Seashell Season

by Holly Chamberlin

  Anyway, Verity opened the front door, and we were immediately in the living room, no front hall. “I’ll give you the tour,” Verity said, and I thought she sounded unsure, like she might be worried I’d hate the place. And even if I did, so what? I’m stuck here.

  “There’s only one bathroom,” she said. “Sorry about that. But I’m sure we can work out morning schedules once school starts.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I thought, Does she think I ever lived in a place with more than one bathroom? And I can’t tell you how disgusting some of the bathrooms were, tile permanently stained with who knows what, and rusty faucets that dripped all the freakin’ time, and sometimes there was no shower, just a bathtub. Do you know how much time it takes to wash long hair when all you have is a bathtub?

  I can’t say I paid much attention to details, like what color the couch was or if there was stuff hanging on the walls. Like I said, I think I’m still a little flattened. She showed me through the kitchen, which was right off the living room and kind of long and narrow. Just behind it, a step down, was a sort of entry/exit area with sliding glass doors leading out onto a deck almost as big as the porch out front. The deck was covered with a retractable awning, and for the first time in days my mood lifted a bit and I had a seriously hard time not saying something like, This is killer! I can’t believe this is all now mine! Well, mine and hers.

  The bathroom was off the kitchen—no tub but a shower, super clean—and behind the bathroom was a tiny room Verity told me she used for storage. There were stacks of plastic bins, most of which, she said, contained winter clothing. “Winter gear takes up a lot of space,” she said. I thought, I wouldn’t know, but I said nothing. A smallish washing machine and dryer lived there too. No more collecting quarters and lugging laundry to the local Laundromat, I thought. Cool. And then I wondered if Verity would offer to do my laundry for me. Mothers do their kids’ laundry, right?

  From this storage area we walked into a decent-size room; I could see the living room just on the other side of the open door. “And this,” she said, with a gesture like she was on one of those game shows and her job was to point out the stuff people might win, “this is your room.”

  I looked around the room. It was just a room. No big deal.

  “You’ll have plenty of privacy when the two doors are closed,” she said. “And I didn’t know how you might want to decorate it, so I just left what was here. I’ve been using it as a sort of study, but I’ll pay the bills and stuff at the kitchen table from now on. The couch pulls out into a bed, but we’ll get you a regular bed as soon as possible.”

  When I didn’t say anything for some time, she said, “Unless you like the idea of a sleeper couch. Your friends could hang out in here more easily then. I mean, the friends you’ll make.”

  I felt such a jumble of emotions right then, anger and sadness and a bizarre impulse to laugh until I puked. The friends I’ll make. That implied that my future lay here, in Yorktide. That implied that people—at least some people—would want to get to know me. To like me.

  “My bedroom’s upstairs,” she said then. “And there’s a small room next to it I use as an at-home studio for preliminary sketches, things like that. The light’s good. Do you want to see the upstairs now or maybe we should bring in your bags so you can get settled?”

  She was being so nice. I didn’t want her to be nice, then or now. It makes this whole starting-a-new-life thing that much harder for me to handle. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you, but it’s how I feel. If she were nasty to me, if she made it clear she resented my being dumped on her and her neat little life in this cute little house, then there’d be something real I could fight against. And why do I feel I need something to fight against?

  Because my father totally screwed up my life.

  “I’ll get my stuff now,” I said, and I walked out of the room, through the living room, and out the front door.

  Chapter 10

  I was a nervous wreck, showing her the house, what is now her home. I want her to like the house, be happy in it, and I’m willing to make all sorts of changes—well, anything I can afford—if they help her to feel settled. I know so little about where she and Alan were living when he got arrested, just that it was a rental apartment. How big or how nicely furnished or how long they had been there—these were details Gemma would have to tell me. If she chose to tell me.

  I told her we would eat at six. At five minutes after she appeared in the kitchen, and we sat across from each other at the old rectangular oak table I’d found at a flea market years ago. It had been sort of a wreck, but one good practical thing about being a creative person is that often you can see possibilities where others might see only a piece of garbage. You can resurrect things, give them new life. But only things, not people.

  When I’d set out the food and we’d begun to eat, I found I couldn’t stop talking. Nerves, I guess. “Our neighbors to the right,” I said, “that’s the house with the green door, are the Gallisons. They’re a young couple with two-year-old twins, and they keep pretty much to themselves. I suspect they’re probably too exhausted to socialize. And to the left are the Pascoes. They’re an older couple—mid-seventies, I think—and are both very nice, though they’re the old-fashioned sort of neighbor—always willing to lend a hand but sometimes a bit too nosey. Get either one of them chatting, and you’ll be stuck for half an hour. But don’t worry. I’ve asked them to give us some privacy while you get situated.” I smiled. “I know Glenda is dying to bring over one of her famous chocolate layer cakes as a welcome.”

  If I had hoped for a smile in return or, for that matter, a word of thanks, I was disappointed. Gemma kept her head bowed toward her plate.

  “Have you ever had lobster?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Well, I thought, one word is better than none. “We’ll get some lobsters this week. A few of the lobstermen sell to the locals at a reduced rate.”

  “I don’t like fish,” she said.

  “All fish or just shellfish?”

  “Fish.”

  I watched as she ate. She held the fork in her fist, not as you’re supposed to hold a fork. Had Alan not taught her basic table skills? And she shoveled the food into her mouth, chewing vigorously, slurping from her glass of water (she’d asked if there was Pepsi; there was not) after every few mouthfuls. I restrained the impulse to comment or correct her. Poor thing, I thought. She’s eating as if this were going to be her last meal for days. And then I wondered—strange thought!—if she were eating like a ruffian on purpose, to annoy me, to shock me. Alan had been brought up to be almost an obsessively neat, even delicate eater. How could he not have trained her otherwise?

  There’s just so much I don’t know.

  “I’m glad you like the chicken,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me about the foods you like to eat.”

  Gemma looked up at me for the first time then, but for the life of me I couldn’t read her expression. “I like fried stuff,” she said. “Dad used to get us McDonald’s fries all the time.”

  It was the first time she had used the word Dad in my home—in our home—and it hit me hard. I responded carefully, without, I hoped, sounding critical of her father.

  “Well, fried food isn’t exactly healthy. It’s okay some of the time, but—”

  “You asked what I liked.” This was said without looking back up at me.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I did.” Tread lightly, lightly, lightly, I told myself. “You know, earlier, when we got out of the car, I said that this was my house. What I should have said was that it’s our house. I’m sorry.”

  Gemma shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  To say our first meal together was a success would be to lie. It was perilously close to a disaster. But what had I expected? This is going to be a long and challenging process, this learning how to be a family, and it’s going to require patience.

  “Do you want dessert?” I asked. “I usually don’t keep s
weets in the house, but I brought in some ice cream. I figured most people like ice cream.”

  “What flavor?” she asked.

  “Chocolate with mint chips, and a pint of maple walnut. That’s kind of a Maine thing.”

  Gemma shook her head. “That’s okay,” she said. “Can I go now?”

  “Of course. Do you want to watch television? Or maybe I could show you my bedroom and my little studio upstairs.” What I wanted was for us to spend time together; I didn’t care if that meant sitting in awkward silence on the living room couch.

  “I want to go to my room.”

  “Sure,” I said around a lump in my throat. “You must be tired. And you must want to unpack.”

  She pushed her chair back, and it scraped harshly on the floor. I watched her leave the kitchen, suddenly exhausted myself, restraining the desire to reach out for her retreating figure, to beg her to stay there with me for a few minutes more. With some effort, I got up from the table and began to clean.

  Again, that feeling of near desperation I’d experienced in the hotel room earlier returned and threatened to overwhelm me.

  I couldn’t afford to feel defeated so easily; it was way too early in our relationship. It was just that I’d had so much emotional energy invested in this reunion. God knows, I’d imagined it almost as often as I’d imagined getting a call from the police telling me that Gemma was dead. But you never know what the reality of the moment is going to be, no matter how many versions you’ve imagined.

  I heard nothing at all from Gemma’s room. I had a disturbing feeling the room was empty, even though I’d seen her go in and close the door behind her. But there was the back door, the one that led into the room where I keep the washing machine and dryer. . . . Walking as hurriedly but as softly as I could, I went over to that door and put my ear against it, and at that moment I flashed back to how, when Gemma was an infant, I used to listen intently every night for any change in her breathing, for the slightest movement, for a murmur of distress. Not through a closed door, of course. Gemma slept in a crib only a few feet from my bed.

  Was that crying I heard now? The desire to rush in—assuming Gemma hadn’t locked the door from the inside—was enormous, but I managed to conquer it and step away.

  At eleven o’clock I went upstairs to my room, feeling almost too tired to sleep but unable to focus on the P. D. James novel I’d been enjoying.

  I thought of calling David. He’d still be up and I knew he would be eager to know how things had gone, but I didn’t feel ready to share anything about today with anyone. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what words would come out of my mouth if I tried.

  This is a dream come true.

  This is a mistake.

  No. Not that. Never that.

  At long last my daughter was back home with me, the two of us sleeping under the same roof for the first time in seventeen years. Mother and child. I buried my face in my pillow and wept tears of joy.

  Chapter 11

  I lied to Verity earlier at dinner when I said I didn’t like to eat fish. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever had fish. Well, except for shrimp. We were at this chain restaurant once with some guy who worked with my father at the time and the guy’s wife ordered shrimp with beer batter. She let me taste one and it was pretty good, but maybe it was the fried coating I liked. Anyway, Dad doesn’t like fish, so we never have it at home. We never had it at home.

  Why did I lie? Because I don’t want to be happy here. Because I want things to be the way they used to be.

  I didn’t tell her, but the chicken thing she made was really good. And there were roasted red potatoes and green beans. I’m not a big vegetable fan, but the beans had some sliced nuts over them, and they were actually pretty tasty. Way better than the stuff in a can, which is what Dad and I mostly eat. I guess I should say, what we mostly ate. Past tense. Until some other time in the future . . .

  She’s so thin, I guess I expected her not to eat a lot, but she ate as much as I did, and I’m taller and bigger all around than she is. More like Dad. But her hair is so like mine, down to the widow’s peak. It’s kind of creepy to sit across the table from someone you have absolutely no memory of but who everyone says gave birth to you and is the reason for half of you being the way it is. Her eyes, too, are mine.

  I should probably be saying my hair and my eyes are hers, not the other way around. She came first. Then me.

  I wandered around the room for a while—my room—though there isn’t much to explore. There’s a small bookcase with only a few books in it, mostly novels but nothing I’ve ever heard of. I wondered if Verity had cleared it out so I could use the shelves for my stuff. Not that there’s much of it. There’s a small desk and chair. I opened the long shallow top drawer of the desk. It was empty; maybe she’d done that for me too. There’s a dresser with three rows of drawers. I thought about unpacking my bags and putting my stuff away and then didn’t. Somehow that would make this all too real—this place suddenly being my new home.

  My new home and my “new” name. I know Verity would like it if I agreed to be called Gemma, the name I was legally given when I was born. And it still is my name in the eyes of the law, like I care about The Law, the entity that tossed my father in jail and sent me across the freakin’ country to live with a total stranger Dad had always told me was pretty much the devil incarnate. That was his term, by the way, and the first time he used it, he had to explain to me that it meant the devil made flesh, the devil here on Earth. Pretty useful term, actually. I’ve met a whole bunch of devils incarnate in my life.

  To be honest, I never much liked my name—Marni never felt right, like a pair of jeans that are baggy in the butt—but right now the last thing I feel like admitting to this woman calling herself my mother is that I like the name she gave me better than the one Dad gave me. So when she asks if I want to take back the name she gave me, I’ll tell her I have no interest in calling myself Gemma, and if to other people I’m still Gemma, then that’s their business and I simply won’t reply to them. I know it must make her feel weird to call me a name my father gave me, the guy who in her eyes stole me from her before I even really knew who she was—my mother. But I don’t really care about her feeling weird, do I? What matters is that I feel weird, weird and unhappy and resentful and depressed, and I have every right to feel all those things.

  I didn’t bother to open the bed in the couch—Verity had asked me if I wanted help with it, and I said no—I just lay down on it and folded my hands across my stomach. It’s a habit. Sometimes I sleep all night like that. Dad once said I look like an Egyptian mummy when I’m asleep. I know that whenever I was sick, he used to watch me sleep, sitting for hours in a chair in a corner of my room, or on a plastic milk crate when we didn’t have a chair to put in my bedroom. He’s a worrier, my father. He’s one of those protective sorts.

  And I wondered what Dad was doing at that very moment, if he was scared of the future or if he was feeling brave about all the crap that was going to happen. The trial and all, whenever that would be. Maybe he was thinking of me, wondering how I was feeling. Maybe he was asleep. There was a time difference, though; it was two hours earlier in Arizona, but I don’t know if the prison guards enforce a mandatory lights-out for the prisoners and if a prisoner gets punished for using a flashlight under the covers to read. Stupid thought. Why would a prisoner be allowed to have a flashlight he could use to smash in someone’s skull?

  “Dad,” I whispered into the dark, not at all believing he could somehow hear me. “I love you.”

  Chapter 12

  “Do you have any Froot Loops?”

  I restrained a grimace. “Afraid not,” I said. “But I do have Cheerios.”

  Gemma shrugged. I brought the cereal to the table and watched as she dumped three teaspoons of sugar into her bowl. Let me be clear. I’m not anti-sugar, but so far it seems to me that Alan hadn’t done a very good job of teaching our daughter the basics of proper nutrition. That would be up to me now.<
br />
  I’m nervous about how Gemma’s going to react to her local celebrity. The community has been invested in the kidnapping since the very day it had taken place. Right from the start people, strangers and acquaintances, had brought me food, like they would bring food to a grieving widow, all of it meant to comfort and sustain the body if not also the spirit. Casseroles and breads still warm from the oven, and coffee cakes. People had voluntarily nailed signs to posts and distributed them throughout Yorktide and as far away as The Berwicks, signs asking: HAVE YOU SEEN BABY GEMMA? Local businesses had offered rewards for any information as to her whereabouts. One wealthy couple, since deceased, offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward for Gemma’s return.

  Now that she was finally back here with me, with us, that caring community had to be acknowledged, if also kept at bay. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I feel it’s best to meet it head on, not to keep Gemma virtually hidden away. That might only fuel people’s curiosity and, worse, it would make Gemma feel like a prisoner. Annie, too, thinks that immersion into the community might be the best way to proceed.

  “I took today off work so I could show you around a bit,” I said. “Yorktide has its charms. And we can drive into Ogunquit, too, maybe have lunch by the water.”

  “You’re a teacher,” she said bluntly. “I thought teachers have the summer off.”

  “I need the money,” I said frankly. “My salary isn’t huge, so I teach concentrated summer courses at the college. Some classes count toward a student’s degree. Others are open to the general public, anyone who wants to make some art.”

  “You sell the stuff you make? Statues?”

  “Sculptures, yes. If I’m lucky. But you can’t count on being lucky.”