She overheard some surfers talking.
“That girl is charged.”
“She rips.”
“Who is that?”
Their jealousy turned into respect mingled with resentment when Gary, one of the OGs paddled close and said, “Hey, I remember you. You’ve picked up some skills. Tell me you didn’t learn to ride like that on Lake Erie.”
“Lake Michigan.”
Poppy was conscious of the strange sound of her own laugh, a laugh that once came easy to her.
“So, where you been?”
Poppy shrugged. “Everywhere, just about.”
“But there’s no place like here, that’s for sure. Once a dunebilly, always a dunebilly.”
* * *
GARY AND CAROL TOOK POPPY under their wing, introducing her to the other OGs. Gary’s family had a shell-fishing grant; grants were priceless. You had to be grandfathered in, and you had to stay active to keep it. The guys who had grants might drive crappy rusted-out trucks over the flats, but they could buy out anyone on the Cape with all the money they made. Some of the guys scored two to five thousand bucks a week working both tides, day and night. These were the real Fleetians, and Poppy knew they’d accept her, but only to a point.
Carol convinced Gary to score a coveted town permit for Poppy. “You need something to keep you busy,” she said. “And this is the best job on the Cape.” She’d put on waders and hit the mudflats with the equipment Gary loaned her: a rake, a culling knife, a bushel basket, and a ring to measure the oysters. Shell-fishing was hard: she had to bend over for hours at a time, lugging a bucket and ice through the muck, culling and clearing off baby oysters spat from the adult shells. Picking wild was good, lucrative work—perfect for a surfer, because it offered what she was already used to: solitude, and the tides.
Gary explained that some guy at Oysterfest a few years back had eaten a bad oyster and blamed it on the bacteria. Now there were laws that required the pickers to ice the oysters, and log every oyster they picked, where it was picked, what time they iced. Her friend “Andy Clam” said, “They even make you record your shits.”
Some of the more experienced pickers could pull as many as three hundred and fifty oysters in a tide, while Poppy felt good if she could get to two hundred. She’d sell them to Wellfleet Harbor for forty to sixty cents each. In two to three hours, she could make four or five hundred bucks. She was new at this, but after only a few days she felt the money take on weight. With every oyster, her plan for her future came into focus. She’d put Ann off for a few years. She could save up, rent out the rooms to the seasonal workers who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. But after all those years of “go” money, it was hard to think of her savings as an anchor instead of an airline ticket.
When she wasn’t in search of oysters over three inches, she was on the water with Gary and the rest of the crew. The surf was decent thanks to a series of squalls offshore. At night, they’d hang out at the Bomb Shelter, or the “Bomby,” a bar under the Bookstore Café that reminded her of a typical Milwaukee corner bar, and it made her homesick for her old city, and for Brad. She was actively trying to forget him, but found herself drunk-dialing him when she returned home. He always answered, and the sound of his voice made her hungry for him.
One night, Carol bought Poppy a beer and sat on a stool next to her at the bar. “It’s good to have you back,” she said.
“Actually, I didn’t really feel like I was back until you showed up.”
“Listen,” Carol said, her expression serious. “When someone asks me not to say something, I don’t say it.”
“Did I ask you not to say something?”
“Not you. Someone else. Pops, you’re my friend. I have to tell you something.” Carol tore at the label on her beer bottle with her fingernail. Whatever she wanted to tell Poppy, it wasn’t good. “It’s about your house.”
Poppy had never thought of the house on the Cape as hers. It had always been ours. “Oh no. I hate this house stuff. I keep trying to forget you’re a Realtor.”
“You and me both.”
Carol smiled, revealing the bright white crowns on her front teeth. This was nothing new to Poppy; so many of the surfers she knew had messed-up teeth.
“So,” Carol said. “You know when I came over with some paperwork?”
“Yeah.”
“You haven’t looked through it, have you?”
“No,” Poppy said. “I just put it in a pile for Ann. She’s the one who deals with this stuff. Why?”
“I kept waiting for you to say something. Those papers? They terminated my contract. I can’t sell your house.”
“Why?”
“Because I got a visit from your brother a few weeks ago.”
Brother. An image of Michael popped into her head—his sheepish smile, his easy manner. She got the chills. But Michael hadn’t been her brother for a long time.
“You mean Michael? He’s on the Cape?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I never thought he’d—I mean, no. I didn’t know, but that’s nothing new.” Poppy was so shocked she could hardly speak. “It didn’t ever occur to me he was right here, so close, although now that I think of it, it makes perfect sense.”
“He said he lives in P-town. Didn’t get a gay vibe, but who knows. He’s cute.”
“I still can’t believe this. Why did he see you?”
Carol took a swig of her beer. “Good old Ann misrepresented the sale.”
“She did what?”
The bartender set another round on the bar and pointed at some guys in the corner. “They sent this over.”
This happened to Poppy all the time, only now, because the beers arrived just when she needed them most, she felt like they’d been ordered not from the men in the corner, but from a higher power.
Carol said, “He’s entitled to his share of the house from what I can tell.”
“His share? Ann said he wasn’t—that we didn’t have to worry about him.”
“She’s wrong. You do. And she knows it. That sister of yours was supposed to list him as an heir, but she didn’t. I knew something was up from the first time I met her. She seemed like she was holding back. I revoked the contract.”
“I’m sorry, but damn, I’m so confused about what this means.” Michael was alive and well? And the house—maybe it could stay in the family after all. She didn’t know what to think. She resolved right then and there to call Brad as soon as she got home. She needed him, she didn’t want to deny it any longer. She couldn’t get through this without his support.
Carol said, “You’ve got a lot of shit to work out. Shit that’s above my pay grade. Lawyer shit, right? But you’re lucky. I could have put a lien on the property and sued for misrepresentation. Believe me, I thought about it. That’s what I was planning to do the morning I stopped by, I was so pissed. But then I saw you.”
“What do we do now?”
“We? Honey, I’m out of it. I just want to be your friend. My advice? Keep looking for the will. You’ve got a mess on your hands without one. Michael wants the house, and from what I can tell, he’s got a right to it.” Carol reached into her purse and dug around. “Here, he gave me his card.”
Poppy couldn’t believe it when Carol put the card in her hand. It was Michael’s. He really was real, and he was here, on the Cape.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I know you’ve been through a lot.”
The men who’d sent the beers over slowly started to make their way to the bar, but hesitated and turned back around when they saw Poppy look at the card, grab Carol’s arm, and tell her she had to go.
THIRTY-TWO
Michael
Michael looked up and saw Poppy standing in the doorway.
“What’s up?” he asked, a stupid, casual-sounding question that belied the way his heart seized at the sight of her. In the dim light of his office he could see that she looked older, and resembled Connie now. A bomb of emot
ion exploded inside his chest. Her face was more weathered from the outdoors, with permanent creases around her eyes. She looked like the landscapers he worked with, not older in the sense that age depleted her beauty. She still appeared youthful, only now her looks were more defined, more particular to her.
The string from her sweatshirt hood was wrapped tight around her finger, her expression pained.
He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“No, no. You weren’t. You don’t expect to see the people you run away from.” Her sarcasm was startling. He couldn’t remember her ever being sarcastic.
“Come in.” He liked to keep things clean, but his office was an exception. It wasn’t a place where he had many visitors. There were piles of paperwork, seed catalogs, and contracts on every surface. He stood up and picked up a pile from the chair in the corner and set it on top of his file cabinet. She looked as though she might leave at any second.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“Carol,” Poppy said. “She gave me your card.”
“I asked her not to say anything.”
“It would have come out eventually, Michael. She said you’re making a claim on the house.”
He’d planned to approach them in his own way, in his own time, when it felt right. Maybe this was easier. Poppy had always been his ally, although he had no reason to think she’d stand by him now—why should she? What must she think of him after the lie he’d told?
Poppy’s eyes fixed on a framed photograph of Michael and Shelby on a fishing boat that he’d never taken down. “Your wife?”
“My ex.”
“God, you’ve been married and divorced.”
“We didn’t marry or divorce.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “She is. How about you?”
“What about me?” she asked.
“Are you married?”
“No. Geez. Everybody asks me that. I don’t have to be married to be happy.”
“OK, no argument from me.” They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Michael didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He still thought of her as his kid sister. He hated that she looked so sad and alone and confused, and that some of her sadness and confusion was because of him, and what he’d done and not done. “I have a boyfriend, I guess. He’s here now. On the Cape.”
“Lucky guy.” He meant this. “Your parents—I can’t—I just found out not too long ago. It’s terrible.”
“It is.” Poppy nodded like everything he said was no big deal, trying hard to seem cool. Her faux-toughness made him ache for her.
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. It was a gesture that was meant to show his physical openness, a trick he learned when he went through family therapy with Shelby and Deeds when Avery was little, and they faced coparenting challenges. The women accused him of closing himself up when things got tough. The therapist said he should strive for transparency above all else, and that body language has everything to do with the success or failure of a conversation. Really, he wanted to curl up into a tight ball.
She walked to the other side of the room and picked up another framed photo, this one of Avery. What a way to explain your life to someone, photo by photo, the way they did on social media. In that snapshot she was only two, playing at Race Point Beach in a broad sun hat and daisy-print bathing suit. He didn’t understand then how much it would hurt, years later, to look at photographs of his daughter as a little girl. Days are long, years are short, as Ed liked to say. He wished he could stop time.
“Is this your daughter?”
“Yeah. Avery. She’s older now.”
“Just look at her. She’s gorgeous. She looks just like you, especially in the eyes.” She paused and turned her gaze back to Michael. “Ann’s son,” she said. “Noah. He doesn’t look like you. Not at all.”
“There’s no reason he should.”
She froze. “What did you just say?”
“He’s not mine, Poppy. He’s just not, OK?” God, it felt good and clarifying to say that out loud after all these years. He wanted to scream it from a mountaintop.
She sat down, breathless. “But all these years … I mean, why’d you say he was? Why, Michael?” Her voice cracked. “You didn’t even say goodbye. How could you do that? Did you ever even think of me?”
He hadn’t anticipated Poppy’s pain. What a time, with Poppy sitting right in front of him, to realize what a selfish shit he’d been, and what a shitty job he’d done trying to navigate that messy situation with Ann and Anthony. Poppy was the victim of collateral damage. “It’s such a long story.”
“Who’s the dad?”
Such a straightforward question, but the answer had been a secret for so long that it felt like it was still locked away. “Ann should explain that to you.”
“Oh, come on.” She slapped her hands by her sides and stared at him, imploring, waiting for him to break. He looked right back at her. Even after all these years, she knew he was stubborn and wouldn’t back down. “I’ve been pissed at you all these years for something you now say you didn’t do. Why did you lie?”
“Did you ever hear me say that was my kid? Did those words ever come out of my mouth?”
“No. Nothing did.” Poppy looked angry, as if she wanted to put up a fight but then, in almost that same moment, she looked sad and defeated. He’d forgotten about Poppy’s incredible emotional range. She was nothing like Ann, who rode her emotions like an arrow. “You left.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I left. You can be pissed at me for that.”
“I guess I’ve done my share of leaving.” Poppy walked over to the window and stood with her back to him. Michael watched her stare out at the gravel parking lot through the yellowed plastic shades, all pent up.
Michael walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, afraid she’d push him away. “Want to get out of here?” Michael asked. He knew Poppy needed to move around, the same way he did. “Go for a walk or something?”
Poppy nodded. “A walk would be great.”
* * *
MICHAEL PARKED HIS TRUCK NEAR Wireless Road. They followed a fire road that eventually led to White Cedar Swamp and Marconi Station, where the first transatlantic signal was sent.
He remembered how much Poppy loved to explore the fire roads. She was always up for an adventure, always looking for a new place, some amazing discovery she could make. She showed him how to get to Dyer Pond and access the remote houses on the far shore that he’d only seen from the water. Before she showed him the way, he couldn’t figure out how people got to those houses. The Cape was nothing like Milwaukee, where the streets were part of a neat grid, the houses announcing themselves, lined up and orderly.
It was still cool and damp outside. Poppy wore a white fleece jacket that made her look innocent and set off the amber streaks in her hair. The white also made her easy to find if she got too far ahead, something that seemed likely to happen in her current state of mind. She blew past all the education signs that Connie and Ed used to make them stop and read. That was how he’d learned about the shapes of leaves, how ferns grow in the shade, and how trees, like people, crowd each other out and battle for dominance.
“This was always my favorite part,” Poppy said as soon as they got to the elevated wooden footpath through White Cedar Swamp.
“Mine too,” he said. The cedars had a prehistoric quality about them, rising out of their mossy mounds, everything dripping. “Feels like I’m in a cathedral.”
Poppy stopped because she saw a bird that interested her. Poppy never missed a bird.
“I bet you wish you had your binoculars,” he said. He remembered that she’d had two pairs, one so old that the leather was worn off and the lenses had turned green, and a smaller, better pair that Poppy always insisted he use when they’d gone bird-watching together.
She looked at him, genuinely touched. “You remember.”
Poppy looked up again, into the branches of an oak tree that Michael could tell had top rot and wouldn’t last many more years. “My mom was losing her memory.”
“Connie? That’s impossible. Her brain was a steel trap.”
“I know. Nobody told me about her dementia. It set in fast, I guess. I think about it all the time now. I wonder what she forgot first. I’ll bet it was hard for her to be here, knowing all her memories of this place were slowly being erased.”
“You don’t need to remember being here, though,” Michael said. “You can just experience it. I can’t think of a better place to be in the moment.”
“But can we really just be in the moment here? Isn’t it the past that makes this place so meaningful?” This was new: the last time he’d seen Poppy, she was sixteen and said whatever popped into her head. She was older now. More mature. She saw some movement in the branches and squinted to get a look. “I’ve seen two Eurasian wigeons since I got here.”
“Remember all the goldfinches that used to crowd around your parents’ feeder?”
“And you’d laugh when you saw them fly, because they moved around like they were drunk?” It was remarkable to watch her mood change before she’d ended her sentence. She smiled, then slapped her arms to her sides in frustration. “I can’t believe I’m standing here at Marconi Station with you and we’re talking about goddamn birds! They’re dead, Michael. Dead!”
Michael winced. The Gordons weren’t the only parents he’d lost; now he was—what? A double orphan? He remembered when he’d stood at his mother’s side, holding her hand, his ear on her bony chest, willing her heart to keep thump, thump, thumping. She wasn’t alone; the hospital was filled with people with HIV. He watched as they dropped away from the poisoning, one by one. It felt like it still should have been news, an outrage, a national crisis. Instead, it was a quiet die-off. Nobody seemed to care anymore. When his mother finally took her last, raspy breath, the nurse, obviously sorry for him, looked from the IV bag to Michael. He knew from the way the room changed as soon as she’d died, the way it felt like a little bit of air had been sucked out of it, that the entire universe would always feel different. The nurse—he still remembered her name was Yvonne—was the only person who seemed to care. “She’s with the other angels now, honey.” Michael didn’t cry. He just shook his head: no, no, no. Now he was doing it again, only this time he wasn’t entirely alone in his grief, and that—well, that was some kind of comfort, he supposed.
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