Wild Game

by Adrienne Brodeur

  I was on the back porch scanning the reading requirements for Columbia’s core curriculum and daydreaming about lofty dorm-room discussions of The Iliad and The Symposium when I heard the Southers pull into our driveway. As soon as I put down the college pamphlet, Ben bounded up the steps and enveloped me in a bear hug.

  “We missed you, Rennie,” he said, and I understood that “we” did not refer to himself and his wife. Ben considered me an integral part of his affair with my mother, a secret second daughter.

  Lily gave me a peck on the cheek. “Good to see you home in one piece,” she said. “Your mother must be over the moon.”

  I took in Lily’s appearance, searching for any indication that her health might be declining. Was she frailer than when I’d seen her last? She looked birdlike and brittle but no worse than before, as far as I could tell. Then I realized what I was doing and felt my face grow hot with shame.

  I led the Southers through the house to the opposite porch, the front one facing the bay, where Charles and my mother were sitting at the table underneath the large umbrella. Brenda, who wore clothes that covered her pale skin from head to toe, occupied herself deadheading the flowering plants that ran along the bench on the wraparound deck.

  “How do!” Ben called, announcing his presence long before he got to the screen door.

  When Ben reached Brenda, he lifted the brim of her enormous hat and gave her a quick kiss. “Brenda, throw this God-awful thing out and get some sun,” he said. “You look like a ghost.”

  “Brenda, please ignore him,” Lily said cheerily. “He’s incorrigible.”

  Charles sighed as he stood. He acknowledged his old friend with a left-handed handshake but looked past him to Lily, whom he greeted warmly. “Good to see you, Lily,” he said and then gestured for everyone to sit before sinking heavily back into his own chair.

  My mother brought out a tray with long stirring spoons and six tall glasses filled with ice and garnished with fresh mint and lemon wedges. She poured freshly brewed tea into each glass and offered everyone a choice of simple syrup or Sweet’n Low.

  “Well, this sure feels like old times,” Ben said, wrapping his large hand around my knee. He took a sip of tea. “I can’t tell you how happy we are to have you back in our clutches.”

  The rose hips and honeysuckle bushes that grew wild along the bank above the beach nodded in the breeze. The tide was ebbing, and the constantly shape-shifting sandbars inched their way toward the water’s surface. The channel had changed in the year that I was away. Now at low tide, the lobster boats had to swing in a wide loop to avoid the shallows instead of passing directly across. Just five years earlier, when my mother renovated our living room, she’d had a special wall of sliding glass doors placed facing northward to frame the spectacular spot where the ocean slashed through the beach and spilled into our harbor. But in a dazzling disregard of Malabar’s renovation, nature had moved the ocean’s cut northward and taken with it my mother’s perfect view.

  “Our test nights weren’t quite the same without you,” Ben continued. “Now, where’s this young gentleman who seems to have stolen your heart? When do I get to meet him?”

  Apparently, Malabar hadn’t told Ben that Adam’s and my relationship was on the rocks. Unsure how my mother had presented the situation, I demurred. “He’s working today.”

  “Too bad,” Ben said. “He’s a lucky guy to have found you, but you tell him from me, just one misstep”—he pantomimed the wringing of a neck, the gesture he’d used that very first night to show how he killed the pigeons—“and he’s done for.” Ben smiled, took a large sip of tea, and winked at me. “Besides, I’ve had someone in mind for you for quite some time. I’ve just been waiting for you to hit eighteen.”

  I blushed. Who could he mean?

  “Ben,” my mother said, changing the subject. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve arrived empty-handed. Exactly what are we testing this weekend? The air?”

  Ben laughed; he’d been waiting for this moment. “Well, with Rennie back and Brenda visiting, I thought we’d be up for a new challenge. What do you think of an eat-what-you-kill weekend?”

  Brenda’s mouth popped open in surprise. Born in New Jersey and raised in Manhattan, she was a city girl if ever there was one. When she wasn’t in gardening gloves to prune my mother’s bushes, her fingers were festooned with chunky silver rings. She would not be using her lovely soft hands as tools to dig clams from the mud or rip mussels off rocks, and Ben knew this.

  “Now, darling,” Ben said to my mother, hamming it up. “What is your pleasure? Lobster? Striped bass? Mussels? Cherrystones? Your wish is my command, as always.”

  I studied Charles during this bold exchange—had Ben always been so overtly flirtatious?—and noticed a half smile on the left side of my stepfather’s mouth. Our eyes met, and Charles held my gaze. In that moment, I felt sure of it: He knew. Or, at the very least, he suspected. He looked down suddenly and shook his head. Did he know that I knew?

  “I’ve got it,” Malabar said gamely. “I’d like some whitebait for the cocktail hour tonight. And tomorrow I’ll whip up a bouillabaisse with whatever else you catch.”

  “Malabar, you are a whiz,” Lily said.

  “Done and done,” Ben said.

  * * *

  In a corner of our basement, my mother and I pulled weathered beach chairs, threadbare windbreakers, broken fishing rods, and other detritus from a pile of forgotten paraphernalia underneath which we thought we might find our old whitebaiting net.

  “I think Ben and I should go whitebaiting alone,” I said. “You need to stay home with Charles and Lily this afternoon. Charles seems off. Something’s wrong.”

  “Nonsense. I want to go,” my mother said. “Brenda can entertain those two.”

  “Mom, did something happen that you haven’t told me about? Does Charles know?” I asked. My panic felt physical, like something lodged in my chest.

  “Of course not,” she said, tugging at a Styrofoam surfboard. “Charles doesn’t know anything.” Behind the surfboard was the net. “Voilà!”

  A twelve-foot-long, three-foot-high rectangle of netting was leaning against the corner, neatly rolled around two tall end poles. We unfurled it to check for holes and rot, but despite its having sat unused in our damp basement for several years, the net seemed to be in good shape. We rolled it back up until our fingers met. I placed my pointer finger over hers and pressed down. “I hope you’re right, Mom.”

  My mother handed me her pole and began to put things back in the pile.

  “Charles seems depressed,” I said. “I think he’s onto you two.”

  “Rennie, has it ever occurred to you that you don’t know everything? Charles is depressed because he’s worried about his health.”

  “I thought he didn’t know about the aneurysm,” I said.

  “He doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he’s unaware that he’s in poor health. It’s dreadful to get old. You were probably too young to remember how different Charles was before his strokes.” Her back was to me and she busied herself with organizing the beach junk. “Facing your own mortality is terrifying.”

  “Mom, stop. Can you look at me, please?”

  She faced me and I saw fear. It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps my mother was afraid of Charles dying. Perhaps it was the thought of being left alone—of being widowed at such a young age—that had driven her into Ben’s arms in the first place. I knew she had genuinely loved Charles when they first met and that she still cared for him now.

  “You and Ben are more obvious than you realize. I see things a bit more clearly, having been gone for so long. I’m telling you, Charles suspects. Please be more careful,” I begged. “And please, please do not tell anyone else. Too many people know already.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t gone rogue on me, gallivanting all over the place,” my mother said, attempting humor, “I wouldn’t have had to find new confidants.”

  “Stop,” I
said again. “I’m worried. Charles is not an idiot. You need to think about his feelings.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Go whitebait without me.”

  * * *

  Ankle-deep in warm water, Ben and I stretched the net, each holding a pole, and pulled it taut. The bottom of the weave was studded with small weights, the top with floats. We walked out a few feet until the water came to our thighs, and then I anchored my pole in the sand, holding it at the base, so one shoulder dipped low and my head tilted sideways, my cheek skimming the surface of the water. Ben, also hunched over, scraped his pole along the sandy bottom, making a large arc around me, the net billowing out from us like a sail.

  He traveled a bit more than 180 degrees and said, “Ready.”

  On the count of three, we flipped our poles parallel to the water’s surface and scooped up the net, raising hundreds of minnows as the ocean spilled out. The ensnared fish flopped helplessly, tiny gills snapping open and shut. We made our way back to shore, where we’d left a bucket filled with ocean water.

  “Spectacular catch,” Ben said, delighted. He dropped to his knees and started separating the silver-sided whitebait from the ordinary chum, placing the former in the bucket and tossing the latter over his shoulder, back into the bay. “You just never know what’s lurking beneath the surface.”

  “Ben, I need to ask you something.” I had grown more confident in the year away. My voice was strong and did not waver.

  He nodded for me to continue but didn’t look up, fully absorbed in his task.

  “Does Charles know about you and Mom?”

  Ben’s rhythm shifted and he slowed down, possibly giving himself time to consider my question. When his sorting was done, he rose to his feet and hauled the empty net back to the water, motioning for me to join him. I did and we stretched the net to its full length and flipped it over, dunking each side into the harbor to remove stray strands of seaweed.

  “The truth is,” Ben said slowly, “he confronted me in the spring.”

  My heart sank. “What made him suspicious?”

  “He didn’t say,” Ben said, shrugging. “He must have just sensed something.”

  We walked back to shore.

  “I denied it, of course. And Charles believed me, I’m sure of that.” Ben plucked off some bits of brown mung as he rolled his end of the net toward me. “In fact, after that, he felt bad for asking and apologized. It’s not exactly a small accusation.”

  I took this in. Ben was wounded that his best friend could have come to such a terrible conclusion, and Charles felt guilty for having made the accusation. Both men knew the truth but fervently preferred the lie.

  “Did you tell Mom about it?”

  Ben shook his head.

  Peter came up behind us with a close friend of mine whom he’d started dating. They were headed out for an afternoon marsh ride and later to a cookout and bonfire on the outer beach.

  “What did you catch?” my friend asked, peering into the bucket. We acted as if there were nothing unusual about her having plans with Peter that didn’t include me.

  “Whitebait,” I said. “Ever had them?”

  Her nose wrinkled. “They’re so small. How do you clean them?”

  “You don’t. You eat them whole—guts, head, bones, and everything. Nauset French fries,” Peter answered for me. Then, eager to get on the water, he said, “Let’s go.”

  I watched as they clambered first into my brother’s dinghy and then onto his boat, Peter at the stern, my friend in the fore. I wondered if Peter, too, had guessed about my mother and Ben. That might explain why he’d been more distant than usual since I got home, speaking to me in monosyllables, some low-grade resentment always simmering beneath the surface.

  I sank down onto the sand, feeling impossibly alone. Why wasn’t I going to this bonfire with friends? Or out with Adam, who’d invited me to see Panama, the Judge, and the Preacher play at the Woodshed—my favorite local band, my favorite local bar. Instead, I’d opted to stay home and help my mother, and this was the first time I’d become aware of a lacuna between the life I was living and the one I wanted to live. I no longer understood the point of the charade. Everyone, it seemed, was in on Malabar’s secret. Brenda for sure. Adam, though that was my fault. Possibly Peter. And now, worst of all, Charles—although apparently, he’d chosen to accept his friend’s denial for the sake of maintaining his own dignity. Was Lily the only one still in the dark?

  I’d be leaving for college in just a few days, I reminded myself. My next escape would come soon enough.

  Behind me, Ben was already halfway up the bank of stairs to our house, bucket in one hand, net in the other. In a few minutes, he’d be showing Malabar our catch, all those whitebait frantically darting around the pail, and her reaction would be pure delight. This was my mother’s favorite kind of dish to prepare, simple and dramatic. As soon as the cocktail hour was under way, she’d swirl hot oil and butter around a skillet. Then she’d grab a fistful of still-wriggling minnows, coat them in seasoned flour, and sprinkle them evenly around the sizzling-hot pan, where they’d curl into crispy, golden Cs. Speed was key—whitebait were best served piping hot with salt.

  Out on the water, Peter lowered his motor and yanked hard on the pull cord; the engine sputtered to life. His boat, a canary-yellow skiff that he’d bought when he was fourteen, was his most prized possession. He maneuvered it carefully through the moorings and past the low-wake zone to the channel, then he accelerated. My brother was a beautiful sight, with his muscular legs set apart, one foot slightly forward for balance, his knees bent to absorb impact, leaning his body into the turns, feeling the tug of the current beneath his feet through the metal of the skiff’s hull. Something shifted inside of him when he was on the water. He seemed to stand outside of time, lost to it, completely free and at peace.

  As my brother sped off without looking back—raced away from me, from our mother, from all the crazy machinations going on in our home—my old friend waved, her fingers waggling absurdly. I felt a pang of envy that somehow Peter had succeeded where I’d failed. He’d put a healthy distance between himself and the madness. He’d managed to grow up, get the girl, and move on, whereas I remained stuck in the scrum of our childhood.

  Then Peter’s boat turned, and the afternoon sun glinted off its wake, illuminating the skiff from behind—and there it was, a single, powerful word emblazoned in bold black letters across the stern: M A L A B A R.

  I waded out into the bay, past the clumps of eelgrass where crabs scuttled away and starfish clung to rocks, until I reached the drop-off. There, I took a huge breath and dived down to the hard bottom. Whatever the surface conditions, it was always calmer below. The water pressed against my ears, creating an insistent silence. I crossed my legs and tried to sit on the ocean floor, a game I’d played since childhood. I fanned my hands and released the air from my lungs to combat my buoyancy, a losing battle. As I felt myself tilt and start to ascend, I kicked off the ground and surged toward the surface. I’ll be gone from here soon, I thought, shooting through the billow of my hair toward the sunlight.

  Ten

  I arrived at Columbia in the fall of 1984 ready to start life anew. My relationship with Adam had reached its logical conclusion, and although he’d show up in New York a couple of times, he soon headed home to Kansas. At college, I intended to create a whole new identity for myself, to obtain some distance from the girl I used to be, a girl so consumed by her mother that she hardly knew where her mother ended and she began.

  College was going to be about me. I would apply myself academically and excel. I’d had my year off in which I’d had a few adventures and some gained perspective, but as soon as I’d returned home, I’d gotten sucked right back into the same old patterns. Not again. This time, I would figure out what and who I wanted to be and start that grand life in earnest. I ached to find out what was in store for me. No more people-pleasing. No more running loops on my mother’s track, waiting for her to thwack the
baton into my hand. In college, the past would be the past, and I would get a fresh start.

  * * *

  Malabar helped me move into my room on the eleventh floor of John Jay Hall on a hot August morning. We unpacked my bags and organized the tiny rectangular area with its narrow bed, standard desk, dime-size sink, and single window facing 114th Street from where I could hear a steady stream of ambulances screaming toward St. Luke’s Hospital. The neighbor in the room to my right was a long-haired Trinidadian boy whose main décor was a poster of three girls in thong bikinis photographed from behind, their buttock cheeks sand-dusted to perfection, lined up as if in prayer before an aquamarine ocean. Across the hall, a raucous Texan girl with bangs that were sprayed straight up had a matching comforter and sheet set and towels in complementary colors. And a few doors down, a grim young man sporting army fatigues kept his room completely bare.

  My room defied category. From home, my mother had brought a small oriental rug, a standing lamp with a bell-curved shade and a brass knob finial, and an oil painting of a Cape Cod scene: a fishing boat grounded at low tide. We made up the bed with worn floral sheets and covered them with a hand-stitched antique quilt that sported blocky orange tulips with green stems, an estate-sale find. The room looked like an extension of my grandmother’s home, some forgotten maid’s quarters or an unfinished office.

  “Shall we grab an early bite?” my mother asked, smoothing the quilt over the mattress. Although exhausted, she was not prepared for this day to end or to return to her empty nest and elderly husband. She’d already made plans to spend the night with Brenda, who lived close by on the Upper West Side, and then travel back to Massachusetts in the morning to check on Charles. Malabar sensed my hesitation to go with her. The rest of the kids on my floor were planning to order pizza and eat in the common room.