Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman, leans against a splintered picnic table at the Astoria summer community fair and scowls at his niece. She’s been badgering him for 20 minutes to say hi to a widow from her church who “loves old fishing stories” and he’s three sips into a cold IPA and half a second from lying about a sudden migraine to head home. The air reeks of fried dough, charcoal from the rib cookoff, and sharp salt off the Columbia River, which churns grey and choppy 50 yards away. The Ferris wheel creaks overhead, kids scream as they hit the top of the tilt-a-whirl, and the scratch of a local country band’s fiddle drifts from the main stage.
He’s adjusting the frayed cuff of his plaid flannel (he wears it even in 75 degree weather, hides the arthritis swelling in his wrists) when a woman trips over a loose cinder block at the edge of the picnic area. She’s carrying a paper plate stacked with elephant ears, and a cloud of powdered sugar puffs off the top, landing in a white dusting across the front of his shirt. Her hand flies to his chest before she can stop herself, brushing at the sugar, and Ronan freezes. He recognizes her immediately: Clara Bennett, 54, ex-wife of his old fishing partner Jake, who ran off with a 28 year old bartender from Seaside 10 years prior and left Ronan holding the bag on a $40,000 boat repair loan.
He hasn’t spoken to her in 7 years, not since Jake sent a single text to say he was moving to Florida and never coming back, and Ronan avoided her out of some stupid, outdated sense of bro code, even though Jake was the one who screwed both of them over. She pulls her hand back fast, cheeks pink under the sun, and laughs, a low, warm sound he remembers from years of dropping Jake off at their house after week-long fishing trips. “I am so sorry,” she says, wiping her palm on the side of her denim cutoff shorts. “I was staring at the group of church ladies over there who keep trying to corner me into their book club, and I didn’t watch my feet.”
Ronan snorts, brushing the rest of the sugar off his shirt with his own calloused hand. “Small world. I was just plotting how to avoid those same ladies. My niece thinks I need more friends.” He nods at the empty spot on the picnic bench across from him, and she sits, setting the plate of elephant ears between them. She’s got a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek (she runs the local after-school art program for kids, he remembers that, Jake used to complain about her bringing paint and clay home all the time) and her auburn hair is pulled back in a loose braid, a few strands sticking to the sweat on her neck. She smells like lavender lotion and the strawberry lemonade she’s sipping from a plastic cup, and Ronan’s throat feels tight. He’s thought about her more times than he’d ever admit out loud, even to his wife Eileen when she was alive. Always thought she was too good for Jake, too good for any of the rough, loud fishermen that ran the docks back then.
They talk for 45 minutes, at first about the fair, the terrible country band, the way the elephant ears are greasier than they were when they were kids. Then slowly, the conversation drifts to harder stuff. She says she never thought he’d talk to her, figured he blamed her for Jake leaving, figured he saw her as some kind of liability. Ronan shakes his head, taps the thick, silvery scar on his left forearm, the one he got when a winch snapped on his boat the Sea Hag in 2009. “I never blamed you. I remember when you brought me chicken noodle soup every night when I was recovering from that. Jake was too hungover to even drive me to the doctor, and you showed up with Tupperware and extra pain meds. I never forgot that.” He pauses, rubs the back of his neck, the old stubbornness warring with the quiet, warm buzz in his chest he hasn’t felt in years. “I just… had this stupid idea that I couldn’t talk to you, out of loyalty to a guy who didn’t deserve either of us.”
Clara leans across the table, her elbow brushing his, and her hazel eyes are soft, no anger, no awkwardness. “Jake’s been gone 10 years. I think we’re allowed to stop letting him call the shots.” The sun is dipping low over the river now, painting the sky pink and orange, and the first boom of the pre-fireworks test blast echoes across the fairgrounds. She stands, wipes crumbs off her shorts, and nods toward the parking lot. “The tacos at that little place on Marine Drive are open late. Way better than the fair food. You wanna skip the fireworks?”
Ronan stands too, his knees creaking a little, and tucks the loose strand of hair that fell out of her braid behind her ear. It’s the first intentional touch he’s had with anyone that wasn’t a cashier or his doctor in 8 years, and his skin tingles where his fingers brush her cheek. She smiles, and he smiles back, something tight and heavy in his chest loosening for the first time since he found Eileen on the kitchen floor, her coffee mug spilled across the tile. They walk side by side to his beat up 2008 Ford F-150, their shoulders brushing every few steps, and she holds the elephant ear out for him to take a bite as they go.
He opens the passenger door for her, and she brushes her hand against his when she climbs in, her fingers lingering for half a second. The radio turns on when he twists the key, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” playing low on the old country station he keeps preset, and the wind off the river blows through the open window, carrying the smell of salt and pine. He pulls out of the parking lot, glancing over at her as she adjusts the air vent, and he doesn’t feel the familiar urge to rush back to his quiet, empty house, to his half-restored lures and his cold coffee and the same TV reruns he watches every night. He turns down the radio a little, asks her if she likes extra cilantro on her tacos.
