Musseled Out

by Barbara Ross

  I scooted over next to her and patted her shoulder. “Oh, Mom. Quit. Quit if you hate it.”

  “But—but—but then, I wouldn’t only be an incompetent retail clerk, I’d—I’d be a quitter.” More sobbing. “I never thought it would be this hard. I’m only fifty-three. I have to figure out something to do with my life.”

  I laughed. Hadn’t I said those exact words recently?

  “It’s not funny,” Mom scolded, though she did manage a little smile. “I bought the stupid machine with my employee discount. I wanted to spoil myself, to own something glamorous.” She was crying again. “But, oh, Julia, I hate it so much. I just hate that thing.”

  “Come back to the clambake, Mom,” I said. “Come back for next summer. Run the gift shop like you used to. It would be so good for Page and the new baby to have you on Morrow Island again. And for Livvie and me. The clambake needs you. Come out tomorrow for the last ’bake of the year.”

  She hugged me back. “I don’t know. Maybe. It would be good to feel a part of something. I don’t feel a part of Linens and Pantries.” She dried her eyes with a napkin she’d plucked from the holder on the table.

  Le Roi, sensing a human in need of comforting, jumped into her lap. His purr machine started before he even landed. Mom petted him, sweeping the length of his long, furry body. “And what about you, Julia?” she asked. “What will you do when the clambake is over for the season? Where will you and Le Roi live?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I answered.

  Chapter 36

  The storm cleared out and left a glorious day for the last Snowden Family Clambake of the season. The air was crisp as fall should be, but the sun shone brightly and the clouds were high.

  The Jacquie II wasn’t crowded. With only fifty or so people aboard, I was fine with that. We were running with a skeleton crew. Our summer employees had returned to school or headed to other seasonal jobs down south. Only a few stalwart schoolteachers and local high school students who could give us their weekends were on hand.

  To fill things out, and because I longed to celebrate, I invited friends and family along. Chris and Quentin were there. Fee and Vee brought Genevieve Pelletier, who still hadn’t returned to Portland for some reason. Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn, still in town completing paperwork, came, too. I’d even brought Le Roi in his carrying case for one last hurrah on the island before the long winter ahead.

  Jamie was on the boat, too. Like Binder and Flynn, he was off-duty and dressed in civilian clothes. He brought a lovely, tall brunette with him whom he introduced as his girlfriend. I gave them each a hug. The tension between Jamie and me was gone at last.

  Bard Ramsey was there, too, trying his best to act hale and hearty, when I knew his heart must instead be breaking. Kyle was out on bail until his hearing, but the road ahead would be a difficult one. I’d invited Belle and her grandchildren, but she’d declined. Peter was out on bail, but Lorrie Ann was still being held in custody. A broken family.

  And my mother. For the first time in five years, my mother was on the Jacquie II, the boat my father had named for her.

  The harbor was quiet as we cruised toward Morrow Island. The seals were in the water, just their heads visible, not hauled out on the rocks, sunning themselves as they did in summer. Many had already begun their migration south. As we passed Chipmunk Island, the last of the summer residents loaded suitcases and boxes onto boats at the dock. Busman’s Harbor would shut off the water to the island the next day. The empty windows of the charming Victorian cottages stared blankly as the Jacquie II passed by.

  When we landed on Morrow Island, I helped the passengers off the boat. Mom was the last to disembark. She gasped when she saw the burned-out Windsholme. She’d seen photos since the fire, of course, and had been involved in the decisions we’d made about the house so far, but seeing it in real life was a shock. I put my arm around her to steady her.

  “Grandma, Grandma!” Page yelled, running to us across the lawn. She threw her arms around my mother. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

  Since it was a cool fall day, many of our guests gravitated to the clambake fire, Bard along with them. He and Sonny stood together, in family solidarity, and matching blue slings.

  I checked on Livvie and her crew in the kitchen. They were in good shape. The staff was small, but experienced. I pulled her aside. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Sure.” My busy sister looked over my shoulder to see what one of the cooks was doing. She had a meal to put on.

  “No. I mean you and Sonny. Are you two going to be okay?”

  Tears sprung to her eyes. “Oh, Julia,” she said. “I almost lost him.”

  I took that as a yes.

  I saw Lieutenant Binder across the dining pavilion and went to talk to him. Flynn was off circling Genevieve like a moon in her gravitational pull. “If I’d known they were an item, I wouldn’t have tried to persuade you she was a suspect,” I said.

  Binder responded in a low voice. “She wasn’t a suspect. She’s a federal informant. She’s the one who gave up David Thwing to the feds. She discovered he was using the business to launder money, and the business locations to smuggle in drugs.”

  “You’re kidding.” There were more layers to Genevieve than I’d suspected. “What will happen to her now?”

  “She only gave up Thwing. She didn’t know any of his suppliers, so she’s safe to live her life. But Thwing built their restaurants and kept them running with drug money. She’ll probably lose them all.”

  It was a courageous decision for an ambitious woman like Genevieve to risk her business by informing on her partner. “So that’s why Flynn kept tabs on every move she made. I thought he had a crush on her.”

  Binder looked over at his partner and Genevieve. “Oh,” he laughed, “I don’t think you’re wrong about that.”

  The ship’s bell rang, signaling the start of the meal. Ordinarily, I worked as host and traffic cop, but with so little staff, I grabbed a tray full of cups of Livvie’s delicious clam chowder and passed them out.

  When the chowder cups were cleared, the main meal arrived. Steamed clams called steamers, twin lobsters, corn on the cob, a potato, an onion and an egg.

  Fee and Vee sat with my mother, and when everyone was served, I visited with them briefly. The sisters reported that though Mrs. Gus would have to go to rehab, her doctors were optimistic about a full recovery. She and Gus had finally agreed to tell their children what had happened.

  “What is her real name?” I asked. I remembered the time I’d spent at her bedside, convinced the poor woman should have an identity of her own.

  Fee answered, “It’s Gus.”

  “No,” I insisted. “What is her name?”

  Fee gritted her teeth. “I’m telling you. Her name is Gus. Augustine. Gussie when she was little, but just Gus from junior high on. When she married Gus Farnham, it caused no end of confusion. That’s when she decided she wanted us to call her Mrs. Gus.”

  “She picked the name?”

  “Who else?” Fee dug into her lobster and I went back to checking on guests.

  At a table near the kitchen, a crowd had gathered. A man named Bruce who said he lived in Paris—France that was, not Paris, Maine—claimed to be the best lobster-eater on the planet. Quite a claim in coastal Maine. As I watched, he threw away everything we’d served him except the steamers and the lobsters. “Distractions,” he said with disdain. I had to admit, this late in the year, the corn was terrible. Traditional, but terrible.

  By the time I got back to Bruce’s table, the steamers were gone and the first lobster demolished. I watched in admiration, as he tucked into the second. He twisted off the claws, used a nutcracker to crack them, and pulled out the meat. He separated the tail from the body, then put his thumb to the end of it and slid the meat out whole. He dredged it in butter and bit in, closing his eyes and sighing in satisfaction. He made short work of the body, using his fingers and all the implements we supplied unt
il every nook and cranny was picked clean. Then he sucked the meat from every one of the legs. It was a sight to behold. When he finished, the crowd cheered. I cleared his plate. There was nothing but shell. I pronounced him the Snowden Family Clambake’s new champion. Our reigning champs, Bard and Sonny Ramsey, looked ready to dispute it, but since each of them had an arm in a sling, there was nothing they could do.

  We brought out dessert, blueberry grunt with vanilla ice cream. Afterward, the guests lingered while the staff cleaned up. There were so few of us, we planned to go back on the same boat with the customers. The sun set over the point, and many of the guests wandered out to view it.

  Chris and Quentin, who’d spent a lot of time together, walked around the outside of Windsholme and then slipped through the fence and disappeared inside. The captain blew the Jacquie II’s horn, our fifteen-minute warning, and the guests and staff prepared to board. I stretched and closed my eyes. The last clambake of the year. My last evening on Morrow Island. There’d be one more trip to shut down the clambake, button up for the winter, and get the clothes and books I’d brought out with me. But this was the end. We had survived.

  I snuck down to the little house by the dock to say good-bye. I carried Le Roi in my arms. I didn’t want him to wander off and hide before we got on the boat. As soon as I closed the cottage door and put him down, he meowed, loudly and insistently. I shushed him, which only incensed him. Finally he looked me straight in the eye, jumped on the kitchen counter, and hit the latch on the door. He kept at it until it turned, and then he batted the doorknob until it, too, turned. He reached a claw into the crack of the door and pulled it open.

  “So that’s how you got out,” I called as I ran after him.

  My mother and I were the only people left on the dock when Chris and Quentin walked down from Windsholme. They looked at us and we looked at them.

  Quentin nudged Chris and said, “You tell them.”

  “Quentin and I have been studying the mansion. The kitchen wing and rooms above are sound. We can save it and preserve some of the building cost-effectively, though it will be smaller.” He let that sink in. “After all,” he added, speaking to me, “you may want to live on the island someday with your family, and Livvie and Sonny are already in the dock house.”

  “The wing over the ladies’ withdrawing room isn’t in bad shape, either,” Quentin added. “In case you need three places. If Mrs. Snowden wants to live here summers, too.”

  Chris beamed at me. “What do you think?”

  What did I think? I pictured his torn-apart second floor and wondered what we might be letting ourselves in for.

  My mother had no such qualms. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  My mother, initially a Chris-detractor, then a Chris-tolerator, was finally won over.

  Chapter 37

  On Tuesday morning Chris and I opened Gus’s. The easy way we’d had of working together the first time we’d run the restaurant returned. I took orders, served, and handled the money, and Chris cooked like a maniac.

  The place was full, and the main topic of conversation was still the arrests of Kyle, Peter, and Lorrie Ann. The war with Coldport was back on the conversational agenda as well. The police had charged Hughie B. Hubler with burning his own boat for the insurance money. Neither Thwing’s murder nor the burned boat had anything to do with a lobster war. I hoped the long winter would cool everyone down.

  At almost ten, when business slowed, Gus wandered in through the back door. “How’s it going?” he asked Chris.

  “Fine. No worries. How’s Mrs. Gus?”

  Gus’s great white eyebrows swooped low over his piercing blue eyes. “So much better. They’re moving her to rehab later today. The docs are optimistic she’ll come the whole way back.”

  “I’m so glad.” It was hard to imagine Gus without Mrs. Gus. She’d been the one behind the scenes. She kept the books, ordered the food, and most important of all, made the pies. They had been married more than fifty years, had raised two children, and were cherished by six grandchildren. And the whole town.

  “Let me fix you breakfast,” Chris said.

  Both Gus and I snapped our heads around to stare. It was such a startling idea. Someone else serving food to Gus at his restaurant. I expected him to resist, but perhaps in a concession to his emotions of the past week, he agreed.

  “Over easy,” he said. “You crack the egg on the grill, then when the clear part starts to turn white, you spoon hot oil over the yolk.”

  Chris had already started back toward the grill. “I know how to make eggs, old man,” he called over his shoulder.

  Gus sat down at one of his tables and patted the chair next to him, gesturing for me to sit as well. “You come, too, Chris, when you’re finished with my eggs. There’s something I want to talk to you both about.”

  Chris brought Gus’s plate over, the eggs, two pieces of toast, and the last of the morning’s home fries, and put it in front of him. Chris stood, shifting nervously from foot to foot while Gus picked up his fork. The thin crust on top of the egg broke beautifully and the bright yellow yolk oozed out. Gus mopped it up with his toast, loaded on a bit of egg white, and popped it in his mouth.

  I held my breath.

  “Delicious,” Gus pronounced. “Perfectly cooked.”

  Chris sighed from relief and sat in the chair between us. It was funny to me how much Chris, who was always so sure of himself, cared what Gus thought. I was giddily relieved myself.

  “Been busy in here?” Gus asked.

  “So busy,” I answered.

  Gus nodded. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The restaurant is important to people—”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “And they care about you, too, Gus. Every single person who’s been in here has asked about Mrs. Gus.”

  “Let me finish, Julia.” Gus took another bite of egg and chewed slowly. “I was going to say, the restaurant is important at times like this, when everyone in town is confused and hurting. They need a place to talk out their worries. And with Crowley’s closed after New Year’s, my restaurant is pretty near the only place where everyone can gather.”

  He was right. The winter would be long and the weather bad. People might run into each other at the post office, but that was it. In the winter, Gus’s would be a warm refuge with wet overcoats draped over every chair and steam fogging the windows. But what was he saying? Was Gus going to give up the restaurant?

  “I think you two should run it,” Gus finished quietly.

  “Never!” Chris and I reacted immediately, with the same word.

  “Gus’s isn’t Gus’s without you,” Chris added.

  For a moment I thought Gus was going to walk away from his restaurant. I couldn’t bear the idea of living in Busman’s Harbor without Gus’s.

  Gus held up a hand. “Hear me out. I think you two should run the restaurant for supper. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, maybe close earlier in the afternoons. I’m an old man, you know.” For a moment, the twinkle was back in his eyes.

  “Chris here is a great cook,” Gus said, “and Julia, you know all about the ordering and such. The town really needs a restaurant in the winter and you’re the perfect pair to take it on. You can close up in the summer when you both have better things to do and the other places are open.”

  The thought was dizzying. I looked into Chris’s green eyes. He held out a hand, palm down. I took the gesture to mean, Don’t react now. We’ll talk later.

  Then Gus threw in the kicker. “Julia, there’s an apartment upstairs you could live in. Do you want to see it?”

  Gus ate his last bite of egg and led the way upstairs to the “apartment.” The restaurant was in an old harborside warehouse, albeit a small one. I guessed by the look of it, the upstairs had been converted to living space sometime during World War II, when shipbuilding in Bath had created a dire need for housing up and down the coast.

  “M
rs. Gus and I lived here when we started out,” Gus said. “But then the kids came along and we moved to our house. Never had much need for it after that.”

  The apartment was a large studio with an enormous, multi-paned window capturing a breathtaking view of the harbor. The place was piled with cardboard boxes holding napkins, plastic forks and the red-checkered boats Gus served most of his food in.

  “I don’t know what to say.” I looked at Chris, who looked back at me. So much to discuss, so many decisions to make. But I could tell from his look, he knew, just as I did, we’d accept Gus’s offer and run the restaurant as a team.

  As Quentin had promised, when the right thing came along, I knew it instantly.

  Recipes

  Chris’s Shrimp & Lobster Polenta

  In the fall when Chris moves off his sailboat, the Dark Lady, to his cabin, Julia’s surprised to discover he’s a great cook. He tells her put this delicious shrimp and lobster polenta dish together in 20 minutes.

  Polenta

  ½ cup quick-cooking polenta

  1 teaspoon salt

  2½ cups water

  2 Tablespoons olive oil

  Sauce

  3 Tablespoons olive oil

  2 scallions sliced thinly

  pinch of crushed red pepper

  2 Tablespoons tomato paste

  ¼ cup white wine

  ¼ cup seafood stock or bottled clam juice

  ¼ pound medium shrimp (21-25 per pound) cut into 3-4 pieces

  ¼ pound cooked lobster meat

  ½ Tablespoon lemon juice

  ½ Tablespoon lemon zest

  1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

  To make the polenta

  Boil water together with salt. Add polenta in a thin stream and stir for about five minutes until thickened. Turn off the heat. Stir in two tablespoons of olive oil. Lay a piece of wax paper on top and keep warm.