Working Title: “Slow Boat, Bitter End”

A Rony Boston mystery by RJ Stewart

(Note: It is again necessary to remind my wonderful readers that this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.)

Thanks to the duties of the crewman, we had re-positioned ourselves, and my thigh was now against hers. The contact was incidental, but under the circumstances it seemed electric. I wonder if she felt the same intrigue. More likely, she dismissed it quickly as yet another male’s attempt at conquest. I put my hand on my leg and hoped for the moment when her hand might brush it. She sat comfortably and began to talk.

He had cancer, a brain tumor. He lingered. We had separated, never divorced. He had a girlfriend, but she could not tolerate the challenge of his terminal illness. He could be very nasty, too, but he needed someone to care for him once he was released from treatment and sent home to die. There was no one for him except his daughter who lived in another state. She did her best, but she couldn’t leave her own family for extended periods of time. One thing led to another. Actually, I hated him. His wandering eye was insatiable. When he hit on my best friend, I wanted to kill him.

 I reached for her hand. She didn’t resist, and I said I was sorry for all that had happened. I said I had lost my wife, too.

To divorce. After twenty-five years. Didn’t see it coming. Blind spots.

Griselda didn’t move. She did not offer a slight squeeze of my hand, as I had hoped. The water lapped rhythmically at the sides of the vessel. The moon seemed to stall, almost resting as it painted the horizon orange.

She laughed oddly and said, I took care of him.

Her laugh was not for any humor but appropriate to her strange and perhaps foolish decision to offer so much of herself to a dying man who had cheated on her.

For seven long months. His condition worsened. I am not a natural caregiver; who is? At first, he was determined to fight the disease. He seemed to think that determination and grit were strengths he had always had, and he could call them to action against any adversity. It was catching; I began to support his optimism, even though the doctors said his condition was not reversible. He said he would defy the odds. What could I do?

The crew member returned to the bow and heaved the forward sail against the wind and cleated it firmly. He picked his way along the gunwale to join the captain and rest of the crew at the stern where they fixed the rudder against the push of the port side wind. The vessel was set to drift but slowly and in a circular course.

The tumor wreaked havoc in his brain and I could see the changes. He had been endlessly selfish, a narcissist. His attention to himself was beyond belief. Maybe the tumor pushed on parts of his brain where selfishness resides, because he changed. He began to ask about me. He brought up things in our past and asked for forgiveness. He even admitted his infidelities, not admitting fault exactly but blaming his behavior on sexual impulses he couldn’t resist.

She lifted a finger to her eye, turned slowly to me. Her recounting of her husband’s deathbed remorse and now her willingness to engage was making me uncomfortably self-aware. I had only seconds earlier been thinking of how I might take advantage of the romantic moment. Of course, I put no thought into it; I was acting normally and pathetically male. Beautiful woman, pleasant setting … opportunity! And now our eyes locked. I cannot say what she saw in mine, but in her eyes a door had opened; I was looking deeply into the soul of a human being.  I longed to cross the abyss that too often separates man and woman. When I welcomed her face now, she was no less attractive, but it was as if a palette of color had come suddenly alive. That April moon was higher in the sky, the color slowly changing from shimmering gold to ivory, and the reflection of it all danced on the sea.

REWRITE AND ADD TO (Another note to my wonderful readers. I am including this note to self as a reminder that this is a draft. Upon re-reading this passage I realize how important it is to the story of change that I intend the narrator to experience. In addition, in this passage Griselda becomes a character with depth. Although this is a “mystery” it may also amount to a mystery about men and women, relationships, and love. Your thoughts? — Ronnie Joe)