Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  “So tell me,” the woman asked. “How’re things going?”

  “Um,” she faltered, forcing the words out. “I have to withdraw.”

  The dean looked at her as if not understanding.

  “Withdraw,” the woman repeated.

  Amelia nodded.

  “From school?”

  She nodded again.

  The dean looked from one corner of the ceiling to the other and blinked several times. Amelia could feel the woman’s years of experience zooming in on her, waiting for an explanation.

  “The end of the semester is tough on everyone, Amelia.” The woman tried to defuse. “Let’s face it, it’s been a hard one,” the dean qualified. “How were finals?”

  “Fine. Still have a four-point.”

  “Well then. The holidays, the New Year—they’re tough with your parents being gone a year—”

  “Yes, I know, thanks.” She’d cut the woman off, knowing how skillful the dean was in talking people out of things. “I just think it’s better if I withdraw for now.”

  Hearing her sigh, Amelia watched as the dean clasped her hands and focused on her.

  “Students feel overwhelmed; even in the best of circumstances, they want out. Hell—the faculty want out.” The dean chuckled airily and leaned back in her chair, rearranging her dark curly bangs.

  “Uhh—it’s more than that,” Amelia said.

  The dean stared at her, trying to divine the reason.

  “Well, how long are we talking about?”

  “At least a year.”

  “A year?” Dean Williams lurched forward.

  “Maybe more. I’ll have to see.”

  “See what, dear?” The woman leaned both elbows on the desk, trying to engender enough confidence for her to share.

  “I’d rather not say.” While she felt the dean deserved an explanation, she couldn’t say it.

  The woman sat back and looked at her with suspicion. “Gifted students don’t just withdraw willy-nilly; won’t the semester break be enough?”

  She shook her head.

  The dean was quiet. Her expression then changed to official business.

  “You’re forfeiting your scholarship.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Amelia looked down at her hands, feeling the beginnings of a protruding abdomen.

  “And you’re willing to give up.”

  “I’m not giving up; I just can’t do it now.”

  “Are you in some sort of trouble?” The dean’s eyebrows rose as she said it and she stepped out from behind her desk.

  Amelia smiled. She’d never been in trouble in her life.

  “No.”

  They stood in silence, absorbing the gravity of the moment and of decisions made.

  She moved toward Amelia to hug her, but instead Amelia waved and slipped out of the door.

  “Call if you change your mind,” the woman called after her.

  Another thing about adult life she hadn’t known—how to get birth control, how to sell a house, how to open a checking account, how to sell her parents’ furniture. Funny how she knew in depth about the fertility cycles of marine animals, but hadn’t thought about her own. And neither had Penelope mentioned it, possibly thinking it might be centuries before her daughter would even think such things, much less have the opportunity.

  * * *

  After the meeting with the dean, Amelia had gone to a pay phone in the lobby of the administration building, plugged in a quarter, and called Chris Ryan’s office. This time he answered.

  “Chris Ryan speaking, how may I help you?”

  Silence. She listened for a few seconds and then quietly placed the receiver back in its cradle and stood there, intent on never speaking to him again.

  * * *

  After her conversation with Dean Williams she needed to think. Leaving her parents’ car in the dorm parking lot, since the needle was brushing the empty line, she buttoned up her black peacoat, wrapped a red plaid scarf around her neck, and took off walking until she reached the university entrance sign on North Country Road. She stood for a few moments. Turning left she tucked her hands into her pockets and headed east along the shoulder of the highway toward the Port Jefferson harbor. The faster she walked the less nauseous and panicky she felt. Her breath puffed in streams. January’s raw, damp maritime wind left a bone-penetrating chill for which the only cure was nothing short of a hot shower.

  While the road was clear, snow lined the sides. Passing cars kicked up the slush mixed with sand from the last storm. Some sprayed her. She’d reared back to shield her face.

  As she approached the town, snow piled up deeper off in the woods; tiny square Cape Cod summer cottages set back in the trees looked snowed-in. An occasional passing car honked.

  From up on a ridge on the outskirts of town, the masts of tall ships were visible from down in the harbor. She inhaled the comforting smell of salt water and seaweed.

  The road then began a steep, winding descent into sidewalks like switchbacks down to sea level.

  One long blast of the Bridgeport–Port Jefferson Ferry startled her, announcing its departure, carrying cars bound for Connecticut.

  The street was lined with wrought-iron, Victorian-looking streetlamps; across was a massive parking lot at the ferry entrance.

  Port Jefferson was a historic whaling town dating from the mid-1600s. In eighth grade Amelia’s class had taken a field trip when they were studying the earliest settlements in colonial America. Named after Thomas Jefferson, who’d invested funds to help shore-up and stop the town from its perpetual flooding, Port Jeff, as it was called, had been known for its whaling and fishing. The town retained the flavor of colonial-American roots by city ordinance as all of the buildings in the historic district were required to reflect that heritage.

  Amelia stopped to watch as the ferry pulled away from the dock, hands in pockets. A loud squeaking made her look up. Overhead was the gold-leaf painted form of a swordfish, that said FRESH FISH MARKET in painted gold letters. The fish swung in the gusty winds off the harbor.

  The storefront faced the harbor with nothing to block the wind. Another gust hit and knocked her off balance but not before she’d spotted the HELP WANTED sign tucked in the bottom corner of the front window. Spray from the waves hit the dock and made a thud as it landed on the hoods of cars waiting to load onto the next ferry.

  Amelia ducked into the alley alongside the market for shelter and then noticed two men unloading wooden crates from the back of a truck. She hurried toward them and spoke up.

  “That’s some nice-looking black sea bass you got there.”

  Both men glanced over like, beat it.

  “I see you got some swordfish there too.” She’d pointed to another wooden crate packed with headless fish and ice chips. “Looks freshly caught.”

  “Can I help you?” said an older man, sounding more like, get lost. With wavy gray hair and a mustache, he placed both hands on his hips and walked toward her, wearing a rubber apron, gloves, and waders.

  She was so tiny there’d been nothing about her that merited such an aggressive stance. She remembered wanting to start giggling.

  “Yeah.” She’d put her hands on both hips too and faced him up. “I need a job.”

  The other younger man, about her age, stopped unloading to stare at her too. They had the same shaped mustache. She imagined he might be a son.

  “What are you, like twelve?” the younger one quipped. Both raised their gloved hands and began laughing in a way that might have chased off someone else.

  “Nineteen,” she called back; her voice pealed through their laughter, clear and firm. “Twenty next month.”

  They were quieted.

  “I can show you my driver’s license if you don’t believe me.”

  They studied her—long dark glossy ponytail almost to her waist, black woolen peacoat, plaid scarf, and jeans. She looked more like an adolescent, but stood like she’d take on either men, if needed.

  “
You know fish?” the older man asked.

  “Boy do I know fish,” she said, nodding as she smiled.

  And for many years Amelia would remember the feel of that smile.

  “Hey—nothing personal,” the younger of the two said. “We don’t hire girls. They’re bad luck and bring trouble,” he said with the kind of hesitation borne of knowing you should keep your mouth shut.

  “You don’t hire girls,” Amelia repeated, nodding, looking into the inert eye of a sea bass that lay under chips of ice, only its face exposed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  He shrugged a response.

  * * *

  The back screen door was rickety and the son held it open for Amelia. Piles of crates to be hosed out sat under a sign that ordered: WASH.

  Amelia heard shuffling around in a tiny office the size of a bathroom stall—a desk touched both walls on either end and it was piled with papers, envelopes, an adding machine, a dog-eared Rolodex, and a wheeled desk chair.

  “Hey, Mom?” the son called as he walked down a short hallway that led behind the counter.

  “Hay is for horses,” she heard a woman’s voice grumble. “I’m in here.”

  “This person’s looking for a job.”

  Mrs. D’Agostino looked up with a curious and hopeful expression that soured once she saw Amelia.

  “Uch. No more girls, no more girls, no more girls.” The woman launched into a diatribe half in Italian with enough English peppered in for Amelia to catch the gist of it. The woman stood, untied her apron, and threw it on the desk. Storming out of the front door without a coat, the bell at the top of the door jingled to announce her departure.

  It was too cold to be out without a coat. Amelia looked from father to son, wondering who wore the pants in the family.

  Both shrugged an apology.

  Just then the shop door burst open, ringing the bell again as Mrs. D’Agostino popped in to holler a final warning in English. “You mark my words, that girl’s gonna be trouble.”

  The woman glared at Amelia just long enough to elicit an adrenaline jolt at the truth of the woman’s words. And she wondered how long she could hide it.

  Then the woman stormed back to her office and slammed the door.

  Both son and husband turned to Amelia.

  “Well,” the father said, and then threw Amelia a rubber apron and a pair of gloves, motioning for her to follow out back to finish unloading.

  * * *

  After each day of work Amelia trudged back along North Country Road to the tiny one-room cottage she’d managed to rent.

  The bungalow was originally built as a summer rental and not suitable for year-round occupancy. Its insulation was nil, not to mention the roof’s viability. In the corner was a wood-burning stove that when fully torqued made the place suffocating and a window or two had to be cracked in order not to break a sweat.

  On the plus side, a huge woodpile had been stacked to cover the entire side of the collapsing wall of gray weathered shingles so that she never had to worry about running out of wood even if she kept a fire burning 24/7. The landlord, who lived in Smithtown and had inherited the place from his family, was almost slap-happy at receiving a rent check before Memorial Day and even more grateful that Amelia was so young and ignorant as to not report him for the shoddy, code-violating conditions of the house.

  She’d stand gutting and cleaning fish in the back room, elbow to elbow with the D’Agostino men, shoveling fresh ice chips into the cases before rearranging the fish. Propping up filets of Atlantic salmon and white bass, she’d garnish each with parsley and kale to separate from the cooked lobsters, fresh steamers, cherrystones, and littlenecks, working behind the scenes until a customer had a question.

  “Amelia?” One of the D’Agostino men would call her out.

  “How’s the best way to cook this?”

  She’d explain in detail whether or not to wrap in foil, bake, broil, pan fry, steam.

  “Now this one…” She’d hold up a bluefish fillet as if it were the guilty party as she’d begin to tell the story of at what ocean depth the species lived. “These guys have nasty bites.” She laughed, remembering having been bitten by one and showed the sickle-shaped scar on her right hand as evidence. “They reproduce in spring, can live up to nine years,” she said as the customer’s eyes widened. “Found from Cape Cod to North Carolina but also in the Mediterranean.” Customers would listen as Amelia would create an entire undersea eco-world so vivid that even young children would listen. “They mature as females but then change into males during winter.”

  During her first few weeks at the Fish Market, Amelia began a tradition of drawing and posting pictures of the catch of the day just inside the glass of the front door. The practice prompted a surge in sales and within weeks the catch of the day began selling out by noon. Freehand on butcher-block paper she’d draw the likenesses of various fish in their habitats, sometimes surrounded by coral reefs, others in eel grass. The images were so beautiful and detailed that many customers would offer to purchase them along with the fish.

  “How such a tiny thing could inject such new life into this store,” Mrs. D’Agostino had marveled after only a month and gave her a dime-an-hour raise. “My God, I eat my words in spades about girls,” the woman swore and guilt tortured Amelia in direct proportion with the swell of her pregnant stomach. “Ammy,” Mrs. D’Agostino went on, “you’re our lucky charm.” The woman bent down and leaned her dyed-red curly head on Amelia’s shoulder as a sign of forgiveness. “God brought you to us for a reason.” The woman beamed as Amelia’s chest tightened in a heartsick way, feeling like a scamp. She was on a collision course with the truth but banished such thoughts just as quickly as they’d bob to the surface.

  Before Alex was born she’d stay after-hours, wiping down the entire place as if it was a laboratory at the New York Aquarium to comply with New York State health regulations. Making sure the lobster tanks were clean, the composition of salt water and oxygen were in the right balance along with temperature.

  Luckily it was winter.

  She’d managed to hide her increasing girth by wearing a man’s down vest beneath a barn jacket, all covered up by a rubber apron. And since it was cold, the D’Agostinos never saw her without being all bundled up. During the course of the workday she was outside, unloading fish, packing ice, and unloading ice chips, everything that required that she be covered up and bundled in many layers.

  One afternoon she’d felt Alex’s foot pushing out against her abdomen wall. She’d paused and smiled, pressing back with her fingers at the tiny foot through the many layers of clothing.

  Amelia looked up to see Mrs. D’Agostino watching. The woman’s eyes narrowed as she dragged Amelia into the fish cooler and shut the door.

  “You lied to me,” Mrs. D’Agostino said.

  Amelia had no response.

  “You made me the fool!” She raised her voice, more hurt than angry.

  “No. You gave me a break.” She smiled with sadness.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have hired me.”

  “You got that right, I wouldn’t have,” Mrs. D’Agostino hollered.

  Amelia raised her hands and eyebrows like, see?

  They sat in silence on two boxes of frozen shrimp, looking at anything but each other.

  “So what now?” Amelia asked, relieved that the secret was out and yet curiously not worried at all about getting fired.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me,” Mrs. D said, shaking her head, looking wounded. “That you wouldn’t have enough faith in me to have mentioned it.”

  “Ha!” Amelia laughed out loud and grabbed her stomach like Santa Claus. “You weren’t going to hire me, remember? You just said it.”

  “That’s right, but I didn’t know you then.” The woman rushed back in her defense.

  “And you never would have, ’cause you wouldn’t have hired me.”

  “True.” The wo
man sat looking at Amelia as if wondering if she’d been tricked in more ways than one.

  “I needed a job,” Amelia said. “You needed an employee.”

  “So what the hell were you planning on doing?” The woman slapped her thighs as she turned and hollered at Amelia. “Opening your legs to give birth behind the counter?”

  At that Amelia was laughing so hard, she tried to hide it, feeling relieved as Mrs. D fought to stay angry.

  “I didn’t have a plan.”

  The two of them stood. Mrs. D touched Amelia’s shoulder.

  “Does the father know?” she asked in a soft voice.

  Amelia looked down at her steel-toe boots, her feet so small they looked like stubs.

  “He doesn’t, does he?”

  Amelia didn’t answer.

  “Any reason why not?”

  She maintained her silence.

  “Who’s gonna help you, Am?”

  Amelia looked at the woman.

  “Who are your people?”

  She didn’t have any, and was more ashamed of that than afraid of what lay ahead.

  * * *

  After Alex was born Amelia worked part-time until two years later when she graduated from the marine biology department down the road at Stony Brook. She’d lined up an off-the-books babysitter who smoked incessantly and did tarot card readings out of her home. It was close enough for Amelia to either bike the six blocks or walk with the stroller to pick up Alex.

  Between medical assistance and student loans to cover tuition, daycare bills, plus her cheapo off-season summer bungalow, she was able to make it to graduation. Mrs. D would show up with grocery bags filled with baby and toddler clothes from the people in their church and with bundles of fish.

  Once Alex had turned two years old, Amelia had walked across the stage at Stony Brook to receive her undergraduate degree with high honors. She’d been accepted into the graduate program in marine biology at Cornell where she was awarded a fellowship that included a stipend to pay for family housing on campus.

  Amelia had always suspected that the family had kept the fish market going for an additional two years longer than they’d planned so she could graduate. At her graduation, Mrs. D’Agostino limped along with her new artificial knee, the whole family attending the ceremony, bringing Alex along so he could yell “Yay Mommy,” the minute he spotted her in cap and gown crossing the stage.