Russell Banks - Continental Drift

On the other hand, he believes that the kind of man he will become, by virtue of his acquiring Marguerite’s love, is the kind of man who can locate with ease the excluded middle between his love for his children and his love for a woman not their mother. The man is handsome, of course, and sexy and good-humored; he’s not rich, not yet, but some men don’t have to be rich in order to seem it; he’s kind and gentle, tender to women, children and animals, without being sentimental, however, because, after all, he’s a “man’s man” as well; he’s a stern yet jocular father to his children, and he can take care of his wife too, can assume a custodial role in her life, honoring and attending to all her needs, even her sexual needs, while at the same time making plans to leave the house later, after he’s satisfied her sexual needs, to drive in his Lancia convertible across the towns of central Florida in the humid summer night to meet his beloved where she waits for him, seated elegantly at a table for two in the small back room of a restaurant that overlooks a dark, star-dappled lake, where the sound of small waves lapping tawny sands and the seductive smell of orange blossoms fill the night air. That’s the kind of man Marguerite would love.

He is seated on the edge of a short, wide dock. He’s wearing dark blue swimming trunks and a yellow life vest, his feet tucked into water skis and his hands grasping a bar attached to a tow rope which in turn is attached to Eddie’s new boat. Late afternoon sunlight glitters off the lake in sheets and planes, and the still air ripples in the heat, distorting the tall, dense, gray-green live oaks and cypress trees along the grassy shore. From where Bob is seated, the shoreline loops and spreads gradually into an approximate O three miles wide and long. They are on the grounds of the Lakes Region Yacht and Country Club, he, Elaine, Ruthie and Emma having been admitted at the gate earlier as guests of Edward Dubois, and after meeting Eddie, Sarah and Jessica at the clubhouse bar, where the grownups drank mint juleps on the terrace under a Cinzano umbrella, they strolled across the clipped, pale green lawns from the clubhouse and marina to one of the half-dozen small, secluded coves on the club grounds where there are picnic tables, fireplaces, boat landings and short, shallow beaches. It’s a Sunday, Eddie’s thirty-third birthday.

Last week, when Bob and his family were invited by Sarah to come to the club and help celebrate the day, Bob instructed Elaine to find out what they should give Eddie for a birthday present. “The sonofabitch’s already got everything he needs,” he muttered. Elaine asked her sister-in-law what Eddie needed. Sarah suggested they get him something to go with her gift to him.

“What is your gift?” Elaine asked. They were talking on the telephone, Elaine standing in her kitchen, Sarah lying in coconut oil next to her pool. Bob sat on the couch in front of the TV watching the New York Yankees, in a late season game, thrash the Red Sox, who once again had betrayed him in August after having seduced him, almost against his will, in May.

“Fucking Reggie,” he grumbled, taking a quick pull on his beer. “I hate the way he struts. Look at the bastard, like a goddamn rooster.”

Sarah spoke slowly, almost coyly, though Elaine couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t simply come right out and tell her what she’d bought for her husband’s birthday. “You’ll never guess what it is,” she said. “I’m almost ashamed of myself, and I know I’ll be sorry later.”

“Well, what should we get him to go with it?” Elaine asked, her voice cooling. “Whatever it is.”

Sarah giggled. “Seat cushions.”

“What?”

“Seat cushions.”

“Seat cushions? Like, for sitting on? For a couch?”

“No, no, silly. For a boat!”

“A boat? You bought him a boat? Another one?”

Bob groaned, “Jee-sus H. Christ! Another fucking boat!” and Elaine shushed him with the flat of her hand, and he went back to staring at the TV screen, hating Reggie Jackson with renewed fury.

“Oh, it’s real cute, he’s gonna love it,” Sarah said. “Wait’ll you see it. He’s been talking about this one in particular for months, and he’s dropped a few hints, but I know he doesn’t think I’ll go out and do it, actually go out on my own and buy him a twelve-thousand-dollar boat.”

“Twelve thousand dollars!” Elaine gasped.

Bob looked up from the TV screen and stared at his wife as if he suddenly felt sick and wanted sympathy.

“Where’d you get that kind of money, Sarah? Won’t he be mad when he finds out? I mean, I can’t imagine …”

“Oh, Eddie’s been putting money into an account in my name for a long time, in several accounts, actually, and I never touch it, even though he tells me I should go ahead and spend it when I want to and not let it sit there where anybody who wants to can see it. It’s some kind of tax thing. I never understand that sort of thing. Anyhow, he’d rather have me buy things with the money than leave it in the bank like that. Jewelry and stuff. I don’t know how he’ll feel about me spending money on a boat, though. But as long as it’s in my name, I think it’s all right. I checked with his accountant, and he said it was okay, though I hope he didn’t tell Eddie — I really want to surprise him. He’s been so worried the last few weeks. Actually, since the robbery, though I don’t think that’s what’s got him down.”

Cushions, then.

Bob stopped one morning at Wiggins Boat Yard and Marina in Winter Haven, where Sarah had bought Eddie’s boat, and bought four large, square, unsinkable cushions, rust-colored, to match the boat, a Regal Empress 190XL, a twenty-foot-long, arrow-shaped speedboat with a 150-horsepower Johnson motor and a top speed of over forty-five miles per hour. Bob lugged the set of cushions in a large, gift-wrapped box from the car out to the terrace behind the clubhouse and then across the rolling lawns to the picnic grounds by the shore, where Sarah had arranged to have sandwiches, beer for the adults and lemonade for the kids, birthday cake and ice cream sent down from the clubhouse, and where Eddie, who had received his gift earlier that morning and had been playing with it ever since, had tied his new boat. When Bob saw the vehicle sitting low and sleek in the water, saw its abundance of chrome and curved glass and glistening deck, saw the snug interior fitted out like a sports car, he set the box of cushions on the ground by the picnic table and stood awkwardly in front of it, as if to hide it from sight, and wished he had bought something like a Swiss army knife instead.

Later, after eating the sandwiches and drinking several Heinekens, and after Eddie had blown out the candles on his cake (eleven of them, one for each three years, Sarah explained), Elaine presented the box to him, with her apologies. “It’s not much, Eddie,” she said, lifting it with difficulty to the front of her huge belly and passing it over the table to him.

Bob looked out at the lake and let his gaze fall on the new boat tied to the dock, where it moved on the rippling water like a thoroughbred racehorse trembling in a shifting breeze.

Eddie tore open the box like a child, then beamed happily at the sight of the cushions inside. “Hey! Thanks, Elaine! Bob! Thanks a lot. This’s great. Look, honey, cushions ! They match the boat,” he said, genuinely pleased. He’d figured on renting cushions today at the marina, he said, or hauling over the small yellow cushions from his old boat, which would have been okay, he explained, but not perfect. “And everything should be perfect on a maiden voyage, right, Bob?”

“Right. Perfect.”

Now, as if to atone for his feeble gift, Bob agrees to water-ski behind Eddie’s new boat, while his wife and sister-in-law watch from the shore and his daughters and niece, hugged by life vests and seated on the new cushions, watch from the boat. He’s never skied on water before; in fact, he’s never skied on any kind of surface, despite having been raised where people drive from cities hundreds of miles away just so they can spend a few hours careening down mountains on slats strapped to their feet.