The House on Oyster Creek

by Heidi Jon Schmidt

  “Mrs. Tradescome,” Carrie said—sneered.

  “I . . .” Charlotte said to Darryl, who was last out the door, his face unreadable . . . or no, unwelcoming. “I . . . I came about the oysters.”

  “What?”

  “You were going to sell me some oysters?” she said, lying by impulse. Business between them wasn’t as suspicious as friendship.

  “At this time of year?” He squinted, scratching under his chin, trying to figure it out. He seemed nothing like the man who had whispered his secrets into her hair.

  An old white van came jouncing up the road and the driver jumped out almost before it had stopped. Desiree, Carrie’s daughter, ran past them carrying a fishbowl tight against her pregnant belly. “It spilled when I stopped at the light,” she said, leaping up the front steps into the house. “How long can a fish live out of water?”

  “You can’t just run tap water over a fish, can you?” Charlotte asked, but no one answered.

  “Let’s go across the way to my place,” Darryl said carefully. “I do have a barrel of oysters out back. I’d be happy to sell you some. How’d you find me?” This he said loudly, to show everyone he hadn’t given her his address. She looked at him, questioning, and his face warned her of something, so she kept quiet, kept a distance behind him as they crossed back to his place.

  “They know,” he said, as soon as they were inside.

  “What do you mean, they know? Know what?”

  “About us,” he said, pulling her into the living area to stand in the corner between the windows so no one would see her. The curtains were stapled to the window frames; the walls were one board thick. For one week in the summer, it would have been sweet. After that the ceilings would seem lower, the rooms darker every day, and when you swatted a fly and the whole place shook, or the shower pipe froze because it was right against the outer wall so the heat from the woodstove couldn’t compete with the icy air outside . . . you’d be reminded every day that you lived here because you didn’t have anyplace else to go.

  “Well, could they tell me? I mean, is there an us?”

  Darryl had backed against the far wall, to stay safe from physical magnetism.

  “Carrie saw us the other night.”

  “What other night?”

  “At the SixMart. Outside the SixMart? She drove by . . . and now they all know.”

  “But . . . we barely know it ourselves.”

  True, but they were living it; Carrie had only been driving by. In the pool of light under the Gas sign, she had seen something so ordinary as to be perfectly recognizable—an unreasoning kiss, the kind that happens in a gas station parking lot because it has nowhere else to go. It would have caught Carrie’s eye in any case. Wellfleet was a small town; it worked like a novel—when Jake had tea instead of coffee at the SixMart one morning, word had gotten around pretty quickly that he was seeing the British woman who’d rented the house on the end of Try Point, hoping to recover from her broken marriage. How else would tea even cross his mind? The speculation had, as usual, been true.

  “It makes good gossip,” Darryl said.

  Charlotte’s heart sank to think how true this was. When Carrie was young, women from out of town were spoken of as “New York whores,” as casually as they were called washashores now. Carrie had never been to New York. And Darryl—well, he’d gotten off-cape, all right. All the way to Hollywood, with the result that he had his detox at Betty Ford, while Tim got his in the Barnstable County jail.

  “We’re innocent?” she tried. Darryl shot her a fond, skeptical smile.

  “We are!” she insisted. “We can’t help what we feel, and we can hardly be accused of doing anything.”

  He pulled the curtain over the couch back and checked out the window to be sure no one was looking—not the gesture of an innocent man.

  “We were both wearing down jackets!” Charlotte protested. “It was, like, us and twelve geese! That is innocence. Either innocence or, you know, bestiality.” Talking steadied her; she wasn’t sure she could stop.

  He laughed. “You’d make a good lawyer,” he said, shaking his head. “Everyone is talking about it. Rob Welch says, ‘You’ve got something going with Charlotte Tradescome, eh?’ ”

  “Rob Welch is the cop whose ear got bitten off?”

  “Well, not all the way off.”

  “Oh, that’s okay then . . .”

  “Of course, I told him I had no idea what he was talking about,” Darryl said, righteously. “I mean, I suppose he could have meant something else . . .” he said.

  “Like what, that we’ve got a money- laundering business together?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “I don’t care if they do know,” she protested. “We like each other more than we’re supposed to. I’m not going to feel guilty about it.”

  “Feelings aren’t facts,” Darryl said. He was wearing his canvas jacket, and as he spoke he reached into the pockets and turned them out in a gesture so eloquent it was hard to believe it was unconscious. He couldn’t afford her. “I learned that in rehab. . . . I mean, it’s not like we’re . . . adulterers, or anything. It’s just a feeling.”

  An AA platitude; it cut her heart. To reckon with feeling, awkward and foolish as such reckoning would always be . . . to work to be honest and good and aware of your own naked humanness . . . and not have a single shred of Yeats to cover yourself . . .

  “You’re an angel . . .” she said, reaching toward him.

  He flinched back. “Everything’s against us.”

  “What do you mean?” She spoke quietly; his frustration seemed at the point of exploding.

  “I wiped out my clams,” he said. “That I’ve been growing two years . . . the day we went out, in the fog, we . . . I . . . left the net out there and it froze and tore up the whole claim.”

  “Oh.”

  “A mistake I wouldn’t have made if I’d been paying attention and not screwing around with you.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, stoic. “But the clams are gone and they’re half my crop. It’s just . . . it’s like the clearest sign.”

  “The Narvilles won the suit,” she blurted. “Speaking of bad signs.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Andrea called. She’s got a little security camera focused on the beach. She wanted me to keep Fiona off her land.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I couldn’t think something like that up.”

  He smiled. They were on the same side again and both relaxed, so that all the natural affection came back into their hearts, and their faces. “Could you move your claim so it’s in front of our place?” she asked.

  “That’s where Westie and Jake are. . . .” That’s right, she was really the mistress of the big house now, in charge of their fates—they’d be coming to hate her, if they didn’t already.

  “There’s some space on the south side of Try Point. Nobody’s been using it, probably because it’s a lousy spot . . . but I think some of us can get grants over there.”

  “Won’t it be the same problem eventually?”

  His shoulders dropped. “I can’t worry about ‘eventually,’ ” he said. “So, why’d you come over?”

  “I . . . I had an epiphany. You know, where a truth just pops into your mind?”

  “I did go to college.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. People assume I’m stupid all the time.”

  “God damn it,” she said. “I thought I should tell you what Andrea said. And . . .” There was nothing to lose; she blurted the truth. “Actually, I came over to throw myself at you. Because I like stupid guys.”

  He squinted at her as if he thought she might mean it.

  “Never mind,” she said. Everything was off-key, out of sync, but she pushed on. She’d gone too far not to.

  “I had a moment yesterday, while the sun was setting and Fiona was playing on the iceb
ergs . . . or I guess I should say trespassing on private property . . . Oh, you know, the bay was that soft summer blue, and the air was full of hope, and I thought, We can’t just let all this feeling go; we’ve got to get up our courage and take this chance with each other.” She was telling it as a story because that was the only way she could keep a little distance. She didn’t dare feel it; she was already dizzy and off balance and she wanted to go home. “Because we’ve been our real selves with each other, and that . . . it’s kind of rare. So it seemed wrong to pass it by.”

  “I wouldn’t know what’s rare,” he said bitterly. “I missed fifteen fucking years.”

  “I missed them too,” she admitted. Safely married, as he’d been safely high. “Shouldn’t we be brave enough to at least see where the road might take us?”

  “Let me tell you about courage,” he said, with an edge of fury that struck a spark in her.

  “No, let me tell you. Do you think I’ve never done anything brave? Every damn step I took after my mother died . . . well, it was like a space walk, that’s what. And grad school, New York, getting married, how’s that for courage? Having Fiona? While you were sticking a needle in your arm?”

  She heard herself fighting with him the way she used to fight with Henry, for some reason she barely understood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’ve been brave, really brave. I just . . . I want us to talk all day and all night—get to know each other.”

  They stayed in their corners, looking across at each other.

  “Actually,” she admitted, “by talk, I guess I meant kiss.”

  There was a kind of fluttering, as when a bird is startled out of its nest, and they rushed together. His hand was so sharp in the small of her back that instinct swept over, and everything was as clear and natural as could be. They were lost in the kiss until finally they had to breathe. The air was full of reason and caution and doubt.

  “Listen,” he said. “We’ll talk. Tomorrow or . . . whenever. But we can’t talk here.”

  “Why? Why? Has no one in the Driftwood Cabins ever had a love affair? Are you, like . . . Shakers?”

  “This is an adventure for you,” he said, not unkindly. “You’re like . . . a tourist here. In my life. Here, take some oysters.” He made a motion for her to stay still and went out the kitchen door to the back stoop, where there was a rubber trash can filled with oysters, and began to fill a paper bag with them, working so fast you’d have thought there was a train bearing down on him. She stood at the sink, watching him out the window—there were years of grease absorbed in the ruffled kitchen curtains, a tide chart on the wall, and a copy of the Big Book, the AA bible, on the table. An old afghan covered the couch; the radio had a wire hanger for an antenna.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting the bag into her hands.

  The cottage was at the back of the land, pushed up against the woods, where the late sunlight angled through the trees. Three glossy black crows dropped from a high branch, flapping to slow their descent.

  “You’ve got a nice spot,” she said. “It’s pretty here.”

  “That’s National Seashore back there. There’s a blackberry patch must be half an acre. Good mushrooming in there too . . . boletus mushrooms and even chanterelles. And the asparagus just keeps coming up—in another month or so I’ll be eating right out of the front yard.”

  He seemed proud, suddenly, of what he had to offer, and his face, which had been shuttered a minute ago, glowed. It felt certain, as natural as a leaf unfolding, that they would walk into each other’s arms and make a true beginning together.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, barely audible. “I can’t take the chance.”

  He peeked out through the curtain again, like a fugitive. A taboo had been broken, a loyalty betrayed . . . not hers, but his. If he could have answered with a nasty laugh, saying yeah, he had something going with Charlotte Tradescome—if he’d been a creep, that would have been fine. The real feeling . . . the man and woman each with half a life’s mistakes behind them, who had found each other like two children, without knowing anything except what they could see in each other’s eyes . . . that he was ashamed to admit to. If Tim and the others knew he was so fragile as that, they’d never let him live that down. The way Henry’s schoolmates had laughed at his hopeless hand.

  “Go,” Darryl said, and she went, down his steps, feeling as if there were a spotlight on her.

  “That’s eight dollars,” he called after her. For show, of course, but her cheeks burned.

  “I’ll send you a check,” she called over her shoulder as if it were the worst insult she knew. And drove away, home to the house with the tall windows looking out on the bay.

  26

  A CRIME

  He went straight out to the truck. He’d intended to use the last hour of light to build gear in preparation for setting the oysters out, and that was what he was determined to do. The work might be pointless but it was repetitive, anesthetic. He had a roll of the plastic-coated wire mesh—three hundred dollars’ worth. He would cut it into three-foot lengths, fold each one, and crimp the edges tight together so it became a bag for the quarter-size, year-old animals. He’d made three when he saw the cop car coming down the road. Somehow he knew it was coming for him, though he hadn’t, as far as he knew, done anything wrong. Not in the last three years, anyway. What went before, though . . . any of it could have come back to bite him, and his first instinct was to take off into the woods, but he steeled himself. He turned to face the cruiser as it pulled in behind the truck. It was driven by Rob Welch, of course—he was the only year-round cop the town had.

  Rob got out of the car stiffly, slowly. He had a big, soft gut under his shiny-buttoned uniform; police work was about the most sedentary job a man in Wellfleet could do, driving up and down the same eight miles of Route 6 all day. It was a long time since he’d been Darryl’s sidekick, growing dope in the National Seashore, way off the trails where no one would find it, selling it to . . . well, there was almost no one they hadn’t sold to back then. Rob made most of the deliveries, sticking his neck out because he was too stupid to protect it. They used to call him Backward Bob, because his transmission had malfunctioned and he tried to drive home from school in reverse. No one would have imagined he’d be the one who made good.

  “Hey, pal,” he said, awkward. “Long time no see.”

  “Very long time,” Darryl said, wiping his hands on his pants, though they weren’t dirty, before shaking his hand. Rob’s hair, which used to cause an arc of pimples where he habitually swept it off his forehead, was cut to bristles now, exposing the torn ear.

  “Got something here for ya, buddy,” he said, sheepishly proffering an envelope.

  “What, I finally won an Oscar?”

  “Yeah . . . that’s what it is. Actually, it’s a warning. For trespassing. First offense, no biggie.”

  Darryl laughed. “Trespassing?” He’d half expected the charge to be murder. Or the smash-and-grab on Charlotte Tradescome’s heart. He and Rob had a girl they used to visit after school—she was fourteen. They’d smoke dope together and she let them do whatever they wanted. One day she’d tried to talk to him at school; he’d acted like he didn’t know her. The look on her face . . . He shuddered. He wondered what Rob remembered. Maybe nothing; he had a wife and two kids, a home of his own on a dirt road off the highway. License to forget.

  “Where’ve I been trespassing?”

  “On property owned by Mr. and Mrs. Jebediah Narville, 9 Point Road, Wellfleet. I’m just the delivery guy here, Darryl. You know I don’t like it. If you want to keep working that land, I think you’ve gotta find a lawyer.”

  “I can’t afford a lawyer,” Darryl said. He could see himself holding out that handful of half-grown oysters to Charlotte last summer, as if they were proof of the kingdom he had to offer her. Fool.

  Rob hitched up his pants. “You’ve gotta sign that you’ve read it, while I’m here.”

  Darryl signed.

  �
��What now?”

  “Stay off the flats, that’s all. Listen, I hear they’re going to open up the flats south of Try Point.”

  “Thanks, Rob,” Darryl said. Rob had a little motorboat; he liked to fish for stripers—he wouldn’t have any idea that the bay south of Try Point was short and narrow, with no movement of salt and freshwater, nothing like Mackerel Bay. “I appreciate it.”

  “We gotta have a beer one of these days. For old times’ sake.”

  Darryl nodded. It wasn’t a real invitation and didn’t need to be refused. He watched Rob back the cruiser around and bump out of the driveway; then he took the filthy curtains with their neat, once yellow rickrack trim in one hand and pulled them off the window, rod and all. He threw them out the back door, and while he was there he heaved the oyster barrel down the stairs, and was about to rip the door off its hinges when he realized that it was too damned easy. There was as much satisfaction in destroying this place as there would have been in tearing up a sheet of paper. If he was going to satisfy his fury, he needed to fight something live.

  He wanted a drink more than anything. Just one. Right. He’d drink himself sick, he’d drink himself to death, he’d be done. And then what about his mother and Carrie? Carrie had Tim, and his mother had her new religion—the Cape Cod Church of the Risen Christ; she’d been baptized in the Holiday Inn swimming pool with fifty other poor, sad souls looking for a reason to hope. He laughed out loud suddenly, mirthlessly. What good could he do for his mother? She had a one-room apartment in the “affordable housing” complex, supplemented her social security by working as a companion to an elderly painter who’d lost his eyesight and was willing to pay her under the table. She hadn’t had a drink in eight years and was hoping her boyfriend, a scrap metal dealer up in Hyannis, would marry her. Every Sunday Darryl had dinner with her, though it made his heart race just to smell the old- lady sadness, the smallness of the place.

  He sat down on the couch and opened the Big Book, but all its petty wisdoms looked foolish and prim. He decided to drive to Chatham, where he could probably buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s without seeing anyone he knew. When he opened the front door, though, Carrie was standing there.