Randy White - The Mangrove Coast

She gave it a light touch, but there was some anger down in there deep, the same place her thirty-second rule came from.

Thinking, Me? Mild-mannered? I said, “So your stepfather’s not the only one in the family who knows how to make cutting remarks.”

“It wasn’t aimed at you, just an overall observation.”

“Men in general, huh?”

“They do seem to be fairly predictable. Not all, but most. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t wondering. I was commenting on your attitude.” When I saw her expression condense, I added quickly, “Not criticizing. Just commenting.”

“You didn’t see how devastated my mom was when Frank left. Like I told you, she was dependent on him. I’d moved out, then he moved out. So there she is, forty-some years old, overweight and a dud in bed according to the husband who abandoned her, living all alone. This beautiful woman, probably the kindest person I’ve ever met, and I’m not saying that just because I’m her daughter. She was hurt, disillusioned, she was depressed and vulnerable as hell. A perfect target for any wandering asshole who wanted to take advantage of her. You expect me to be happy about that?”

“Are you talking about the guy she disappeared with or someone else?”

Amanda said, “I’m talking about him, yeah, that’s exactly the guy I’m describing. Jackie Merlot, the one I’m telling you about.”

According to Amanda, Gail had met Merlot years ago. She pronounced it “MUR-lowe,” similar to the pronunciation of the wine. At about the same time, Gail also started seeing Calloway as her psychologist. “Apparently, Mom knew Merlot back when the two of us still lived alone. I say apparently because I can’t remember ever seeing the guy until about eleven months ago. When I did meet him, just looking at him, something about his face, those eyes, it gave me the creeps. Jesus, talking about him gives me goosebumps right now. See?”

I looked at the freckled arm extended toward me. When I touched my fingers to her forearm-there were, indeed, goosebumps-she flinched slightly, saying, “Merlot was supposedly one of Frank’s earliest land syndicate investors. I think he and my mom met through Frank at some party or something, got to be friends, but once she started to date Frank, Merlot vanished from the picture.”

Nearly twenty years later, Merlot had reappeared.

“I don’t know how he heard about the divorce. Maybe he read it in the paper or something, but only a couple of weeks after the thing was final, Merlot was back on the scene. Mom had been living by herself for more than a year by that time. Frank and his soulmate bimbo were a public item, not even trying to hide the fact they were living together. He’d even gone to the trouble of making a full confession to my mom about his affair. About why he’d outgrown the relationship and why he hoped they’d be friends, but their life as husband and wife were over, because he needed space to grow and he’d met an old spirit probably from another lifetime, meaning Skipper. Can you imagine someone as nice as my mom sitting there listening to this bullshit? Also that he wished her well, but that she had to go on and find a new life. Nice guy, huh?”

“Kind of surprising behavior for a psychologist.”

“Yeah, it’s like little Skipper had actually screwed the man’s brains loose. But you know what gets me most of all? Frank really is a pretty nice guy. That’s one of the reasons it hurt my mom so much. She wasn’t just dependent on him, she liked him. He took care of her, he made her laugh. About a month after Frank left, she told me the whole story. The both of us just sat there holding each other and crying.”

I was sitting at the galley table, drinking iced tea, listening. I could look across the water to the row of guide slips, each with its own ornate wooden sign. Name of captain, name of skiff. At the end of the T-dock was Janet Mueller’s bright blue houseboat moored snugly among the more expensive sailboats, Aquasports, Makos and fiberglass party cruisers. Curled up on the stern deck of Janet’s boat was the marina’s black cat, Crunch amp; Des. His tail was slapping rhythmically in sunlight. He looked as predatory and as bored as some of the big lions I’d seen years ago while working in Mozambique.

Thinking about Mozambique, the way its jungle rose as a green bluff out of the mud of the Zambezi River, caused me to think about the small Central American nation of Masagua. Similar jungle, similar earth odors, similar rustred rivers. It also caused me to think about Pilar Balserio.

I said to Amanda, “I’ve read that losing a lover is like having someone die. Someone you care about. When a relationship ends, they say you have to go through a mourning period.”

“Well… my mom certainly did that. She’s a very sensitive person. If there’s a commercial on television that uses a dog or a baby, she gets teary eyed. It used to drive me nuts, but that’s just the way she is. When I was growing up, all my girlfriends absolutely loved her. Same with the boyfriend I had in high school. The two of them still stay in touch. At least, they stayed in touch before she met Merlot. See, I’m telling you about the kind of person my mother is. She’s very caring and extremely thoughtful. You need to understand that to understand why I’m positive she’s in some kind of trouble.”

According to Amanda, Merlot began by telephoning her mother regularly, checking on her, then dropping by to bring her books or little presents. Gail Richardson was lonely, depressed, and she welcomed the friendship.

“This was after they’d spent quite a bit of time getting reacquainted on the Internet.”

I said, “What?”

“You know, the Internet, the America Online thing. You don’t have a computer?”

“No.”

“I thought everyone had a PC. But you know how it works, right?”

I nodded. Tomlinson had told me about it.

“Mom and Merlot did a bunch of E-mailing, visiting the same chat rooms, that sort of stuff. Conversations through cyberspace. Merlot in his house, Mom in our old place, which is why it always seems so safe having on-line friends. I guess the two of them spent a lot of time getting reacquainted, just typing away.

“After a while, they had their own Internet friends, their own little circle, people she’d never met. This was early on she told me about the Internet stuff, back when she was still open about her relationship with Merlot. Like I told you, the Internet stuff always seems so harmless.”

“Your mother’s good with computers?”

“No. You don’t have to be good with computers to work the Internet. She was just lonely, that’s all. She’d be online almost every night. I know, ‘cause I’d always get a busy signal when I tried to call. Finally, I talked her into getting a second line.”

“She spent that much time.”

“Yeah. What else did she have to do?”

“And always with Merlot?”

“Not at first. I spend my share of time on-line. I’ve got E-mail friends all over the world, so Mom and I used to jabber away to each other. For some reason… it’s hard to explain… but there are certain subjects that are easier to write about than talk about. So that’s what we’d do. Write notes back and forth about all kinds of stuff. She’d write about the way it was between her and my real dad, and I’d write about… well, private stuff, the way I felt about things.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened was she got involved with a different group of E-mail friends. I wasn’t a part of it. And I think she had an on-line crush on some guy from California. She never told me that, but if my mom mentions a guy more than twice, I know she has some feelings for him. I warned her about telling strangers too much about herself. I mean, no one really knows who anyone else is on the Internet. Right?”