Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  The following day she returned to the bar on Green Turtle Cay for cocktails. And again the day after that, traveling aboard the mid-afternoon ferry from Treasure Cay.

  “How are you?” McGuire asked when Barbara Mayall entered the bar the third time and settled herself on a stool directly in front of him.

  “In free fall,” she answered. “Got anything for that?”

  “Sorry.” McGuire offered a tight smile. “No parachutes.”

  “What if I get drunk enough so I don’t care whether I come down or not?”

  “Just might work.” McGuire held up a bottle of tequila. “With orange juice, right?”

  They talked through the fading light of day while the harsh Caribbean sunshine mellowed into dusk. McGuire mixed tequila sunrises and listened to Barbara Mayall describe her father’s villa on Treasure Cay and how he had offered its use for as long as she needed it.

  “Which might be the rest of my life,” she confided. The admission clouded her face. She turned away from him to blink at the oversized navigation charts displayed on the far wall, her eyes shining.

  McGuire watched her carefully, admiring how loose strands of her blond hair swept in gentle waves across her forehead and above her wide-set pale green eyes. He found her surpassingly attractive and when she lowered her head and continued to blink spasmodically, he handed her a tissue. “Have you seen the view of the harbour up behind the boathouse?” he asked as she brought it to her eyes.

  She whispered, “No.”

  McGuire called across to the bar manager to announce he was taking an hour’s break. Then, leading her by the hand, he guided her through the kitchen, out the rear entrance of the bar and up a series of wooden steps to a tired white wicker loveseat set on a small terrace. She sat and rested her head on his shoulder and together they watched the yachts and day-sailors glide in and out of the harbour below them. McGuire said nothing and twice, when her body shuddered in long avalanches of silent sobs, he tightened his arm around her and she hid her eyes against his chest.

  When she rose to leave a half hour later, she kissed him on the cheek and promised to return the next day.

  And she had. And each day since.

  Over the next two weeks, McGuire grew familiar with the many small details of her being. Her habit of biting her bottom lip before permitting a wistful smile to appear and display perfect snow-white teeth. The graceful line of her shoulders and the blush of tan across her back, bared in her cutaway summer dresses. Her small hands, a child’s hands on a woman’s body. The thin line of once-sheltered skin, like pale ivory, across her ring finger.

  On the day Cora Godwin died, McGuire was not scheduled to work his regular evening shift in the bar. As they had planned the previous day, Barbara arrived at Green Turtle Cay on the afternoon ferry carrying an overnight bag. She climbed the hill to his cabin where McGuire waited, slouched on the porch in a faded canvas director’s chair, reading a novel by a Spanish-American writer and sipping vodka and soda. From within the cabin soared the music of Paul Desmond, the jazz musician’s alto saxophone swooping through the melody of a Cole Porter ballad.

  He rose to kiss her gently and she teased him, first clinging to him, then giggling and pushing him away as his hands moved down her back to the swell of her hips. He mixed her a drink and they sat together on the porch, talking and watching the sun disappear somewhere beyond Florida. Then they changed into bathing suits and walked down the east side of the hill to Ocean Beach carrying a blanket and canvas bag containing T-shirts, towels, fresh bananas, apples and figs, a bottle of California Chardonnay, a corkscrew and two plastic tumblers.

  At the beach they spread the blanket over the talcum-textured sand in a location sheltered by wild bougainvillea and lay back to marvel at the rising moon, impossibly brilliant in the cloudless night sky. They ate the figs, drank most of the wine, counted the stars, danced with words among personal memories both sweet and bitter, made love and fell asleep wrapped in the blanket and themselves.

  When dawn arrived they rose and swam naked in the chilly South Atlantic water. Then, gathering their belongings, they donned their swimsuits and began walking barefoot along the beach, bathed in the warmth of the Bahamian dawn. McGuire wore a faded brown plaid bathing suit topped with a torn Buffalo Bills football jersey. Barbara wore a two-piece blue swimsuit beneath a diaphanous lacy cover-up whose hem danced in the breeze from the ocean.

  At one point Barbara stopped and gave him a mock menacing look. “Kiss this face,” she said, and when he did she laughed and hugged him tightly.

  Reaching the northern end of the beach, McGuire paused at a break in the line of bougainvillea marking the edge of the sand and the beginning of the wild sawgrass, where a path of crushed seashells meandered around the foot of the hill back to the sheltered inner harbour. The corners of McGuire’s eyes crinkled in the sun and he nodded toward the path. “Coffee,” he said simply.

  “At the restaurant?” Barbara asked. She raised her hand to his tanned face and traced, with one long-nailed forefinger, the white scar across his upper lip.

  “Hot and black,” McGuire nodded. “And fried eggs. With bacon.”

  “You make it sound better than sex,” she said, and at his glance she threw her head back in laughter so the low rays of the sun hatched a suing of emeralds in her eyes. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and for several moments they stood that way, the sun caressing their backs, the ocean roaring empty threats at their feet, the air around them blessedly warm and clear and strangely resonant.

  At the harbourside restaurant, the first stragglers from the tourist villas skirting the shoreline were arriving for breakfast, and the restaurant manager, a Bahamian named Lewis McIntosh, separated himself from one of the tables to approach McGuire, his face solemn.

  “Lawyer, his name Leedale, he called last night,” said McIntosh. He nodded to Barbara and withdrew a note from his shirt pocket and handed it to McGuire. “I wrote what he said to me, word by word, and this is it.”

  McGuire unfolded the paper and read the message, scribbled in pencil:

  If you are related to one Cora Meriwether Godwin, formerly Cora McGuire, I regret to inform you of her death yesterday. A memorial service will be held Wednesday at two in the afternoon at St. Luke’s Episcopalian Church, Compton, Massachusetts. Mrs. Godwin specifically requested your presence. Reading of the will in the office of Hirons & Leedale the following day at ten in the morning. Kindly reply by Tuesday. Parker Leedale, Attorney-at-Law.

  McGuire read it twice, once silently to himself and once aloud to Barbara.

  “I’m sorry,” Barbara said, reaching across to touch his arm with her small hand.

  McGuire smiled and nodded.

  “Who was she?”

  “My aunt. My father’s sister. She was a good woman. She taught me a lot of bad habits. Like how to be stubborn. And how to demand honesty from everybody, especially myself. How not to give a damn what other people thought about me. Terrible stuff like that.” He looked out across the water and smiled. “Do you know what she said when she heard that the police academy gave me a special proficiency award when I graduated?”

  Barbara watched, waiting for him to continue.

  “She said, ‘Isn’t that clever of them?’” He looked at her and shook his head at the memory. “Cora was a sweetheart. Crusty as hell on the outside maybe, but inside . . .”

  “You won’t go, will you?” Barbara asked.

  “Have to.”

  “But why?” Her voice acquired an edge, like a honed knife.

  “Something I should do for her. Something I should’ve done a long time ago, when she was alive.”

  “How much difference will it make now? To her? How much difference will it make to her if you go or not?”

  McGuire turned and smiled. He reached for her shoulders but she stepped away so only his fingertips made contact.
“It’ll just be for a few days,” he said. “I’ll be back by the weekend. I wouldn’t feel right not going.”

  “What if I said I didn’t want you to go?” She raised her chin and her face hardened. “What if I said I just might not be here when you return?”

  He ignored the threat. “Would you like to come with me?”

  “No.” She folded her arms and turned her back to him, staring out at the harbour. “I don’t want to leave here. I’m not ready to leave. Even with you.”

  “Then please wait while I do something that’s important to me.”

  Her eyes snapped to his. “Aren’t I important to you?” she demanded.

  Oh hell, McGuire said to himself. Has it come to this already? Yes, it has, he replied silently. He stepped to her and wrapped her in his arms, overcoming her mild resistance.

  “Listen to me,” he said softly. “You don’t need to know the details, but I never really had a family. Not a mother who gave a damn or a father who was ever home. Except for Cora, my father’s sister. She married a good man, she moved out to the Cape and she taught me more than anyone else about how to behave like a decent human being. I’ve always owed her for that. And I never paid her back. So this is my last chance.”

  “I really need you so badly right now,” Barbara said. “I don’t have any real strength any more, and I need yours.”

  “You got it,” McGuire replied. “When I get back, you’ll have all you need.”

  “Why did her lawyer track you down here?” Barbara demanded. It was late in the afternoon and they were seated on the ocean side of McGuire’s cabin, sipping orange juice. Her eyes were red-rimmed but she was calm. They both stared out at the water as they talked. “You don’t have to be there for the reading of her will, do you? Can’t they send you a copy of it or something?”

  “I’m her only living relative,” McGuire shrugged.

  “Really?”

  “She had a son, Terry. He was drafted, reported MIA in Vietnam, last seen storming a mortar emplacement. Her husband Earl died a few years later. Earl went downhill from the day they heard about Terry. Never got over it. Cora was my father’s only sister, Earl was an orphan.” He shrugged. “I’m all that’s left.”

  “Okay, I understand why you have to go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I don’t like it.”

  “Won’t exactly be a day at the circus for me either.”

  “You just think I’m on the rebound, don’t you?”

  McGuire breathed deeply and turned to look away from her, saying nothing, wrapped in his thoughts.

  “Well, maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe a year ago, a year from now, I wouldn’t have given you a second glance. But right now . . .” She faltered. “Right now, I can’t imagine staying here without seeing you every day. Just to trade a joke or go for a walk, you know?”

  “We’ve done a hell of a lot more than that,” McGuire said.

  “Yes, we have.” She tossed her head back and closed her eyes. “Was that so bad?”

  “Bad? It was terrific.” McGuire turned to look at her, the sun highlighting the crow’s-feet at his eyes.

  She smiled at the sight of him like that, his face shining and the fine hair at his temples shimmering like silver. Then she rose to kiss him, open-mouthed and hungry.

  Chapter Three

  It would be a snakes-and-ladders journey from Green Turtle Cay to Cape Cod, a series of short hops and slow crawls by ferry, taxicab, commuter propeller aircraft and scheduled jetliner.

  For McGuire, no part of the journey would be longer than the walk down the hill from his cabin to the dock, an overnight bag over his shoulder and Barbara clenching his hand.

  “I’m giving you three days,” she said, leaning toward him and kissing his ear. “Then I’m coming after you.” She wore a red gingham blouse tied at the waist above beltless jeans that clung to the lower half of her body like a lover. On her feet were woven leather sandals scattered with rhinestones that exploded suddenly in the sunlight.

  “I won’t need that long,” McGuire grumbled. He was tense, like someone waiting in an empty house for the doorbell to ring. Leaving Barbara was a penance, payment due for the unexpected joy he had experienced. You always pay for happiness somehow, McGuire believed. “The funeral’s tomorrow, the will’s being read the next day. I’ll be back on the weekend.” He guided her around a sharp turn in the path.

  When they reached a switchback, Barbara stopped, gripped his arm until he turned to her, and held him in the focus of her eyes.

  “The ferry’s coming in,” he said, avoiding her gaze.

  She looked over his shoulder at the approach of one of the new ferry boats which had replaced the old converted island freighter that had plied the strait between the cays for years. The new ferries were small, fast and unquestionably ugly, their windowed cabin boasting all the aesthetics of a shoe box. As she watched, one of them, painted green and white, rumbled its way between a fleet of sports fishing boats anchored in the marina.

  “It’ll wait,” Barbara said.

  McGuire looked from the ferry into her eyes.

  A lonely middle-aged man often discovers women he believes he should have married. They are always younger than himself, yet equal or superior to him in many ways: in their carriage, their apparent self-assurance, the easy manner they have in performing the smallest obligations of life. As he grew older, McGuire encountered more of these women in street cafés, airport lounges and passing taxicabs and on the arms of younger, less deserving men. The women were suddenly there in the sweep of his vision and then were gone, leaving only a brief smile, a whiff of perfume, a small gesture with their hand as fleeting proof of their existence.

  After the collapse of McGuire’s second marriage, they also left behind a realization that weighed heavily on his chest, as though the air in his lungs had been replaced by water. It was the recognition that his life had been, and would continue to be, haphazard and somehow more unfair than it should.

  To McGuire, Barbara had been one of those women from the first moment she entered the bar at Green Turtle Cay. Her beauty fascinated and almost inhibited him, and her family’s immense wealth added to the intrigue by making her appear unattainable. But when he responded to her pain with sensitivity, he shattered the social barriers between them. He became a source of strength to her and Barbara’s hunger for him promised in turn to correct the imbalance of his life.

  She symbolized an escape, perhaps, from the stoked rage that burned within McGuire and, because he was a man who had long ago replaced happiness with hope, he loved and feared her for it.

  “I’ll be here when you return,” she said, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

  They continued down the path toward the harbour. Bertrand, the cocky young Bahamian who operated the dive shop and won money from tourists in all-night backgammon marathons, was pulling his boat away from the pier while the divers checked their air tanks. Bertrand’s black mongrel dog sat upright in the bow, his pink tongue tasting the wind. A two-masted schooner, its sails furled and small inboard engine humming, was threading its way between other boats into the harbour, its dinghy following like an obedient animal. The scratchy cries of the pair of parrots that nested in a grove of trees at the end of the harbour echoed over the water, and McGuire watched the birds fly in tandem past his line of sight, their red and blue plumage almost too brilliant to be real.

  My God, I’m leaving all of this, McGuire realized. Why? he wondered. Why, even for a few days?

  “You’re staying in Boston tonight?” Barbara gripped his hand, extending one arm for balance as they slid down the last short, steep incline of the path.

  “With an old buddy and his wife.” McGuire followed the birds as they swooped and glided above the trees. “My former partner.”

  “The man who’s paralyzed?”

  “Yes.”
He took his eyes from the parrots and watched the ferry ease into the dock. Three guests of the Green Turtle Club, preparing for their return to the mainland after a week’s stay on the Cay, sat wearily on their luggage at the end of the pier.

  “You’ll enjoy that,” she said, trying to encourage him.

  “Probably.”

  “Joe?” She stopped at the bottom of the hill, above the dock. “I’m going to say goodbye here, okay? Not on the pier with all those people around.”

  “What’ll you do the rest of the day?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Go for a walk on Ocean Beach. Catch the night ferry back to Treasure Cay. Read a book. Think about you.”

  They kissed again, awkwardly this time, both wanting more than they dared to take. Then she ducked her head and turned to ascend the hill again.

  From the open rear deck of the ferry, as it tore a ragged wake across the water, McGuire watched her standing at the switchback halfway up the hill, one arm raised and waving for him to see until the ferry rounded the peninsula and the town of New Plymouth and she was gone from sight.

  The journey continued with a cab ride from the Treasure Cay ferry dock to the airport and a bumpy flight on a Bahamair Twin Cessna to Fort Lauderdale. After a surly customs official inspected each pocket of McGuire’s luggage and clothing, the trip resumed with a maddening wait at the airport, three hours in the cramped seat of a DC-9 to Boston and thirty minutes in the back of a rattletrap cab before McGuire arrived at Revere Beach with a headache and a sense of loss, a feeling that he had taken a wrong exit somewhere on a road he didn’t know and had never intended to travel.

  But the sight of the small white frame house belonging to Ollie and Ronnie Schantz cheered him, and Ronnie was out the door and running down the walk while McGuire was still paying the cab fare. She wrapped him in her arms and squeezed him until he asked her to stop, then she held his head in her hands and looked at him.