The Line Tender

by Kate Allen

  “Thanks,” I said. I unwrapped the pendant and turned it over a couple of times. It looked the same, intact from its flight across the kitchen. The dental floss was wet, but not greasy.

  Mr. Patterson spoke very quietly. “Fred came over one day and asked how I got Mrs. Patterson to be my girlfriend. I laughed and I said, ‘Is this about Lucy?’ and he nodded.”

  My heart sped up. I wiped my face and looked at Mr. P.

  “So I suggested he give you a gift—a piece of jewelry. He said he didn’t have that kind of money, so I gave him the key to Mrs. Patterson’s jewelry box.”

  He took a sip of Moxie.

  “I tried to help him choose something. I offered a ring, some ivory hair combs. Fred thought those were cruel to elephants and put them back into the box. He passed up diamonds and a garnet necklace before he settled on that one.” Mr. Patterson pointed at the pendant. “The mermaid caught his eye. I told him it was a mechanical pencil. He was very excited about that discovery. He said it was ‘the right gift for Lucy.’”

  “It’s a what?” I whispered.

  “It’s an Art Nouveau mechanical pencil. I bought it for Mrs. Patterson ages ago. She used to wear it around her neck.”

  A mechanical pencil. I picked it up to see how the pencil worked, but I couldn’t figure it out. My hands were shaking a little.

  Mr. Patterson put out his hand. I dropped it into his palm. He twisted the barrel. Oily water dripped out the bottom. “There’s still lead in it, though you might need to dry it out inside,” he said, handing it back to me. “Fred thought you could use it for your art.”

  I looked down at the pencil. On my napkin, I drew loopy squiggles and wrote my name. The lead was soft and good for drawing.

  “Get yourself a proper chain, will you? Mrs. Patterson’s broke ages ago, and it was made of a stronger material than dental floss.”

  “It’s triple looped,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “Lucy,” said Mr. Patterson.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking at Mr. Patterson.

  “It’s okay, dear,” he said.

  “Can I see it again?” Sookie asked, looking at the pendant. I passed it to Sookie.

  “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why did he want to give it to me?”

  “You were his favorite person in the world and he wanted to tell you,” Mr. Patterson said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and pressed it into each eye. “That’s what it means.”

  I knew he was thinking about Mrs. Patterson. And that’s when it hit me. I’d always suspected that I was Fred’s favorite person in the whole world. And he was mine. But neither of us had ever said that out loud. Not to each other. I shivered, thinking that he had wanted to say it to me. It was like standing on the edge of the quarry again.

  30. Stronger

  I started to write Fred a postcard, but there were too many words for the small space, so I wrote him a letter instead. I told him about the butter fiasco and asked him when he’d planned on giving me the necklace. The last words were I keep hoping I’ll hear you chuck rocks at my window and ask me to go somewhere with you. Then I stuffed the letter into an envelope and put it in my pocket.

  A car door slammed outside and I looked out the window. In the porch light of Fred’s house, I saw Lester heading up Fred’s walkway. He rang the bell. A shadow drew toward the screen door and Maggie appeared. They stood for what seemed like a long time, exchanging words, separated by the screen. And then Maggie invited Lester into the house.

  I breathed out through my mouth, hoping that the talk would go well.

  And then something bounced off the side of my house. I heard a rock ricochet off the trim around my window.

  My heart pounded.

  I pressed my face close to the screen and looked down.

  Fiona was standing in the light of the streetlamp.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment, though I was still curious as to why she wanted me.

  “Hey,” she said. “I got your postcard.”

  “Oh,” I said. It had been more than a few days since I’d dropped it in the mailbox, before playing gin rummy with Mr. Scanlon.

  “Maggie put it on my dresser, but I didn’t see it until tonight!” she said. “Want to take a walk?”

  I looked at the clock. It was after nine. “I smell like lobster,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  She was standing at the end of my driveway, wearing a flowy dress, a sweatshirt, and the red Chinese shoes. I was wearing my blue Chinese shoes. She smiled and said, “Where do you want to go?” As if we had always taken late-night walks together.

  I shrugged. “Wherever. We can just walk toward town.”

  We took a left at the end of our street and headed to the ocean. There was a boat far from shore that was moving slowly through the black water with white lights like stars at the mast and the front.

  “I saw Lester go into your house,” I said, as we walked along the railing, the beach below us.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He went in the front door and I went out the back.”

  “Are you mad at him?”

  “No,” she said. “I know that I should be there to make sure my mom doesn’t say anything horrible to him. But I just . . . left.”

  I nodded, thinking about what Fiona had said as we passed an older couple out for a walk.

  “It will be okay.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Fiona said.

  “Your mom stopped by my house tonight. She talked to my dad. I think it helped.”

  “She talked to your dad?” Fiona repeated.

  I nodded.

  “That makes me feel better.”

  At some point, I realized that I was leading us to the mailbox, where I had deposited each of Fred’s postcards throughout the summer. When we got to the bookstore, I paused in front and looked up at the three big awnings over the door and windows, the mailbox to my right.

  As if Fiona wasn’t going to notice, I walked over, pulled the envelope out of my pocket, and stealthily dropped it inside. I assumed that we could keep walking, but her feet were planted on the sidewalk.

  “Are you sending that to Fred?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I know about the shoebox. My mom says too much,” she said. “And your dad doesn’t say enough.”

  I watched her face for signs of disgust. She thought for a moment and said, “You could get a journal. Or you could talk to me.”

  She looked me right in the eye, like she was serious.

  “You’ve got plenty of friends,” I said. “I don’t—”

  “No. You’re my sister,” she said. “Not biologically, but better. More meaningful. I don’t know.”

  I wanted to hug her, but I just stood there.

  “I blew up at dinner tonight. And then Mr. Patterson told me that Fred had wanted to give me the necklace,” I said, pulling it out from inside my shirt. “It’s a mechanical pencil.” I twisted the gold rod and the lead appeared. Fiona leaned in close. “It was Mrs. Patterson’s.”

  “Mystery solved,” she said. “And, as it happens . . .” Fiona dug in her pocket. “Put out your hand.”

  “What?” I said.

  Fiona grabbed my wrist and turned my hand. Then she slowly dropped something cool into my palm. I looked down at the metal links.

  “It’s sterling silver. I wish I could’ve gotten you gold to match. But at least this one’s stronger.”

  At first, we couldn’t break the floss. Fiona gnawed through it, which was disgusting since this string had actually passed through the cracks between my teeth on several occasions and, more recently, had floated in a pan of butter.

  I pulled the pendant free and Fiona threaded the sil
ver chain through the little eye on top. Then, she stood behind me and fastened the clasp. I stuffed the dental floss into my pocket.

  “Better?” she asked.

  I nodded and hugged Fiona tight.

  31. Invitation

  Fred got it half right. he finally sent me another shark. It wasn’t a real live one. But it was real.

  In my sleep, I heard the phone ring over the dull whir of the fan. Waking up to a phone call at dawn was more jarring than an alarm clock interrupting my dream. My dad had regularly received strange calls from work at all hours of the night, but that had stopped after the accident. I was out of practice and was dying to know who was on the phone.

  I lifted my head off the pillow to uncover both ears, but the white noise muffled the sound of Dad’s voice. I put both feet on the floor, flipped off the fan, and walked to the doorway.

  “Where?” Dad asked.

  There was a long pause. I rubbed my eyes and yawned.

  “What makes you think she’d want to see that?” Dad said.

  “See what?” I wondered. There was another lull on Dad’s end of the call.

  “You can talk to her about it,” he finally said.

  When the squeaking from his crutch came closer, I knew that he’d been talking about me. Dad stopped at the doorway and covered the receiver with his hand.

  “It’s Sookie,” he said. “Says a white shark washed up on the Cape. He’s wondering if you want to watch the biologists cut it open.”

  He extended the phone and looked at me as though he were trying to read my reaction, as if he wondered whether I was truly interested in something that most humans (other than my mom) would find disgusting. I also wondered if it bothered him that Sookie knew something about me that he didn’t.

  Eyes wide, I took the phone from his hand.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Sookie. Sorry to wake you up,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No problem.”

  “I got a call from Robin. She said that a runner found a white shark. Washed up in Chatham. She and Ray are driving down to the beach for the necropsy,” he said. “She thought you’d like to watch. That you might want to bring your sketchbook.”

  “I would,” I said without hesitation. Dad’s brow lifted slightly, like he was surprised. Even I couldn’t believe that I wanted to go. I covered the receiver.

  “Is that okay?” I whispered to Dad.

  He nodded. “Just stay with Sookie.”

  “Do you want to come?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how I’d get around the beach with this thing. Too much sand,” he said, gesturing to his foot. “But you go.”

  I put the phone up to my ear again.

  “I’ll come by in a bit,” Sookie said.

  “Sookie?” I said. “Why did Robin call you?”

  “She’s on my case about the tagging project,” he said. “Just like you.”

  “Are you going to do it?” I asked.

  “No comment.”

  Sookie’s tone was so flat, I couldn’t tell if he was considering it at all.

  “See you soon,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I pressed the button to end the call and crossed my arms.

  “You’re really up for this?” Dad asked.

  “Are you that surprised?”

  “Given the way this summer’s going, no,” he said. “You’re gonna need some money for the trip.”

  He went looking for his wallet and returned with two twenties.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Tolls, food. Just bring me the change.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I took the money.

  “Bring a sweatshirt,” he said. “It might be cool on the beach.”

  Then, as if driven by a motor, I ran downstairs to the kitchen sink and pulled out a heavy-duty garbage bag and a roll of duct tape from the junk drawer. I ran back upstairs.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, as I bagged his cast.

  “You need to come with us,” I said.

  I wrapped him up like a futuristic, ninja mummy.

  “No sand’ll get in there,” I said. “You’re getting this thing off soon anyway.”

  “I’ll come,” he said, smiling.

  “Bring your camera.”

  He nodded.

  I gathered up my art supplies and found clothes, but couldn’t decide which shoes to wear to a necropsy. I thought about the scene in Jaws when Hooper and Chief Brody slice open the shark, releasing a river of foul, grayish fluids. I didn’t want to wear anything I might ever want to wear again, so I grabbed my gym shoes.

  I waited on the stoop for Sookie to arrive. Mr. Patterson was on his porch, drinking a cup of coffee, so I walked over with my backpack.

  “A necropsy?” he said, making a gruesome face. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  I stood at the bottom of Mr. Patterson’s steps.

  “Don’t you want to know what a huge shark looks like inside?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t thought about it before,” he said. “But I suppose.”

  “You were an engineer, right?” I asked.

  “Yes. A mechanical engineer.”

  “I want to know how all of the parts work, so I can draw the whole shark for my science project.”

  He nodded. “You’re going with Sookie?”

  “And Dad,” I said.

  I could hear Sookie’s truck on Beach Street before he made either turn onto King or Smith. He pulled into my driveway, hopped down from the cab, and went into the house.

  “Oh hell, I gotta see this,” said Mr. Patterson.

  32. Sharks Can’t Digest Hair

  Walking in the sand, I saw the small crowd gathered in an arc around the base of a rocky section of the beach, watching the shark, the way strangers hang around, useless, like when someone has had a seizure in a grocery store. The shark was hung up in a huge field of boulders. I could see glimpses of the long white belly between the bystanders. The shark must have been the length of a swimming pool. Sookie started to jog ahead and I felt torn between wanting to get inside the arc right away and not wanting to leave Dad and Mr. Patterson behind.

  “You go ahead. We’ll be right there,” said Mr. Patterson, as if he could read my mind. I looked at Dad’s boot to make sure the duct tape was holding up. As if that cast couldn’t make his foot any hotter in August, I had to wrap it in plastic. But when I saw Dad’s face, I knew he didn’t care. With his boot in the sand and his camera around his neck, he was home.

  I ran behind Sookie, my backpack bouncing up and down on my back, and saw an opening between two older ladies in short terry-cloth beach dresses. I squeezed between them, entering the arc at the edge of the rocky terrain. The shark looked like a ghost with its white belly and broad fins stretched to the sky, reflecting the sunlight. The head was wedged between large boulders and there was another rock between the caudal fins and tail. The shark was packed into the rocks so tightly that I wondered whether the biologists, or even the high tide, could move it.

  I left the spectators at the edge of the arc and hiked into the rocks, the way Fred and I had done so many times at Folly Cove, feeling out each step before committing. I moved closer to the snout-end. The shark had taken a beating. A chunk of the nose was missing and large gashes below the injury fed into the nostrils and into the mouth. Its jaws were slightly open, showing many broken and missing teeth. I looked to the sides of the snout. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand. The smell was pungent, like opening a fridge that contained a rotting animal.

  I was pretty sure this wasn’t Sookie’s shark that had drifted out to sea because Fred told me it would have disintegrated out there, but I had to make sure. So I hiked around the snout to the side where I thought the scar had been and I crouched in the shadow of a large fin, to see t
he gray side of the shark.

  Sections of the gray skin had been worn away, maybe from bouncing around on the seafloor as it rolled into the beach. There was no M-shaped scar between the blanched-out gills and the dorsal fin. Definitely not ours. Without thinking, I put my hand where the M should be and Mr. Patterson yelled from far back at the arc, “Lucy, don’t touch it. You’ll get worms!”

  I pulled my hand away and looked up at the other spectators. One woman nodded, backing up Mr. Patterson like Mrs. Patterson would have done.

  “You might want to stay back with the rest of the group down there,” said a man carrying a red box, like a tool kit, toward the shark. “We don’t have much time. We can’t have people in the way.”

  I nodded, but I had no intention of moving. I watched the people wearing baseball caps, who were moving around the shark. They had brought in plastic totes, coolers, and big buckets, and deposited them in the smaller rocks just beyond the shark. One man was taking a measurement of the tail. A couple of others were talking and unloading gear. These were the biologists.

  I spotted one of them, bent over a plastic tub of supplies, wearing a pair of orange waders like the ones Sookie and Lester wore on the boat. When the biologist stood up, I saw her thick, curly hair, pulled back with a purple headband. I recognized Robin right away.

  She was pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as she looked at me. I was squatting next to the head, probably in her way. She smiled, as though she had known me well. She looked at Dad, Mr. Patterson, and Sookie.

  “Lucy?” she asked, walking over to the snout, reaching out her gloved hand. “You made it.”

  I rose out of my squat and gave her my hand, like an adult would do. “Thanks for calling Sookie this morning.”

  “No problem,” she said. “Hopefully you’ll learn something here.”

  Sookie nearly wiped out in the rocks, but when he finally made it over, he put his hand out. “Hi, Robin. Sookie.”

  “It’s been a long time. Nice to see you again.”