.”
He ran to the door. I took a cane, just in case I was pushing my ankle faster than it liked, and we left the house.
* * *
The evening was breezy and there were clouds huddling together for comfort in a dreary sky. The freedom of walking on the sand barefoot, feeling cool water slide across my ankles, a light wind stroking my hair like my grandmother used to, my poor crazy grandmother. I realized my loneliness had always been bearable because Shay had been so much a part of my life. My mother and father worked long hours and spent very little time with me. There were purchase orders to be picked up and brought to the Galley, then inventoried and shelved. Everything had to be cleaned and cleaned again. Slicers and food cases and windows and doors and sinks and counters had to be immaculate. Deliveries signed for and double-checked, stock rotated. Food had to be prepared and wrapped and set up for the next day. People had to be served. The work never ended. Never ends now.
And my grandmother, oh, my crazy grandmother would stand in the bay and sing all day, and take me home and feed me warmed coffee-milk, sometimes leaving the milk out, wash and dry all her wet clothes, then nap before she started a late dinner for me. Sort of a dinner. My parents had worked long hours and usually ate at the Galley before they came home. My grandmother, thin as dune grass, sometimes forgot to eat and sometimes forgot to feed me. When she did manage, it was usually a piece of American cheese or a few slices of linguiça on a piece of bread. Sometimes, as a treat, she let me sneak a puff on her cigarillo. Sometimes she rolled her own, a sweet, cloying mixture that I recognized years later as weed. Sometimes I stole it from her ashtray when she napped and walked around the streets puffing on it. I had no sisters or brothers; I was always alone. Friends were very few. Kids in crazy families get shunned.
When I met Shay, we spent every minute together. Nobody in my family minded that I was never home unless it was summer, and then I was just expected to spend it working at the Galley.
When I met Dan, it was love and relief and joy. I had someone to love; I had someone who loved me, who noticed me, who loved being with me, who ate with me. It was such a happy time. I loved that I had a future with him.
I didn’t know what I needed to do next. For Shay or for Sam or for anyone.
And so here we all were. Each of us standing on the precipice of an oddly spinning world, tilting off its tracks.
Crazy.
Black.
Muslim.
And a battered pit bull.
* * *
It was dark now and I was very tired, but the night called to me. I grabbed a jacket and opened the back door ready to walk to the pier. The dog rose from a light, anxious sleep to follow me. We walked together, down the back steps, to the sand; he pressed against my leg for guidance.
There was a rough chop to the water, a sign of bad weather to come. I am very keen on picking these things up now. Shells were being left on the beach from the ebbing water and shells were taken, the seaweed was flung against the sand, and pulled away. I could feel the temperature dropping.
The bay rushed to me like an old friend, then rushed out as we walked along, slowly, to give my ankle time to adjust to my weight with each step. Ahead, something on the pier had been upright, then moved, then dropped down, and I knew it had collapsed into a man cocooned in a heap of blankets. I knew who it was and I stopped. The dog stopped and sat, confused, and looked up at me.
“He’s on the pier,” I whispered, and knew right away I couldn’t go there. Whatever Sam was mourning for, I knew he had to be left alone. There are things not to be intruded upon. I turned around to walk back.
“Aila?”
His voice startled me. He had obviously seen me and was pulling himself up, leaning against railings, now standing, wrapped in his blankets. He waved.
I hesitated, then waved back.
“Please, come sit with me!” he called. “I’ve just finished my prayers.”
“Okay!” I called, and walked to the pier and climbed up to him.
“Let’s sit here,” he said, and held out his hand to lead me to a bench. “I see you are walking pretty good.”
I sat down next to him, laying my cane down next to me. “My foot feels better.” The dog jumped up squeezing between us like a chaperone. “You were praying?”
“Oh yes,” he answered. “We pray five times a day.” He started folding his blankets
and put them, one by one, on the bench next to him. He sat pensively for a few moments before he started speaking.
“Listen, it’s been a complicated day,” he said. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have brought you to the dealership and I didn’t mean to pressure you into going boating. It’s just that sometimes I don’t feel I can do things alone yet.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “And I’m sorry that whole car thing stunk.”
“My aunt is going to take me to her dealer. Of course, she hasn’t seen him since the seventies, but I should have a car in a few days.”
“You should bring charges against that guy.”
“I don’t want to fight,” he said dispiritedly. “I don’t have the heart for it.” A profound sadness crossed his features.
I patted his arm. “I’m sorry”—I didn’t know how to finish—“that people are like that.”
A breeze brushed against us, filled with soft mist, like tears. The air grew heavier, ripe with moisture and a sudden chill. There was a quick flicker of light across the bay that caught my eye. I could smell rain.
“It’s going to pour,” I said. “Do you want to come back to my house? I can make us tea or something.” It was a hospitable offer, nothing more. Just as I said it, the rain started falling in big, loose drops.
“Thank you,” he said, pulling himself up and extending his hand to help me. “I’d like that very much.” We started for my house.
“Do you mind if I do this?” he asked, draping the blankets around my shoulders and his, to block the rain.
“No,” I said truthfully, lifting them over our heads, too. “I appreciate it.”
We made our way across the beach, a short walk made longer by our swinging gaits and two canes. The rain, by now, was driving hard, pelting the beach, slapping into the water. Another flicker of lightning outlined the shore, accompanied by the soft thrum of thunder. Yellow flashes backlit the horizon, growing brighter and closer with each passing minute.
We hobbled faster, across the deepening sand, up the slippery deck steps, just making it into the kitchen as the sky grew pitiless, hurling the rain down in sweeping sheets. We stood safe, squeezing together to peer through the back door, watching the sky disappear into the bay.
We wiped ourselves and the dog off with dish towels, and I led Sam to the bathroom, so he could unfold his blankets over the shower rod to dry. Then I invited him into the living room, to sit on the couch and relax. It’s a cozy room with a fireplace; there were white and yellow daffodils in a small jar on the hearth, leftover from the bounty at the store, just starting to look tired. Sam sat tentatively at first, his eyes swiveling left and right to check out the room before he threw his head back against the cushions and let out a long sigh. The dog rolled on the rug to finish drying off before curling up his thin frame for a nap in my reclining chair. I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle.
I placed two cups on the table. The sight of them put a catch in my throat. Two cups on the table, waiting for tea, looking so right; a man stretching across the couch looking so right, the rain falling outside, while we spoke in soft voices, it was all exactly right.
Except it wasn’t really. I squeezed my eyes shut until the image of Dan left and the tears retreated.
The banana bread released its fragrance throughout the kitchen as I unwrapped and sliced it. Oh, I remember too well how I used to do this.
The kettle sputtered a soft whistle.
“Shall I bring the tea into the living room?” I called.
“Thank you!” he called back.
I grabbed a tray from a cabinet, put out two tea bags and two spoons, the two cups, sugar and cream, and carried it in to set down on the small coffee table in front of the sofa. A tea ceremony of old memories. He watched me go back for the kettle and return. He watched as I placed a tea bag in each cup, poured hot water, returned the kettle, and brought back two slices of banana bread on napkins. I sat on the floor next to the sofa, to eat from the table. I felt his eyes. Dan used to watch me, too.
Sam and I were awkward with each other. Sam took three sugars and let his tea steep very dark; then he sat forward and held the cup in his hands. I added cream to mine until it was the color of ivory. We drank in companionable silence. He delicately put his cup down on the tray and picked up a slice of bread and ate it in small, savoring bites. After finishing it, he turned to me.
“Thank you,” he said, “that was awfully good.”
“You’re very welcome,” I said. We were so polite.
There was a pause. I was going to make a silly remark about the dog, who hadn’t stirred through all this, but Sam suddenly cleared his throat.
“So, do you want to see my leg?” he asked, his voice nervous. “It’s okay, I have bathing trunks on.”
My first impulse was to say no. It seemed an act of intimacy, too personal for us yet, we barely knew each other and it scared me a little. What might his leg look like? But he was staring at me, urgent and uncertain and so vulnerable.
I thought, It’s just his leg.
And then, It’s his leg.
“Okay,” I said.
He pulled himself up and held on to the arm of the sofa. He unbuttoned his pants and unzipped his fly with shaking hands. The sight of him unzipping his pants startled me. What was happening here? It was the most intimate thing he could do. The pants slid to the floor.
And he stood there. A perfectly formed man. His beautifully muscled body, strong arms, one leg carved like a statue, from bone and sinew, one leg gleaming silver and blue, the mark of a warrior who had fallen and risen again, brilliant and strong and glorious. A leg that took nothing from him but added an extraordinary measure of strength and power. I couldn’t stop myself; I reached out to touch it.
“I think . . . you look . . . perfect,” I said.
He stood absolutely still; neither one of us knew what to do next.
“Should I take the leg off?” he finally asked. “There is nothing but a stump underneath.”
I knew he wanted me to see. I knew he wanted to bare himself, leave himself exposed to whatever my reaction was, as though it were a test, not for me—but for him. I nodded mutely. He sat down on the sofa again and slid his hand down to the bottom of the leg and pressed a button on the side. Something clicked and released and he started sliding the leg off, leaving his remaining half thigh, encompassed in a white silicon fabric sleeve.
“No one except my mom and the nurses at the VA has seen my stump before,” he said, trying to slide the sleeve down. His face was full of concentration and worry, as though he was waiting for something awful to overcome both of us.
“Do you need help taking that off?” I asked, reaching for the sleeve.
Relief fell across his face. “Thank you.” He guided my hand and together we slowly and carefully slid the leg off.
“Is it okay?” he asked when his bare half thigh was finally revealed. “Are you okay with it?” His eyes never left my face.
I touched the leg gently. It was scarred, the end neatly stitched into a flap, as though the making of a leg had been started and left uncompleted, right there, in the middle of his thigh. It was still swollen, still had a certain rawness, still needed to heal.
“It needs the sun and the sea,” I said, realizing what I was offering. Tears slid down his face and he swallowed hard, then nodded. My heart opened for a moment. There are many ways to love; I knew this. To love a new friend would be okay. I reached out to touch his hand, to tell him it was all right. To thank him for trusting me with this. His injury, painful and sacred, broke my heart. I wanted him to know, but there were no words.
I wanted to thank him for his sacrifice. More than that, I wanted to acknowledge its terribleness, its finality that bestowed upon him a certain nobility. I wanted to acknowledge his suffering. My fingers, instead, touched his thigh, lingering on his warm flesh for a moment.
Touching his skin, tracing the scars. Mourning for him, his lost limb.
And then I leaned forward and kissed it.
Chapter 14
It rained all night.
It poured like a baptism, the heavens trying to wash away our fear and pain and leave us both reborn with acceptance and compassion and relief. I’m not sure it was successful. Sam stayed another hour, sitting on my couch, while I sat on the floor next to him, my head leaning against his good leg. We spoke of nothing. He had tears in his eyes after I had kissed him, but he said nothing. It hadn’t been awkward, and I hadn’t meant it to be sexual, and he understood that. It was actually very ordinary, and it was comforting because it was ordinary. We said nothing, just sat in the dim light of a small lamp watching the bold rhythm of lightning and thunder and the quiet insistence of the rain, and it was peaceful.
After a while, the rain let up and he showed me how he put his leg back on. I needed to help him smooth the sock. There could be no air pockets, no folds, no wrinkles; it had to be perfectly, perfectly smooth. Then he snapped the limb into place and pulled on his pants and stood up.
I wanted him to stay, for safety’s sake in case there were downed lines, but I didn’t tell him and let him go. I rose to my feet, fetched his blankets, and followed him to the door and held it open. The dog ran into the night—I knew he’d be back—while Sam stood for a moment on the threshold, glancing apprehensively at the slick deck and stairs ahead. He took a tentative step outside, walked to the stairs, then stopped, nervous about descending.
I joined him. “Let me help you down,” I said. “Sometimes they can get slippery.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m good.” He gestured to the still-open kitchen door. “Get out of the rain; I got this.” The rain was sluicing through his hair and slicking it down.
“Be careful,” I said.
Suddenly he turned and enfolded me into his arms and kissed me with rain-wet lips. We pressed together for a moment, only for a moment, and it was unbearably sweet.
“Good night, Aila,” he said, into my hair. “You don’t know what you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget you. I’m just so lost.”
And All the Phases of the Moon Page 8
