Stern Men

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “It would have to be retail price, though,” he repeated. “If I sell it to her.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that would be fine. She wants to be certain there’s plenty of it.”

  “I don’t want to lose any money on the deal. I got a distributor in Rockland who expects a certain amount of lobster from me every week.”

  “I’m sure your price will be fine.”

  “How you plan on cooking the lobster?”

  “I suppose . . . I’m sorry . . . I don’t know, really.”

  “I’ll do it for you.”

  “Oh, Mr. Thomas!”

  “I’ll build a big fire on the beach and boil them in garbage cans, with seaweed.”

  “Oh, my goodness! Is that how?”

  “That’s how.”

  “Oh, my goodness! Garbage cans! You don’t say.”

  “The Ellis family can buy new ones. I’ll order them for you. Pick them up in Rockland couple days from now.”

  “Really?”

  “The corn goes right on top. And the clams. I’ll do the whole thing for you. Sister, that’s the only way!”

  “Mr. Thomas, we’ll certainly pay you for all that and would be very grateful. I actually had no idea how to do it.”

  “No need,” Stan Thomas said. “Hell, I’ll do it for free.” He surprised himself with this tossed-off line. Stan Thomas had never done anything for free in his life.

  “Mr. Thomas!”

  “You can help me. How about that, Mary? You can be my helper. That would be pay enough for me.”

  He put his hand on Mary’s arm and smiled. His hands were filthy and reeked of rotting herring bait, but what the hell. He liked the shade of her skin, which was darker and smoother than he was used to seeing around the island. She wasn’t as young as he’d thought at first. Now that he was up close, he could see she was no kid. But she was slim and had nice round breasts. He liked her serious, nervous little frown. A pretty mouth, too. He gave her arm a squeeze.

  “I think you’ll be a real good helper,” he said.

  She laughed. “I help all the time!” she said. “Believe me, Mr. Thomas, I’m a very good helper!”

  It poured rain on the day of the picnic, and that was the last time the Ellis family tried entertaining the whole island. It was a miserable day. Miss Vera stayed down at the beach for only an hour and sat under a tarp, griping. Her European guests went for a walk along the beach and lost their umbrellas to the wind. One of the gentlemen from Austria complained that his camera was destroyed by the rain. Mr. Burden the fiddler got drunk in someone’s car, and played his fiddle in there, with the windows up and the doors locked. They couldn’t get him out for hours. Stan Thomas’s fire pit never really took off, what with the soaked sand and the driving rain, and the women of the island held their cakes and pies close against their bodies, as if they were protecting infants. The affair was a disaster.

  Mary Smith-Ellis bustled around in a borrowed fisherman’s slicker, moving chairs under trees and covering tables with bed sheets, but there was no way to salvage the day. The party had been her event to organize, and it was a calamity, but Stan Thomas liked the way she took defeat without shutting down. He liked the way she kept moving around, trying to maintain cheer. She was a nervous woman, but he liked her energy. She was a good worker. He liked that a great deal. He was a good worker himself, and he scorned idleness in any man or woman.

  “You should come to my house and warm up,” he told her as she rushed past him at the end of the afternoon.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You should come with me to Ellis House and warm up.”

  She repeated this invitation later, after he had helped her return the tables to the school and the pews to the church, so he drove her up to Ellis House at the top of the island. He knew where it was, of course, although he’d never been inside.

  “That sure must be a nice place to live,” he said.

  They were sitting in his truck in the circular driveway; the window glass was fogged from their breath and their steaming wet clothes.

  “Oh, they stay here only for the summer,” Mary said.

  “What about you?”

  “Of course I stay here, too. I stay wherever the family stays. I take care of Miss Vera.”

  “You take care of Miss Vera Ellis? All the time?”

  “I’m her helpmate,” Mary said, with a wan smile.

  “And what’s your last name again?”

  “Ellis.”

  “Ellis?”

  “That’s right.”

  He couldn’t figure this out exactly. He couldn’t figure out who this woman was. A servant? She sure acted like a servant, and he’d seen the way that Vera Ellis bitch harped at her. But how come her last name was Ellis? Ellis? Was she a poor relative? Who ever heard of an Ellis hauling chairs and pews all over the place and bustling around in the rain with a borrowed slicker. He thought about asking her what the hell her story was, but she was a sweetheart, and he didn’t want to antagonize her. Instead, he took her hand. She let him take it.

  Stan Thomas, after all, was a good-looking young man, with a trim haircut and handsome dark eyes. He wasn’t tall, but he had a fine, lean figure and an appealing intensity, a directness, that Mary liked very much. She didn’t mind his taking her hand at all, even after so short an acquaintance.

  “How long are you going to be around?” he asked.

  “Until the second week of September.”

  “That’s right. That’s when they—you—always leave.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I want to see you again,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “I’m going to want to do this again. I like holding your hand. When can I see you again?”

  Mary thought silently for a few minutes and then said, in an open way, “I’d like to see you some more, too, Mr. Thomas.”

  “Good. Call me Stan.”

  “Yes.”

  “So when can I see you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m probably going to want to see you tomorrow. What about tomorrow? How can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Is there any reason I can’t see you tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary said, and turned to him suddenly with a look of near panic. “I don’t know!”

  “You don’t know? Don’t you like me?”

  “Yes, I do. I like you, Mr. Thomas. Stan.”

  “Good. I’ll come by for you tomorrow around four o’clock. We’ll go for a drive.”

  “Oh, my goodness.”

  “That’s what we’re going to do,” said Stan Thomas. “Tell whoever you have to tell.”

  “I don’t know that I have to tell anybody, but I don’t know whether I’ll have time to go for a drive.”

  “Do whatever you have to do, then. Figure out a way. I really do want to see you. Hey! I insist on it!”

  “Fine!” She laughed.

  “Good. Am I still invited inside?”

  “Of course!” Mary said. “Please do come inside!”

  They got out of the truck, but Mary did not head up the walk to the grand front door. Dashing through the rain, she went around the side, and Stan Thomas chased her. She ran along the granite edge of the house, under the protection of the great eaves, and ducked inside a plain wooden door, holding it open for Stan. They were in a back hallway, and she took his slicker and hung it on a wall peg.

  “We’ll go to the kitchen,” she said, and opened another door. A set of spiral iron stairs twisted down to a huge, old-fashioned cellar kitchen. There was a massive stone fireplace with iron hooks and pots and crevices that looked as though they were still being used for baking bread. One wall was lined with sinks, another with stoves and ovens. Bundled herbs hung from the ceilings, and the floor was clean worn tile. At the wide pine table in the center of the room sat a tiny middle-aged woman with short red hair and a keen face, nimbly snipping beans into a silver bo
wl.

  “Hello, Edith,” said Mary.

  The woman nodded her hello and said, “She wants you.”

  “She does!”

  “She keeps calling down for you.”

  “Since what time?”

  “Since all afternoon.”

  “Oh, but I was busy returning all the chairs and tables,” Mary said, and she rushed over to one of the sinks, washed her hands in a speedy blur, and patted them dry on her slacks.

  “She doesn’t know you’re back yet, Mary,” said the woman named Edith, “so you may as well have a cup of coffee and a seat.”

  “I should really see what she needs.”

  “What about your friend here?”

  “Stan!” Mary said, and spun to look at him. Clearly, she had forgotten he was there. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to sit here and warm up with you, after all.”

  “Have a cup of coffee and a seat, Mary,” said Edith, still snipping the beans. Her voice was commanding. “She doesn’t know you’re back yet.”

  “Yes, Mary, have a cup of coffee and a seat,” said Stan Thomas, and Edith the bean-snipper flashed him a sidelong look. It was a fast snatch of a look, but it took in a whole lot of information.

  “And why don’t you have a seat, sir?” Edith said.

  “Thank you, ma’am, I will.” He sat.

  “Get your guest a cup of coffee, Mary.”

  Mary winced. “I can’t,” she said. “I have to check on Miss Vera.”

  “She won’t die if you sit here for five minutes and dry off,” Edith said.

  “I can’t!” Mary said. She flashed past Stan Thomas and Edith, right out the kitchen door. They heard her quick footsteps fluttering up the stairs as she called out, “Sorry!” and she was gone.

  “I guess I can get the coffee for myself,” Stan Thomas said.

  “I’ll get it for you. This is my kitchen.”

  Edith left the beans and poured Stan a cup of coffee. Without asking how he took it, she added a splash of cream and did not offer any sugar, which was fine with him. She made herself a cup of the same.

  “Are you courting her?” she asked, after she sat down. She was looking at him with a suspicion she made no attempt to mask.

  “I only just met her.”

  “Are you interested in her?”

  Stan Thomas did not answer, but he raised his eyebrows in ironic surprise.

  “I don’t have any advice for you, you know,” Edith said.

  “You don’t have to give me any advice.”

  “Somebody should.”

  “Somebody like who?”

  “You know, she’s already married, Mr.—?”

  “Thomas. Stan Thomas.”

  “She’s already married, Mr. Thomas.”

  “No. She doesn’t wear a ring. She didn’t say anything.”

  “She’s married to that old bitch up there.” Edith thrust a thin yellow thumb at the ceiling. “See how she scampers away even before she’s called?”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Stan said. “Who the hell is she?”

  “I don’t like your mouth,” Edith said, although her tone did not suggest she minded it all that much. She sighed. “Mary is technically Miss Vera’s niece. But she’s really her slave. It’s a family tradition. It was the same thing with her mother, and that poor woman only got out of the slavery by drowning. Mary’s mother was the one who got swept off by the wave back in twenty-seven. They never found her body. You heard about that?”

  “I heard about that.”

  “Oh, God, I’ve told this story a million times. Dr. Ellis adopted Jane as a playmate for his little girl—who is now that screaming pain-in-my-hole upstairs. Jane was Mary’s mother. She got pregnant by some Italian quarry worker. It was a scandal.”

  “I heard something about it.”

  “Well, they tried to keep it quiet, but people do like a good scandal.”

  “They sure like a good one around here.”

  “So she drowned, you know, and Miss Vera took over the baby and raised that little girl to be her helper, to replace the mother. And that’s who Mary is. And I, for one, cannot believe that the people who watch out for children allowed it.”

  “What people who watch out for children?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t believe it’s legal for a child to be born into slavery in this day and age.”

  “You don’t mean slavery.”

  “I know exactly what I mean, Mr. Thomas. We all sat here in this house watching it come to pass, and we asked ourselves why nobody put a stop to it.”

  “Why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

  “I’m a cook, Mr. Thomas. I’m not a police officer. And what do you do? No, I’m sure I know. You live here, so of course you’re a fisherman.”

  “Yes.”

  “You make good money?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Good enough for what?”

  “Good enough for around here.”

  “Is your job dangerous?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Would you like a real drink?”

  “I sure would.”

  Edith the cook went to a cabinet, moved around some bottles, and came back with a silver flask. She poured amber liquid from it into two clean coffee cups. She gave one to Stan. “You’re not a drunk, are you?” she asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Very funny, with my workload. Very funny.” Edith stared at Stan Thomas narrowly. “And you never married anyone from around here?”

  “I never married anyone from around anywhere,” Stan said, and he laughed.

  “You seem good-natured. Everything’s a big joke. How long have you been courting Mary?”

  “Nobody’s courting anybody, ma’am.”

  “How long have you been interested in Mary?”

  “I only met her this week. I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought. I think she’s a nice girl.”

  “She is a nice girl. But don’t they have nice girls right here on your island?”

  “Hey, now take it easy.”

  “Well, I think it’s unusual that you’re not married. How old are you?”

  “I’m in my twenties. My late twenties.” Stan Thomas was twenty-five.

  “A good-looking, good-natured man like you with a good business? Who isn’t a drunk? And not married yet? My understanding is that people marry young around here, especially the fishermen.”

  “Maybe nobody around here likes me.”

  “Smart mouth. Maybe you have bigger ambitions.”

  “Listen, all I did was drive Mary around to do some errands.”

  “Do you want to see her again? Is that your idea?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “She’s almost thirty years old, you know.”

  “I think she looks swell.”

  “And she is an Ellis—legally an Ellis—but she doesn’t have any money, so don’t go getting any ideas about that. They’ll never give her a dime except to keep her dressed and fed.”

  “I don’t know what kind of ideas you think I have.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Well, I can see you’re trying to figure something out. I can see that pretty clear.”

  “She doesn’t have a mother, Mr. Thomas. She is considered important around this house because Miss Vera needs her, but nobody in this house looks out for Mary. She’s a young woman without a mother to watch over her, and I’m trying to find out your intentions.”

  “Well, you don’t talk like a mother. All respect to you, ma’am, but you talk like a father.”

  This pleased Edith. “She doesn’t have one of those, either.”

  “That’s a tough break.”

  “How do you think you’ll go about seeing her, Mr. Thomas?”

  “I think I’ll pick her up and take her for a drive sometimes.”

  “Will you?”

  “What do you make of that?”

  “It’s none o
f my business.”

  Stan Thomas laughed right out loud. “Oh, I’ll bet you can make just about anything your business, ma’am.”

  “Very funny,” she said. She took another swig of hooch. “Everything’s a big joke with you. Mary’s leaving in a few weeks, you know. And she won’t be back until next June.”

  “Then I’ll have to pick her up and take her for a drive every day, I guess.”

  Stan Thomas treated Edith to his biggest smile, which was most winning.

  Edith pronounced, “You’re in for a heap of trouble. Too bad, because I don’t dislike you, Mr. Thomas.”

  “Thank you. I don’t dislike you, either.”

  “Don’t you mess up that girl.”

  “I don’t plan to mess up anybody,” he said.

  Edith evidently thought their conversation was over, so she got back to the beans. Since she did not ask Stan Thomas to leave, he sat there in the kitchen of Ellis House for a while longer, hoping Mary would come back and sit with him. He waited and waited, but Mary did not return, so he finally went home. It was dark by then, and still raining. He figured he’d have to see her another day.

  They were married the next August. It wasn’t a hasty wedding. It wasn’t an unexpected wedding, in that Stan told Mary back in June of 1956—the day after she returned to Fort Niles Island with the Ellis family—that they were going to get married by the end of that summer. He told her that she was going to stay on Fort Niles with him from now on and she could forget about being a slave to goddamn Miss Vera Ellis. So it had all been arranged well in advance. Still, the ceremony itself had the marks of haste.

  Mary and Stan were married in Stan Thomas’s living room by Mort Beekman, who was then the traveling pastor for the Maine islands. Mort Beekman preceded Toby Wishnell. He was, at the time, the skipper of the New Hope. Unlike Wishnell, Pastor Mort Beekman was well liked. He had an air about him of not giving a shit, which was fine with everyone concerned. Beekman was no zealot, and that too put him in good standing with the fishermen in his far-flung parishes.

  Stan Thomas and Mary Smith-Ellis had no witnesses at their ceremony, no rings, no attendants, but Pastor Mort Beekman, true to his nature, went right ahead with the ceremony. “What the hell do you need a witness for, anyhow?” he asked. Beekman happened to be on the island for a baptism, and what did he care about rings or attendants or witnesses? These two young people certainly looked like adults. Could they sign the certificate? Yes. Were they old enough to do this without anyone’s permission? Yes. Was it going to be a big hassle? No.