Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

“How did you get here?”

“Owney rowed me out earlier. Old Cal Cooley certainly did not swim.”

It was a quick trip to Courne Haven Island, and when they got off the boat, Owney led them to a lemon-yellow Cadillac parked by the dock.

“Whose car is this?” Ruth asked.

“My uncle’s.”

It matched the house, as it turned out. Pastor Wishnell lived a short drive from the Courne Haven dock, in a beautiful house, yellow with lavender trim. It was a three-story Victorian with a tower and a circular porch; bright blooming plants hung from hooks, placed three feet apart, around the entire porch. The slate walkway to the house was lined with lilies. The pastor’s garden, in the back of the house, was a little museum of roses, surrounded by a low brick wall. On the drive over, Ruth had noticed a few other homes on Courne Haven Island, equally nice. Ruth hadn’t been to Courne Haven since she was a little girl, too young to notice the differences between it and Fort Niles.

“Who lives in the big houses?” she asked Owney.

“Summer people,” Cal Cooley answered. “You’re lucky not to have them on Fort Niles. Mr. Ellis keeps them away. One of the many nice things Mr. Ellis does for you. Summer people are vermin.”

It was summer people, too, who owned the sailboats and the speedboats that surrounded the island. On the trip over, Ruth had seen two silvery speedboats darting across the water. They were so close to each other, the head of one boat seemed to be kissing the ass of the other. They looked like two dragonflies, chasing each other around, trying to have sex in the salty air.

Pastor Wishnell set up Mrs. Pommeroy to cut hair in his back garden, right in front of a white trellis of pink roses. He had brought out a stool and a small side table, where she placed her scissors and combs and a tall glass of water in which to dip the combs. Kitty Pommeroy sat on the low brick wall and had herself a few cigarettes. She buried the butts in the soil under the roses when she thought nobody was looking. Owney Wishnell was sitting on the steps of the back porch in his strangely clean fisherman’s clothes, and Ruth went to sit beside him. He kept his hands on his knees, and she could see the curling gold filaments of hair on his knuckles. They were such clean hands. She wasn’t used to seeing men with clean hands.

“How long has you uncle lived here?” she asked.

“Forever.”

“This doesn’t look like a house he’d live in. Does somebody else live here?”

“Me.”

“Anyone else?”

“Mrs. Post.”

“Who’s Mrs. Post?”

“She takes care of the house.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping your friends over there?” Cal Cooley asked. He’d come up behind them on the porch without making a sound. Now he lowered his tall body and sat next to Ruth so that she was between the two men.

“I don’t think they need any help, Cal.”

“Your uncle wants you to head back over to Fort Niles, Owney,” Cal Cooley said. “He needs you to pick up Mr. Ellis for the wedding.”

“Mr. Ellis is coming to this wedding?” Ruth asked.

“He is.”

“He never comes over here.”

“Regardless. Owney, it’s time to push off. I’m going with you.”

“May I go with you?” Ruth asked Owney.

“You certainly may not,” said Cal.

“I didn’t ask you, Cal. May I go with you, Owney?”

But Pastor Wishnell was approaching, and when Owney saw him, he quickly jumped off the steps and said to his uncle, “I’m going. I’m going right now.”

“Hurry,” said the pastor as he walked up the steps and onto the porch. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Ruth, Mrs. Pommeroy is going to need your help.”

“I’m not much help cutting hair,” Ruth said, but the pastor and Owney were gone. One in each direction.

Cal looked at Ruth and lifted a satisfied eyebrow. “I wonder why you’re so eager to hang around that boy.”

“Because he doesn’t annoy the fuck out of me, Cal.”

“I annoy the fuck out of you, Ruth?”

“Oh, not you. I didn’t mean you. ”

“I enjoyed our little trip to Concord. Mr. Ellis had a lot of questions for me when I got back. He wanted to know how you and your mother got along, and if you seemed at home there. I told him that you’d both got along swimmingly and that you seemed very much at home there, but I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about it. Come to think of it, perhaps you should write him a note when you get the chance, thanking him for having sponsored the trip. It’s important to him that the two of you have a good relationship, considering how close your mother and grandmother have been to the Ellis family. And it’s important to him that you get as much time off Fort Niles as possible, Ruth. I told him I’d be happy to take you to Concord at any time, and that we had a good time traveling together. I do enjoy it, Ruth.” He was giving her his heavy-lidded stare now. “Although I can’t get out of my head this idea that someday the two of us will end up in a motel along Route One having filthy sex together.”

Ruth laughed. “Get it out of your head.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because Old Cal Cooley is such a funny man,” Ruth said. Which was not at all the truth. The truth was that Ruth was laughing because she had decided-as she often did, with varying degrees of success-that Old Cal Cooley was not going to get to her. She wouldn’t allow it. He could heap upon her loads of his most insidious abuse, but she would not rise to it. Certainly not today.

“I know it’s only a matter of time before you start having filthy sex with somebody, Ruth. All signs point to it.”

“Now we’re going to play a different kind of game,” Ruth said. “Now you leave me alone for a while.”

“And you should keep yourself away from Owney Wishnell, by the way,” Cal said as he walked down the porch steps and wandered into the garden. “It’s obvious that you’re up to something with that boy, and nobody likes it.”

“Nobody?” Ruth called after him. “Really, Cal? Nobody?”

“Get over here, you big old man,” Kitty Pommeroy said to Cal when she saw him. Cal Cooley turned on his heel and walked stiffly in the other direction. He was going back to Fort Niles to get Mr. Ellis.

The bride, Dotty Wishnell, was a likable blonde in her mid-thirties. She’d been married before, but her husband died of testicular cancer. She and her daughter, Candy, who was six years old, were the first to have their hair done. Dotty Wishnell walked over to Pastor Wishnell’s house in her bathrobe, her hair wet and uncombed. Ruth thought this was a pretty relaxed way for a bride to walk around on her wedding day, and it made Ruth like the woman right away. Dotty had an attractive enough face, but she looked exhausted. She had no makeup on yet, and she was chewing gum. She had deep lines across her forehead and around her mouth.

Dotty Wishnell’s daughter was extremely quiet. Candy was going to be her mother’s maid of honor, which Ruth thought an awfully serious job for a six-year-old, but Candy seemed up to it. She had a grown-up face for a child, a face that didn’t belong anywhere near a child.

“Are you nervous about being the maid of honor?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Candy.

“Obviously not.” Candy had the firm mouth of the aging Queen Victoria. She wore a most judgmental expression, and those lips of hers were firmly set. “I was already a flower girl at Miss Dorphman’s wedding, and we aren’t even related.”

“Who’s Miss Dorphman?”

“Obviously she’s my teacher.”

“Obviously,” Ruth repeated, and Kitty Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy both laughed. Dotty laughed, too. Candy looked at the four women as if she were disappointed in the lot of them.