The Sea Horse Door

by Gina Rossi

  Chapter Ten

  So many questions, yes, growing in my mind, and I am going to find answers to a few. Alice has an early evening event on the main pier—to learn about night fishing—children only, no parents allowed, and no me, obviously. I ring Skeet and ask for a pickup at five p.m. He doesn’t come himself but sends a driver I don’t know. He drops us at the seafood market, and I confirm an eight p.m. collection. I’m not driving because I’m going to the bar.

  I leave Alice and her suppertime picnic with Cherri and her troop of little ones. It’s a lovely evening. Summer is coming softly to Maine. It’s a privilege to be here, right now, watching late spring blend into the warm richness of July. I walk away from the water, cross Main and turn right, up Oak. Murphy’s Bar is at the end of the block, on the left. Everyone talks about Murphy’s. Maggie’s Diner may be the facial expression of Lobster Cove with its blue and white checks and cheery welcome, but Murphy’s is the heartbeat. Besides, I gather David Hu, the barman, has a reputation as the local shoulder to…well, not cry on exactly—but everyone talks about him like he’s the guy who knows everything and everybody in Lobster Cove. He’s the problem-solver.

  Only…no, it can’t be true. I walk into the bar, and it’s like men only.

  No way! This is the twenty-first century. Lobster Cove folks must surely be more tolerant and open-minded about sexist issues like this. I hesitate at the door because the barman’s scowling like I’ve committed sacrilege.

  “Are you, um, open?” I ask, with a smile.

  “What does it goddamn look like?” he growls.

  That could mean yes or no, but the door’s open so I reckon it’s a yes. I walk in, sit on a barstool and look around. Apart from the lack of smoke, this could be a downtown bar in any number of fifties’ Hollywood movies. There’s a jukebox, and some guys around a pool table over near the back wall. There are elements of Mo’s in The Simpsons.

  The barman stares, old and hostile. He could use a shave. I look him in the eye. “Good evening. I’d like a glass of white wine, please. A sauvignon blanc if you have?”

  Without looking away, he reaches down, grabs something, opens it on an under-counter bottle opener and slams it onto the Formica surface in front of me. Beer. A bottle of beer, standing in a small puddle of its own self because Scary Barman bashed it down so hard.

  Have I done something wrong? I cast my mind back to what little I know about American women’s rights and feminism. Can men like Scary Barman still be real in a country that gave us Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Gloria Steinhem, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, even Beyoncé? And Jane Goodall, chimpanzee hugger and feminist?

  There’s a pleasant wine bar close by, called Merlot’s. I could use a little pleasant right now, to be frank, and I didn’t order beer. I get off my stool and pick up my bag, reaching inside for cash. You know what? I’m not going to pay. I walk out.

  “Hey! Excuse me?”

  I turn straight back, mouth full of objections, but instead of Scary Barman I’m confronted by an altogether more agreeable person, an Asian man of around fifty, or prematurely grey in his forties, his hands spread out in apology. He’s wearing a Wildflowers of Maine tea towel tucked into his belt as an improvised apron.

  “Did you get it in the neck from Uncle Buck? I’m damn sorry.”

  Did I?

  “He got a bullet in the wrong place in ’Nam.” He guides me back to my stool, whips the beer out of sight and pours me a giant glass of chilled wine. Is there a right place to get a bullet, Vietnam or elsewhere? He hands me the wine. “On the house. Jeez, I’m sorry. You’re Lara, aren’t you? Lis Dalton’s nanny from Blue Rocks?”

  I nod. “That’s me. Did I do something wrong, because your colleague—”

  “Don’t mind Buck. He helps out around here. Anywhere, really. Whatever he can do. This and that. He has, you know, what they call special needs.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He owned this place way back, but the community formed a cooperative and bought him out, so he didn’t have to shut down and sell. That way he has the funds to pay for his own care. He comes across a little weird if you don’t know what’s what. But he wouldn’t hurt a fly, honest. No need to be afraid.”

  “It’s okay.” Now that I know.

  “I’m David. David Hu.”

  “Pleased to meet you, David.” I glance down the bar. Buck’s polishing glasses, grumbling to himself.

  Hu follows my eyes. “We keep him away from the tourists.” Big grin. “Or new folks like you.”

  I smile back. “It’s nice that Uncle Buck has something to do, that people care for him.”

  “Yeah. Way back his Daddy was a real force in this town. Saved it from developers. Folks don’t forget around here, so everyone looks out for Buck. Lucas is real good to him too. Gives him odd jobs up at the house, stuff like that. He’ll pitch up any day soon, out of the blue, to mow the lawn.”

  Folks don’t forget around here. Here’s my gap. “I suppose you know Lucas pretty well.”

  “We go way back. Sure. I used to babysit him when I was a teenager. Mrs. Dalton was a pretty generous contributor to my pocket money fund. Nice kid, Lucas. Born to succeed, know what I mean? Born with looks, and now, of course, he’s got the money. He’s one helluva clever guy. I’m not. Not at all. I’m just the nice guy around here.” He laughs—he’s joking, there’s no envy there. Besides, it’s true.

  I go for it. “Did you know his wife?”

  His face closes. “Sure. We all knew Bonny, like a lotta other folks who live in this town.”

  “What was she like?”

  He looks at me for a moment, and then comes out from behind the counter, pulling off the tea towel. He tilts his head toward a booth in the corner and picks up my wine. “Come.” He sticks his head through a doorway next to the bar and yells, “Carla, come out here, willya, and bring me a Coke, ice and lemon.”

  I go and sit in the booth with Hu. Bonny, he tells me, was the wild one. Lucas was wild enough, but she pushed it right to the raw edge. Lucas, as a teenager, got in trouble with his teachers, had some mild brushes with the law involving fast driving, disturbing the peace, drinking, some drug use. Always a risk-taker, Bonny urged him to new heights, be it cliff-diving at Thunder Bay, swimming in the underwater caves off Skeleton Point or any number of other dangerous activities prohibited by the coastguard.

  “But Lucas is bright.” Hu’s Coke arrives, brought by a tall woman with olive skin and black plaits streaked with silver. He thanks her and stabs the ice with a straw while he thinks what to say next, being careful. “Lucas knew—knows—when to stop. Bonny? She always egged it.” He sits back. “Cruising for a bruising. That’s what folks said about those two. When Bonny…when Bonny had her accident…” He looks away across the bar. “…folks kinda agreed she had it coming.”

  “They did?”

  “Lucas was wild, but he never hurt anyone. She was different.”

  “How?”

  “When Lis was born, Lucas quietened right down. Took his responsibility seriously, apart from that crazy-ass job he does. Bonny just carried on.”

  “Carried on what?”

  He jabs the ice, rattling it in the glass, poking at the lemon slice. “She, uh, messed about. He went crazy.”

  Crazy enough to murder her?

  He shakes his head like he’s reading my mind. “Deep down, Lucas is a real good guy. The best. Nothing wrong with Lucas, in spite of what people think.”

  “And what do people think?”

  “You speak beautifully, do you know that?”

  Eep. I’m losing him. “What do people think about Lucas?”

  “Uh, you know.” He drains his glass, probing the last dark drops trickling through the ice.

  “Not really.”

  “Thing is, a mad old Abenaki woman saw him coming back from Emerald Lake alone, when Bonny should have been with him, the night she died.”

  “Agat?”

  “You know her?”

&nb
sp; “Not really, but I—”

  “Hu!” A group of people come in. “Hu! Hiya, Hu.”

  Hu slides out of the booth. “I gotta go.”

  “Of course. Thanks for the wine.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He hurries off, unnecessarily fast, if you ask me, to get his hand pumped and back slapped by the new arrivals. I finish my wine and wander out into the mild evening air to wait for Alice. What, exactly, did Hu mean by messed about?

  Does he mean what I think he means? What it universally means?

  Chapter Eleven

  Honestly—and perhaps it’s a good thing—I haven’t got much time to deliberate these issues because Pick has roped me into the end-of-term school party.

  “The little lemon sponges you made for the Fathers’ Day celebrations were out of this world. Clearly, you are a competent baker. Can we count on your assistance?”

  “Yes, of course.” I don’t hesitate for a second; I’m that flattered.

  “I’m putting you in charge of the naughty corner.”

  That figures. “What do you want me to do?” Offer dry crusts to those who have misbehaved?

  “Ah!” She pats her stomach, covered by an apron where pairs of animals spill out of Noah’s Ark pockets. “You will be responsible for the dessert section of the buffet.” She hands me a list of names of mothers—and one father—who bake. I glance at it, recognizing no one.

  “Great.” I fold the list and shove it into a pocket. I’m not contacting any of those people, because I can do this myself.

  In the end, I get all the help I need. At zero hour, two mums I barely know from school—Judy and Valerie—come over and help me while I’m finishing off a batch of cherry tarts, each with a glazed cherry and green marzipan leaf. Judy rolls pastry for chocolate cheesecake slices, while I get stuck into a sticky toffee cake, and Valerie starts on a raspberry and blueberry trifle.

  Halfway through the morning, Jay Sawyer arrives to take the Jeep away for service.

  “I’d forgotten,” I wail. “Not today, please! I have so much to do.” I spread my hands out to encompass the entire kitchen, both ovens working, pans on five of the six hotplates, microwave running and dishwasher on the third load.

  “No problem.” He accepts a cup of coffee and, unasked, washes the mug when he’s finished, plus every item in the sink, at lightning speed, stacks it in a teetering pile on the draining board and leaves with a smile and a wave, telling me he’ll make a booking for next week.

  Judy chuckles over the caramel sauce she’s watching on the hob. “That’s Lobster Cove style for ya. Good man, Jay.”

  Something I’ve noticed: Jay’s softened quite a bit since our first meeting. Is it to do with Alice’s friendship with Molly? Lucas’s absence? Or perhaps the presence of these members of the school gates’ brigade in my kitchen, all hands willingly on deck?

  By the time school’s out, we’re done. All I have to do is make the ice cream and the filling for the fruit flan, offered as a healthy option to those watching their weight—although you’d be kidding yourself if you ate the pastry.

  In the end I buy the ice cream. I’m not a saint.

  ****

  “You’re a saint,” Pick cries, hands clasped, surveying the dessert display, laid out on gingham cloths on trestle tables in the school hall.

  “Why, thank you, Mrs. Pick.” I smile.

  “Call me Ruth. And—” she clasps the hand of a man standing next to her—“meet my husband, Ronnie.”

  Red-headed, red-bearded Ronnie is an oyster farmer and yachtsman. He towers over Ruth, unrecognizably radiant in his presence, in her pretty yellow and white polka dot dress with flared skirt and fitted bodice—Pan Am breasts notwithstanding. Looking at her this way, she can’t be much older than me.

  “Lucas not here?” Ronnie asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “When do you expect him home?”

  “I-I don’t really know.”

  He studies me for a moment while he eats a sausage roll. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Seems a while since Lucas was in town.” Clearly, concerning school matters, there are Chinese walls between Ruth and Ronnie. I’m grateful.

  “He’s delayed in Aberdeen,” I say quickly, offering a bowl of cheese straws. “The weather, you know.”

  He nods. “Yeah, I know.”

  I look across to the group of small children sitting on a mat to one side of the hall, entranced by the clown hired to entertain them. I’m not telling anyone about Lucas being hurt. I have no details, and vitally, Alice knows nothing. Furthermore, John asked me not to tell her. If I spread the word, she might pick up something distressing via one of her friends. I watch her, cross-legged at the clown’s feet, almost on top of the toes of his long, squeaky shoes, enthralled, laughing up at him with delighted eyes as he pulls yards and yards of knotted scarves out of his right ear.

  She’s too young to worry. I’ll do that for her.

  ****

  On the day school closes for the summer holidays, I get a message from Lucas. Alice has run ahead into the house to deposit her book bag and the pile of drawings she’s brought home. I retrieve the message and stop, halfway through the sea horse door, one hand on the cool carvings of the metal handle.

  Lucas. Hi there.

  Hi stranger, I reply. How are you?

  OK.

  Only okay? I delete that. Good. We’ve been waiting and waiting to hear something from you. Alice misses you. I delete that, too. We miss you. When are you coming home?

  Soon.

  Can’t wait. Delete. When? Can I tell Alice?

  No.

  When?

  As soon as I can.

  A day? A week? A month?

  Tell Alice I love her.

  I call John while Alice is lunching on chicken and vegetable salad, a small whole-wheat cheese sandwich, and fruit smoothie.

  “He’s broken two fingers,” John tells me, “so it’s probably a little difficult to text. I’ll let you know when I hear something.” I can hear he’s rushing so I let him go. What else has Lucas broken? Why didn’t John tell me about the fingers?

  Over the next days I squeeze nothing out of Lucas. He is not communicating. He answers my texts in monosyllables. Two to be exact, in response to any question I ask: No and Don’t know. It’s better than nothing, isn’t it? At least we know he’s alive. But is he okay?

  Alice stops asking about him, like he’s faded out of her life.

  Two broken fingers explains the radio brevity, if not silence. Except it doesn’t. At breakfast one morning, with my phone on the table in front of me and Alice looking on with interest, I discover I can text or call whichever two fingers I leave out, including both thumbs.

  Something’s wrong.

  Alice asks for more fruit smoothie, and as I get up to get the jug out of the fridge, a movement catches my eye. The tall kitchen doors are open to the sea porch and the stunning outlook of sea and sky. A brief thought occurs: I’m so worried about Lucas I can’t enjoy all the sheer breathtaking beauty of what’s around me. I stand and stare. On the ragged lawn, mid-way between the house and the slope to the beach, I see a familiar figure—white-haired, brown-skinned, wearing an ankle length shift and clogs. She lifts her face to the sun and holds up her arms. I can just hear her wails over the sound of the surf.

  Agat.

  “More smooothieeee, pleeeease.”

  “Coming up.” I pour the last of the thick, pale liquid into Alice’s glass, give it to her, and put the jug in the dishwasher.

  When I look again, seconds later, the figure’s gone. I run through the house to the front door, standing wide open to the perfect afternoon.

  “Hey!” I yell, expecting to see her racing down the driveway. There’s nobody in sight. Anyway, she could access the front of the house from the beach, so why not leave that way? It’s one of the things I love most about Lobster Cove—how people leave their doors and wind
ows wide open, and don’t bother to fence their properties. Right now, I’m not so mad about that tendency. I wait, watching and listening, until Alice comes outside and asks me what I’m doing.

  “Looking for something,” I say. I grasp the big sea horse handle, close the door and lock it. On the sea porch, I walk up and down, scanning the lawn and the shore to the east. There are distant figures walking on the rocks, but they could be anybody.

  Alice follows me onto the grass. “Lara?” She tugs my hand.

  “Mm?”

  She points to the ground. “What’s those?”

  I look. In a semicircle around the steps leading up to the porch there are small crosses.

  Crosses?

  I look closer. Dozens of small crosses, maybe a hundred, hardly taller than toothpicks, each one bound at the centre with twine, stand upright in the untidy grass in a perfect semicircle around the bottom step, like…

  Like what?

  Like you’re not supposed to go inside the house.

  Voodoo. That’s the word that comes to mind.

  I stare at the crosses, unwilling to step back over them.

  “Come, Alice.” I pick her up and carry her around the side of the house, where I heave her over the porch rail well away from the scene of Agat’s nonsense. I clamber after her, making her laugh.

  Alice has a birthday party this afternoon. Jay Sawyer and Molly are picking her up in twenty minutes, and I know exactly what I’m going to do while Alice is away. I’m taking a drive out to Emerald Lake to have a word with Agat. It’s time. Before things get worse.

  Alice leaves. I’m locking up when the phone rings. John, thank God, with an update. “Everything’s going real well. Lucas is making progress. He’ll be home pretty soon. Nurse Nina says he’s responding well to the data you send.”

  “The what?” Sudden thought: Is he also responding well to Nurse Nina, whoever she may be?

  “Photographs of Alice, messages.”

  “Who is Nurse Nina?”

  “My contact at the hospital.”

  That’s not what I meant.

  “Thank you, Lara, I’m sure your efforts mean a lot to him.”