Open Water

by Maria Flook

  He sat down again in the tepid water. His guilt expanded like an apron of fungus; it ringed him with layers of cold truffles. He spent hours. Rennie claimed that it was the best seat in the house, and sometimes Willis had to let her use the tub. Her lavender bath salts scented the hall long after she was finished.

  Rennie didn’t tolerate Willis’s obsessive nature or recognize his sickness. When Willis became agitated, she punched his shoulder and said, “Fiddle-faddle.” Such a tenderness in fool words startled Willis. Then, if Willis felt like an argument, Rennie too quickly conceded his point. She liked to derail him. She told him, quite simply, “Touché.” She bowed at the waist. She was closing it off before he could build up his case.

  Lester’s heart attack occurred in the car, during a freak Easter snow squall. Willis and Lester were driving home late from a boat show at the Boston Garden. They were on empty stomachs. Heavy snowflakes fell on the windshield and collected like curls of white butter, mounding up in a solid mass. The wipers were working hard but they couldn’t fling the heavy snow. Lester pulled to the side of the road. He waited in the driver’s seat.

  “What are we doing?” Willis said.

  Lester looked at the white windshield as if he saw a face in the storm. He seemed to recognize this face but didn’t necessarily wish to greet it.

  “Why are we stopping? Here?” Willis said. Lester looked ready to answer Willis, but he cupped his shoulder in the palm of his hand and hunched forward in pain. It must have been a terrible crushing sensation in his chest, but worse than the sensation was the recognition. Lester knew what it meant to him, what it meant to his son.

  After it was over, Willis sat next to his father for several minutes. Willis tried to reconstruct events; he thought of the cabin cruisers in the Boston Garden. His father perished at this unexpected place, at an absurd moment, while they were tuned to the “Sports Huddle” on WHDH. For a long time, Willis sat listening to the voice of Eddie Andelman discussing Stanley Cup finalists. At last, Willis went around to the driver’s side and he shoved his father’s body out from behind the wheel. It was difficult to get him over on the passenger side, he was a big man. He was a dead man. When Willis stepped back into the car, the heavy snow sucked his shoes right off his feet. He explored the icy pedals through his wet socks. Willis thought of Lester joining up with Wydette. It wasn’t until then that he started screaming. He yelled to Wydette, “Look out! Look out! Look out!”

  He rode along the shoulder, testing the feel of it. He didn’t yet have his driver’s license. When he stepped on the brake, the car fishtailed on the fresh snow. He worked into the traffic and kept driving until he saw a road sign, a blue square with a large, iridescent H. Willis believed that the sign had appeared out of nowhere to help him deliver Lester directly to Hell. Willis followed the blue signs; he recited what Wydette used to say, her polite, hypnotic formula: H—E—two sticks, H—E—two sticks, H—E—two sticks, H—E—two sticks, H—E—two sticks.

  He kept spelling the word until he steered into the emergency entrance of a hospital in North Attleboro. Attendants took his father from the car. They pulled Willis into the bright reception area where they pressed him down into a wheelchair. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. What had happened to his shoes? they asked him. An attendant started to write on a chart. They asked him, “Are you under the influence of alcohol? In the past twenty-four hours, have you inhaled or ingested cocaine? Phencyclidine? Dust? Son, you can tell me, have you been using dust?”

  “He looks dusty,” another paramedic said.

  Dust. He knew what they were talking about. Willis had spent time with Lester at Narragansett Park. Back at the horse barns, they had watched a groom administer tranquilizers to a race horse. The pills were the size of golf balls. Before investing his money, Lester was researching the colt’s condition; he was asking about the horse’s knee.

  Its injured knee was the size of a grapefruit.

  The groom joked with Willis. “You have a mortar and pestle at home? Here. Grind one of these and you’ve got yourself an unbelievable buzz.” Then the nurses were shaking him. Willis wasn’t answering their questions. He was laughing with tears. The tears felt like hot wax and he wiped them away with the backs of his knuckles.

  At Lester’s funeral, Willis stood at the crest of a hill in White’s Monument Village. He tried to feel hate, but hate was too minimal a feeling, so he tried to feel pity. Nothing came naturally except for feeling nothing. Nothing had a greater complexity of emotions, its icy touch fell across several categories. When the priest asked for a moment of silence, closing his Bible on its snowy tassel, Willis tried to expectorate, but his saliva was thin and he couldn’t expel it. He stood in the cemetery next to the small monument where his mother was buried. He remembered her body in its maple coffin, her slender fingers laddered across her chest, her cheeks colored a horrid peach tone, like the stain on a cigar-store Indian. The funeral home didn’t know how to match her rich, honey coloring, her Santiago complexion. Then, his father was going in beside her. The murderer beside his victim.

  After the service, Rennie Hopkins waited to walk back to the car with Willis. “This is a sight,” she said. She was looking over the chalky rows. Willis recognized that two of her three husbands were sunk in the same graveyard, at opposite corners. Even the first one, Bill Hopkins, had his name on a marker commemorating Aquidneck Islanders LOST AT SEA. Rennie was shaking her head. She told Willis, “Every one of them thinks he’ll see me later on, in heaven. What am I going to do with that?”

  Willis was startled by her confession.

  “When I’m finished, remember, I want my service out at sea. Billy gets first dibs. Those other two—well, their spooks will have to swim out to find me,” she told him. Willis didn’t like being distracted from the cold and dismal plain of his own poor-me, but Rennie cornered him, and he felt his smile surfacing against his will. He tried to shake her off, but she increased her pace and her footsteps fell in stride with his. She didn’t say anything more. They sat down in the car and she drove back to the house. It was a beautiful April morning. Even Rennie, widowed for the third time, was taking greedy, deep breaths of the tingling air. The sea had a rich, floral perfume. Already Rennie was trying to imagine new ways to afford the taxes on their waterfront property. But she wouldn’t start thinking about money, yet. The air was sweet with chlorophyll scents. She told Willis, “Smell that? That’s the old reliable. That’s the plankton blooming.”

  After Lester’s death, Rennie went to Family Court and picked up a preprinted Petition for Adoption. Willis was over twelve years old and could nominate Rennie to be his guardian. She showed Willis the simple form, but he said, “I’m not signing anything.”

  She looked at him. “Is that so?”

  “What is this thing? It looks like a car title. Nobody’s going to get a pink slip for me. You can’t own me.”

  “What if it’s other way? What if this says you own me?”

  He rubbed the back of his cuff over his lips.

  “Who says I want to?”

  Rennie told him, “You can sleep on it.”

  Munro encouraged Rennie to give Willis over to the Department of Children, Youth, and Family Services. “He’ll do better in foster care, with two parents. You aren’t automatically his provider just because Lester Pratt is dead. You don’t have any legal obligation.”

  Rennie said, “Ebenezer lives!”

  After a two-day sulk, Willis signed the petition. She could see his relief when he made his decision. She watched him sign his name next to hers. She was smitten by the bold loops of his double l across the paper. He crossed his double t like a high hat. Rennie submitted the form to the Clerk of Rhode Island Family Court along with two adoption reports which confirmed basic information, such as their proper names and if the names were to be changed, their places of birth, occupations, schooling, and blood types. The court would process the petition, then send a team from the Family Court Investigative Unit to Easton
Way for a “home study.” After the home study, it might be a month to six weeks before their hearing was on the docket.

  But Munro had set a screwball in motion. He alerted the Family Court Investigative Unit of his contentions regarding the adoption and insisted that he be present when they visited Easton Way. He was told it wasn’t his privilege. He wasn’t a current resident of the home. Munro told them he had important information about Rennie’s incapacity to raise a teenage child. They agreed he could submit his concerns to them in writing.

  The day before the home study team was scheduled to visit, Willis and Rennie did a major cleaning job on the house. The kitchen linoleum was warped in the center and curled along the edges. Willis tacked the faded vinyl sheet, but the hump in the middle remained. They put a kitchen chair on it to keep it level. The chair looked ludicrous, alone in the middle of the room, so they moved the table.

  Rennie and Willis washed windows using newsprint soaked in white vinegar. Vinegar worked best on the accumulated salt scum. Willis worked on the outside, Rennie stood opposite. The windows were difficult to clean because they had divided panes. They were twelve over twelve, double hung, and the work was tedious. Halfway through, Willis dropped his sour rag and walked down to the beach. When the house couldn’t be improved beyond a certain point, Rennie helped Willis arrange his room so it looked organized, but “lived in.” “We don’t want to overdo it,” she told him.

  The next morning, Rennie boiled cranberries with three cups of sugar. She let the pot simmer for hours on the stove. The tart scent enveloped the house.

  Munro arrived first.

  “What are you doing here?” Rennie said.

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “I order you to leave.”

  “I’ll wait outside on the steps. That will look great.”

  Rennie sat down on her kitchen stool. “I’m sort of wild about this kid, don’t you see?”

  He looked at his mother. Rennie couldn’t tell if her confession had stung Munro or simply itched him. He told her, “You might think you like this kid, but you’re still in mourning. Just when haven’t you been in mourning? Christ. You don’t know what you’re doing. This kid isn’t going to bring back any of your husbands. Or get rid of me.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of you, exactly. Is that what you think? Is this about jealousy or money?”

  “Well, you don’t have too many resources, do you?”

  “Which resources?”

  “Don’t be poetical.”

  Rennie said, “I mean, in some cultures, sons are a prized resource.”

  He smiled at her. “I can’t sell you common sense for a penny, can I?”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Carole and I think this is a mistake.”

  “Your wife needs something more to do with her time.”

  Willis walked through the kitchen to the stove. He stirred the steaming berries, which had dissolved into a violent red pureed goo. He replaced the spoon on its china caddy. He lifted the pot from the burner by its two metal handles and walked it to Munro. He shifted the hot kettle on the pads of his fingers. “Get out of here now.”

  Munro backed a few steps away from the bubbling fruit.

  Rennie said, “Willis.”

  Willis kept walking toward Munro.

  “Relax, killjoy, I was leaving anyway.” Munro pushed out the kitchen door and trotted down the porch steps.

  Willis returned the kettle to the stove. He blew the heat off his fingertips. He rinsed them under the tap.

  The Family Court Investigative Team arrived and toured the house. The day was clear. A Citgo tanker was moving into the channel. Gulls dipped on the wind like newsprint party hats, and the official mood seemed optimistic. One of the social workers asked Willis questions about the adoption petition to make sure his signature wasn’t coerced. He volunteered to show them his handwriting and rolled a ballpoint over the back of an envelope. Of course, she had not asked him if his signature was forged, and she explained the difference to him to be sure he understood. Munro had given the court an impression that Willis wanted to be placed in foster care. She said, “You know, some boys go to the Farley School. It has an indoor swimming pool. Or, there’s an exam for gifted students. We get them early admission at LaSalle Vocational School.”

  Willis nodded.

  “You know what?” she went on. “Some of these foster families have multiple vehicles. Kids can use these vehicles when they get their license.”

  Willis shrugged.

  They questioned Rennie’s intentions, her long-term view. “It’s our understanding that you are single, Miss Hopkins?”

  “Single? Oh, please,” Rennie said. “I’m widowed. Thrice.”

  “What we mean to say—this is a single-parent household?” the social worker said. “We have to take into consideration the absence of a male role model.”

  The other social worker said, “Your son, Mr. Hopkins, does he have any interest in Willis?”

  Rennie said, “He’s not your typical Big Brother.”

  “Do you see a problem there?”

  Rennie agreed it might be a problem.

  The social workers left Willis with the impression he had free-agent status. He could decide for himself what he wanted to do. If he didn’t like how Rennie fussed over him and was attracted to the anonymity he would gain by entering the social system, they would arrange it for him. He tested Rennie’s commitment by running through his options out loud at dinner. He stirred his minestrone until a pasta bow tie surfaced and he collected it in the bowl of his spoon.

  “That Farley School sounds good, it has a pool,” he told her. “Some foster kids get their own cars.”

  Rennie shook some vinegar over the sliced tomatoes. “I’m listening,” she said. “It’s real Academy Award material.”

  “I’m just telling you what they told me.”

  Their petition was put on the docket and their hearing scheduled for the end of May. Rennie and Willis stood at the hearing in Newport County Family Court before Judge Yarborough. The warm spring wind was blowing into the room through the floor-length windows and Willis could hear the halyards clanging in Dyer’s Boatyard. “We don’t have the usual adoption surrender because both parents are dead, is that right?” Rennie nodded. The judge recognized that Rennie was the very Renate Hopkins whose husbands had drowned in separate offshore accidents. He seemed genuinely impressed by her desire to adopt the orphan, yet he couldn’t mask his curiosity about the nature of Lester’s death.

  “Now, Mr. Pratt wasn’t fishing out of his home port, was he? His crew was out of New Bedford? Mattapoisett? Was it Galilee?”

  “Lester didn’t fish,” Rennie said. She smiled at the judge.

  The judge pushed his papers around on the table in front of him. “Of course, you’re right. It says here ‘heart attack,’ excuse me.”

  “Excused,” she said.

  Judge Yarborough turned to Willis. “You attend Rogers High School?”

  Willis said he did.

  “You like your big place out there on Easton Beach?”

  “It’s good,” Willis said.

  “Just good?”

  “Sure. I like the beach,” Willis said. He didn’t like being under the microscope. Rennie didn’t think he was thinking about Wydette or Lester, he just wanted to be through with it.

  Judge Yarborough asked him if he accepted all the terms of the petition. Willis said, “I do.” He was instantly horrified by the familiar idiom. How had he managed to say it? The judge laughed at his alarm.

  Afterwards, Rennie took him to the snack counter at the Tennis Hall of Fame and bought him a nine-dollar lobster roll. She told him, “Don’t think this is going to be within reach all the time.”

  He looked across at her. She was some kind of obstacle but he didn’t know what kind she was. She was building up before his eyes like one of those mysterious stalagmites he’d read about. She was unfathomable and beautiful a
nd there forever.

  He tried to keep some distance from her, and he hated it when Rennie answered his questions before he even had the chance to ask them.

  “There’s a twenty on the sideboard,” she told him.

  Were his empty pockets screaming?

  He couldn’t understand her ready-made loyalty to him. He watched her fold his laundry. She smoothed the sleeves of his shirts, tucked the wayward collars, shook out the pant legs of his jeans, their knees bleached and stringy, as if the empty clothes reeked of a sweet substance.

  Rennie knew he was settling down with her when Willis adopted Bill Hopkins. Of all the ghosts he could choose from, Bill Hopkins had the most glamour. Willis latched onto him as his one paternal figure. Rennie had told Willis all about the Teresa Eve. Then, Willis went to the lending library at the Seaman’s Institute and borrowed the transcript of the Coast Guard hearing. He studied the pages until he knew more than Rennie. The hearing transcript stated: “No attempt is made to fix blame.” They could find “no actionable misconduct.” “No failure of equipment.”

  Willis said, “Don’t you think any time a ship is lost, the finger points to the skipper?”

  “Maybe,” Rennie said.

  “They questioned the skipper’s wife, Dolores. Did you know this Dolores?”

  Rennie said, “I knew her. Poor girl. They asked her what the skipper had told her about his plans. What did they think he said to his wife? ‘Honey, I’m going to load it up past the rails?’ ”

  Willis said, “Captain Alberelli from New Bedford was behind Billy in the Karen and Marcy. Little Eden was to the south a-ways and she steamed in when she heard it on the radio. Then it was a free-for-all, four draggers came over. Let’s see, it was the Josephine G., the Caroline, the Viking II. They helped search through midnight; by then they had the Coast Guard utility boats and their big cutter, Bittersweet. There was nothing to be seen. Not a plank. Nothing surfaced. It was just too black. Next day, they had divers from the National Marine Fisheries Service come in to investigate the wreck. She was in a hundred and thirty feet. They took short ten-minute dives because of the depth. What can you find out in ten minutes?”