Fishermen's Court

by Andrew Wolfendon

  The only time I see tension cross her face is when I bring up her parents’ upcoming visit. She covers immediately, though, saying how nice it will be for her kids to see their grandparents for the holiday. At one point, I catch her flashing Miles an eye signal. Half a minute later, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. “I’ll walk with you,” says Miles, who gets up and heads in the same direction. In the mirror over the bar, I see Beth walk past the rest rooms and around a corner. Miles follows her. They’ve gone into the back hallway to discuss something; probably how to ditch me now that the food-ingesting portion of the festivities is over.

  I notice Miles has left his phone on the table. Dare I peek? Better not. It’s probably locked anyway. But then I remember him checking his email only moments ago; maybe it’s still unlocked from that. Keeping my eyes on the bar mirror, I slide his phone across the table onto my lap. His email is still open; the phone is unlocked! I tap my way to his text-message log and find half a dozen texts from random-looking sets of numbers—going back to yesterday. They’re all the same message: Carlisle Road, Bridgefield, MA. 1:20 am, May 13, 1999. I note the first one came in yesterday at 10:22 a.m. That would have been right after I showed him the old newspaper article in the chapel. Damn.

  So that explains Miles’ sudden change of attitude—when he showed up at Harbor House with his laptop, ready to work. And why he’s been “helping” me with this whole thing. And hiding it from Beth. Someone has placed him at the scene of that accident. His concern is not for me. Never has been. His concern is for Miles. Why didn’t I see that before?

  Underneath his calm, “empathetic” exterior, Miles has been shitting cinder blocks since he got that first text. Because, to him, it meant one of two things: either I was sending the texts because I’m a nut-job hellbent on seeing both of us get our karmic comeuppance, or else a third party, perhaps a political rival, really has figured out a way to tie him to that fatal accident, a job the police couldn’t do. And even though Miles didn’t actually throw the bottle—in his mind, anyway—just the fact that he was in the car with me, drunk, when people were killed, makes for the kind of story a state senator would hardly want anyone tweeting about.

  Especially a state senator with tall ambitions.

  I spot Miles returning from the back hallway with Beth. I slip his phone back onto the table, screen-side down.

  . . . . .

  On my way back to Danny’s shed in the deepening darkness, I catch the scent of herb in the air and pass within ten feet of a trio of young men in raincoats standing under the eaves of a large woodshed. It’s my three beer-buying buddies with the $4.71 business offer. The alleged eldest of the trio flashes me his toothy grin again, but it comes off as creepy now.

  I feel a ping in my gut and realize something is still bugging me about my earlier encounter with these guys and their whole “twenty-one” story. I can’t put my finger on what it is, though.

  I try to shake off the feeling as I walk on. I wonder if the lads are going to follow me.

  My cell-phone rings, startling me. Is my phone service working again, or will this be another dropped call?

  I duck behind a rack of kayaks-for-rent, seemingly unfollowed by the lads. The number I see on Caller ID does not warm my heart. It’s Angie’s. The sun is long past the yardarm, so that can’t be good news. I tap the Answer button.

  “Okay,” says the gin-thickened voice at the other end. “You want to dig into this shit, have it your way. Grab a bloody shovel.”

  Chapter 28

  What comes tumbling out of Angie’s mouth over the next few minutes causes tectonic plates to shift in the psychological foundation of my life.

  “He didn’t think you were a bad person, Finn,” she blurts out, as if she’s been holding her breath for two minutes. “He knew it was an accident. He was worried about it ruining your life.”

  “Who, Angie?”

  I know damn well who.

  “You know damn well who.”

  Dad, of course.

  “What are we talking about here?” I ask her.

  “He knew, Finn.”

  I’m pretty sure I know what she’s saying, but I need to hear the words aloud. In a voice that sounds hollow and distant to my own ears, I say, “Knew what?”

  “Don’t make me say it, Finn.”

  “Knew what, Ange?”

  “That you caused that crash! The one that killed those people. That’s why he lied to the police. Not to protect himself. To protect you. But you’re not a bad person. You’re not a bad—”

  “Angie!” I snap. I can feel her slipping into maudlin incoherence, a stage in her drunkenness progression from which there is no return. “I need you to stay focused.”

  “I can’t promise anything,” she slurs.

  “How did he know? What made him come to that conclusion?”

  “I told you. It was in the papers. That the cops suspected”—she mangles that word—“a bottle was thrown from that bridge. One day they showed up at our door with a credit card receipt. Asked Dad if he bought a bottle of that Glen-fuck-me-sideways-crap. Dad remembered the way you were acting the day after your graduation. Dropping grad school, heading off to California with some losers you hardly knew. He knew something had happened to you, but he didn’t know what. When the cops started asking questions about the bottle, he put two and two together. Told ‘em the bottle went out with the recycling.”

  Jesus. My whole “No one else could possibly have known about that night” theory has just flitted away like a flock of startled gulls. Dad knew. Which means Mom knew. Angie knew. And any of them could have told anyone, at any time. This changes everything.

  “How long have you known what happened?” I ask my sister.

  “Since back then. There was no hiding from it.” Angie seems to sober up all at once. “Things got super-weird after you left, Finn. Dad started staying up late at night, drinking at the kitchen table. In the morning we’d find notes he’d scribbled about the Abelsens and Goslin. The whole thing was killing him, but there was no way he was going to turn his own son in.”

  Unreal. All of this was going on while I was learning how to make burritos in Mission Beach, blissfully unaware anyone had even died that night.

  “So that’s when Dad started changing?” I say, as much to myself as to her. I remember when I came back from California, my dad was a different man. He looked twenty years older, and his eyes had a dark, pleading look. I’d always thought it was his mounting health problems that caused the depression of his later years, but now I see it was probably the other way around.

  “Him and Mom had started having problems too,” says Ange. “The house was not a fun place to be, believe me. I started ‘going out’ every night just to get away from there.”

  Suddenly the whole Carroll Family Holiday Tragicomedy Special sharpens into focus. To protect Miles’ secret, I blew town and began steering my life into the breakdown lane. To protect my secret, Dad allowed guilt to consume him. Which, in turn, put the final nail in the coffin of his marriage to Mom. Which, in turn, caused Angie to start avoiding home like a communicable disease. Which, in turn, caused her to “fall in with the wrong crowd” and pick up her lifelong love of liquor, among other unhelpful tendencies.

  My God, it’s an O. Henry tale on acid! An entire family brought down by a single thoughtless act none of us even committed! I don’t know whether to laugh or break down crying. But I do know this: if I start laughing I will literally never stop. They will haul me off the island on a gurney, singing “Camptown Races” in a Daffy Duck voice.

  It’s my turn to deliver a blow to Angie. “I need to tell you something,” I say to her, “and I need you to be sitting down.” I h
ope what I’m going to say will help her in the long run, but it might do the opposite. “Dad was mistaken. The night of that accident, it was Mi—”

  Suddenly the phone connection cuts out as if I’ve hit End Call. I redial. The call goes through but then cuts out again. I try several more times; same result—connect, disconnect. Angie calls me back, but when I try to answer, the line goes dead again. Thank you, oh Mighty Phone Gods of Musqasset, for your ever-impeccable timing.

  I couldn’t have left Angie dangling at a worse moment. By the time I reach her again later—if I manage to do so—she’ll be too drunk to communicate with.

  Bloop. A text message comes through. A knife emoji, a gun emoji, and a coffin emoji.

  Come to think of it, maybe I’m the one who needs a drink here. I make a beeline for Pete’s Lagoon and plant myself at the corner of the bar. Jeannie looks at me as if I’m a suicide bomber with my finger on the detonator. She doesn’t even ask how I’m doing; she simply fetches the bottle of Glenmalloch from the top shelf and pours me a finger.

  Six seconds later, she pours me a refill. “Are we still on for ten o’clock?” she hazards.

  I probe her eyes to see if there’s some dark secret hiding in there I should be worried about. If there is, she’s covering it well. I remind myself of my commitment to trust her.

  I nod; yeah, we’re still on.

  . . . . .

  I lie on my bed at Harbor House, warm from the good scotch but cold in my gut. My decision to return to my rented room instead of Danny’s shed was unplanned and automatic. For the first time in days, my mind is devoid of thoughts about men with loppers trying to kill me. Or about friends who think I’m psychotic. I am oblivious to text-message threats and to the fishy smoke detector hovering right over my face. I am even indifferent to the astonishing note I found under my door when I returned to my room just now: “Hey, want to meet for a drink later and share seafood pie recipes? – Leah.” It’s been ages since a pretty woman courted my attention, but even lust can’t set its hook in my mind.

  All my thoughts are on my fucked-up family.

  I think about my father crawling into an early grave, at the age of fifty-seven, believing himself partially responsible for the Abelsens’ tragedy and believing his son to be an unredeemed killer. Lying to everyone about a lie. A falsehood. If only he had talked to me about it, just once, I could have lifted that burden from his shoulders. But of course, that would have broken the Carroll family code. The code of secrecy. In Dad’s mind, keeping mum about my “crime” was the greatest gift of love a father could bestow on a son. That’s how the Carrolls showed love, after all; by protecting one another’s stories.

  I clearly see, for the first time in my life, exactly how septic we were as a family. A meal at the Carroll home was not an open-hearted gathering of family members. It was a weighty affair, filled with innuendo, in which each of us related to the others through a filter of secrets each alone was privy to. The layers of who-knew-what-about-whom and what-it-was-okay-to-talk-about were insanely complex, and power dynamics were always in play because each of us was hoarding private knowledge we could use to blow the others’ lives apart.

  My older sister Grace knew I had been caught shoplifting and also knew where I hid my porn stash. I knew she was using contraception and sneaking around with an older guy who liked to get rough. Angie knew I sometimes stole beer from Dad’s private fridge. I knew she liked to cut her skin when she was alone. And so on and so on. Layer upon layer. But ultimately we kept all our secrets, at least the big ones, because that was how one behaved with honor—yes, honor—in the Carroll household.

  Suddenly a memory swoops, full-blown, into my mind, flooring me with its vivid detail.

  I’m seven years old and I bound off the school bus, excited because my class has been dismissed early for a teachers’ meeting. I run into the house to tell my mother I’m home, but I don’t see her anywhere—maybe she forgot I had a short day. I figure she must be napping, which she often does in the middle of the day, so I dash upstairs. Before I get to my parents’ bedroom, a man slips out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “I just needed to find your mother,” he explains to me, flashing a smile that doesn’t spread to his eyes, “so I could give her a special package.” Yes, that’s the phrasing he uses; talk about Freudian slips. That’s when I notice he’s wearing a brown UPS uniform. With lots of undershirt showing. The thing that strikes me the most, though, is that he is a black man. This is the first time I can recall seeing a black man in our house. This random moment of racial awareness distracts me from the more obvious questions I should be asking.

  The man hustles off downstairs, and my mother emerges from the bedroom, tying her bathrobe sash. She gives me her biggest smile, a rarity, and says in a hushed voice, “Come downstairs with me, Finnian; I need to tell you a great big secret.”

  As she scoops me a heaping bowl of ice cream from the freezer, she explains to me, “That delivery man was bringing a birthday present for Daddy. Birthday presents have to be kept secret, right? So you can never tell Daddy about the man who came today.” Man who came—again with the Freudian stuff. “Can you keep that a secret, Finnian? Mommy likes to give ice cream to little boys who are good at keeping secrets.”

  True to her word, she randomly gives me ice cream, with a wink and a smile, not once but several times in the ensuing weeks.

  I have pretty much forgotten the whole thing when we are at a neighborhood cookout the following summer. I’m looking for my mom, to show her a salamander I’ve caught. I find her sitting at a picnic table next to the same UPS man who had been in our house that day, only this time he’s wearing a tank top and shorts. I notice their bare thighs are touching. Silly. My mother makes the “shh” gesture and winks at me. And the random ice cream treats start up again.

  Until this moment, I had no conscious memory of that whole episode. “Conscious” is the operant word here. Because it doesn’t take a Manhattan psychoanalyst to see the subliminal thread that has woven through my entire life. I suddenly realize, as insane as it sounds, that I was actually seeking Jeannie’s approval, on some level, when I looked the other way regarding her infidelities. I thought somehow she would credit me for my discretion. Yep, I did.

  God, what a rancid stew we Carrolls were steeped in.

  And I’m still steeping in it. Look at Angie. She is a raging alcoholic and I have never confronted her on it; have, in fact, covered for her on countless occasions. Look at my friendship with Miles. Ever since college, my value to him has derived from how well I could help him maintain his lie of being the perfect guy. The list goes on.

  Danny’s message for me was absolutely on target. My whole life, I have sought to gain my power from lies. And—surprise!—there is no power in lies. Lying has sucked the life out of the Carrolls for decades. But maybe Danny was right about something else too. Maybe the crisis I’m in is offering me a chance. A chance to explode this old pattern once and for all.

  Yes! That power is in my hands. These truths I’ve been learning about Dad, these memories I’ve been unlocking, are not necessarily here to condemn or shame me but to offer me clarity. I don’t have to live the Carroll Way. I can reinvent myself.

  I roll off the bed, fired up with fresh energy and resolve. It is possible to change; I have to believe that. Life has been holding that door open for me ever since I stumbled out of my parents’ kitchen, clinging to a pulse, eight days ago. I will not piss that chance away.

  I look at my cell-phone clock. Nine fifty. Jeannie will be out of work in ten minutes.

  Before I leave my room, I take the sweet note Leah left for me and write on the back, “Would love to exchange seafood pie recipes with you, but, alas, I am a man in love. Next lifetime for sure. – Finn.”
I slip the note under her door as I walk past.

  It’s a small act of truthfulness, but it feels good.

  Chapter 29

  The Shipwreck teeters on the edge of Table Rock like a truck trailer dangling off a bridge in an action movie. I’m surprised by how much integrity the hull still possesses. I’d have thought the punishment this storm has been meting out would have broken it apart by now, but the old mail boat hangs stubbornly together; determined, it seems, to make its final voyage as the K.C. Mokler, not as a pile of anonymous sea shrapnel.

  I was expecting Jeannie and me to go someplace quiet to talk, but the first thing she said when I met her at Pete’s was, “It’s going. Tonight, I can feel it.” I knew what she meant—The Shipwreck. And I knew we had to be there to witness it. We borrowed Pete’s ancient pickup truck and drove to Lighthouse Hill as fast as we could.

  Now here we sit, looking down with flashlights at the wreck once again, waiting for one final monster wave to sweep it away. The rain has ended and the winds have finally calmed, but the sea is still pounding ferociously.

  I’ve always been of the persuasion that places and objects hold onto “memories”—energetic traces—of emotionally charged events that take place in and around them. I think maybe that’s what ghosts are. And so, when The Shipwreck lifts anchor tonight, I think it will be taking the ghosts of Jeannie and Finn’s old love with it. Not just metaphorically but in some energetically real way. I believe that. I do.