Storm Tide

by Marge Piercy

  I suddenly found myself smiling. “The daughter of a dentist,” I said. Abel, stirring his coffee, looked up and shrugged.

  The lips reveal no injury. Facial abrasions and signs of feeding activity of crustaceans and marine life are consistent with superficial trauma from waves and contact with ocean bottom and force of breakwater on body. The right and left earlobes show signs of cosmetic piercing.

  Chest: The abdomen is slightly protuberant with a nine-inch curved linear scar in the right lower quadrant. There is an absence of hair in the pubic area. Right and left nipples show scar tissue consistent with cosmetic piercing (rings were found in each nipple).

  Again, I glanced at Abel, embarrassed. At some point the waitress had delivered his meat loaf with mashed potatoes, a side of overboiled green peas in a little dish next to the salad. He hummed as he ate and never looked up from his newspaper.

  Arms: The arms are muscular. The hands reveal evidence of injury on the right palm consistent with slashes due to beach grass. There is a one-inch abrasion beneath the right armpit consistent with the feeding activity of an eel.

  Ever since I’d been a boy, I’d heard of bodies washed up in Saltash harbor, crabs that colonized the skull as comfortably as curling into a paper cup; eels that ate their way through human intestines. For the first time in years, I thought of Corkie Pugh and his morbid stories.

  Upper arms reveal striated abrasions and evidence of injury due to automobile window glass. One shard of glass, approximately one centimeter in diameter, found in upper arm.

  Legs: There is scar tissue on the right inner thigh, approximately 4.5 centimeters in diameter, consistent with the surgical removal of a tattoo.

  “It was a butterfly,” Crystal told me. A biker boyfriend liked to brag that he didn’t eat his women because it was boring, so she got herself tattooed. “As a joke,” she insisted. “To give him something to watch. Like TV.” I didn’t laugh.

  “I was drunk,” she had said and looked away, ashamed.

  INTERNAL EXAMINATION:

  Heart: The heart weighs 450 grams. The cardiac valves are normal.

  Stomach: The stomach contains approximately one ounce of opaque gray liquid. The small bowel contains semiliquid to semisolid fecal material, and in the rectum there are areas of purple-red streaking and dilated internal hemorrhoids, but no primary nor metatastic tumor is identified.

  “Put it in my ass,” she had told me. “Come on, I bet you’re a virgin. I want to be your first time.” When I did, I felt her back muscles constrict. She clenched her jaw. When I removed myself, I saw a tear roll across her cheek. “Did you like that?” She sat up with difficulty. “Did you? You can do anything you want to me. Anything.”

  Brain: The brain weighs 1290 grams.

  Body Cavities: The body cavities are open in the usual manner. There is no evidence of blunt force or penetrating injury to the chest or abdominal cavities. The lungs are expanded and the organs are in their usual anatomic locations. Evidence of semen found in the vagina.

  A sound I made, a gasp, attracted Abel’s attention. I had not seen Crystal since the Sunday night before she died. I’d used a condom. “Where was she before the accident?” I asked him.

  I was sure he expected the question. He drew back his shoulders. He leveled his voice. “I don’t have that information.”

  I didn’t need it. I knew. Why had Johnny left Town Hall with her that night? Where did they go? Crystal was Johnny Lynch’s lover. Why hadn’t I seen it? Because he was an old man? Because the thought of his nakedness was beyond my imagination? I’d expected Crystal to make me pay for Judith. I was certain the price was Tommy. But Johnny Lynch? Did they meet at my house when I was with Judith? How long had it been going on?

  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

  Department of Public Safety

  Chemical Laboratory

  NAME OF VICTIM: Crystal Lee Sinclair

  RESULTS: Blood Alcohol: .11% (MKL)

  Urine Barbiturate Screen: negative (WGH)

  Cocaine Metabolite Screen: negative (WGH)

  “Abel, what does this mean? Blood Alcohol, point-eleven percent. Is that a lot? Does it mean she was drunk?”

  “For a girl her size, I’d say so. Legal limit is point oh-eight.”

  “So you think that explains it?”

  “Why she drove off a bridge? Wandered around disoriented? Sounds like drunk to me.”

  “Abel, she didn’t drink.”

  “All the more reason, if she wasn’t used to it.”

  “I mean she didn’t touch it, Abel. Ever. She gave up drinking years ago. I lived with her. I know.”

  He said, “Believe anything you want.”

  “What if somebody got her drunk?”

  Abel brought his napkin to his lips. His voice was official. “Due process has been followed, Mr. Greene. I suggest you try to put this unfortunate accident out of your mind.”

  As if that were possible. As if I would ever forget.

  “I’m sorry but I’ve done the best I can. For you and the girl and her family. The law is satisfied.”

  I was not.

  JOHNNY

  Johnny dialed his daughter’s telephone number, slightly ashamed that he had to rely on his address book. What kind of a father didn’t memorize his children’s phone numbers? What kind of a world was this, in which their numbers were crossed out and replaced, each one farther away than the last? He had no idea where Novato was (a suburb of San Francisco, she’d said), only that it was seven o’clock out there and Mary Rose should be home. He desperately wanted her to pick up. He needed to tell her how much he loved her, and that if there was anything she needed, anything at all, he was here. He needed to hear her talk about the good times—before her mother took ill; before she’d moved in with that bartender twice her age. He needed to hear from her lips that she loved him.

  “Hello and have a nice day!” The damn answering machine spoke in the voice of the new husband, the idiot who sold insurance. “If you have called for Rodney, Mary Rose, Emily, Rebecca, or John …” Jesus help us, Johnny thought, Rebecca was four years old and John eleven months. Who in blazes was going to leave a message for them on the answering machine? He’d try later.

  He’d tried all day after the memorial service and three times today. Seeing Crystal’s father confirmed in his heart his love for his own children: whatever the imagined slights between them, whatever their youthful sins. The Lord worked in mysterious ways. He closed one door and opened another. Johnny had never been a religious man; that had been his wife’s department. But he’d begun to see patterns now as he entered his old age; he’d begun to wonder if there was a hidden purpose in things.

  Perhaps the Lord in His wisdom had brought Crystal into his life for just this reason, to unite him with his children; to soften his heart toward those he loved and to sharpen his resolve. For who were the rightful owners of the land above the dike? “Who stood to gain or lose?” as Gordon Stone used to proclaim at town meetings. Surely not himself, for he was an old man. Surely it was the rightful inheritance of his children and grandchildren he was fighting for.

  Little Laramie and Crystal were messengers, he saw that now. A girl like Crystal had been with a hundred men; rough men, hoods, Las Vegas gamblers, men who used her like David Greene. So why had she ended up in Johnny’s care except to show him the way back to his own children? He’d provided everything he could for Crystal, a good job and fatherly advice and, God rest her soul, a fitting memorial service. But he was weaker than the forces of evil, weaker than David Greene and Gordon Stone, who had lured her across that bridge to her death. Had David done his part by her, had he married her and cared for his boy, the door would not have been closed on Crystal, nor opened, to show Johnny the way back.

  He tried his daughter’s number again. Ten o’clock on the West Coast. They had three children: where the hell could they be?

  “Yeah, hello?”

  “Hello, Rodney? Is that you? I’d nearly given up.
I’ve been trying to get you for hours.”

  “Uh, yeah. We went out to eat. Who is this?”

  The idiot. “It’s Johnny. Mary Rose’s father. In Massachusetts.”

  “Right, she’s puttin’ the kids to sleep. Can you call back?”

  “Well, it’s one A.M. here. Can you ask her to come to the phone?”

  Johnny thought he heard him mumble, “Shit,” before the receiver dropped hard.

  “Hello, Dad? Is something wrong? I was in with the baby.”

  “No, no, dear. I was just wanting to hear your voice. Wanting to tell you I love you, that—”

  “Hold on, Dad. Okay? Goddamn it, Rodney. Just wait a minute and I’ll be right there. Hello, Dad? I’m glad you called.”

  “You are?”

  “The stove is dying. The old gas stove that came with the house.”

  “Oh, no, dear. Is it dangerous?”

  “No, but I’m down to two burners here, for the five of us.”

  “Do you need something, dear? Would five hundred dollars be of help?”

  “A big help.”

  “I know what a simple thing like a good kitchen stove can mean. The kitchen is the center of a family.” He remembered winter evenings, when he came home after work to find his family at the table, the older ones doing their homework, Emily Ann at the stove.

  “Hello, John. Rodney, here.”

  “Where’s Mary Rose?”

  “With the baby. Listen, thanks for the kind assistance with the stove. I feel like I want to do something for you in return.”

  “I’m sure that’s not necessary.”

  “John. Tell me something. What kind of a health care plan do you have in your office, John? Because I think I can really help you with your insurance needs—”

  “Thank you, we can talk about that next time. Now it’s bedtime for me. I’ll send the check off tomorrow.” Johnny hung up without waiting for a response. One sleazy husband after another; no wonder Mary Rose didn’t have a minute for her dad. Rodney was number three. Mary Rose had been adopted after his wife had lost two babies. Poor Mary Rose was always searching for love. What she needed was security; more than he could send her in dribs and drabs, a real nest egg for herself and her babies. Nothing less than their rightful inheritance.

  When the summer crowds were finally gone and the rental business slowed, he had another series of meetings with the dolts from the bank. Roger told him that until the question of the dike was settled, and settled favorably, they could not forward him money on his land. “It will be settled,” Johnny said. “It’ll be settled soon.”

  “What do you mean, you want the dike on the agenda?” Ralph Petersen said. “I’d think that’s the last thing you’d want.”

  “No, no, it’s time,” Johnny insisted. There was a buttery softness to the light in late October, a kind of gentle haze that cast the browning marsh grass in a golden glow. He could have been staring through his office window at a field of wheat. The streets were empty of tourists. Neighbors stopped to chat in the long blue shadows of afternoon. When he was a younger man he was up at four A.M. this time of year, duck hunting in the river valley, arriving at the office on a good day with five or six mallards for the girls. God help him if he brought them home to Emily Ann; she didn’t even like his shotguns in the house.

  “But the vote won’t go your way, Johnny. You know that our young friend asked Abel for an autopsy report.”

  “And I advised Abel to give it to him. Why not? The girl is dead and buried, Lord rest her soul. It’s time to move on, Ralph. I suggest you put it to the board this way: the Capital Improvement Plan is due to be updated in December. If there needs to be any work on the dike, it should be discussed now.”

  “There shouldn’t have to be any work to speak of. It’ll either be opened or left closed.”

  “Well, I’m asking you to call for a vote on that, Ralph.”

  “Put it off, Johnny. You won’t get the votes. Sandra and Fred come up for reelection in May. We can win both seats. We can have the majority back if we work for it. I don’t see any new David Greenes in the picture.”

  “Put the dike on the agenda, Ralph. Do this for me.”

  David Greene. Six months ago the name was no more than the memory of a small intense boy who played high school baseball. Now he’d joined Judith Silver, Palmer Compton and the attorney general himself on Johnny’s list of enemies. Davey Greene, the Pitching Machine. Johnny turned away from the marsh. He opened his office door to walk among his staff. Crystal’s desk stood in the corner like a shrine. David Greene. The idea that the amoral little prick should judge Johnny Lynch, when the entire town knew why the dear girl crossed that bridge—to confront him and his dirty little triangle, to demand he act like a proper father to her child, to bring the wayward man home.

  He felt David Greene’s hatred whenever their paths crossed; he could sense those hard gray eyes across a room. Twice Johnny had attempted to approach him—and why not? They’d both lost a dear presence in their lives; why grieve alone when the natural business of this town drew them together? Both times David Greene simply stared at him with silent accusation, as if he himself had anything to feel guilty about.

  All this was unfortunate. Johnny had honestly thought he’d won David over to his thinking about the dike. No, David hadn’t accepted a water-view lot; he wasn’t greedy and he wasn’t stupid. But through his observations over time and his conversations with Crystal, Johnny had come to think of David as a realist rather than a knee-jerk environmentalist. Now it seemed the boy’s hatred would hold sway. So be it. If David voted to keep the dike closed, the bank would come on board Johnny’s project like a shot. If David’s vote swayed the majority to open the dike, well then, he was depriving Johnny of the fair use of his land and opening the town to a sizable lawsuit for recompense. Either way, Johnny would win.

  Maria had come to him, closing the door behind her. “We have to replace Crystal,” she said bluntly. “None of us can work those programs the way she did. We need someone young. And her empty desk is depressing the girls. Everytime they stop and look at it, one of them starts blubbering.”

  She put on his desk an ad she had drawn up for the local papers, “Wanted, Secretary for Legal Office, Good Benefits, Must Have Computer Skills.”

  Now, two weeks later, the ad still sat on his desk. Why hadn’t he put it in? He was waiting, superstitiously waiting, until the vote on the dike came up. After that, he would fill the position. It would be nice to have another young face around the office, but this one would be more stable, calmer. Pretty but stolid, that was his recipe for peace in the office.

  The hearing on the dike was finally scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving. Sandra Powell and Lyle Upham seemed delighted to take up the issue. They were friendly and full of chat before the meeting began, exactly as Johnny would be if he was about to cut someone down with his vote. Ralph and Fred Fischel were uneasy. Fischel hadn’t been convinced the hearing was Johnny’s idea. Fred called him when the agenda was announced to hear it from Johnny’s own lips. David was Mr. Hatchet Face—had been since the girl went off the bridge. Nobody expected so much as a how-do-you-do from Selectman Greene these days.

  All the usual nuts filled the seats. Palmer Compton had his boy by his side. Johnny smiled. “Hello, Palmer,” he said, and got a grunt in return. There were all the other conspirators from Gordon Stone’s group; Dr. Garvey in his natty bow tie and even Judith Silver, looking, he had to say it, delightful in her gray wool coatdress. Word had it David had not been over on the island since Gordon’s death; you had to give him that. So what if the opposition far outnumbered Johnny’s own troops tonight? He hadn’t bothered sounding the alarm. He felt almost serene as he watched the drama unfold, as if he was a visitor from far away, come to observe the curious behavior of the natives. Let them rail against the dike—and rail they did—a full two hours, as Ralph and Fred seemed to shrink in their seats. Johnny yawned.

  It was a quarter pa
st ten when Ralph gaveled discussion to a halt, looking at Johnny in the back row as if to say, This wasn’t my idea. Johnny responded with a simple smile.

  “Mr. Chairman.”

  “Mrs. Powell.”

  “I move that this Board of Selectmen do what we rightly should have done many years ago, that is to open the Tamar River dike.”

  “Second.” Lyle Upham beamed at the applauding crowd.

  Ralph looked pale and tired. His voice was pure defeat. “The motion on the floor is to open the dike.”

  “Mr. Chairman, I move to refer the motion to a committee,” David Greene said.

  Johnny thought he hadn’t quite heard him at first. Refer to committee? What was Greene trying to do? Where did he pick that up? “Mr. Chairman,” Johnny shouted. “I rise to a point of order!”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.” David Greene again. “Mr. Lynch is not a member of this board … any longer. He can’t call for a point of order.” The little prick smiled straight at Johnny.

  Above the noise in the hall, Fred Fischel glanced from Petersen to Greene, obviously confused. “I second the motion to refer.”

  The fool. What did he think he was doing? A referral to committee would delay action either way, the one thing that could hurt Johnny. He couldn’t believe where this was going.

  “Debate on the motion is allowed.” Ralph’s voice was lighter, infused with hope. “Mr. Greene.”

  “I believe this is one of the most controversial issues in the history of the town,” David Greene said. “I think it’s only prudent to study the matter further. We have approximately $25,000 left in the consultancy line of the budget. I move we form a committee to draw up a request for a proposal to seek an engineering study that might tell us the effects of either opening or closing the dike.”