She was not like Brumfitt Kings’ mermaid, Daddy said. She had long dark hair that seemed nothing like seaweed, and her tail could have been any colour or no colour at all, but the light made it shine. The mermaid welcomed him, and said this was his castle now, that he was to be the king, and told him to lean down so that she could put a crown upon his head, so that she could welcome him to his kingdom. But as he bent over and the mermaid reached for him, he said he heard a dog barking, and then saw his mother burst into the room. His mother pulled him into her arms, away from the mermaid. Daddy said that my grandmother carried him across the rocky ocean bed, and up the rise, the water seeming insubstantial to her. “Hush, hush, hush,” she kept saying to him, her words the rhythm of the waves breaking over them. Daddy felt the waves trying to pull him back into the ocean, but each one of his mother’s hushes beat back the water, breaking its pull on him, until the two of them broke through the dark tunnel of the salt water and onto the surface, the water flattening into a sheet of glass, the sun’s light exploding off the surface of the ocean bright and gleaming: everything disappeared and all he could see was light, light, light.
My grandmother, who died when I was eleven, liked to point out that my father didn’t include certain bits from the story. Like how when he’d finally opened his eyes again it was to the inside of a hospital room. Like how she didn’t see any mermaid. Like how what she saw was a fisherman’s Newfoundland dog going after Daddy and dragging his limp body from the surf. Like how Daddy was dead for at least a few minutes. But Daddy insisted. He went around the island telling anybody who asked how he was doing, and plenty of people who didn’t, that he’d been under the ocean, that he’d met a mermaid.
Carly thinks he likes to tell that story as a lesson: we all have a place where we belong, and Daddy’s place was above the water, on Loosewood Island.
I think it tells a different lesson, the same lesson that is in all of Daddy’s stories: there’s magic in the sea, magic on Loosewood Island. The problem is that some of the magic is like Brumfitt’s mermaid: sharp with teeth.
Brumfitt Kings probably isn’t a name you’d hear in your daily conversation, but he’s famous enough that a good portion of the tourists who come to Loosewood Island come only for that reason. Others, of course, come for all the same reasons that tourists go anywhere: to see something beautiful and new, to play at being rich somewhere else, and simply to step outside themselves, to imagine that their lives could be something different. Every year we get a few tourist couples—they are always couples, but since I’ve grown up, some of the couples have been men—who fall in love with the island and decide that what we need is an upscale coffeehouse or a jazz bar or a shop that sells only olive oil, and they start their new business up. It doesn’t usually take more than one winter for those people to realize that the reason they fell in love with Loosewood Island wasn’t because of what the island was, but rather because of what Loosewood Island wasn’t. It wasn’t the life they wanted to leave behind. Still, some of them make a go of it year-round and become permanent islanders, and some of them are just tourists with a business interest, keeping shop during the summer months and closing up the rest of the year. There are plenty of islanders who make a good living looking after cottages and houses and businesses that are shut up for the winters.
Even the tourists who don’t come for Brumfitt Kings have mostly heard of the island in the first place because of Brumfitt Kings. The bulk of tourists, Brumfitt Kings fans or not, come here during the summers, but the Brumfitt Kings pilgrims are less predictable. We’ll get a few every month of the year, even into January and February, and you can pick them out because they are the ones who walk the island with coffee-table-sized books in their hands, trying to match Brumfitt’s paintings to the views in front of them. We’ve encouraged it on Loosewood Island, keeping the Brumfitt Kings Museum open year-round. Islanders have grown used to seeing tourists stumbling across our lawns and getting lost in their search for the exact point where Brumfitt painted Morning Breaks, or Broken Mast with No Hope for Shore. The only people who get upset at the Brumfitt Kings tourists are the other tourists themselves, the summer people who built up their six-thousand-square-foot “cottages” and who think that buying into the island means that they’ve bought the island. Those are the ones who try to tell lobstermen whose families have been fishing the same spot for fifty or a hundred years or longer that they don’t want their view spoiled by lobster boats. Those things work themselves out.
Those other kind of summer tourists, the wealthy ones, can be a bit much sometimes, thinking that Loosewood Island’s a sort of fishing theme park, but they are mostly bearable. The ones who come to the island for Brumfitt Kings are almost always easy to deal with, however. For some of them, the trip to the island has been a lifelong dream, and for others it’s something they do every summer.
I think that Daddy and I both look kindly on the Brumfitt tourists because we understand the pull. For Rena and Carly, the idea of the family legacy, of being the descendants of a famous painter, is appealing, but there isn’t any urgency to it. A few years ago, when the Met installed Brumfitt’s most well-known painting, The Catch, neither of my sisters were interested in making the trip to New York with Daddy and me.
“I’m happy to go to the city if Tucker wants to watch the babies,” Rena said, “but I’m not making the trip just to see a painting that I’ve already seen.”
Daddy raised his eyebrows and then put down his beer with an exaggerated slowness and theatricality that made Rena start smiling even before he began his lecture.
“And where, exactly, have you seen The Catch?”
“It’s in every Brumfitt book ever. Plus, all I have to do is head to the west side of the island to get the same view. Seems a lot quicker to take a walk over there than to drive to New York City,” she said.
She was teasing, and she indulged Daddy and me in going to museums when we used to take vacations as a family, but she just didn’t understand. Brumfitt painted the island, but in some of his paintings he saw a different island than the one my sisters did. The Catch was one of those paintings. The paintings that got Brumfitt “discovered” in the 1950s are menacing portraits of Loosewood Island: men drown, a body floating in the water is one that is ravaged by the seas, and a man in a boat is a man who despairs of ever getting home. Brumfitt also has his share of what I like to call “restaurant and hotel lobby paintings,” even though that pisses Daddy off almost as much as when I say that Brumfitt is what you’d get if you combined Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer: paintings of birds caught on the wing, fish brushing against the surface of the waves, the ruggedness of the coast with all menace removed. My favourite works, however, like The Catch, are the ones that remind me of the stories Daddy likes to tell about Brumfitt: paintings where hands snatch at you from the ocean, where birds I’ve never seen before cover the air, where sailors beat back monsters from the waves.
The Catch shows the purpling skies of dawn, a lush light coming over the horizon, but enough shadows to make the ocean seem sinister, and a small, single-masted boat overmatched by the waters and the waves breaking on the rocks. There’s a pair in the boat: a seasoned man and a boy who could be ten or eleven. The man is struggling to pull a single fish from the water. It’s not clear what kind of fish it is—where the rope meets the water there is simply the froth of water—but the man’s back is bent and his muscles and sinews seem to jump from the canvas, and the thing that is clear is that this is a large fish, and that this man with his son, and presumably a wife and more children at home, will use this fish to feed his family.
Despite the strain of the man, the movement of the catch in the water, the menace of the ocean, it’s the son, however, who caught my eye as I stood in the museum with Daddy, and who always catches my eye when I look at prints of The Catch. The boy is smooth and delicate, more like a bird than a boy. He’s looking over the side of the boat and into the water. His hand is extended, almost touching the wate
r.
And this is why I love the painting, why it reminds me of the stories of Loosewood Island that Daddy raised me with: if you gave The Catch only a cursory glance you might wonder at the reflection of the boy’s fingertips in the foam of the ocean.
Except it’s not a reflection.
It’s not the boy’s fingertips at all, but some other person’s fingertips—some other creature—reaching from the water to grasp at his hand, to pull him under.
Every time we boarded the Queen Jane, Daddy gave us the same lecture: watch our feet with the ropes, watch our fingers in the hydraulics, watch that we sit where we’re out of the way, watch that we help when it is needed, and always, he’d add at the end, giving us a wink, watch to see if there’s anything that Brumfitt might have painted out in the water.
By the time I was twelve I’d started showing breasts, though it was Rena, early at only eleven, a full year younger than me, who’d gotten her period already, and Momma had been making noises about how the Queen Jane wasn’t a place for me or my sisters to be spending our weekends, that squatting on the deck to pee and hosing it off wasn’t the best training for the kind of girls she was trying to raise. She’d never been warm to the idea of me, Rena, and Carly fishing, but she was always ready with an extra lunch for Scotty to take along. He belonged out there with his daddy, she’d say, because otherwise how would he learn to be a lobsterman? It might be in the Kings blood, but that didn’t mean Daddy didn’t also need to teach him how to be a man.
Despite Momma’s urgings and Daddy’s steady attention, Scotty was always the last one out the door. On a Saturday morning, when I’d already be in my boots and slicker down at the docks, checking the bait, re-coiling any lines that I didn’t like the look of, he’d still be sitting at the table, as if his sugared cereal could stand to soak up more milk. Rena and Carly were somewhere in between. Sometimes they’d come fishing because I wanted to be there—and Scotty had to be there—and because they didn’t want to be left behind. Sometimes they’d stay home to walk the island and bake with Momma or play with friends.
That Saturday, a fall day when the wind was hinting at what was in store for us with the coming of winter, was the last time that the four of us all went with Daddy at the same time, and it was also the first Saturday that Momma said it explicitly: “You girls are staying home.”
Scotty was still upstairs, even though Daddy had woken him first and Momma had gone into his room twice to get him moving, but I was at the table eating oatmeal with syrup. Daddy was pouring coffee into his thermos. Momma packed him his lunch every day, but he liked to doctor up his coffee with enough sugar to offset the salt of the sea, and he always heated the cream before he poured it in, so that the coffee wouldn’t go cold for him if he was still out on the Queen Jane in the evening. He rested the lid on top of the thermos, like he did every morning, to keep the steam in while he pulled the sugar from the pantry. He glanced at Momma when she said it, when she said, “You girls are staying home,” but he didn’t say anything.
Rena stuck her head out of the bathroom, where she was braiding her hair, but Momma glared at me and me alone. I hadn’t said anything, hadn’t responded, but she acted like I had. “That’s right, Cordelia. You’re staying home. It might be a weekend, but it’s cold outside and I don’t want you girls coming back home tonight with runny noses and skin that’s chafed from the wind.” She folded her arms under her small breasts and leaned back against the counter. She was wearing a blue dress that matched the sky more than the water, and I wondered how early she must have woken to have already done her hair and her makeup before starting to make breakfast and pack lunches. She uncrossed her arms, crossed them again, and then brought one hand up to her necklace. I could tell that she was nervous. She hadn’t talked to Daddy, and she wasn’t sure what he’d say. She seemed to consider it, and then let her fingers fall away from the pearls, standing up straight and crossing her arms. “The Queen Jane is no place for a young lady.”
And this time I did speak. “Scotty can go fishing, but I can’t?”
There was a long silence. Rena stood still on the threshold of the bathroom. Carly put down her doll. Upstairs, I heard the first movements from Scotty’s room, the creak of his bed and then the floor. We were waiting for Daddy to respond.
He put the glass jar of sugar down on the counter and unscrewed the lid. He didn’t seem to be in any sort of a hurry as he opened the drawer, pulled out a soupspoon, and started scooping sugar into the thermos. I counted the spoonfuls, five, six, the squeak of the spoon in the sugar, the occasional tinkle of the handle hitting the glass of the jar or the rim of the thermos. Fourteen and fifteen, and then Daddy dunked the spoon in the thermos and gave it a twirl. He didn’t say anything, and the lack of voice was too much for me.
“Scotty’s a baby, and he’s still going fishing?” I said.
I was looking at Momma, and she was ready to respond, but it was Daddy who spoke. “Scotty’s a Kings, and he’ll be out fishing with me today, Cordelia.”
“You and your sisters can stay home with me,” Momma said. She was trying to make her voice sound bright, but all I could think of was glass breaking. “You’ll help me with painting the back room, and after lunch we can bake some cookies if you’d like.”
“I’m a Kings, too,” I said. I pushed myself away from the table, hard enough that some of the milk in my glass sloshed out. I’d like to be able to say that I hadn’t meant to push that hard, but I had, and more importantly, I meant what I said next. “I can’t go fishing because I’m a girl?” I paused, so that the next words would really hit. “That’s bullshit.”
I think that I was hoping the word would drop like a bomb. The men on the docks swore without any real thought, and I’d heard Daddy talking like he meant to take the paint off the hull of the Queen Jane, but that wasn’t the language we used in our house. I’d never heard anything stronger than a “darn it” come out of Momma’s mouth. I pressed hard on the word, “bullshit,” looking at Momma and waiting for her to respond. She opened her mouth, but it was Daddy who spoke.
His voice was calm and even, as if he were simply suggesting I wear rain boots instead of sneakers. “I don’t think you’re going to talk like that in front of your mother,” he said, “but the point is taken.” He picked up the thermos and screwed on the cap. “It is bullshit, Cordelia. You’re right. You’re a Kings, too, and if you want to be out on the water, you’ll be out on the water. All the kids will go today, and if any of the girls decide that they don’t want to be out on the Queen Jane in the future, well, they don’t have to be. But if they want to fish, if you want to fish, Cordelia, I’ll have you along.” He didn’t look at Momma as he said it, but he didn’t need to. We all knew that what he said, as far as it came to fishing and the Kings name, was how it would go.
To her credit, Momma didn’t storm out of the room, didn’t do anything more than nod and pack up lunches for me, Carly, and Rena, to go with the lunches she’d already packed for Scotty and Daddy.
Out on the Queen Jane, things moved like they normally did. Carly had brought along her doll, Mr. Pickles, and she and Rena pretended that he was their captain, giving them orders for what lines to move, what traps to bait. They were too old to be playing with dolls, but Carly never went anywhere without the raggedy thing. I didn’t care that they were acting like little kids. What I cared about was that they were out of the way, that it was just me and Scotty doing the real work. I wanted to show Daddy that I belonged on the Queen Jane.
By midmorning, my sisters had set themselves up with a snack on the deck under the cabin. We were across from Seal Coat Cove, and Daddy was working over a jammed trap with a pair of pliers. Scotty and I were working together to lift a baited trap and get it over the rail, but mostly it was me. I could see Scotty looking over at where Rena and Carly were sitting. I’d like to believe that I told him he should go over with them, that he should just take a break, because I was trying to be thoughtful. But even at the time I
knew that wasn’t the truth; I knew that I wanted him to go sit down with my sisters so that Daddy would see that he was weak, that he wasn’t meant for the water. Scotty didn’t think about my reasons. He immediately let go of the trap and walked forward to get himself one of the blueberry muffins that my sisters were eating.
I hadn’t expected him to just let go, to leave me holding the trap on my own, and it banged down off the edge of the boat and smashed into my shin. “Fuck,” I shouted. I didn’t mean to swear that time. It just jumped out of my mouth. The second time I’d sworn in front of Daddy that morning.
He looked up from the trap he had resting on the platform in the middle of the deck and raised an eyebrow. He loved raising his eyebrow. “You all right?”
“Just slipped. I’m okay.” I bit my lip. “Sorry about saying … that word.”
“Not the best habit to get into, particularly for a twelve-year-old,” he said, and then he glanced over at my sisters and at Scotty. “You three, come on. How about you help Cordelia out?”
Scotty blushed and shoved the muffin into his mouth before scampering back to me. I felt almost bad about it, but there was a part of me that was also happy that I was the one Daddy had seen working. Both Rena and Carly were slower to respond. I knew that they would have been just as happy to stay home with Momma. They’d worked the first hour we were aboard, but they were content to stay in the shelter of the cabin, out of the wind.
I wrestled the trap up myself and dumped it over the side of the boat. “We’re good,” I said, and Daddy nodded and moved up to the captain’s chair, easing the throttle forward to move us to the next set of traps. I turned and started prepping bait. Scotty was already there, wiping the crumbs of the blueberry muffin on his slickers before putting his work gloves back on.
The Lobster Kings Page 3