He pulled his hand back and then picked at the skin around his thumb. He looked away from me and sank lower into his seat.
“Something else?”
He put his hands down on the bench and straightened up, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “Kenny.”
I knew what he was going to say, but I asked anyway. “Kenny, what?”
“Kenny was on the ferry, too. Had two big bags with him.”
I was staring at Tony, but I was glad that he was looking at anything but me. I don’t think he would have believed my words if he had seen my face. “I know. He’s taking a little time.”
Tony nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Just so you know.” He lifted himself out of the booth, reached over to bounce his fingers off the top of my hand again, and then walked out.
I took a sip from my coffee even though it had gone cold. I had to do something to give myself a second. Kenny.
I checked my watch. It was late enough for school to have started, for Rena to be at the fish shop. I needed to talk to her. I dug some cash out of my jacket pocket and dumped it on the table.
The fish shop wasn’t officially open in the off-season, but I knew Rena would be in there, either doing the books or playing on her computer: she’d gotten involved in an online knitting community and spent a couple of hours each day chatting with ladies on the forums.
As I wiped my feet and pulled off my jacket, I was surprised to be greeted by my nephew, Fatty. Fatty had just turned six, and his name isn’t Fatty; if anything, he looks skin and bones, though I’d seen him knock away plenty of chicken nuggets and fries when he put his mind to it.
Back when Rena had Fatty, he’d come as a surprise. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that she was having a baby so much as a surprise that she was having two babies. Even the doctor was surprised at the twins, which led Daddy to comment that maybe Rena and Tucker needed a better doctor. When they were born—a boy and a girl, a perfect pair—all Tucker had said was, “Well, I’ll be painted with herring. We’re going to need another crib.” I don’t know what the hell “painted with herring” means, but I can guess what Tucker thought it meant. It was just Tucker’s way of trying to impress Daddy, saying something that sounded vaguely like a lobsterman might say it. I suppose being surprised like that—and make no mistake, getting an extra baby is a surprise—can make you say some strange things. Tucker’s become a decent lobsterman in his own right these past five years.
He and Daddy have a complicated relationship. Daddy isn’t exactly easy to please, and he’s been happy with Tucker on the boat. Things can be different on land, however. There was a spell when Daddy was talking like it would be Tucker taking over the business instead of me, but then Rena and Tucker hit a bit of a rough patch in their marriage. Daddy didn’t pry too much, but it was enough to end the talk of Tucker being slipped in as the heir to the Kings. It left some bruises, though, both with me and with Tucker, and I wondered how Daddy and Tucker would fare on a boat with Carly’s girlfriend thrown in the mix. It was going to be a sight to see Stephanie, Tucker, and Daddy together on the Queen Jane.
Tucker and Rena had named the twins Johnny and Mary. Johnny after Tucker’s dad, who lived in California, where Tucker had grown up, and Mary after Momma. You could see Daddy wasn’t sure how to take the name of his granddaughter, and he did what he usually did, which was to pretend there wasn’t anything to it. Still, he never called Mary by her name. He called her Guppy from minute one, and once he started, it took off with everybody on the Island. Even Tucker and Rena were calling her Guppy before the first month was out. Johnny, however, got his nickname later.
Daddy had opened the fish shop even before the twins were born, and he’d given over the running of it to Rena when she returned to the island. When the kids were still too young for school they spent most of their time up there with her, and had their run of the place. During the summer Fatty was three, we had a real heater—ninety degrees for three weeks on end—and there wasn’t a building on Loosewood Island set out with air-conditioning. Guppy was her usual sweet self, but Fatty had been a high holy terror, screaming anytime his mommy or daddy, or even when I, who was always his favourite, tried to get him into a set of clothes, even just underwear. So after a few days of this, Rena gave up.
“Let him walk around with his dick flapping away,” she said. “What’s the difference? The kid’s three, it’s hot enough to melt an iceberg, and if some tourist gets his pants in a bunch because Johnny’s not wearing clothes, well, they can buy their fish somewhere else.”
There wasn’t anywhere else, of course, and nobody complained. But each and every time somebody came into the shop, Johnny came running out yelling, “Look at my belly! I’m a fatty!” It was both horrifying and hilarious, and of course, lobstermen being lobstermen—which is to say, maybe not as aware of the niceties of things—the name Fatty had stuck. At six, he’d turned into a sweet kid, finally matching Guppy’s temperament, and when I looked up as he called my name I saw that he was sitting on the stool behind the counter, holding the James Harbor Tide. “You reading the newspaper?” I asked.
“Nah. Just looking at pictures.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school, Fatty?”
“I had a fever last night, so Mom kept me home today. I puked, too,” he said.
I hung my jacket up on the hooks behind the counter and pulled him into a hug. I kissed his forehead, letting my lips linger on his skin like I was a mother myself. “Not too hot.”
“No,” he said. “Haven’t had a fever at all today.”
Rena stuck her head out of the back room and scowled. “Is it true?”
“You heard?” I meant about Kenny, because that’s why I’d come. I had to choke the words out, but that wasn’t what Rena meant.
“Of course. The fire’s all anybody’s talking about today. That and James Harbor making a play.”
Fatty looked up. “What fire?”
Rena stepped over to her son and stood behind him, resting her arms around his neck. She leaned down to him and said, in the same voice I sometimes recognized her using with Daddy when he started to get belligerent, “You want to run over to the coffee shop and pick up something sweet for you and Guppy to split when she gets home from school?” He jumped from the stool and was almost out the door when Rena called him to a halt and made him get a raincoat on.
“You involved in that fire, Cordelia?”
I wiggled my hand. “Something like that.”
“Daddy’s going to have a fit.”
“Daddy needs to understand that I can handle my own business,” I said. I went over to the cooler and pulled out a can of soda water.
“You going to pay for that?”
I popped the tab of the soda water. The hit of the bitter bubbles felt good. “Add it to my tab.”
Rena gave me the finger, but then she held out her hand. “Grab me one, will you?”
I handed her a can and then I leaned back against the glass door of the fridge. I looked down at my hands. My nails were chipped. I never bothered painting them during fishing season, but when the traps were out of the water I usually kept them neat. When I looked back up, Rena wasn’t drinking from her soda water. She squinted at me and then said, “It’s something else, isn’t it? You didn’t come to talk about Eddie Glouster.”
“No,” I said, but I started with Eddie Glouster anyway. I told her everything that had happened the night before, and then I told her about Carly coming back to Loosewood Island, and then I told her about talking with Kenny and about Sally’s leaving.
“Shit,” Rena said. “I don’t feel strongly about Sally one way or the other—” I rolled my eyes and she said, “Come off it, Cordelia, she’s not that bad, and they had something once, and maybe they would have made a go of it somewhere other than the island. But that’s sure a crappy way for a husband to find out a marriage is over.”
“It’s hard, sure,” I said, “but don’t you think that maybe it’s for the best? I mean
, I feel bad for Kenny. He looked like he’d taken a punch in the face, but they’ve been having problems from the jump.”
Rena pushed Fatty’s stool back to the counter, folded the newspaper, and closed the door to the back office. “Sometimes it’s worth working through things.”
She wasn’t talking about Kenny and Sally. I knew that. There’d been a rough stretch for her and Tucker, but they’d righted the ship.
Rena peered over my shoulder and out the window looking over the ocean and then glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Daddy’s back.”
I felt sick all of a sudden, like I did when I was a kid and Momma told me I was going to have to wait for Daddy to get home to give me a punishment. Whether or not it was the right thing to do, I wasn’t looking forward to explaining what had happened with Eddie Glouster. “He shouldn’t have been back until this afternoon,” I said.
“Well, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s walking up from the harbour.”
“Not a word about Carly,” I said, and Rena nodded.
We stopped him before he got to the diner.
“What are you doing back so early?” Rena said. She folded her arms over her chest. I realized I was already standing in the same position. A few of the old boys in the diner noticed us confronting Daddy, and through the window I could see them laughing.
“There’s nothing pernicious about it,” Daddy said. Pernicious. Him and his five-dollar words. “They told me I could come home. Boat ran smooth and I made good time.”
“And?” Rena said.
“And nothing,” he said. “She ran some tests—”
“She?” I said.
“Yes, Cordelia. It’s 2005. We’ve got lady doctors,” he said, pointedly not looking at me as he added, “and even lady lobstermen now.” I gave him a scowl for that. I could see Rena was trying not to laugh, no doubt thinking the same thing I was, which was that the idea of Daddy dressed in just a flimsy gown in front of a female doctor seemed ludicrous. Even getting him to go to Dr. Jamison, whom he’d known for thirty years, was always a struggle. “She did one of those heart things with the lines, drew some blood, made me piss in a cup, and had me sleep with a bunch of tubes and wires attached to me. Anyway, she said she’d give me a call in a couple of days.”
Fatty came running out of the coffee shop carrying a bag with some sort of pastry in it, and ran over to us. He wrapped himself around Daddy’s leg. “Grandpa! Want some cookie?”
Daddy chuckled and shook his head. “No, thanks, Fatty. It’s all yours.”
Fatty nodded and then looked at Rena and said, “I’m going to head over to school and wait for Guppy.”
“You come right back with her,” Rena said, “and don’t you touch any of your sister’s cookie.” Fatty nodded and then ran off.
Daddy turned and looked at me. “I heard the news, Cordelia. You okay?”
The certainty I’d had the night before that we’d done the right thing at Eddie Glouster’s evaporated. “You heard about the fire already?”
Daddy glanced at Rena and then back at me. “No. But I’m about to.”
“What—”
“I was asking about Kenny. I saw him getting off the ferry with his bags. Had a little chat.” He rubbed my shoulder. “You okay with this?” I nodded, but it was purely a mechanical action. I felt a little dizzy. “So what’s this about a fire?”
I glanced at the door of the coffee shop and then took a few steps away. Daddy and Rena followed. “Eddie Glouster,” I said, and I could see Daddy tighten up.
I told him the whole story, from my conversation with Tony and Chip through to me throwing the log.
When I finished, Daddy nodded. “Saw him and his wife getting off the ferry, too. He didn’t look too pleased to see me. Chalked it up to the usual.”
“I think she did the right thing,” Rena said. I felt a swell of love for her. Rena and I were close, but she didn’t always take my side of things with Daddy, and it meant something that she spoke up before Daddy weighed in. I started to give her a sideways smile, but then Daddy spoke.
“And I think it was foolish. You know better than that, girl.” I looked down at the ground. “Look at me,” he said. His voice wasn’t loud, but there was a snap to it, and I looked up. “That was dangerous. Next time you come talk to me and I’ll take care of it.”
“No,” I said.
I hadn’t expected the word to come out of my mouth, and when it did, I felt my hand start to rise, like the word was a physical thing that I could snatch back.
“Excuse me?” he said.
But the word was already out there. I kept my gaze up this time. “No. I can’t have you always taking care of things for me, Daddy.”
Even though I was looking at Daddy, I could see Rena swiveling back and forth, staring at us. Daddy was quiet for a few seconds. And then he nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I suppose it’s going to happen sometime or other. We done, then? Because I could use a coffee.”
Daddy turned and put his hand on the door of the diner, but Rena stopped him. “Daddy,” she said, “what else did the doctor say?”
He looked at Rena and then he looked at me, and neither one of us gave any ground. He sighed and then pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket. Rena snatched them out of his hand.
“Fibre?” Rena looked up at Daddy and then back at the bottle of pills again. I took them from her, read the label, and then echoed her.
“Fibre? The doctor gave you fibre supplements? Why?” I turned the bottle over to look at the back of the label, as if that would explain it to me.
Rena closed her eyes firmly and then opened them. “So, you’re saying that you passed out in your kitchen, went to the doctor, had a round of tests, and you’re coming home with … fibre supplements? Cordelia finds you out cold in the kitchen and the doctor is worried about your bowel movements?”
Daddy took the pill container back and stuffed it into his pocket. “Well, at least that time you spent in nursing school is good for something,” he said. “Yes, the doctor is worried about my bowel movements. Not that it’s any of your business, but yesterday, when I stood up from the toilet, I got dizzy. When Cordelia found me, I suppose I didn’t want to have to tell my daughter that I’d passed out because I was trying too hard to take a shit. Okay? There.”
I tried to keep my face straight, but I couldn’t. I started to giggle and so did Rena.
Daddy scowled. “Oh, grow up, you two. I like to keep my own things as my own things, but what the doctor said, more or less, is that I’m getting old. She said all of the usual things: eat better, watch my weight, multivitamins, baby aspirin, less salt. She’ll call me with test results in a couple of days, but in the meantime, she wants me to take fibre supplements and to try not to get myself too worked up.” He let a little scowl soften and he poked me in the shoulder. “Which means that if you can avoid burning any other houses down, that would be terrific. And if there is anything else that the two of you need to know, I’ll tell you, okay? Now,” he said, with a smile that I wasn’t sure was entirely real, “is there anything else, or can I finally go get a coffee?”
“Decaf,” Rena said. “If the doctor is saying she doesn’t want you to get too worked up, make it a decaf, okay?”
I realized that he hadn’t looked at me. There was something he wasn’t telling us. That was nothing new. There was always something he wasn’t telling us. Maybe he figured it was something we didn’t need to know. Which reminded me: “Daddy,” I said, “did you talk to George?” He shook his head. “Word is that George found some James Harbor buoys out in our waters while he was motoring around today.”
Rena glanced at me and then at Daddy. “Lobster season doesn’t start until next week. Shit. I think Tucker has a colour-coordinated chart of television shows he means to watch before heading back out on the Queen Jane.”
“They aren’t trying to catch lobsters,” Daddy said. “They’re just trying to horn in on our territory. Figure if th
ey get the traps out it will be a fait accompli. By the time our season starts and we’re out and fishing it will be too late.”
“What are we going to do about it?” I said.
“You know I just came back from spending the night in the hospital, right? That the doctor’s telling me not to get too worked up? And I’m gone for twenty-four hours to find that Kenny’s off the island, you decided to burn out Eddie Glouster, and James Harbor is already in on our waters.” He rubbed his hand on the stubble on his cheek. “What are we going to do about James Harbor? What do you think, Cordelia?” he said as he hauled open the door of the diner. He paused, glancing in the diner to make sure everybody was paying attention, and then looked back at Rena and me, his voice loud enough to carry both inside and out. “We’ll encourage the James Harbor boys to get out of our waters, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll go to war.”
That, to me, didn’t seem like the best way of keeping himself from getting too worked up.
Daddy looked around at Carly, Stephanie, Rena, Tucker, and me, and then he placed his hands flat on the table. “I feel like King Lear trying to divide up his kingdom,” Daddy said. “But it’s better to do it now than to have problems later.” I made a face, and he laughed.
“What?” Rena asked.
“I’ve read Lear,” I said to her. “It ends poorly.”
“You know what else ends poorly?” Daddy said. “Dinner without dessert. And while we’re at it, a little salt won’t kill me. The doctor said to watch what I eat. Cut down on red meats, less fat, olive oil instead of butter when possible, and less salt. Not no salt. Just less salt. A little salt.” He pulled himself straight up in his chair and looked down at his hands. The five of us waited. “I’m not fixing to retire, but the truth of it is that all men age, and Carly,” he said, “if you’re seriously intent on moving home and shacking up with Stephanie”—he nodded toward Stephanie, who blushed—“we’ve got some logistics to work out.” He stood up, like he’d forgotten something, and walked over to the window. There were some high, grey clouds kiting across the sky with speed, and out in the harbour there was enough wind to bounce the waves white. I thought it was going to be a rough ride across to the mainland for Stephanie and Carly after lunch; they’d come down for the weekend to tell Daddy about their plans to move to the island, and they’d looked like they were feeling it on the way in on Friday night. Stephanie, I knew, didn’t have much experience on a boat, despite her intentions of becoming Daddy’s new sternman, and Carly had gotten used to life with her feet on the mainland.
The Lobster Kings Page 14