by Kate Allen
“Moxie, please!” Mr. Patterson exclaimed. It was the most animated he’d been all day.
Marion set the sodas on the coffee table and handed one of the orange cans to Mr. Patterson. He popped the top and drank the bitter beverage, swallowing with his eyes closed. “Mmm. That is first-rate.”
Sookie and I cracked open the cans of Canada Dry.
“Why did Rockport split from Camden?” Dad asked.
Vern took a slurp of the Moxie and said, “I don’t remember exactly. Some days I’m as sharp as a tack and others, I can’t remember my own son’s name. My father was a quarryman.”
“Ha!” Mr. Patterson snorted. “My father was a quarryman.”
“Limestone?” asked Vern.
“No. Granite,” said Mr. Patterson.
Here we go, I thought. Men from Rockports, talking rocks.
Mr. Patterson and Vern Devine continued on for twenty-five minutes. Vern told us how limestone from Rockport, Maine, was sent to Washington, DC, to build an important building, which he later remembered to be the Capitol building. Mr. Patterson explained how his father and three hundred other quarrymen went on strike days before the stock market crash in 1929, never to return to work in the pits again. They talked about the navy and their wives. And then Vern said, “I don’t know who you people are, but I’m having a great visit.”
Marion came back into the room to give Vern some pills in a white cup. His hands shook like a bobble-head doll when he reached for the medication.
“Sookie is a fisherman,” I told Vern, pointing at Sookie. “About a month ago, a great white shark swam into his net by accident. An eighteen-footer.”
“Is that so?” Vern asked, focusing on Sookie. “Where were you fishing?”
“About twenty miles off Rockport.” He added, “Massachusetts.”
“Wait a minute,” said Marion. “That made the papers up here.”
She disappeared into the hall.
“Can I try a sip of that?” Sookie asked Mr. Patterson.
“My Moxie?” Mr. Patterson’s eyes widened.
“Yeah. I’m curious. I don’t want to take a whole can.”
Sookie reached for Mr. Patterson’s drink, took a sip, and made a face like he had ingested a mouthful of motor oil. “That is sickening.”
“It’s an acquired taste,” Mr. Patterson said, taking back his can.
“We like it,” said Vern.
Marion returned with the clipping.
“I cut this out for you,” she said, showing the article to Vern. She looked at Sookie. “That’s you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sookie’s fifteen minutes of fame had been extended by two seconds. He blushed.
“I remember. That was a big one,” Vern said, pointing to the photograph. “Sad, really.”
“Vern, let’s show them the photos of Helen in your study,” said Marion, changing the subject. She helped Vern to his feet without giving him the option of declining.
We followed Marion and Vern back into the hallway and into a room off the back of the house with views of the Casco Bay cove. Vern’s study was lined with bookshelves and a collage of framed photographs. There was a black-and-white picture of Vern leaning over a giant octopus sprawled out on a lab table. Vern looked younger, except he wore the same bug-eyed glasses. There was a photo of four children in bathing suits, with their legs dangling from a dock.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Those are my children,” he said. “They’re retired now. Can you believe that?”
I smiled.
Just above my head, my eyes drew like magnets to another photograph: my mom and Vern. I gasped.
It was so odd to see her here in this old man’s house. I knew she had a life outside of us, but here was the evidence. They both wore diving masks around their necks and blue sweatshirts. If Vern was ninety-five years old, he must have been scuba diving and teaching into his eighties. He must have liked his job.
“How old was my mom in the picture?” I asked Vern.
Vern looked at Marion. Marion looked at Dad.
Dad leaned on his crutches and studied the photo. “She was probably in her early twenties.”
“Gosh, you look like her,” Marion said.
We both had a slew of freckles, but her hair was more brown than red, and she didn’t have zits. I thought of the conversation I’d had with Fiona at Newbury Comics. I hoped I ended up looking like my mom.
“There’s one over here.” Vern pointed his shaky hand to another image of my mom. This time, she was in a group of people, standing at the water’s edge, looking at a dorsal fin poking out from the flat calm. “That was a bull shark. It was trapped in a salt pond on the Cape.”
Under the surface, the shark looked huge, not that different from a white shark.
“How’d you get it out?” I asked Vern.
“We didn’t do anything, except watch. For days. The full moon came and raised the tide. The deeper water helped the shark swim back into the ocean.”
I looked at Vern, wondering how he could remember details like that, yet not know how to use a telephone anymore. He blinked his big eyes.
There was another photo of my mom and Vern at the front of a classroom. He was leaning against an island with a sink at the front of the room and she was talking to the students.
“I was still teaching at the university,” Vern said. “And Helen must have been a guest lecturer in my class that day.”
My mom was smiling and doing something weird with her hands and the college kids were awake, at least the ones I could see in the photo. Dad leaned into the photo and studied it closely.
“Every once in a while, you get a student who knows her stuff. And that was your mom,” Vern said. “She knew her stuff better than anyone else I ever taught.”
I smiled at Vern and he smiled back.
“Vern, you doing all right?” Marion asked. “Want to sit down?”
“Yes,” he said.
Marion helped him into a chair.
“I’m going to make a few sandwiches. You are welcome to visit with Vern in the study as long as you’d like,” said Marion. “He does get tired, so don’t be surprised if he nods off on you. And call me if he starts getting feisty.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Vern, clasping his hands on his lap.
I thought I should run out to the car and grab the research proposal before Vern fell asleep, so I left the men in the study and returned with my backpack. Sookie and Vern were talking about the depleting cod population in the ocean. I waited for a lull.
“Professor Devine, I wanted to show you the research proposal you wrote with my mom about tagging great whites. I’m trying to understand the details.”
I set the paper in Vern’s lap and he slowly began to flip through the material, stopping after only a few pages.
“Yes. This was Helen’s baby. I contributed very little, but she had a great idea.”
“What made it great?” I asked.
Dad shifted his weight, scuffing his boot on the wood floor.
“Do you know what the ‘census’ is?” Vern asked.
“Kinda?”
Vern opened his mouth to speak, but then looked puzzled. “Can somebody explain the census?”
Mr. Patterson spoke up. “Every ten years the United States government collects data to find out who is living in the US. The census takers ask questions about age, sex, and race, to see how the country is changing.”
“It’s friggin’ annoying. If you don’t send in your form fast enough, they start callin’ your house,” Sookie said. “No thanks. I’d rather stay off the grid.”
Dad smiled.
Vern ignored Sookie. “There is no census for white sharks. We have no idea how many young sharks, middle-aged sharks, and old sharks there are. A balance wou
ld tell us there is a healthy . . .”
Vern was searching for the word.
“Ecosystem?” Dad offered.
“Correct. If there is an imbalance . . .” Vern hesitated. “There might be a problem.”
Vern was slowing down. I had been standing up the whole time we were in the study and I crouched to a squat, hanging on to the arm of Vern’s upholstered chair. Vern took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. When he put the glasses back on, he looked straight into my eyes and put his hand on top of mine.
“You’ll get your census data, Helen,” he whispered.
My neck and shoulders were tingling. I wanted to correct him, but I just stared at his mouth, wondering what he would say next.
“You’ll figure out what those sharks are doing here.”
He blinked and smiled at me. I was almost a thirteen-year-old, but he thought I was a shark expert. Whatever fog his mind might have had, there was a clear line that led straight back to Mom. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went for it.
“Okay,” I said. “How do I find the sharks, if nobody knows where they are headed?”
“In a plane,” he said.
“Should I get the nurse?” Sookie whispered.
I kept looking at Vern. “You think I should get on a plane?”
Vern shook his head. “No. It’s like we talked about. A man is in the plane . . . he will call you on the boat.”
It sounded like nonsense to me, until Dad said with the sureness of a dart, “A spotter.”
I turned to face my dad. “A what?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said. His brow was creased.
“But, Helen, wait for the seals,” Vern said.
Vern took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was asleep.
I stayed in a squat, watching Vern breathe for a moment, and then I fell onto my butt, looking around at everyone.
“If I ever get like that, just take me out to pasture and shoot me,” Sookie said softly. I looked up at Vern to make sure he was still asleep.
Dad was rubbing his chin. “Hold on. Some of the things he said make sense. Spotter planes are used to find fish. Lucy, hand me the proposal.”
The pages were spread across Vern’s lap. I pinched a corner, pulled the paper away from the professor’s knees, and passed it up to my dad. Vern didn’t flinch.
“Do you remember the spotter plane?” he asked me.
“No.” I had taken a break after the part about the harpoon boat.
“I remember it,” said Sookie. “The spotter plane was going to keep an eye out for the sharks and radio to the boat to help the captain get the right position.”
He looked over Dad’s shoulder at the proposal.
“Christ, Helen. Might as well hire Roger Clemens to fly the friggin’ plane.” Sookie gave a budget presentation on his fingers. “First, you gotta pay the fisherman for his fuel and his time. Then, you gotta pay the spotter to find the shark.” He shook his head. “The state’s not gonna pay for that.”
“She was looking for grant money,” Dad said.
“What did he say about seals?” asked Mr. Patterson.
Dad looked like he was about to answer when Marion walked into the room.
“You bored him to death,” she said, covering Vern’s lap with a colorful afghan.
Vern’s head was tipped to the right, and he breathed through his mouth.
“Actually, I think we wore him out,” Mr. Patterson said.
“That’s possible,” said Marion, picking up a water glass from the table beside Vern’s chair. “Lunch is ready.”
Marion led us to the round wooden table in the kitchen. The lazy Susan in the center held a strange combination of items—a number of prescription drugs, a set of binoculars on top of a bird guide, and an animal bone.
As we chose our places, I asked, “What’s the bone?”
Marion put a platter of sandwiches and a glass bowl of tortilla chips onto the table. “I found that down by the rocks this morning. I was going to ask Vern where it came from. It keeps him sharp.”
Fred would have already generated a short list of potential candidates. I looked at the bone. Maybe a rabbit, or a cat, or a groundhog. Something small, but not chipmunk small. I thought about how I would draw it on the back of a postcard to Fred.
“Thank you for making us lunch,” Dad said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course. I was happy that you could make the trip. I think Vern is happy too.”
“How long have you been Vern’s nurse?” I asked, taking a sandwich from the platter and passing the dish to Sookie. I pulled the bun off my sandwich and started ripping it into bite-size pieces.
“Well, Vern originally hired me to take care of his wife, Eleanor, when she was battling cancer. When Eleanor passed away two years ago, Vern started showing signs of dementia, so I just stayed on to help him. It seemed meant to be.”
“He seemed pretty with it today,” said Sookie. “I mean, when he was remembering the shark that got stuck in the pond.”
“His long-term memory is still impressive. It’s the short-term memory that is failing him. And he gets crabby sometimes. But all in all, he’s still doing pretty good.”
Dad poured me a drink and I put one of the bread pieces in my mouth, chasing it with a sip of lemonade. It went down smoothly, but after a while I lost interest in eating because it took so long to choke down the food.
“Were you able to get the information you needed from Vern?” Marion asked.
“Well,” I said. “Sort of. We did get some new information, but it just made me want to ask more questions and then Vern fell asleep.”
Marion nodded. “You just write down your questions after lunch and I’ll see what I can find out.”
* * *
° ° ° °
Dad, Sookie, and Mr. P ate cookies and decided to take a walk out back to get a better look at the cove. I stayed behind in the kitchen and looked out the picture window with the binoculars, spotting a small boat moored close to Vern’s property.
“Is that Vern’s boat?” I asked.
“Yes. His son usually takes him out a couple of times during the summer for a short ride.”
“You get a lot of birds around here?” I asked.
“We do,” Marion said, setting a glass in the drying rack. “Want to bring me your plate, Lucy?”
“Sure,” I said.
She scraped my dish into the trash and dropped it into the soapy water. “You didn’t eat much. You don’t like cold cuts?”
“Cold cuts are fine,” I said.
“It’s none of my business, but have you always been very thin?” she asked.
I put down the binoculars and felt my stomach flip, as though I’d been cornered. “Well, sort of, but I have been having problems swallowing this summer. It makes me not want to eat.”
She brought a glass of lemonade to the table and sat down.
“Any idea why?” Marion asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
I told her about the accident and losing Fred. I told her about how I sometimes feel like I’m going to die at mealtimes or choke on my own saliva.
“Have you seen a doctor about the swallowing?”
“Not exactly. Dad talked to a nurse on the phone. She said it might be anxiety.”
“She’s probably right. Two huge losses,” she said. “Panic attacks seem like a normal response to me.”
I shrugged. “Great.”
“Here’s what you do,” Marion said. “Start with soft foods—applesauce, Jell-O, soup. Make it easy on yourself at first.”
I nodded.
“Then you need to say to yourself a few times, ‘My body knows how to do this.’ And you let your body do its job.”
“That sounds too easy.” I poked the an
imal bone with my finger. Maybe it came from a fox.
“It is, if you stop getting in the way.” Her expression was neutral.
“Okay,” I said, picking up the binoculars and looking out the window again. I saw Mr. Patterson plucking berries off a bush. The binoculars felt like a mask that put some distance between Marion and me. “When I was talking to Vern, he got confused and thought I was my mom. Does that happen a lot?”
“Sometimes,” said Marion.
“He called me Helen and told me it’s my job to collect data on sharks.”
“Maybe it is.”
“But he meant that Mom is tracking the sharks.”
“Some days it’s hard to know when Vern is talking crazy and when he’s making sense.”
25. The Presence of a Lady
We waited for about an hour after lunch, but Vern was officially worn-out. There was no chance of getting any more information about Mom’s research or the tagging project. I wrote down a few questions for Marion, not knowing if we’d still be in Maine to visit the next morning.
At a gas station, Sookie sat behind the wheel while he waited for the pump to click off. A map was spread over Mr. Patterson’s lap.
“Let’s stay at a motel,” Mr. P said. “My treat.”
I poked my head between the front seats.
“Uh,” Dad said, looking into the side mirror, probably hoping for an out. “Sookie, do you need to get back tonight?”
Sookie was leaning on the armrest with his forehead in his palm, dozing. “Nah, Lester’s painting the boat all week.”
It was quiet for a moment. “Why do you want to stay?” Sookie asked Mr. Patterson.
“I just like being here. That’s all,” he said. His knee was bouncing around like his feet were doing a little dance.
I looked at the islands scattered along the lower half of Mr. Patterson’s map and settled into the back seat to dig up a postcard for Fred.
* * *
° ° ° °
After some debate, we pulled into the Spruce Grouse Lodge. It seemed a little rustic, with cars pulled up to the guest room doors and rooms only on the ground level. I dropped my backpack in a room with my dad that smelled like furniture polish and lemon candies and decided to hike down the sidewalk for a side-by-side comparison of the accommodations. Sookie was sitting on the bumper of the Diplomat, drinking coffee. Fred would’ve disapproved of the Styrofoam cup.