The Salt House

by Lisa Duffy

  “You are a kid, Jess,” he said, his voice thickening. “You’re my kid. And nothing happened other than your father being a jerk. I was a jerk. That’s all.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Say what?” he asked, tilting his head at me, his eyebrows squished together.

  “That it’s your fault. You always take the blame. Like Mom is always right.” I crossed my arms in front of me.

  “Well, statistically, she is,” he joked, trying to making light of it. He saw the scowl on my face and walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulders. He smelled like cigar smoke, and I wrinkled my nose at him and stepped away.

  “See,” he said, “another thing your mother’s right about. The smoke does stink.”

  In my whole life, I’d never heard my father say one bad thing about my mother, not even when he was joking around. He gave me a lopsided grin until I gave in, my scowl fading away. He went back to the dishes, and I left him there, knowing that was the end of that conversation.

  I was walking through Kat’s room when I heard my name. I turned, and my mother was propped on her elbow, looking at me from Kat’s bed.

  She squinted at the clock. “You’re up early,” she said, her voice hoarse with sleep.

  “Kat woke me up,” I muttered.

  Kat came in the room and skipped over to my mother, talking a mile a minute about going on the boat with my father. I went in my room and shut the door, not caring that it slammed behind me.

  Several minutes later, there was a knock on my door. My mother’s head appeared in the doorway, a forced smile on her face.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I knew about the fight. About her throwing my father’s shoes out the front door. About him telling her she was killing him. About him sleeping on the boat last night.

  But I waited, wondering if she would tell me the truth.

  “Sorry that Kat woke you,” she said. “She asked me to sleep with her last night, and I didn’t hear her get up. Are you going on the boat with Kat and Dad?”

  I felt my insides flip, a trembling in my arms and legs.

  She was standing in front of me pretending everything was fine.

  And my father was in the kitchen, with his angry eyebrows and serious eyes, and a crazy, too-large smile plastered on his lips.

  “I’m babysitting all day,” I told my mother, lying straight to her face, a sense of satisfaction running through me.

  Not even the slightest waver in my voice.

   5

  Jack

  Kat was quiet on the boat. She put on the life jacket I handed her without her usual grumbling and scooted on her hands and knees over the cushioned seat at the bow, a half-eaten doughnut hanging from her mouth. Sprinkles dotted the corners of her mouth like misplaced freckles, and they fell from her face when she pitched the last of her doughnut over the rail to the seagulls hovering in the sky above.

  The drone of the engine filled the air as we left the dock and turned east to where the bay opened into the mouth of the Atlantic. Kat was on her knees, her hands on the rail and her body pitched forward. A spray washed over her when we hit a small wave, and she looked back at me and laughed. I winked at her and stretched my arms up to the sky, my lungs on fire, the tightness in my back not giving an inch.

  Morning had come before I felt like I’d slept at all, and by the time I got home, Kat was worked up about my not being there. She didn’t say it, but she climbed up me, wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, tight as could be, just like she used to when she was a toddler. When I mentioned going out on the boat, a light came back to her eyes, and I’d let my breath out. It had been stuck somewhere in my chest since I’d walked in the door.

  Hope was in Kat’s bed, her eyes closed. I’d pulled the shade down and covered her with the blanket. When I leaned down, pressed my lips to her forehead, and whispered that I was sorry, I felt her head move, a nod, and then her eyes were on me, asking me questions, even though she didn’t say a word. When I didn’t say anything, she turned away from me.

  And then Kat was in the room, whispering, Bye, Mommy, and pulling me by the hand to hurry up and get moving.

  Kat had asked if we could haul traps. She loved to throw the females back in, but it was the middle of June, and Maine law didn’t allow for hauling traps on Sundays between June and September. I told her this as I fastened her life vest before we left shore, and a scowl had settled on her face. She’d brightened when I said we could stop at the shop.

  She asked if Uncle Boon would be there. I shrugged, not wanting to disappoint her again. Boon wasn’t her uncle, but we’d been buddies for as long as I could remember, so when he’d given himself the title, it stuck. I doubted we’d see him at the shop, though. Sunday was Boon’s fishing day.

  I kept the skiff as shallow as I could to avoid the choppier swells with Kat sitting like she was. The shoreline of Alden followed along in a blur of balsam firs and rocky cliffs. The land curved inward farther up, and we followed the bend into Calm Cove, a large horseshoe-shaped inlet full of long piers and docks. White mooring balls bobbed on the surface, and I slowed the engine to a crawl as we passed the No Wake buoy.

  Rows of wooden pilings held up the long wharf at the water’s edge. I slipped the skiff into the small space next to Hope Ann. Kat climbed out onto the pier and took the rope I threw her to tie us off. She’d mastered the figure eights but still needed help with making the last loop and securing it to the cleat.

  The sun lit the aluminum ramp as we walked up the incline to the landing. A handful of people sat in white plastic chairs above us, drinking coffee from to-go cups. It wouldn’t be long before the Wharf Rat filled with the afternoon crowd and music blared from speakers disguised as rocks in the corners of the roped-off deck.

  Kat skipped down the deck and stopped when she reached the splintered back door of the shop. She stuck her hand out for the keys, and I handed them over to her. She took the key ring, a jumble of silver and gold keys of various shapes and sizes, and flipped through them methodically before she lined one up with the keyhole and stuck it in. I leaned against the shingled wall, settling in while she searched for the right one.

  The door opened on the first try, though. Boon stood before us with a smile on his face, as if he lived there and just happened to hear us at the door. His thick frame filled the doorway, his black hair slicked back. He was dressed in his usual gear: pressed khakis, boat shoes, a shirt with our logo on it. Boon got on my case for working too much, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. There was no off button when it came to Boon and work. He just did it in different clothes than I did. Behind a desk instead of inside a wheelhouse.

  “Aw, come on Uncle Boon. Dad was letting me open it with the keys,” Kat said, her voice full of blame.

  “Come on yourself, fancy pants,” he said, turning her by the shoulders. “Go back out, and I’ll shut the door. You can open and close it until the cows come home.” Kat scooted out while I called after her to knock if she got stuck.

  There was a pot of coffee on in the kitchen. I poured a cup, took a sip, and felt the hot liquid light up my lungs.

  The shop was closed on Sundays, and I wondered why Boon was here. I’d only stopped in because Kat wanted to sit on the edge of the thigh-high lobster tank and stick her hand in the shallow water to lift them out one by one.

  I threw the half-filled cup in the trash and walked down the hall. Boon was still at the door, throwing the deadbolt each time Kat unlocked it. She shouted at him from the other side of the door through her laughing to stop. I leaned against the wall and watched until the noise from the two of them made my head throb.

  “Boon. Let her in. You’re cranking her up.”

  “That what uncles are for,” he said, without stopping, the click clack of the lock bouncing around in my head. A game of Ping-Pong in my temples.

  “You’re not her uncle, and I’ve got a hell of a headache.” I reached around him and yanked the doo
r open. He looked at me sideways while Kat fell in a heap at his feet.

  After she settled down, I left her by the lobster tank and found Boon in the freezer checking the thermometer.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Got a call from the alarm company that the temperature in here had dropped, but I don’t see an issue. We might need to replace the sensor.” He glanced at me. “You look like shit. I heard it was a long night.”

  I shrugged, ignored him.

  “Hope sounds as tired as you look.”

  “What’d she call you? Christ.”

  The freezer door was open a crack, letting in the warmer air, but the chill wrapped around me. I’d been on the water by four in the morning all week and stayed out later too. Lately it seemed like it took me twice as long to get the job done. There was a pain in my back that came and went, and with it so did my breath. Now, with my head pounding, and my body aching, the frigid air made me feel weak.

  Boon watched me with a blank look. “When you didn’t answer your cell this morning, I called the house. Hope answered.”

  “So you know the whole story, then. We had a fight. I’m an asshole. Let’s drop it.”

  He walked past me, leaned out the door, and yelled to Kat, asking if she was okay. When she yelled back that she was fine, he closed the freezer door until only a small sliver of light came through.

  “You are an asshole,” he said, “but I didn’t need Hope to tell me that.” He said it lightheartedly, but it fell flat in the air between us. I’d heard his lines my whole life. Normally I’d throw him a chuckle, but today I had nothing left in my tank.

  “You look like shit,” he said again. “When is the last time you ate? You haven’t been this size since high school.”

  I was down to the last hole on my belt, cinched as tight as it would go to keep my pants from falling off.

  “Yeah, well, you’ve got a beer gut big enough for both of us.”

  “You know it’s all muscle,” he joked. I didn’t answer because I did know. Boon hit six feet in middle school and started shaving soon after. I caught up to him in height but not in size or strength. He may have looked bulky and slow, but under all that bulk was a guy who could still kick my ass with one hand tied behind his back.

  “Why the hell are we in here?” I asked, and moved to push past him, but he put his hand on my chest to stop me.

  “Wait.” He looked back at the door. “I don’t want her to hear me,” he added, like we weren’t in a steel icebox a room away with the door shut.

  “The bank called last week looking for you. . . . I took the number down.” He reached into his pocket, held out a piece of paper.

  I took it, shoved it in my back pocket, and mumbled thanks, avoiding his eyes as I walked around him to the door.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, stepping back, blocking my exit.

  I looked at him, let my face do the talking. He put up his hands.

  “Just hear me out,” he said.

  “It’s freezing in here, so it better be important.”

  “You never get cold,” he said accusingly.

  “I look like shit, and I’m cold when I never get cold. Is that it?”

  “Look. What I’ve been thinking is that . . . it makes sense . . .”

  “No,” I told him, knowing where this was going.

  His eyes snapped up. “At least give me the goddamn respect of hearing me out.”

  “I’ve been hearing you out for the last year,” I said. “You don’t need my help in here, and I don’t need your help out there. We cut fifty-fifty. You sell and I catch. The way it’s always been. What you’re talking about is charity. Give me the goddamn respect of calling it what it is.”

  He threw up his hands. “What I’m talking about is a friend helping out a friend who’s down on his luck. We wouldn’t be standing in this fucking building if it wasn’t for you. And I’m in here cashing my paycheck sitting in a warm room while you’re out there killing yourself.”

  “I’m out there because I want to be. How many times do we have to go around about this? I’d slit my throat if I did what you do all day.”

  I pushed past him, opened the freezer door, and walked to where Kat was standing above the lobster bin, holding one in each hand.

  “Look, Dad,” she said, “they’re twins.”

  “Let’s go, Kat.”

  “Ten more minutes. Please?” she asked.

  “Five,” I warned. “Meet me outside.”

  On the deck, the sun wrapped around me like a blanket. I leaned against the building and breathed, squinting against the pressure in my chest.

  Boon came out of the shop and stood in front of me, his shadow blocking the sun. I felt a shiver run through me, even though the thermometer mounted on the wall read almost eighty-five degrees.

  “You’re an accident waiting to happen right now,” Boon said calmly. “You don’t have an ounce of fat on you, and you’re hauling traps like we’re just starting up. You pulled in the same catch last week as the Frazier brothers, and there’s two of them and a stern man. The same stern man that you fired, by the way. Still haven’t explained that one to me.”

  “Nothing to explain. My boat. My stern man. I wanted him off. You’re the one that hired him.”

  “I hired him because I wanted to give you some help after . . . what happened. Not to mention, he’s the hardest-working guy around.”

  “And he never shuts up. Talked all day about nonsense.”

  “You fired him for talking? Was he allowed to take a piss, or did you dock his pay for that too?”

  “Look, Boon. Let me do my job and you do yours. It’s worked that way for years.”

  “What’s worked for years isn’t just hard work; it’s smart work. This . . . here . . . is not smart work.”

  He was getting worked up. Boon style. Face red, eyes blazing. Ready to blow. I stayed calm. We’d done this enough times to know what happened when we both let go.

  “Let me worry about it. It’s not your problem,” I said.

  He leaned forward. “Now, I’m going to talk and you’re going to shut up and listen. The guy I own a business with—a business that a lot of people depend on to make a living—is either going to hurt himself or hurt somebody else out there. You think that’s not my problem? I hired that stern man because somebody should be out there with you. You’re stressed, you’re tired, and you’re weak. Do you know what I’d call that? You know what any betting man would call that? A trifecta for disaster.” He glared at me. “And that’s not a race you want to win, Kelly. That’s not a race you even want to run.”

  He was in my face, trying to keep his voice down. From the side-glances of the people on the deck, he wasn’t succeeding.

  “That was me talking to you as a friend,” he said, looking around, lowering his voice when he noticed the eyes on us. “Now I’m talking to you as your business partner. Cut back your time out there, or I’ll do it for you. We’re running a business here. You’re not a one-man show calling the shots. You fuck up out there, you’re taking more than just yourself down. You hear me?”

  The veins on the side of his neck bulged. He was meddling, as usual.

  But he was right. Everything on the water was earned. Mostly your reputation. If I was careless and somebody got hurt, it was not only bad for business. It was the end of our business.

  I gave him a nod. He stepped back and shook his head at me. A look on his face said he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could do.

  I couldn’t explain any of it to him. How being out there, hauling trap after trap, hour after hour, made the day go by. And the next one. And the next one. Until the days made weeks, and the weeks made months.

  I couldn’t explain that’s how my life made sense now.

  “Answer me one question, and then I’ll let it go,” he said, calmer now.

  I met his eyes, waited.

  “Is it the Salt House?” he asked. “This business with the bank?”

&
nbsp; I nodded, swallowing a gulp of shame. I hadn’t been late on a payment in my life. Sure, maybe when I was younger and we were just getting the business off the ground, I’d been overdue on an electric bill or a phone bill. But that was because I spent most of my time on the water and was barely on land to take care of things.

  Not because I didn’t have the money.

  Hope and I had always done okay. More than okay, in my eyes. We didn’t take fancy vacations or drive new cars—mine was an old Ford, Hope’s a 2008 SUV, safe enough to get the kids here and there, but no car payment. Neither of us were big spenders—although the number of shoes in Hope’s closet baffled me—we always had enough extra money after the necessities for the good stuff: lessons, instruments and summer camps for the girls, a membership to the boat-club pool, one weekend each season that Hope and I snuck away by ourselves, and a couple of trips every year for Hope and the girls to visit her mother in Florida.

  And then came the past year.

  The extra mortgage, just enough to update the Salt House, coupled with Hope not working was enough to deplete our savings, leave us living paycheck to paycheck. Now we were coming up short. I’d covered the June payment, put the check in the mail yesterday, but it was already two weeks late, and I didn’t even want to think about July.

  I shut my eyes, opened them, and heard Boon’s voice. When I focused, he was talking animatedly, his hands punctuating the air. I tuned in midsentence.

  “. . . let me help finish it. We can bang it out in a couple of weeks. Have you in there in no time.”

  “No sense in finishing it if I can’t get my wife to step foot in the front door,” I said, and Boon’s expression changed, his eyes telling me he had no idea.

  “She wants to sell it,” I confessed. “Keeps talking about starting over somewhere new. You know, without all the . . . stuff attached to it. Memories or whatever.” I cleared my throat, suddenly exhausted.

  The door opened and Kat walked out. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two of us, her smile fading. But Boon grabbed her and swung her around. She giggled and wobbled when he placed her on her feet.