Page 11 of Troubles in Paradise
He vowed then that he would marry her.
But first he had to beat out scores of other men—the salty locals and rich, sunburned tourists alike, all calling her name, throwing down money, telling her she was as beautiful as one of Charlie’s Angels. It took endurance to get the first date. Huck had to stay at the bar drinking but not getting drunk until Sloppy Joe’s closed at four a.m. This was no small feat when his wake-up for the morning charter was only two hours later.
Looking back, Huck realizes that he’d been so dazzled by Kimberly’s obvious charms and—he’ll just say it—so invigorated by the chase that he ignored the warning signs of a deeply troubled person. Kimberly routinely did shots with customers, sometimes as many as five or six. She never appeared visibly drunk at work, but after her shift ended, there was always a margarita or three or five. Back at the beginning, Kimberly had been happy and pliably good-natured when she was drunk.
Shortly after they were married, things changed. In year three, Captain Coke’s own substance abuse got the best of him. He was spending all his money on cocaine and, apparently, none on his business. He’d taken out a line of credit on the equity he had left in his boat and then failed to pay. Just as the bank was ready to claim the boat, Huck stepped in and bought not only the boat but the whole charter business. Kimberly called Huck a savior, though she wanted Huck to keep Coke on as captain. No, sorry—that wasn’t going to happen. Huck didn’t want Coke anywhere near the boat or the business, though he was happy to pay for rehab. This went over poorly with both brother and sister, but Huck stood his ground. He took over the charter business, hired a new young mate, and made so much money the first year that he was able to buy a second boat.
Huck wanted to start a family and Kimberly claimed she did too, but she refused to quit her job at Sloppy Joe’s. It brought in too much money, plus it was her identity. Huck didn’t say that if she had a baby, she would have a new identity.
He wouldn’t dare.
Kimberly did go off her birth control but she continued with the shots and the after-shift drinking.
“For God’s sake, Kimmy,” Huck finally said, “any baby we have will be born pickled.”
Kimberly didn’t like this one bit, though it did make her slow down a little—and sure enough, she got pregnant. Huck remembers the mixture of giddiness and terror at the news; it was as though someone had told him he could travel to the moon with the astronauts or star in a movie with Clint Eastwood. Did he want to? Hell yes! Did hereallywant to? He wasn’t sure. What did Huck know about having a child, about being a father? He was also afraid that Kimberly wouldn’t be able to stay on the wagon for nine full months—it seemed impossible—plus both of them smoked like fiends, and that would have to stop.
Kimberly bought prenatal vitamins and went to see an ob-gyn in Miami and she changed her post-shift drink to one white-wine spritzer. She cut down to four cigarettes a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late at night—and Huck thought,Okay, maybe this will work. He couldn’t expect her to quit everything cold turkey; that was how people failed.
Then, late on the night of December 1, 1983—Huck still remembers the date and probably always will—Kimberly came home stinking drunk, waking Huck up when she slammed into their bungalow on Catherine Street singing “Piece of My Heart” at the top of her lungs and crying.
Huck jumped out of bed. He would never lay a hand on a woman but he wanted to throttle her. He took her gently by the shoulders, pulled her in close, and whispered, “It’s not just you anymore, Kimmy. You have to think about our baby.”
Kimberly said, “Baby’s gone, Sam. I started bleeding at work.”
Huck was crushed; Kimberly was worse than crushed. She was riding a pendulum of emotions. When she swung one way, she was fine—it happened to a lot of people; they could try again. When she swung the other way, she was a mess—it was her fault, she was damaged and broken and unfit to be a mother.
Kimberly went back on the pill.
Huck felt like he was on a bike without brakes careening down a mountainside. He was afraid to jump off even though he knew he would crash when he got to the bottom. What followed was three years of Huck fishing and Kimberly drinking, drinking, drinking. This ended only once a beefy, tattooed loudmouth on one of Huck’s charters bragged to his buddy that he’d gotten to third base with the bartender of Sloppy Joe’s the night before.
“Oh yeah?” Huck said, blood pulsing in his ears. “Blond gal?”
“Ass like a valentine,” the loudmouth said, and it took every ounce of Huck’s willpower not to stab the guy in the forehead with the gaff.
When Huck confronted Kimberly, she admitted to it right away but said it was more like second base, maybe not even. She couldn’t remember and wouldn’t have been able to pick the guy out of a lineup. “The men are an occupational hazard, Sammy. They don’t mean anything.”
“Men?”he said, and he realized then that Kimberly hooked up with her customers all the time, maybe even every night. Was the baby she lost even his? She had made him a laughingstock, an absolute fool for love.
He told her it was rehab or he was leaving. She agreed to rehab, and once she was safely inside the facility, Huck served her with divorce papers, which broke her heart but broke his heart even worse.
Once Huck left the Keys for St. John, it was only a few weeks before he met and fell in love with LeeAnn Small, who was Kimberly’s opposite in every way. Maia liked to throw around the wordqueen—Beyoncé is a queen, J. Lo is a queen—but in Huck’s life there had been only one queen and that was LeeAnn. She was statuesque, bronze-skinned, dark-eyed. She had a rich laugh and a slow smile that she shared with Huck like a secret.
On their first real date, at Chateau Bordeaux, Huck told LeeAnn about Kimberly. LeeAnn tsked him—because who couldn’t have predicted howthatstory was going to end—and then said, “If you’re looking for more crazy, you’re in the wrong place.”
LeeAnn didn’t fish but she checked the wind, watched the sky, passed along fish sightings from their West Indian neighbors that Huck would never have heard about otherwise. She introduced Huck to the people at restaurants who would buy his catch. She never gave him a hard time about how long he spent on the water or tinkering on the boat. And, man, could she cook—conch ceviche, Creole fish stew, fresh tuna steaks with lime and toasted coconut.
LeeAnn was tough, stubborn, uncompromising, but unlike Kimberly, she stuck to a moral code and was utterly beyond reproach. Huck was a little scared of her at times. She was a nurse practitioner and the most competent person up at the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center, where she treated everything from ankles sprained on the Reef Bay Trail to jellyfish stings to STDs. LeeAnn was strict with Rosie, but despite this—or because of it—Rosie broke the rules again and again and again, eventually getting pregnant by one of the rich men she waited on at Caneel Bay.
There were six golden years when Huck lived in the house on Jacob’s Ladder with LeeAnn, Rosie, and Maia. He can remember sitting down to dinner in the evenings and seeing their bright faces and hearing their chatter or their squabbling and thinking how blessed he was to be among them.
He missed that sweet spot in his life now that it was over.
LeeAnn died of congestive heart failure.
Rosie died in the helicopter crash with Russell Steele.
Now here’s Huck, five years after LeeAnn’s passing and one month after Rosie’s passing, in danger of falling in love with Irene Steele, the wife of Rosie’s lover.
