JUST BEFORE DAWN, Robert stood in the dark bathroom and washed his hands and face three times. He considered a cat bath for his genitals, but lately Althea had been getting up several times a night to pee, and he feared her walking in to see him doing that, washing his penis at the sink. He should have done it at the restaurant but had let the self-locking door close before it had occurred to him. And he couldn’t take a shower because he never did that right before bed. He dried his face and hands, then climbed up to his place beside his wife. As soon as he stretched out she turned over and lay her leg over his, her arm across his chest, and he tried to breathe normally, wondering if she could feel his heart beating beneath her wrist in a way it shouldn’t.
He may have slept, he wasn’t sure, but later that morning, the air still, the slight smell of sewage and seaweed in his cabin, Robert’s pregnant wife woke from her sleep and straddled him, and Robert tensed with the knowledge that Jackie’s dried juices were still on him and now they were inside Althea. For the first time he thought of the virus, something deadly he could have caught and would now be passing on to his wife. His wife and baby. But Jackie was not the type to sleep around, he told himself, and Althea seemed to be enjoying it, moving up and down, her round stomach hard against his, and Robert felt sure she would begin to sense something different somehow, that a deep and womanly part of her would detect the evidence of another woman’s depths. But, instead, Althea came softly and then he did too, and last night’s indulgence felt for the moment harmless, forgivable, and behind them both.
But that night, as Jackie ordered drinks from him at the service bar, she looked particularly radiant, her eyes brighter and more mischievous than ever. When Robert put three Bombay tonics on her tray, she squeezed a lime wedge directly onto his hand, the juice running down between his knuckles, and five hours later, the bar dark and quiet, they took their time and did it on the restaurant floor, in the kitchen on the prep table, and, finally, in the manager’s office, Jackie’s bare bottom on the desk blotter, her heels on his shoulders. After she had left, blowing him a kiss from the darkness of the shell parking lot, Robert went to the men’s room and washed his hands, face, penis, and balls. It was very late, probably close to sunrise. He poured himself a tall Maker’s Mark on the rocks, his third of the night, and sat at one of the tables at the front window feeling what he viewed as a uniquely male mix of pride and remorse; Jackie was unquestionably the most attractive woman on the waitstaff, respected for her earned authority with the other waitresses, known to be an easy date for nobody. And here she was giving herself to him freely, which left Robert feeling an echo of what he felt with his own wife—special, singled out—but it was a bastard echo, one he knew could gratify but not fulfill. Over the years he’d done this with many waitresses and barmaids, sometimes in their apartments, but usually like this, somewhere in the dark of the restaurant or bar or back office after hours, a few drinks in him and them. One, a single woman with two small kids at home, pulled her panties back on and said, “Will you write a poem about me?” And besides their own nameless hunger and the liquor in their veins, he knew that’s what got to them, the fact that he professed to write poetry when so many other bartenders tanned themselves at the beach and worked the numbers on big football and basketball games. The fact that they thought he was a poet.
Now Althea’s dark faithful eyes came to him and he drained his bourbon and poured himself another, splashing it with Coke to make it go down faster. Tonight the surf was loud enough to hear clearly through the glass, the white froth of the waves easier to see out on the dark beach. Robert began to feel somewhat imperiled, his chest a bit constricted at the real possibility that on a loose and drunken Monday night, Jackie might tell one of her waitresses about the two of them; and he had no doubts the news would then spread throughout The Whaler and its cabins as thoroughly and predictably as the smell of their own sewage on windless days. He had no doubts about its effect on Althea, either; she would leave him with barely a word. Her faith in him would simply vanish, and she would vanish as well, taking his child with her. For one bourbon-floating moment, Robert felt relieved at the prospect, a reprieve from husbandhood and fatherhood and all of their weight. He drank from his adulterated bourbon, his thoughts already tilted on their axis inside him, his relief gone as he feared this to be the true state in which he would find himself if he were ever to lose his wife: off-kilter, foggy-headed, and directionless. He imagined himself alone in his cabin, perhaps ironing his shirt and vest, preparing himself for a shift of high tips he would squirrel away so he could take time off to be alone and do what? Write poems? Really write some? Who was he shitting? For without Althea, without her unquestioning belief in him, he wasn’t sure he’d really be able to make that leap onto the page, a leap he truthfully hadn’t been making too well before Althea. For months and months he would not write one line, or even read a poem; he’d work his shifts, spend the day running errands or watching two rented movies on his laptop. Sometimes a line would come to him and he might write it down on the envelope of a bill he’d end up throwing away. Other bar and waitstaff would talk of the accounting course they were taking up, or the realtor’s exam they were studying for; if they turned their attention to Robert he’d smile shyly and say he was working on a book of poems. Then Althea walked into his bar, the woman he’d conjured with words that very day, and he began to actually feel capable.
Some late mornings as he lay in the loft waking slowly, Robert would look down at Althea as she swept the floor or fixed him some eggs or simply stood at the window with a cup of tea, her belly round and full and heavy, and he was certain he felt an ethereal measure of the same thing, his head and heart germinating what he hoped would one day uncoil and spring into a book with his name on it. After breakfast, if Althea had no upholstery work and wasn’t driving to the basement shop she still rented from the two blond bank tellers, she’d kiss him on the cheek, then climb back up into the loft with a novel, and Robert would sit at the table with his open notebook, put his pencil to it, and wait. He’d hear a single-engine plane running an advertising flag out over the beach and he would write: plane. He’d hear an off-duty waitress laugh in one of the cabins and he’d write: woman laughing. He’d try and combine these to see if some poetic alchemy might ensue, a Robert Frost–like rhyming couplet, maybe. But when he did come up with a couplet it sounded more like an old woman’s effort at a cheerful greeting card:
A plane flies by
A woman laughs high—
The man sits at his table
Wondering if it is stable—
But nonetheless, he saw these as seeds, and usually, after a half hour or more of recording them, he felt he’d laid some important and necessary groundwork and he’d close the notebook, place it carefully on the shelf beneath the window, then open a beer and climb the short ladder to the loft, feeling virtuous and almost triumphant.
Once Althea had asked to read one of his poems, but Robert had told her the truth: “They’re not good enough yet, honey. They’re not done.” She smiled at him knowingly, a smile that seemed to respect his honesty about his craft, but she knew better—they were already wonderful—and Robert had felt once again the surging hope that she might be right and that he was destined for an exceptional road after all.
But now there was the feeling he was laying booby traps in that road. Robert finished his bourbon, washed out the aftertaste with a quick draft, then placed the mug and glass carefully in the sink, closing and locking the rear door to The Whaler. He could smell the ocean. He turned and stumbled over something in the shell lot and landed on one knee. It was an empty Bacardi bottle that had fallen out of the full dumpster, and he threw it back onto the heap. It was nearly dawn. The air was cool, and the cabins were five black silhouettes against the dark marsh. He looked at his own, the farthest shadow on the south side of the lot. Inside the front-porch window was the dim glow of the table lamp Althea left on for him every night. He imagined her standing in her full
cotton nightgown, leaning forward to switch on the light before climbing with surefooted care up to the loft.
He looked at the other cabins: Jackie’s was just two over from his. He wondered if she was asleep yet. Did she share the loft with her cabinmate, a dour veterinarian student and waitress named Kimberly? Or did she sleep alone, and there was room for him to crawl up there and sink into her one more time, because after tonight this would be it? It would only be a matter of days before word got out among the waitstaff, and then how long would it be before Althea would hear a comment through an open window or from one of their tiny front porches? And he knew then, standing in the slight sway of a bourbon swoon, the five black cabins standing before him like a line of executioners, he was going to have to leave The Whaler before the season was up, just take Althea, load up the Subaru, and rent a place inland. He’d tell her he didn’t want to subject her and the baby to any more raw sewage; he’d say he wanted to get more work done on his poems. The Whaler always had a waiting list for his job, and he’d tell the manager, Danny Sullivan, a round and sober Irishman who never smiled sincerely, that his wife’s pregnancy needed some monitoring from her hometown doctor, something like that, and then Robert Doucette would start anew.
He took a deep breath and struck out in the direction of his cabin but then veered slightly north and stepped softly onto Jackie’s porch. He cupped his face to the screen door and peered in. The room was all shadows, the loft a pale strip hovering in the darkness. But then there was another shape, lower, on the floor, a cot or small bed, a woman’s hair fanned out on the pillow. Robert swayed a moment, then caught himself. He could hear morning birds in the trees beyond the marsh. He had ten, maybe twenty minutes at the most before it was too light to slip back home. Under cover of darkness. The phrase rippled through his head. Shakespeare, he thought, and he fancied himself with billowing white sleeves, a long sword, poetry on his tongue. He reached for the door handle, turned it, and was not surprised when the door opened; most of the cabins’ doors were swollen from the sea air and would not close all the way without slamming, and then you needed a pry bar to open them in the morning. He stepped inside the cabin, which could have been his own, but the air smelled strongly of pine air freshener and hand lotion, and one of the women, the one in the loft, was sleeping deeply, a slight rasp in her breathing. Robert concluded it had to be Kimberly, as Jackie would not be so deeply asleep yet. She was on her side in the cot, just a few feet in front of him. He recognized her thick hair on the pillow. He would slide in beside her, lift her top leg, and enter her from behind, his hands on her bountiful breasts.
Robert took off his bartender’s vest and dropped it to the floor. He squatted and untied his shoes, stepping out of them and his pants and underwear, walking over the floor in his shirt and socks, his penis already half-hard. He glanced up at the loft and saw Kimberly’s hand, her fingers curled in sleep. He leaned over and lifted the cot sheet, and was about to whisper Jackie’s name when he saw Kimberly’s profile instead, the low cheekbones and perfect nose that because of her cheekbones was not attractive, the same profile he saw every night as he placed drinks on her tray and she scanned her tables, eyes narrowed in worried concentration. Now her face was slack, her lips parted, a dime-sized drool spot on the pillow, and Robert lowered the sheet and stepped back.
The thought came of climbing the loft and placing his penis in Jackie’s cupped hand, but outside already seemed less dark than moments before, the high grass of the marsh becoming defined in the soft blue light out the rear window. The morning birds were calling to one another louder now, more frequently, as if they were already into their second cup of coffee, and Robert began to feel the whiskey-dulled punch of remorse in his stomach. He crept back to his clothes and stepped into his underwear but had to hop to get his second foot in, and when he finally stuck it through he was breathing hard and standing three feet past Kimberly’s cot. She turned over onto her back and let out a long breath; Robert held his own, his heart pulsing high above his ears. But her eyes were closed, her lips still parted. He had neglected to cover her all the way and her white tank shirt was twisted on her. Poking from the arm hole was half her breast, her dark nipple as solitary and inviting as a chocolate morsel. He glanced back longingly at Jackie’s empty hand, then tiptoed to his pants and sat down on the floor before pulling them on, then his shoes too, leaving them untied as he backed out the screen door and slowly pulled it back into place.
It was dawn now, the shell lot salmon-colored. A lone white gull landed on the dumpster and folded its wings in before jumping onto the heap. Robert began to tuck in his shirt, but something was missing, his vest, and he was just about to reach for the door handle one more time when he felt something a few yards south.
Althea.
She stood there looking directly at him, her long white sleeping gown bunched slightly on her belly, the hem raised in the front, showing her thick ankles and bare feet; most of the shells were broken and jagged and nobody walked on them barefoot. Robert let go of the door. His shirttail was hanging out in front and he wanted to tuck it in but knew that motion would surely reveal everything, though nothing had really happened inside the cabin. And this is the truth which emboldened him to step off the porch onto the crunch of shells, speaking gently his wife’s name: “Thea?”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with dark, dry eyes.
“Honey?” The air itself seemed to be stretched tight as he walked through it.
When he got close she raised her chin: “Which one?”
“What?” Inside Robert an elevator cable seemed to snap.
“Jackie or Kimberly?”
The descent was terrible.
“Kimberly?”
“No, Thea, honey, what are you talking about? Let’s go inside.” Robert touched her hip, was hoping to turn her toward home, but she gripped his wrist and looked into his eyes: “Jackie.”
The elevator slammed into the pit. Robert shook his head, but Althea was nodding; she dropped his hand and walked quickly over the broken shells toward Jackie’s cabin. There was a great silence and time seemed to slow down to nothing, as if he were in a car breaking into speeding pieces on the highway and all he could do was roll with the fragment he was strapped onto; he watched her go, her curly black hair and white sleeping gown and bare feet as she stepped up onto the porch. Now time moved again and he bolted after her, but his foot slid out behind him and he did a near split and had to catch himself with his hands, then his knees, and then he was up. But Althea was already inside, the screen door a slam Robert was late for, stepping into the room just as his wife grabbed Jackie’s empty hand and jerked her completely out of the loft onto her back and buttocks, her bare feet slamming the floorboards and wall, Kimberly jumping to her knees in her cot, screaming. Jackie was screaming too, flailing behind her; then Althea screamed, and it was the only one Robert heard now, a long wail followed by a panting whimper. She held Jackie’s hair with two hands but no longer to do damage, it seemed; more, it was to hold herself steady. She was bent over, squeezing her knees together, and blood was coming in slow, sure rivulets, moving down her olive calves onto the floor, onto the floor and Robert’s black bartender’s vest.
IT WAS JACKIE who called the ambulance. Althea kept moaning, her face empty of color, and Kimberly had her lie on the floor and rest her bare feet up on the cot. Robert had just stood there a moment, saying nothing, doing nothing, but then Althea began to cry, covering her eyes with her arm. He knelt down and touched her hair, but she shook her head away from him so violently that he stood again, then ended up sitting on the cot, holding her bloody feet in his lap as Kimberly squatted and did something with a towel beneath his wife. Jackie stood off to the side in nothing but light blue panties and a New England Patriots T-shirt, her hair still ratty from Althea’s grip, looking from Robert to his wife on the floor as if this were something she couldn’t possibly have invited upon herself.
Robert had wanted to ride in
the ambulance, but the EMT shook his head no and closed the doors, his partner already inside there wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Althea’s arm. Robert followed in the Subaru, the ambulance in front of him impossibly white, its siren off but its orange and red roof lights blinking and spinning as the van sped down the empty boulevard. And the sun was the same color, sitting on the water, the beach deserted. Robert had to push down on the accelerator to keep up with the ambulance, and he felt he was actually chasing it, that they were fleeing him, whisking his wife off to safety and high ground. He began to feel afraid. The towel Kimberly had wedged beneath Althea was dripping when the EMTs arrived. And when they lifted her onto the gurney her face was yellowish and she didn’t look at him or anyone, just closed her eyes tightly against what must be a terrible pain. Two months early. And what about the baby? Was the baby in pain?
The ambulance left the boulevard and barreled past the wide salt marsh. Robert kept the Subaru two car lengths behind, though they were moving close to fifty. He wondered what the EMT was doing to her behind those white doors. How could you stop the bleeding if it was coming from inside? Robert’s face prickled with heat and he felt nauseated, his mouth nothing but a sticky shot glass, his head aching behind his eyes. Over the years he’d sometimes cheated on his girlfriends, but never anyone as loving, trusting, and faithful as his wife. The wind was blowing in against his cheek, the smell of the ocean and the mudflats of the marsh, and for a moment he could feel his heart beating in his ears and he heard nothing else as the wind pushed silently at his face like unrelenting bad news: What if you lose her? What if you lose your child, too? He got an image of himself alone in the fall, working at Skinny’s in Florida, a youngish man with all his promise gone: squandered and lusted away. If he’d ever had any in the first place.