The Jetty Read online

  They had lunch at a pizza place near the beach.

  “I thought we’d have dinner at home tonight,” Kathy said.

  “Okay,” Michael said around a mouthful of pizza crust, sausage, mushroom, and white, thick, gooey cheese. “I mean, sure, whatever you want.” He wiped his mouth with three paper napkins. His nap had only briefly suspended his appetite. Now it was back in full force.

  “I never eat big lunches in the city,” he said. “What happens to me here?”

  “Maybe it’s the sea air,” Kathy suggested.

  “Sea air?” Michael protested. “What does that matter? Sailors aren’t all fat.”

  “Do you know a lot of sailors, Michael?”

  “Well, look at Popeye,” he said. “He’s skinny except for those biceps. And what about Olive Oyl? She lives by the ocean.”

  “Ok,” she said, laughing. “I see you’ve researched this.” She pushed

  her chair back from the table. “Well, we’d better go get to the store. If you’re going to have an appetite like that, we don’t have enough food in the house.”

  So it was back to the store. Back down Alister, past the white church, back to the Family Center. Michael was dreading it, really. But Kathy got right to business, making a list, checking it twice. In fact, with only two of them, the grocery list wasn’t very long after all. A couple of steaks, lettuce, tomato for the salad, dressing, pasta, charcoal and lighter fluid.

  C hapter Four

  ow that it was almost September there actually was an evening, a dusk; it started about seven. As Kathy got dressed for dinner she

  felt rather fancy. Even putting on a sundress felt like dressing up in Port Aransas. She thought she’d protected herself well from the sun today, but the dress didn’t have much of a back, and when she turned she saw a white stripe of untanned skin across her shoulders. The dimming of the day seemed to bring out her own inner glow. She adjusted the straps of the yellow sundress and did a little dance step, almost a twirl, to make the skirt flare out and settle smoothly. It was a simple cotton dress, but it fit her just right, it made her look innocent and buxom at the same time. She’d had it for years; it had been a birthday gift from Gail.

  Abruptly Kathy felt the sadness come over her. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; she knew that. Still, she felt the emptiness, the sense of hopelessness wash over her like the sea. For hours at a stretch she had managed to keep the dark thoughts at bay. Bright island scenes rescued her; sometimes she had an unexplained impulse to smile, even laugh. But always the sadness returned.

  Michael stood in front of the barbeque grill on the cottage’s back porch. He studied the back of the charcoal bag and poured charcoal briquettes into the base of the grill, then stacked the coals in a neat pile, just as the bag instructions suggested. He did these things with all the ritual devotion of the perfect husband. Unfortunately, his execution proved no match for his intentions. He squeezed a more than generous amount of charcoal lighter fluid on the coals, and struck a match. Flipping the match

  onto the fluid-soaked coals, the fire flared up dramatically, almost singeing his eyebrows. He retreated from the flames, reaching his hand to his brows, thankful to know they were still there.

  After a few more minutes’ ministrations, his efforts seemed to be working. The fire was catching, and feeling relieved, he turned back to the kitchen.

  “How’s the fire going?” Kathy asked.

  “Good,” he said. “I mean great, but I wish it was a gas grill.”

  She busied herself cooking the pasta and vegetables. In a kitchen, Kathy was competent and organized – near obsessive.

  “Want me to set the table?” Michael asked.

  “That would be nice.”

  “And I’ll open the wine,” he added. “Let it bre-e-e-eathe.”

  He was eager to be helpful, to “pitch in.” It made him feel a closeness with her, as if they were in harmony, a team. He searched through several kitchen drawers before finding a corkscrew, then discovered to his chagrin that it was a manual type. He started to complain to Kathy but thought better of it, determined to figure the corkscrew out on his own. Again his effort at domestic competence was unrewarded; he made a mess of the procedure, breaking off the cork, and as a consequence having to strain the crumbled cork out through a sieve into a mixing bowl. He looked up and saw that Kathy was watching him. “I better put the steaks on,” he said as an escape line.

  He went back to the porch where, using a long fork, he laid the steaks on the grill and enjoyed their accompanying sizzle. For a moment life was good, the fire was going, the night was young. Then suddenly he remembered his offer to set the table. Helping with dinner was more complicated than he imagined. He returned to the kitchen where he rummaged for silverware. He began setting the table. Was it knives on the right or left? He tried out various arrangements, careful to prevent Kathy from observing his confusion.

  “Are the steaks almost ready?” she asked.

  “Uh, I’ll check,” he said. He went out on the deck only to discover that he had burned the steaks on one side, while leaving the reverse sides raw. “It’ll just be a minute,” he called back to Kathy. He turned them long enough for the raw sides at least to get hot. Kathy liked her steaks medium rare. Half-burned and half nearly raw equaled medium rare, didn’t it?

  “Here they are,” he said, bringing the steaks in on a plate.

  “The pasta’s ready,” she said. She served up two plates of pasta and vegetables, and he turned down the lights, and lit a candle.

  He poured her a glass of wine out of the bowl, shrugging his shoulders

  at her puzzled look.

  He held up his glass, dramatically twirled it, smelled it, and tasted it. “Full bodied,” Michael said, with mock seriousness, and added, “with a touch of boysenberry.” His attempt at humor evoked little response. For a moment there was silence while they tried their steaks.

  “I may have overcooked them a little,” he said. “I mean . . . ”

  She looked down at the charred remains of the steak, picked at it with a fork, scraped it with a knife, then studied it as if it were a computer screen. There was a long silence. Michael watched transfixed, breathless.

  Then, suddenly, Kathy began to giggle. Hardly audible at first, it soon became a gentle chuckle, then a chortle, and finally a rollicking, raucous laugh. At first hesitant to laugh, Michael now joined in, but his laughter was only half-hearted. Was it his imagination, or was Kathy laughing at him? He pushed that thought out of his mind and joined in the merriment, perhaps more from relief than from any other emotion. At least he and Kathy were laughing together. Soon both had aching sides. When the laughter finally subsided, Kathy pushed aside the charred steak. Dinner was pasta, vegetables and salad.

  When they were finished, Kathy rose from the table. She began to collect the dinner dishes and place them in the sink. She put on an apron, but had trouble tying the apron strings behind her back. He came up to

  help, and Kathy didn’t resist when he kissed her neck. The only sounds in the room were the water streaming from the faucet, the clink of the dishes, and the rattle of silverware, and Kathy and Michael embraced, leaning against the kitchen cabinet.

  This happy – and from Michael’s perspective, promising – interlude was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the front porch. Reluctantly, Michael released Kathy from his embrace, went to the front door, and peered through the window. Jack and Vivian Leffler stood outside the door. “It’s the Lefflers!” Michael exclaimed. “Did you tell them where we

  were staying?”

  “Nope,” she responded. But Michael hadn’t told them the address. He remembered specifically not telling them. He stood as if suspended between kitchen and front door. “Michael, invite them in,” Kathy said.

  He hesitated.

  “Michael!” Reluctantly, he did as he was told.

  “Beware Greeks bearing gifts!” Vivian exclaimed, as Michael opened the door. She held up a liquor bottle li
ke an ancient harbor statue lifting a beacon. “We’re not interrupting anything, are we?” Vivian said, winking at Michael.

  “We just finished dinner,” Kathy assured them before Michael could respond. She was still drying her hands in the kitchen.

  “Then our timing is perfect,” Vivian said.

  Jack was wearing white cotton slacks and a blue stripped shirt rolled to the elbows. He was carrying a large cardboard box that appeared to be heavy.

  “Good to see you, old man,” Jack said, speaking with a slight European accent. “And Kathy,” he said, taking her good hand with noticeable tenderness, and kissing it. “Wounded?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, pensively. “I suppose I am.”

  “That makes us a matched pair!” Jack said, nodding toward his own

  bandage and laughing.

  Jack made his way past Michael and into the kitchen where he started pulling bottles out of the box. Vivian studied the cottage and smiled. “Well, this is the cutest little place.”

  “Our neighbor says it’s haunted,” Kathy said.

  “Could be,” Vivian replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “There have been numerous ghost sightings here on the island.” While Kathy showed Vivian around the cottage, Michael turned back toward Jack who held a bottle in each hand.

  “Ghosts?” Michael asked.

  “Ghosts, yes,” Jack answered. “Drowned sailors. Murder victims. The island history is full of sightings. Noises in the night, open windows, that sort of thing. You’ve heard it all before, I’m sure. When a ghost is in a room, the temperature drops. Ghosts never eat. Ghosts don’t cross the water.

  “Oh, there’s one island ghost story that is particularly popular. It concerns a smuggler from the early part of the twentieth century killed by the authorities. Now he is said to roam the island, frequenting his old haunts, searching for his lost love. And with him a giant dog – a Beast!”

  “Haunted? You believe that?”

  “I believe people are haunted by lots of things – failure, fear, loss.” Michael considered this, and while it may have been true, his focus

  was on the ghosts.

  “I think I may have seen one last night,” Michael said, and briefly described the events of the previous evening.

  “Michael, if you’ve seen them you may be in danger. Don’t trifle with them.”

  “Trifle with them?” Michael asked. “Why would I . . . ?”

  “And Michael, they’re especially dangerous in the water. They can’t cross the water, but they lurk in the shallows.”

  Michael wanted to know more, but Kathy and Vivian were returning to the kitchen.

  Vivian set the rum bottle (for rum it was) on the counter and Michael picked it up.

  “There’s a little Captain in all of us,” Michael said, quoting the popular television advertisement and setting one foot on an imaginary rum barrel. Jack and Vivian watched Michael’s performance with bewilderment.

  “It’s a commercial,” Michael explained.

  “Big Bamboo Rum,” Kathy said, reading the bottle’s label.

  “Jack, you’re smart to buy the house brand,” Michael chimed in. “I

  mean these days you’ve got to save a dollar whenever you can.”

  “Big Bamboo is hardly a house brand,” Jack responded. “It was a Bahamian company that stopped production years ago, and the remaining bottles are quite rare.” Jack opened and poured from bottles as he spoke – bottles of dark rum, crème de banana, triple sec, grenadine – all the while tasting the mix periodically like a five-star chef. He opened the refrigerator and found Kathy’s bowl of limes. “You must have been expecting me,” he said, winking at her. He squeezed in several limes, then poured a jigger’s worth of juice into a glass, topped it off with rum, and handed it to Kathy. To Michael’s surprise, Kathy drank it and smiled! “It’s yummy!” she said. Yummy, Michel thought. He hadn’t heard Kathy use that word in months. Jack filled three more glasses.

  “I call it ‘Rumrunner Punch’ ,” Jack said.

  “It’s Jack’s own creation,” Vivian chimed in, proudly. “Jack’s simply marvelous with his creations.”

  “And recreations,” Jack added with a wink.

  With their drinks, they filed into the living room.

  “So, what do you do, Jack?” Michael said, “When you’re not creating, I mean.”

  “Do?” Jack repeated the word as if it were a foreign language. “Yes,” Michael said. “You know, job, work?”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “Well, actually, I’m more or less retired. Before that

  I was in sales and shipping.”

  “Jack is so modest,” Vivian insisted. “He can sell simply anything, can’t you darling?”

  “Oh I suppose I can sell a few things, but I can drink practically everything! Especially Bahamian rum. Vivian, shall we give them a verse of ‘The Big Bamboo’?”

  Side by side they pulled at the edge of their eyes to give them a slanted appearance, and started singing, “I took my girl to a Chinese stand/ to eat chop suey and moo goo gai pan, but she said ‘let’s get out of here quick’/ she said ‘I like Bamboo, but not chopstick!’/the Big Bamboo always long/ the Big Bamboo always strong/the Big Bamboo stand up straight and tall/ and the Big Bamboo pleases one and all.” Jack and Vivian laughed heartily at the completion of their little performance.

  Michael laughed nervously. “Must be nice,” he mused, “to be retired, with so many people out of work and looking for a job.”

  “Well, these cycles occur periodically,” Jack said, going back to squeezing the limes. “It’s human nature.”

  “Jack’s an expert on economics,” Vivian stated with glowing

  admiration.

  “More like an amateur historian,” Jack said. “But observe what the past has taught us. Note the high-flying period of the last few years in the United States, followed by recession. It’s almost a mirror image of the period of Prohibition and the roaring twenties, followed by the crash and the depression. Wealth, consumption, excess, greed.”

  “Greed?” Michael exclaimed. “You mean like Madoff ?” (No reaction from Jack and Vivian.) “You know, Madoff ? He swindled his clients and friends out of billions.”

  Still, there was no reaction from the Lefflers.

  “Madoff – with the funny hair?” Michael pushed up his hair on each side to give the idea “Madoff – Ponzi scheme?”

  “Charlie Ponzi!” Vivian exclaimed, drawing a harsh look from Jack. “What Vivian means,” Jack explained, “is that Ponzi ran the original

  pyramid scam in 1920. His company was called ‘The Old Colony Foreign

  Exchange.’”

  “Then let’s talk about excess,” Michael argued. “I’ll bet nobody back then gave away 100 cars like Oprah did!”

  “Actually,” Jack countered, “in 1923, a Chicago bootlegger named

  Remus gave out 100 new cars as party favors!”

  “Well, Oprah did it on television!” Michael exclaimed, certain that this fact would help him prevail.

  “Oh,” said Vivian. “We don’t own a television.” Michael almost choked on his drink.

  “Michael,” Kathy said, “get some more ice from the kitchen.” Michael paused, and started to say something.

  “Michael,” Kathy repeated, cutting him short and handing him the ice bucket.

  “Oh, right,” he said. He carried the bucket into the kitchen, setting it down on the counter.

  Kathy followed him into the kitchen.

  “Kathy, there’s something seriously wrong with these people,” he said with a troubled voice.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, they’re . . . they’re so politically incorrect – I mean that

  big bamboo number.”

  “You were laughing.”

  “I was trying to be polite!”

  “Michael, they were just being silly.”

  “Weird is more like it,” he said. “And no television? I mean that’s un- Ame
rican!”

  “Because, unlike you, they don’t reverently recite television commercials as if the words were Shakespeare?”

  “That’s not fair!”

  She looked at him as if to say “it’s not?” She checked the ice bucket,

  and seeing it was still empty, gave him a look, filled the bucket from the ice maker, and went back to the living room.

  “I know some Shakespeare,” Michael said to the empty kitchen. “‘We will sell no wine before its time,’ No that’s not it, uh ‘We make money the old fashioned way, we earn it,’ no, no, that’s not it either. I’ve got it:

  “Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made:

  Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade,

  But doth suffer a sea change

  Into something rich and strange.”

  Michael studied his reflection in the kitchen window, and gave a melodramatic, villainous laugh.

  His laughter was cut short by the sound of music playing. Jack had discovered a super oldies station on the radio, and a big band song was filling the room with sounds of clarinets and trumpets. Michael returned to the living room to find Jack and Kathy dancing. Kathy was dancing! Before Michael could fully process this image, Vivian took Michael by the hand and soon all four were swaying and twirling to the music. Michael had always been known for his two left feet, but Vivian was so skilled he almost felt graceful. He had to admit that Jack and Vivian certainly knew how to party; they were intriguing company. Yet, Michael could not feel entirely comfortable with them.

  But as the evening wore on, Michael’s nervousness seemed silly. After a couple of hours of more dancing, more drinking, Michael drifted to sleep on the couch, his head in Vivian’s lap. She lifted his head up gently, and stood up quietly and laid it back on the sofa pillow.