The Cove

by Hautala, Rick

  She held her breath and stood there, damp clothes in hand, and listened to the phone as it rang three more times. She craned her head to hear the answering machine click on, but when it did and the greeting started playing, the caller hung up without saying anything.

  All the more convinced it had been Tom, she was scowling as she finished shifting the load from the washer to the dryer and was about to put a third load into the washer when the phone started ringing again.

  Once again, after four rings, the answering machine kicked on, and the caller killed the call without leaving a message.

  Balancing the shotgun on top of the load in the laundry basket, Louise carried everything upstairs. She considered calling Tom and telling him to stop harassing her, but she decided not to.

  Carrying the laundry basket, she bumped the cellar door closed with her hip and was about to go upstairs to fold the clothes when the phone started ringing for a third time. Unable to take it any longer, she dropped the basket and grabbed the receiver of the wall phone. Pressing it to her ear, she shouted, “Will you please leave me alone?”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Louise suspected Tom was playing some bullshit mind games with her when she heard a sharp inhalation in her ear.

  “I … I’m sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “Is this … Do I have the Browns’ residence?”

  Louise flushed, her eyes widening as she stared at the wall in front of her.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were — Ah, geez. Yeah. Yes. This is the Browns’.”

  “Is — umm — Ben home?”

  “No, he’s … he had to run a quick errand. Can I take a message?” she asked.

  “Do you know if he has his cell with him? This is his … Julia. I tried calling his cell, but it goes straight to message.”

  Louise finally calmed down enough to realize that the caller was upset. Her voice was high-pitched and wavering. It almost broke at the end of each sentence, like she was having a difficult time getting the words out.

  “When he gets back, I’ll tell him you called. I can give him a message if you want.”

  “I — umm, no … Just tell him I … tell him Julia called, and I can’t see him tonight. I–I’ll explain later.”

  “Yeah … Sure thing,” Louise said, trying to sound nonchalant. She had no reason to care, but she felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for the woman and, after a brief pause, she added, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  For the space of a few heartbeats, she got no answer. Then she heard the woman’s breath hitch as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  “Tell him I’ve been trying to get in touch with him, and I … I don’t know when I can see him. Thank you.”

  With that, she ended the call, leaving Louise with the buzzing phone pressed against her ear. Wondering what this was all about, she replaced the phone gently in its cradle and stared at it for a long time. She jumped when the phone rang again. Convinced it was Tom this time, she controlled herself as she picked up the phone and calmly said, “Hello?”

  “Louise? Hi. This is Kathy.”

  For a split second, Louise didn’t quite believe it was the Kathy she thought it was — not Kathy Brackett — but she was at a loss to think of anyone else it might be.

  “Oh … ah, hi,” she said.

  “Hi, Lou. I was wondering if Ben’s around,” Kathy said. Now that she had spoken again, Louise realized it was Kathy Brackett, but that raised the immediate question — Why the hell is she calling Ben?

  “No, he — umm, he’s out. Can I take a message?” She was beginning to feel like her brother’s social secretary.

  After a pause that was long enough for Louise to suspect that maybe it wasn’t as over between Ben and Kathy as Ben had indicated, Kathy said, “He asked — I wanted to talk to him about going over to Harbor’s Edge and visiting your mom.”

  “Really?” Louise said, unable to mask her surprise.

  “I … umm, I just thought it’d be a nice thing to do, you know? I … I’ll never forget how nice your mum was to me when Ben and I were … you know, seeing each other.”

  And making babies, Louise thought.

  “I don’t think he’s gonna be around for a while, but I’ll tell him you called.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Kathy said. She paused, and Louise sensed that Kathy had more to say, so she waited until she added, “You think it would be okay if I went over there by myself?”

  “I don’t see why not.” A sudden chill wound around Louise’s heart. “I mean — the truth is, she probably won’t even recognize you, but — yeah, I think that’d be nice if you did that.”

  Kathy grunted and then said, “Thanks … ah, you don’t have to tell Ben I called. I — he doesn’t need to know.”

  “Sure thing. Catch yah later,” Louise said, and then she hung up the phone.

  For a few moments, she stood there, her arms folded as she leaned against the kitchen wall and stared at the shotgun on top of the pile of clean laundry. Then she looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror her mother had put next to the kitchen door.

  “So I can make sure I don’t look a fright before I leave,” her mother used to say.

  Well, I look a fright now, Louise thought. Her hair was lank and untrimmed, her face pale and still splotched purple and green where Tom had hit her. Her lips were cracked and raw. She was twenty-four and looked forty.

  “God damn it!” Louise shouted to the empty house. “That bastard isn’t sucking the life out of me anymore!”

  Muttering that the laundry could go fuck itself, she grabbed her purse and car keys, and drove down to Monica’s Hair By The Sea. She parked her car and got out. Rain beat on her back and shoulders as she pushed the door open. Bells tinkled as she entered and slammed the door shut against the wind.

  “Well, if it ain’t Louise Marshall. How you doin’ there?”

  Monica was a big woman with a big smile. She was wrapping Edna Chadbourne’s hair in pencil-width perm rollers. Before she sat down in one of the white wicker chairs, Louise inhaled the warm, uniquely feminine smell of the salon — fragrant floral shampoos, acrid perm solution, the chemical tang of nail polish. The salon was airy and relaxing, painted in tones of green and blue with dozens of hanging plants. After the male-dominated nightmare of the past few days, Louise felt as if she had found a haven.

  “You lookin’ for a trim today? If you can wait a few, I’ll be right wit’cha,” Monica said, squirting perm solution on Edna’s rollers. “Weather like this, everyone’s got a bad hair day.”

  “I need a haircut. A real haircut. And maybe a makeover, too,” Louise said, scowling at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Oh, you’re gonna surprise Tom tonight?”

  “You might say that,” Louise replied. Then her shoulders dropped, and she added, “You haven’t heard? Tom and I are — I left Tom.”

  Monica looked at her sympathetically. Edna peered at her over her coral-shaded glasses. Louise felt exposed … vulnerable, like she was onstage in her underwear.

  “Okay, dear. So what’s his name?”

  “His name?” Louise let that sink in. Then she smiled and said, “I don’t know yet, but he’s gonna be either a lawyer or a hit man.”

  Monica laughed and winked, and then bellowed, “Lina!”

  An Asian woman, as small and petite as Monica was tall and large, came out of the back room. She had inky black hair spiked high in a punked-out short cut with bright blue sideswept bangs. Louise smiled at the thought of blue bangs on herself.

  “Lina is my makeover expert,” Monica said. “Hair, face, nails — she can do it all.”

  Lina smiled at Louise. “So, what are you looking for?” She had a lilting Asian accent.

  “Not quite what you have,” Louise said, “but close.”

  Lina laughed, a sound almost as tinkly as the bells on the door.

  “Have a seat, then.” She motioned to a chair in front of a mirror. “Let’s have
some fun.”

  “Got no choice, boys” Wally said as he looked back and forth between Ben and Pete. He cocked one eyebrow up high so it looked like a furry white caterpillar crawling up to his hairline. “Soon’s the weather lets up, we’re goin’ out. Gotta go.”

  He was standing in the wheelhouse of the Abby-Rose, leaning to one side with his elbow propped on the helm. Rain slashed the windows and washed the deck as the boat heaved with the swells. It was obvious he’d been drinking for a while, now. A hazy, distant glaze frosted his eyes, like he was focused on the far horizon. In his right hand was a bottle of Myers’ dark rum that looked about half-empty. It was hard to tell, looking through the dark glass.

  Ben narrowed his eyes and shook his head, looking from his father to his brother and then back to his father. The rain was making a thunderous racket on the roof of the wheelhouse. The surface of the ocean was dented like a sheet of metal that had been hammered repeatedly. To the west, past Martin’s Hill, the sky was clearing. Thin lines of a deep, rich peacock blue showed through swift-moving rafts of charcoal-colored clouds.

  “No we don’t. What you have to do is grow some onions and tell Sullivan to go fuck himself.” Ben was trying hard but was unable to keep his anger in check. “He thinks he’s got you by the cojones, and he’s gonna keep squeezing.”

  “He doesn’t think he’s got me by the balls … he knows it.”

  Wally sneered before taking a swig of rum. Then he smiled and wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

  For the first time in his life, Ben saw vulnerability in his father. It was lurking below the surface, almost hidden, but it was definitely there. This both surprised and bothered him. His father had always been so strong, so savvy, so confident. Maybe he wasn’t book-smart, but he was smart enough and clever enough to make a damned decent living doing what he loved … going to sea. It didn’t matter if it was fishing or lobstering or taking a gaggle of tourists for a cruise of the bay. He did things his way, and the whole town knew it.

  “How much do you owe him?” Ben asked. He began pacing back and forth in the narrow confines of the wheelhouse. His sneakers squeaked on the wet deck every time he turned around.

  “The Crowbar?” Wally said and then sighed, casting his eyes downward as he took another drink. “More’n you can imagine, my boy. More’n you can imagine.”

  “You think if we scrape together all the money we can — my savings included — we could pay him off?”

  Wally looked at Ben, his eyes vague and unfocused, as if his memory was a book, and he was idly flipping the pages.

  “I don’t like the idea of you being under his thumb like this, Pops,” Ben said. He knew his father didn’t like him seeing him up against the wall like this, either. It wounded his pride, and if there was one thing Capt’n Wally had in spades, it was pride.

  “I ain’t the only one,” Wally said. “There’s plenty of fellas working the docks carryin’ water for Sullivan.”

  “That don’t make it any better,” Ben said, “and that sure as shit don’t make it right.”

  “Aww — hell!” Wally curled his upper lip in disgust and bit his inner cheek. “I got other debts that’re killin’ me just as much. You know I ain’t got any insurance for your mother, being in that nursing home. The bills from that fuckin’ place are enough to … to … Aww, fuck it. You don’t want to know.”

  “How ’bout I take out a loan, then?” Ben said, “enough to pay off the boat and throw some against the nursing home bills.”

  Wally didn’t consider the suggestion for even a second before he started shaking his head.

  “It ain’t your goddamned responsibility.” His voice was a low growl. It was obvious he was getting drunker by the minute, and the drunker he got, the nastier he got. “I don’t want you getting involved. It’s bad enough that I am.”

  Ben chuckled darkly and, staring his father straight in the eyes, said, “This is family we’re talking here. I’m involved whether you like it or not, and if someone’s putting the screws to you, I’m definitely involved. We’re all involved. Right, Pete?”

  Ben glanced at his brother who, throughout the conversation, had been hanging back, barely watching or listening to them. He was staring out over the water at the far side of The Cove, looking like he had something else entirely on his mind. When Ben addressed him directly, Pete shook his head as though he was just waking up and said, “Huh? … Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Pete!” Ben said, and then he turned his attention back to his father. “You want me to talk to Richie?”

  Wally snorted with laughter and then took a bigger slug of rum. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed with loud gulping sounds.

  “What good’ll that do?” he said, his words slurred now.

  “I dunno.” Ben took a step forward and was going to put his hand reassuringly on his father’s shoulder, but he held back. “What’d’yah say we find out.”

  Wally exhaled with a blubbering sigh and shook his head. His gaze was cast down at the deck like he had lost something and was looking for it. His eyes kept darting from side to side as he kept shaking his head, his shoulders hunched. Ben had never seen his father look so defeated, so hopeless, and it pained him deeply.

  “So Pops … How ’bout you forget about drinkin’ … least for the time being?” Ben said. “Lou and I were planning on going out to Grave’s Edge to visit Mom. Why don’t you come along, too? She’d love to see you.”

  Wally winced as though his rum had left a bad aftertaste in his mouth. He shook his head in firm denial.

  “She won’t be happy to see shit,” he said, as much to himself as to Ben. As his gaze drifted out over the water, he took another long gulp of rum. “In case you hadn’t noticed, she ain’t there no more. The lights are on, but no one’s home.”

  Ben wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw tears welling up in his father’s eyes. Whatever they were — tears or raindrops or spray from the ocean — Wally quickly wiped them away on his sleeve.

  “I gotta meet up with the trawler as soon as it clears,” he said. “So when the rain lets up, I’m going.”

  “Where are you meeting the trawler?” Ben asked. He cast another quick glance at Pete and could tell that he was still not really paying attention to what was going on.

  “The Nephews … as usual,” Wally said. “’Spozed to be there ’round midnight.”

  “For one thing, you’re in no condition to pilot a goddamned boat … especially in rough seas. It’s gonna be heavy seas, especially out beyond the headlands.”

  “You think I don’t know how to skipper a goddamned boat?” Wally shook his head in disgust and spat over the rail. “I can take this boat to Boston and back again in a Christless hurricane. Blindfolded.”

  But even as he said that, he lost his balance and had to grab onto the wheel to keep from falling down. Ben lunged forward and grabbed him by the arm to support him, but his father quickly shook him off with a snarl.

  “Don’t fuck with the capt’n on his own goddamned boat.” Wally slurred the words so badly Ben almost couldn’t make them out above the heavy patter of rain on the wheelhouse roof. His father’s breath was nearly toxic with alcohol fumes.

  “You’re in no shape to do anything but go home and sleep it off,” Ben said as he grabbed the bottle of rum and all but tore it from his father’s grip.

  Wally lunged at him to retrieve it, but Ben backed out from underneath the roof and stood in the pouring rain, dangling the bottle over the side of the boat.

  “I’ll drop it overboard if you come any closer,” he said, staring at Wally.

  “’N I’ll toss you overboard with it ’n make you fetch it back,” Wally said.

  He looked angry enough to rip Ben’s head off, but Ben noticed that his father never let go of his grip on the wheel. It was the only thing keeping Wally on his feet.

  “Pete and I’ll take you home so’s you can sleep it off.”

  “Sleep what
off? Christ on a crutch!” Wally bellowed, but the unfocused look in his eyes told the true tale.

  “If this run’s so goddamned important to you — then let Pete and me go meet the trawler. Can you live with that?”

  Pete snapped to and said, “No goddamned way. I ain’t taking this boat out … not at night and with the electronics all frigged up.”

  “Well I sure as hell can’t go alone,” Ben said.

  Wally’s face flushed with rising anger. His cheeks blossomed with red splotches, and his eyes bulged. When he started to sputter, no intelligible words came out. Ben jumped when a woman’s voice called his name out behind him. He turned and looked up at the wharf, expecting to see Julia, but Louise was walking quickly down the gangplank to the dock. She was almost lost inside an old, black rubber raincoat with the hood pulled down all but covering her eyes. The rain popped as it hit the rubber.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Ben asked.

  Louise climbed over the gunwales and, once under the shelter of the wheelhouse roof, slid the hood back.

  “Whoa,” Ben said.

  Louise’s hair was now chin length and hung in coppery, bouncy waves around her face. Long bangs brought out the green flecks in her hazel eyes, which were artfully made up. Ben couldn’t see a trace of the bruise on her cheeks, which were softly flushed. She wore a reddish lip-gloss that made her lips look full and plump.

  Even Pete was moved to say, “Wow, Sis.”

  Louise grinned, satisfied with the effect, but then she was all business.

  “You had a couple of calls,” she said to Ben, and he knew instantly who at least one of them was from. A cold feeling twisted in his gut.

  “Julia’s been trying to get you all day, but your phone’s not working.”

  Ben fished his cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and looked at the display. The battery strength was at zero.

  “Fuckin’ thing,” he muttered. He pressed several buttons, but nothing worked. Without thinking, he cocked back his arm and threw the cell phone far out over the water. It hit with a dull plunk and sank out of sight, leaving behind a widening ripple that was quickly erased by the falling rain.