The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane

by Kelly Harms

  “What’s up?” J.J. asks in the microsecond it takes him to appear from wherever he was lurking.

  “We need you to do us a little favor. Just a quick run to the grocery store.” She holds out the list and I see it’s miles long. Smart woman. “But first, can you grab us a bottle of scotch?”

  * * *

  At one o’clock, we sit down at the breakfast bar for egg salad. We rush over our lunches, eating quickly so we don’t lose our rhythm, maybe, or so we don’t sink into the gloom that seems to wait right outside the kitchen door. From my perch I look at the kitchen and see the mess—not from the night before; cleaning it up is the first thing we did after we filled two rocks glasses with what Aunt Midge used to call a “vertical finger” of Scotch. This is new mess, from all the recipes we’ve started in the last hour, while waiting for J.J. to return with groceries. It calms me, to see the sink with a pot soaking in it, the granite countertop still dusted with flour from my messy pasta-making process, Nean’s bread rising in a warm corner and filling the room with its comforting smell. I hasten to return to its midst and use a dinging timer as an excuse to scramble off my stool and get back to work.

  It is around dinnertime when we finish our first set of dishes. We eat creamy lobster macaroni and cheese standing over the saucepan while we wait for the pot pies to bake. I start to think of more things we could cook, and after running them by Nean we set to work again, sending J.J. out to the market once more. We decide on knishes, to celebrate Aunt Midge’s two exciting years living in New York’s East Village, and paella for the twenty-fifth anniversary trip she took with Albert to Spain. Then there is Irish soda bread, for her father’s side, and chicken schnitzel for her mother’s. Each new recipe we pick leads to more stories, and I find myself educating Nean over the hours on everything I know about Aunt Midge’s life, from time to time stopping and wiping my hands down on the towel I keep tucked in my waistband to go fetch a photo album. I show her Albert in a bullfighter’s jacket with the cape unfurled in his hands and Aunt Midge five years ago when, on a bus trip to Branson, she had a brief affair with the string bass player in a jamboree show. Later, while I am pounding out thin layers of chicken between two sheets of plastic wrap, Nean rummages around in an album and pulls out a picture of me as a toddler, sitting on Aunt Midge’s lap with one of my fingers lodged up her nose and a look of great distress on my fat little face. She holds it up to me, speechless.

  I shake my head. “Of course you would find that. She loved that picture, and I was always trying to destroy it, but she must have had the negatives squirreled away somewhere.”

  “Um, why are you picking her nose?”

  I look heavenward. “She said I went through a phase where I was always trying to put my fingers in everyone’s noses. Strangers, family, it didn’t matter. My mother was at loose ends over it. Everyone else batted me away, but Aunt Midge figured the only way I’d learn the error of my ambitions was to actually succeed in them, and boy was she right. She had a nasty cold at the time.”

  “Ew.”

  I nod. “I was most displeased, apparently, and threw a monster fit and never tried to pick a nose again.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” Nean says. “Let’s put this one in pride of place to remind us all of that important lesson.” She takes the photo to the refrigerator and affixes it with a magnet right in the middle of the freezer door.

  I find with surprise that I don’t mind at all. In fact, I like the picture all of a sudden. The young version of me is wearing a fussy pink ruffled dress, and Aunt Midge is sitting on an avocado green easy chair wearing an outrageously large hat festooned with plastic flowers. It must have been Easter, I realize. Easter was, as far as I can remember, the only day that prompted Aunt Midge to cook. She made the same thing every year.

  “Nean, would you call J.J. and tell him to pick up a ham, too, and two cans of sliced pineapple rings? Oh, and a jar of maraschino cherries.”

  “Um, sure,” she says. Then she looks at the clock. “It’s nine,” she says. “This will have to be his last trip; the stores close at ten on Fridays.” She stops work suddenly and turns to me. “Oh SHIT. It’s Friday.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “I was supposed to take some sample loaves up to Bread and Honey,” she says, her voice getting shaky for the first time since this morning. “I’m trying to get a job there.”

  “You are?” I ask. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do, Janey,” she says, resolute. “If you decide to let me stay, I have to start doing something real. I can’t just keep waiting for whatever to happen.”

  I furrow my brow. I know she’s talking about herself, not me, but still I wonder if I am doing that very thing by staying home all day shortening hems and frittering away Ned’s money on groceries. I know what Aunt Midge would say about that, as if she is right here, standing in the room with me. I turn to Nean and say those words to her.

  “If you want a job, then you’ll get a job.” I walk over to the cabinet and start pulling back down all the flours I can find and loading up the countertops with them. “Start working on your flax pullman and maybe those incredible pretzels you make. Oh, and the asiago cheese bread, that is your very best loaf. We’ll take them in tomorrow, first thing, and explain why you couldn’t make it in today.”

  Nean looks at me. “But I’ll have to stay up all night,” she says. “It’ll take me hours.”

  “Then we’ll stay up all night,” I reply—the “we” part popping out automatically. I open my arms wide to the kitchen around us. “At least we have plenty of sustenance.”

  Nean looks around at all the food and smiles, but then she scrutinizes my face. “Are you sure?”

  Since the moment that I saw Aunt Midge—saw her body—by the pool this morning it has felt like the world has been tilting, shifting wildly, leaving me desperate to right myself. But now, after hours in the kitchen with Nean, I feel safer, more sure. Like I have found a small island of solid ground.

  “I am positive,” I say. “On the condition that we do not have to talk about boys.”

  * * *

  It is four in the morning when Nean pulls her final loaf out of the oven. It’s a fine Italian specimen with beautiful crusty slashes on the top cut to look like a sprig of rosemary. Gratified by the results, we both fall asleep on the leather sofas in the living room, then roust ourselves again an hour and a half later to start packing up the car. I am going to take everything but a few knishes and the ham into the shelter first thing. The knishes will be lunch; the ham, which is now overwrought with pineapple and cherry “flowers,” will keep in the fridge until the funeral.

  Nean’s pointed out that by stopping at the shelter so early, we’ll avoid Noah altogether. And I’ve pointed out that by arriving at the bakery at the crack of dawn, we’ll make a good impression on the owner. So we split up. A groggy and confused J.J. takes Nean to Damariscotta, while I schlep the food to the shelter in Little Pond.

  But our plan has one major flaw: The quiet drive all by myself, with the sun so low in the sky turning everything pink, gives grief a window to find me, and grief is nothing if not opportunistic. By the time I pull into the parking lot of the shelter I am mired in sadness, under its thick cloudy spell, having trouble getting a good breath of fresh air.

  That overwhelming ache is probably why I don’t see anything unusual in the lot. I load myself down with Tupperware containers and crocks and make three trips back and forth to the walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen, a trek I’ve made enough times I can do it blindfolded. All this time I don’t see or hear a thing, lost in the memory of Aunt Midge, tucking herself into my bed, singing the Rolling Stones to me, stroking my hair. The fourth trip inside, which I am determined shall be the last, is two paper sacks full of bread and a big Pyrex dish of chicken pot pie, and the balance is so precarious that it forces me to slow down and enter the kitchen, which has industrial-style swinging glass doors, butt first. And that is when I se
e him.

  Sitting in the dining room, wearing a plain white T-shirt and clean jeans and leaning over a bowl of cold cereal, is Noah. He looks sleepy, and his hair is wet and shiny, like he just got out of a shower two minutes ago. I’m shocked to see him. I know Noah enjoys his work, but coming in at—I look at my watch—six ten in the morning?

  I stare too long and he looks up, sees me juggling my bags and dishes and gaping at him openmouthed. He stands, so I quickly back into the kitchen and put down the food, start looking for an exit. My face feels on fire, and my arms like they are being tickled by porcupine quills. Desperate and out of my head, I run into the walk-in and let the door close behind me and feel the cold rush over my flushed face in a whoosh.

  Through the small foggy window of the cooler, I see the kitchen doors swing open, and then Noah appears. The sight of him brings the hurt from two nights ago heaving back and my heart starts to ache even more than it was aching already. I want to run out of the freezer screaming, catch him by surprise, smack him in the face and pound on his chest and cry. Mostly, I want to tell him about Aunt Midge.

  Instead I hold completely still and try not to breathe. I watch as he spots the bags on the counter and pulls one closer to look inside. He lifts out a loaf of Nean’s bread then sets it back in the paper sack. Then he picks up the pot pie and starts looking around in circles. He shakes his head in confusion, his wet hair getting loose and draping itself over one eye. Before I know it he’s opening the cooler door and walking inside.

  “Hi Janey,” he says, just as casually as that. “What is this?” He is holding out the pot pie.

  “It’s a pot pie,” I squeak out helplessly. There are ten million questions in my head right now: Why did you leave my house like that and break my heart? What are you doing here at six a.m.? Do you understand that I love you?

  Instead I tell him about the pot pie. “It goes in the freezer. I taped heating instructions to the bottom of the pan.”

  Carefully he lifts the pan above his head and finds the index card I’ve scotch-taped on. “I see.”

  I stand there like an idiot, feeling lost for words. I look up above his head, and then, when he sets down the pie on a shelf of the cooler, I move my eyes to the floor. I am looking for a way to tell him that I was trying to avoid him, that I didn’t want to see him today, without saying exactly that. Then I notice his feet—they are bare except for white tube socks. “Where are your shoes?”

  Now, in Noah’s eyes, I see the very same look I saw in Nean’s yesterday—was it just yesterday?—morning. The look is guilt. A revelation is coming, I understand, and my gut clenches up. Not another revelation, please. I can’t take any more surprises, not today.

  Noah looks into my eyes—maybe he sees in them the fear coursing through me—and then down, as if noticing his socks for the first time. “Let’s go back into the kitchen. It’s cold in here.”

  “No,” I say stubbornly, tears welling up. “If we go into the kitchen where it’s warm, I’ll tell you about Aunt Midge and you’ll be kind to me and I’ll cry and you’ll use it as an excuse not to tell me the truth and then I’ll never know why you are looking at me that way. What are you doing here? Tell me.”

  “What about Aunt Midge?” he asks me, not moving from the icy room.

  I sniff and cough. “Nothing. Well. Something. She died,” I say, as solidly as I can.

  “Oh, Janey,” he says. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Yes, yes,” I say, desperately wanting the consolation, but not from him, not right now. “What are you doing here?”

  He takes a deep breath. “Janey, I should have explained my situation a long time ago,” he says.

  “What situation?”

  “My living situation. I live here, in the shelter,” he says, but by now I already know this. Somehow I knew it the moment I saw him sitting at the dining room table, where I’ve seen and fed so many people over the last months of lunches.

  “You work here,” I say, stupidly. It is cold enough that I can see my breath in here, and it looks thin, like it could falter and stop at any time.

  “Yes, but I also live here.”

  I grab a shelf full of milk jugs for stability. “I don’t understand,” I say, even though I do.

  “I came here, to this part of Maine, just before you did,” he begins. “I was homeless, and I had been living in my car. I heard they needed someone to run the shelter garden, so I asked for the job in exchange for being allowed to stay for more than the usual eight consecutive days. I needed the time to get back up on my feet.”

  I shake my head. “But you said you had an apartment in Little Pond,” I begin. “You told me that you were saving up to buy a new farm.” The realization that he has been lying to me all this time hits me and makes my stomach churn more.

  Noah shakes his head. “Even when you declare bankruptcy,” he tells me, “there are still lawyer’s fees to pay. And I owe money to friends, cousins, anyone fool enough to give it to me. I couldn’t have told you that—you would have hated me. I had to tell you something.”

  His lies roll into a snowball with Nean’s, and together they hit me hard enough that I feel beat up. I flail back in defense. “Are you a drunk?” I demand, thinking of the way he declined the glass of wine at dinner despite my protests. “Is that why you went bankrupt?”

  “No,” he says back quickly. “But one of the rules of the shelter is that you can’t drink—not a single sip—if you want to spend the night here.”

  Of course. It all makes sense, but it doesn’t stop the feelings of betrayal. “You should have explained,” I say. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have told me sooner. Instead he’s twisted it so that every minute we’ve spent together has been based on pretext and lies. “I would have understood.”

  “Really?” Noah asks, his voice growing just one hair louder. “Would you have? Or would you have assumed, as you just did, that I was an alcoholic, or an addict, or a criminal of some sort?”

  His raised voice feels like a slap in the face, like this is somehow my fault, instead of his. “Well, why else would you be living in a homeless shelter?” I say defensively.

  Noah shakes his head. “Would you listen to yourself?” he asks.

  “I’m not the one who has been lying all this time,” I cry. I lean against the shelving, my legs losing their sturdiness in the cold. “You lied, and lied, and you made me fall in love with you.”

  At this, Noah at least has the sense to lower his eyes. But I want to punish him, so I go on. “No, not you. I never fell in love with you. I fell in love with someone you invented.”

  It works. His shoulders slump and I see I’ve hurt him, and the shame of it heats me back up, even in this freezing cold walk-in. Somewhere inside me there is a tiny, rational voice telling me to apologize, to talk to him, to hear him out and try to understand why he wasn’t more honest with me. It is telling me that this is real life, this feeling-out of other people, this litany of surprises, this flailing around for the truth. And missing it most of the time.

  But I hate that voice. I hate the insecurity and the uncertainty and the opaqueness that comes with it. Noah is a liar. Nean is a liar. Aunt Midge—even she lied to me. She promised me she’d make sure I was taken care of. She said she’d stick around.

  I shake my head, feel my body shudder with cold and anger. I want everything to be clear, and make sense, and stay the same. I want to get out of this freezer.

  I angle my body so I can push to the door without touching Noah. I know even the brush of his shoulder against mine would crack me wide open in this cold room. But I avoid him and remain intact. When I reach the handle I don’t turn around, I don’t take one long last look, I don’t apologize for my shortcomings or forgive him for his.

  I just beat it the hell out of there and head straight for home.

  NEAN

  “Bread is like life—you can never control it completely.”

  —ROSE LEVY BERANBAUM, The Bread Bible

 
It doesn’t seem right that Aunt Midge should have turned out, despite her big talk, to be mortal. And it’s weird that the person I most want to discuss her death with is, well, her. If this world made any sense, any sense at all, I would find her now, and we would sit out by the ocean and stare, and she would tell me a story that would explain everything in an incredibly roundabout way. One that would tell me what to do without her.

  J.J. is doing his best to comfort me, but I can hardly hear a word he says over the shock that he is still talking to me at all. That he is here, still, despite everything, driving me to and from the bakery in his truck with his arm around my shoulder is just too goddamn unbelievable. He hasn’t yelled at me once. Hasn’t balked at the back and forth of grocery trips we put him through yesterday, or the ridiculously early hour he was called upon to chauffeur me this morning. Hasn’t even complained.

  And then there’s Janey. Did she really mean what she said to the cameraman yesterday—that we were sharing the house? How could she possibly, after everything I’ve done? But she and I have cooked and cried together for nearly twenty-four hours, and she hasn’t mentioned kicking me out once in all that time. In fact, she’s been filling me in on Aunt Midge’s life, helping me know her as well as she did, like I am some long-lost sister that needs to be caught up on the family history she’s missed out on. Like I will be staying, in that house, indefinitely.

  Out of sheer gratitude I convince J.J. to swing by the funeral home on the way back from the bakery. I know, from watching Six Feet Under, that planning a funeral is a huge pain for the survivors, and last night while we rolled out knish dough, Janey told me all of Aunt Midge’s wishes, so I feel pretty qualified to take over this miserable duty. She wants to be cremated and live in an urn on the mantelpiece so she won’t miss any of the action. She wants a good-bye service down by the boat put-in, and if anyone sings “Nearer, My God, to Thee” she has vowed to come back and haunt them.

  After filling out six million forms, it is all arranged. The service will be on Monday, and the director will post something in the Damariscotta paper so people know to come. He, a kind old guy with Santa Claus reading glasses, also volunteers to call the shelter and let everyone there know the news, just in case Janey didn’t feel like spreading the word this morning. The wake will be at our house, and he reminds us to stock plenty of food and drink. I promise him this won’t be a problem.