by Luanne Rice
“Great!” Bonnie said, oddly let down. She was so used to helping Cass: soothing her, giving her support, listening to her talk about Josie. Sometimes Bonnie thought that she gave so smoothly, her sisters didn’t realize how much she needed back.
But Cass came around the tank, shook the water off her hands, and gave Bonnie a bone-squeezing handshake. “Sure, a boat launch is exciting,” Cass said, shaking Bonnie’s whole arm. “But we’re talking business launch here. I can say I was there on the ground floor.”
“Thanks, Cass,” Bonnie said, genuinely touched.
“And there’s nowhere to go but up, sistah. Stah. Star.” Cass stopped midway. “Well, look who’s here! Speak of the bride … What’s this? No honeymoon?”
Nora stepped into the tank room, sheepish, gazing at her sisters through newly feathered bangs. “We’re going to Savannah for two weeks in the spring; neither one of us could really get away from work now. Are you two mad?”
“Mad? Just because you didn’t invite us to your wedding? Are we mad, Cass?”
“Oh, nothing the ritual dunking of the bride won’t cure.” Cass swept magnanimously toward Nora, her arms extended.
“What ritual?” Nora asked, pulling back as first Cass, then Bonnie hugged her.
“It’s a little tradition, dates back to the early days of Mount Hope, sort of a play on the love-and-war theme.” Bonnie pulled her toward the lobster tank. Nora, elegant in cranberry cashmere, dug in her heels.
“Yeah, we love you, but this is war. You don’t ask your sisters to your wedding, you get dunked,” Cass said.
“Please, guys,” Nora said, laughing, then moving forward, as if she’d decided to give in. “Let me take off this sweater, will you? It cost a fortune. God, I just had my hair done yesterday …”
Suddenly, Cass stopped fooling around. She reached for Nora, pulled her close in a big hug. Bonnie looked on, surprised to feel tears in her eyes.
“I’m so happy for you,” Cass said.
“Thank you, both of you,” Nora said, as Bonnie moved forward.
“Tell us about it,” Cass said. “Belinda said you were beautiful.”
“They are so terrific, those girls,” Nora said. “They made me realize how much I wish you two had been there.”
“We wish that, too,” Cass said. “But …”
“But …” Bonnie said. She started to cry, realizing how hurt she had felt. Wiping away tears, she caught Cass doing the same thing. Looking into each other’s eyes, they started to laugh. Nora joined in, sounding sheepish.
“I was a jerk,” Nora said.
Instead of contradicting her, Cass and Bonnie hugged her harder. Then Cass found herself checking her watch. “I’d better go. Billy’s waiting.”
“Who’s going to the boat?” Bonnie asked Cass.
“Me and Josie, I guess. There’s no way I’d ever drag T.J. away from the phone this time of day, and Belinda’s studying for a test.”
“Leave Josie with me,” Bonnie offered.
“Are you sure?” Josie was playing quietly on the stairs, trying to get Barbie to surf on the back of a sand crab that had escaped from a tank.
Bonnie closed one eye as she figured out her schedule. “Sure. I have to pick up the kids at six. Does that give you enough time?”
“Definitely. I have to be home to feed mine before then.”
“Go launch.”
“Launch?” Nora asked.
“Billy’s boat,” Cass said, and Bonnie saw she could barely hold in her pride. “Today’s the day.”
“Wow,” Nora said, shaking her head. “I was so wrapped up in me and Willis, I had no idea Billy was even close. I thought maybe next season …”
“See?” Cass said, edging for the door. “That’s the thing about eloping. You miss all those family-get-together news highlights like boat launches, speech therapists, Mom’s sore back, Dad’s retirement plans …”
“Stop,” Nora said, holding up her hand. “You’ll make me feel worse.”
“Worse? I was trying to make you feel better,” Cass said, blowing a kiss, disappearing out the door.
20
Cass walked along the waterfront from Keating’s Wharf to the Mount Hope Boatyard. She knew Billy had a surprise planned because he’d kept her from visiting the boat the last few times she’d asked. Cass had seen her three weeks ago: out of the water, in the cradle, patchy below the water line, the bottom paint scraped off. Billy had had a long way to go to make her seaworthy.
She saw the boatyard two piers away, the black spars of a windjammer silhouetted by the tawny sunset. Her pace increased as she got closer. The cradle where Billy’s boat had been was empty: two weathered wooden supports standing bare in the yard. Then, hearing a whistle, she looked toward the water. Billy waved to her from the dock. “Over here,” he called.
Cass ducked her head against the bitter cold and ran over. The bib of her oilskin overalls scooped the wind inside; with both hands she held it close against her chest. She caught sight of Billy’s face: he had that look he’d get on her birthday and Christmas, when he knew in advance she was going to love her present. So she kept her eyes from the boat, suspended by webbing from the Travelift fifteen feet away. She made a show of holding her right hand like a blinder to her face.
“Don’t look,” Billy said.
“I have to.” Cass sneaked a peek; she spied a white hull and cabin, red trim, glistening brass. “Wow,” she said, covering her eyes again. Billy came over to her. His dark curls tossed in the wind, and his eyes held hers.
“This is it, eh?” Cass asked. “Billy Medieros’s boat.” She felt herself grinning so wide she thought her face would crack. From the minute she’d met him, she had thought of Billy as a sailor, and now she was going to help him launch his own boat. He slid his hand between her overalls and the wool plaid jacket; he tugged the small of her back, and she bumped his pelvis.
“Hey, Billy,” she said. She had never seen him like this, so totally confident in his own power. Their marriage, the children’s births … When the babies were born he had held them for the camera, paraded them before the relatives, but there had been a tentativeness that bordered on reserve, as if he were overwhelmed, a little unsure of himself.
No reserve here. Billy held Cass close, looked her straight on, couldn’t stop smiling. Finally, he held his hand over her eyes like a blindfold. “Watch it … I have you … there’s a rock,” he said, leading her across the gravel-strewn yard.
He let Cass’s own excitement carry her body forward, then he stopped her momentum, one hand gripping her shoulder, with a flourish. She swayed, but he held her. He took his other hand away from her eyes.
CASSANDRA
MOUNT HOPE, R.I.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
“What do you think?” Billy asked.
“I can’t believe it,” Cass said, thinking how every girl in Mount Hope grows up wishing her sweetheart would name a boat after her, and now it had happened.
“Take her down!” Billy yelled to Pete Turner, the old guy operating the boat lift. The machinery creaked, and wind zinged through the elaborate webbing as Pete lowered the swinging boat into the choppy water. She rocked at her berth as the webbing was disengaged and the yard guys made her fast to the dock.
“Who are those men on our boat?” she asked proprietarily.
“Hang on,” Billy said. “I’ll be right back.”
Cass watched him run across the yard to his truck. He opened the driver’s door and disappeared inside, searching for something on the floor.
“A big day for Billy,” Pete Turner said, climbing down from the lift. “He’s been like a little kid, waiting for this.”
“You’re a boat owner, Pete,” Cass said. “You know how it feels.”
“I sure do. They say the two happiest days in a man’s life are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells it,” Pete said. Pete was a grizzle-faced codger not much younger than Cass’s father, and he played the role of
Yankee cynic to perfection. When he retired, the Mount Hope chamber of commerce would have to train someone to take his place.
“What about the day he launches it?” Cass asked.
“That’s the best of all,” Pete said. “Billy stood over my shoulder, watching me paint your name on the transom. I told him I’ve painted ten boat names this year alone, and if he didn’t like the job I was doing, here’s the paintbrush.”
“You did a great job.”
“Well thanks, Cass,” Pete said, heading into the boat shed. Billy hurried over, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
“To break over the bow?” Cass asked.
“I thought we’d drink it first and smash the empty bottle, but someone beat us to it.” He turned the uncorked bottle upside down. Bits of gold foil fell out.
“Uh-oh,” Cass said. T.J. Somehow she knew, with unfailing clairvoyant certainty, that T.J. had crossed a new and extravagantly forbidden teenage threshold: drinking his father’s champagne in his father’s truck.
“I’ve been noticing all the gum wrappers,” Billy said, “but I didn’t think much of it. I’m going to kill the little shit. I buy champagne and it isn’t even New Year’s Eve, and my goddamn son drinks it.”
“I don’t like this,” Cass said. “Stealing your truck and drinking? I don’t like it at all.”
“That’s the last time I leave my keys home.”
“Let me see the label,” Cass said, grabbing the bottle.
“Perrier-Jouët,” Billy said.
“We’ll kill him,” Cass said, nodding. She tapped Billy’s wrist.
“But we’ll get him later, okay?”
Billy shrugged, his eyes sullen until he looked at his boat.
“Take me onboard?” Cass asked.
This boat had been known around Mount Hope as a tub. George Magnano had bought her cheap in Louisiana and converted her on his own for the North Atlantic. Her steam-bent ribs gave her a round belly, and broadside waves could roll her the way they never would a deep-keeled dragger.
Cass walked through the wheelhouse, which was filled with electronic navigation equipment, a digital fishfinder, his rifle for shooting sharks, a chart table, and a framed photo of Cass and the kids.
Touched, Cass climbed down the companion ladder and crossed the compact galley. The main saloon, where the crew would eat meals and relax off-watch, had a wooden table gimbaled to stay level during the worst storms, and benches covered with scratchy brown-plaid covers.
“George left those,” Billy said.
“I would never have guessed!” Cass responded.
“You don’t like them?”
“Aren’t they a little brown?”
“I like brown,” Billy said. He sounded slightly brisk, and Cass realized that he felt so proud of every aspect of this boat, he couldn’t even admit George had stuck him with some ugly seat covers.
She walked through the crew’s quarters and looked into the head, and then she came to Billy’s cabin. He had hung jackets and foul-weather gear from hooks, put paperbacks and tide tables in the hanging net shelf and bedding on the bunk.
“You’re ready to go?” she asked, surprised.
“I want to get fishing right away,” he said. “It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been out, and I’m afraid of falling behind. It’s already November. There’s not much fishing weather left.”
“We have enough in the bank. I just didn’t expect … I didn’t know you were this close to launching,” Cass said.
“I’ve been riding hard on Pete to get her in,” Billy said. “Now that she’s launched, I don’t want her sitting idle. She’s costing me too much money.”
“I’ve gotten used to having you home at night,” Cass said, moving into Billy’s arms.
“It’s like another life,” Billy said, stroking her hair. “I don’t want to get too used to it.”
“No, we might never give it up.”
Billy stretched out on his bunk, one arm bent behind his head. The reading light cast a warm cone of light on the pillow. “Let’s break this boat in right,” he said, the corners of his lips turning up.
“I only get crazy in our own bed now,” Cass said, lying beside him. “No more funny stuff. Bonnie says we’re middle-aged suburbanites.”
“Yeah?” Billy asked, unhooking her overalls.
“Middle-aged,” Cass said, kissing him. “Suburbanites.”
“You on your back, me on top?” Billy asked, his tongue tracing her earlobe.
“Twice a month.”
“Once in February, cause it’s short.”
“Like I said, no more kinky stuff,” Cass said.
“And only in the dark with our socks on,” Billy said, reaching up to switch off the light.
“I want to see you,” Cass said, turning it back on.
With Billy unzipping her fly, Cass wriggled out of her shirt. She lay on her back, her arms folded beneath her head. Billy lowered his head to her breasts; one flick of his tongue, and she felt her nipples harden.
She reached around his back to untuck his shirt. Then she began unbuttoning it—one button at a time, taking her time, sliding her cool hands up his narrow waist, across his belly, into his dark tangle of chest hair.
Their mouths found each other, their kisses familiar and wild all at once. The bed, though large for a bunk, was cramped. A small heater blew warm air that was instantly consumed by the musty chill; Cass snuggled against Billy as he pulled both their pants down to their knees. Cass’s boots kept hers from sliding off. Billy leaned down, to ease her boots off, but Cass stopped him.
“Let’s not get all the way undressed,” Cass said, breathless.
“You cold?” Billy asked.
“Yes, but that’s not why. It’s more exciting, like we’re in a hurry this way.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, his hand closing over Cass’s wrist as she freed his hard dick, pushed it into the purple wetness between her legs. “Cause we are,” Cass said. “In a hurry.”
Now he tried to touch her, to rub her with his fingers, but she pushed his hand away, behind her, so it rested on her back. She wanted to lie smack against his body, with no space between them. He understood; with one hand on the small of her back, the other between her shoulder blades, he held her close.
“Like that?”
“Tighter,” she said.
They were breathing hard now, lying sideways, her leg slung over his hips, the toe of her boot wedged under his ass. They thrust in a rough rhythm, their pelvises slapping, like water hitting the hull.
She hung on to her husband, feeling him hard against and inside her; when he started to hold his breath, his movements became more urgent, and she knew he was about to come. When he was very close, when she felt the rhythm change, she reached down between their legs, to touch the spot where his penis entered her body.
She grasped him for one final, shuddering second. Then, when he lay still, she brought her fingers, salty with their juices, to his mouth, and trailed them across his lips.
“You,” Billy said.
“No, us.”
“I mean, it’s your turn.” Still breathing hard, he reached down, to touch her. Again, she pushed his hand away.
“That’s not what I want right now,” she said, gazing into his eyes.
“Then what? What do you want?”
“I have it.” With her arms around his neck, she gave him a long kiss, tasting the salt on his tongue. “What I want. Right here. I want you.”
“I think he’s going to marry her,” came Alison’s whispery voice over the phone.
“Really? Shit,” T.J. said, lying in his bed, the receiver clamped to his ear.
“He hasn’t exactly said so, but when he took me out to dinner, he was telling me how much I’m going to like her, how much we have in common. He said she can’t wait to play me in tennis. Can you believe that?”
“He’s gotta be kidding.”
“There is no way I’ll ever visit him if she’s there.�
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“No way. He’s crazy.”
“His condo is actually pretty nice. The bathroom’s black marble, and it has a TV and a sound system. And a Jacuzzi.”
“He has his own Jacuzzi?” T.J. said. He imagined sitting in a black marble Jacuzzi with Alison.
“It’s big enough for two,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“He says he’s taking me to Florida for Christmas, but there’s no way if she’s going.”
“Florida for Christmas?” T.J. asked, sitting a little straighter. This was the first he’d heard of it.
“Yeah. My parents own a condo in Florida. They’re going to have to sell it, but until the divorce my father gets it for Christmas and my mother and I get it for February vacation.”
“You think he’s probably going to take her to Florida for Christmas? His girlfriend, I mean?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. I think she actually lives with him up here, there’s so much of her stuff around. She probably just gets out when I come over.”
“Then I definitely wouldn’t go to Florida,” T.J. said. The idea of being apart from Alison for as long as she would be in Florida was too terrible to imagine. “I think it would be a lousy idea, you going to Florida. He’d probably expect you to play tennis with her and all.”
Alison didn’t reply. “Alison?” he said.
He heard the sharp breath, and he knew she was crying. “Alison? Alison, don’t cry.”
“We used to go,” she whispered. “All of us, every Christmas.”
“You did?” T.J. couldn’t imagine spending Christmas in Florida—sand instead of snow, the water summer-blue instead of choppy gunmetal-gray.
“Yeah.” She couldn’t talk. T.J. hated it when she cried on the phone. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her tears away. But it made him feel bad, that she was crying so hard about not going to Florida this year. He knew she hated her parents’ divorce, that she wanted them all together, especially at Christmas. But how could she stand the idea of spending so much time away from him?
“I’m coming over,” he said. “Just hang on. Look out your window in twenty minutes. Fifteen.”
