"Oh, dammit all to hell!" Grandpa cursed when the spanner slipped from his oily hands for the third time in a row as he tried to loosen some stuck screws on the outboard motor he was repairing.
I looked up from the trestle table by the back door where I was poring over the books and put down my pen. "Grandpa, why don't you let me help you?"
"I'm not yet too old to do my repairs myself", he grumbled huffily. "You see to it that those books are in order."
"Fine, whatever you say", I murmured, a little stung by his harsh reaction.
There was no denying that his age was gradually taking its toll on him. He had never quite recovered from the shock of Mom's accident which had aggravated his tendency for grumpiness, and his movements had grown continually slower and less energetic as the pain in his worn joints worsened.
Still he was not ready to waste a thought on retirement. He had been out fishing ever since his thirteenth year, and he intended to keep it that way for as long as he could. I admired his stubborn determination to work on, but he could be quite hard to be with when he was forced to admit that there were things that didn't come as easy to him as they used to.
He had managed to prise the seized-up screws off at the fourth attempt and was dismantling the engine, making a tremendous noise as he laid out the bits and pieces on the ground.
Grandma came out the back door, shouting at Grandpa not to make such a racket and handing me a letter. Classy cream-coloured paper, addressed in a familiar longhand. "It's so lovely that she still keeps writing", Grandma smiled, "even now that she's engaged to her banker's heir."
"Thank you, Grandma. Rub it in." I snatched the envelope from her hand and shoved it under the open ledger without another glance, wondering once more how a person as compassionate as my grandmother normally was could sometimes be so tactless.
It had been more than two years now that Eliza had gone back to Boston not long after her parents returned from overseas. A few weeks after my last trip to Missouri, they had summoned her back home. She left very shortly after she had appeared on our threshold, not at all her usual cheerful self, to give me the bad news tearfully.
One last walk over to the lighthouse, and she was gone. I tried to fill the raw void in my heart with even harder work, tried to let the waves wash away the pain when I ran down to the cove every morning, no matter the weather, to dive into the cold salt water and swim out into the ocean as far as I dared. Needless to say that I kept missing her anyway.
She wrote to me regularly at first. My heart did a little joyous jump every time I saw her handwriting on the envelope, but it was always accompanied by the sharp sting of regret. Sometimes I wished she'd stop writing and let the ache in my soul finally heal, while another part of my mind relished the little anecdotes she penned for me in her witty, eloquent style and balked at the idea of breaking this last connection.
After a while, I managed to shut away the feelings I still had for her, sensing she wouldn't come back for me. It hurt nevertheless when Ruth Wilson recently told Grandma that Eliza had got engaged to the promising son of a successful Boston banker. I couldn't say I was surprised, though.
I was surprised that she had written again. Her letters had become rarer and rarer as both of us continued to live our separate, very different lives. I hadn't heard from her for months and was almost startled to find she had not completely forgotten about me yet.
"Aren't you going to open it?" Grandma insisted. "Don't you want to know what she writes?"
"Oh, Grandma. Stop nagging, please." I knew my tone was too snippy, but I couldn't help myself.
Grandma stiffly walked back into the kitchen without another word and yanked the door forcefully shut from inside.
I sighed and focused on my numbers again.
Grandpa had finished clanging around with his engine parts and was cleaning them diligently, piece by piece. "What'd you do to make your grandma mad?" he asked after a while.
I shrugged noncommittally. I wasn't in the mood to discuss Eliza all over again.
We worked in silence for a while until the back door was opened once more. Grandma came outside again, still in the lightweight coat and the hat she had donned for going to the grocery store. I didn't pay much attention to what she was saying, as I was trying to find an error somewhere in my figures. They didn't quite add up and I had trouble finding the fault.
She hurried over – her sometimes fearful energy had not diminished a bit - and said, leaning forward over my table, "Young man, I'm talking to you!"
"Sorry", I said, unnerved. "Say it again."
"Mrs. Mulligan needs your help, Mick. Just met her at Jem's. She's got an appointment with that specialist in Portland tomorrow morning – you know, that doctor she sees for the trouble with her eyes – and Ted promised to drive her, but he's caught that stomach flu everyone seems to get at the moment, and she's afraid of taking the bus on her own because last time she did, she missed a step when getting off because she couldn't see it properly, and …"
"I'll drive her if I have to", I cut in. "Only problem is that we'd planned to go out for the last good fishing day tomorrow before the weather changes. You know Grandpa can't go alone. The forecast is pretty bad from Thursday on."
"I know. Jack Mulligan is going to help Grandpa in return for your chauffeur service. His companion can run the workshop on his own for a day. Everything's taken care of then." Grandma smiled, satisfied with her organisational skills, ignoring the dirty looks Grandpa shot her over his scattered collection of engine parts. He didn't think much of Jack's fishing or sailing abilities, but he couldn't possibly refuse helping a neighbour out.
I felt a little guilty for actually looking forward to the prospect of driving into town, leaving Grandpa alone with well-meaning but utterly clumsy Jack. But I had loved the occasional outing in Ted's car ever since he had taught me all I needed to know about driving and repairing a car. I hadn't had much opportunity to put my skills to any use lately. Too much work at the height of the fishing season.
"Sorry, Grandpa", I said when Grandma had slipped back inside.
He screwed up his face into a grimace of comical exasperation, heaved an exaggerated sigh and said, "What could you have done but say yes, lad? I've known her for long enough now to know she won't take no for an answer if she wants you to do something. It's Jack for me tomorrow and Mrs. Mulligan for you if your grandma says so." His voice was gruff, but the mellow indulgence in his eyes, now fixed on Grandma's small figure behind the kitchen window, busy sorting through and packing away her groceries, and the tiny smile playing around his mouth belied his tone.
I averted my gaze, feeling as if I had intruded upon a very intimate moment.
Was this what love was all about? Not the wild rush of emotion that took your appetite away and made you do strange things, but something steadfastly lasting, something that could weather any storm? Not blazing fireworks shooting up into the sky but the unspectacular, reliable, steady flame of a candle that kept burning long after the flashy fireworks had died?
I wondered if that was what Eliza and I could have had in the long run.
I wondered if it was still her that I missed or just the idea of someone by my side, someone to love me and to be loved in return.
I wondered if I would ever find a true soulmate.