A Matter of Mercy

by Lynne Hugo

  “Of course. Like the lady.”

  “You sweet talker you.”

  Caroline handed him the bottle and an opener. “You may do the honors, sir. I’ll fix us emergency rations.”

  “You got it, sweetheart.” It was a bad imitation of some movie star she couldn’t identify, but Caroline smiled. “Not only that, I’ll get a fire going. Where’s your wood?”

  “Ah, well. Didn’t get around to that yet.”

  Rid shrugged. “I guess you haven’t been back that long. Sure your Mom doesn’t have any?”

  “No wood. We can set the couch on fire if you want. Or you can just open the wine.” Caroline searched the cupboards, finding a can of marinated mushrooms and a jar of artichoke hearts to drain and add to the tray of cheese and crackers, baby carrots and Granny Smith slices she’d scrounged from the refrigerator. Little party toothpicks and napkins from one of the hutch drawers, leftovers from her wedding to Chuck, completed the spread.

  Rid whistled. “Not bad. Wicked good, in fact.”

  The beer they’d had in the truck first. Candles on the mantelpiece, candles on the coffee table, the tray of food between them, the wine glasses refilled and then refilled again, the afghan knit by Caroline’s grandmother around both their backs, the wind and rain beating on the windows. His hand on her thigh in sympathy when she got teary about Eleanor dying. Later when Caroline tried to figure out why this time, this man—Rid, of all unlikely choices—she catalogued these elements and was ashamed that she’d just had too much to drink and succumbed.

  No place felt clear of baggage except the floor, which had been Caroline’s choice, so they’d started on the braided rug and the good green quilt she’d dragged out, but it hadn’t been long before they agreed they were both too old to lie on the floor and pretend they were comfortable. Rid had tried to lead her to the hospital bed, but she’d resisted. Her own room had a narrow twin. They ended up in the big bed in Eleanor’s room, no longer in use. My parents’ bed, she thought afterward.

  Later, candlelight flickered against the darkness and his fingertips lightly circled one of her breasts as they sipped the last of the wine. Maybe it was the afterglow of candlelight, sex, and wine, but she found herself talking more than she’d been willing to in years.

  “Funny how we’re both back where we were born,” she said. “Did you feel like you had to? I mean, Mom’s cancer is what brought me back, but I won’t be staying after…. Did you come back because you didn’t have any place else—or because your Dad needed you—or…?”

  “Turned out Dad needed me, but I was back before then. It was weird, ya know? Dad put my name on his grant when I was a kid, even though I swore I didn’t want to work the flats. It was like he knew I wasn’t going to do anything else. ’Course I gave him plenty reason to think that, too. Wonder how many times I got suspended from school?” He laughed. His hand was square, callused. A violent offshore wind was picking up sand and flinging it against the windows; tomorrow they’d be milky with salt, and cleaning them would be Caroline’s chore.

  “I never understood how that worked, the grants, I mean.”

  “There’s only so much space in the harbor and a certain amount is reserved for picking in the wild—where the public can go. The sea farmers get their leases—same thing as a grant—from the town, see, and there’s only so many. When they’re gone, they’re gone. By Dad putting my name on his grant, that meant that if—or when—he died, it would pass to me. It meant I’d always have a way to make a living. I never knew why Dad wanted to do it. God, you break your back, and.…”

  “Yeah,” Caroline murmured.

  “Well sure, there’s a million problems. Your oysters get diseased, your nets get fouled, the price of seed goes sky high just when you have the least spat yourself, the flies eat you alive or you’re wet and freezing, your bull rake breaks, your dingy leaks, somebody underbids your best account and they never heard of loyalty. Whatever.”

  “Sounds like a great life.” She was sarcastic, softening it with a smile. But what she wanted to ask was why on earth would anyone—no, why would you—do this if you had any other choice? “There must be something else you could do,” she said instead.

  “Well of course. I’m not a complete loser. Or, in spite of the fact that I am a complete loser, yes, I could do something else. Don’t wanna.”

  Caroline looked at him, waiting, her brows slightly tented, and he returned her gaze, his expression that of someone waiting for a joke.

  “Look,” he said finally, “all that stuff about it being backbreaking and unpredictable—all that bad stuff is true. But, CiCi, if you could see what I see—the sky painted colors when it’s a sunset tide and how it bleeds into the water as if it’s all made of the same stuff. And in the mornings, just being able to see as far as my eyes can see and it’s bay and cliffs and sky. You can’t believe the different birds, oh my God. Have you ever seen laughing gulls make love?” He shook his head, smiling at the image he conjured. “And then there’s my grant and all the trays and nets that are mine.” He drew a map in the air. “I’m here, Mario’s got the grant next to mine, and Tomas, he’s got the one on the other side. Mario does most everything half-assed, and Tomas does everything out of, oh, I don’t know, The New Science of Aquaculture book, but we’d do anything for each other.” Caroline watched Rid’s face, saw that he wanted her to understand.

  “Barb, Mario, Tomas, geez, Austin, Woody, Clint, Karl, Peg, Richard, Todd, Toby, and shoot, Tweed, and Bogsie—I’m not naming but a fourth now, but all of ’em—we help each other out like family. And this family lives by the tides to support the community. Between us, we can figure most anything out. Barb, she’s an encyclopedia with a heart. It’s like I’m part of something that’s always been here. Even the crabs have a place, you know? They’ll finagle their way right into any nursery tray with the smallest opening and eat your seeds like popcorn, so we all hate ’em. But they keep the bottom clean. They have their place, too, when you think about it. See? It’s a world, CiCi, that all works together, and I get to be out in it every day. Sure there’s crappy days, but you know, mostly the air is so plain good, and the water’s clear glass and I pick up one of my own oysters, shuck it right there, slide it into my mouth and I know damn well it’s probably the sweetest and the best in the world. It’s not a job, it’s a life. Every bad day earns me the ones that are—geez, I told you I couldn’t explain it.”

  “You love it,” Caroline said quietly.

  “More ’n anything. I wish to hell I hadn’t wasted so many years, but….” A shrug and another head shake, his tone unguarded and sad.

  “But you’re here now.”

  “That I am, ma’am.” He cooperated with her attempt to be chipper.

  “Is there anyone? I mean, I’m surprised you’re not married, or living with someone, or involved. Or are you?” How could she not have asked first? Rid could have had a wife and two girlfriends and her mother wouldn’t have known it unless they’d all been out picking oysters together.

  Rid laughed easily. “Not hardly. Been there, done that. All done with that, I should say. Lizzie’s the only female in my life now.”

  She tried not to show relief; he might misinterpret, think she wanted something.

  “So anyway, you’re back here as much as I am. Place in your blood, too, then?” Rid said.

  “More like returning to the scene of the crime, I guess.” She shrugged, then steered in a more comfortable direction. “Really, I’m here for Mom. As long as she needs me. Until….”

  She was grateful he was neither stupid nor disingenuous and merely said, “And then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Chapter 4

  Caroline didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but then she woke needing to pee, amazed that dawn was already mixing into the blackness, lightening the world from black to charcoal gray. She cracked the bathroom window to listen for the weather; it sounded normal enough, though there were no bird sounds. The bay
might still be churning whitecaps, but the tide was out so she wouldn’t hear it. Still, it was clear the storm had passed.

  She flipped the bathroom switch to check for power. Nothing. Her feet were cold on the ceramic floor, and she thought it was just as well she couldn’t see herself in the mirror. Smeary makeup, bedhead, a sweatshirt, underpants.

  Caroline used the toilet, rinsed her hands and swished water around in her mouth to freshen the sourness. Her toothbrush was upstairs. In the dark she washed her face to take off the eye makeup, then felt for the toothpaste and used her forefinger to swab her teeth with a glob of the minty stuff, more for her breath than her teeth. On her way out, she finger combed her short hair, fluffed the sides and back where she’d slept it flat.

  Tiptoeing back to the bed in which they’d slept, she slid back in next to Rid more from chill than confidence. He rolled over as she did.

  “Hi.”

  It was still dark enough that Caroline couldn’t tell if he’d opened his eyes, although outside the gray had already lightened several shades since she’d gone to the bathroom. How quickly, how imperceptibly, life moved on.

  In a sudden gesture, he flung off the quilt and jumped up. “Holy shit. I’ve got to go let Lizzie out. Her back teeth will be floating, and she won’t speak to me until next Tuesday for not feeding her last night.” Then he was standing, hopping on one foot, pulling on boxers. “Did you see where I threw my jeans?”

  It wasn’t like she’d thought he’d stay. She’d not consciously decided she even wanted him to, for that matter. So was it pride or something else that made her first vaguely insulted then overcome with a terrible loneliness, like the last unpicked rose hip, that he was in such a hurry to leave? She got up, too, following him into the living room, so he couldn’t escape and leave her as if nothing had happened.

  “Rid, last night, I didn’t give you an honest answer to something you asked.” Caroline could see his jeans, in fact, over behind the rocking chair, but didn’t let his eyes follow hers there.

  He had the decency to stop and look at her. “What was that?”

  “You asked me why I wasn’t teaching. I can’t teach. I lost my certification. But no place would hire me anyway. That fatal accident I mentioned?” She paused, and he nodded. Caroline dropped her head and stared at her hands, one rubbing the other in her lap as she moved to sit on the sofa. The gray T-shirt that had been the layer next to Rid’s skin, and the final one to come off last night, was wadded beneath her. Rid took the two steps and sat next to Caroline, his bare thighs goosebumped in the chill. She was cold, too, but the fact that he sat there chilled as she started to talk left open the question as to whether he intended to bolt. So she dragged his shirt from under her rump, handing it to him wordlessly and pulled the green quilt up from the floor over their legs.

  Rid pulled the T-shirt over his head. Satisfied then, Caroline continued.

  “I was the driver in that fatal accident. Chuck—he was my husband—and I had had this argument, and I got in the car and took off … that’s not the point. I was charged with DWI, and I pled guilty. Rid, I was in prison.”

  “God, CiCi, I didn’t know. I’m really sorry.”

  Maybe he’d signaled her then, because he didn’t ask any questions, but the accident was something she never talked about, the stone-weight on her chest, and suddenly here she was, rolling it away to test some man, and now inertia kept it rolling. “It was in P-town. I didn’t even hit another car on the road, it was a parked car.”

  Rid had to ask then. “Was it icy or something?”

  “No. I wish it had been, to tell the truth.” She waited for him to take the bait, to ask more, and he did.

  “What happened?”

  She sighed. “The other car was parked. I guess I misjudged how close I was, you know how narrow those streets are, but also, I didn’t expect—see, a woman, the mother actually, had just opened the back door and was lifting a child out. I don’t know why, I never understood why she was on the street side, but she was, and I hit that open car door and them.”

  “She was killed?” Rid said, eyes opening, more blue in his incredulity.

  “She was pretty badly hurt, but she lived. The four-year old—he’s the one who died.” Tears were coursing down Caroline’s cheeks now. A man who’d been in prison himself would understand, even if it meant she’d changed her whole notion of who she was, with what kind of people she belonged.

  “CiCi, I’m real sorry. That’s just got to be so hard.” He shook his head as if to ward off the image of such sorrow, an empathic gesture, but at the same time, Caroline saw it: a nearly imperceptible clouding-over of his eyes, thigh muscles contracting to rise.

  She couldn’t let him. “And there’s even—”

  He stopped her with a hand on her knee as he slid himself forward in the first motion of standing. “I can’t believe what you must have been through, Ci. It must have been hell. You’re doing good to get over it.” He paused, not long. “Right now, I’ve absolutely got to get going—I need to run and get Lizzie and get out to my grant, you know, check for damage, but also get those trays and hats back in while I’ve still got the tide. It’s already coming.” He looked at his watch, which he’d not taken off at all last night, and made an exaggerated face of alarm. “Hey, thanks so much for last night. I mean really, for helping me pull my stuff in.” He started toward the hallway. “I’ll just quick use the john. Oh, there’s my jeans. And look, whaddya know. Shoes too.” He picked them up in swoops, a gull diving for prey.

  Rid disappeared into the bathroom, and Caroline heard his long hard stream overcome by the flushing toilet before it even ended. A quick rinsing sink sound, and he appeared again, this time with jeans and shoes on. She’d not had time for more than gall and hurt and an inchoate need to keep him from leaving her alone now.

  Rid came back into the living room and gathered his waders and slicker, now dry, off the kitchen chair backs where he’d finally arranged them last night.

  “Let me get you some breakfast,” Caroline said, moving quickly into the kitchen area. “I can fix some—”

  “No, really, thanks, but I’ve got to run.” He was putting his wallet in his jeans pocket and picking up his truck keys, body angled to the door, talking to her over his shoulder. Behind him the light said dawn, almost morning now. As she’d known they would be, the windows were so occluded Caroline could not tell the weather.

  “Just some cof—” Ridiculous, she realized. The power was out.

  It didn’t matter. “Really, thanks though,” he said, opening the door.

  “Then let me go with you. I can help.”

  “Actually, CiCi, what I’ve got to do today is probably easiest to do myself, you know, rather than take the time to show you. Another time, though. Thanks for the offer. If you need help with your mother—she’s coming home today, right?—you just wave me in off the grant, okay? See ya later.”

  He was on the porch. The screen door had slapped shut behind him already. Caroline, still barefoot, still in only underpants and a sweatshirt, stood in the doorway and called after him. Called toward the beach and the bay and his back, and later, flushed with humiliation, had only this to cling to: the hope that the sound of the waves, the gulls’ caws, the onshore breeze was enough to garble it, the pathetic non-sequitur. “Rid, the four-year-old was deformed. It was somebody’s deformed child that I killed. How could I ever get over it?”

  When she replayed it in her mind, she could make it come out either way because she’d only seen his back. Could be he hesitated a nanosecond then kept walking, pretending not to have heard. Or, he strode on to his truck those stupid, sad, desperate words separated and far-flung as bits of dry rockweed skittering along the beach in a high wind, none of it reaching any goal, none of it remaining coherently together. She could make it come out either way. But an AA leader in Chicago had lectured, “Tell the real truth, if only to yourself,” when speaking about conducting a searching moral inventory. Attenda
nce at four AA meetings had been one condition of her early parole, even though she’d never had a drinking problem. Still, she’d taken the AA message away and it had freed her even when she didn’t like it. It was, well, simpler.

  And the truth was simple: just enough beer to put her over the legal limit, an argument with Chuck, a figure opening a car door into a narrow street, a mother injured and her son dead.

  Rid had hesitated.

  Caroline went inside, broke the slam of the screen door, then softly closed and locked the main door. She knew it would be best if she turned on the radio, and busied herself with showering and making coffee—if the damn power ever came back on—or at least changing clothes and straightening the room. Instead she stood half-dressed in the silence and took in the disarray of a place where something wasteful had occurred and now would all have to be put right again. The room looked as if something feral had been loosed there, snapping, pouncing, killing again while she’d pretended she was still something good, tender, in the bed of a dying old woman.

  She tried not to let herself look for him, but she did. Saw him come back to the flats and park below the high-water line, where the others had already moved their trucks back from the incoming tide. His dog jumped out and ran on the beach, like her mother had said, but then Rid put her back in the truck. Another sea farmer waded over to talk to him. She tormented herself by watching him work, leaving the window to strip the bed and start the sheets in the washer, and then returning. Leaving again to fold the green quilt. Erasing the signs. Returning. By the time she was ready to pick up her mother, the tide was in and he was gone.