The pines here have started to die, he thought, reached the end of their life span. It must have begun a year or two ago, but this summer suddenly the trees that framed their view from the porch had gone dry and rust colored, listing precariously to one side. Even the low shrubs along the path had begun to lose parts of themselves, large regions gray and dead, overtaken by lichen. Things had been changing. Even the mussels seemed to be disappearing. Once his mother could spend hours in the rocks of the boathouse beach pulling up their dinner, and now, not a mussel remained there. They still clung to the large boulders just down from the house, but less each year.
He could see the ferry in at the landing, a hulk next to all the sailboats and lobster boats moored in close to town: Dorothy Gail, Ladies First, You Bet Cha, Reel Life, Doctors Orders, A Parent Lee Knot II, Jolly Roger, Miss B. Haven, Santa Marine, he never understood why naming a boat was an opportunity for bad puns, slogans, testaments of love. Like permanent bumper stickers. Even his own father, a lawyer, had felt it necessary to name his first boat the Misdemeanor. Tom preferred simple names that connected with life on the water, Osprey, Leeward, St. Ann.
The Native Son just motored past and slowed up, resetting traps. Hook, pull, check, bait, back. The stern man couldn’t have been more than about eight, just a day out with his dad, what a different life. Tom couldn’t imagine spending time with Buster at his office, much less in the confines of a working lobster boat. He tried to get his son interested in boats, taught him to sail early, but seasickness won out over father-son bonding. And Kerry, he’d felt awkward with her ever since she turned eleven; knowing that she was no longer a gender-neutral child, that she was entering a world of femininity. It made him nervous. As if she already understood her sex in a way that he would never fathom. He did what he thought little girls might like to do with their fathers, took her to tea at the Four Seasons, bought her dresses of all types—sailor, flapper, sun, and party—he gave her an assortment of beads and yarn, thinking that while he did not know what to do with these things, she would.
Tom couldn’t remember what his father did with his sisters. He’d been too busy rushing out of the house himself to notice. And even if he had he would’ve done the opposite, striving to be the opposite of his own father. He promised his children honesty and assumed the rest would come. But the rhythm of parenthood was in constant flux; just as he understood and adjusted, things would change. “Ride the wave,” Melissa would say, sounding disturbingly like Gwen. No, he was relieved that the kids had chosen to stay home this week, to leave this place to the adults. He didn’t want the pressure of trying to make them happy too; to understand their moods and needs too. Melissa was enough, too much. Hot from the sun, Tom decided to head down to the float to consider the water. He, in the last few summers, had become less willing to swim.
On the float he found Melissa, Libby, and Danny. Melissa and Libby had gone down with intentions of swimming. Danny had given up the porch with the intention of going for a row. Tom found that all their good intentions had been submerged under the high tide. Libby and Melissa lay on small bath towels facing each other on one corner of the float. Libby, in a black one-piece that she had been wearing for the last ten years, lay facedown, a straw hat over her head. Melissa lay face up, arms stretched out wide beside her. She wore a small bikini he had not seen before, purple. There on the hot, gray planks against her baby-pink towel, she seemed to be drawing the light to her. She looked thin and young, and Tom thought in that moment she was strangely unchanged physically by the two children and fifteen years. Danny lay on a large pile of life jackets in the bottom of the Little Devil, which floated away from the dock, its bowline tied to a ring on the float. He had one leg hung over the side, and with each lazy wave his limp heel was kissed by the water and then released. Gwen had apparently gone to take a nap. She was napping a great deal this trip. He assumed she was living too hard at home.
Tom stood on the end of the ramp and thought how young they all looked. How old he felt. How Melissa’s breasts curved lasciviously out from her rib cage. He wanted to lick them, wanted the rest of the family to disappear. Should’ve come here alone, he thought, just the two of us. That hot day, skinny-dipping, how long ago was that? He wanted to fuck her there on the hot planks, get splinters in his knees, the heels of his hands. His stomach turned, ashamed to want her here with his family draped all around. Ashamed that he couldn’t control those feelings. Scared at what could be behind them. He wanted to fuck her in broad daylight in a public place. He wanted to tie her up. He wanted to feel her thumbs press against his windpipe, to feel things go black. He wanted to turn her over and find a new place to fuck her. And these thoughts as he looked at her body, barely covered, made him burn with the heat that runs up the back of the neck before vomiting.
She had let him tie her up once, on the guest bed with the pineapple posts. He wouldn’t do it in their own bed. He had never come so hard. And for days afterward he didn’t want to look at her. She had defiled them both by letting it happen. Really, it had been her idea, a game, an experiment, like she was just testing a new recipe or attending a costume party. She wanted to do it again, and he had explained that he hadn’t liked it. She had laughed at first, had thought he was kidding.
He wasn’t going to let himself like it. Because if he did, if he tied her up and fucked her ass and devoured her body, forced her to do all the things he wanted, she would see what he truly was. Or what he truly was, something even worse, something that he could not even imagine, would find its way to the surface. Because there could be some even more perverted longing inside him. He knew what happened when these boxes were opened. He knew if he stayed, eventually she would find out. She would force open the lid with all her good intentions, the writhing contents would pour forth, and she would leave disgusted.
He had to leave her before that happened. If only she’d let him alone, let it go. His predilection might not be his father’s, but he was sure there could be much worse, that really it was all the same in the end. He would not find out, but he knew all the same. Melissa said she was always up for anything. He knew that was simply a saying, a phrase that, if tested, she would regret ever uttering. So he would love his wife as he should, face to face in their own bed, no rope, no throat, no covenant broken. Soon he wouldn’t even be doing that. God, he wished she’d cover up.
He pulled off his T-shirt, with an uncertain impulse to give it to her, but instead let it drop to the decking. He felt the nausea rise, felt almost faint from it. He stepped down from the edge of the ramp, walked to her side where she lay at the edge of the float, and dove over her into the water. He went down deep to where the water felt heavy and sharp, so cold he felt his body seize for a moment, then he turned up and pulled strong for the surface. The feeling that his air might give out before he broke the surface made him swim fast, fighting the cold. Sputtering and thrashing he stroked for the float and hoisted himself up, not willing to swim the long way around to the ladder.