A bead of perspiration rolled down my spine. I felt it trickle beneath the heavy twill of my button down shirt, the most presentable item I managed to dig out of my laundry pile on the short notice of Bobby’s sudden supper mandate.
The decrepit porch sagged underfoot. This sorry ol’ place is in serious need of shoring up. I vowed, come spring, after the rains stopped, I’d be a good friend, help take stock of the place, formulate a list as to what all would be required to help make a start.
Bobby, who’d spotted the lights of my truck, flung the door open to greet me as I reached the top of the porch steps, his big ol’ frame filling the narrow entryway, all but blocking out the light from the hallway.
“Yo, it’s the castaway,” he boomed, slapping me on the shoulder, beaming. “Storm chase you in?”
The front door slammed shut behind me on a gust of wind strong enough to swoop a smaller guy, fling him over the cliff and clear into the Pacific, beyond. “No sign of her lettin’ up, man,” I replied. “No mercy tonight.”
“Wood burner’s earnin’ its keep, come on in and warm your bones, bud,” Bobby said.
I had not set eyes on Bridget since she’d lost all of her hair. Hell, I was in an awkward position, not knowing if I should say something or go about our greetings as if she wasn’t altered any. Something or other had to be said in order to get it out of the way, I knew that much. I swept my own discomfort aside for once and went for the safe bet: “Nice head scarf, Bridg’, how’re you holding up?”
It’s a crime, Bridget being so sick. She nodded with a thin-lipped, wry-faced smile that led me to believe that if she was keeping her shit together on the outside she was raging hell on the inside.
“It sure does appear I’m makin’ some small progress, Marcus, thank you for askin’,” she said, looking away to end that particular line of conversation, a relief for both of us. She’d taken my jacket in one hand and my hand in the other — thin, small and real bony, yet surprisingly strong. I looked down at it, white as white could be, pale blue superficial veins close to the skin’s surface raised up on the back like a bunch of creeping earthworms.
“Prepare yourself for meetin’ Maggie, my sister, shinin’ jewel of the McCleery crown,” she said, “she’ll be back any minute now, Marcus, at least she ought to be, the queen bee’s been gone for hours.”
“No messing around out there at this time with another of these goddamn storm systems coming in,” I said. “I hope for her sake she’s close by.” It was no night to be rambling around waterlogged, unlit roads, reacquainting, reminiscing, whatever it was she’d been up to. Tall domes of leaden, stone gray clouds were smothering any chance of moonlight breaking through.
There would be no stars to look up at in the sky that night. Indoors, the air was thick with smoke, the kitchen filled with a briny steam.
Bridget handed me a big, ol’ mug of sweet, hot, honeyed tea. It warmed my hands and eased the tightness in my chest. The heat of the wood burner flushed my face as we stood there, waiting for her sister to make her appearance. In the narrow slips of silence between the necessary small talk I forced out of my mouth, I heard what sounded like ball bearings plink into plastic bowls in the kitchen, the shrill, metallic rattle in stark contrast to a soft, groaning croak and hiss of burning wood, an orchestra of fire and water. Bridget seemed distracted, disconnected, as Bobby applied himself to coaxing my ongoing pitiful attempt at chitchat, piping up with something, anything to plug the uncomfortable silences. My awkward ways never bothered him none.
For years I’d trusted no one but Bobby. And Bridget, God bless her, she never presses me too hard, as is her way. It’s time that has won us over with each other, her and me. That’s how it is for shy folk. Good people like the McCleerys are well worth the effort, worth their weight in silver and gold.
Let me make this clear, I have never been a man to will the fragile pieces of my heart on another, not since all my troubles started as a kid. If you’d told me that evening I would find myself so instantly undone, that a few split seconds was about to change the mindset of my life, I’d have laughed in your face, suggesting that you to take the giant bug out of your ass, for you’d picked the wrong guy to play such foolish games with.
Oh yes, I’d be the first to admit I was an authentic, card-holding skeptic of the strange and mysterious, invisible force of womanly bewitchment. A dude such as me had no previous reference or concept whatsoever of a stealth invasion in the feminine form. I guess the best way for me to describe it is a magnetic attraction that strikes when you’re least expecting it, the crazy shit that goes down when two people are drawn together by their opposite pole.
In the briefest of moments it took for her to walk into that house, her eyes were almost instantly locked onto mine. I felt myself flush and reddened, undoubtedly to a sudden, deep shade of darkest maroon. I’ve gotta say we both sensed it, a door to somewhere strange and new and foreign, one that neither of us had thought to pass through, least of all that night. It flung itself open in a hot flash. Looking back, any fool could’ve heard my heavy heart pounding ten to the dozen, visibly raising the breast pocket of my shirt. I stuttered a short greeting, my mouth and throat as dry as the barn floor out back as I stumbled toward her, offering Maggie my hand in a bungled attempt to disguise this rash onset of irrational and totally out of character behavior.
It was a clumsy introduction at best and she threw me further off balance by taking a tactile hold of my hand a few seconds longer than was warranted. This mesmerizing stranger of sorts, Bridget’s sister, had zero problems in maintaining direct eye contact. Her piercing green eyes docked into mine like a bullet on target. I blinked fast as she held her gaze. A surge of something implicit and unfamiliar continued to pass between us and it hovered a minute more in the heavy charge of air. Bridget’s little sister, of all people in the whole dang world, was reading me for the fool I was, frozen on the spot, dazed, confused, blindsided, an open book, chapter and verse. It was as If I was written solely for her.
Up close, I took in the smell of her. It was of the Pacific, a mixture of sea breeze, salt water and that strong, earthy scent of damp sand. She let go of my hand in order to reach up to the back of her head and loosen her hair band, shaking rainwater from a tumble of dark waves, an alluring first move, one that made me think of the ocean at night, its unleashing of scent-bearing chemicals secreted deep within her core. Call it chemistry, pheromones, whatever mysterious matter it is that fuels most all-animal behavior. Truth is, I’m as dumbfounded now as I was then, in having fallen hook, line and sinker within seconds of her call.
“I hope you like oysters, Marcus,” she said, awakening me from a swift and intoxicating self-analysis. It was like I was on something, high on her.
She handed over her icy loot. “You shuck?” She asked me with a sly, half smile.
“Beg your pardon,” I stammered, stumbling forward. My face flushed anew. What was I, a sophomore schoolboy crushing on a senior girl, one who was way out of my league?
The wind howled and chased in through the window frames and under the doors. It swept in on the gusts that whipped across the old pastureland in the front and back pounding so heavily on the thin, single pane glass, I feared at once the windows might shatter.
I laughed, in spite of myself, standing there, hypnotized, clinging on for dear life to the bag of ice and oysters Maggie thrust upon me. I’m no stranger to the shucking of a half dozen oysters, still, semi-paralyzed as I was, I passed the bag over to Bobby, whom I duly followed, with a sense of relief, like an obedient puppy, into the kitchen. He rattled around in the kitchen drawers, unearthing a couple hook-tipped, dull-pointed, thickbladed oyster knives. “Swiss,” he said as he set about our appointed task at the kitchen sink. “Indestructible. Belonged to my folks.”
Bobby filled a bowl in the sink from a bag of ice Maggie hauled in from where she’d left it on the porch and he set about arranging the oysters evenly on top. I watched him as he took two clean kitchen t
owels and folded them into thirds to both brace the shells and protect our hands from any accidental slippage.
The art of oyster shucking is a learned one that takes skill and patience and practice to perfect. Bobby shared how he’d learned at any early age how to inspect each of the oysters for any that were already open, reminding me that a healthy, living oyster is clamped shut at the outset. If an oyster’s open even slightly and will not close when tapped, it’s a done deal, dead. I watched as he took a good sniff of each of the shells, one at a time.
“If you come across a fishy one, avoid it like the plague,” he urged. “You know what they say,” he let out one of his deep chesty smoker’s chortles: “eat a bad oyster, you’ll soon suffer a reversal of fortune.”
As the big guy vigorously scrubbed away at the outer shells, removing mud, sand and dirt, I stole myself a stealthy glance at Maggie. Not surprisingly, given my performance earlier, she caught me in the act. I averted my eyes and looked back down at my task at hand.
Bridget asked her sister to go light candles in the dining room. “It’s been a whole year,” she remarked, her arms full with a pile of old mail she’d cleared from the dining table and carried into the kitchen, “It was you who was here last for supper, Marcus and that’s been a good twelve months since. First time this old table has seen any action in a long while.”
The belly side being the bottom and the flat side the top, I picked out one oyster at a time, holding each shell firmly between one of the folded towels. Working my knife into the hinge, I wiggled and finessed the hook-tipped blade ‘til I was able to exert sufficient pressure ‘gainst the top and bottom, twisting and prying, rotating it so as to feel the familiar “pop”, the sweet spot, the moment the oyster yields. I pulled off the top shells, severing the muscle that held each shell together before I made a close inspection of the half dozen my unsteady hands had managed to shuck.
Top shells went into the garbage as I slid the knife beneath the clear, shiny, lively looking oysters inside the bottom shells, so as to swiftly release them to eat. Bobby and I placed the half shells onto a platter Maggie had prepared with coarse salt to stabilize the mildly metallic, mineral scented bivalves. My hand trembled as I passed the platter over the countertop. Seeing as I was feeling extra scrutinized, pressured to say the least, I focused on the shining, silvery, almost iridescent color of the sweet oyster meat. Its mild, salty aroma was seductive.
Bobby hauled a steaming pot of pasta from the stovetop to the sink. He poured spaghetti al dente into a large, metal colander as Maggie stood directly across from me cutting lemons for the oyster platter. Bridget was busy stirring tomato sauce with a wooden spoon, seemingly oblivious to any agitated tension on my part. The cacophony of leaks I’d been aware of earlier was steadily filling the bowls and buckets that were dotted around the kitchen.
The three of them worked well in the kitchen together. They sure made a good impression of a tight-knit family, if I hadn’t known better, that is. According to Bobby, Bridget and Maggie were not nearly close. Not for a long time.
Maggie walked directly over to stand before me. She was radiant, her hair still damp and fragrant and her cheeks all rosy and glowing from the chill night air. I watched as she took an oyster on its half shell and holding it close to my mouth, her fingertips brushed my lips. “I always eat the first one naked,” she said, flashing a three by nine smile wide enough to knock a dude for six.
My wide eyes spoke for themselves. “Don’t worry, Marcus,” she laughed, applying the slightest touch of her palm to the back of my bare arm. I’d rolled up my shirtsleeves for the shucking. “Keep your clothes on. Forget the lemon. Bring the oyster to your nose, smell its essence, then, shoot it in its juice . . . like so, now, chew it, slowly, and swallow.”
She was clearly getting a kick out of making fun of me. What the hell does a guy like me from the Central Valley know of oyster etiquette? I’m no food snob, though I eat all the oysters I get my hands on, outdoors, in their natural habitat. “Squirt a little lemon on the next one,” she said, her hand on my arm a second time. “Eat an oyster eyes first and taste the bay, isn’t that what they say?”
“My sister’s such a geek, a total food elitist,” Bridget said. “Don’t mind her, Marcus. Way too many fancy oyster bar bills in this girl’s history.”
“She’s right though, Bridget,” Bobby came to Maggie’s rescue. “In my humble opinion, oysters are best enjoyed fat, plump and unadulterated.”
I took myself a second shell, squeezed a drop of lemon on it, slurping its delicious contents down in a manner I hoped was halfway acceptable given my sophisticated newfound companion. “Each to his own,” I said. In other words, I meant take me as I am, or not.
Maggie made no qualms in fixing her eyes on my mouth as I chewed on the slippery oyster deliberately and slowly, as directed and duly swallowed. Her face lit up with something like approval of my having fully savored the experience just as she’d instructed.
“Heavenly. Yes?”
I smiled back and nodded, taking extra care than usual in the wiping of my lips and beard with the cloth napkin she’d handed me. It might as well have been the first time I’d ever tasted an oyster given the explosion of tastes in my mouth. Man, the range of pain and pleasure flooding through my veins was confusing.
Maggie took care of the bulk of our conversation while Bobby and Bridget were fixing to serve supper, rattling on about a chef in the city making waves in the restaurant scene by cooking with seawater. “Who knew, it’s all the rage in some parts of the world?” she asked. “Bread bakers are swearing by seawater, apparently.”
Neither me nor Bobby or Bridget passed comment on the sort of crazy who pays for the luxury of filtered, sanitized seawater. I know from my own experience, boating with my Grandpa as a boy, any fool is free to take as much seawater as he or she should reasonably need. Dang well bring it to a boil and pass it through a coffee filter. Job done, though I never said as much.
It wasn’t until halfway through supper that Bridget chose to spill the beans on her disturbing meeting that afternoon outside of the dispensary. Mia’s being gone sure was news to me, the last to hear about it. Bobby shuffled his eating irons uncomfortably.
Tension is generally the first trigger for me to make a swift exit. I was out of my depth in the middle of a complicated family matter of which I had no part, nor wanted one. A familiar urge to make a hasty retreat, to recharge, alone and in private called. My palms began to sweat again, my heart was fit to racing. I stared out of the window into the depths of the sheeting dark. Lightening flashed across the night sky.
“She’s in Humboldt, we know that, for sure,” Bridget announced.
Maggie leapt from her chair, sending it crashing to the floor. Heavy wood caught my leg at the point where the prosthetic joins. I flinched and instinctively I leaned down to tug at and pull my pant leg back into place. Maggie took it all in, though she was polite enough to give no pause to stare.
“Jesus, Bridget, this is unbelievable,” she turned her attention to snap at her sister. “I’m sorry but I just cannot get into your head. Mia may be anywhere in the whole damn Emerald Triangle by now, it’s not just Humboldt you know, Mendocino and Trinity counties make up a massive trifecta of potential trouble,” she said. “Lord, what I need right now is a drink . . . what the hell do you think happens to young girls their age in the middle of fucking nowhere?”
Bobby was the next to blow a fuse. He picked up his salad plate and smacked it on the side of the table in an uncharacteristic show of force, cracking it in two and shooting salad leaves across the surface. I sat upright, on red alert for I’d never seen him react this way. “Enough,” he yelled. “Quit your conniption fit, Maggie. You come here, raisin’ sand, with no right to point a finger at your sister or any one of us.”
“Calm down, both of you,” Bridget stood and raised her voice to be heard above Bobby’s. “Mia is my daughter, Maggie, and despite the fact you seem to think I’ve given up on
her, failed her, I will decide what the next move will be. You all know how hard this is. The timin’. It sucks.”
I froze to my chair in fear of further aggravating the situation by offending my friends in slinking off. As I’ve said, I am a solo operator, more than used to saying hell no to any form of social responsibility, but this time I found myself offering no excuse and I stuck it out at the table. I did the right thing and kept my mouth shut.
“I’m sorry that you’re on edge, that you’re bein’ forced to give the booze a rest, Maggie,” Bridget said, “You know we don’t keep alcohol in the house. I dare say, you’ll survive by doin’ without it for another night. After that, you are free to go do whatever the hell it is that gives you the courage to be so righteous.”
Maggie kept her mouth zipped a minute or two more as she mulled things over in her head. “It’s time we take a look through your daughter’s email,” she said, calmly, when she deemed it sufficiently safe to speak. “Together. See if we can’t find some leads at least in what she was thinking when she took off. Andres proved himself good for something. He unlocked her password this afternoon.”
“What? You met with him out here?” Bridget asked her sister. “Where?
“Briefly,” Maggie replied. “He drove out. And the bastard better not be thinking I owe him one.”
Maggie retrieved a laptop from the messenger bag I vaguely recalled she’d worn slung over her shoulder when she’d made her electric entrance, earlier. She uncovered it from its wrapping of plastic bags, using its weight to push a stack of plates to one side before she flipped it open.
“We already know that the girls were last seen in a forested area in Humboldt,” Bridget said. She took her time in composing herself, steadying her voice in order to recount what she had learned that afternoon from Jazmin’s distraught mother.
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