The Sea Horse Door

by Gina Rossi

  “Then why not move away from here? Go somewhere where there aren’t any memories?” I almost tell him to go and live somewhere he’s not afraid to be. Because that’s why he has that job that takes him away from home for weeks at a time—so he doesn’t have to be here at Blue Rocks with the ghost of Bonny reflected in every window. I know I’m right. This is where the desperate comment about living in London has been growing roots.

  He doesn’t answer. Alice is back. “Come, Daddy, come and see my jews. We go to the beach.” She pulls him toward the door, but he resists.

  “No, Alice. We’re not going there.”

  “Please! Come. Come.”

  “No!” His aggressive roar slaps Alice out of her joyful mood. Her eyes fill, her mouth turns down and she bursts into tears.

  “Look what you’ve done!” I’m horrified, half-crying myself, scared of what I’ve done. I pick Alice up. “Why do you have to speak to her like that?”

  “I won’t show you my jews, Daddy. I won’t show you my diamond.”

  “Diamond?” Lucas, standing very still, stares at Alice. “What diamond?” He’s utterly calm, like he’s had nothing to do with the perfect storm of distress thrashing in my arms.

  “In the table rock,” she cries. “You. Can’t. See. It. You not allowed!”

  He turns his eyes on me, so dark I can’t see his thoughts. “Does she mean the Cocktail Rock?”

  “I have no idea.” Alice flings her arms around my neck, cracking me across the nose. “Ow! There’s a rock she loves lying on, very flat, about a yard square that’s exposed at low tide. It’s got a deep fissure running diagonally—”

  He’s gone. “Lucas!” I shout at his back as he runs down the sea porch steps and sprints across the grass. “I don’t think Alice means an actual diamond—” On the other hand, Alice is obsessed with that crack in the rock.

  Oh my God. What are the chances?

  Could it be? Could it be Bonny’s diamond? How many times, while we’ve been on that little beach has Alice implored me to look at her jews? “Mm,” I say, vaguely peering into the crack in the rock, my eyes so full of sunlight I can see nothing in the dark split, wet with seawater, fringed with a little green weed, smelling of cool salt.

  “You can’t have my diamond, Daddy,” Alice screams, bawling her eyes out.

  I sit on the porch swing with Alice in my lap, my hands, my knees, everything, shaking.

  “Alice,” I say, after a while, “if you stop crying, we’ll go to the beach, see?” She shuts up immediately. It’s a brave effort, punctuated by mighty hiccoughs. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hands, but it’s not enough and allows me to stall for time. We go inside and wash and dry her face. To be honest, I’m not too keen to see what Lucas is getting up to on the beach. Perhaps Alice will forget that I said we’d go there.

  No chance. Nose blown, face clean, she tugs my hand. “Want to go to the beach. Want Daddy.”

  We go. Lucas, sitting on the wet pebbles next to the flat rock, ignores our approach. He stares out to sea, his empty eyes telling me all I need to know. He found nothing. Alice runs to him and, absentminded, he draws her into his arms, sitting her on his lap, kissing the top of her head. I hang back, leaving them to it. I’m a spare part in this, and I wouldn’t know where to start, what to say—but I’m not leaving. I don’t want to leave Alice and Lucas alone here, where the autumn shadows are damp, the sea cold and the sorrow deep.

  Sorrow? Angie said Lucas and Bonny’s marriage was over. Did he, does he, believe that? It’s hard to think so, looking at him now, huddled on the wet stones with his daughter. The wind, fresh off the sea, freezes me to the rock on which I’ve perched. Alice has short sleeves, and I’m worried she’ll get cold, and ill. Pulling courage from where it’s retreated to hide from my foolishness, I stand up and go toward them, putting a hand on Lucas’s shoulder.

  “Lucas?”

  I might as well not have spoken. Arms around Alice, he stares across the waves.

  “Please, get up and come with me, or the tide might cut us off.”

  Eventually—because I don’t want to frighten her with scary talk—my desperation registers with Alice. She gets off Lucas and, taking one of his hands in both of hers, tries to pull him to his feet. “Come, Daddy, come at once. Lara says.” She puts her little back into the job, slipping on the pebbles. “Help me, Lara, help me.”

  Lucas stands, picks up Alice and walks across the beach to the steps. Today, the cove isn’t the way I know and love it: a peaceful, private suntrap, lined with warm pebbles and fringed by the blue beauty of the sea. Today, it’s a sad, cold reminder of love gone deeply and dangerously bad. I climb the path, wondering what to say. I’ve been such an idiot. Lucas asked—told—me not to come here, and I disobeyed orders. Apart from ugly memories, it’s a dangerous place with that swift tide, the wind and currents. With the awful reminder it holds for him, it’s lethal.

  “Oh,” cries Alice, pointing, as we go into the house via the sea porch. “Buster! Look at his whispers!”

  Buster slips past with remarkable speed for such a large animal, his whiskers coated in glossy butter and dotted with crumbs, his eyes fixed on the exit, and, bad news, the lower half of Alice’s sea horse scone clamped in his jaws. I give chase, but he boosts himself down the steps, streaking across the grass to hide in the straggle of scrubby bushes on the far side.

  That bloody cat.

  I march into the house, flustered and frustrated. “Honestly, Lucas, that cat is too much. It’s time somebody trained him to—”

  The table is virtually bare. Buster has eaten the scones, the butter, even the jam, and I bet my life he stuck his fat head into the milk jug and had most of that while he was at it. Honey paw prints on the table top tell the rest of the story. Alice surveys the devastation and bursts into fresh tears. Buster’s ravaging of the breakfast table is the absolute last straw, but at least it takes the spotlight off the awkward happenings in the cove.

  “We’ll make more sea horse scones,” I tell Alice. “Lots. Stop crying and take Daddy to fetch a pen and some cardboard.”

  She stops crying. “Why?”

  “Daddy’s going to draw a lovely sea horse to use as a template.”

  “What’s a temp—what did you say?”

  “A template. A shape to trace around.”

  Lucas raises his eyebrows. “I am?”

  “Yes.” I fill the dishwasher with everything Buster has, or might have, licked, sweep crumbs into the bin, wipe the table and start over. “I need a sea horse. Just the outline to cut out and use as a baking shape.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucas says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should never have taken Alice to the…I shouldn’t have taken her there. You asked, told, me not to.”

  “I can’t stop hoping,” he says. “I can’t stop myself. I don’t know what to—”

  “Come, Daddy, get crayons.” Alice takes his hand and pulls him out of the kitchen.

  Alice called it the bidden cove. Entirely the opposite word to forbidden. Somehow, that gives me hope.

  Suffice it to say, Lucas doesn’t come lightly to drawing. He and Alice disappear for a while into the studio and come back laden with sheets of cardboard, pens, rulers, T-squares, and a large and small pair of compasses. He also brings along something called a French curve, and a spline, which is a strip of rubber with a bendy metal wire inside—both for drawing curves. I hand over Common Shore Life of Maine, in case Lucas needs inspiration, and get busy with a new batch of scone dough.

  Clearly, inspiration is unnecessary. In minutes, Lucas creates a stunning sea horse on a sheet of cardboard. Not a sketch, but more of a diagram. Correction, a highly accurate technical drawing, complete with parallel lines, circles, notes, symbols.

  “Wow, that’s incredible. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man comes to mind,” I say, leaning over him to gauge progress before I add eggs to the dry scone ingredients.

  “Have you seen it?” he asks.<
br />
  “The Vitruvian Man? I have.”

  “In Venice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky.” He hands over the drawing. “There’s your sea horse.”

  I hold the card in my hands and marvel at the exquisite delicacy of the pen lines. There’s no multiple meaning here, no subjective interpretation required. Here is an image with one intended meaning. It’s the beautifully executed, working drawing of a sea horse.

  “I’m not cutting this up,” I say, holding it to my chest. “Can you do another one? Just the outline?”

  “That one is too hard, Daddy,” Alice says. “Draw a nice one, like mine.”

  At last, a smile. Lucas looks at the picture Alice is holding up: a cross between a purple kite and a green fish skeleton with wings.

  “That’s beautiful darling,” he says. “Can I have it?”

  “You can keep it forever.” She jumps off the chair, scattering high-tech pens, and runs outside to where Buster sits on the top step of the sea porch, casting me filthy looks for spoiling his fun.

  “I will,” he calls, drawing another sea horse, freehand this time. It takes him ten seconds.

  “That’s perfect,” I tell him, brandishing the kitchen scissors. He stares at the sketch for a moment, then lays it back on the table and adds unnecessary detail to the fins.

  “May I take you to dinner tonight?” he asks, not looking at me, giving the sea horse an eye, plus lashes and an eyebrow.

  I hesitate. This is a surprise. “Thank you.”

  “Anywhere you’d like to go?”

  “Mariner’s.”

  His eyebrows go up. “Really?”

  Mariner’s Fish Fry is at the end of Hidden Cove Drive, above Sea Crest Inn. I’ve passed it often on my walks. There’s a squat lighthouse with a deck around the second floor, and a glorious view of the bay. It’s bedecked with lobster buoys and traps giving the place a working harbour feel, although it shouts romance and adventure to me. “Yes. Yes, please.”

  He looks up. “Done. I’ll make a reservation.”

  “Alice mustn’t be up too late.”

  He’s giving the sea horse earrings and a necklace. “I’ll get a sitter for Alice.”

  Oh. A date, then. We’re sleeping together, but we haven’t been on a date. How ridiculous is that, and why does it feel so awkward?

  He gives me the sea horse. I cut it out and transfer the outline to my dough. Half an hour later we have a dozen fat, golden sea horses and life regains a tenuous equilibrium.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “There’s only one thing to eat at Mariner’s,” Lucas says, pulling out my chair. “Fresh lobster.”

  Lobster doesn’t cut it for me. I’m not having any. I wouldn’t know where to start. “I’m, er, not a big fan.”

  “Trust me.”

  “No.”

  He sits down opposite me. “Any particular reason why you wouldn’t?”

  This is a fathomless question! However, I’m going to stick to the realms of lobster. “I’m concerned lobster hunting is bad for the environment.”

  “Lobster hunting, huh?”

  I nod.

  “Don’t worry about it. The environment is fine. If you did a job like mine you’d know what seriously impacts the environment. Lobsters aren’t even on the scale. What seriously affects the environment in these parts is climate change. The sea is warming up. Local lobstermen find black sea bass in their traps in ever-increasing numbers. It used to be too cold for them this far north, but not any more.”

  “I don’t mean that lobsters damage the environment.” Is he laughing at me? “I mean we damage the environment by yanking them out of the sea. We shouldn’t eat them. We should leave them where they belong, to fulfil their role in the delicate balance of the marine ecosystem.”

  His eyes level with mine. “You’re not serious. In that case we shouldn’t be eating anything.”

  He has a point, and I’ve lost the argument—weak to start with. I concede with a polite smile and turn my attention to the view. Lucas has booked the best table up next to the windows, looking out across the deck. Although there’s the bright buzz of a popular restaurant on one side of us, there’s the navy blue sea on the other, trickling the liquid gold shimmer of boat lanterns.

  The evening doesn’t get off to the best start. Lucas remains consumed by the possibility of what might have been, no matter how slim the chances. At Blue Rocks this morning, I glimpsed a man who was almost set free—until he raced off to the cove to hunt for his innocence, finding nothing. That man is not here tonight. When conversation stalls, he thanks me for what I’ve done for Alice, tells me how much he appreciates my input, and praises me for my hit and miss child-rearing wisdom as he calls it. We discuss the view, he tells me what I’m looking at—Lobster Cove, essentially, from the north, all the way past Pine Island to the Martin Lighthouse across the bay—and we study the menu. But, all the while, lurking behind the smiles and the chat, there’s a shit-storm of unbearable despair in his eyes.

  After half an hour of this, and not very much wine—my glass of Chablis has somehow evaporated—I put a hand over one of his.

  “Hey, we can go home. Honestly, we don’t have to do this. Why don’t we go back to Blue Rocks and get a take-away? We can sit on the porch and—” And what? Anything but this. He’s making himself do this; it’s not what he wants, or what I want.

  He’s staring at my hand. When he looks up I can see he wants to go home, badly. He pulls away from me, sits back, pulls in a deep breath. “No. I’m going to do this.” He picks up the menu. “What do you feel like?”

  “Um…”

  “C’mon, try a little lobster. You haven’t lived until you have. I’ll order, shall I?”

  Baptism by fire, then. “Okay, but be kind. To me and the lobster.”

  He pours more wine and a waitress comes over. There’s a lengthy discussion—in Lobster-ese—of what’s on offer and how it’s prepared. Lucas thinks, deliberates, considers, and eventually orders something for both of us. I shudder to think. Out of control of the situation, I sit back and enjoy the lovely aromas around me. The air is warm with the buzz of garlic and herbs frying in a little butter, cooled by the tang of lemon juice and salt on a sharing platter of oysters going past, borne aloft by a fast-moving waiter.

  Our food arrives. Several lobsters embracing on an enormous plate, with rice, salads, sauces and lemon wedges tucked in all around. We are given bibs. I am afraid, very afraid. The waitresses withdraw and, panicked, I say—firmly—to Lucas, “I’m not…I’m not getting involved with that. It’s pretty, but I’m not going in.”

  He grins. “Bear with me. It’ll be all right.”

  Oh God, what is he doing? He has plier things, nutcracker and tong things, eating tools. What is wrong with him? He laughs at my expression of horror. That sexy, warm laugh I adore. Why doesn’t he laugh more often? No. Thank heaven he doesn’t. I’d go mad. I cover my eyes.

  “You Americans are barbaric, you know that?”

  “Bah-baric?”

  “You say lobstah.”

  “You say lob-staaaaah.”

  I peek through my fingers. “That’s correct. I speak English properly.”

  He shouts with laughter, turning heads. People stare. “Wrong. The Pilgrim Fathers removed themselves from England and, in isolation in a new land, preserved the English language in its purest form. I speak proper English, unlike you, influenced as you are by all that European aristocracy.”

  I lean forward, hand still half over my eyes. “You’re a savage,” I say, in an undertone. “You savage the language as you are savaging that lobster.”

  He objects, laughing. “I am, we Americans are, extremely humane. We don’t hunt, shoot, and fish any more than the Brits, and if, when, we do, we do it properly.”

  “Is that so?” I have to smile. The smell, no, fragrance, of that lobster is—it must be said—unlike anything I have ever experienced before. Lucas swiftly cracks, pulls and cuts, p
iling the meat into a separate bowl, tossing coral pink shells into yet another. In spite of heavy reservations, my mouth waters.

  “Come.” He dips a chunk of meat into a dish of melted butter and holds it out to me. “Open mouth.”

  I come out of hiding and do. Oh, heavenly. “Mmmmmm!” Wow. Oh.

  Lucas watches me, those excellent hands poised over his work, fingers spread, juice and melted butter running between them. He’s genuinely delighted. “Do I have a convert?” The smile is slow, but it spreads.

  “Maybe.”

  He gives me more, and some more, until I tell him to stop, and feed himself. He hands over the bowl and I Hoover it along with the rice, the tomato salad with chives, and the cucumber and avocado in a creamy lemon dressing. He piles my plate with more lobster and orders a second bottle of wine, asking the waitress to call Skeet, because we’re going to need a ride home.

  “Or we could walk,” I suggest, splattering warm butter on my bib.

  “Sure could. It’s downhill all the way.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The second bottle’s open, and the tone of the evening has changed. Is it merely because I’m eating lobster and thereby cheering up Lucas? He’s twisting and breaking stuff, splitting and crushing, juices running everywhere, working hard to get the last of the meat, the little I’ve left him.

  “How come you’re so clean?” I ask, looking down at my bib. “Apart from your hands.”

  “Years of experience.”

  “You’ve been coming here for years?”

  “Until Bonny got pregnant. Then she went off lobster, among other things.”

  Okay, Bonny’s back and I’m running with it. Thank you, wine. “What other things?”

  “Me.” He spends a long time rinsing his hands in a bowl of water with lemon slices floating on top. Eyes down, he dries them, finger by finger, on a special little towel brought by a waitress. She gathers plates, clears and wipes and, in spite of protests, leaves us with the pudding menu.

  “Why?”

  He looks me in the eye. “We had problems.”

  A man approaches our table, with purpose, so I’ve timed it wrong. “Nice to see you out, Lucas, how’s things?” Lucas introduces me to Claude Bennis, head chef. For a few minutes we chat about lobster, and the glorious fall weather, and touch on the local restaurant business, and then Claude moves on to greet people at other tables.