The House on Oyster Creek

by Heidi Jon Schmidt

  Ada smiled to herself, tucking a sheet of tissue neatly in as she folded the shawl. “In the eighteen hundreds, fishermen here brought in millions of pounds of cod every year. Can you imagine? But as the fish dwindled, the more able people found ways to leave. Only the roughest stayed. Replaced by washashores—fishing sounds romantic to them!” She laughed at the thought. “I don’t blame your neighbor for wanting Tim off his beach,” she admitted.

  “You know about the lawsuit.”

  “Skip is the church deacon,” she said.

  “But . . .”

  “We do own to the low-tide mark here,” Ada said quietly. “It’s one of the King’s Laws . . . from the sixteen hundreds. Everyone traveled by sea then, and no one would build a wharf on land they didn’t own.”

  “So no one could go on the beach except people who lived right there?”

  “People didn’t hold beach parties in 1650,” Ada said. “You’re allowed to use the beach for ‘fishing, fowling, or hunting’ . . . which was what they needed it for. Oysters were so plentiful . . . no one would have thought to farm them. Through the Depression, they were almost all we had—I swore I’d never eat another one if I didn’t have to. Now the summer people come and I hear them talking about the oysters. One has a brinier taste; one is more metallic. . . . well, it makes me laugh! I’d take bread and butter any day.”

  “Times have changed.”

  “Yes, they have,” Ada said. “There’s barely a mackerel left in Mackerel Bay . . . in fact, the bay was nearly fished out before I was born. The Portland Gale swept the old wharves off their pilings—there was no reason to rebuild. We had the railroad, then the state highway. No, the laws are about all that’s left of the past now.”

  “And that, oh, my best beloved, is the story of how the oystermen came to carry guns,” Charlotte told Fiona in the same folk-wise voice she used to read Kipling aloud. (Yes, Kipling, with Henry’s clipper ship bookplate still affixed inside the cover.) They all had fishing rods in their trucks now—as long as they could say they were fishing, they wouldn’t be trespassing. Some kept guns instead—for fowling—really to remind everyone who was boss as long as he had a gun in the back of his truck. Fiona had made a thank-you card for Darryl, with cutout snowflakes and pasta shapes smashed onto it in smears of glue, and they ran out to meet him as he drove down to the water.

  His face, when he saw them! He got out of the truck and came up around toward them, looking if they were his family.

  “We wanted to say thank-you for the clams,” Charlotte explained, awkward now that they were standing together.

  “You haven’t said, ‘How beautiful,’ ” Fiona said. “You always say, ‘How beautiful, how beautiful,’ when the sun goes down.”

  “How beautiful,” Charlotte said, laughing, and they all said together, “How beautiful.”

  Fiona handed the card to Darryl. “How beautiful!” he said. “Did you make this yourself?”

  Fiona explained in detail how she had folded and cut the snowflakes; it seemed like she’d talk for as long as Darryl would listen, and he listened a long time, while Charlotte drank him in. His nose was bent as if it had once been broken, there were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, his hair was cut very short but still it was beginning to curl. Charlotte was like a shoplifter, secretly pocketing these details. She lifted Fiona onto her hip so she too could see into his honest eyes.

  “I’m glad to get a card, because you know what? Today’s my birthday. I’m forty-three today.”

  “Mom!” Fiona said, looking, of all things, accusatory, so that Charlotte laughed, thinking she’d say they should have made him a cake or . . .

  “What?”

  “You’re the same age as Darryl! You could have married him!”

  “I . . .” Charlotte said. “I . . .” She couldn’t speak, and the silence stretched on, a soft silence that seemed to envelop them all in a dream. Darryl reached out and tucked an escaped strand of hair behind Fiona’s ear.

  “That would have been so nice,” Charlotte said finally, letting all she felt pour into it. They seemed to have made a pact so secret that they didn’t mention it even to each other, that they would always show their hearts fully to each other, no matter the risk. She had to honor it, and then, because she had a pact with herself to keep Fiona’s world whole and safe—“But I’m already married, silly! And we’d miss Daddy, don’t you think?”

  Fiona turned her sweet, rosy, ringlet-haloed face to her mother, and gazed at her with a cool, sidelong smile that would have seemed more appropriate from a very well-read and sophisticated sixty-year-old man.

  14

  SQUID

  “ ‘ Cupid and Bacchus my saints are, may drink and love still reign, with wine I wash away my cares and then, to cunt again,’ ” said Henry, deeply stirred, gazing at the wine list as if it were his bible. He’d meant to entertain the waiter, who stood frozen, his pencil poised above the pad. Henry assumed all men had this in common, a connoisseur’s enjoyment of wine and women, a pleasure in comparing and contrasting the various vintages and ethnicities, full-bodied or light and sweet, with a slight smoky finish, hints of melon and pear. . . .

  “Did you want the merlot?” the waiter asked in mortification.

  “I guess he hasn’t read Lord Rochester,” Henry said, once the man had fled to the kitchen.

  “Another philistine.” Charlotte shook her head.

  “It’s shocking how little people read,” Henry said. “You look in people’s windows at night and you don’t see a single bookshelf, just a big television.” Charlotte had sworn that if she heard this lament one more time she would buy a forty-foot plasma TV and keep it tuned to the Cartoon Channel twenty-four hours a day.

  “It’s true; print is dead,” she said, running him through with his own sword. The waiter returned with the wine.

  “A devout Catholic, Lord Rochester,” Henry said somberly, trying to get back in the man’s good graces, but once he’d approved the bottle and the man went on to the next table, he added: “. . . on his deathbed,” and began to laugh, silently at first, holding it in until he wheezed and sputtered. “I’ll admit he was a bit spermy earlier on.”

  “To Lord Rochester,” Charlotte said. It was their wedding anniversary, though Henry didn’t remember and she had no intention of bringing it up. It was also the day after Columbus Day weekend, the last gasp of Wellfleet’s tourist season, so they’d come out for half-price day at the Wharf Grill. The tide was rising under the floorboards: The grill had once been a fish shed. It was dark and low, with nets and buoys hanging in the corners and small-paned windows looking onto the harbor. There was a stack of plywood by the entranceway—tomorrow the place would be shuttered for winter, but tonight everything was half-price and everyone in town was here. The paint man from the hardware store was at the next table with the lady from the post office. She, a heavy woman with a harsh face and two inches of straight gray hair, still looked almost pretty in the candlelight, and seeing Charlotte, she broke into a broad smile. “Twin lobstah, ten ninety-nine!” she said, and Charlotte lifted a glass, and would have hugged her, she was so grateful to be included, to have a little part in the life of the town.

  Charlotte and Henry were seated beside the window, a dark mirror now that the sun was down. In it Charlotte could see Ada come in, with a man who might be one of Henry’s ancestors, an ancient mariner. Half the faces in town had that sharp, weathered, British look. Portuguese fisherman had filtered in, and French Canadians (being French Canadian herself, Charlotte was deeply suspicious of French Canadians) and otherwise most seemed to be Irish, ruddy and welcoming.

  “Twin lobster,” Henry said, watching the post office lady tie on her bib. “How Americans eat!”

  “They’re followers of Lord Rochester,” Charlotte said, without turning from the window. Alone in the opposite corner, Orson was sitting with a glass of cognac and an open copy of Cities of the Plain, which he was using as a sort of duck blind from which to su
rvey the room. Henry tried another tack.

  “I don’t ever remember an October as warm as this,” he said.

  “You haven’t been here for twenty years.”

  He looked as if he’d been bitten by a shrew.

  “I just can’t talk about global warming right now,” she said.

  “I wasn’t talking about global warming. I was saying we’ve been having some nice weather.”

  Ugh, this was probably true. Henry tried again, a smile brewing up amidst the fierce lines of his face. “Fiona seems to like this preschool.”

  Six weeks she’d been in preschool and he had managed this deduction. Excellent. Was she growing needlelike teeth like a shrew? Probably. She pressed her forehead to the window so she could see out to the fishing boats moored at the end of the pier.

  “Nah, anywhere’s fine.” Darryl’s voice. Charlotte knew it by the wave of feeling that washed through her. She found his reflection in the window—his and his date’s. She started to study the menu as if she were supposed to memorize it.

  Henry, however, jumped to his feet, becoming loud and goodhumored, his way with men. “Darryl! How’re ya doing?”

  “Very well,” Darryl responded, in the same hearty tone. “And yourself?”

  “Good. Or as good as a man can be under the circumstances . . .”

  “Circumstances?”

  “The White House?” Henry said.

  “Oh, him,” Darryl said with a sigh. Then, quickly—“This is Nikki. Her brother’s in the service.”

  Nikki. Tall, and thin in a wiry, masculine way, with long, loose sun-blond hair and big expressionless eyes softly blinking. A worker-mermaid.

  “You of all people must be tormented,” Henry said to her. “Billions a day, thousands dead, by presidential inanition. Impeachment would be a start, but why not prosecution?” Henry would never insult a person by assuming he or she might vote Republican. He didn’t sit with the other parents in Mrs. Carroll’s parking lot. He didn’t imagine there were people who, if they didn’t see themselves as heroes fighting for the American way, would have to see themselves as failures. He’d never noticed they always had FOX News playing on the SixMart TV.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Nikki said, looking past him.

  “Nikki works for Pembroke and Sons, you know, the crane guys?” Darryl said. “So I know her from work.” He seemed to be trying to explain himself to Charlotte, as if he’d bumped into his wife when he was out with his mistress. “We couldn’t resist half-price night.”

  “No, neither could we,” she said. “It wouldn’t be economical not to eat out on half-price night.” They stood there in magnetic paralysis a minute longer before she managed to speak. “You’d better sit down and order. I was going to get the calamari but look, he just crossed it off the blackboard; they’re already out.”

  “My God, he’s handsome,” Henry said once they left. “His father and I used to drink together—that was before the Mermaid, back in the Mooncusser days. Amos Stead was a good man, and oh, the things he knew! He could tell you the story of every ship that was ever wrecked on the back shore. He’d started college, but Marlene fell pregnant and he had to come home and go to work fishing. It was a grim day when Amos Stead died. I saw old Bart Speck coming down the street like a horse pulling a hobble, and my heart dropped to my feet.

  “But what a son,” he continued, with thunderous approbation. “A fine specimen of American manhood.”

  Charlotte looked out the window for fear she was blushing, and seemed to see a small ghost ascending—a very large moth, maybe.

  “He’s the kind of man we need in Iraq,” Henry said stoutly.

  Charlotte gasped. “I thought you were against the war!”

  “If we’re there, we might as well win.”

  It was one of those conversations—all conversations—driven entirely by intuition. Henry was no less sensitive than his wife but, having been born into a family that would have been appalled to see their son peering into the hearts and minds of others, had covered himself with layer after hard cerebral layer: A critic was born. A part of him recognized every nuance of Charlotte’s feeling, and another part recoiled from such knowledge, preferring to ship any threats directly to Fallujah.

  “They’re calling up the National Guard,” he said, with a torturer’s little smile.

  “Henry!”

  “Write your representative.” He shrugged.

  Skip and Betsy Godwin had just come in, looking flush with Jeb Narville’s money, in command and therefore out of place; you didn’t really belong here until life had beaten you down a little.

  “We’ve got to get Fiona over for a playdate soon!” Betsy said as they passed, and Skip told her to go ahead and order their drinks; he wanted to have a word with Henry.

  “I’ve been meaning to get over and see you,” he said. “You grew up here, Henry; you know what we’re dealing with, out on the flats.”

  He was appealing to the deepest arrogance—the pride of truly belonging to the town. The essential thing in Wellfleet was how long you’d lived here, how many generations your family held on. You might have dazzled the New York art world, or won the Tour de France, but alas, these achievements were the positive proof you’d come from away, and the grocery clerk whose brother went down on the Mary Belle in 1973 was your superior. Skip had guessed that the way to attract people to his cause was to appeal to this sense of entitlement-by-history, but if he’d looked a little closer at Henry, who was wearing a sweatshirt that had washed up on the beach the other morning, he might have thought again.

  “I came summers,” Henry said. “Stead, Rivette, Cloutier, those are the old names here.” Skip stiffened; these were names from the police blotter. Another . . . ghost? . . . flew up outside the window. Otherwise Charlotte could see only the quiet harbor with the lighted masts of summer’s last sailboats swaying.

  “They think they own this town,” Skip said. “ ‘By the waters’ means ‘to the mean low tide.’ That’s the law.”

  “The King’s Law,” Henry said. “We’re still living by the King’s Law, in the twenty-first century? They’ve been working that land for generations,” he said. “And they’re not doing anything to trouble the rest of us.”

  “You’re a Tradescome, from Tradescome Point. If you don’t defend your rights, next thing you know you’ll have lost them.”

  “Tradescome Point, beside Oyster Creek.The oysters make it the place it is.”

  Charlotte saw Darryl glance toward her; she hated for him to see her talking to Skip and concentrated all her attention out the window, so he’d see she wasn’t going along. Two more apparitions flicked up from the water.

  “Do we have giant moths out here?” she asked, and, having caught Skip’s attention, took a deep breath and proceeded. “Skip, why didn’t you mention any of this when you drew up the subdivision documents?”

  “Didn’t come up,” he said. “Why should it? But now there’s a case; I took it. It’s purely a business matter.”

  “We’re not joining the suit, Skip,” Henry said, with that steely decency that was the first thing she’d loved in him. He was not interested in joining the upper class in their attempt to pull the shore out from under the lower.

  “You’ll be the only ones,” Skip replied. “I’ve talked to nearly every upland owner on Try Point—they’re delighted. They’ve had it up to here with these guys.”

  Their oysters were served. “Another round?” the waiter asked.

  “Please.”

  “Think about it,” Skip said, leaving.

  “ ‘Purely a business matter,’ ” Charlotte mocked. “I’ll never understand how people can say that, as if you’re supposed to assume that business and ethics never cross paths at all.”

  “Calmness, calmness. This too will pass,” said Henry, who, having once been a Marxist, was in a position to know. “Have an oyster. They transcend description.”

  Skip had joined Ada and her friend across the r
oom, and they were listening intently.

  “Henry, don’t you want to say hi to Ada?”

  “Hi?” he said, dubious.

  “Well, you know, ‘Good day, Miss Town,’ or whatever Tradescomes say.”

  “She’s talking to Skip. And Preston Withers.”

  “Maybe later, after Skip’s done. She’s kind of the last thread between you and your family, and we’ve lived here for months now without a visit.”

  “It’s unconscionable,” he said, with an expression of vile loathing such as he felt only toward himself. “But not here, not now.”

  “That’s Preston Withers? He looks a little like you.” The hard squint, the outthrust jaw: They’d have been clergymen in an earlier generation.

  Henry gave a little snarl at this idea, and Charlotte shuddered.

  “Are you getting a draft? Do you want my sweater?”

  “No, no, thanks, honey, I’m fine.”

  “Aaahh, it was one of those inner drafts, the breath of the grave,” he said, laughing. “I know them well.”

  Orson had paid his tab, stopped by Darryl’s table to say hello, and arrived beside them.

  “Mr. Tradescome!” he said.

  “Captain!” Henry said, perhaps because Orson was wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap, or because he was three sheets to the wind. “Join us! Please sit down!”

  He motioned to the waiter, who seemed not to see him.

  “He’s been quoting Lord Rochester. The waiter’s afraid of him,” Charlotte explained.

  Orson looked over his shoulder and caught the man’s eye, making an undulant cognac-sniffing motion—apparently a universal signal, as the waiter held up a finger and went to the bar.

  “Lord Rochester, an excellent fellow,” Orson said. “A man truly open to all the pleasures of the world. Your husband is an uncommonly learned man, my dear, but then I’m sure you know that. I’ll never forget reading Dread and the Common Man. You were prescient, Henry; it’s awful to realize how far you saw.”

  Henry looked mortally pained; praise appalled him, but Orson was just warming up.