by Lisa Duffy
I told Josie, in that moment, I felt like a failure. How there was an awful sinking I’m the worst mother in the world feeling.
I told Josie I wanted a do-over. Josie laughed, and said, Honey, don’t we all. Then she said maybe our readers would connect to something like that. So I went back to my desk and wrote my first column.
I wrote about how you can love your child with something that surpasses logic and reason and words, and you can still screw up. Even with the best intentions and loftiest goals, sometimes, as a parent, you fail. I wrote how so many of these moments stare back at you and say, See, you were told being a parent would be harder than you imagined, the hardest job in the world, and you didn’t believe it.
Did you?
3
Jack
The spare key to the truck had wedged itself between the pages of the Ford manual. I emptied the glove box onto the front seat, swearing at the hair bands that were tangled with the bungee cords coiled in a tight circle. Now that Jess had her license, I let her take the truck once in a while. Between the clothes on the backseat and the flip-flops strewn on the floor, it looked like she’d moved into the old truck.
I thought about stretching out on the backseat and letting Hope calm down before I went back in the house. But after twenty years together, I knew to keep away from her until she cooled off. The boat wasn’t great for sleeping, but it’d do for the night.
The drive to the dock was less than a mile if you stuck to Main Street, but I took the road by the water. The one I drove six mornings a week, before the sun came up, to Hope Ann, my lobster boat—and home away from home.
Hope used to call it that, with a smile. Now she called our house my other home. She’d call me on my cell to ask if I’d be home for dinner. You know, your other home, she’d say, and I’d hear her frown through the phone.
The light in the center of town blinked yellow. I slowed, turned into the lot, and parked in front of the shop in the space marked Down East Lobster—the only space open even at this time of night because of the Wharf Rat, the local bar on the harbor. Boon had put up the sign last summer one morning after he’d circled the waterfront for more than an hour and ended up in a parking spot in the goddamn next fucking town. Quinton Boonalis was sweet and good-natured, Hope liked to say, until he wasn’t. I thought the sign was foolish, with the town dead for almost nine months out of the year. But Boon had never gotten used to the changes in our hometown. As kids growing up in Alden, the town seemed to have sprouted up from the water. Evergreen-dotted cliffs shot straight up out of the Atlantic, and the low-lying roads near the mouth of the bay sat underwater in the highest of tides, as if the surrounding water was intent on reclaiming what had been rightfully hers.
Now, some thirty-odd years later, the influx of visitors and summer people had changed the geography of Alden, with new bridges connecting the once-submerged roads to make access possible to houses perched high on pilings.
As much as Boon complained about the changes in Alden, we both knew the summer folk were good for business. And business was what mattered to Boon.
When we started Down East Lobster Supply, I’d fish and Boon would sell. Now I still fished, but we had a handful of guys from Alden who sold their catch to us. We sold some of our lobster out of the shop, or to local restaurants. But it was our shipping business that allowed us to keep our price per pound competitive. The Freshest Lobster in Maine Delivered Straight to Your Kitchen was how we grew from some kids just out of high school hauling traps to lobster dealers.
Not that we were rolling in it. But it was a living. A tough one at times, with long hours and hard work.
And some years were not worth thinking about. When the recession plowed in the summer of 2008, lobster prices dropped below the price of ground beef. Record harvests glutted the market. Too many lobsters, not enough buyers.
That was two years ago, and some of the guys were still having a tough time of it. Hank Bitts had fired his stern man and brought his wife aboard in his place. One less man to pay.
They were loyal, our guys. Mostly because of Boon. Last I’d looked in the books, we had five hundred out to Tom Clover, whose engine had shit the bed at the beginning of the season, two-fifty out to Hank Bitts for a root canal for his wife, and almost a thousand out to Stan Grady, who was waist deep in legal bills after his wife caught him almost as deep into Dawn Milney, the busty hygienist from Village Dental.
The guys had a field day with that one over the radio. Stuff like, “Hey, Grady, I thought the nurse was supposed to do the drilling,” and, “Stan the Man, you go to the dentist to have a cavity filled, not the other way around.” And so on and so forth. So much of it I’d finally yelled over the radio to shut up or get off the channel. They were good guys, but enough was enough.
The back deck of the Wharf Rat was full of people, even though it was almost closing time. I blocked out the noise, the music. All I wanted was quiet. And sleep. I climbed over the rail of Hope Ann, the deck still slick from when I hosed it off earlier.
Below deck, the cabin was crammed with foul-weather gear piled in heaps, crates of WD-40, liters of oil, and coils of line stacked three high. I pushed the mess over and spread out on one side of the cushioned V-berth.
I hadn’t wanted the dinner party from the beginning.
Hope had suggested it one night when I got home from the boat. I’d started to say I could do without it—but fine if that’s what she wanted—when she’d scowled and said I’d always hated parties. Why should this one be an exception?
She said it in the way she spoke to me lately, light and airy but cold. Like fake snow blown from a can. She looked over at me after she said it, and her face softened when she realized my mouth was still open, my unfinished sentence lost in the air.
“It’s the decent thing to do,” she said. “Peggy’s new to town and it’s what we would have done before.” Her eyes filled when she said this, and I knew “before” meant before Maddie died, before we became who we were now.
Part of me wanted to see Hope do something . . . anything . . . that she would have done before we lost Maddie. I didn’t question the party because of it. I didn’t know anything about Peggy except that she’d moved to Alden last year, and somehow she and Hope had met and hit it off.
And then, before I knew what was what, the party had come, and Finn was standing in my kitchen. I was stunned, speechless when he appeared in the doorway across the crowded room. He said, “Hey, man,” and Hope introduced him as Peggy’s husband, and then she frowned at me when I didn’t cross the room to shake his hand, only nodded my head.
I didn’t mean to bring Finn into the fight with Hope; she didn’t know anything about that time in my life. But I wasn’t any good at fighting about one thing when it was really about another, and before I could stop it, Finn’s name came out of my mouth, and then Hope said his name: Ry. The way she said it, so easy, rolling off her lips stained red from the wine—I snapped.
Not from anger, though. Not at her. Even though it came out that way. Even now, thinking about that time, my body felt heavy, weighed down. If Finn felt the same about his role in the mess, he hadn’t shown it.
I’d heard him ask Hope at dinner what someone had to do to get a boat named after them. She was at the other end of the table, and people were talking in various conversations. But I tuned out everything but them, nodding now and then to show I was listening to the Martins discussing the proposed budget for the town’s new fire station. But I was listening to Finn, watching his every move.
His voice was playful when he said it. So what does someone need to do to get a boat named after them? He put the emphasis on do and leaned toward her when he said it. If he meant to startle her, it didn’t work. He didn’t know Hope. She laughed, as if it were a ridiculous question, and pointed at me.
“Marry him,” she said.
When Hope excused herself to the kitchen, Finn looked over at me and saw that I was watching him. It’s quite a boat you g
ot there, he said, his words slurred.
I ignored the comment, pretended the noise between us at the table had drowned out his voice. The last thing I wanted was to ruin the night for Hope.
But he found me on the back deck smoking a cigar later that night, the rest of the party inside.
“Got another one of those?” he asked, gesturing to the cigar in my hand.
“No,” I said, even though there were a dozen of them in the drawer inside.
He leaned against the railing in front of me. When he crossed his arms, his shirt strained against the movement. His biceps were small boulders.
He hadn’t changed much in the twenty years since I’d seen him. Deeper lines cut his too-tanned face, and a blond crew cut spiked with gel showed more scalp than hair, but he had the same girth from high school.
He’d been a juicer back then, a linebacker who broke the opposing quarterback’s leg in the last game of the season, even though our team had been up by three touchdowns. His buddies had high-fived him after the game, saying, You told him, like a team wasn’t really beat until an ambulance showed up.
I heard he’d gone into the army or navy after high school, or maybe it was the coast guard. Probably whoever would take him after the DUI. After he smashed his truck into the stone wall at the edge of Jeremiah Road and the cops found him with a broken nose and his hands covered in blood.
The cops had assumed the broken nose was from the impact. Only Finn and his buddies who’d jumped me knew it wasn’t. They also assumed the blood all over his hands was his, but they were wrong about that too. Most of that blood had belonged to me.
I flicked my cigar in his direction, and he sidestepped to avoid the ash. It was a slow, wobbly step. He leaned back against the railing to steady himself.
“I guess I’m a little drunk,” he said when he caught my eye. “Tell your wife I’m sorry to be the drunk asshole at the party.”
“I guess times don’t change.” I leaned down, ground the tip of the cigar into the metal sand bucket on the step.
“Got me there, good buddy.” He shook his head in an aw-shucks kind of way, as though we were old friends just shooting the shit. “Cut me some slack. It’s a party after all. Who would’ve guessed our wives would end up friends?”
“Go find your wife and go home,” I told him. “Party’s over.”
He blinked, his grin wobbling. “Well, so much for small talk,” he said.
I got up out of the chair and stood in front of him, the stench of booze hitting me. Whiskey, maybe, or scotch. Stuff I never went near. His eyes were glossy, red rimmed, and his wide, flat face was damp with sweat, even though the night was cool. If he wasn’t drunk now, he had been at some point in the night.
Finn cleared his throat, stood up straighter. “We’re grown men now, Kelly. What happened between us was a long time ago. I was hoping we could put it behind us.”
He’d been a shadow standing over me. I’d been passed out on Pop’s boat, sleeping off the twelve-pack Boon and I had split after work. There was a flash in my mind of the steel tip of a leather boot. The thud as it slammed into my head.
Without thinking, my hand went to the scar above my eye. I felt the thick line that sliced through my eyebrow. Boon always said I was color-blind. I never told him my right eye had taken the brunt of that blow. That the doctor told me my vision in that eye would never be the same. That it would be hazy, unfocused. Permanently.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” I asked.
“You say that like I just showed up here. You forgetting that I came here because I was invited?” His voice was upbeat, a nervous twitch on his lips that he forced into a smile.
“Not by me you weren’t,” I said.
He nodded, as though he’d known this all along. “Fair enough. I figured you hadn’t connected the dots with Peggy and me. But hey, no worries in case you’re wondering—man-to-man—I kept my mouth shut. Figured with the wives and all. I don’t need Peggy yammering at me about the past. And Hope seems like a firecracker, like if you set her off, well—”
“Don’t talk to me about my wife,” I interrupted, and he stopped talking, the smile slowly leaving his face.
In the distance, the foghorn at Breakwater Light let out a warning.
I didn’t speak. I knew if I did, I’d tell him Hope didn’t know anything about that time in my life. And he’d also hear that I didn’t want her to hear it now. Not after the year we’d had. Not after everything she’d been through.
Finn held my eyes before he gave a small shrug. “I was hoping we could do this on friendlier terms. Let bygones be bygones.” He paused. “You know, you’ve got quite a business going on, you and Boon. Fishing pretty much all the harbors from what I hear. No water left for folks not selling to you.”
“No water left? It’s the Atlantic.”
“You get what I’m saying.”
“Actually, I don’t. So spit it out.”
His face colored. “Now I remember why I kicked the shit out of you. Here’s the deal. I want to fish my waters again. The waters you moved in on after I left.”
I waited. Not sure I heard him right.
He’d worked as the stern man on his father’s boat for a couple of summers in high school, just like every other kid in these parts who was related to someone in the fishing business. I’d fished with Pop, my grandfather, ever since I’d turned ten.
But I’d kept fishing. I’d fished ever since.
“I’ve got a forty footer with twin diesels and a pot hauler. I’ve got a buddy who’s got a license. What he doesn’t have is territory that’s pulling anything but crabs. But you do. And you’ve also got strings where I used to haul.” He cleared his throat, bolder now.
It didn’t surprise me that he had a twin diesel boat, even though every working lobsterman around here fished with a single engine. Two engines were twice the worry, twice the maintenance, twice the cost.
Pop’s inshore territory had always been the western edge of Turner Point. Finn and his father had fished near us. But that was more than twenty years ago, before the older Finn died, and Ryland had disappeared off the face of the earth. And the territory had become mine.
There were no lines in the water. Nothing you could see. But there might as well have been. It was water, fluid and moving, but territories were made out of concrete. Mess with them and you might get your gear cut, your driveway full of nails, your tires slashed. And that was if whoever you messed with was in a good mood.
“You’ve got traps where I used to haul,” he said again. “I can see taking over since I was gone. Now that I’m back, I should have rights to fish it.” He said it in an offhand way. Like we weren’t talking about how I put food on my table.
“It’s my territory. Go near it and we’re going to have a problem.”
“It was my territory. Ask anyone who fished with us back then, and they’ll tell you it belongs to me. Your partner there. Boon. He knows.”
“Well, go ask him. Last time you guys saw each other, I heard he was pretty reasonable.”
His hands balled into fists when he heard this. “I don’t have a problem with Boon. He kicked my ass. I’ll give him that. But he was just looking out for you. Like I said, water under the bridge.”
“I had nothing to do with that. He went looking for you all on his own. I guess he figured you wouldn’t be so tough one-on-one. And he was right. Wasn’t he? Rumor was, you were a rag doll when he got done with you.”
Finn’s lips twitched. He looked like he might come at me, but he took a deep breath and stayed at the railing.
“Look. We can go back and forth about this forever. I have no interest in what happened back then. And I didn’t come here to be your buddy. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. That’s fine. But fair’s fair. You’ve got traps all over the place. Your buoys. All over the place. You’ve got your trawls out there, the shop, guys selling to you.” He ticked these off on his fingers. “We’re talking about your scraps here.
All I’m asking for are your goddamn scraps while I get my business going. A strip of water. A strip of water that used to be mine.”
“Used to be. It used to be your water,” I said. “And it’s staying that way. You want to work these waters? Do what I do. And every other fisherman around here does. Find some open water and fish it. And when you come home with nothing, go out the next day and do it again. And that strip of water isn’t just a scrap. It’s how I make my living. That water feeds my kids, pays my mortgage. And it belongs to me.”
He watched me, his face blank. “Don’t lecture me about fishing. I’ve been doing it as long as you, just in different waters. And I’ve got kids to feed and a mortgage to pay as well. That water doesn’t belong to you. It was mine and you took it. And I think it’s time you stop taking things that don’t belong to you.”
From somewhere inside the house came the sound of glasses clinking together. I looked over and saw Hope standing in a small circle with two other women. Their silhouettes were dark shadows through the sliding glass door. They lifted their glasses and drank a toast to something. Hope turned, and the light across her face lit her smile.
The slider opened, and Jessie stepped through the opening. She didn’t pause when she saw the two of us. She walked right over, crossing the porch quickly until she stood next to me, so close that her chin brushed the side of my shoulder.
“Mom needs you,” she said.
“Go back inside. I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, and turned back to Finn.
But she slipped her fingers around my wrist, pulling me toward the door.
“Dad. It can’t wait. She said now.”