Broken Man on a Halifax Pier Read online

  “Barely.”

  “He still out west?”

  “I think so.”

  Joe laughed again, added a little snort. “Anyways. See you around, I guess.”

  “Thanks for stopping by.”

  And Joe, a slightly worn and beaten-down blast from my past, galumphed off the wharf, him in his high rubber boots. But not before he gave a half turn and caught a glimpse of Ramona just as she was opening the cabin door.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “High-school reunion,” I said. “Joe was voted most likely to run his car off the road in a drunken haze. Looks like he turned out to be one notch up on me.”

  Ramona switched on that radiant smile, the one I was getting used to, the one I found myself eagerly waiting to happen. She liked me. She liked the language that I used. She liked something about the little boy lost in me. And on top of all the other good things on my checklist I had for her, maybe I liked her most for liking me.

  “So now the word will be out,” I warned her. “Mystery woman in town. It’s gonna go viral. When they find out you kissed Tom Hanks, everybody’s gonna want to check you out.”

  “Bring ’em on,” she said. “I’d like to get to know the locals.”

  Taking the boat out into the ocean would have to be for another day. She’d asked, but I said no. Figured we might get caught in a storm and die. I decided to get Rolf to coach me about engines and tides and shit like that sometime. Then maybe.

  “Head back to the villa?” I asked.

  “Sure. I think I’m ready for a glass of wine.”

  I almost reached for her hand as we headed back down the wharf, the boards clunking in a most pleasing rhythm as we walked. The impulse was there, but I held back. I kept thinking, one false move on my part and it’d be like the gun and the deer. Slow and steady was my plan. If you could call it a plan.

  Rolf was waiting for us when we arrived back at the shack. He had fish. “You city folks eat haddock?”

  Ramona was all smiles. “I love haddock. How much?”

  Rolf looked insulted. “Not selling it, dear. Giving it. I got a Jesus complex. I need to feed the masses. Or in this case, you two starving gringos.”

  I opened the door and invited Rolf back in. He immediately spied the two wine bottles on the table. “Now, she’s talkin’,” he said.

  “Sit. I’ll pour you a glass.”

  Rolf sat, sprawled, accepted the Mason jar with a splash of wine in it, then pulled a hip bottle of something from his side pocket and doubled the liquid in the glass. My guess would have been rum. “They call it fortified wine in the liquor store,” he said.

  “The boat looks amazing,” I told Rolf. “The lady was impressed. Thanks so much.”

  “My pleasure. I did it more for your old man than for you to be honest. But I did get a bit of satisfaction over the idea that if you take good care of something, it can last one hell of a long time.”

  The life lesson was not lost on me.

  Ramona poured some wine for me in an old Esso glass from the Olympics and poured some for herself into what I presumed to be an old Smucker’s jelly jar. Rolf offered to “fortify” it, but we both covered our respective glasses.

  The wine tasted good. The fillets of haddock sitting on the counter seemed more than a good omen. Rolf gulped down what was left in his glass and thumped the table with his hand. “Kids, thanks for the wine and for the conversation. A guy like me gets tired of his own company, but I need to go home and feed the cats, have a nap, and then go to bed. Just bang on the door if you need anything. You know where I am.”

  “Thanks again for the fish,” Ramona said and kissed Rolf on his unshaven salt-and-pepper bearded cheek.

  And then we were alone. I think it was another one of our awkward moments. The wine had not kicked in yet. Our glasses emptied quickly and she refilled them.

  “Why does the second glass of wine always taste better than the first?” I asked.

  “Does it? Maybe because the wine has had time to breathe.”

  “Bullshit. How could that be?”

  “Just is.”

  We had wine, we had fish that we could cook in an old frying pan, and I had this brilliant woman sitting across the table from me who had had the foresight to buy a small bottle of olive oil from the young man back at the general store.

  “Guess you know about expensive wines and such, huh?” I said, just trying to keep the small talk rolling.

  “Maybe. But hey, knock it off. I’m not the person who you seem to think I am. In some ways, I’m a whole lot like you.”

  True, I had been playing the game of labelling her. Movies, money, fashion. Unfair. “That’s good to know. I’m surprised, though. You got to know quite a bit about me today. Thought I would have scared you off by now. But I still have a shitload of unanswered questions about you.”

  “Save them. A woman likes to hang on to at least a little mystery if she can.”

  “But I don’t know enough about you to even begin to connect the dots or figure out how all roads lead to Stewart Harbour.”

  “Well, all roads didn’t lead here. You did. And here we are. And I like it.”

  “Little Miss Sunshine,” I said.

  “Yeah. That’s me. Do you like her?”

  “I like her a lot.”

  She took another sip of wine. “Ready for fish?”

  “Not yet. C’mon, give me something about you. Anything. Family stuff maybe.”

  “Sure. Fair enough. Where to begin? Born in Halifax. Mother was a schoolteacher. Father was a lawyer who dealt in shipping matters and a bit of real estate on the side — all incredibly boring stuff but lucrative. Good parents, they were. Mostly. I had a brother, a couple of years younger. Trevor. A good kid. We never fought. My parents never fought.”

  “How boring.”

  “You want the real story or do you want me to make up something?”

  “Sorry. Really.” I suppressed a laugh and nearly shot some wine out of my nose. “Continue.”

  “Parents sent us both to private schools. Armbrae Academy. I had to wear short plaid dresses. Boys seemed to like me, but I liked to keep to myself, had a way of keeping them away when they came sniffing. Got labelled as a cold bitch.”

  “No way. I can’t see it.”

  “Call it self-defence. I had a look, a line, a couple of close friends who were quite excellent cock blockers.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “In high school?”

  “It allowed me be more of who I wanted to be rather than what boys wanted me to be.”

  “Parents still alive?”

  “Mom’s in a home on Oxford Street. My father died of working too hard, making too much money, ditching his family, and then having a heart attack.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me too. He’s the one who left me the loot so I could do whatever I wanted with my life. But I’d have been happier if he had lived and kept his money.”

  “So it’s coming into focus. Young South End Halifax girl, goes to private school, fends off all the horny boys there, has a rich ole daddy who can buy her anything. What next?”

  “Well, it wasn’t quite that superficial, but you’re close. So then I do the circuit. Go to university in Toronto. U of T. Get my first jobs as a model, modelling lingerie for Sears catalogues.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah. That was me trying to be independent. But it was just for money, money that I could say I earned on my own.”

  “No longer just daddy’s little girl.”

  “Still was, really. But my mom was a little embarrassed when her friends went shopping for bras in the Sears catalogue and saw me there in a 34C.”

  “I guess she was.”

  “But that was nothing. I soon gave it up and got into theatre. Shakespeare, Beckett, Pinter. A string of boyfriends around then but nothing serious. Truth was, I liked the gay guys in the theatre scene more than most of the men who wanted to date me.”

  “But
were any of these boyfriends one of the serious ones?”

  “Only one. Blake. And only because he was the best actor I’d ever met. He taught me to memorize lines and I thought I could never do it. He taught me to fight all those demons of stage fright and fear. He was older, smoother, wiser. But he was, as they say, married to his craft. And so was I, perhaps. Or so I thought. He left for London and I left for California. An amicable parting of the ways.”

  “What, no drama, no story?”

  “No, there wasn’t. In Toronto I got in with some independent film people, starred in a couple of short films on the festival circuit, got noticed by a couple of TV producers. You ever see Downtown East?”

  “You acted in that?”

  “One season. It wasn’t much. Then I was in a couple of independent features based on literary novels. Really depressing stories. They made the movie houses in Canada, but people walked out of those theatres psychologically damaged, I think. Nonetheless, I followed a couple of those directors to California because that’s where the action was.”

  I sat silently and just looked at her. The sunlight was coming in off the harbour now and lighting up her face in a coppery glow. I’d never seen a more beautiful fifty-year-old woman before in my life.

  She suddenly seemed like she was tired of telling me her story. Maybe she thought I was bored by it. Maybe she thought that adoring gaze of mine was boredom. “Anyway, I had a few bit parts in commercial movies, kissed Tom Hanks, and then decided to go home.”

  I was still in the dark about relationships. She had really glossed over that and given me a version of her curriculum vitae without the insightful or juicy bits. But I was wise enough to not ask more about her personal life.

  “What about that brother?” I asked, hoping to just hear a little more family history and then leave it alone.

  “He died,” she said. “He went to university in Montreal. But he didn’t come back.” Ramona turned away and looked out the window at the sun sparkling on the water.

  I’d said sorry too much already today. So I sat silently and waited for her to come back.

  When she did, she touched my hand resting on the table. She gave me a sad soft smile and said, “We’ve all had losses. All of us.”

  11

  When you pass a half century in your life and you’re getting to know someone for the first time, you can’t tell your whole life history in one sitting or one day or even one month. We sipped our wine and probably both made a silent vow to stop talking about dead brothers, fathers, mothers. “I’ve never known anyone named Ramona before,” I finally said, wanting to take us back to small talk. “Wasn’t there some kids’ books with a girl that name?”

  “Ramona the Pest was one of them. The girl’s name was Ramona Quimby.”

  “Never read it. I was more of a science fiction kind of guy. I liked novels set in the future. I couldn’t wait to get there. The future, that is. And look, here I am. And what a disappointment. No flying cars, no jetpacks, no vacations on the moon.”

  “Is it really so bad?”

  I looked at her, studied the way she held her wine glass. “No. I take that back. Not at all. I look around and I see paradise. That’s only because you’re here.” I was getting bolder but I still said it like it was a tease, a joke. Just in case I had gone too far.

  “Thank you, kind sir. I’ll graciously accept any compliment you can throw at me.”

  “And I bet you cook one hell of a piece of fish,” I said.

  “So that’s it. Boy gets hungry. Boy gives girl a compliment in hopes she’ll cook him some haddock.”

  “Damn. You can see right through me.”

  I think I mentioned food because I just wasn’t sure where things would go next. Deep down I was scared. I was having a great time with this woman, but I was still scared out of my wits, diving down, out of my depths, and certain I would screw everything up somehow. But, when in doubt, eat.

  “I’m gonna clean one of those pots and boil some potatoes,” she said. Ramona had bought a bag of new small potatoes at the store. “I guess I should have bought some vegetables.”

  “Fried haddock and boiled potatoes. The perfect meal, according to my father. He detested vegetables. I don’t know why. He considered them evil. He’d tolerate cabbage and potatoes but seemed to have a grudge against anything green. Funny, eh?”

  “We all have our quirks. Maybe he could have patented it and made a fortune. The Stewart Harbour Diet. Fish and spuds. Protein, omega-3, and carbs. Lose weight, make friends with fishermen, live long and prosper.”

  “Well, we did eat a lot of fish, Pete and I. And we were hardly ever sick.”

  “Lucky you.”

  The potatoes were boiled, the fish was fried, and a happier meal could not have occurred on the planet that day. The sun was going down and the second bottle of wine was opened. And then I looked over at the supplies she had bought and saw the carton of eggs. Had I not fully taken the hint when she had been so bold to buy sheets at the general store? Sheets and eggs. Ramona was planning on staying the night with me.

  I turned on a little lamp and lit a couple of candles I found in a drawer, candles my mother had made. She’d save stubs of burned down candles, melt them, add a wick, and make new ones. I never thought of us as being exactly poor, but both of my parents prided themselves on being thrifty and not wasting anything.

  I don’t fully remember what we talked about for the rest of the evening. All I know is that we kept it light as we flirted and joked. We became casual and avoided heavy topics. And we both became weary. Weary but comfortable.

  The wine might have hit her a bit harder than me. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were squinty and she was talking about how she had always wanted to live by the sea. “Right by the edge of the ocean,” she said. “So you could walk out your door and it would be right there. You could smell the salt air and hear the waves. Nothing between me and France except the Atlantic Ocean.”

  I could have told her about the disadvantages of living by the ocean — the fog, the wind, the nor’easters, and the hurricanes. But it was not an evening for logic or negativity.

  As she drifted off, two men were having an argument in my head. The horny guy was screaming that now was the time to make a move. Lure her into bed and screw her brains out. It has been a long while, buddy. A mighty long while.

  The other man, the shy one, the gentleman, said, Look here, Bosco, she’s already had a bit too much to drink and you’d be taking advantage of her. Go slow. Now’s not the time for pushing things too far.

  And, of course, the gentleman was right. The wine was gone, the sun had dropped below the horizon. The eggs were waiting for breakfast.

  “Time for bed,” I said softly.

  “Really? I’m not even tired.” Her eyes were fully closed now, her head slightly slumped over.

  I unwrapped the sheets and tossed them over the old mattress we had smacked with a broom outside earlier that day. I led her to the old fisherman’s single bed where my father had so often sacked out at night, only to awaken in the dark hours before sunrise, preparing to go to sea. I tucked her in and placed a blanket over her. She immediately slid toward the wall, making just enough space for me to lie beside her and curl into her, both of us still with our clothes on.

  In the morning the sun was shining as I opened my eyes and realized I was alone in the bed. I could smell coffee.

  Ramona was standing by the hotplate cooking eggs. “Sorry I fell asleep on you, cowboy. Guess it shows I can’t hold my liquor. Anything crazy happen that I should know about?”

  I smiled, sat up. “Not a damn thing. Nothing crazy. It was all good. Most fun I’d had since I don’t know when.”

  “Welcome to the future.”

  “What?”

  “The future. No flying cars, no jetpacks. But you have to admit, it was better than a vacation on the moon.”

  “It was indeed. We had way more oxygen. And gravity. I rather like the combination.”


  There were scrambled eggs and coffee and small talk. And I kept waiting for the bubble to burst.

  And it did.

  “I’ve got to go back to Halifax this morning,” she said after we had finished eating. “I have this appointment with a lawyer concerning the trust fund. Papers I need to sign. He claims it’s really important and if we don’t do this now, I’m gonna be hit with a shitload of taxes.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling a little stunned.

  “You wanna come?”

  I had this gut feeling that if I returned to Halifax, it would be some kind of weird rewind thing and all of this would go away. She’d go her way; I’d go my way back to my truly unappealing jobless rathole of a life and I’d end up standing alone on the pier on another foggy morning, looking into the abyss.

  “No, I think I need to stay here,” I said.

  She immediately detected my mood swing. I guess it was pretty obvious. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” What I was sure of was that Ramona, who had suddenly dropped from the clouds into my life, was about to ascend back into them and disappear.

  Ramona walked over to the stained and faded mirror above the sink and began to put on makeup. “I’m really sorry but I have to do this,” she said, all businesslike suddenly.

  “I’m sorry too.” I had reverted to being a hurt little boy. It was like my birthday was over and I had to go back to being a sorry-assed, snot-nosed brat who had to wake up and go to school.

  “I’ll be back,” she said unconvincingly.

  “I’ll be here.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “No cellphone?”

  “Nope. Not even sure there’s reception here.”