Tigers in Red Weather (4 page)

“Life is melancholy. Why dwell on it?” Hughes said, returning with the drinks. “Anyway, this stuff isn’t the blues, it’s swing.”

In the fading light, Nick saw he had removed her wine bottle from the lawn. “Oh, you think you’re so clever,” she said, laughing.

“You must think I’m clever, too. You married me, after all,” Hughes said, returning her smile, and offering her a martini.

“Have you ever heard Robert Johnson?” Charlie asked. “That’s real blues. Southern blues. Not for the club set.”

“What do you have against the club set?” Nick asked, turning to face him, happy to rise to the bait. Happy for something to happen around here.

“I have nothing against the club set, except maybe their musical taste,” he said, giving her a quiet smile.

Nick was about to reply, but thought better of it. Instead, she stared at him a moment, wondering just how drunk she really was. She could hear the beetles singing in the night. The rustle of the palm at the corner of the lawn. Her lily-of-the-valley perfume mingled with the soft, southern night air. She heard Hughes talking about Elise’s hometown, in Wisconsin, somewhere. And the sound of the horns.

Next to her, sitting in the rented chintz-covered chair, was this man giving her a smile full of cathouse jazz and motel rooms.

“Excuse me for a minute,” Nick said, rising, her hand on the arm of the chair to steady herself. “The kitchen calls.”

“I’ll help you,” Charlie said.

“It’s really not necessary,” Nick said, picking up her martini and holding it against her like armor.

“I’m a whiz in the kitchen. Ask Elise.”

Elise stared at her husband, impassive. But she didn’t, Nick noticed, offer to come in his stead.

Nick didn’t dare turn around as they walked back inside. She opened the icebox and pulled out the peeled cucumber.

“Could you slice this for me?” she asked, handing him the cucumber.

“Knife?”

“In the drawer under the sink,” she said, retrieving the shrimp.

“From the shrimp boat?” Charlie asked, eyeing the bowl.

“Yes,” Nick said, laughing.

“Which one?”

“What do you mean, which one?”

“The five o’clock?”

“Yes, what other one is there?”

“The morning shrimp boat,” Charlie said, slicing the cucumber, a little too thick for Nick’s taste. “Seven a.m. sharp. It’s the best one and you get more shrimp.”

“And how in the world would you know this?” Nick asked, giving him a mocking smile.

“I always buy the shrimp. Elise doesn’t like the canal.”

Nick busied herself making a lemon sauce, whisking a yolk into the pool of juice at the bottom of the bowl.

“I’ll show you one morning, if you like,” Charlie said. “Cucumber’s done.” He approached her with the cutting board and stood motionless behind her.

Nick stopped whisking.

“Do you have any Robert Johnson records?” Nick asked.

“I do,” Charlie said. “Would you like to hear them?”

“Yes,” Nick said. “And the shrimp boat, too. I’d like to know about that.”

“Fine,” he said.

Nick began whisking again, the sauce turning a thick pale yellow.

“Your cucumber,” he said.

“I liked them,” Nick said, clearing the plates.

“He’s a good worker,” Hughes said, staring into his scotch. “Some of the men don’t seem to care one bit whether the work on the boat gets finished. Mostly, those are the ones without families.”

“Nothing to go back to, I suppose.” Nick turned on the tap. She eyed Hughes. “But Charlie, I liked him. He said he’d show me the good shrimp boat.”

“Did he? Well, Elise doesn’t seem much for the outdoors, does she?”

“A bit milquetoast,” Nick said.

“She’s quite lovely, though.”

“Did you think so? I thought she might fade into the wall and we’d be searching for her all night.” Nick scrubbed at a plate. “But he’s pretty dashing.”

“Yes, well, you’re not alone. He has many admirers at the lunch canteen.”

“I imagine she must have a hard time with that.”

“Oh, I don’t know, he seems quite devoted to her.”

“Really?”

“You did seem to have a good time. I’m glad,” Hughes said, swirling the remnants of his drink around in his glass. “I don’t want this to be too dull for you.”

“This is our life. Why would it be dull?”

“Our life,” Hughes said slowly, an almost imperceptible sigh escaping his lips. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“What do you mean, you ‘suppose it is’?”

“I don’t know what I mean, maybe I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Well, I’ve had too much to drink,” Nick said, turning to face him, “and I want to know what the goddamn hell you mean, you ‘suppose it is’?”

“Yes, you’re right.” Hughes stared straight back. “You have had too much to drink.”

“So I’ve had too much to drink. So what? I’ve had too much of everything, goddamn it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t swear so much.”

“I wish you were the man I married.” Nick was shaking. She knew she had said too much, but it was like cliff jumping.

When she was a girl, she and Helena and a couple of boys would go up to the old quarry to test their nerve. The granite had run out years before and the quarry had been abandoned to the groundwater, its depths unfathomable. They would take turns, starting from an old oak
stump that served as their marker, and running without stopping until they were in the air, plummeting off the cliff. The boys who were really scared would skid like marbles at the edge. But Nick always jumped.

Then again, there, she had known the lay of the land.

Hughes finished his scotch in one quick swig and poured himself another. “I’m sorry if you feel disappointed.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry.”

“Go to bed, Nicky. We can talk when you’ve sobered up.”

“You’re the person who’s supposed to …” She stopped, unsure. “You’re my husband.”

“I’m well aware of that, Nick.” His voice seemed angry, spiteful even.

“Are you really? You don’t seem aware of much these days.”

“Maybe you’d be better off alone, maybe I’m not up to the job of being anyone’s husband.”

“At least I’m trying,” Nick said, suddenly afraid. “You …”

Hughes stood, and in an instant seemed to be towering. His palm pressed against the table, his knuckles white around the glass. “You don’t think I’m trying, Nick? What do you think I do every day, every second? That boat, this place, this house, this life: You think this is what I want?”

Nick looked at him. And then with one swift move, she yanked the radio cord out of the wall. One minute the radio was in her hand, and the next, it was hurtling through the air.

Hughes didn’t move a muscle, he just stood, his words hanging about him and an emptiness in his eyes.

The radio missed him and smashed into a corner of the wall.

“And what? You think that”—she pointed at the springs and plastic lying in a heap— “you think that’s what I want?”

“I’m going to bed,” Hughes said.

“What’s the point?” Nick ran her fingers through her hair. “You’re already asleep.”

*   *   *

Hughes left early the next morning. Nick pretended to be sleeping. The curtains were drawn and the room was stuffy. They both liked to sleep with the window open, but Nick had left it shut when she had finally come to bed, refusing to afford herself even the pleasure of the cooler air. It would be horrible and it was horrible, not least because it was stifling.

When she heard the engine turn over, she rose, not even bothering with her dressing gown. She sat at the kitchen table, staring into her black coffee. She toyed with the idea of throwing her things into a case, calling a taxi and fleeing back home. But when she mentally arrived in Cambridge, she was lost, the future yawning out in front of her. And he would still exist somewhere, somewhere else, and she wouldn’t have him. So she just stared at the coffee.

She tried to think of her parents’ marriage, but it was no use; she wasn’t aware of what went on behind closed doors, in dark stairwells, at parties when she was left at home, on midnight walks when the world slept. They had seemed happy. But her father had died when she was still so young, and what she could remember of the two of them together were fragments: a diamond brooch presented in a green leather box at Christmas; her mother running her hand over her father’s whiskers; the intermingling smell of Royal Yacht tobacco and L’Heure Bleue.

Her mother hadn’t wanted her to marry; she thought they were too young. She had forced Nick to go on dates with other boys, boring dances with a sweaty-palmed neighbor trying to hold her hand under the table. But when it became clear that she and Hughes were meeting in secret, her mother gave in. Better she be married if anything happened, she had said.

They wed on the Island, at the church where she had been christened. Small, with beautiful stained-glass windows. The reception
was at Tiger House. They had some overly strong punch and tea sandwiches and a sweet white cake with candied violets on it.

Nick, feeling strange and sick, had escaped to the upstairs drawing room. Sitting on the gray silk Sheraton sofa, she began pulling the orange blossoms out of her hair. She wondered if she’d ever be able to go back downstairs. Maybe she’d waste away on this sofa, like a sort of Miss Havisham; the orange blossoms would wilt and petrify, the chocolates set out on the side table would become brown, old stones.

And then Hughes had appeared in the doorway in his morning coat. Without a word, he came over and sat beside her. Nick continued to toy with the small scented sprigs, not daring to look at him, ashamed. He had taken her chin in his hand and turned her face to him. And in that gesture was everything, everything that wasn’t dead and stale and confining.

He took her hand and led her to the maid’s bedroom in the back. The window was open and the yellow-checked curtains were blowing in the harbor air. Lifting her voluminous skirt and petticoat, he knelt and put his face against her, inhaling her, but remaining still. Minutes seemed to pass before they heard footsteps in the corridor. Hughes turned his head toward the open door, but remained pressed against her. The downstairs maid passed by the door and stopped, paralyzed and flushing before their tableau. Hughes had stared at the woman a moment, as if he wanted her to see them, see what was happening and changing between them, keeping still, before kicking the door shut.

It was ten o’clock, the sun was on its way to its apex and Nick was still wearing her nightgown. The coffee stood cold beside her motionless hand on the breakfast table. She thought she could detect the lingering odor of last night’s shrimp, although it could have been the shrimp from Wednesday, or Sunday, for that matter.

She had found the remnants of the radio carefully wrapped in tissue
outside the front door, like a baby left on a doorstep. She had half expected to find a note pinned to it reading “Unloved and unwanted.”

Damn him, Nick thought, damn him to hell.

They were supposed to be different, different from all the people who didn’t want things and didn’t do things and who weren’t special. They were supposed to be the kind of people who said to hell with it, who threw their wineglasses into the fireplace, who jumped off cliffs. They were not supposed to be careful people.

But, if only he weren’t so beautiful. If only she didn’t want him so much.

She heard an engine outside and slowly rose, moving toward the kitchen window.

Charlie Wells was slamming the car door shut, a stack of records tucked under his arm. Nick ran into the bedroom and shut the door. A sensation from the night before—his hand on the soft interior of her thigh under the dinner table, a silent interloper—came back to her. How could she have forgotten that?

Her heart pounding, she found her dressing gown and checked her appearance in the mirror. She looked thin and unhappy. Goddamn it, she thought, I am thin and unhappy, so what?

Charlie was knocking on the screen door. Nick straightened her back and went to greet him.

“Hello,” she said, looking at him through the screen.

“Hello,” he said, smiling back at her. “I’m sorry for dropping in on you like this, but I was wondering what to do with my morning and I thought to myself that I’d like to spend it listening to Robert Johnson. And then I thought, maybe you would, too. I’m playing hooky.”

“Ah, and Hughes told me what a good worker you were.”

His hand, seeking her out while she’d fiddled with her napkin.

“Yes, your lieutenant is a very serious man.”

“He is,” Nick said.

Charlie stood there, jostling the records under his arm. He was wearing a pair of khakis and a chambray shirt, dock shoes and that cathouse smile.

Nick picked at the grime lacing the screen.

“Look,” he said, after a moment. “Maybe I’ve been too impetuous. You’re probably busy and I’m being a nuisance.”

Nick looked at him thoughtfully. “No, I’m not doing anything that a little music wouldn’t improve.” She pushed the door open and stood aside. “Please.”

Charlie stepped in and put the records on the table.

“Stay here and make yourself at home. I’m going to put on something a little more practical. One has to be serious about music, after all,” she said, finally throwing him a smile.

In the bedroom, Nick put on her green striped sundress and some red lipstick. She went back to the kitchen and began fixing a fresh pot of coffee. She stood with her back to the counter, watching Charlie thumb through his records at the breakfast table. Some of the cardboard packaging was worn, disintegrating at the corners. Hughes would never let anything he cared about be so ill-used, she thought. All his tools were kept clean and carefully returned to their cases when he was done with them. He even kept his toothbrush in a special case in the bathroom cabinet. And yet, it moved her, all that care and intensity for a screwdriver or a toothbrush.

“I think we’ll start your education with this one,” Charlie said.

Sitting in one of the chintz chairs, Nick gripped her coffee as Charlie put the needle to the vinyl. The music was rougher than the blues she was used to, but it had a certain back-porch quality. It was like a piece of driftwood, all worn down and muddy-colored. But with the sun shining on the green lawn and the palm trees bowing and straightening in the breeze, it couldn’t make Nick sad. In fact, it made her feel light-headed, like she might blow away with it.