The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  “Hello?” Julie said. “Are you okay?”

  No one appeared. She was alone out here, unless someone were deliberately messing with her, concealing himself. Peter again surely. But Julie’s uncles would tell her to trust her instincts, not keep calling out like some unwitting damsel. Mentally agreeing with them, she broke into a run, struggling not to skid on the slippery ground.

  The distance to the house was farther than she had remembered. By the time she arrived, her breaths were coming in hard punches, and she lacked the precision to fit the key in the lock. Inside, Depot let out his bark of reunion. The key sliced metal, failing to find its target. Julie tried again, yanking the key out with a grating sound that was almost, but not quite drowned out by the thud of a foot on the bottom porch step.

  Julie stabbed the key home, wrenched it sideways, then yanked the front door open. She slammed it shut behind her without taking a look. For all she knew, whoever it was had been about to grab her. Julie leaned against the door with her full weight, turning the lock while Depot jumped and twined around her, his joyful barks unremitting.

  Still panting hard enough that it was difficult to speak, Julie sent him a mistrustful look. “What—happened—to—being—a—watchdog?”

  Depot looked back at her just as balefully.

  A solid rap sounded against the door. They both turned their heads.

  Then the bolt began to turn to the side, unlocking.

  * * *

  Julie took hold of Depot’s collar and tried to pull him toward her, though the dog fought her grasp. They could go to the basement, exit through the door down there. If someone had stalked her all the way back from the party, and was brazen enough to enter her house uninvited, that was a person she had best avoid.

  It wasn’t her house. This had to be a Hempstead.

  Since Julie also had no desire to prolong the night with either Martha or the grandmother, the basement still seemed a fine idea. She and her dog could hide out, make like they’d gone for a walk. The only problem was, Depot refused to budge. He was behaving quite calmly, considering the way their domicile was being invaded.

  The door slid open an inch or two at a time, and then an old man walked in.

  He entered with one hand extended at his waist, as if expecting the greeting he received. Depot didn’t bark, just lowered his head and gave the man’s palm a long lather.

  “Traitor,” Julie muttered. “He really scared me.”

  It struck Julie that if this man had a key, perhaps he’d come over before, made Depot’s acquaintance when she wasn’t here. The house, so open and exposed, its rear wall laid bare to the sea, suddenly felt intruded upon from within. Julie wrapped her arms around herself and cleared her throat, though the man didn’t appear to take any notice.

  He rubbed the top of Depot’s head, looking around with a smile. Julie recognized him at that moment—the customer who’d been in the antiques shop when Ellie rushed her out. A seaman who had a key and obvious familiarity with the house.

  “Mr. Hempstead,” Julie said, wondering why she hadn’t seen him at the party.

  “Captain,” he corrected, continuing to look around as if unsure who had spoken. Judging by where he aimed his gaze, it might have been the dog.

  “I’m afraid I find myself a bit confused tonight,” he said apologetically. “I shouldn’t have come.” The man took a breath that resulted in a series of feeble coughs.

  “The house is let now,” Julie said. “I’m the new teacher.”

  “Of course you are,” he replied, bringing one fist to his chest.

  Concern traded places with her fright and discomfiture. “Can I get you a glass of water? Would you like to come in and sit down?”

  “No, no,” the man protested. “I must be getting home. It’s late.”

  Julie reached out to stop him. “I’ll walk with you. My dog and I can both go.”

  But the man turned back toward the door. “I wouldn’t hear of it. Please get on with your evening. I hope you enjoyed the festivities at Old Bluff.”

  He seemed more clearheaded, and his cough had abated. The man poked around in a pocket and withdrew his ring of keys. He separated one from the bunch, then reached for Julie’s hand, which he closed over the key before depositing a courtly kiss. “You will be a wonderful teacher for our children, my dear.”

  “Thank you,” Julie began. “I’m really going to try—”

  “Please don’t let your strength be sapped,” the Captain went on, putting a stop to her interruption with one outstretched palm. “This island has a way of doing that.”

  * * *

  The Captain’s plea was all that allowed Julie to fall asleep that night, licking her lips in what had come to feel like a deplorable tic, the pop-up bar at the party a mirage in her mind. How had she dumped out a full glass of scotch? Not long ago, Julie would’ve gotten down on her hands and knees, rescued the liquid before it could seep into the ground.

  The next morning’s slash on the calendar was arduous to draw, the feeling of buoyancy bestowed by new sobriety indeed winding up a honeymoon glow. Still, Julie couldn’t quell a feeling of pride when she counted up the number of bisected squares.

  A rap on the front door interrupted the dreamy tracings of her finger across the page.

  “Who’s Eddie Cowry?” Julie asked, opening the door to let in Ellie.

  It was a good time for a visit, given their joint penchant for adult beverages. Maybe they could take to hanging out before it was five o’clock anywhere.

  Ellie folded small fists on her hips. “You have a way of making me feel like I’m always entering in the middle of a conversation.”

  Julie offered a quick smile of acknowledgment. “Come in. Would you like some coffee? And then you can tell me about Eddie.”

  Ellie shook her head, following Julie into the kitchen. “No, you go first, tell me about the party. I’m keeping my expectations low, mind, since your big takeaway involves a child.” She paused. “And a social outcast at that.”

  “Ah,” said Julie, shaking grinds into a filter. “We’re getting somewhere. There was a terrible bullying incident with Eddie and the other students last night.”

  Ellie hoisted herself onto the counter, dangling her feet. “It isn’t that Eddie himself isn’t well liked, although maybe that’s true. But really it’s about his father.”

  Julie looked up with interest, sliding milk and sugar toward Ellie. “His dad?”

  Ellie doctored a mug. “Mike Cowry. Biggest dub of ’em all.”

  “You used that term before,” Julie said. “When we were talking about highliners.”

  Ellie held up a finger in a bingo gesture. “If a highliner is a top lobsterman, with the biggest catches and consequent wealth—relatively speaking—not to mention being known as an authority, then the guy who used to be called a dub is his polar opposite.”

  “So Eddie’s dad is struggling financially, not respected, and—”

  “—lousy at what he does,” Ellie concluded.

  “And Eddie bears the burden of his father’s low status amongst his peers.”

  Ellie regarded her. “Very good.”

  “While Peter is high status,” Julie went on. Of course—the Hempsteads were island royalty. It explained the children’s deference at the party, as if they’d been in the presence of a lord, and also the parents’ odd scurrying when they were about to be faced with the grandmother.

  “The Hempsteads own half the houses on-island.” Ellie drank deeply from her mug, concealing her face. “They collect rent like Monopoly money. I don’t think there’s a single resident who isn’t indebted to them or dependent on them somehow.” Her mouth twisted visibly before her expression could lighten. “No, scratch that. There is at least one. And he happens to be a highliner himself. Knows a hell of a lot more than I do, even though I’m the dau
ghter of a fisherman.”

  “Great,” Julie said. “Who is it?”

  Ellie jumped down from the counter. “I’ll give you a hint,” she said. She puckered her lips and performed a dramatic smooch. “Meet you at the schoolhouse around five?”

  Chapter Thirty

  Julie fed Depot and took him on a walk before heading out herself. She was curious about the cliff path Ellie used, but decided to go the way through the woods that had become familiar already. She had too much to do today to spend time exploring.

  The prospect of confronting a classroom with not enough to say or do was a teacher’s equivalent of the going-outside-naked dream. Meager lesson plans that petered out before the allotted time, gaps and silences and trailing sentences when content ran dry and Julie came up empty, corpse dust on her flailing hands. Kids attacked silence as if it were a small, helpless animal, tore out its throat with their teeth. Preparation was essential.

  The route to town seemed to take longer than it had before, Julie’s drying-out body lagging, and she had to pause in a grove for a drink of water that posed pale contrast to the liquid she really craved. She didn’t recognize this spot. Perhaps she had gone the wrong way after all, vision bleary from the lack of alcohol. If she had veered off course, this was an awfully pretty spot to get lost in. The late-summer woods glowed, lit with gold. Yellow leaves jangled like coins on their branches, caught in a sudden, quick breeze.

  Those trees weren’t birches, as Julie had thought. Stepping closer for a better look, her foot came down on a thick, squishy body. It was a dry-drunk dream, a hallucination, had to be, yet still Julie recoiled, her insides roiling as if she were about to throw up. Picturing some outsized island slug, Julie pulled her shoe free of the pulpy mass. Then things began to clarify, all five senses returning. First, a pungent odor. These were plum trees, so laden with fruit that a purple carpet’s worth had fallen to make room for less overripe siblings. The plums on the ground lay cracked and seeping, but the specimens on the branches hung heavily: perfect amethyst globes. There was a sharp tang in the air, a flavor of ferment.

  The fruit had camouflaged the path, but Julie could see it now, she knew which way to go. Shaking her head in wonder—in Wedeskyull such a bounty would’ve been picked clean and sold for princely sums at farm stands—Julie took time to pluck a fat orb and eat it, juice dripping down her wrist as she jogged along the remainder of the path. If she shut her eyes, the snack was vaguely reminiscent of brandy, which might be sufficient to get her through this day.

  As Julie neared town, she realized that something had changed, although her mind was still working too sluggishly to catch hold of what it was. She continued running down the sandy road at a good clip, sunshine causing her to squint as she looked left and right at closed shop doors and lowered awnings.

  That was it.

  She was running down the road, whereas in the days prior she could move only in fits and starts, stepping aside periodically to get out of the way of crowds. Yesterday had been Labor Day, the crowning glory of the season, and now the island had emptied itself out. Summer people gone from their second homes, tourists no longer making the crossing. It was more total a clearing than anything Julie had ever experienced in Wedeskyull, where the exodus was gradual: summer vacationers giving way to leaf peepers, who made way for skiers and ice climbers, the population only truly reduced to a skeleton crew of locals during mud and black-fly seasons. On Mercy, it was as if a natural disaster had hit, the place apocalypse bare. No more pop-up businesses or kids hawking lemonade, cookies, and handmade art from stands. The island had shed its colorful summer robes, leaving behind a muted landscape.

  Just as Ellie had warned.

  Julie settled for a plain old deli sandwich from the grocery store. The cart she’d stopped at the other day, worthy of a spot on the Food Network, had been rolled out of sight, gone till the flocks and droves of people that accompanied the high season prompted its return. Munching her lunch, Julie let herself into the schoolhouse and got down to work.

  * * *

  She spit shined the building, leaving not one speck of grit on the desks and beating the stage curtain until it was dust-free. Folders of worksheets and shelves full of textbooks were organized by age group, with activities planned for the inevitable downtime when Julie’s attention would be diverted by the other grades and students finished their assigned work early. She had her preferred getting-to-know-you exercise laid out, and a backup in case the kids found her first choice lame. (No one ever argued with a scavenger hunt outdoors.) She’d even gone over to the library where she printed out a discourse on drama and composed a hard-sell speech on the virtues of putting on a play.

  She was as ready as could be for tomorrow by the time Ellie came to get her.

  They walked along the shore, waves lapping the rocks in a succession of ticks, like a clock that never wound down. Julie hadn’t yet been to this part of the island, where the land sat so low, it was all but swallowed by the sea.

  “My mother used to say that the ocean was just like the sky,” Ellie remarked, pointing. “That they’re mirrors of each other—one blue when the other is, or gray, or storm-driven—and that we lived in the best place on earth because top and bottom always matched, up and down, every day the same.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Julie said.

  Suddenly, she saw the flight from Mercy differently than she had earlier. Instead of the summer people leaving behind an empty shell, a mere husk of island life, they became intruders on an idyll that only the year-rounders knew. Yesterday’s population had been engorged, ballooned like a leech, and now, after a summer of being feasted upon, the island could shrink down to its normal state of peace.

  Water flicked their sandaled feet as Julie and Ellie walked along the shoreline.

  “Fishermen aren’t the easiest guys to get to know,” Ellie said. “They’re a clubby bunch, tend to stick to themselves.” She gestured to a hulking building on the right. It was shaped like an airplane hangar, curved roof and walls. “And this is where they do it.”

  Ellie pulled open the heavy door, gesturing Julie inside. A rotted, fishy odor struck as soon as they entered, and Julie pinched her nose.

  Ellie laughed. “Takes some getting used to.”

  In addition to the smell, there was an overwhelming array of sights and sounds. Rectangular boxes, yellow in color and resembling cages, made up the perimeter of the room, stacked ten high in fifty times that many rows. A few cages sat on long tables, wire shears scattered amongst them. There were smaller tables at the rear of the cavernous space, occupied by men who ran the gamut from just out of high school to impossibly old. Loud, raucous voices seemed to speak a foreign language, its accent requiring translation—hawba for harbor was one of the more comprehensible substitutions—and the terms also alien. What did sleeves, bugs, and cups mean in this context?

  Cups.

  The scene contained enough new features that it had taken Julie a second to realize it was just the same as anywhere else. Men laughing, jeering, insulting one another whether for real or in jest, pounding each other’s backs, raising their hands in a cheer. The vocabulary might be different, and the workaday details, but these were just guys, gathering after a long day to rehash problems, brainstorm strategies, let off steam.

  And like men everywhere, they were doing it with liquid assistance. The fish-market smell had temporarily camouflaged the more familiar odors of beer and liquor.

  Tonight Julie couldn’t count on an interruption from the grandmother; there was no chance of a second saving grace. It would be down to her, what happened next.

  A roar of voices surged, men noticing her entrance. Julie looked around wildly for Ellie, but they had gotten separated. There she was, standing at a makeshift counter. The man behind it slid bottles around, three-card-monte-style, exchanging their places as if searching for a certain kind. His mouth spread wide
in a grin as Ellie looked up at him, flirty, hungry, pleading. These guys weren’t wine drinkers, and the one serving in the role of bartender was clearly having a hard time coming up with a pinot or a cabernet.

  Scotch though. That would be procured easily enough.

  Julie hunched over, sweat pearling at her temples. It was hot in this crowded, sweaty, laughter-filled space. She clenched her hands into fists, muscles quivering in her thighs. She needed to sit down. She needed to get out of here.

  Then Ellie was at her side.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh, Julie, I’m an idiot, I should’ve realized.”

  She clenched a beer stein filled with blood-red liquid in one fist, giving no sign of letting it go. But with her other hand, Ellie steered Julie back outside.

  “I’ll get him, okay?” she said. “You stay out here, and I’ll bring Callum.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Julie went to wait by the boulders at the edge of the ocean, leaning against a rock crusted with shards of white barnacles sawn off by the sea. She felt weak with both wanting and the relief of a barely averted catastrophe. The car that almost hit you, the hurricane that struck a neighboring town.

  The unceasing rhythm of the waves made time hard to gauge, but Ellie had clearly polished off the contents of her first serving of wine, and possibly a second or third, by the time she emerged from the building, clutching a refill. She walked at a slow, loopy pace, Callum holding her by the elbow.

  “Callum, you know Julie,” Ellie said, the words sounding slippery in her mouth. “And vice versa.”

  “The new girl,” Callum said, stopping in front of Julie. His tone as affable as always, but his expression discordant with it. Intense, navy-blue eyes searching her face.

  Julie felt her cheeks warm under his gaze.

  Ellie administered a playful punch. “We go by woman now.”

  Great, Julie thought. I’m crushing on the guy my friend has a thing for.

  “I’m a throwback,” Callum acknowledged, and Ellie sent him a You so are glance.