Matunuck

By Greg McLaughlin

He once was lost, and then he was found. Mickey Maguire returns to his childhood summer beach community steeped in sorrow, pain and regret. He's spent nearly twenty years away from the cozy hamlet of Matunuck, Rhode Island, where all his relatives live within five square-miles of each other. Having uproot

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg McLaughlin
• Release date: May 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737248415

Greg McLaughlin

Greg McLaughlin is an Associate of the Centre for Media Research at Ulster University. He is the author of The War Correspondent (Pluto, 2nd edition; 2016), and co-author with Stephen Baker of The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process (2010) and The British Media and Bloody Sunday (2015).

Book preview

Matunuck

Greg McLaughlin

Dedicated:

To my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins,

siblings and parents who lived in, visited or loved Matunuck over the generations. 

Special Thanks:

To Mom & Dad, for following the tradition of past generations, and for taking their turns serving as the

heart and soul, and driving force behind uniting

the family in Matunuck.

Special Acknowledgement:

To John McLaughlin for serving as the

beta reader, and for contributing critical input

to getting this story just right.

Edited By:

Sarah Campagnone

Cover Photo Credit:

Sarah Campagnone

About the Author:

Greg McLaughlin sees the world and questions what he sees. He seeks to capture the beauty and meaning of the people and places around him. And he aims to understand and investigate the delicate relationships and bonds between family, friends, lovers and strangers.

He lives in Greenwich, CT with his wife, and he has two adult sons. He graduated in 1991 with a degree in English, Creative Writing and a minor in Film Studies from Rhode Island College. While in college, he also wrote, co-directed and starred - along with a talented troop of comic actors - in his own original sketch comedy television show called LATEST WITH GREGORY. He later earned his MBA at the University of Connecticut, and has pursued a 25-year career in Journalism, Marketing, Business Operations and Management Consulting.

He's written full-length fictional novels and screenplays for the past twenty years, recently publishing all eight novels as well as a personal memoir on Amazon. His published novels include four social-political thrillers; THE SECOND COMING, THE THIRD PARTY, BROKEN ENGLISH and UNDER THE AURORA, two dramatic romantic comedies; THE CURVE IN THE ROAD, and THE TRIPLE DATE and two family-oriented dramedies; THE B TEAM and MATUNUCK.

His inspirational personal memoir, HEADLOCK, tells the story of his recent mission to lose 80 pounds, rebuild the strength he had in his twenties as an elite NCAA collegiate wrester and battle the ravages of time to return to top athletic shape - all in his late forties - in a bid to ultimately compete in the USA Wrestling Senior National Championship.

His latest novel, MATUNUCK, is his most deeply personal and emotional story, inspired by the summers he spent in the quaint Rhode Island beach community throughout the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. Related to prominent Matunuck families such as the Galloglys, Terrys, Gambles, Mullaneys, Clarkins and Aherns, he spent his summers in Matunuck with his grandparents, several great aunts and uncles and countless cousins, who all either lived in town year-round, stayed for the summer, or rented.

The story captures the love, beauty and magic of that special place in South County, Rhode Island called Matunuck.

Contact:

Greg McLaughlin

E-Mail: [e-mail]

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greg.mclaughlin.501

LinkdIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregmclaughlin/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMcLaughlin126

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B08P578YTC

Copyright:

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical people, real places and events are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places and persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Greg McLaughlin

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions hereof in any form whatsoever.

Chapter 1

Michael Maguire watched his shadow walk ahead of him in the sun. Cold, foamy water rippled across the cool, hard sand, obscuring his two-dimensional companion as the ocean waves ebbed and flowed.

With the frigid water trickling through his toes, he could feel bits of red, slimy seaweed brush by the top of his foot and past his ankles. It danced with his toe hairs and stuck to him like slime, as the wake of each wave recoiled. The light spray from the crashing surf caressed his cheeks. He felt the heavy air of the sea fill his lungs and tasted the salty mist that coated his lips and face.

He fixated on the unique sound of the waves that crashed with a violence and convulsion like no other beach. First the receding water from the previous wave scraped past the layer of rocks and pebbles that lay between the shore and the ditch where the surf broke. Then, just before the next wave crested, the beautifully jarring sound of the rumbling pebbles ceased in a frozen moment of silence before giving way to the loud crash of the new swell bombarding the hard, rocky plane of sand like an ordinance explosion.

Despite a twenty-year absence from his childhood summer home and the beach he called his own for the first nineteen years of his life, Michael couldn’t forget the dichotomously pleasant and soothing sound of the nasty, snarling waves that pummeled the sand and rocks at the old Matunuck beach.

Since he could remember, the waves in Matunuck broke unlike any in the world - even within the same state, only a mile or two away. Other famous beaches in California, Florida, Hawaii, and nearby New Jersey, boasted sometimes larger-sized surf, less slimy seaweed and smoother sand. But most beaches featured waves that broke hundreds of feet out and rolled gently toward the shore until dissipating into little more than a foot-tall ripple.

While Matunuck Beach could occasionally see ten, fifteen or even twenty-foot swells, the average trended closer to five or six. But the danger in swimming at Matunuck didn’t lie in the size of the waves. It came down to the way they broke and the infamous four-foot trench-like ditch where waves smashed only a few feet from the shore just past the curl of the surf.

With the configuration of the points at either ends of the mile-long stretch of dunes, the orientation of the coastline and the sharp angle at which the ocean transitioned from deep to shallow, the unique and stubborn Matunuck waves refused to break until just before the trench. This legendary drop-off sat perfectly positioned to scoop sand and rock beneath the surface like an excavator. As a result, just as swimmers entered the water, carefully clamoring over the field of pebbles, they often found themselves simultaneously falling into the ditch while combatting a crashing wave or even a series of choppy swells cresting on top of each other. Once taken down by the thrashing water, swimmers found themselves swirling within the rounded edge of the ditch as the portion of the wave that didn’t make it to the shore twirled them like a pair of dirty socks in the spin cycle of a washing machine.

Only experienced local swimmers felt comfortable navigating the ditch and the deceptive break of the waves in the tumultuous Matunuck waters.

Michael watched each wave rise in the afternoon sun, wander slowly toward the shore, pick up speed along the way and then spill its immense force onto the land. It always pained him to see a particularly large and well-shaped wave empty itself into the sand without someone taking advantage of the opportunity to dive into it or body surf it over the ditch to the shore. He recalled as a young teenager, laying in the shallow aftermath of each wave, allowing the current to suck him outward, over the rocks and into the undertow of the next incoming wave. He missed the feeling of being dragged into the ditch, spun around in circles and then spit back out on the other side of the moving swell of water. Or sometimes, he would ride the wave forward on his stomach like Superman soaring through the air above Metropolis. Unlike most beaches, Matunuck gave the passengers of its waves a few seconds of glorious ridership before body-slamming them straight down into the rocks.

Michael thought of swimming in the Matunuck surf as less of a leisure activity and more of an adventure or a challenge against the power of nature. He, his siblings and his friends prided themselves on their daring and their ability to face the might of the Atlantic Ocean - with all the adversity she threw at them - and still survive.

He would often emerge cut, bruised and scraped with patches of watery, salty blood trickling from a leg or an elbow. People who hailed from other towns, and usually swam at other beaches, could not understand the appeal. But to anyone from town, no other beach compared to the feeling of perseverance and accomplishment that Matunuck beach engendered.

As he watched a juicy set of waves roll toward him, he considered tossing his shirt, shades and ball cap and taking a dip himself. But beside not having a bathing suit, he had to stay on his timeframe. He had an important meeting later in the afternoon.

Since leaving Matunuck and rarely returning, Michael had taken residence in a variety of places before settling in the non-descript urban jungle of El Segundo, California. Only a year earlier, he had taken up walking every morning as early as possible. He liked to stride through the downtown stretch of old El Segundo, past the Chevron power plant and across the smooth and beautiful soft, white sand of Manhattan Beach.

The California gem featured crystal-clear bluish-green water and gentle rolling swells that broke hundreds of yards off-shore. The arched sandy enclave provided early morning surfers with plenty of runway to ride in, out and ahead of the bubbly curl.

Living out of the A-Loft Motel on Sepulveda Boulevard, he had plenty of time to take his two-hour walks late in the mornings after his layoff from Golden Records. Since his early twenties, he’d worked up the line from a mid-level to an executive producer and ultimately to the position of Chief Operating Officer. He spent nearly twenty years scratching and clawing for each next step at the company, working exorbitantly long hours, spending evenings in the studios with artists, working through his weekends with sound engineers and editors, dining with clients more nights per week than he spent at home and regularly working well past midnight on various plans, deliverables, presentations and proposals.

All that effort and the painful sacrifices he made over his two-decade-long career crashed to the ground like an angry Matunuck wave one day when the CEO called him into his office to discuss a merger they had planned with another company. Michael knew about the merger and had conducted much of the financial analysis to demonstrate the viability of the move. Little did he realize that the work he contributed to the merger would cost him his job. A few weeks before officially signing the contract, his CEO called him into his office and informed him that they were going to tap the COO from the other company instead of him. Just like that, a painstakingly constructed career came to an abrupt halt.

The two-year full severance built into his contract helped from a financial standpoint as did the sizeable lump sum and residual stock options. But, the emotional break of having been cast aside, stuck him like a thrust to the heart.

Whatever dagger he felt plunged into his chest with his firing, his divorce felt like a broadsword across the neck. He knew he and Danielle had struggled since their inauspicious start. He expected raising a child together so young to take its toll. And he knew, deep down, she never fully committed to him as her husband. But he also did not believe the marriage would evaporate as it had.

He attempted to keep it together. He swallowed his own identity and tried to be the man she preferred. He gave in to her. He made choices that he knew she wanted and expected him to make. He kept his own personal aspirations and desires that he knew conflicted with hers to himself. He buried his desire to work back to the east coast, and embraced their life in LA the best he could. But in the end, he couldn’t fake his love for their life. She could see through his veneer. And no matter his efforts, he couldn’t remake himself into what she wanted. The thawing of the relationship started soon after the beginning. The incubation of the divorce took eighteen years. But the final dropping of the axe moved swiftly.

A year-and-a-half earlier, Danielle informed him that she had hired a lawyer and wanted him out of the house. A month later, he found himself in arbitration arguing over furniture, silverware and old photo albums. The entire process concluded in less than six months with him capitulating most of their possessions, including the post-modern home they shared, embedded into a steep hill in Pasadena. He moved out, stayed with friends for a while, checked into the motel while he looked for an apartment and resided there ever since.

He bent down and pulled a long flat chunk of Basalt out of the sand. Nearly perfectly round and flat as a coin, he cupped the stone between his thumb and forefinger. It fit perfectly. He looked at it for a second, appreciating the hundreds of years-worth of erosion that had contributed to its ideal smooth and rounded shape. Then he cocked his arm back, stepped toward the vast ocean and hurled the stone perfectly side-armed, releasing it into the air and across a calm, flat lull in the waves. The stone hovered horizontally before slowly descending and striking the water like an airplane landing on a runway. As soon as it made contact, it produced a small splash and immediately skid back into the air. It skipped across the water seven more times, slowing and traveling less distance between each hop before eventually losing velocity and succumbing to gravity.

He smiled at the result of having skipped the stone seven times and looked for another one to toss.

A little green speck of color caught his eye. He almost missed it. He nearly stepped on it and drove it deeper into the ground. He bent down and freed a small, smooth chunk of sea glass from the sand. As he stared at it, the pain in his heart from recalling his lay-off and divorce intensified.

He always thought of his little sister when he saw sea glass on the beach. More than twenty years earlier, when he was eighteen and his sister was only thirteen, he stole her prized collection of Matunuck sea glass from a high shelf in the basement. He assumed that it had been forgotten and that nobody would notice it was missing. It had rested on that shelf collecting dust for at least half of a dozen years since Dana was barely seven or eight.

He could hardly bear the embarrassing and painful memory of having taken the ten-pound glass container with all its marvelous, worn-smooth, hundred-year-old colored bits of glass and given it to Danielle as a Christmas present.

Worse, he gave it to her right in front of his sister on Christmas morning, leaving poor Dana to stare in disbelief, but with enough maturity and tact not to say anything that would embarrass her older brother in front of his girlfriend.

He held the small piece of glass in his hand. He ran his fingers along each rounded edge. He closed his eyes and slipped it into his pocket. He couldn’t remember the last time he spent a solid amount of time with his siblings. They used to hang out on the back deck of the Matunuck house playing cribbage with the radio blasting in the summer sun.

Michael, or Mick as his family called him, recalled shucking corn with Dana and his brother, Conrad, whom they called Radley. They often pealed cucumbers for their parents, sliced the tops of strawberries or diced watermelon for summer dinners in the still-bright sunlight after eight o’clock. By eight-thirty, as they downed apple betty with vanilla ice cream, and the sun waned in its array of oranges, reds and purples, the entire family engaged in games of Monopoly, Life or High-Low-Jack into the dark of night until bed time around ten.

He checked his watch. He had made it to Charlestown and doubled back to the bend where Green Hill Beach ended and Matunuck started.

The chill of his upcoming meeting washed over him like the sixty-five-degree Matunuck beach water. In a matter of weeks, he would negotiate and complete the sale of his parents’ house. Once executed, his entire nuclear family would be eradicated from any connection to Matunuck and Matunuck beach.

The wind kicked up and a brush of cold ocean water splashed across his brow sending shivers down his spine.

Chapter 2

A half dozen sea shells, strung along a stretch of fishing wire, tinkled together as Mick opened the salt-worn swing door and entered the rundown Tuni Grill. It had been there, along Matunuck Beach Road next to Bunkie’s Hair salon, the Surfside panty and old man Elmer’s fruit stand, since he could remember. The wood paneling, the round barstool chairs along the counter and the grime-covered stainless-steel grill all looked the same. In the room adjacent to the grill, sat a cheesy gift shop that sold towels, chairs, blow-up rafts, beach balls, sunscreen, pails and little plastic shovels. On the other side of the dining room sat a laundromat complete with two washing machines and four dryers embedded in a wall.

Mr. Bozzutto, a rotund, red-faced man with an enormous bulbous nose and dimpled skin, had owned the eclectic three-room business for all the decades Mick could remember. He must have been seventyish back then, so Mick assumed he would have sold the business. But the fact that it still looked identical as it had twenty years ago implied that maybe Mr. Bozzutto was still kicking around into his late eighties or even his nineties.

Mick sat on a red padded spinning bar stool and waited for someone to take his order. Mr. Bozzutto used to sit in the back room smoking his cigar and taking his time before emerging to tend to his customers.

Mick eyed a cardboard box on the counter that contained several long, thin slices of soft Italian bread with about a quarter inch of pizza sauce and no cheese. They were wrapped in plastic and stacked neatly in two rows, about four-deep. He reached for one of the packages and heard a voice from behind him.

One of the cold pizzas, said a woman, a few years younger than him, who emerged from the laundromat.

She wore a white tank top with the word ‘Matunuck’ across her chest.

Yes, Mick answered. I love these.

A true Rhode Islander, the girl’s thick accent lopped off the sound of the letter r at the end of ‘Islander’, causing it to sound more like ‘Islandah’.

She torqued her head sideways at notice of his light blue ball cap.

Or maybe not? she asked.

I’m from here, yes, Mick answered. But I live in LA now.

I figured something was up, she smiled, pointing at his hat. Not too many people who like the Rhode Island no-cheese cold pizza come in here wearing a Dodgers cap.

She spun around, reached under the counter and pulled out a cap of her own.

We all wear this one, she beamed as she pulled back her blond hair, twisted it into a long straight column and pulled it through the back of her Boston Red Sox cap. Where in Rhode Island are you from?

I’m from a town in Connecticut called Northington originally, he replied. But my family came here to Matunuck every summer for years.

Serious? she asked. I’ve been here all my life and I’ve never seen you here.

I’m a little older than you, Mick replied.

I suppose, the girl mused as she scraped remnants of dried meat and cheese from the grill. I thought I knew everyone in town. You must’ve been gone a long time.

Like twenty-some years.

That explains it.

From behind a curtain, Mr. Bozzutto emerged. He had lost weight and his nose had shrunk, but otherwise, his eyes and body looked almost identical to Mick’s mental image of him. It seemed as if he had frozen in time.

You’re a Maguire, ain’tcha? Bozzutto said, recognizing Mick at first glance. You’re Gordie’s son, the one from California?

That’s right, Mick replied. You’ve got to be related to Mr. Bozzutto?

He was my father, the younger Bozzutto said extending his hand. Nice to meet you. I’m Leonard Bozzutto. My dad was Lawrence. He owned this place when you were a kid here.

Mick shook the man’s hand, his warm, clammy palm with stubby fingers and calloused knuckles squeezed tightly.

Mickey Maguire, right? Leonard continued. I remember you and your brother, Conrad, hanging out here, jeez, must be twenty years ago.

That’s right, Mick said. Radley and I used to get burgers here with our dad.

Radley? the waitress asked.

Rad, or Radley, Mick explained. That’s what we called him for short.

How’s Radley shorter than Conrad? she muttered as Leonard fixated on the patron sitting at his countertop.

You used to come in with towels around your necks in wet, slimy bathing suits after hanging out at the beach all day, said Leonard. You used to get sand and seaweed all over the stools and drip salt water on the floor. My dad made me clean up after you.

Sorry about that, Mick grinned.

Either way, it’s the same two syllables, the waitress said.

How’s your father doing? Leonard asked, oblivious to the musings of his waitress. I haven’t seen him for a couple months.

Wait, your father’s Mr. Maguire? asked the waitress with a bright smile. He used to come in here every Sunday with your mother after church. They’d buy the Pro Jo and read it cover-to-cover, sitting down at that table back there. He’d special order fried spaghetti and eggs. She’d get oatmeal and coffee with extra cream and sugar. She said she wanted it to taste like coffee ice cream.

That’s them, Mick nodded.

They’re adorable. I haven’t seen them in months. I hope they’re okay.

Well, Mick’s voice softened. He’s hanging in there, I guess.

Shame about your mother’s stroke, Mr. Bozzutto said as he lobbed a chunk of butter onto the grill and watched it sizzle into a bubbling puddle of oil.

Your father took such good care of her, the girl chimed in. What’s happened to him?

"My dad