A quarter of an ounce. She tried to equate that to coffee beans, to whipped cream. It would take so very little of each to get to a quarter ounce. She read on. A tongue, a palate, nipples, hair follicles. Fingers and toes beginning to form. Fingers and toes! Already?
The two couples got up to leave and she saw one of the men reach into his wallet for a few bills to leave on the table. She called out, “Bye now! Have a good night!” and busied herself behind the counter so she didn’t look like she was watching for a tip.
When the door closed behind them, and when the café was silent and really truly Mary’s for the first time, Mary touched her stomach again and pictured the baby, her baby, the little bunch of coffee beans with real fingers and real toes. She felt again the twinge of joy, the possibility of a future start to form inside of her. She imagined putting the baby in a carrier and walking down to the water, her body curled protectively around him. Or her! Either one, either one would be fine. There there, she said to the imaginary baby, when the wind off the harbor picked up. Mama’s got you. Where was Josh in this picture? He was nowhere. She couldn’t in a million years imagine living with a baby in Josh’s house, the television blaring, the car shows always in the background. But it was just as hard—or maybe harder—to imagine living in her own house, with Vivienne’s hair products scattered around, the counters covered over with Vivienne’s clutter. Where would she even put the baby? Her own bedroom was tiny, and the whole house had only the two bedrooms.
It was almost official closing time; in five minutes, Mary would turn the sign from OPEN to CLOSED, then count the money in the cash register and record it in the ledger as Daphne had shown her. She’d lock the register and put the key in the secret spot that only the three of them knew about.
Mary was crouched down, peering into the second fridge, the mini, where they kept the smaller containers of half-and-half, when she heard the bell on the door ding. Shit. She should have turned the sign first. She started to call out, “We’re closed!” in her best customer service voice as she rose but then she saw that it was Josh who had come in and the words lodged themselves somewhere deep in her throat.
Josh, swaying a little bit as he moved, drunk, his eyes lined with red. Or maybe it was more than drinking, maybe it was drugs, the ones he’d hidden in her closet, or something else, worse: heroin, cocaine. She didn’t even know enough to know what to look for.
“Hey, babe,” he said. Even these two simple words slurred. Shit shit shit.
Andi and Daphne would not like this. “We’re closing,” she said. “Josh, I’m not supposed to have anyone in here. I’m closing up.”
Mary didn’t feel good about the way Josh was looking at her, squinting, like whatever he’d drunk or taken or shot up made it impossible for him to open his eyes all the way. “Closing, huh?”
What she should have said next was, “Andi’s coming right back, and then we’re closing.” She realized that after: Andi, who drove to Ellsworth for CrossFit four mornings a week, was tougher than Daphne and that might be enough to get Josh to go. But what she said instead was, “Yeah. I’m in charge tonight, Andi and Daphne went to Bar Harbor.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid Mary.
His body language changed then; he grew in front of her. Or maybe she was shrinking. She stood up as straight as she could and pressed her fingers into the countertop, hard, so that the area around the knuckles turned a bright white.
Josh came up to the counter and leaned against it, chewing his lip and looking up at the menu like he was an ordinary customer who was trying to decide between an ordinary latte and an ordinary mocha on an ordinary day.
“So you’re alone, huh?” He had a weird little smile on his face.
“Yes,” said Mary.
He was still looking at the menu and smiling the little smile when he said, “Just talked to your mom.”
“My mom?” Mary’s heart dropped to the floor.
“Your mom, that’s right. I went around to your house looking for you. She was just home from work so we got to talking and wouldn’t you know it came out that she knew about something that I didn’t.”
“What’s that?” asked Mary, and her heart was thudding hard against her rib cage. She really, really did not like Josh’s little smile. She wanted it to go away, she wanted him to go away, but she didn’t know how to make that happen.
“About the baby,” said Josh, and when he said baby he hit his fist so hard against the counter that Mary jumped.
She was breathing hard now too; it was like her body had split off from her mind and was doing its own thing.
Josh’s voice got library-quiet and she shrank back from the counter. His eyes didn’t focus on her when he said, “When were you gonna tell me?”
To compensate, she tried to speak more loudly, but her voice wouldn’t go the way she wanted it to. It wouldn’t work at all. She said, “I was, uh—”
“When were you gonna tell me? Huh?” He was no longer quiet. Again the fist slammed down. She remembered that she hadn’t locked up the cash register yet and she made a move toward it, stroking the key in her apron pocket, and Josh followed her around the counter.
Then his voice got soft again and he reached out and touched her shoulder and said, “I can’t believe it, Mary, you and me are having a baby.”
“Josh.”
“But mostly I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me. Big news like that.” He was squeezing her shoulder now, just a little bit at first, and then a little bit more, and then hard enough that it really hurt, and then enough that it really, really hurt. She tried to wiggle out from under his grasp but she couldn’t, he had her too tight, his face was close to hers and she could smell his beery breath. She could see the red vessels in the whites of his eyes.
Then the bell on the door dinged again—Mary still hadn’t turned the sign to the CLOSED side. Please please please she said to herself as she was turning around. Mary wasn’t a religious person and she’d never been taken to church as a child and she didn’t really know how to pray, so imagine her surprise when she saw an angel step through the door.
“Well now, look who it is,” said Josh. “It’s Charlie goddamn Sargent.”
“Hey,” said Charlie, nodding at the two of them. “I just came in looking to see if you had any of those lobster cookies, Mary.”
“No cookies,” said Josh. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “All out. We’re closing. Isn’t that right, Mary? It’s closing time.”
“You okay here, Mary?” asked Charlie, looking back and forth between the two of them. Josh had removed his hand from her shoulder and she reached up and rubbed the spot he’d been squeezing—geez, it hurt. She bet a bruise was forming, a big one.
“She’s okay,” said Josh. “She’s great. We’re discussing some happy news we just got, that’s all.”
Charlie coughed; the cough was obviously manufactured to buy a moment. That seemed suddenly ridiculously thoughtful to Mary, that fake little cough, and she felt her eyes fill. Charlie said, “I didn’t ask you, Josh. I asked Mary here.”
“Closing time, Charlie,” said Josh. “We’re all closed up here for the night.” He smiled, and Mary remembered how she used to think that smile was a sign of Josh’s charm. It seemed like another person who’d fallen for that. Well, it was another person: a younger, more innocent, less pregnant person.
“Thanks for your input, Josh, but I’m not leaving here until I hear from Mary herself. If it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not,” said Josh. He came around from behind the counter and Mary saw that the two men were pretty evenly matched in height. “It’s not all the same to me at all.”
Charlie ignored that. “So I’m just going to ask again: You okay here, Mary?”
Right then it seemed like the world switched to slow motion from the regular speed it had been running on, giving Mary time to think and consider before she answered. Mary looked at Charlie Sargent and saw the gray stubble around his chin and the anchor tat
too on his forearm. She noticed how strong he was; his forearm was thick and muscled and biceps made hills in his upper arms. She saw the way he was looking at her—it was the way she imagined that a good father would look at his teenage daughter when he was trying to help her work out something confusing about the world. The unexpected kindness of that look from a man she barely knew was almost too much to take: here was an almost stranger, a good man, who wasn’t going to leave her alone if she needed him, who was asking if she was all right.
“I’m not sure,” she said finally, and Charlie stepped a little closer to Josh. Mary’s shoulder throbbed, and she touched it, and her head was throbbing too, and there was blood rushing into her ears, and then she said, “I mean, no. No, everything is not okay.”
She heard Josh’s sharp intake of breath. She thought of the lady in the clinic with her list of questions; she thought of the posters on the wall of the clinic’s bathroom. Silence hides violence. She could be one of those women in the blink of an eye, the twist of an arm behind a back. Anyone could. She cleared her throat and said, “Everything is not okay, and I don’t feel safe.”
“Got it,” said Charlie calmly. Mary didn’t meet Josh’s eyes, but she heard that under his breath he said, What the fuck, Mary? “Josh,” Charlie said. “I want you to get the hell out of here.”
Josh said, “Mare?” and she almost wavered then because his little-boy voice was back, the one that made Mary feel like she could take care of him, but then she touched her stomach and thought eleven weeks and palate and hair follicles.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Josh. “Last time I checked, Charlie, you didn’t own this place.”
Mary stared at the anchor tattoo on Charlie’s forearm.
“Doesn’t matter what I own or don’t own,” said Charlie. “Matters what I told you to do.”
“She’s with me,” said Josh. “Motherfucker.”
Josh started toward Charlie then and Mary saw him raise his hand, his fist closed, and she thought, That’s it. He’s going to kill Charlie Sargent and then he’s going to kill me. Weirdly, she even had time to think: How am I going to tell Eliza that her father is dead because of me?
But Charlie was faster. And he punched Josh on the side of the face so hard that Mary heard a crunch and Josh fell back against table three, his elbows hitting the table, his feet sliding out from underneath. Two of the chairs clattered over and Josh struggled to get up. He had one hand on his chin, and Mary’s first stupid thought was to run for ice. Her second thought was that Charlie was leaning over Josh to help him up.
But although he was leaning over him, he wasn’t helping. He was talking to him almost softly, sort of gently, and he was saying, “I want you to get the hell out of this café and after that I want you to get the hell out of this town. We know you been messing with people’s traps, we know all about that, and now that I see how you’re treating Mary here….You can take a day or two to tie up your affairs, or whatever else you need to do, and then I want you to go, and I don’t want you to come back. We don’t ever want to see your face around this harbor again. We don’t need you here and we don’t want you here. You hear me?” Then Charlie stopped and looked at Mary and said, “Unless I made some sort of mistake. Mary?”
Mary touched her stomach and thought, Little fingers, little toes. She said, “No. No mistake.”
Josh had by then pulled himself to his feet and there was a stream of blood coming from his nose and maybe his mouth too but it was hard to tell. He made a noise that sounded almost like a growl and then he stomped his foot—he stomped his foot, like a child!—and he left the café; it was clear to Mary and probably to Charlie that he would have slammed the door if it hadn’t been the kind of quietly self-closing door that didn’t allow itself to be slammed. But he did punch the glass on the way out.
There was a moment after Josh was gone that Mary stared at Charlie and Charlie stared back at Mary and the only sound was the refrigerator and Mary’s breathing and Charlie’s too. Then whatever adrenaline had been shooting through Mary left all at once and she felt weak enough that she had to grip the counter again.
“Now, sit down,” said Charlie. He lowered himself heavily into a chair at table three. His cheeks had gone saggy and he tipped his head forward and closed his eyes.
“Are you okay?” asked Mary.
“Just a little dizzy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “It’ll pass. Sit with me.”
Mary said, “There’s blood on the floor, I have to clean it up.”
“Later.”
“I don’t want it to dry.”
Mary wet one of the bamboo cloths and got down on her hands and knees and wiped up the blood—there was a trail, from table three to the door—and then she crumpled up the cloth and stuffed it into her pocket. This one time she wasn’t going to put it in to be washed. When she was done Charlie pulled out a chair for her at table three and said, “We’ll sit for a minute, and then I’ll see you to your car, and then you can go on home and forget that bastard. If you’re okay with all of that.”
“I’m okay with all of that,” said Mary. She couldn’t meet Charlie Sargent in the eye. She also couldn’t tell him that the guy he’d just sent out of town was the father of the little bunch of coffee beans currently growing inside of her. And then, without even a speck of warning, she was telling him. She didn’t break down; she didn’t apologize or hesitate or dress the fact in some fancy language. She just said, very calmly, “I’m pregnant, and Josh is the father.” Then she kept going: she told him about the paper bag in her closet at home that Josh had put there, and she told him about how she kept hoping her mother would turn into some other kind of mother but never did, and about how she couldn’t imagine living with Vivienne forever, especially with a baby. She even swallowed hard and told him about how her teacher said she was really good at math and could do something with it someday but now, well.
Charlie took all of this in, nodding, and finally he said, “Oh, Mary,” very gravely and gently, and she felt like those two words were an embrace. A long minute passed after that, and Mary realized that she felt better after having said all of that out loud, but because she didn’t know what do with that feeling she said, “Were you really looking for lobster cookies?”
“Yes,” said Charlie. Then, “No. Just went out for some air. But when I saw the lights on and saw Josh in here I figured I’d better take a closer look. The sign on the door said OPEN, so…” That made Mary remember she still hadn’t turned the sign to CLOSED; she rose to do that, and then she went behind the counter and opened a fresh package of lobster cookies—she’d pay the cash register before she left for the night—and put two on a plate and brought them back to the table. Her legs were shaky and her breathing was still a little bit unsteady and she felt the way you do the first day back to school after a week home with the flu. When she bit into her cookie she realized how hungry she was. She hadn’t eaten properly that day at all. Tomorrow: fruits and vegetables, everything that was good for the baby.
Charlie said, “I’d say you’re better off without him. But what would you say?”
What would Mary say? Two days ago, even yesterday, she would have said that she was terrified to be with Josh, but also terrified to be without him. Now something had changed—a subtle shift in the atmosphere when she started imagining a pale yellow nursery, walking with the baby by the wharf. “I’d say yes,” she said. “But I didn’t plan to tell you any of that. I don’t know what happened, I just—I don’t know, it just came out.” She squinted. “Are you going to tell anyone?” She didn’t want Andi and Daphne to know—she didn’t want anyone to know. But now she’d told Eliza Sargent and Charlie Sargent, and Vivienne knew, and Josh knew, and probably Alyssa Michaud had guessed too.
Charlie made a motion like a zipper closing up his lips. “It’s your business, Mary, not mine. I don’t go telling other people’s business. Never have, and I’m not going to start now.”
“Thank you,” whispered Mar
y. Mary’s phone buzzed: a text. Daphne. She’d forgotten she was supposed to let her know when everything was done at the café. The text said ALL CLOSED UP? EVERYTHING OKAY?
Debatable.
Mary put the phone down. She should lock up and go home, but she didn’t really want to. The café felt warm and comfortable and she didn’t want to leave it and go out into the fog of the summer evening, the uncertainty of her house, her mother, her room. So she searched for a way to keep the conversation going. Even with that in mind, she wasn’t sure, later, where she got the courage to say what she said next. Charlie was almost done with his cookie, just the tail was left. She ate hers the other way, leaving the head for the end. She said, “I just told you the biggest secret of my life. Now you have to tell me something, so that we’re even.”
Charlie raised his eyebrows at her, saying nothing.
“Something that nobody else knows about you. It can be small, like your favorite ice-cream flavor. Or it can be big, like—well, I don’t know. Something big.”
“Oh, hey now,” said Charlie. Mary couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or pleased. “That’s one hell of a question. You’ll have to give me a minute on that one.” Mary nibbled on her cookie and waited; she could still hear the little bubbling noises the refrigerator made every so often.
Finally he said, “Okay, Mary, are you ready for this one?”
She nodded.
“Now, you are absolutely not to tell anyone this, ever, okay? You have to promise. I don’t want this getting out, getting around. Town like this. You know how it is.”
“Okay. I promise.” Mary breathed in deeply. She felt like she was holding a whole universe inside her lungs.
Charlie leaned close to Mary like he was going to whisper, although when he spoke he did so at a regular volume. And then he said the most astonishing thing. He said, “That accident I had on the boat, beginning of the summer?”
The Captain's Daughter Page 24