The Fiction of Owen Thomas

Shoreline Drive

A Novella

Summary

As a child psychiatrist, Peter knows that wanting what we cannot have is often a precursor to unhealthy obsession. Young Fenton Soulak is a good example. Fen, a teenager in therapy following the boating accident deaths of his father and brother, has fallen madly in love with the woman on the cover of a reprint of an old, 1940’s Jack McMannis detective mystery. He is making elaborate plans to hunt her down, introduce himself, and marry her. What Fen sees as a sure-fire plan for happiness, Peter knows is a distraction from grief that will build momentum until it collides with reality, sending Fen into a tailspin of disappointment that he may not be able to handle. But Fen rejects Peter’s professional opinion regarding his matrimonial machinations. As far as Fen is concerned, Peter’s own marriage is a fraud.

Peter is normally accustomed to that kind of deflection from his young patients, grappling with difficult emotions. But Fenton Soulak – the son of a friend of Peter’s wife – is in a position to know two things about Peter’s life that leaves him unsettled: first, that Peter’s supposedly stellar marriage is the product of spousal thievery and, second, that Peter’s wife, Diane, is now carrying on behind Peter’s back with her ex-husband, Spencer. The first fact, Peter has been historically successful at rationalizing. Diane, after all, had always had a mind of her own and could not have been “stolen” if she had not wanted to be divorced. The second fact, however, has been increasingly difficult to deny.

Impossibly attractive, Spencer is a wealthy architect who has remained on good terms with Diane since the divorce. In fact, just a little too good as far as Peter is concerned; particularly since it was the affair between Peter and Diane that ended the marriage. Despite the cuckolding, Spencer graciously gave up the artistic home he had designed and built on Ridgeline Drive, up on an escarpment looking over the tributaries of the Cleatchee River that run through Summerville. He bowed out of the marriage, leaving not just the house, but the expensive grill on the back deck and the grand piano in the living room. Spencer also conceded full custody of Lucy, his only child with Diane. At nine-years old, Lucy now worships Spencer in a way she never will Peter, even though it has been Peter, and not Spencer, who has done the hard work of parenting.

The two men could not be more different. Peter’s cautions are Spencer’s indulgences. Peter is always punctual and wears a disdain for reckless living. Spencer is usually late and wears cowboy boots and three-day stubble and drives a sports car that looks like a silver bullet.

But both men love the same woman and, when Peter is forced to open his eyes and consider reality, it appears that Diane may be reversing herself. Diane’s invitations to Spencer to join the family for holidays and birthdays are regular and Spencer seems to have the run of his old house and to play the old piano in the living room as only Spencer can, as though he had never left. Diane and Spencer share the same secret language. The same jokes. The same history. The same child. Diane, an accomplished swimmer, is even giving Spencer private swimming lessons several days a week. 

Including Spencer as a member of the family had originally been Peter’s idea. Post-divorce civility, Peter thought, had been the mature thing to do.  He had set the tone for Lucy’s sake and, along the way, to assuage his own guilt for poaching Spencer’s wife. But now Peter has to wonder whether that was all a mistake. He has to wonder whether Spencer has been busy orchestrating his revenge. Is this just the paranoia induced by Peter’s own overactive sense of guilt? Or is something really going on?

On Diane’s birthday, Spencer drops by as planned for dinner and presents.  But he does not come alone.  On his arm is Nicollet Flores, a dancer from a local strip club called Shocks and Struts. Although her English is poor and her attraction for Spencer is abundantly clear, Nicollet is nobody’s fool. Accurately assessing the situation, Nicollet takes matters into her own hands, leading Peter down a road on which he will learn a little something of young Fen’s obsession with wanting those whom he cannot have. It is a road that will ultimately lead Peter to places not even Fenton Soulak would have imagined.