Sea, Sky, Islands: Three stories by Alice K. Boatwright

Author:Alice K. Boatwright [Boatwright, Alice K.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Noontime Books
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

As soon as they were gone, he called home, but the line was busy. That was surprising because Patti always said she had no friends on the island except him. They had met at an AA meeting earlier in the summer. She had appeared at the Fellowship Hall one night in June, introduced herself as “Patti, addict, alcoholic,” and she’d been around ever since.

Jack had been fascinated by her quiet manner, her long red braids, and delicate tattoos. He asked her out for coffee to welcome her to the group. She said OK and after that one thing had led to another.

His friends in the program said it was wrong to get involved with a newcomer, especially a young woman, but Jack didn’t think of Patti as young most of the time. She said she’d stopped counting birthdays ever since she turned 20, and the things she knew shocked him – made him feel like he was the one with no experience. She said she’d come to the island because she got on the wrong bus in Seattle. She’d meant to go to San Francisco, but when she saw the water, the mountains, and the islands she hopped a ferry and that was all there was to it.

Shirley was disdainful about the whole relationship. If Jack bumped into her at the grocery or the post office, she would curl her lips back and say “Jack,” in a tone that wrapped greeting, recrimination, and goodbye into one. She called Patti “that whore who’s got you wrapped around her little finger.”

He didn’t care what she thought. She had gotten the house and everything in it, while he was living in a rented cabin. He was paying her alimony and the kids’ school tuition, so the way he figured it, he didn’t owe an explanation to anyone.

Not that she could ever in a million years understand what he and Patti had going anyway. At the sight of her puffy face, red with indignation, Jack believed that he had never loved her in twenty-one years as much as he had loved Patti in these past months. They had known each other since kindergarten and nothing about her could surprise him, while everything Patti said and did was filled with mystery.

Patti didn’t confide in him that much when they were alone, but at meetings, sitting around stained card tables in the Fellowship Hall’s dim light, she would say things that made the back of his neck prickle with love and compassion for her. It was one of the things that made him look forward to meetings now. Wondering what Patti might say next. Before that, staying sober had been something he knew he had to do if he didn’t want to die at fifty like his father. He had trouble remembering why he was doing it when he sat alone every evening in the cabin.

Now he and Patti were regulars at the Wednesday and Saturday meetings, arriving early to set out the chairs and staying late to wash the coffee cups.

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