Beatriz Williams - The Wicked Redhead

“Now I guess you might have been referring to the fact that somebody shot you,” I continue. “But if that bullet hadn’t grazed you, and the good doctor hadn’t prescribed you a brandy cure for the pain, why, the whole evening might have been ruined.”

He says something I can’t quite make out over the wind and the engine. But he isn’t smiling, so I don’t press him. Maybe he wasn’t talking about getting shot at all; maybe he was thinking about what came after, caught in Duke’s trap, and that none of that horror might have come about if we hadn’t ventured out on the waters of New York Harbor in a high-powered speedboat that evening, hadn’t passed through the Narrows and into the wide ocean, hadn’t afterward spent the night in pleasure as we did.

“I guess we paid for it, all right,” I say, mostly to myself, but Anson has got the ears of a cat, I guess, because he replies, Paid for what? and I say boldly, Joy.

He doesn’t say anything to that. Maybe I was expecting the sound of this word— joy —might cause him to shut off the engine and seize me in his arms and deliver some kind of physical comfort to daub the wounds inside us both, but all I detect is a fresh whiteness at the joints of his fingers that hold the wheel and adjust the throttle. The boat pursues its long, clean course down the Indian River, mangrove passing to the left and the buildings and wharves of Cocoa slipping away to the right. Then the buildings thin out and disappear altogether, and Anson speaks up over the deep, angry throat of the engine.

“I telephoned my parents from Fitzwilliam’s office. Asked how Billy was doing.”

“And? Have they put his poor jaw back together again?”

“Yes.” He pauses. “Seems he hasn’t yet woken up. May be some injury to the brain itself, because of the force of the blow.”

I grip the edge of the seat with my good hand. Feel a little sick. “Poor Billy.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t they do anything? Some kind of operation?”

“I don’t know. It was a bad connection; I couldn’t hear half of what she was saying.”

“You mother, you mean?”

“Yes.”

I stare down at the ugly blue serge covering my knees, against which an image of Mrs. Marshall takes shape, as I last saw her. She stands in the moonlight beside a Southampton swimming pool, consuming a cigarette in swift, fierce drags, and she tells me about her sons. She wears a long, shimmering dressing gown, trimmed in down, and an aspect of fascinating beauty, made of delicate, high-pitched bones and preserved skin. In the tension of her face, I perceive a universe of keen emotion, which might be love but also fear. I swallow back a cup of misery and ask, “How’s she taking it?”

Anson lifts his hand from the throttle and works the brim of the flat newsboy’s cap atop his head. His profile is terribly grim. “How’s she taking it? Her son’s lying in a hospital bed with a broken head. I guess she’s taking it as well as the next woman. Considering she’s already lost another son to the war.”

“I hope you’re not blaming yourself. It’s my fault, if anything.”

“It’s Kelly’s fault, Ginger. And mine, for bringing you into this, first, and then dragging my brother into it because of you.”

I rise from the seat and grasp his elbow. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you even think it. You didn’t mean for that to happen. You were doing your job, that’s all.”

“But Billy wasn’t. Billy had nothing to do with this.”

“No, he got into this mess because of me, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. I should never have taken up with him. A sweet wee cub like that.”

“He wasn’t so naïve as that.”

“No, but he was fallen in love with me, and I let him fall, because I was vain and shallow and flattered by him. Because I needed a little solace. Because I hadn’t met you yet.”

Anson makes a noise in his throat, but nothing else.

“Anyway,” I say, “how was I supposed to know poor Billy was serious about me? Men make all kinds of promises. They’ll say anything. Maybe they even mean it at the time; I don’t know. Every man wants to run away with you, until suddenly he doesn’t.”

“Well, I knew,” he says. “I knew he was serious about you.”

“See here. You have nothing to be guilty for, do you hear me? If I’d known you were brothers, the two of you—”

“ I knew we were brothers.”

“And you didn’t touch me, did you? I was the one who came to your bed, that night we went out on the ocean. I was the one who gave you that brandy and climbed in beside you.”

“I let you in.”

“You were an innocent before me, Anson. Don’t think I didn’t know.”

“Maybe so,” he says, “but I wasn’t so innocent I didn’t know what we were doing together. Wasn’t so drunk I didn’t mean what I did. I knew I was breaking my brother’s heart, and I did it anyway, because …”

“Because why? Because you’re such a mean, selfish, awful bastard and wanted me for yourself?”

His hand yanks down the throttle, smacking the engine back down to size, cutting our speed to a mere crawl. He turns to me, left hand gripping the wheel, and his face sort of shocks me, bruised and brutal, lit to blazes by the afternoon sun. “All right. Have it your way. You seduced me. I’m just some poor, innocent rube who fell in love with the wrong girl and stuck himself with nothing but trouble.”

“If you want out—”

“Want out ? Out of what? Out of loving you? Out of waking up and thanking God you’re still alive, I haven’t killed you with this life of mine, this job of mine—”

“Oh, if that’s what’s bothering you—”

“There is only one thing that bothers me, Ginger. I might ache for my brother, I might burn for my part in what was done to him, but there’s only one thing that makes me so sick I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight, I can’t see reason, and that’s the thought I might lose you. Might not ever again kiss you or lie with you.”

“You can’t lose a thing that doesn’t ever mean to be lost, Anson. You can’t lose a thing that belongs to you. A girl that was made for you, the same as you were made for her, like a handle for a bucket, like a pillowcase for a pillow. A hearth for a fire.”

And I say this brave thing, and I sit back on my heels and wait, gazing at his battered face with my heart right there in my eyes, in such a way that I have never yet looked upon a man, stripped and raw, and still he doesn’t seize me in his arms. Still he doesn’t touch my skin nor kiss my mouth. His stare is that of a man condemned to death. His left hand grips that wheel as if some frightful hurricane be bearing down upon us.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“There’s another thing.”

“So tell me.”

“Something your stepfather said, back there in the springhouse.”

“He said a lot of things.”

“You know what I mean, Ginger. I didn’t say anything before. I figured we had enough to do, making it safely down here to Florida. Making sure you weren’t hurt any worse than I feared. And I know Duke said a lot of things, and most of them didn’t have any truth to them. But if there’s any chance, Ginger, any chance at all …”

He cuts himself off and looks away, blinking back something in his eyes, and how can I blame him? A question like that. And I know why he’s asking it. Not because he actually supposes he might have started a child in me; not even so much as a week has passed since we lay together in the cold, black Southampton night, reckless as two young thieves, while this same ocean spoke outside our window, and though Anson might have lost his wits entirely during the sweet course of those hours, he is yet sensible enough to understand the limits of nature’s bounty. No, indeed. A far more complicated possibility has risen up before him, and my step-daddy is to blame for that, as for most of our troubles.