“Sometimes people have reasons for bein’ crazy.”
“What are Cooper’s?”
She was quiet for such a long time that I was about to speak myself, when she said, “He had a sweetheart once.Maybe he still loves her.”
My eyes went wide.I sat forward.“Who?”But Swansy wasn’t about to tell, and I knew it.She wasn’t a gossip.She dropped hints of secrets here and there only when she felt there was a need for it.In this case, the need had to do with my understanding Cooper better.The identity of the woman wasn’t important, simply that there’d been one once upon a time.
“Cooper and a sweetheart,” I murmured.“Interesting.”Many times I’d pictured Cooper’s women, the ones he went to for sex.I’d never pictured a sweetheart, though, one he went to for love.“Does Benjie know about her?”Itwould explain his utter conviction that Cooper would never marry me.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Where is she now?”I asked.Swansy didn’t answer.“Did she marry someone else?”Still no answer.“She must have.Otherwise she’d have been with Cooper.”
“If she loved him.”
Oh dear.Cooper had loved her, but she hadn’t loved him back.The hurt I felt for him quickly turned to anger.“She was a fool, then, a fool.Men like Cooper don’t come along every day.”
“T’hear you talk, you’d think you were in love with him yourself, girl.”
“I do love him, but not in that way.I respect him.I admire him.It’s not that he has great ambitions, or that he’s some kind of superstar, but in his everyday existence, he’s an eminently capable man.”
Swansy gave a slow, thoughtful nod but didn’t say a word.
“Adam wasn’t.”I remembered our lives together.“Poor Adam.He was a dreamer far more than a doer.We were both so excited about leaving home.I’d had it with my family, and he’d had it with his.”
“Real different, your families.”
“But just as stressful.In my case it was social pressure as in materialism, jealousy and spite.In his case, it was an obsession with upward mobility.His family was where mine was two generationsago.They kept pushing Adam, pushing him to do better in school, to earn more money each summer, to befriend this executive’s son or that politician’s daughter.When he told them he was going to be a fisherman, they went nuts.”
Swansy sat very still.
I hung my head.“Maybe they were right.”Dark thoughts filled my mind.“Adam wasn’t an athlete.He wasn’t physically coordinated.Aside from his height and weight, he was the most improbable of fishermen.Without Cooper, he’d never have made it as long as he did.”The darkness deepened.My voice came from a tortured spot deep inside.“I kept telling him he could do it, that he could do anything he wanted.I thought I was doing the right thing.”The memory tormented me.“If I hadn’t pushed, he’d have given up.And if he’d done that, he’d be alive today.”
“Stop that, girl!It’s not your fault he’s dead.He went on the boat of his own free will, and an accident happened.They do sometimes, y’know.”
“But fishing?”My eyes flew to her face.“He shouldn’t have been fishing in the first place.It was a misplaced dream, a romantic notion that just didn’t fit him.He hated fishing.In the end, he really hated it.”
“So why didn’t he stop?”
“Because I kept encouraging him to go on.”
“And he wasn’t man enough to stand up to you?”
The suggestion hit me like a slap in the face.I opened my mouth to deny it, then closed it again and swallowed hard.
Swansy started rocking.The gently creaking rhythm of the runners on the floor soothed my ruffled thoughts.
I took a deep, uneven breath.“I loved him.”
Swansy patted my knee.“Yes, you did, girl.You loved him a whole lot.He was lucky.Had more love in three years than some men have in a lifetime.”
That thought stuck with me for a long time after I left her house.Cooper was certainly one of those men who’d missed out, but as the weekend came and went, I found myself wondering where Peter stood on that score.
Then I wondered why I cared.He hadn’t called—at least, he hadn’t called me.He’d called Cooper several times to ask questions and update him on what was going on, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t bothered to ask how I was.
It was infuriating.
I vented that fury on my work, which meant that the pieces I produced as the days passed were darker and more dramatic than the rest of the collection.That didn’t worry me.They were still good.Actually they were better than good, I decided.The more I looked at them the better they seemed.And I spent hours doing that.They intrigued me.
