by CJ Hauser
“I thought your father was a lobsterman,” I say.
He looks up, still shucking. “Hey,” he says.
“I saw your truck,” I say.
“Doing penance,” Henry says. “Two Hail Marys, one Our Father, and ten dozen oysters.”
I cross to him and the shells crush and splinter underfoot like a whisper traveling through a crowd. I sit on the table next to the radio. I watch Henry from the side. He may have picked up his pace since he realized I am watching. The Henry I love would want me to see him be good at this. And he is: bits of shell flake off like paper as he digs the knife at the crevice, searching for the sweet spot. He splits the shell open with a hard crack of his knife and the muscle that holds the halves together gives way, exposing the meat.
“So what’s up?” he says. “Unless you just came to say hi.” He smiles at his hands as he says this.
“The Dorians are having you build in the scenic easement,” I say.
“Hrm,” Henry says. He keeps shucking, angling the blade into the roof of a shell, popping the top off. “I thought that might be so. Property that big.”
“And they’re building on a loon nesting ground,” I say.
“Oh my,” he says.
“It’s environmentally protected!”
Henry gives me an oh please look but doesn’t stop shucking. “You hate the loons,” he says.
“Not homicidally. Henry, listen,” I say. “The Dorians have paid almost thirty grand in bribes to build that house. The money is being used to turn the waterfront into a shopping district that will drive out the Deeps. And probably make more Elm Parks.”
Henry is not asking any questions, or looking surprised. He is focusing on the oyster in his hand and how to crack it. I wait for him to say anything, but he doesn’t.
“Did you know?” I say.
“Does it matter?” Henry says. He watches his hands doing their work together, the one holding and the other popping, a perfect efficiency of motion. He stops, and looks up at me. I had not counted on this but I know that he is right.
The question that’s important isn’t whether or not Henry knew, it’s whether or not it matters. To me.
Henry is always thinking about us when he makes choices. And sometimes, I’m just not. Sometimes, I’m thinking about the news, or I’m thinking about what I want, and he knows this, because he knows me. He has forgiven this fault before, but now he is showing me the way to do the right thing for us. He is asking me to choose him instead of the news. To choose us, instead of how much I want to write this piece.
I want to rail against the injustice of Henry having asked this of me, but I know that’s not really what matters. It’s not about anyone asking me to do anything. When you’re a child people ask you to do things and you balk, or obey, but grown-ups give up things they want of their own accord. They make this sacrifice, not easily, or lightly, but willingly. Because that is how you grow a family.
Did he know and does it matter.
“I have files, Hen. Proving it. We’re going to run a story.”
If there’s a hitch in his movements I am too slow to spot it.
“Is my name in the files?” he asks.
“I don’t care what’s in the files; I care what you’re telling me,” I say. “I want you to tell me whether you knew.”
Henry shakes his head. “No, you don’t.” He tosses another oyster in the bucket. “You want me to tell you that I didn’t know and that everything is fine and I’m just as much of a sap as the rest of them.” He reaches to push his hair out of his face with the back of his wrist. “A noble sap.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “That’s not what I want at all.” But he’s right. That is exactly what I want.
Henry stops shucking and reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a pale blue rag. He tosses it to me. “Here,” he says, because I am crying.
I blow my nose. The rag smells like shellfish. “What do you want me to do?” I say.
“Not run the piece,” Henry says. “Or at least, not help them write it.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or don’t want to? What will happen if you don’t? For Christ’s sake, Leah, this is Menamon. It’s not like it’s gonna be WikiLeaked.”
I shake my head. “I’m writing it,” I say. “Your name won’t be in there, but I have to write it.”
Henry’s hands are flat on the shucking table now. “Leah, we’re talking about my job,” he says. “What are we going to do if I lose my job?”
“It’s just part,” I say. “You can still work at Arden. We’ll be fine.”
Henry shakes his head. He doesn’t believe it. “Who are you trying to impress, Leah? Them?” He gestures at what must be all of Menamon. Or the Deeps. Or the culpable oysters. “They don’t give a shit about anything. They act like they do, making signs and holding protests, but all they want is for things to stay the same, because they’re scared. Have you ever heard of that before? A protest to keep things the same? And you, you’re trying to help them because, what, you think they’ll thank you for it?”
I blow my nose in his handkerchief again. He comes over and takes it back. He wipes his hands on his jeans and then leans into me. I am still sitting on the table and I wrap my legs around him. I hold on to his waist.
“I need the handkerchief back again, please,” I say.
He ignores me. “They won’t thank you, Leah. I can tell you that right now. You can give your whole life to these people, and the moment you do one thing they don’t like, it’s over. They’ll rag you for it until you die, or you move away. And then they’ll say it’s because you didn’t have it in you to stick it out here.”
“So . . . what?” I say. “I don’t write it. I forget all about it. Quinn will hate me. Charley will hate me, again. Every man, woman, and seafaring child in this town will hate me. And what am I supposed to do then?”
“You’re exaggerating, and besides, I won’t hate you, Leah. What do you care what they think? It’ll just be us. That’s why we got married. So it could be us.”
I think of my life before Henry. How cold it was. How I had everything I needed and I was good at many things, but how it wasn’t until Henry showed up and told his roommate we were both winning at Scrabble, and taught me how to see through sidewalks to the soil, and told me we did not need to go to Niagara Falls if I didn’t want to—it wasn’t until then that I felt like anything mattered at all. Besides the news, of course. And there will always be news, but those things that Henry showed me, could I lose them? If it were just me and Henry, not needing anyone else, could we live that way?
It sounds romantic, but I know the truth. I know what happens to people like that.
“Can I just think about it?” I say.
I CALL MY parents.
Am I selfish? I say.
Of course not, they say. What’s wrong, you sound stuffed up.
Allergies, I say. Spring pollen.
I miss you, I say. Tell me what I’m missing there.
Nothing, they say. We miss you and you’re missing absolutely nothing.
Is something wrong? they say. You only say you miss us when something is wrong.
That’s not true, I say.
32
Quinn
We both listen to Leah’s car pull out. We’re alone.
Carter is staring off into the woods, a pleased expression on his face. I point toward the pond. “You swim in there?” I say.
“Naw,” he says. “Used to, but then a snapper moved in.”
I nod, look up. It’s nice back here. Green and cool like one of those places where children get to have adventures in storybooks. One of those places that makes you, the kid being read to, think, Why can’t I live someplace like that?
“Used to be they were everywhere,” Carter says. “The turtles. Before they put a road through the wetlands in the middle of the night.”
That sounds like the sort of story Leah would jump all over a
nd I half want to collect it, bring it back to her, but instead I say, “Well, that’s one all-right thing, then. I mean, you don’t want fucking snapping turtles roaming all over the place.” I feel like a sulky teenager seething at the dinner table with Marta all over again, incredulous that she could not answer all the questions I had. Why did he leave? What was his favorite dinner? His favorite animal?
Oh, I don’t remember that, she would say. I seethed and seethed.
Carter pushes back his hair, the silver pieces grouping then dispersing. “What do you think about Billy being involved in all this?” he says. “You know him pretty well, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess it’s all right.”
“I worry about him, a kid like that,” Carter says. “Getting hit like he did?”
“Yeah,” I say, but the thing is, what the fuck is Carter doing worrying about Billy? I mean, sure he’s a kid, and maybe someone should worry about him. Even I worry about him from time to time, but he’s got a family of his own. I mean, I’ve been clocked before. No big deal. In field hockey, every game. Girls in tartan plaids are rough, and I was fast and they knew nothing short of blood loss would stop me.
I got clocked again later too, in the prime of my adulthood, when it really counts, if we’re counting here. In a bar, the second time. Some guy who was messing with Sam when she was still something like my girlfriend. I talked smart to him and he got me good in the mouth with a fist, like men do. Then again, in the eye.
I ran out of the bar after it happened. The guy was gone by then; Sam was fine, I figured. I was sure I was dying, if you want to know the truth, and I thought I’d spare Sam the scene. Dying for sure, I thought. What the hell did I know? I was just some skinny kid from Mystic barely old enough to drink in the first place. So I ran, and I sat on a park bench by myself, stinging and throbbing and aching until I realized it felt enough like a hundred other things I’d felt before to mean I wasn’t dying. I headed home, and when I got there, sitting on my stoop, with her little elf face and fucking tiny nose and tiny ears and overall girliness, was Sam, so different from the other women I’d been with. She was like a real lady in the movies sitting on my front stoop crying with all her mascara running down the face like a mess, and me swooping in to comfort her even though I’d bit into my tongue so bad my mouth was full of blood.
She started hitting me on the arm and saying, Why did you run away! Why the fuck did you run away like that? And it didn’t hurt much, because she never knew how to make a fist right, but more blows were the last thing I needed.
So I grabbed her wrists and said, Hey, hey, it’s all right. I’m fine see? And I gave her a big grin, which was probably pretty bloody and horrific, because she just starting crying all over again. For Christ sake, I said. I brought her inside and she calmed down then. The colors were starting to run and collect in the space under my eye. It stung and ached at the same time and my cheek was too large. Sam found a half bottle of vodka, real cold, in the freezer and we took turns holding it against my eye socket and taking shots. The shots were cold, and then, as the heat leached out of the shiner, they were warm but we didn’t give a fuck. It was six A.M. and Sam kept saying she was sorry. She was so sorry, but hey, it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t the one who was supposed to be taking care of me.
Carter is staring off at the tree line again. I can’t just sit here with him like we are normal people shooting the shit. “Let’s go look at the pond,” I say.
“Sure,” Carter says. We walk over, me staring at my feet and he at his feet. And then I am staring at his feet and he at mine. I notice the lifting tarsals and the way our toes spread in the new grass. I do not have Marta’s feet, her fat little baby toes—no, my feet look like they have about as much rigging in them as a bridge, and about as little flesh. And Carter’s are just like them.
The pond is green and murky. It smells like green born but rapidly decaying. Carter’s probably about to launch into some sort of talk about ecosystems, but before he can start talking, I start unbuttoning my pants.
“Quinn?” Carter says. But I’ve got them off now, and I’m in my T-shirt and a pair of Rosie’s white underwear, which are really too big on me, but I like sharing clothes, and I don’t care, and I get a running start for the water.
“Quinn!” I hear Carter say as I launch out over the pond.
I plunge down. The water is blood warm. I make the mistake of opening my eyes underwater. It’s wild in here. Everything looks brown and I feel reeds twisting around my legs. A weird primal terror takes hold of me and I push off the lake bottom, meaning to rocket myself back up to the surface, but the ground is silty, slimy, years of rotten leaves and muck, and I don’t push off the way I think I will. Instead I just slip around, dancing on the bottom. I begin to paddle, up and up with my eyes closed, until I break the surface.
Carter is pacing back and forth on the edge of the pond like a dog who can’t swim. “What the hell are you doing?” he says. “Get out of there! That snapper could take half your calf off.”
I’ve finally got him to lose his cool. “I’m just swimming, Carter. You know. Swimming.” I scissor my legs and kick and churn the water.
“You’re nuts, get out of there right now,” he says. “I wasn’t kidding about the turtle, he’s the size of a puppy. Quinn, get out of there.”
I am treading water furiously, sputtering and flicking my hair around, and the algae is swirling around me like mad. I kick with my feet and throw my hands up in the air, arms streaming water, and say, “Why don’t you save me, Carter, huh? I’ve been treading for years. Why don’t you come on in and do something about it?” I have water in my mouth and in my eyes and I spit and I blink.
“For Christ sake,” he says. He’s not sure, but he pulls off his shirt.
He stands there, in his pants, thinking, pacing the perimeter. I start doing a backstroke around the pond, dipping down my feet so the turtle will know I mean business. Part of me hopes he does come and fuck me up. Let that turtle clobber me! Let him show Carter what it looks like when someone other than Billy gets sucker-punched.
Carter pulls off his jeans and jumps into the pond wearing just his shorts. He makes a big splash and surfaces sputtering and paddles over to me. For a moment we’re just treading water next to each other.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he says. His wet hair is dark and slicked back. He’s seal-like, bobbing above the water.
I flail. I crash my arms down on the water surface and I splash at him. I say, “With me? What the fuck is wrong with you? You were supposed to save me, Carter, okay? Me and Marta both, and where the fuck were you?” I splash and splash and I’m throwing up algae and muck and I’m not even treading anymore, just flailing. I duck underwater and then come up again and I will swallow as much lake water as I please, I swear I will fucking drown myself right here if that’s what it takes.
“Quinn,” he says. “Quinn. I’m sorry, okay? Just come over here. Just get out of the pond and we—” He tries to grab me, but I have too many arms all flying around and I’m coughing, and I’m not going peacefully. No way. My teeth are clenched so hard my jaw aches and I flail and then he catches me by the wrist.
“Come here,” he says.
“No,” I yell. “It’s too late. It’s too late now, Carter. If I want to wrestle turtles and drown myself, there’s nothing you can do about it anymore!”
But he’s still got me by the wrist. He pulls on me, and I pull back, but he is stronger. Goddammit, I had not thought he would be so much stronger than me. He pulls me to him by the wrist, and when he gets me that close he swipes all the wet hair out of my face. He drops my wrist and grabs on to me.
He’s the only one treading water now. He’s holding me. He’s got his arms around my back and I am pressed to his chest and somehow he is treading enough for both of us to be afloat. I say, “No!” I say, “No, no, no, no,” over and over again, and I struggle to get away from him and slip out of his grasp.
>
But he has me there, clasped to his furry chest, which is heaving, and he says to me, “Shhhhh.” He says, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you by the gills.”
And I stop flailing against him. Because this is what my mother always said. She would squeeze me close when my thoughts or mouth were running too fast. When I was acting generally crazy or angry. She’d trap me in her arms and she would say that she’d got me by the gills. She wouldn’t release me until I was calm.
But Marta was always the crazy one. Crazier than me even. How could I have thought she’d come up with this on her own? How could I not have realized this was something she knew because, once, someone had done it to her?
“Oh, fuck you, Carter,” I say, but if I’m honest, all I want is for him to keep pinning me to him here in the water, snapping turtles lurking beneath us in this lake in a yard that feels like home for no goddamn reason at all. And so I just keep still.
Carter clasps the back of my head and presses me closer, my head against his chest so I can hear all his organs bumping around in there.
He says, “I got you. You know that? You might not need it now, but I do, I’ve got you by the gills. Whether you like it or not.”
33
Leah
We are in our backyard, under one of the large pines, a blanket of needles beneath our feet. Henry is eating a bowl of oatmeal and I am drinking coffee, keeping him company before he heads out to the casa grande.
Henry moves his spoon around, stares into his bowl. “How’s work?” he says. And I know it’s not Charley or the paper he’s asking about. It’s me. How I’m doing, feeling about all this. Because I told Quinn and Charley I couldn’t work on the piece, and since then have been sulking around the house. Sulking around the office. I did the right thing but I am not a good sport. Our peace is uneasy.
Quinn and Charley were pissed. You realize how idiotic this is? they said to me. We’re running the story one way or the other. What difference does it make whether you help or not? But to Henry, it makes a big difference whether it’s his wife’s name in that byline or not. Its presence, a condemnation. Its absence, a declaration of solidarity.
