She checked her face in the cut glass mirror that hung on the wall opposite the photos. Patted an eruption of hair over her left ear, and went to the door and opened it.
Roy Murtha stood in the doorway. An elderly man, his dark eyes smiling at her. He was wearing charcoal slacks, a gray shirt with black stripes, shiny material, rayon or some other petroleum fabric that looked unbearably hot. Murtha always dressed this way, more like your local bookie than the usual slovenly Keys citizen. He was swarthy and his body was short and thick. He could've been one of those powerful Soviets, a coal miner or weight lifter. Lips puffy, jowls with a shadow of beard. White wispy hair.
For the last few years he'd been coming into the fish house four times a week. Their most loyal customer. Far as she knew the man lived alone, but he bought food enough for twenty. Always a smile for her, a special hello, always wanted to chat, talk about news events, the weather. He'd given her the creeps when he started coming in years ago, always that smile, that lingering look. Now she was used to it, saw he meant no harm.
"Hello, Mr. Murtha."
He held out a small bag of Chee?tos, offering her one. She shook her head.
"How can I help you?"
He drew the bag back, took a handful of Chee?tos and patted them into his mouth, gave her a smile, then shouldered past her into the room as he munched.
She drew a breath.
"What're you doing?"
"We need some privacy, Doris. You and me, we need to talk."
She hesitated for a moment, watching him browse her office. Then she shut the door behind her.
"I been coming in here, what is it, going on six years now?"
"That sounds right."
He smiled and swung his head around the room, ticking off every detail.
"Must've spent, a hundred, two hundred a week."
"Sometimes more," she said.
"But I never been inside here. In the inner sanctum. "
He walked over to Philip, craned down for a look. Her husband's eyes were closed, his head slumped forward. A doze.
"He's not looking so good, is he?"
"What's this about, Mr. Murtha?"
He glanced over at her, gave her that familiar smile.
"Funny thing is, Doris, the honest truth, I don't eat seafood of any kind. Never have."
"What?"
"Hate the stuff. Creatures living underwater, I never could stomach them. Just the names for the things, gills, fins, scales, all that, it makes my stomach turn. No, ma'am, I'm more into snack food." He rattled the bag her way, giving her another shot at a Chee?to. But she made no move. "I tell you what, Doris, I always wished you were in some kind of other business. I don't know how many times I came in here thinking, Christ, I wished you had a flower shop, or a jewelry store. Almost anything but fish."
He was standing in front of the wall of photographs, looking them over while he shook more Chee?tos into his hand. Eating them now one at a time.
"The thing I have about fish," he said, "I guess it comes from my background. Father in the merchant marines, loved boats. One of his shore leaves, he took me out, wanted to teach the buckaroo how to fish. I was six, seven. I was afraid. The water, the waves, all the big boats passing by, rocking our boat, it was all new. It scared the piss out of me."
"Mr. Murtha, I'm really very — "
He put up his hands in a be-patient gesture.
"My dad and me, before we're even away from the dock I'm throwing up. The old man can't believe it. His own son. A pussy like that. I'm puking out my guts and he's there driving the boat going, Raaaalph, Raaaalph, making fun every time I vomit over the side. And hell no, he wouldn't take me back to shore, had to ride up and down all day in the New York harbor, all those swells making me sicker and sicker, my father going Raaaalph, Raaaalph. And he kept on fishing, kept catching these things, bringing them on board, fish flopping around, blood all over the deck — I'd see that, and then I'd get sick again. Spent all day at the rail, my knees bleeding. That had to be what it was, don't you think? A thing like that, it happens when you're a kid, it marks you. You never touch fish again, hate the idea of the goddamn things. That's how it is when you're a kid, impressionable. Making choices for the rest of your life. Raaaalph, Raaaalph, over and over. A funny guy, my father. Very funny."
"Please, Mr. Murtha. I'm truly busy today. Is there something specific you want?"
Still looking at the photographs he said, "Now, that's the big question, isn't it, Doris? Man my age, man of some means, I ask myself that question all the time. What do I want? I could buy this, I could get that. Nice car, speedboat. But what is it I really want? What's missing in Roy Murtha's life?"
He turned around, looked at her. Putting a finger in his mouth, sucking at the orange crust that coated it. She took an impatient breath, let out a sigh.
"Most people, Doris," Murtha said, licking the last traces from his fingers, "they work something out on this issue. They marry, have kids. Don't ask anymore what they want. They get preoccupied, find diversions. All that philosophical daydreaming, it goes to sleep. They don't have time for it anymore. Now they gotta make a car payment, gotta run out, get more milk, take the baby to the doctor. But me, it never happened, the marriage thing. Worked too hard, never had time for candy and flowers. So here I am, prime of life, time on my hands, and I'm asking myself that question all day every day. What is it I want?"
"Now, look here, Mr. Murtha. I don't mean to be impolite, but I'm afraid you're just going to have to leave."
He cleared his throat and said, "Me, I come from rough, simple people. Not big thinkers, my people. No education, except in the streets. Grew up in the Bronx, never what you'd call close to my parents. Didn't connect with them. Sounds weird to say it, your own parents, not feeling anything for them. But there it is. That's just how it went with me."
Doris opened the office door, held it open.
Murtha grew still, his stumpy body taking root in the middle of her office. He peered strangely at Doris as if she'd just materialized before him.
"You know what, honey? It's kind of spooky saying it, but you two, you got the very same eyes. Same cheekbones. I mean, yeah, sure, it comes together in different ways, but it's all there. Coloring, even that lift in your eyebrow."
Her hand wandered to her throat.
In a hushed voice, she said, "Same eyes as who?"
"Why, Sylvie," he said. "Your daughter, Sylvie Winchester. You two are dead ringers for each other."
Doris stepped back. She managed a breath.
Murtha turned away from her, went across the office, glanced at Philip, then brought his eyes to the wall of photographs. Black-and-white shots of fish hanging on the dock outside. The marlin and sailfish with their weights painted in white on their sides. Mexico, the Caribbean, California, Nova Scotia. Philip and Doris in all of them. Sunburned, giddy from another great day on the water. And there were other assorted characters on that wall, others from the many who flowed through their lives, holding their rods in one hand, drinks in the other. Faces without names now, afternoons floating timeless on the cedar wall.
"All these people friends of yours?"
"Yes," she said. Light-headed now, a tremble in her knees.
"That's good," he said. "Friends or family. Got to have one or the other. Preferably both."
Murtha came across to her, shut the door behind her. He reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his right hand. Doris cringed as she felt the tickle of the hair on his knuckles. She stepped away.
"You see, Doris, I came in today — it wasn't to buy fish. It's because I decided it's time we get down to the nitty-gritty. I tell you about me, details of my life, you tell me about you, we exchange autobiographies, then we talk about the serious issues affecting our lives. How's that sound?"
Murtha dug out another Chee?to, poked it into his mouth. Doris was quiet, her pulse still wobbling from hearing her daughter's name on this man's lips.
"In my case," Murtha
said as he chewed, "you add up the years, and what I am is an old man. But the truth, Doris, I don't feel a bit old. I got no health problems, got a good heart rate, blood pressure's low. On the social front, I'm a fairly decent man. Oh, I may wind up still talking crude sometimes, but don't let that fool you. That just comes from spending too much time around the wrong people. Myself, I'm not crude. A fuck will creep into my speech now and then, a shit, like that. But believe me, this is not Roy Murtha talking. It's 'cause of the men he's been forced to associate with over the years; it's those guys rubbing off on me."
With a dark ache swelling up from her groin, Doris walked over to the blinds and began to open them. The fistfight was over now. Everyone back to business out there. A few eyes cut her way as she opened more blinds.
She stood with her back to Murtha, looking out at the stark gray concrete interior of the fish house. And feeling inside her the solid wall she'd built so carefully beginning to crumble. That high, hard partition between her old life and her new one, between the pain and confusion she'd known as a young woman and the fairy-tale joy of her life with Philip. Hearing Sylvie's name on this man's lips. Hearing her name after all these years.
She turned and walked over to stand behind her husband, rested her hands on his shoulder.
"Here's how it is," Murtha said. He took a single Chee?to from his bag and looked at it fondly as though it were some fine cigar. "I came in here six years ago, it wasn't to buy fish. Like I said, I hate fish. Every day I leave here, I go right away to the Snake Creek Bridge, unwrap that fish or shrimp or whatever, and throw it in the water. No, sir, the reason I came in here was to see you. Talk to you. Be close to you, Doris."
Her voice wavering, she said, "I'm not following you."
He put the Chee?to in his mouth, chewed it as he walked over to Philip's wheelchair. He looked down at Philip's head, which had dropped forward, chin on chest. A rasping snore.
Still staring at Philip, Murtha said, "Let me put it like this, Doris." His eyes rose up casually and held hers for a moment. "I'm Sylvie's grandfather."
The room swayed. Doris took a breath and felt a cold wind begin to whistle in her veins.
"See, Doris, your actual mother, your biological one, she was a nightclub singer. Torch songs, you know. Her name was Jenny Marciano. Pretty woman. Tall, slinky, could even be elegant, you know, if the mood took her. Jenny sang at the Copa for a while. That's where I saw her first. Wonderful voice, cross between Billie Holiday and Eartha Kitt."
"What're you doing? Why're you saying these lies?"
"Doris. I wouldn't lie about something like this. I'm no villain. It's true. I'm your father. Your old man."
Doris swallowed. Swallowed again.
Fiddling with a Chee?to, Murtha said, "So when Jenny got pregnant, I gave her the cash to get it fixed. Instead, without discussing it with me, she ran off, disappeared. Hid out in Tahoe is what I found out later, had the baby. You, Doris. Then, it turns out, when you were a year old, Jenny decides motherhood isn't her thing. Decides she wants her career back. So she put her little girl up for adoption. And that's how you wound up with Mr. and Mrs. Glenn R. Carter in Tennessee. They told you, didn't they, that you were adopted?"
Doris nodded yes, they had told her.
Her mouth was open but the dry words gagged in her throat. Murtha circled the office, studying the photos, glancing across at Philip, touching things as if he were committing it all to memory.
"In my heyday," he said, "I had a few men working under me. Guys. It was within their abilities to locate people, so, you know, I had them find Jenny, then after that, it wasn't hard to track the Carters down in Clarksville, Tennessee."
Doris waited, watching this stocky old man circle the office.
He said, "I never let the Carters know about me. I saw right off they wouldn't approve of who I was. What kind of life I was leading. But over the years I managed to pull a few strings, help your daddy's business dealings. I made sure he got himself that bright, shiny new car dealership he wanted so bad.
"Stayed in the background, discreet. But I kept watch over you, Doris. I kept watch. Clarksville, Fort Bliss, Lejeune, then the farm over on the Gulf coast, and finally here. I'm not bragging about it — I mean, I feel guilty I didn't do more. Guilty I didn't reveal all this to you long ago. But I did what I could from a distance."
She let herself down heavily in the salesman's chair beside Philip's desk.
"When it came time to retire, I decided to move down here. How I pictured it was, maybe I'd pass by you in the grocery, catch a whiff of you now and then, the post office, wherever. Little moments of togetherness. Watch you, make sure you were doing okay. Maybe someday, when the moment was right, I'd come up to you, reveal myself. But I never actually worked up the courage for that.
"Then a month ago, who walks into my liquor store, wants a pint of Ronrico dark rum? Yeah. None other than Sylvie."
"In Key Largo," Doris said, "Sylvie."
"That's right. I saw her, and I almost fell over. Looked so much like you. So much like my mom, too, you want to know the truth.
"I'm staring at her, standing there behind the counter of my store, listening to her ask for a bottle of rum, but I couldn't move. Just stared at her. And what does she do? She sees me looking funny at her, and very slow, she comes around the counter. Wiggles up close to me. Starts whispering things. And Christ Almighty, I can't believe it, but she's flirting with me, batting her eyes, reaches out her hand for my leg. My own granddaughter, not even knowing who I am, standing there running her hand up and down my goddamn thigh.
"I cool her off, get her out of there soon as I can. But then she calls me at my condo. We talk. She calls five, six times. We get chummy, a little bit anyway. Talking about ourselves a little. Then a day or two later, she shows up at my store again. Turns out she thinks I can help her with something, a personal matter. She's been looking for somebody, like a knight in armor kind of thing. Thinks I might be it. Even offers me money, a whole lot of money. Wants to pay me to help. Names some goddamn fish that's worth all this cash; Christ, I didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
"My first reaction was, I was dumbfounded, you know, her being who she was and me being who I am, and I said no, I wouldn't do it. I shoved her out of there. Now I look back, I reflect on that day, what she was asking me, and it's clear, I treated it too casual. She got angry and that's the last I saw of her."
Doris couldn't speak. Just kept staring at this man, trying to hear what he was saying through the static growing in her head.
"What Sylvie said was, she said her father, this man you married, Harden Winchester, he was forcing her into things of a sexual nature. Making her do things to him. Deviant stuff. She couldn't get away. Would I help somehow? Walked up to me, a random guy in a liquor store and makes this kind of statement. Would I help her escape this monster?"
Doris was shaking her head.
Murtha said, "So after I have a moment to consider it, I see I gotta do something. But to get going I need to know where she is. A current address for her. That's why I'm here. Why I had to tell you who I was."
"Lies," Doris said. "Lies, lies."
"The truth," Murtha said. "The plain simple truth."
"Harden wouldn't do that. He would never do that. You're lying to me. All this. These horrible lies."
Doris couldn't seem to lift her arms, a ghostly spread of numbness through her limbs.
"Where's Sylvie, Doris? Just tell me where she's living. That's all. I can check this out, come back and tell you what I found."
"I don't know where she is," she said. Her voice not her own, a flimsy imitation.
She dragged herself to her feet, looked out the window at the work area. Another load of lobster arriving on the south ramp. Rough men drinking beer, others shoveling ice into their huge coolers for another week at sea. She turned and faced Murtha. Philip was awake now. He burbled to himself like a two-year-old chatting with an invisible playmate.
"I haven't seen Sylvie in fifteen years, not since I left the farm."
Slowly, he brought his eyes back to her, stared for a while as if he were trying to rearrange her words, find some good news hidden in them. Then he frowned and said, "You're her mother. You gotta know where she is."
"I stopped being Sylvie's mother a long time ago. If you've been spying on me like you say, surely you know this."
"Okay, Doris. That's how you want it to go, I'll just have to find her some other way. But hey, look, now this thing is in the open between us, there's no way around it, we got to converse some more. You calm down, think over what I been telling you, and we'll speak again, work it out between us in some fashion. Okay, can you do that? Calm down?"
"Get out. Get out. Get out!"
One of the big lobster boats rumbled to life out in the creek, and Murtha turned his head and listened. He peered out at it for a few seconds. Then turned back to Doris. She was holding open the office door.
"You should know, honey, only reason I stayed away from you all these years, only reason I didn't come to you sooner, tell you all this, it was 'cause of the life I led. I didn't want you thinking you were poisoned, had bad blood flowing in you. This was the only reason. To protect you, Doris. Protect you."
When he was gone, she locked the door and walked over to the window. She watched the big lobster boat making the cramped and tortuous turn out in the narrow channel. Backing the engines, then forward again, and back. It was the Deep Pleasures, run by Jody Marcus, a young woman from down in Big Pine Key. Doris watched her work the silver throttles back, then forward, the streams of silver bubbles rising from her props.
Doris stared hard at the young woman working the controls until her vision blurred and the tears began to run freely and painful sobs cramped her stomach. She sat at Philip's desk, lay her head against her arms, and gave herself over to it.
CHAPTER 17
It was just before noon and Harden was eating the lunch Sylvie had fixed, sitting at the round oak table, bare-chested, in his bright yellow gym shorts and old sneakers, stuffing down the turkey and Swiss sliced thin and stacked high on pumpernickel, heavy on the mustard, lettuce, a wafer of tomato, hamburger dills, a handful of Ruffles potato chips on the side, washing it down with Perrier from the bottle, making little grunts of pleasure between gulps. Sylvie was at the sink washing her plate, her eyes on her work, not glancing out the side window, not even allowing herself so much as a peek at the clock.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 16
