Steamed Open

by Barbara Ross

  “We stopped in the village,” Anne said. “So charming. On his way, the keeper saw a woman, alone, walking toward the point. Except for the keeper, all the year-rounders lived in the village. He called out to her to see if she was lost.”

  Anne stopped to take a breath. I was enjoying her telling of the familiar tale. “The next day her body, weighed down by stones in the pockets of her coat, washed up on Sea Glass Beach. Her clothes were expensive. She must have been a woman of means.”

  “The local people were convinced she must have been a summer person, or a guest,” Glen finished. “Otherwise how would she have known about the beach? But no one ever came looking for her.”

  “They say she’s still there,” I told them. I was only half kidding. “They” did say it, all the time. “In the daylight, she can be seen from the keeper’s cottage, swimming in the surf in her turn-of-the-century clothes. And night she walks through the rooms.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” Anne asked.

  “The story? Yes,” I answered. “Unlike most of the ‘legends’ you’ll hear around here, it is. She’s buried in the Herrickson family plot in the little Westclaw Village cemetery. Her headstone says UNKNOWN MERMAID, because she returned to the sea.”

  “I meant, do you think the ghost part is true?” Anne said. “I hoped to see her when we stayed in the keeper’s cottage.”

  I started to say, no, I didn’t believe in ghosts, but Anne’s expression was so sad it stopped me. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does,” I answered.

  “Now, honey. We may not be able to stay at the lighthouse, but we’re making the best of our time here,” Glen reminded her.

  “We will stay there,” Anne insisted “We’ll stay there before we leave.”

  I didn’t think they would, but I didn’t say so. Anne seemed so bent on it. I wondered about this strange couple and their fanatical dedication to their lighthouse quest. What motivated them? And why did not getting this single notch on their belts, the overnight at the keeper’s cottage at Herrickson Point Light, make Anne so melancholy?

  I told the Barnards where to look on the horizon for Gray’s Light and left them. The tour was almost over.

  * * *

  As Morrow Island came into view, the crowd on the boat came alive again, chattering and pointing across the water. The enormous bonfire that would heat the rocks Sonny would use to cook the lobsters and steamers was visible on the shore.

  Once I’d done my bit helping everyone ashore, I went to the kitchen to find Livvie and beg for a change of clothes. Fortunately, she did have something I could wear, a shapeless black shift. It hit her above the knees, but fell on me to mid-calf. The top swam on me, but it was better than the cutoffs.

  After I changed, I walked back to the dining pavilion from Livvie’s cottage, watching the many kids who’d been on the boat—playing volleyball on the great lawn, running up the hill toward the beach, discovering the playhouse in the woods that was a perfect miniature of Windsholme.

  Lately, in moments that took me by surprise, I’d been tearing up at the sight of infants and toddlers. I’d started imagining a baby with a dimple in her chin and bright green eyes. I hadn’t said anything about it to Chris. We talked about the future all the time. We talked about Christmas and vacations. We planned to run our dinner restaurant, Gus’s Too, again in the off-season. Sometimes Chris even talked about things further out, like when he could stop renting his lakeside cabin during tourist season and we could move there permanently.

  His cabin had three bedrooms. In my vision of the future I saw a crib in one of them. But we hadn’t talked about children. Or marriage. I could talk to Chris about anything, with three exceptions, his family, weddings, and babies. The mention of any one of them, even in casual conversation, shut him down.

  I went to check on Mom in the gift shop and ran into the Barnards inspecting the wares. From behind them, I pointed to the sturdy green mugs up on a high shelf, engraved with the images of the three Busman’s Harbor lighthouses. Mom, catching my movement, nodded silently and pulled two down for their inspection.

  “Perfect,” Glen said. “A souvenir of our time in Busman’s Harbor. It hasn’t been what we expected, but it hasn’t been uninteresting, either.” He pulled out his wallet.

  When the Barnards left, Mom and I were alone in the shop. “Did you ever hear that Ida Fischer murdered her husband?” I asked.

  “Goodness, Julia. Where did that come from?” She looked at me. “Never mind. I know. This Frick business has brought it all up again.”

  “So you did know, about Mrs. Fischer I mean?”

  Mom’s brow furrowed. “It happened a long time ago, when I was a girl. I didn’t hear about it then, but when Ida came back to town and went to work at Herrickson House, the talk came back.”

  “What was the talk?”

  “She murdered her husband and spent twenty years at the Women’s Correctional Center.”

  “Twenty years!”

  “It could have been life.” Maine hadn’t had a death penalty since 1885.

  “Do you know how she did it?”

  Mom spread her hands on the counter. “Only rumors. You know how people talk.”

  “What did people say?”

  “They said she beat him to death with a clam rake.” She paused. “Julia, are you okay? You’re white as a sheet.”

  I did feel a little woozy. I thought of the police, checking all those clam rakes. Did they know about Ida’s past? They must. “I’m fine,” I said. But I wasn’t.

  Dinner was as busy as lunch. I ran from guest to guest, making sure their glasses were full and so were their tummies, but I had trouble focusing. I believed Bart Frick had been killed with a clam rake. Ida Fischer was rumored to have killed her husband with a clam rake. Will Orsolini was missing a clam rake. These thoughts tumbled around and around in my head like socks in a dryer. I didn’t want Ida to be the murderer. I didn’t want Will to be.

  There had to be some other answer.

  By the end of dinner service the weather had turned. Low clouds drifted westward rapidly, pausing only to give us a glorious sunset. By the time we loaded the last of the guests and staff of the Jacquie II, the wind had come up as well. It was still more a breeze than a blow, but enough of one to tell us a change was coming.

  “Why don’t you come to my house,” Mom said to Livvie before we boarded. “Spend a rainy day in town. I’m sure you have plenty of errands you could get done.”

  A sleeping Jack curled against Livvie’s shoulder. “We’re all exhausted. We can all use a quiet day right here.”

  Mom had stayed on the island with us when we were babies. Livvie was determined to do the same.

  I was the last person to board the boat. “Rain’s coming for sure,” Captain George said. “No clambake tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I woke the next morning to the sound of wind-driven rain pounding on the big, harbor-facing window in the studio. Chris stirred beside me. The rain meant a light day for him, too, his landscaping work postponed. Later in the day, he would take his cab out and give rides to tourists who preferred not to get wet, but first there was time to enjoy a cozy, slow start to the morning.

  It was nine by the time we showered and dressed. “Pancakes?” Chris asked, pointing to the floor.

  I smiled at him. “Of course!” My nose had been attuned to the smells coming from Gus’s place all morning.

  Gus’s was mobbed and noisy, full of lobstermen and tour boat operators, ferry crews, and pleasure sailors. The retail workers still had to report for duty, but everyone who worked on the water had the summer equivalent of a snow day. Just as with a snow day, they were happy for the break, as long as it didn’t last too long.

  Slickers hung on the back of every chair. Chris started for two open stools at the counter, but I held him back. Much as I didn’t want to bring our idyllic morning to a close, we had to talk. He squinted, bringing his light brown brows together over those green
eyes, but moved to the line for a booth.

  Time passed slowly. No one was in a hurry to go back out into the storm. Chris shifted from one foot to the other, looking pointedly at the two counter places, which were now occupied. Then, as if a bell had sounded, five groups got up at once, shuffling into their rain gear, and the rest of us made a beeline for the empty booths.

  I put my Snowden Family tote on the red faux-leather banquette cushion, then went behind the counter, and grabbed a tub to bus the tables. Because Chris and I operated a dinner restaurant in his space during the off-season, Gus tolerated us helping out, even if we never, ever did anything quite to his exacting standards.

  I put the dirty dishes in the tub and wiped the tables down. Then I took the dishes back to the kitchen and deposited them by the old conveyor-belt-style dishwasher. As he did every summer, Gus had hired a local kid to work in the back. Gus always picked the last kid anyone else would hire, a young person down on his luck with financial or family troubles, or both, since the two so often came together.

  This year’s version was Kyle. He was nowhere to be seen, but a whiff of tobacco smoke came through the screen on the kitchen door, telling me where he was.

  “Kyle! Dishes piling up in here.”

  “Coming.”

  By the time I got back, Chris was settled in the booth, his long legs under the table. Gus approached and took our order: coffees, blueberry pancakes, and bacon, a rainy day treat. The blueberries would be fresh this time of year and not frozen, which made them extra special, and drowned in Maine-made maple syrup, the only kind Gus carried.

  Gus brought the coffee on his return trip and disappeared again. There was no putting it off any longer, but how to start the conversation? I’d gotten nowhere up until then; what would make this time different?

  As luck would have it, I didn’t have to start. Chris did. “Did you talk to Emmy yet? About the DNA test, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Too busy?”

  I could have taken the easy way out. The day before had been busy, and I’d been distracted, but I didn’t. “No. Not too busy. Chris,” I put my elbows on the table and leaned toward him, lowering my voice. “I’m not comfortable asking Emmy until I know what this is really about.”

  “What do you mean? You know what it’s about. I want to know if Vanessa is my niece.”

  I settled back into the seat and deliberately let my arms fall loosely at my sides, signaling that I was open to understanding, open to listening. “All due respect, honey, is that really your business? Emmy doesn’t want to know. Your brother doesn’t want to know. Emmy hasn’t indicated Vanessa has started asking questions. She sees Emmy’s ex as her father. Your brother’s in prison. He has nothing to offer her. Why aren’t you willing to wait, and let the adults in this situation sort it out? If they ever do.”

  Gus chose that not particularly great moment to put our plates down in front of us. The smell of the pancakes wafted toward me, softening me up. Chris looked at his plate longingly, like he wanted to dive in and let the rest of the conversation drift away. But, to his credit, he didn’t. He squared his shoulders and looked me in the eye.

  “I’ve never talked to you about my family. I know that’s been hard for you.”

  I nodded to show I’d heard.

  “My mother is sick. Very sick. And it’s genetic.”

  The booth began to tilt. “What kind of . . . ?”

  “Huntington’s. She has Huntington’s disease.” His familiar voice was thick with emotion.

  The melted butter began to congeal on top of the cooling pancakes. Huntington’s Disease. The little bit I knew about it was enough to terrify me. Woody Guthrie’s disease. Paralysis. Dementia. Early death. Passed from parent to child. The picture I’d had in my head of the baby with the dimple and green eyes disappeared with a pop like a balloon. Tears sprang behind my eyes. “But she’s alive?” I asked.

  He nodded. I wasn’t sure he could speak.

  “But you never go to see her.” Despite my efforts my voice rose. Someone in the booth behind us turned to look. I’d often urged Chris to visit his parents during the off-season. Last winter, he’d traveled to Florida, not the part where his parents lived, but still, he’d passed so much closer than we were here, yet he hadn’t gone to see them.

  My heart ached. Chris had a loving heart. I was certain of it, but he never visited his mother, who was sick, who was dying. I couldn’t make sense of it. Did I have to change my view of the man I loved? I wasn’t sure I could, but how did this new information fit?

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before this,” Chris said. “But now you understand why I want to know if Vanessa is Terry’s daughter. She has a right to know. Emmy has a right to know. Vanessa can decide on her own, when she gets older, if she wants to get tested for the disease. But she should know.”

  This statement brought a whole new world of awful possibilities crashing down. “Have you been tested?”

  He shook his head. “No.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I haven’t wanted to know. It might make me live differently. More cautiously. Or more wildly. Make different decisions. I figure your time is your time. Nobody else knows when it’s coming. I didn’t want to know, either. I wanted more than anything else, for everything to be fine. Or at least to pretend it was.”

  I fought tears, blinking hard. Chris was the healthiest person I knew. His physical hard work outdoors kept him lean and well-muscled. His height and fitness had always made me feel safe in his presence, sheltered from whatever life threw at us. Now that feeling of safety was shattered. I was afraid. Afraid for him. Afraid for Vanessa. Afraid for us and the future.

  Finally, the tears spilled over, splashing onto my plate. “I don’t understand. Why are you just telling me now?”

  “I couldn’t talk about it before and I can’t really talk about it now. I’m sorry.” He stood, threw a twenty on the table, and stalked toward the door.

  * * *

  I left my pancakes uneaten and ran up the stairs to the studio. I hid my red nose behind a napkin as I left the restaurant. I didn’t want friends or neighbors to see my splotchy, tear-stained face. My emotions were a jumble. I was mad and sad and hurt and scared, all at once.

  I sat on our couch with my laptop and read about Huntington’s Disease. None of it was good. The disease had no cure, and only minor treatments for symptoms. It was progressive and debilitating to both the mind and the body, including the loss of control of movement, ability to swallow, personality changes, loss of judgment and decision-making capabilities, spiraling into dementia. It was an equal oppressor of men and women. If either parent had the disease, the chances of a child inheriting it were fifty percent.

  Symptoms appeared in the late thirties or early forties, unless they arrived much earlier. Chris was thirty-six. The earliest signs were subtle ticks in arms or legs, general clumsiness and jerky movements of the eyes. I thought hard about Chris, picturing conversations, interactions. One of the things that attracted me to him physically was his litheness, how he moved around his sailboat the Dark Lady with the grace of a well-muscled cat. No, I’d seen no sign of the disease yet.

  The disease might move swiftly or slowly, but the end was the same, the requirement for full-time care. The average life expectancy after onset of symptoms was twenty years. I did the calculations in my head. Terry was ten years older than Chris, their sister in San Diego an unspecified number of years younger. Chris never spoke about her. Their mother had to be in her sixties, at least.

  Of all the emotions and reactions stirring inside me, this simple set of facts caused the strongest reaction. Why did Chris never visit his mother? Their time was limited. And if she was too far into dementia to appreciate his presence, why did he never go to support his dad, whose life must be a hellish challenge?

  Chris was a good man. A supportive man. Up until that moment, I’d believed that the biggest mistake he’d made in his life, smuggling prescription drugs fro
m Canada for seniors in need, had been made out of kindness and generosity, not out of selfishness or greed.

  But was there any other way to interpret Chris’s actions? He never visited his parents, never called that I’d ever seen. For ten years, he’d never visited his brother in prison, though he was only an hour up the road. He never, ever mentioned his sister. What could have happened? What had blown them apart?

  My family had its conflicts, for sure. Sonny and I were opposite in every way—temperament, outlook, politics, religion—all the third rails of family conversation. Learning to run the Snowden Family Clambake together had been an adventure in daily confrontation. Livvie and I had spent most of our lives as opposites, too. I was the good girl, the student, the one who did everything her parents wanted. Livvie was the rebel, the flunker-outer, the girl who got pregnant her senior year in high school.

  My parents had loved each other fiercely. We were always brought up to believe that the courtship and marriage of the girl on the private island and the boy who delivered groceries in his skiff was the stuff of fairy tales. It was the kind of love that forced everyone else out, including, occasionally, Livvie and me. My mother had mourned long and hard for my father, making little room in her sorrow for anyone but my niece Page.

  We were a complicated family. Like every other family.

  But when Livvie got pregnant, when my dad got cancer and died, and last year, when we’d almost lost the clambake business and Morrow Island to bankruptcy, we’d rallied. We’d fought and we’d yelled, but we’d rallied. And we also laughed and cried and hugged and said, “I love you.” A lot. Because that’s what families do.

  Chris loved my family. There was a time when I’d worried he loved them more than he loved me. He’d cheerfully, at his initiation, spent Thanksgiving and Christmas, Easter and Fourth of July with us. He loved being in the mix. He loved having a stocking with his name on it hanging from my mother’s mantel with the rest of ours.

  So why would he leave his father alone to deal with his mother’s illness? Why would he deprive his mother of his presence and the comfort it might bring? Wondering didn’t lead me anywhere. I’d have to ask him. When he calmed down.