by Katie Curtis
That night, Anna dreamed of the ocean floor. It had cavernous spaces and rocky ledges, and piles and piles of lobsters. On a far-off ledge, there was one lobster that was blue. Around it, the ocean waters seemed to glow, or maybe the glow was coming from the lobster itself.
Chapter 9
It had been a relaxing Sunday with church at St. Patrick’s, then brunch out with Mike, Marie, Henry, Aunt Catherine, and Uncle Joe. Anna realized she was feeling good about going to Church again, and she added it to the list of changes she felt since she had come home. Her anger at God had melted considerably, she noticed, and thought it might be time to get in His good graces again.
She spent the afternoon in the boathouse painting. Afterward, she headed back to her sister’s house. She had made an amazing lamb curry for them while Mike was at work. He hated Indian food, but Marie loved it and made it often when he had to work at night. Anna filled herself with the delicious stew, flavored with ginger and garlic, and dipped her fingers into the warm pile of naan bread Marie served. She let the comfort food distract her and tried not to think about Andrew. She had called Raphael both yesterday and today, but said nothing about Andrew or the Fundraiser.
On Monday morning, Anna woke up with a pressing thought—Andrew was a professor. She went to the computer, looked up the Darling Marine Center, and in less than five minutes learned that there were in fact two weeks left of classes, and that a Professor Andrew Toomey was teaching Invertebrate Biology at ten a.m. After borrowing Marie’s truck and promising to drive carefully (with an eye roll) she drove the twenty minutes to the campus, which was easy to find. Class didn’t start for twenty more minutes, so she grabbed a coffee at the cafeteria and then made her way across campus wearing a baseball hat and nondescript clothes - Mike’s navy blue hoodie and jeans. Anna reached the classroom and sighed with relief since it turned out to be a lecture room. She could hide in the back.
What are you doing? Are you crazy? Stalking this place where Andrew teaches? What’s next, are you going to hide on the boat before he sets off? Wandering into the ladies’ room to kill the last few minutes, she splashed some cold water on her face, suddenly very nervous. She overheard two girls talking next to her. They were grad students, probably, in jeans and sweaters. They were reasonably attractive, clearly very academic and confident.
“So only two classes left with Toomey. How are you taking it?” the shorter, dark-haired girl said to her taller friend with blond curls.
“My hearts gonna break a little bit at the final. Maybe I’ll have to rearrange my fall schedule to fit in one of his classes,” she said as she lathered Chap Stick on her lips.
“I know. I almost want to volunteer to be his skipper this summer just to have some more face time with him. Could you imagine being in a boat alone with him out on the ocean?” Anna was very glad her face was resting in a paper towel as they spoke, because her reaction was completely involuntary. She started to laugh out loud, but managed to make it sound like a cough. She found herself feeling oddly . . . protective? Angry? Jealous? Of Andrew? Dear Lord, what was happening?
Anna quickly rushed into the back of the classroom and pulled her cap down low over her eyes. She spotted a tall, rotund guy and sat right behind him. Not long after she sat down, Andrew walked into the room. He was wearing old jeans and Top-Siders, and a blue oxford with a white T-shirt underneath it. After a minute of staring at his stack of papers, he looked up and started to speak.
“Okay, everyone, we are two weeks out from the final right now. If anyone hasn’t completed their last lab they should have it in to me by the end of the week. I’m not accepting any more as of Friday at five p.m. Just slide it under my door before that time.” Anna felt an electric shock go through her body at the sound of his voice. He spoke with his hands in his pockets and the effect was casual, but Anna had to admit that he was extremely attractive as a professor. Who could blame those girls? It was hard to concentrate on tidal charts or exoskeletons with Andrew teaching.
“Let’s go over the items that will be covered on the exam. Consider this class and next week a review. We’ll follow the syllabus as we review since the exam will follow it pretty closely. First we have anatomy, habitat, and reproduction. Who wants to tell me about the lobster’s brain?”
Anna looked down hard at the floor as Andrew walked around the front of the class. Although the lecture hall was big, she noticed with a slight sense of panic that it was not that full. He could spot her if he looked around the giant in front of her. She pulled out her sketch notebook in her purse so that it looked like she was following along, and put her hand on the side of her face, covering her profile.
She listened for a few more minutes in her silent panic. Okay, seriously, what were you thinking? Do you think you are going to get out of this moment without him recognizing you? Are you prepared for the humiliation you are about to experience? She couldn’t believe her internal alarm did not go off when she had first considered this idea. It was such a strong reaction, when she saw his name next to this class time she decided to check it out. She almost didn’t believe Liz when she first told her. But here she was, sitting in her old boyfriend’s classroom, hiding like a criminal in the back.
And then it happened. Andrew walked over to pull down a roll-up chart hanging at the side of the classroom. “Let’s review habitat. Tell me about the relationship between migration and water temperature.” His eyes cast over the room when the large guy in front of her bent down to pick up a pen, and he spotted Anna. Andrew’s face grew confused, then stunned; then finally a faint smile crossed his lips. Though the students might not have noticed, Anna did. She tried to sit lower in her chair, but it was too late. I’m an idiot, she thought. Andrew regained his focus and continued on as if he hadn’t noticed her at all.
“So are you planning on taking the final exam too?” she heard Andrew say after the last student had left the classroom. Anna could hardly move from her seat. The humiliation weighed down on her. She had picked the edges of the sweatshirt hoodie through the whole class, and now there was a good-sized hole along the seam. She took a deep breath and stood up to face him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a professor?” she said. “I mean, why were you trying to hide this?” She put one hand on the desk next to her, and the other rested on her hip.
“Anna, we haven’t exactly sat down over a cup of coffee, have we? It didn’t occur to me to mention it to you,” he said, picking up handouts and books. “Besides, what difference does it make to you? So what if I am a professor or researcher? I’m doing this to help other lobstermen. Lobstering comes first for me, and you already know that’s what I do.” He put his things into his bag.
“Well, you could have mentioned it,” Anna mumbled. She felt even more humiliated by the fact that he was right. What business was it of hers? “I’m sorry that I interrupted your class. I didn’t mean to bother you. I guess I was just shocked when your sister told me you taught here. And there have been so many surprises lately that I can’t seem to think clearly anymore.” She couldn’t look at him as she spoke. “I should probably go.” She walked toward the door, pulling her baseball hat down tighter around her head.
“Wait,” he said. “At least let me buy you lunch. I have to eat now anyway. We will officially catch up over a sandwich. No more surprises.”
At first Anna thought the invitation was a bad idea. Somehow it seemed like it would confuse her even more to spend more time with him. But then she realized she was curious. She wanted to hear how he had become a professor while remaining a lobsterman.
“Okay,” she said, heading into the hall. “But let me buy lunch. I crashed your class. It’s the least I can do.”
The large windows of the cafeteria filled the room with sunlight, and the tree boughs around the window swayed lazily in the wind. Anna stared at them while she waited for Andrew to sit down with his tray. She had grabbed some soup and crackers. Her stomach felt a little too nervous to eat a sandwich or sa
lad. She saw him crossing the cafeteria, walking toward her with his confident, slow stride. Her thoughts drifted back to their days in college, when they ate together in the food court every night for dinner. They were broke then so they had to stretch every dollar they had on their meal cards. They would sit there for hours eating frozen yogurt and doing homework, or talking with friends, laughing until their sides hurt.
She didn’t think he wanted to become anything other than a lobsterman after college, although he always excelled at his studies. A biology major, he graduated magna cum laude, something her father often pointed out when they talked about how he was ‘just’ a lobsterman. Anna could hear her father now: How can he throw his education and talent away like that? For what? Some romantic occupation? She snapped out of her daydream just as he sat down. His tray was filled with a large sub and chips. She remembered he didn’t like tomatoes, and she saw some sticking out of the sub. “You know there are tomatoes on there, right?” she said.
Andrew promptly picked them off. “Thanks.”
Anna took a bite of her soup, a delicious clam chowder. She noticed the two grad students from the bathroom staring at them and she had to smile. She cleared her throat. “So when I left for New York, you were determined to keep up your family’s lobstering rights, or your territory at least. Keep the tradition alive. How did you end up getting your PhD while doing that?”
Andrew took a bite and rolled up his sleeves, thinking. “Not long after you moved, there was a bunch of fighting between the fishermen and the lawmakers. They wanted to increase the minimum size for lobsters that you could keep while they were shortening the fishing season. The local newspapers were carrying articles about the debate almost every day. The lawmakers were listening to shoddy facts from environmentalists. It just really made me mad. I knew these waters. I knew there were plenty of lobsters down there. They thought they were trying to keep lobstering sustainable, but they would have easily pushed out the fishermen we had at the time by making those changes. So the one thing I kept thinking was they needed someone who understood both sides of the debate. Someone who understood the ocean and the lobstermen. I took some classes thinking I was just going to get my master’s degree, and by then I had become close with a few professors who shared my view. They encouraged me to keep going. So I did. And I was lucky. They understood the constraints I had during lobster season and they never required me to do anything during that time. If I had to take a trip for some research, they scheduled it in the winter or spring.” Andrew waved hello to a group of students that walked by.
“What about the fights between lawmakers and lobstermen? Have you been able to make a difference so far?” Anna asked.
Andrew shrugged. “Well, the oceans are definitely getting warmer. We’ve had record catches because Long Island and Connecticut lobsters are moving north. But I think with bigger boats, and lobsterman going out farther, we can keep this industry in Maine. I just published a few papers on it, so we’ll see.”
Anna nodded. They ate in silence for a few minutes. “How’s your brother doing? I heard he opened a restaurant in Rhode Island?”
“Yes, he seems pretty stressed at the moment and we don’t get to see him that much. But I think he’s good, from the little I have gathered. He’s upset about Uncle Charlie too.” Anna felt another twinge of guilt that she hadn’t visited and checked in on her brother since he opened the restaurant. Anna looked up at Andrew’s face, and she suddenly found herself wondering what experiences he had had, and if he had loved anyone else besides her. “So what about your grad school years. Any girlfriends?” she asked.
He sat back and crossed his arms, silently thinking for a few moments. “A few. I just came from a trip in Brazil where I grew pretty close to a colleague. But it didn’t work out,” he said soberly. “She wanted to go back to the West Coast. Seems like I have a bad streak of luck with girls who don’t want to live in Maine.” He gave a shy, crooked grin, and the effect was so disarming Anna was grateful she was sitting down. Surely her knees would have buckled at this moment.
“What about you and your guy in New York? Where’s that headed?” he asked. His voice was very direct and took on a serious tone. He wasn’t grinning anymore, but instead sat holding his drink in his hand, his eyebrows furrowed. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and Anna could see the scar on the bottom of his right forearm. A lobster trap had come up too quickly and dug into his arm, scraping his flesh almost to the bone. She had taken him to get stitches at the hospital in Bristol.
“He works in finance, on Wall Street. He’s from Argentina originally, but his family has lived in Connecticut since his school days.” She nibbled on a salty cracker as if to say she was finished talking about it, but Andrew pressed on. “Well, how come you’re still here in Maine? I mean, how much time can you take off for a funeral? Did you take a leave of absence or something?” he asked. He leaned toward her with great interest, his arms crossed and his shoulders forward.
“I have a great job at the gallery,” Anna said. “My boss is like a mentor. I’ve learned so much from her. She let me stay here in Maine and I promised her I would look into the galleries here, see if there was anything worth bringing back.” Anna hoped her answer sounded convincing. She again promised herself to visit the gallery her father had mentioned so that her story about scouting out talent looked good to Raphael and her family. She still wanted to be under the radar about working on several pieces while she was here.
As if he could read her mind, Andrew asked, “What about your painting?” His face seemed to soften a bit, and in his eyes she saw a friend, and something else. Longing. That was what was getting to her. She could see Andrew’s longing. Since they first saw each other at Shaw’s Wharf. It seemed to stir up her own.
Anna tried to hide her thoughts. “I still paint. I can’t help it. It’s just . . . always going to be something I do, I guess.” She wasn’t sure why she wanted to keep her commercial life hidden. She liked the creative freedom that came from no one thinking she was trying to sell her art, that it was just for her. And for some reason she didn’t want Andrew to know about her agreement with Genevieve, although it would be easier to tell him than her father. For now, she wanted to keep things the way they were.
“Tell that to your dad,” Andrew said, laughing into his plate of chips. “He must be really sad that you keep your lantern hidden under a basket. He wanted you to be a direct link to the Old Masters, right? No offense, I just remember the pressure you had to deal with. I don’t know if he just relaxed as he got older, or . . .”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Anna said. Talking about her dad put her on edge again. “He’s still the same as always. We just don’t really talk much now.” She grew sad at the thought, and the whole situation made her depressed. “I sort of swore to him I’d never paint again when I left. To cut off that pressure once and for all. I would rather he think that I stopped painting than for him to know that my apartment hardly has room to hold any more art. It’s easier that way. Raphael is always teasing me that he has nowhere to sit—we don’t . . . we don’t live together. I have a roommate.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling Andrew this.
Andrew wiped his face with a napkin and was quiet for a moment. “Do you love him?” he asked. Anna suddenly felt very uncomfortable, and the room became so hot that she felt a drop of sweat roll down her forehead. Maybe it was the soup overheating her, or sitting in the sunlit window. Or maybe it was having Andrew shine a light so intensely on her life. She wasn’t ready for this kind of scrutiny.
“I would say that falls under the category of none of your business, kind of like your getting a PhD is none of mine,” she answered. She crossed her arms. Her pale skin grew flush under her cheeks.
“But you’re here, aren’t you? And I told you that story.” Andrew answered, smiling slightly. The effect was disarming.
Still, Anna couldn’t answer him. He quickly added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. And, I�
��m sorry for driving away so angry the other day.” His eyebrows furrowed as he spoke, and he played with the salt and pepper shakers nervously.
“No, I’m the one who owes you an apology, I shouldn’t have blamed you for everything, and I did,” said Anna. “We just, we needed different things. And it was a hard time for me, with my mom gone.”
His face was tight with emotion. “It’s not your fault. It was my fault. When I . . . when I saw you again, I just . . .” He sighed and pushed his hands through his hair, the perpetual mess of Andrew’s light brown locks. “Look, I have office hours that start in a few minutes.” Andrew glanced at his watch and avoided her gaze. “I’m done with my semester in a few weeks. If you’re still around, why don’t you bring your sister and nephew out on the boat?” He stood up suddenly and grabbed his tray. “I should run. I’ll see you later, Anna,” he said. He made eye contact quickly, his gaze intense, but guarded. He nodded as he walked away.
Anna sat watching the leaves blow in the wind outside, though the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. She couldn’t seem to forget the feel of being under that gaze.
Chapter 10
She drove back to her uncle’s house (she had resigned herself to the fact that it would feel like her uncle’s house for a while, so why fight it?). The sky had turned dark gray, and the ocean acted as a mirror to the sky, making it hard to pick out the horizon.
Why did she go to Andrew’s classroom? Why did she feel unsettled about everything? Andrew and Raphael, her dad? She could feel the weight of her emotions pulling her down as she pulled into Riley’s market. She grabbed some tea, wine, and chocolate—she wasn’t sure which one she needed. On her way back to the car she spotted the new gallery again. She put her things in the front seat and walked over. She listened to the sound of the small rocks crunching under her feet. The sea roses lined the edge of the road, and she tried to steer clear of the thorns.