Beach Plum Island

by Holly Robinson

  She jabbed him with an elbow. “Relax. I’ve had nothing to drink all day but coffee. These are just really dumb shoes.”

  “Ah.” Gabe glanced down at her feet. “But they’re pink. That must make up for them being so dumb.” They had gotten on the escalator; at the top of it he stopped and stared at the restaurant window. “This place? Really?”

  “What’s wrong with sushi?” she demanded. Elaine had brought dates here before; in her experience, most men didn’t care about dinner, only what might happen afterward. Dinner was merely foreplay.

  “Sushi’s not really a meal,” Gabe said. “Three hours after having sushi, I want to eat again because I’ve had nothing but cold balls of rice and fish. I’m still hungry, but it’s too late because I’ve already spent too much money.”

  “I’m paying,” she pointed out. “You won’t have spent any money at all.”

  He gave her a look. “That’s hardly the point. Also, this particular sushi palace feels like a high school cafeteria. I’m too old to eat at an orange plastic table with green plastic chairs. If I wanted to do that, I’d work in a day care center.”

  Elaine stepped away from him and glared. “My, my. Somebody took his snarky pills today. Fine, Mr. Picky. Where do you want to go?”

  “Just because I don’t like a place doesn’t mean I’m picky. Though I do admit to being something of a foodie,” Gabe added. “Meals are more than just fuel for me. Dinner, especially, should count as a daily ritual, now that we’ve experienced the downfall of religion as a cornerstone of Western civilization.”

  “Good God. Fine. Just quit yammering and choose someplace else,” Elaine said. She’d had only salad for lunch and didn’t want to think about food as ritual. For her, food was mostly a temptation she battled every day, with every fiber of her being. The minute she caved and was forced into elastic-waist pants, the uniform of her generation, her life might as well be over. “Look, just to be clear, this is not a date,” she added. “I only wanted to take you out to a nice dinner to say thank you for the other night,” she said. “Sorry you’re so insulted.”

  Gabe gave her arm a squeeze. “I’m not! I’m delighted that you called, despite being somewhat despondent that you don’t see me as date potential. Even so, is a cheap college sushi bar really your idea of a nice thank-you? I mean, honestly?”

  Honestly, Elaine was beginning to wish she could summon a cab, go home, take off these stupid shoes, and gorge on wine and cashews for dinner. But that would hardly pay off her debt to this man.

  “Look, I just picked this place because I know it,” she said. “I hardly ever come to Harvard Square anymore. So why don’t you take us someplace else, but it’ll still be my treat.”

  “What if it’s too expensive?”

  “I make good money! Probably more than you do, judging from your wardrobe. If you really wanted me to take you someplace decent, then you should have dressed accordingly!”

  “What? This is my formal T-shirt!” Gabe tried to look wounded. This act might have been convincing—his brown eyes were sorrowful and long-lashed, like the eyes of those greyhounds PETA used in their commercials to shut down the Wonderland Dog Track—except then he started to laugh, a snorting that he tried to smother with one hand. In a few seconds he was doubled over, laughing so hard that he started to wheeze.

  Then Elaine was laughing, too, wiping tears from her eyes and saying, “None of this is funny!” when, really, it was: the absurdity of his stupid save-the-world clothing and her stupid pink shoes, their mismatched ideas about food. She hadn’t laughed this hard in forever.

  They kept trying to catch a breath, then failing because the other was still laughing. Eventually, Elaine had to lean against the wall outside the sushi restaurant and swab the mascara out from under her eyes.

  “Here, clown face, you missed a spot.” Gabe helped her with a tissue, concentrating so hard that a frown line appeared above his glasses. Afterward, he led her to Henrietta’s Table, a restaurant in the Charles Hotel with French bistro tables and locally grown food. “Simple, good meals,” he promised.

  He ordered a pork chop with mashed potatoes. Elaine was going to stick with spinach salad, but Gabe coerced her into ordering roast chicken and Elaine found herself savoring every mouthful. She even did serious damage to a side dish of risotto with mushrooms. She suddenly felt much happier, even relaxed.

  “Yum. I’m such a barbarian,” she said, gnawing on a chicken leg. “You bring out the worst in me. I swear I’ve never eaten two pieces of toast until breakfast at your place.”

  “Then you should eat breakfast at my house more often.” Gabe signaled the waiter and ordered coffee and a slice of blueberry pie. “You obviously don’t eat enough.” He gestured at her figure.

  She bristled. “What’s wrong with the way I look? I’m very fit.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Gabe said mildly. “But I can also see your ribs under that shirt. One strong wind and you’d be on the other side of Harvard Yard.”

  “I’ve always been thin. I can really put food away, in case you hadn’t noticed.” She gestured at the pile of bones on her plate, picked clean. “I love to eat.”

  Gabe patted his own belly. “Me, too.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” At the shadow of hurt in his eyes, she quickly added, “But you look good the way you are.”

  “Right, I’m sure you think so,” he said, then busied himself with the coffee and pie.

  “I mean it.” Elaine touched his hand.

  Gabe still didn’t meet her eyes. “Thanks.” He asked her about work then, and she talked about college marketing, something she seldom did. She tried to be honest about it, to make up for hurting his feelings with that stupid food remark. She admitted she’d never imagined herself in marketing, but was glad to be selling education, and proud to have created new identities for certain struggling but worthy colleges.

  He continued to ask questions: about her childhood in Newburyport, her parents’ divorce, her decision to live in Boston. Elaine even told him about her father’s battle with cancer and her resentment, intense and irrational and totally petty as it was, toward Katy and Gigi.

  One question seemed to naturally lead Gabe to ask another. It was flattering but unnerving to see how deftly he managed to turn the conversation back in her direction just as she was ready to ask him something in return.

  Elaine kept her eyes on his face. Seated across the table from Gabe and being neither drunk nor hungover—he’d suggested they stick to water and tea rather than order wine, and she’d gritted her teeth but concluded it was probably a good idea to prove that she could do without alcohol—she enjoyed looking at him. At his eyes, mostly: they were so warm, the brown irises shot through with gold and green. Gabe’s prominent nose was the right shape for his long face, too. She even admired the silver in his brown curls.

  Gabe, unlike most of the younger men she’d gone home with in the past few years, looked like a man who had experienced regret as well as joy, taken risks and been sorry. He was kind, too, even to their clueless waiter, an elderly man who twice brought the wrong items to the table.

  Perfect, she thought again, for Ava. “How did you like my sister?” she asked as he finished his pie.

  “Ava? She’s lovely. You’re lucky. I wish I had siblings.”

  Elaine nodded. “We don’t always see eye to eye, but Ava was like a second mother to me growing up. You should get to know her.”

  “I’d like that.” Gabe picked up his coffee cup and sipped. “If you’re trying to play Cupid, however, you’re aiming at the wrong target. Missed by a mile.”

  “Why? She’s smart, gorgeous, generous to a fault.” Elaine made a deliberate show of lifting the tablecloth to look at Gabe’s sandals. “You even shop at the same shoe store.”

  He tossed his napkin onto the table, signaling for the check. “Our shoes can date, the
n, but sorry. That’s it.”

  Elaine felt defensive on Ava’s behalf. “Why? You’d be good together.”

  Gabe gave her an impatient look, pulled a credit card out of his wallet, and handed it to the waiter before Elaine could reach for her purse. “Ava’s a nice person, I’m sure, but I’m not equipped to take on two teenaged boys.”

  “Hey, this was supposed to be my treat,” Elaine protested.

  “Forget it. I chose the restaurant,” Gabe said, waving a hand. “You can take me out next time.”

  As if there would be one, Elaine thought. “I wouldn’t have expected you, of all people, to be child-averse,” she said. “Why would Ava’s kids put you off?”

  “I know my limits.” Gabe stood and offered his elbow to escort her out of the dining room. She ignored the gesture and walked ahead of him. Out on the sidewalk, though, he took her arm anyway and said, “What made you think I’d be gaga over kids?”

  “You adopted a cat.”

  Gabe tipped his head back and howled. “That’s it? I have a cat? That’s proof of my potential parenting prowess?”

  Elaine was trying not to laugh, but it was difficult. Gabe’s laugh was a deep rumble, a little rough, and very infectious; she caught people smiling at them as they passed. “Not just any cat. A homeless cat,” she said. “You’re a natural caretaker. I can’t believe you don’t have a litter of your own kids already.”

  “How do you know I don’t?”

  They had stopped to cross the street, though Elaine had no idea where they were headed. “Oh,” she said, startled. “I’m sorry. Do you? Were you married before? I never asked you that, did I?”

  Gabe shook his head. “No. Never married. No kids. But never assume.”

  She was offended that he would think she was the sort of person who went around judging other people. Not because he was wrong, but because she hated that about herself. “And you’re how old?”

  “Thirty-nine,” he said. “You?”

  She stiffened. “Younger than you.”

  He patted her hand. “By what, a week?”

  “Shut up!”

  “No, seriously. How old are you?” The light turned but Gabe held her in place, his arm still linked through hers.

  Elaine sighed. “Thirty-six.”

  “All right, so I was off by a couple of years.”

  Tears sprang to Elaine’s eyes, unexpected and unwelcome. “Do I really look that old?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I can’t tell how old you are. I Googled you.”

  “Jesus. You’re sick.”

  “No. Just careful about who I choose to see.”

  Unlike you. That was what Gabe wasn’t saying, and it made Elaine furious.

  The light changed again. This time Gabe led her across the street and toward the gates to Harvard Yard. The buildings were dark, the dorms unoccupied at the height of August, the ancient trees looming around them.

  “I still don’t understand,” Elaine said. “Why wouldn’t you date a woman with children?”

  “You still don’t know what I do for a living, do you?”

  “No. So tell me already.”

  “You really want to know?”

  God, this man’s mind games were exhausting. “Not really, no,” she said. “I hate defining people by their jobs, just like I hate being defined by mine. And, truthfully? I can already guess by looking at your sandals. And by your T-shirts, which shout their slogans and make me feel guilty for not saving the baby seals or whatever.”

  “Oh, I see. Clothes make the man. Or unmake me, in your eyes.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, though it was.

  “All right, so what do I do? Go ahead and guess.”

  This was too easy. “You’re a social worker or a teacher.”

  Gabe led her to the steps of Widener Library, where they sat next to each other on the chilly stone. “Pretty good. I taught at an alternative high school right after graduating from college, and then I became a social worker. But I’m not doing that anymore.”

  Exasperated, Elaine wanted to slap Gabe’s knee the way she had Tony’s earlier today, which led her once again to think about how her best friend and this man had so many qualities in common, yet couldn’t be more different.

  She took a white tissue out of her purse and waved it in front of Gabe’s face. “I give up! Uncle! Aunt! Grandmother! Whatever you want me to say, I concede! Just tell me. What the hell do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a judge,” Gabe said.

  Elaine nearly fell off the step. “You are not.” She stuffed the tissue back into her purse.

  “I am! I used to be a social worker,” he said. “I worked for the Department of Children and Families for a while after earning my MSW. When I got tired of that, I went to law school. I was named to the bench two years ago. Now, before you get all impressed and deferential . . . ”

  “. . . which I would never,” Elaine said.

  Gabe smiled. “Which is why I like you. But let’s put it out there: I’m only a juvenile court judge. So forget about me fixing your parking tickets.”

  The weird thing was, despite suffering a brain cramp whenever she tried to picture Gabe in a black robe instead of a T-shirt, she could easily imagine him talking to kids about their mistakes, working with parents and social workers. He was a caretaker, yes, but one with authority. “Let’s see your judge face,” she said.

  Gabe furrowed his brow and peered down at her over his glasses, tightening his mouth. “Do you have anything to say on your behalf, young lady?”

  “Ouch!” she said. “I think you just burned a hole in my forehead.”

  “Yes, well, now you’ll be more accountable for your actions, won’t you?”

  “I will,” she promised, smiling. Then she thought of something. “Wait. But why were you at home on that Monday morning I was at your apartment? And again when I called today?”

  He shrugged. “I never take vacations, but I have to use up the days before the end of December. So I take most Mondays off. And that’s when I try to do volunteer work for the causes I believe in.” He pointed at the back of his own T-shirt.

  “You’re one of the good guys,” Elaine summarized. “Not a capitalist barfly like me. See, that’s why you’d be perfect for Ava. She’s a teacher and an artist, and she loves saving people like my wayward half sister. My nephews are really wonderful, you know,” she added loyally.

  “I’m sure they’re great. But, even if I were interested in Ava—which I’m not, lovely as she is—I have zero interest in being a replacement father, especially to teen boys.”

  “Ouch. That sounds pretty harsh.” Elaine stood up; the stone step was chilly on her bare legs and it was getting late.

  “Just being honest.”

  “I know. It’s fine. Really. Ava’s probably too busy to date now anyway, because she’s trying to find our brother.”

  Gabe linked his arm through hers again as they walked back toward the Harvard Square T stop. “What do you mean? What brother?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Elaine filled him in as they crossed the street and began threading their way through the crowds outside the Harvard Coop.

  “Sounds like your heart’s not in the search,” Gabe said once she’d finished. By now, they were standing by the frozen yogurt place near the subway entrance. A group of teen girls jostled around them, squealing as they passed a phone around and took pictures of themselves.

  “It’s not,” Elaine admitted. “I hope we never find him, actually.”

  She had expected Gabe to be critical, but again he surprised her. “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “You don’t?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve just lost your father. You’re an orphan now. That’s a mind-blowing event. It means there’s one less layer between us an
d whatever we think the hereafter has waiting for us. We all grieve that enormous rift in our own ways. Ava’s way might be to reach out and collect whatever new pieces of your dad she can find, while you guard yourself against fresh emotional onslaughts.”

  “Thank you,” Elaine said.

  “For what?”

  “For helping me feel normal. I don’t always feel normal around Ava. She’s so much better at coping with life than I am.”

  “That’s probably an illusion,” Gabe said. “We all have our soft underbellies. Ava just might not show hers as often as you do yours.”

  Elaine looked up at him and was startled again by the warmth in his eyes. “Funny. I would have said my soft underbelly is completely crusted over by now.”

  “There’s a lovely image,” Gabe said, making her laugh.

  She smiled, but wondered if he was right. Was she going soft? It was true that she’d felt more vulnerable lately. Before her father died, she had been living her life as if she’d figured everything out—work, family, friendships, even hot sex. Now everything felt precarious, even her relationship with Ava—always her true north.

  “Hey.” Gabe nudged her. “Why the glum face?” He pushed the subway turnstile for her and led the way to the inbound tracks. The air was immediately thick, hot, and rank.

  “I was wondering if I’d regret not helping Ava and Gigi with their search,” Elaine said, “and worrying about what will happen if they do find Peter and tell him I was against it.”

  “You’re worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet. I’m sure you’ll handle everything fine if you just take it slowly. Especially if you stay sober.”

  Gabe might as well have slapped her. Elaine felt her face burn and stopped walking so abruptly that he nearly ran into her. “Is that what this whole night was about?” she demanded. “A chance to issue some tired platitudes about the dangers of alcohol? Look, I’m not one of your juvies. Just because you get to play God on the bench doesn’t mean you can do it on a date.”