The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

Rob said, “Evie,” in a tone he hoped exhibited disapproval and authority.

  Evie shrugged and circumnavigated the kitchen. On her next go-round she stopped and said, “Can I get Instagram?”

  “No,” said Rob.

  “Never,” said Zoe.

  “Probably not never,” corrected Rob. “But not now.”

  “Worth a try,” said Evie.

  22

  LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE

  Eliza

  By the time Russell came back to the truck again, Eliza had composed herself, even though inside she was a rainbow of different emotions: angry, guilty, confused. To his credit, Russell didn’t ask her what was wrong or why her face was, well, for lack of a better term, lobster red, or anything else about the phone call. He said, “Good solid day of work, Eliza. What do you say we get a beer.”

  It wasn’t really a question, based on the inflection, but Eliza answered it like one.

  “I don’t know…I should go back, check on my dad.”

  “Val wouldn’t leave him if he needed anything, you know that. Call him first, though.”

  It was true. Val was probably at the house right now, fixing some supper for Charlie, or else she’d brought Charlie back to eat with her. Val wouldn’t leave Charlie to fend for himself.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Val will take care of him.”

  Eliza called, just to be sure. The stitches had come out easily, Val said. No pain. Had Charlie, by any chance, made any other appointments while he was there? Consulted with oncology or neurosurgery?

  “No, honey,” said Val. She sighed. “I tried, course. You know, Eliza, you can lead—”

  “Oh, Val,” interrupted Eliza. “If you tell me that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink I swear on my father’s traps I’m going to lose it.”

  “Okay, then, Eliza. Listen, your dad’s resting, you want me to bring the phone over or let him sleep?”

  “Let him sleep,” said Eliza. “Thanks, Val.”

  She ended the call and looked at Russell and shrugged and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s go get a beer.”

  There were exactly three places to get a beer in Little Harbor. One was the seafood restaurant, The Lobster Trap, open only in the summer, where the tourists and the summer residents went. Hoity-toity, her father called it. Then there was The Cup, where no self-respecting lobsterman was going to end his day. Finally, there was The Wheelhouse, domain of the fishermen. They went to The Wheelhouse.

  Russell headed straight for the bar and returned with two bottles, Bud, cold.

  “They were out of champagne,” said Russell. “So I got you this.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” said Eliza. “Nobody drinks champagne after hauling.” Though, in fact, she would have killed for a very cold glass. “Let me give you money for mine,” she added, reaching for her wallet, which it turned out she didn’t have. She’d left it at her father’s house that morning, along with her phone. She rummaged around her side of the booth where her sweatshirt was anyway, for show, and muttered a little bit, also for show.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Russell said. “I think I can buy you a beer.”

  Russell sat across from her in the booth. Those same booths had been there long before Eliza had illegally drunk her first beer at The Wheelhouse at age fifteen. They’d been there when she was ten years old, sent by her mother to fetch her father home on a Saturday night, the way all of the men had to be fetched home at one time or another. Probably the booths had been there since time began.

  Russell was so tall that his knees bumped up against hers. Even if she’d wanted to get her knees out of the way she wouldn’t have been able to, so she left them where they were, gently pressing into his. That was okay, right? It was just knees. She tried not to think about the winter painting lobster buoys in the barn. To help her not think, she drank a lot of the first beer fast, and felt it go right to her head. Must have been all of that sun on the boat—she’d put her tourist hat on too late.

  “I owe you for today anyway,” Russell was saying. “One-ninety-five. Not the best day, not the worst.”

  Eliza stared at him. He’d gotten some sun too, despite his own hat. In Massachusetts you were practically put on trial for child abuse if you let your kid get a sunburn; you were even looked at askance if you let yourself get anything other than a reputable, resort-ready tan exactly three shades darker than your normal skin tone. Here a sunburn was normal, just a fact of life, a part of the workday, a battle scar. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why would I be kidding?”

  “You’re not going to pay me one hundred and ninety-five dollars.”

  Russell stretched his legs; he had to tilt his body toward the outside of the booth to do that. She missed his knees, once they were gone, but she didn’t know how to get them back. “Sure I am. You work, you get paid. Gavin Tracey doesn’t volunteer on the boat, I didn’t ask you to volunteer on the boat. I asked you to work.”

  That’s when Eliza made her mistake: she laughed. It wasn’t meant to be a bitchy laugh, more like a hey-buddy-stop-your-kidding-around kind of laugh, good-natured and sociable. But it came out all wrong.

  Looking back later she saw that’s when it all went downhill. She didn’t know it immediately. But she should have seen it from the way Russell’s features slid together.

  “You keep it,” she said, trying to recover, trying to sound affable. “Half of what we hauled is going to my dad anyway. And you used your fuel to get to his traps, and your fish to bait them. And I don’t—” She stopped herself. Too late, though.

  “You don’t need it.”

  Well, bingo! Of course she didn’t need it. One hundred and ninety-five dollars! She felt awkward being in this position, but…she spent that on a hair appointment, on one shoe out of a pair, on her weekly housecleaning, and didn’t blink. Judith Barnes, who made significant monthly deposits into her and Rob’s checking account, owned two Birkin bags and was looking at a third. And let’s not even get started on the Hinckley. It was true, Eliza Barnes didn’t need Russell’s one hundred and ninety-five dollars. Russell needed it much more. The price of bait had nearly doubled this year, creeping closer and closer to one hundred dollars a tray. Fifteen grand to replace the reverse gear!

  She tried coming at it from another angle. “But I’m not even a good sternman. I’m useless. I don’t deserve to make whatever Gavin would have made.”

  Someone had accidentally put a few extra Ss in one of those words before it came out of her mouth: uselesssss. Eliza could feel some of her hard edges softening.

  Russell narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the table.

  “Put my share in the fund to fix your reverse gear,” she added.

  He unfolded himself and rose from the booth. “Drink up, Eliza, I’m going for two more.”

  “Mine’s empty,” she said, and it felt like a dare, the way she hit the bottom of the bottle against the table.

  The second beer went down easier than the first, if that was possible, and then Russell returned to the bar. Again Eliza reached for her nonexistent wallet and again Russell refused. Two beers turned to three, then to four. At beer three and a half Eliza said, “So, Russell, you seeing anyone?”

  “I see people.”

  “Anyone—special?”

  “Jesus, Eliza.”

  “Sorry! Sorry.” Some years ago Russell had married a girl from out of town—Beatrice Prince. That was the name of Russell’s last boat, before Legacy. Eliza had never met Beatrice Prince, neither person nor boat. (She’d gotten all of her information from Val.) They’d been married three years and then Beatrice Prince had decided the lobstering life wasn’t for her; she’d taken off for Bangor or Augusta or wherever it was she’d come from, and she’d taken a bunch of Russell’s money with her—the money he’d been saving for a new boat. That’s when Russell had left town for a while, tried out the civilian life, found it didn’t suit him, come back home, started again, taken out
loans, bought Legacy. Eliza knew money was a worry, always a worry. “Sorry!” Eliza said once more. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Good riddance to bad rubbish, Val had said about Beatrice Prince.

  Russell excused himself to use the bathroom and to talk to a couple of men at the bar. Elton Cobb, who ran the co-op. There was Ryan Libby, and there was Jack Cates. There was Michelle Davis, one of the two women in town who owned their own boats. Most people in the bar were varying versions of the men and women she’d known her whole life: hardworking, hard drinking, loyal, independent.

  Eliza peered into her beer bottle; it was nearly empty. Holy lobster traps, four beers, on an almost-empty stomach. The turkey sandwich had been a long time ago. Eliza had earned her drinking stripes early, but they had faded over time.

  The last time Eliza had had more than two drinks had been at the Colemans’ holiday party the previous December, where she, and many others, had been brought down by the innocuously named Angel’s Delight. Rob had been hungover for at least thirty-six hours after that party. He always got oddly quiet and remorseful when he drank a lot, like a chastened schoolchild, but he was even more so after that night. Eliza, hungover, became short-tempered, hungry for French fries, and irrationally aggravated by clutter. It wasn’t the best version of herself.

  Currently, though, she was really enjoying the feeling the beers were giving her. They were cushioning her from her absence from home, and from her fight with Rob, and from the pounding terror she felt over her father’s health, and, after spending the long day with Russell in close quarters, from the Thing They Would Never Talk About.

  A flame like that is going to burn itself out.

  She looked around the bar; it was filling up now, all the lobstermen back from the haul, and there was a merry, reckless feeling in the air. In the corner there was a jukebox—a jukebox, in this day and age. How ridiculous. How wonderful. Eliza felt like she’d stepped right into a Springsteen song: workingmen, their girls, their troubles and triumphs.

  Flames could burn themselves out, but did they ever flare back up again?

  The year before her mother died—Eliza would have been eleven—was the first time her dad let her ride in the back of his truck on Trap Day. The traps were piled five or six high. You had to hang on when the truck hit a bump. When you got to the wharf, you had to load them all on board for the first set. And then you were off: another season begun.

  The year after Joanie died Eliza told Charlie, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to Trap Day. Can I stay home? I want to stay home and read.”

  “No way,” said Charlie.

  “Why not?”

  “How would that look, Eliza? A daughter of mine, not helping out. You know how it is. No one goes till everyone goes.”

  And then, at the end of that day, the light low in the sky, a strip of orange racing across the horizon, the last of the boats pulling out, the traps piled so high they made the boats look lopsided, she loved the town all over again.

  Now she felt a door in her mind unhinge, and from it tiptoed a thought that she couldn’t quite capture. It slithered away from her, herring-slick. When Russell came back maybe she’d try to articulate it. She was facing the door to the bar when it opened and in came Mary from the café.

  “Mary!” called Eliza. She waved her over enthusiastically—more enthusiastically, it was true, than she might have without the four beers.

  Mary looked around the bar and moved toward Eliza. She wore a cautious expression and her movements were sparse and economical, like she’d spent her bottom dollar on them and couldn’t afford to be wasteful.

  “Sit down! Have a seat.” Eliza gestured toward the space Russell had left. “You’re not here to have a beer, are you?”

  Mary shook her head and slid into the seat.

  “Too young for that anyway, right?”

  Mary looked startled. “I’m seventeen,” she said. “I’ll be eighteen August third. But anyway I don’t like beer. Well, sometimes I do. But not now.”

  “That’s a nice birthday. August! Mine’s in January, it’s completely dreary.”

  Mary nodded.

  “Want a Coke or something?”

  “No, I’m good,” said Mary. “I’m just—I’m looking for Josh.”

  “Your boyfriend.”

  “That’s right.”

  Eliza lowered her voice and, emboldened by the beer, said, “How old is Josh, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.” It had been in college when she’d first heard people saying my asking, instead of me asking. All those years of saying it wrong, she couldn’t believe it. She was humiliated.

  “He’s twenty-four.”

  Eliza absorbed this; she was torn between feigning indifference and stepping in as a mother figure, saying, I forbid you to see him. I order you to find a boyfriend your own age immediately.

  Mary smiled uncertainly at Eliza, and Eliza, seized by a desire to be kind, said, “Hey, you know what? My father was older than my mother and they had the greatest love I’ve ever witnessed.” She said that though she still had the image in her mind of Josh skulking outside the circle of men at the wharf, creeping like a fox outside a den of chickens. Mary’s smile widened but not so much that it reached her eyes. Then Eliza said, “I haven’t seen him. It’s crowded over at the bar, though, who knows. He could be there.”

  Mary nodded again and made no move to get up. She looked tired, and the skin underneath her eyes had a lavender tint to it. Eliza suddenly remembered the Fourth of July missed call and said, “Hey! Did you try to call me? Over the holiday, when I was home?”

  Immediately Mary’s eyes filled—quickly, like inside there was a tiny tap that someone had just turned on—and Eliza said, “Oh. I’m sorry!”

  “No, that’s okay, it’s just—” Mary swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and then she folded both hands on the table as if she were at prayer and took a deep breath. The bar noises receded to the background, and Eliza fixed her gaze steadily on Mary. Mary leaned in toward Eliza and said, “I did try to call. I just—I just wanted to talk to someone.”

  Eliza leaned in too. “You did? Is everything okay?”

  “Not really,” whispered Mary. “Not at all. I’m just…well, I’m sort of…no, not sort of, I’m pregnant.” She choked out the last words like they were a rotten bit of food.

  “Oh, sweetie,” said Eliza. She half rose from her seat. And immediately, a shadow passed over the table and Mary made a nervous jumping motion and looked up: Josh.

  “Thought you were meeting me at the bar,” he said to Mary.

  “I was, I was looking, I just stopped to say hi.”

  Eliza wanted to say, Excuse me, young man, is that how you greet your pregnant girlfriend? But because she was trying not to pry she stuck out her hand and said, “Eliza.”

  He accepted it. Wimpy handshake, awful sign, an indication of bad breeding. Eliza had made sure her daughters could shake hands with a vise grip; she’d been taught that way by her father. “Josh,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Eliza said. It was a reflex, even if she didn’t mean it.

  “Yeah. You too.”

  Eliza thought, Yeah? She said, “You have a good haul today? Russell and I, we had a pretty good haul, for early July. It’s starting to pick up, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Josh. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Got a couple of shedders.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’ll be August before we know it.”

  Josh shrugged and looked at Mary and said, “Let’s go.”

  Mary gave Eliza a funny look—sort of wry, sort of self-mocking—and rose from the booth.

  “Mary—” said Eliza, but she was gone, melting into the crowd.

  Now Eliza could capture that slippery thought: now. It was something about young love, brought on by the jukebox and the atmosphere and all of the memories that were unearthi
ng themselves and standing in front of her, asking for attention.

  It was this: that your whole life was a quest to recapture the feeling you had the very, very first time you fell in love. She tried not to think about the long-ago night on Turtle Island, the tent, the sleeping bags zipped together, arms and legs and lips and necks and the heat they gave off. Oh, man, the heat. A flame like that is going to burn itself out.

  When Russell came back she was so lost in that thought—drunkenly, she believed that it explained everything about the human condition—that she didn’t notice him until he had regained his seat across from her. She thought maybe she should try to explain her thought to Russell, but when she looked at him she saw his face was pulled tight with irritation.

  “Sorry,” he said, “to be gone so long. I was just talking to the guys about something.”

  Eliza smelled gossip, and sat up straighter. This sounded promising. “What? Something good?”

  “That guy who was over here, talking to you, Josh—you know him?”

  “No, I only just met him.”

  “They think he’s pulling some shit, stealing from traps.”

  “Really?” In Little Harbor, in any lobstering community, that was one of the gravest offenses that existed. You didn’t touch another person’s traps without permission, period. And if you did, and if you got caught, Lord help you when the wrath of the vigilante justice system rained down upon you.

  “That little shit,” she said. It wasn’t her usual way to describe someone, but Russell had brought back a fresh beer for each of them and she was feeling agitated and feisty and local.

  “They said we better watch out for Charlie’s traps. He’ll know now that they’re going untended. That guy’s no good.”

  “Wow.”

  “Don’t say anything to Charlie, though. I don’t want him to worry. I’ll keep an eye on his traps.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I can help, anytime. And, thank you, Russell.”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  To change the subject she said, “It’s so funny being back here. It feels like I never left.”