The Captain's Daughter

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  Mary said hello, and then she crouched down to pet William. She had always wanted a dog, but Vivienne wouldn’t allow it; she was fake-allergic.

  “I’m glad I ran into you, Mary. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “You have?”

  “I have. I’ve been wondering what you’re doing with yourself.” Mary waited, figuring that Ms. Berry would go on. She did. “You have such a good math head on your shoulders. I was disappointed to learn that you hadn’t applied to Orono.”

  “Oh,” said Mary. The University of Maine, Orono campus. “Well. Things got complicated.”

  Ms. Berry had a broad face that was more tan now than it had been during the school year. When she smiled, you could see that one of her bottom teeth crossed a little bit over another one. Her hair was frizzy—frizzier probably because of the heat. She had kind watery blue eyes and a soft voice. Beside her, William whined gently, and she held two fingers up to him, and he quieted immediately.

  “Of course, it’s fine to take some time off—in fact, I believe it’s sort of trendy these days—but too much time off and you might forget how to think.” She looked shrewdly at Mary, and Mary got the feeling that Ms. Berry was looking through her, all the way into the center of her uterus.

  “Right,” said Mary.

  “My advice is to keep up with your studies, even informally. There are math sites all over the internet that can keep you fresh. Send me an email, why don’t you, and I’ll send you back a list.”

  “Okay,” said Mary. “Sure, okay, I will.” She patted William one last time.

  ———

  Math. Here was the math Mary had recently done. Google told her that the cost of raising a child was approximately $245,340 from birth until age eighteen. Mary made twelve dollars an hour at The Cup, in cash, which was very generous, considering that minimum wage was $7.50. Still, she’d have to work twenty thousand four hundred and forty-five hours in the next eighteen years to make that much, which was one thousand one hundred and thirty-five hours per year, which was twenty-one and eight-tenths hours per week. And that was just to pay for the baby, not for Mary herself, not for somebody to watch the baby while she made the money to pay for the baby. If she ever wanted to live anywhere but her mother’s house (and of course she did) she’d have to pay for that too. Then she had looked up the cost of child care, which ranged between eight and twenty dollars per hour for an infant.

  Mary was a whiz at math, always had been, but these numbers just didn’t add up.

  ———

  Almost twelve weeks. At twelve weeks the baby would be the size of a lime; soon, the baby would feel it if she poked her own tummy, very gently.

  When Mary opened the door to A Cut Above she didn’t see Vivienne. Two of Vivienne’s coworkers, Megan and Chelsea, were huddled over the computer. There was a girl she didn’t know sweeping. In another chair, in Vivienne’s station, a woman with foil-wrapped hair sat looking down at a celebrity magazine.

  “Giiiiiirl!” said Chelsea. “Your mom didn’t tell us you were coming by!”

  Mary shrugged. “I didn’t tell her.”

  Megan slid around from behind the counter and hugged Mary. When she was done hugging she lifted a lock of her hair and said, “I knew it! You came in to try the balayage, didn’t you?” Balayage was some sort of special highlights Vivienne was always going on about. “Finally. I’ve been waiting for you to say the word. Let me do it, okay? You have to let me do it.”

  Chelsea was looking at Mary and squinting. “You should totally try it, Mary, you’ll love it.”

  “Totally,” said Megan. “Totally. A little golden brown right through here…” She reached out and stroked Mary’s hair. “You’ll think it’s going to darken you but I’m not even kidding, it will lighten you right up—”

  “I’m not here to get my hair done,” said Mary, as kindly as she could.

  “Oh,” said Chelsea.

  “Oh,” said Megan. “Okay.” They both looked completely crestfallen, but in short order they went back to what they had been doing on the computer, going over the next day’s appointments. At that point the woman with the foil highlights turned around and Mary saw that it was Vivienne’s friend Sam. At the same time Mary recognized Sam, Sam recognized Mary.

  “Mary!” said Sam with genuine enthusiasm. Sam was the only one of her mother’s friends Mary really liked talking to. Sam and Vivienne had been inseparable in high school, and since then Sam had gone about things the expected, acceptable way—she’d waited to get married until she was twenty-seven, and she’d gotten pregnant after, and now she had an adorable five-year-old boy named Stephen and a two-year-old girl named Penelope, who was called Penny for short. Sam worked as an intensive care nurse at Maine Coast Memorial and part-time as a home health aide for the elderly. Before Mary started at The Cup she had sometimes babysat for Stephen and Penny.

  “Your mom’s in the back,” Sam said. “Sorting out orders or something.” Mary nodded. Ordering the products and tracking the sales were part of Vivienne’s job, her least favorite part. “She’s been after me forever to do something with my hair, so here I am,” said Sam.

  “You too?”

  “Yup.” Sam frowned in the mirror. “I told her I don’t have time for any upkeep, so that’s what I’m worried about.”

  Sam indicated that Mary should sit in the chair next to her, and she closed the magazine and leaned forward to put it on the table that held Vivienne’s combs and scissors and hair straightener and curling wand and all the mysterious bottles and potions that helped Vivienne work her magic. When she was younger, Mary used to love to come in and pretend to use the products and twirl around on the chairs. Now, though, she didn’t feel like twirling or using the products. She just felt like sitting.

  “How’s Penny?” asked Mary, once she was settled. “How’s Stephen?”

  Sam had asked Mary to babysit for Stephen and Penny twice early in the summer, but once she was working and the second time she had plans with Josh. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t always loved babysitting. There was that time, for example, when Penny, who was supposed to be napping, screamed in her crib for twenty-five solid minutes while Stephen made a tic-tac-toe board in red crayon on the kitchen floor and Mary ran between the two of them, not sure who to tend to first. Sam had said not to worry if Penny had trouble settling down for her nap, but this seemed beyond having trouble settling down.

  Mary had been at her wit’s end, but when Sam got home from work she had simply popped Penny’s pacifier back in her mouth (Mary had tried that, but Penny had spit it heartily out each time) and had Stephen sit for two minutes in a straight-backed kitchen chair while she sprayed cleaner on the kitchen floor. The crayon had come right off, and Stephen had accepted his punishment uncomplainingly, even stoically. Sam hadn’t even seemed aggravated with Mary for letting things get into such a state.

  How did mothers know these things? How did they do it? How was Mary going to be able to do it?

  Sam used her forefinger to make the universal symbol for nutso. “It’s the usual at my house,” she said. Sam’s husband worked construction. They lived in a pretty little house that was within walking distance to downtown Ellsworth, and Sam even found time to make gourmet cupcakes that she sold to a bakery on Main Street. Sam was the opposite of Vivienne in almost every way. Sometimes Mary wondered how it was that they were still friends. (“Habit,” Vivienne had said once when Mary asked.)

  “How’s the hospital?”

  Under the black robe that the customers at A Cut Above put on while they got their hair cut and colored it looked like Sam was still wearing her navy-blue scrubs. She was definitely wearing her nursing clogs, which were also navy blue but had lighter blue flowers all over them. Sam always told Mary she’d make a good nurse. She was calm in a crisis, Sam said, with a good head on her shoulders. Of course, that was before that day with the crayons and the crying.

  “Not the best day,” said Sam. “We lost a patie
nt.” Sam had little purple half-moons under her eyes, and her skin looked pale.

  “Oh! I’m sorry,” said Mary. She couldn’t imagine what that was like, being around sickness and death all the time. She’d never seen a dead person before; she’d definitely never seen anyone die. She thought Sam was wrong: she’d make a terrible nurse.

  “That’s okay,” said Sam. “She was old, and really frail. And then pneumonia got her.” She shrugged. “She was ready. Just yesterday, she told me she was ready. Her kids knew she was ready. Her husband’s been gone for three and a half years. If you ask me, the body hangs on way past the point it should sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” said Mary.

  “It always takes something out of you, though, you know. Watching a life end.”

  Mary was quiet; she didn’t know what to say to that, but she tried to look sympathetic and understanding.

  “I tell my husband all the time that when it’s my turn to go he’d better slip me something nice and peaceful and sit there with me. Not that that’s legal in Maine, not even for doctors to do it, but I could tell you stories and stories about how it should be. Man, I could tell you stories.” She rubbed her eyes and studied herself in the mirror and said, “Boy, who’s a downer today? I’m sorry, Mare. I’ll try and shake it.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Mary. “I don’t mind.” She thought about the conversation with Charlie in The Cup, the night he’d saved her from Josh, about the accident on his boat not being an accident at all. She thought about the way he’d told her, his fingers tapping on the table in a sort of rhythm. Not panicked. In fact, he’d been calm, like he was telling a story about someone else, someone he didn’t know very well. He’d apologized to her too, just as Sam had now, and Mary had said the same thing to him: I don’t mind. She didn’t; she hadn’t. She thought of it as a sort of honor.

  Now, in the salon, she picked up the magazine and flipped through it. There was a whole section on summer reads. The photo showed a few books with beachy covers and women staring out into perfect blue-green oceans. Unrealistic, if you lived in Maine, where the water was too cold to swim in and most of the beaches were rocky and uninviting. People came from forever away to summer here anyway. They lapped up the lobster meat and the blueberries and the glimpses of the ocean through the native firs.

  Sam said, “I wonder if these highlights are going to make me look as good as nine hours of straight sleep would.” She pulled the skin under her eyes down with two fingers and made a face. Then she turned to Mary and said, “So, listen. Your mom told me, about you.” She looked significantly toward Mary’s stomach.

  Inside, Mary fumed. The news wasn’t Vivienne’s to tell. Mary stared hard at the counter with the hairbrushes and the scissors.

  “You okay, kid?” Sam’s voice sounded the way it did when Penny had a fever and Sam was trying to get her to take some Tylenol. Mary felt like Sam was stroking her forehead with her voice.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  Sam leaned toward her and lowered her voice. “You sure you’re doing things the way you want to? Anyone pressure you to make choices that weren’t your own?”

  “Nobody’s pressuring me,” said Mary. “I’m sure.”

  “And the father—?”

  “Gone,” said Mary. “Left town.” Mary had heard that Josh had moved out without paying July’s rent, which he was late on anyway. He’d packed up most of his belongings—he’d taken the flat-screen TV, his landlord had said—and he’d disappeared. His boat was gone from the harbor, and his buoys were nowhere to be seen.

  “That’s what I thought.” Sam nodded firmly. “That’s what Vivienne said. And that’s—what, a good thing? A bad thing?”

  “A good thing,” repeated Mary. She didn’t tell Sam anything else. She didn’t tell her that sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, startled by an image of Josh with his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t tell Sam that sometimes she thought about what might have happened if Charlie Sargent hadn’t come by at just the right time, and she didn’t tell Sam about the posters in the clinic that showed the pregnant woman with the bruises on her arms. She didn’t tell Sam about the brown paper bag in her closet that Josh had never come back for, and her middle-of-the-night fear that Josh would come looking for her, looking for the baby, looking for the paper bag, and that there’d be nobody around to help her.

  Well, she’d do whatever it took. Whatever that might be. She was capable of things people didn’t even realize. She was capable of a lot.

  Sam said, “Mary?” and Mary had the feeling that Sam was going to get into things a little deeper, that she had real questions for Mary, but then Vivienne came out and said, “Hey, look who’s here!” She was wiping her hands on the apron she wore for hair coloring, and she was sucking on a mint. “Come here, baby girl. Did you finally come in to try some of that balayage?”

  Mary sighed. “I don’t need balayage, Mom.”

  “Then what do you need?” Vivienne peered at Mary’s face. “Brow wax? Just a little off the top of the left one—”

  “No.”

  Then the rage and hurt and resentment and—yes!—the fear bubbled to the surface, and while what Mary said next surprised her, it also made her feel good, and satisfied, and self-righteous. She said, “I need a mom.”

  All eyes were on Vivienne and Mary: Sam’s and Megan’s and Chelsea’s.

  Mary felt like something had loosened inside of her, and words came out all in a rush. “I’m all alone with this! I don’t have any help and I don’t have any money and I’m scared to death and I just want you to help me. I don’t want you to wax my eyebrows or cut my hair or my nails, I just want you to be a mom, and I just want someone to tell me everything is going to be okay even if it’s not. I need to hear everything is going to be okay. Okay? I just need a mom.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mary, don’t be so dramatic.” Vivienne’s eyes were flashing. “You have a mom. You have a mom right here. I’m sorry if I’m a shitty mom, but I’m the one you got stuck with. And guess what? I wish I could promise you everything is going to be okay, but I can’t, because I may be a lot of things but I’m not a liar. And being a single mom is no picnic. I should know.”

  Suddenly the silence in the shop was so aggressive that you could have heard a bobby pin drop.

  Later that night, when Vivienne got home, long after Mary did, she knocked on Mary’s bedroom door. Mary didn’t answer, pretending to be asleep. When she opened the door—Mary would have locked it, but the lock had been broken forever and then some—Mary lay very still. She could feel Vivienne standing in the doorway for a long, long time, and then Mary heard her whisper, I’m sorry, Mare, and she stood there even after that, but Mary didn’t move, because she was sad and she was mad and she was scared and one stupid sorry wasn’t enough.

  She willed Vivienne to leave, but instead Vivienne sat on the edge of the bed and she brushed Mary’s hair back from her forehead. Mary could tell Vivienne had been drinking because she could smell some kind of sweet liquor on her breath and when she started talking her words were a little slurry. She said, “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I wanted to do better. I wish I had done better. I never wanted to be all alone doing this, never. It’s hard, honey, it’s really, really hard. It’s not what I wanted for you, that’s all. It’s not what I ever wanted for you.”

  Then she started to cry softly, and a tear landed right on Mary’s cheek and Mary had to try really hard not to wipe it away. She fought the urge, and she fought it some more, until finally she felt Vivienne’s weight shift off the bed and she heard the door open and then close again.

  The next morning, at home, Mary lay on her bed and touched her stomach. If the baby could feel a gentle poke, then couldn’t it feel—ugh. She couldn’t let herself finish the thought. Thirteen weeks and six days, that was the deadline.

  Eliza had done it, and look her now, look at her now.

  She called the number in
Bangor. She wrote the date and the time on the wall calendar in her room. August 3rd, ten o’clock in the morning. She’d be eighteen that day; she wouldn’t need any forms, she wouldn’t need anyone’s permission. But she’d have to get a ride. She’d have to take the day off from work.

  36

  LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE

  Eliza

  It was only once they were talking to the ER doc, a middle-aged Korean woman with long, tapered fingers and a calm, kind manner and a name tag that read DR. KWANG that Charlie mentioned the odd, not unpleasant, déjà-vu-like feeling that he’d experienced right before he’d fallen from the bed. Not quite a smell, but almost; not a memory, but sort of.

  “An aura,” said Eliza and Dr. Kwang at the same time, and Dr. Kwang explained to Charlie, “An aura sometimes precedes a seizure, and seizures appear in approximately sixty percent of patients with occipital glioblastoma multiforme.” When Charlie looked at Dr. Kwang blankly Eliza said, “That’s what your tumor is called, remember, Dad?”

  “Fancy name for a tumor,” said Charlie.

  Dr. Kwang looked at Charlie’s chart and frowned, and then she looked at Eliza, and then Eliza asked if she could speak with her privately for a moment, and in the hallway Eliza told her everything, quickly, efficiently, the way she’d learned to speak back in med school. Dr. Kwang’s expression was inscrutable; she nodded, and they went back into the room, where Charlie was waiting.

  Dr. Kwang cleared her throat and met Charlie’s eyes directly and said, “You understand, Mr. Sargent, that without treatment your condition will continue to deteriorate, most likely rapidly. I’ll write you a prescription for antiseizure medication, but that won’t have any effect on the growth of the tumor itself.”