What's Mine and Yours(91)

“What about my father? Have you seen him around?”

“Your mother says he’s fine. Goes to visit Diane sometimes, fixes little things for her around the house, and then asks for money.”

“That sounds like him.”

“But he’s got a job for a moving company, so he does long hauls out of state. He’s got an apartment somewhere on the east side. He’s in a program.”

“He’s done programs before.”

“It’s a good thing, according to Lacey May.”

“Those two are going to keep this up forever, aren’t they?”

Ruth shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to know.”

“You’re right,” Noelle said. “Enough about the Venturas and the Gibbses. You’ll be back at the hospital tomorrow. We’ve got to squeeze out the most of your last day of vacation.”

“Vacation?” Ruth rolled her eyes. “Bailey had me sticking my hand in beehives and pulling up weeds.” She huffed and reached for the bill. Noelle didn’t fuss and let her pay.



The pirate museum was along the boardwalk, and Ruth asked if Noelle would mind if she invited Bailey to join them. He’d been infatuated with Blackbeard as a boy and might get a kick out of the relics they’d salvaged from old ships.

“Wasn’t he the one who killed all his wives?”

Ruth slapped her arm and laughed. “Of course not. You’re thinking of Bluebeard.” Ruth explained that when he was a boy, Bailey read storybooks about English pirates and marooned ships, the Graveyard of the Atlantic. He would dress up in her beaded necklaces and romp around the house, a miniature marauder. She relayed this history to Noelle all while beaming, as if the boy Bailey were in front of her now. It pleased Noelle to see how much contentment Ruth could still extract from her memories of her son as a boy. She relished it, longed to delight in a child the same way.

They waited for Bailey in front of the museum, and Noelle didn’t recognize him when Ruth first started to wave. He was tall and sunburned, his face nearly all hair: a full beard and mustache, thick sideburns enclosing his cheeks. His dark hair curled beneath his ears. His eyes were blue, and Noelle couldn’t help but remember lyrics from the song she’d listened to that morning. Tus ojos azules, azul que tienen el cielo y el mar. She’d never had a thing for blue eyes, but she couldn’t help but be disquieted by his: they were the color of frozen water.

He kissed his mother before he awkwardly nodded at Noelle, folded her into a stiff hug. He smelled of wood chips, tobacco. He wore the same Clementine Farms T-shirt as his mother, brown work boots, and jeans. He had flecks of silver in his beard, lines at the corners of his eyes that swept up to his temples when he smiled. But he was younger, she remembered, around Margarita’s age: thirty or close to it.

“You’re all grown up,” she said, unsure of how else to greet him.

Bailey smiled at her. “You too.” He ushered his mother inside, away from the sun.

The museum was hokey and dim. Old wooden steering wheels were mounted on the walls, alongside replicas of the bronze mermaids that had adorned the prows of the ships. Nautical maps were displayed in glass cases; a long, battered sail drooped from the ceiling. Ruth pointed to the placards she thought Bailey would find most interesting. He and Noelle trudged behind her, studying each other more than they did the exhibits. When she caught him looking at her, he’d snatch his eyes away, look at his hands, then back up at her, as if for permission to go on staring. She smiled at him, and they ambled on together.

“How’s your sister?” Bailey finally asked.

“Which one?”

“Margarita. The model.”

“Oh, she’s an actress now. She just landed a recurring part on a show for this season. She’s a nurse on a hospital drama.”

“Does my mother know? She’ll get a kick out of that.”

They wandered past a display of a typical sailors’ lunch—a rubber fish, a bowl of cornmeal mush, a plastic goblet filled with plastic rum.

“I used to have a crush on her, you know. I thought she was so beautiful.” Bailey stammered and corrected himself. “You all were.”

Noelle smiled. “I don’t remember that.”

He asked her about the theater, and she told him, although he must have known much more about her than he let on. He didn’t bring up Lacey May’s cancer, or the divorce. She asked about his farm. He raised chickens and bees; eggs and honey and beeswax paid the bills. But he harvested grapes, too, and flowers, the garden vegetables he’d grown as a boy: tomatoes and bell peppers, cucumber and squash.

“Clementine is my ex-wife. When we separated, I bought her out. A buddy and I keep it up now.”

“So, you’re still gardening?” Noelle teased. She asked why they’d separated.

“We stayed together for a while after she got saved and became born-again, but it wasn’t the same after that. She was always picking on me for something—smoking a cigar, drinking too much. And I’m not a drinker—believe me. Finally, she figured divorce was bad but being yoked to an unbeliever was worse.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“I’m mostly interested in this life,” Bailey said. “It’s enough for me.”

Noelle stared at him, wondered what kind of man he was.