Molly looked at Emma, who was playing now with the two children, the parents looking on. Molly waved to them. The woman waved back.
She sat back down, slowly, carefully, as if she were wearing a dress that he could look up if she wasn’t careful. She sat Indian style, her palms flattened on her thighs. Her fingernails were short, blunt, like his. She was wearing black jeans and black half-boots. Her vivid yellow wind-breaker was billowing out behind her as the stiff offshore early-evening winds swept in.
She didn’t look at him, just stared at that bright red sun that was close enough to the water now to turn it a gleaming golden red. “Have you ever been married before, Ramsey?”
Getting down to it now, he thought. “Yes, when I was twenty-two and just starting law school.”
Her voice cynical, she said, “You knocked her up?”
“Nope. She was a marine, had just finished her basic training and was going to be shipped out to some god-awful place in Africa. We wanted to be married just before she left.”
“What happened?”
“We did well together. She was the one always on the road, off to someplace I’d never heard of, but it worked out okay. She wanted to wait on kids and I was agreeable. Then it was all over.” He found his body tensing, becoming clammy, just as it had that day he’d walked out of the courtroom, elated because he’d just won an important case, only to have one man and one woman, both in uniform, waiting for him. He’d known, oh yes, he’d known in that instant that Susan was dead.
“She was killed when her helicopter crashed in the Kuwaiti desert at the end of the Gulf War in ninety-one. She would have shipped home the very next week.” “I’m sorry,” Molly said, “I’m so very sorry.” “Shit happens.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “No, don’t act like a man about it.”
There was clean anger in his voice as he turned to her. “Why not? At least now I can sound all flippant and macho, but for a very long time I couldn’t even say her name without stuttering or bawling. And you, of all people, Molly, know that shit does happen.”
She didn’t understand how he’d felt, given her own experience with marriage. She said, “You must have loved her very much.”
“Yes, but Susan died a long time ago, Molly. Fact of the matter was that we didn’t really know each other all that well. She was gone too much of the time. When she was home, it was nonstop sex until it was time for her to leave again. We talked, sure, but for the life of me, I can’t remember many conversations. And, as I said, I know more about you than I did her. For example, I don’t remember how she squeezed a tube of toothpaste, whereas I know that you flatten the tube in the middle. I don’t know what kind of nightwear Susan really preferred. You love floaty silk nightgowns. I saw you rubbing the one you couldn’t help but pack, you loved it so much. But with me around you wear only those cotton jobs that start at your throat and end at your toes. I never knew what her favorite breakfast
was. You like to eat Grape-Nuts unless you’re on the ran- and I do mean that literally. She liked my body, she told me that whenever we were together, but I can’t remember that she ever looked at me the way you did this morning. You licked your chops, Molly. I don’t think you once got up to my face. I felt like a sex god. It was great.
“Isn’t that strange? To be married for nearly three years and not really know your mate very well?”
He stared at the sun again, then over at Emma. He saw her laugh at something one of the kids said. After the man had taken her off the beach nearly right under his nose, he automatically checked on her every fifteen seconds, or less. Usually it was less, especially after San Francisco.
“Maybe, but I never knew Louey all that well either. Like Susan, he was gone most of the time. Unlike Susan, when he was home, he was usually a jerk.” She sighed. “Louey’s dead. It’s just over a week. It seems much longer. Goodness, it feels as if I’ve known you forever.”