by Gina Rossi
Cherri talks. However, she mostly answers all the questions she asks. It goes like this:
“Did I overhear you falling foul of Ruth Pick? Don’t you worry about her. Ruth’s a stickler for bureaucracy. A softie at the core. Kids love her. Now why would an English person wanna work in Lobster Cove? I guess it’s a nice change. Is this your first time in the US? People travel so much these days it’s like the world’s one country. How do you take your tea? This has been brewing awhile so it’ll be pretty strong.” And so on.
There’s a glass teapot of hot water, stuffed with sprigs of fresh mint. Cherri lifts the pot and pours from a great height into two ruby tumblers, etched with gold. She reaches down to the side, feeling around for a tin of biscuits in a lacquered Chinese cabinet, and I fish for bits of grit and dead twig while her attention’s elsewhere.
“So, Lara…” She tips the biscuits—coconut with a strong smell of rosewater—onto a plate and puts them on the table, pushing them toward me. “What do you know about Blue Rocks? It’s not a bad place. Did Lukey prepare you in any way? It’s not what you’d call a normal household.”
“Lukey?”
She pauses, lowers her lashes and shrugs with one shoulder, coquettish. “Aw, I’ve known Lucas Dalton since he was a kid. I used to teach him. Of course he’s Mr. Big around here these days, but—”
Really? She’s known Lucas since he was a kid?
“You okay? You look like you hit a problem, honey.”
I smile. “You certainly don’t look like someone old enough to have taught Mr. Dalton.”
“I don’t, do I?” She leans close, the old table wobbling under her bulk. “I go to Agat, an old Abenaki woman at Emerald Lake, for my facials and some little—” she lowers her voice to a theatrical whisper—“treatments. Why not? You only live once.” She waves a ruby-nailed hand, gemmed knuckledusters sparkling on each finger. “I know we’re gonna be friends, so I don’t mind telling.” She peers at my face, too close, hunting wrinkles. I look away.
She takes the hint and sits back, though not much, given her size. “What brings you to Maine, honey? You can tell me.”
I’m English. I refuse to be set upon and made to tell everything. Besides, that invitation to confide makes me feel like I’m guilty of something. On the other hand, I bet everyone in this town is as tight as fifty sardines in a matchbox, so she’s going to find out what she wants to find out without any help from me. I shrug. “Mr. Dalton offered me a good job. I needed, need, the money.”
“Mr. Dalton! How formal and cute are you? I love that. But why Maine, honey? You’re very far from home.”
“It’s temporary. I’ll decide the way forward when Mr. Dalton gets back.”
“Did he mention the situation?”
“Well, I know he’s a widower.”
“But did he tell you about—”
“He told me his wife drowned and that some people in Lobster Cove believed he murdered her. Is that what you mean?”
Cherri flinches. “Lucas is real nice in spite of what people say, and think, but things ain’t the same up at Blue Rocks since Liz went.”
“I gather.” I pick up my glass to avoid a refill, and sip. There’s definitely sand.
“Things,” Cherri goes on, choosing her words with care, “would have been different if she’d been around.”
“How different?”
She lowers her voice. “Liz was real refined, both his parents were. Old for parents. Married a while before kids came along. Stalwarts of our community, you know? People didn’t dare question justice, such as it was, while they were here, but Lucas’s standpoint was questioned again after Liz died, after Lucas’s father moved to Florida.”
Not fair, if you ask me. “Was there a trial?”
“There was.” She nods. “Lucas got off. Insufficient evidence.”
“I don’t understand why people would question justice if he was innocent—”
“I didn’t say he was innocent. I said he got off.” Cherri watches me, teapot poised in mid-air. A sudden smile transforms her face. She looks past my shoulder. “Ah.” She lowers the pot, relieved.
I turn around. A postman stands in the doorway with a sheaf of envelopes and packages in his arms, saving us both I can’t help thinking. I stand up quickly, discarding my tea. “I won’t hold you up. Thanks for the chat.”
“You come straight back with any questions, or if you need any help. Anytime, honey. We support pupils and their carers unreservedly.” She dismisses me gently by turning her smile full beam on the postman, eyebrows raised. “What have you got for us today, Frank?”
I back off, and dash out, straight through the exit, directly to the parking lot and into the Jeep without looking right or left. Sitting there, doors locked for some reason, I sort out my head. I don’t want to like him…or, no, I wouldn’t mind liking him, but…
Hell. Face it. Alice’s sweet comments about love this morning got me thinking and feeling around that little niggle of excitement present in my tummy since…
Since Lucas walked out of his house in that Gothic fog and turned those desolate eyes on me, used that deep voice and gave me that strong hand. But, he’s no victim. He’s a survivor, and that in itself is—
Listen to me! I slap the steering wheel with my palms, twist the key in the ignition and drive away from school. I’m not thinking about this again. Lucas is…he’s my boss, I like him, and I don’t want to piss him off. That is all.
As for Cherri’s comments, I can see she’s a real nice person, but she’s made me indignant and that indignation seethes all the way back to Blue Rocks. When Lucas said that some people in Lobster Cove thought he had murdered his wife, I had no idea what that actually meant.
I had no idea the debate was alive and so well.
****
What should I do? Nothing, because it’s not my business. Back home, on my own for the first time, I explore the house thoroughly, straightening stuff as I go, even to the extent of stripping Lucas’s bed. He sleeps in a small room at the end of a narrow passage beyond Alice’s room. There are other bedrooms, much bigger. None bigger than mine though. It’s clearly the main bedroom where, probably, bad memories lurk.
It’s a while until school comes out, but I lock up and head back to town with a copy of The Lobster Cove Anchor on the passenger seat. I’ve circled a few adverts and addresses, and have errands to run. First, I head to the Morgan Bank, the only one in town, to open an account. I’m given forms to fill out, and I’m asked to make a deposit. I take the folded cheque out of my bag and blink. Lucas has paid me double. I ask the accounts manager about the other cheques.
“He altered the amounts yesterday.” Her smile is so white and bright I feel the heat. Or is it shock sizzling through me at the amount of money I’m earning for what is an important—but relatively menial—task?
“He did?”
“He did.” She taps away at her computer.
“Why post-dated cheques?” I ask, wondering if Lucas is regretting those generous actions, since the blue pyjamas disaster.
“Not much online banking where he goes, Miss Fairmont. He sets up everything beforehand. He prefers it this way.”
After a busy fifteen minutes at her keyboard, she tells me my account will be up and running in two to five days. I thank her and leave, walking out into the sunshine, dizzy—like someone who’s just won the lottery. I wander around in a daze, looking for buttons for Alice’s pyjamas, and thread, and something with which to mend her sea horse and books.
Everywhere I go, wherever I look, I see lobsters. Everything is lobster in this town. There are lobsters on awnings of shops, guesthouses and restaurants—of course. You can buy loaves of bread shaped like lobsters, drink drinks out of lobster-shaped bottles and bumper-sticker your car so there’s no doubt you come from Lobster Cove. Lobsters are not the prettiest creatures. I’d prefer a sea horse, for example, although I’d never eat one. However, passing by Jewels of the Sea, a pretty little jewellery
boutique on Main Street—next to Shucker’s Booktique where I’ll take Alice on Saturday morning for story hour—thank you The Lobster Cove Anchor—I see a fine chain, like cobweb, made of tiny gold lobsters. It’s exquisite. However, there’s also a pair of small, diamond sea horse earrings, which I adore.
In the end I get thread, wool and bookbinding tape, even fat, red heart-shaped buttons for the blue pyjamas, at the grocery store, on my way to collect Alice.
Teacher Pick nails me to the doorpost of the classroom the second she sees me. “Please spend a little time with Alice and her colours.”
“Her colours?”
“Most of the children in the class use blue, green, red, yellow, even purple and turquoise correctly. However Alice is some way behind.” She lowers her voice. “This morning when I asked her what colour her father’s eyes are, she said ‘red’.”
Oops. I did see a dirty whisky glass in the washing-up yesterday morning. I move swiftly to defend my new boss. “Mr. Dalton found it very hard to say goodbye, Miss Pick. I’m sure you understand that.” I smile, hoping it’s a that’s-that kind of smile, and hoping she’ll believe his eyes were red from crying.
No dice. “It’s Mrs. Pick,” she tells me. “Last week, Alice told me his eyes were the colour of beer. As you can see—”
I phase out. They are exactly the colour of beer. I’m thinking of any number of typical English pubs on the River Thames at Richmond—outside on a summer’s day, where hanging baskets burst with geraniums, lobelia and begonias, and there are pints of ale on the table, in the sunlight. Homesickness stabs me so viciously I see spots in front of my eyes. Everything is wrong. I’m far from home, Lucas is far from home—and I’m worried he’s still cross with me—Alice hasn’t got a mother, Pick’s a pain in the arse—
“—would highly appreciate attention to the matter.”
What matter? Oh. “Yes,” I say, remembering. “Yes.” I nod, smile again, in a business-like, will-do fashion and go to the car.
“What colour is the sky, Alice?” I ask, reversing out of the parking area behind the school.
“Beautiful red,” she answers.
See?
We get home and go into the house. “Look at my drawing.” Alice drags it out of her backpack, and holds it up for inspection. “That’s me.” She points. “That’s Daddy.” She points to a tall, wobbly stick man with a very red smile and eyelashes like two squashed black octopuses. “And that’s Mummy.”
At first, mummy looks like a potato, perhaps the ghost of a potato, a wavering pink-brown ovoid towering over Alice. And then I realize. It’s an admirable rendition of Queenie’s beautiful egg.
Chapter Seven
We settle into a routine, me and Alice. She has school every weekday morning. I drop her off and come back to Blue Rocks to make our beds, wipe down the bathroom—we share mine—and clean house.
Once the day’s chores are done, and any errands completed, I walk on the beach, read on the porch, or climb the rough paths behind Blue Rocks, one of which leads me up the hill, all the way around the back of Mariner’s Fish Fry, and onto Hidden Cove Drive, where the mansions of Lobster Cove hide between old trees.
Life here is utterly different, and, on the surface, I like it. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m somehow fulfilled. Do I have a suppressed urge to nest? Is that why I decide the hallway of Lucas’s house needs some pepping? I drag in a round table from the never-used living room. At the bottom of the stairs, in the curve of the newel post, with flowers—a mixture of roses and hydrangeas from the thigh-deep lake of cut flowers outside Flowers in Bloom—it makes all the difference, even if I did have to buy a vase myself. Any moment now, this house will become a home. There’s also a potted daisy plant from Cherri, who left it on the doorstep with a note scribbled on a paper napkin when she passed by yesterday, along with a punnet of glorious blueberries, warm from the sun. The house remains bare, but it’s shining clean and the brave daisies on the kitchen dresser shout Look at us. See how jolly we are. I love them.
I’m not cleaning this house. Isn’t that what I said to Lucas? Because I am, actually, and while I do I notice someone’s spent a lot of time and brainpower on its design. Everything’s spacious and practical. Is this an American thing? Am I unfairly comparing poky—all right then, cosy—English homes to the generous, warm, airy spaces of Blue Rocks? Yes. Simply put, it’s wonderful to live in this organized way—with plentiful cupboards, bathrooms everywhere, a laundry room, pantry, storeroom, basement, wide porches, double doors and huge windows giving onto the jewelled blues of Maine, everything from pale sapphire to cobalt, and turquoise and jade. I love these colours. Compared to the restrained greys and greens of England, they are forward, honest, and pure.
I wonder if Lucas’s wife designed Blue Rocks? I wonder if she died before she got around to furnishing? Or is this it: a kind of failed attempt at Shaker? Perhaps she and Lucas had big, happy plans, and the memories of those throw long shadows on his heart. Is that why he stays? And why he goes away?
So many questions, but not the sort I can ask in my daily emails to him, even though we’ve settled into a relaxed routine, way better than how we started out. Rather, I send short messages and pictures of Alice. I ask questions like:
Jay Sawyer says the Jeep needs new tires.
After a few days, Lucas answers, Do it.
Or: Lucas, can I Hoover your studio? There are dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds in there.
Three days later: Hoover?
Vacuum, to you.
Two days later: If you must.
I must. I did already.
Four days later: Don’t move anything.
Oops.
We’re ten days in, Alice, Buster and me. Our routine is set. The weather’s wonderful and everything’s going smoothly. Life is good, although one thing’s puzzling me. When I Hoovered Lucas’s studio I sat in the leather chair at one of his desks and had a good read through my CV. I am a stranger to myself. I don’t relate to that woman describing her life’s goals, dreams if you like, on those pages. Am I trying to be something I’m not? Something I think I should be, rather than someone I can be, want to be? Is this a new-style Maine me, interfering with my stability? Strange, but my photo’s missing. I look around for it but can’t find it anywhere. Where’s that gone?
****
About that new, relaxed way Lucas and I communicate around Alice? It doesn’t last. My fault, I guess, hunting for answers to questions about Lucas. This is how it starts: I’m not a nervous person. However I wouldn’t say I have nerves of steel either. I’m brave enough to survive general life, but I’d rather not be put to the test, so, when first I hear noises in the house I take no notice. Imagine if we all went about life jumping and screaming at every unexplained little noise, even if heard at night? But I lie in bed—in what is essentially Lucas’s bed—every night and think about where I am, in this silent house on the lonely shore between dark sea and sky. Sometimes, unable to sleep, I watch through the window, like I’m waiting for something, seeing nothing except timid stars and pale surf pushing through the blackness. And then I hear the noises. You have to listen really hard or you’d think it was your imagination. There’s movement, whispering, rustling, barely audible, but nonetheless there.
During daylight, the sounds are impossible to recall. When the surf’s up, I hear nothing. Is it Buster, getting into the roof somehow? I reckon he’d make more of a racket.
“How does Buster get in and out of the house?” I ask Alice.
“Through the door,” she says.
Figures. “Which door?”
She takes my hand and leads me into the basement. Buster has a high-tech cat flap set into the outside wall, and another in the door that leads from the basement into the house. We go outside and wander on the grass in the fresh, crystal clear air, walking all the way around the house, me looking at the roof.
“What’s that?” I ask Alice, pointing at the cupola.
&nb
sp; “Tower.”
“Do you go up there?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “I can’t go on the roof!”
“I know that. I mean can you get up inside that tower from inside the house?”
She shakes her head and bends to pick one of the small yellow flowers growing in the grass. She presents it to Buster who’s just arrived. He sniffs politely and rolls on his back for a tummy tickle in the sunshine.
I gaze at the cupola, tiled like the rest of the house, and neatly louvered, although one of the planks under the southern eave has slipped. What a handsome ornamental detail to place on a roof—the perfect finishing touch, like the cherry on top of a cupcake. Ornamental or not, I bet there’s some way to get up there. The mermaid weathervane shifts this way and that, no more than an inch in the light breeze. Somehow she doesn’t look quite so pierced-though today.
That night, the sea falls silent, so I can hear the noises properly. Not thinking about how isolated I am, not dwelling on the possibility that the house could be haunted I put my head under the duvet and resolve to buy earplugs.
The following morning, Alice and I pull up in the school car park at the same time as Cherri. “What plans have you got this fine day?” Cherri asks. I tell her I’m about to scour town for earplugs because of the noises in the roof.
“Oh, that’s probably mice,” she says. “They can do a lotta damage. Best get a trap from Dylan at Old Mill Veterinary. A humane trap, that is,” she adds, quickly, when she sees my face. Admittedly, I had imagined a Tom and Jerry contraption with a big chunk of cheese well-placed to hide the beheading mechanism.
“Although…” she muses, “didn’t I once hear something about Blue Rocks being built on a sacred site?”
No. I’m not going there. I refuse.
I kiss Alice goodbye and go straight to Old Mill Veterinary. This is the first time I meet Dylan Foster, although I’ve spoken to her on the phone about updating Buster’s inoculations.
“So Buster not doing his job, then?” She smiles, handing me a plastic tunnel thing, one-way entry, no exit.