Seashell Season

by Holly Chamberlin

“She died when I was a little younger than you are now. She had pancreatic cancer.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Gemma looked down at the unopened envelope.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It was pretty awful, actually. We were very close.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Elizabeth. Everyone called her Betty.”

  “Is that why my middle name is Elizabeth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you close to your father?”

  “No.” The word came out a little too harshly. “We fell out over something very important to me.”

  “But he keeps in touch,” Gemma said now, looking up at me. “I mean, he’s got your address.”

  “He sends the occasional card.”

  Gemma asked no more questions. She tore open the envelope and then opened the card. There was a rather amateur picture of a daisy on the outside. I wondered for a moment if Hallmark made a card to celebrate the safe return of a victim of an abduction, and almost laughed at the absurdity.

  “Twenty bucks,” Gemma said, extracting a bill.

  “What does he say?”

  “ ‘Dear Gemma. We are very glad you are home safe and sound. Love, Grandpa and Valerie.’ ”

  Without comment, Gemma stuffed the money into the pocket of her jeans, put the card on the kitchen counter, and left the room.

  I guess I should tell you I’m an only child, whether by chance or design I don’t know, and now that Mom’s gone, I never will. I was very close to her, as I’d told Gemma. My mother was a warm and loving person, ready with her affection, but in her efforts to keep me safe and happy, she rather sheltered me. I was shy by nature as a kid, and my mother’s fussing about me only served to compound my social awkwardness.

  My parents’ marriage was perfectly functional, but as far as I could tell, not a passionate one. But what does a kid know? Tom Peterson was a good husband and father in terms of not straying and of providing food and shelter for his family. Betty Peterson cooked, cleaned, and generally made life pleasant for her husband.

  It was only when I hit adolescence that my passion for art really emerged, and the desire to paint and sculpt and to show my work to others began to war with my shy and retiring temperament. Increasingly, I felt I had to know if I was any good or if I was deluding myself. Interestingly, it was my overprotective mother who really encouraged the pursuit of my artistic interests. One day when I was about fifteen, not long before the cancer killed her, my mother sat me down and said—I’ll never forget her exact words—“I never followed my dreams. To be honest, I can’t even remember what they once were. I want you to follow your dreams, Verity. I don’t want you to live a disappointed life.”

  The unspoken part of that message being that she, Betty Peterson, had led a disappointed life.

  My mother’s death really shook me, but I remembered her words, and by the time I was in college, I was taking her advice about following my dreams by enrolling in classes in drawing and sculpting and metalworking, showing in student exhibitions, staying up until all hours to perfect a piece, and working odd jobs so I could buy materials without having to ask my father for money. He paid perfunctory attention to what he called my “hobby,” so what support I found was from my teachers and fellow students. It would have been nice to have my father’s active and enthusiastic encouragement. But I never really expected it, so I never really missed it. Or, I thought I didn’t.

  When I met Alan and we started to date—my first serious relationship—it was pretty obvious that my father considered Alan a godsend. After my mother’s death and Dad’s rapid remarriage to a woman with whom I could never bond because she was the opposite of my mother in every way I could see, he had little interest in being a hands-on emotionally supportive presence in my life. When Alan came on the scene, with his meticulous care of and concern for me, with his professed love, my father breathed a sigh of relief. I suppose that I did too.

  I never told my father about the bad aspects of my relationship with Alan. There would have been no point. So when four years or so later Alan made off with my baby, my father was at a total loss as to how to respond to my grief. I would have appreciated a show of outrage, anything really other than what he said to me a few weeks after the abduction. “Are you sure you didn’t do something to make him angry enough to run off?”

  Then I was the one feeling the outrage. “You’re saying it’s my fault Alan stole my child, is that it?” I remember asking, my voice shrill.

  “No, no, of course not,” he protested. “It’s just that—”

  I didn’t let him finish his sentence but demanded he leave the tiny apartment in which Alan and I had once lived together. And I haven’t seen my father since.

  Not that he didn’t try to see me. For a while he would leave messages on my answering machine, and two or three times he slipped a card under my door, asking if we could meet for coffee, asking if I needed anything, even asking me once to come home. I never called him back, and I tore up the cards. Whenever I saw him in the grocery store or coming out of the post office, I would turn the other way. If he saw me those times, he didn’t pursue me, and that also made me angry. I didn’t want my father in my life, not after what he had said to me about it being my fault that Alan had stolen my daughter. But I did want my father in my life. Of course I did. I wanted the man who had taken me for ice cream the last day of every school year, the man who had mended my favorite doll when her plastic arm had fallen off, the man who had made me laugh until my sides hurt with his imitation of Daffy Duck.

  But I just couldn’t let him come back to me. I couldn’t.

  Then my father and his wife moved to Florida. Christmas and birthday cards continued to find their way to Maine, but any other attempts to get through to me trailed off over the years. Really, you couldn’t blame the man for giving up; I had worn him down with a stubbornness I couldn’t seem to control. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had cut ties altogether.

  And yet here he was, sending a welcome home card to my daughter. His granddaughter.

  Chapter 22

  I’m not a big fan of Verity (that’s an understatement), but it’s too bad her mom died. And cancer sucks. But is losing a mother to cancer worse than losing a mother to—to what? To a lifetime of lies? To basically never having a mother in the first place? I mean, to having one but not knowing you have one?

  Shit. It’s all so messed up.

  You should know that the child protection people had petitioned the court to forbid contact between my dad and me, but because the court (does that mean a judge and a jury or just a judge?) determined that Dad hadn’t been an abusive father—I mean, would an abusive father have insisted that his five-year-old kid wear not only a raincoat but rain boots and a rain hat and carry an umbrella for even the slightest bit of rain?—we were allowed to talk.

  We were given a schedule. Once a week Dad can call me at an appointed time and for a limited amount of time. Our calls are going to be monitored by the people at the prison. That annoys me—I mean, do The Authorities really think we would be dumb enough to plan a breakout or something over the phone?

  I have to admit, I was pretty nervous, waiting for the first call earlier today. I mean, I hadn’t spoken to Dad since that disastrous day at the prison. At a minute after eleven the phone rang, and I snatched the receiver of the phone extension in my room.

  “Dad?”

  “Marni. I’m glad you’re there.”

  The sound of his voice, so familiar, almost made me burst out crying. All the anger I’d felt toward him for what he did to us suddenly disappeared. “Of course I’m here, Dad,” I said when I’d gotten control of my emotions. I didn’t want to waste one minute of this call blubbering. “I wouldn’t miss your call.”

  “How is it there?” he asked. His voice sounded anxious. I know he’s concerned about me. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me.” He has, I thought, enough to worr
y about already, like staying away from guys with knives hidden in their sleeves. Do prison uniforms ever have long sleeves? I wonder. Maybe they don’t to prevent stuff like people hiding knives.

  “What’s she saying about me?” he asked then.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing much.” It was true. I’d expected Verity to start slinging abuse the minute she met me, but so far, anything she’s said about Dad has been fairly neutral. Of course, she might be playing a game with me, lulling me into trusting her and then wham, she’ll rip Dad a new one.

  “Is she there? Is she listening in?”

  “No, Dad. I’m in my room, and she’s out back, doing something with her garden.”

  “Good.” He actually breathed a sigh of relief. “How was the flight? Were you scared?”

  I laughed. Good old Dad. “No,” I said, “it was fine. I don’t see why people are afraid of flying.” I guess I didn’t mention that the trip to Maine was the first time I’d been on an airplane. Dad and I had never had the money for real vacations. And Dad doesn’t trust any vehicle that goes over fifty miles an hour, so trains were out too.

  “Is it hot there?” he asked.

  “Not as hot as back home.” Again, I almost started crying.

  I know we talked some more, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what we said. Not much of anything, I guess, knowing that someone was listening to us. But I guess Dad forfeited his right to privacy when he did what he did. Forfeited my right to privacy too.

  Finally he said: “I have to go now. The guard’s here. . . .”

  Suddenly I felt all panicky, like this was the last time I would ever hear my father’s voice. “Dad?”

  “Yes, Marni?”

  “Be careful, okay?” What I didn’t say was, Don’t piss people off the way you sometimes do. My father can be difficult to get along with, though every time he gets into a stupid argument with someone and gets fired from a job or thrown out of a store because of it, he blames the other person.

  “I will,” he said. “Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  And that was that.

  I refused to cry. I wanted to, but I refused. I didn’t want her coming in from the garden and hearing me through the flimsy doors of my bedroom. I didn’t want her to witness anything real about Dad and me.

  But I have one question I’d like to ask someone, anyone. How can you be furious with someone for having done something outrageously stupid and yet, at the same time, love him with your whole heart?

  Chapter 23

  The entire time Gemma was on the phone with her father, I felt sick to my stomach. God knows what I actually did to the poor plants, no doubt over or under watered them. I couldn’t think about anything other than what they were saying to each other, if Alan was further poisoning Gemma’s mind with false tales of my sins, if she was telling her father I was treating her badly. Would such rumors get back to Soledad Valdes? Would she and her colleagues investigate and, in spite of evidence to the contrary, take Gemma from me?

  When I finally went inside after what I knew to be the allotted amount of time for Alan’s call, Gemma was leaning against the kitchen sink, drinking a glass of Pepsi. (In a moment of weakness I had bought her a bottle. One battle at a time.)

  “Are you okay?” I asked. I did my best not to stare at her as if for clues of what had transpired between her and Alan.

  Gemma nodded.

  “If you want to tell me anything, I’ll just listen. I mean, I won’t judge or comment; I’ll just listen.”

  Gemma shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  I went to the fridge and took out a carton of grapefruit juice.

  “Where are Dad’s things?” Gemma asked suddenly.

  I turned back to her. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the stuff he left behind.”

  It was not a question I had expected. “That was a long time ago.”

  “I know,” Gemma said in a tone that suggested I was an idiot. “But where are they?”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing left,” I said, carefully pouring a glass of juice with a hand that was slightly trembling. It wasn’t a lie. I had destroyed all vestiges of Alan, cutting him out of the pictures taken in the hospital at Gemma’s birth, throwing out what clothes he’d left behind, tearing up and then burning the notes he had written to me in the early, good days of our relationship.

  “How could you not have kept even one thing?” she demanded.

  I have to walk carefully, I thought. Gemma loves her father, and I really don’t believe there’s any good to be had by going out of my way to reveal to her the depth of my anger with Alan.

  “It was too painful,” I said evasively.

  “You were going to be married to the man. You couldn’t have hated him all that much.”

  “We had broken up not long after you were born,” I explained. “But you’re right. I didn’t hate him before he took you.” But after . . .

  “But you made him take me. He told me all about you.”

  He also told you I was dead. “I’m sure he did,” I said evenly. “And I’m also sure that most of what he said was a lie.”

  “Why should he lie?” Gemma was practically shouting now.

  “If he told you the truth, that I was a good person and a good mother, what excuse would he have had for taking you?”

  Gemma slammed her empty glass on the counter. “You’re trying to trick me,” she said angrily. “I’m not stupid, you know!”

  “I know you’re not stupid,” I said, my heart breaking for my daughter. “And I know the truth, as it comes out, is going to be hard to hear.”

  The whole truth, I thought, even revealed slowly, might be too much for anyone to hear, let alone my and Alan’s daughter. Maybe she never would learn it all, every last detail. There are some things I don’t think she needs to know. Anyway, whatever I tell Gemma now might have been—or might soon be—contradicted by Alan, and at this moment in time she’s far more likely to believe his version of the truth than mine.

  “Do you want some lunch?” I asked my glowering daughter.

  Without answering, she stormed out of the kitchen, and a moment later I heard both doors to her room slam shut.

  Chapter 24

  I have only one picture of my father—of us. Dad doesn’t like his picture taken. I sometimes wondered if he was like the members of that tribe in a jungle somewhere—or is it the North Pole—who believe that a camera image steals your soul or something. I never asked him. (And now I know the truth about why he didn’t want his image getting around.)

  Anyway, he didn’t even know this picture was being taken. We were hanging out in the teeny yard behind the last place we were renting. One of his temporary buddies from work (all his buddies were temporary) had come by with this huge bag of packaged chicken parts for us. He didn’t say where he’d gotten them, but the truth was clear in the way he and Dad laughed and slapped each other’s hands and clinked their beer bottles. The guy—his name was Stan—had stolen the chicken and who knows what else, and was playing Mr. Generosity by giving out packages to his friends. He brought his son along with him, a quiet, nervous kind of guy around my age, I guess, or maybe a bit older. He didn’t go to my school, I know that much. He had a major camera slung around his neck and went around taking pictures of the cacti in the yard. At one point he took a candid picture of Dad and me, each taking a huge bite of a chicken leg (I forgot to say that Dad grilled the chicken immediately), and then another one of us sitting side by side in folding chairs and laughing. I didn’t know he had taken the pictures and neither did Dad, because he would have been mad and demanded the kid delete them. Anyway, a few days later, when I got home from school, here was this guy—sorry, his name was Tim—waiting for me with an envelope inside of which were prints of the photos of me and my father. I remember saying thanks but then also, “What do you want for them?” and expecting the worst.

  But Tim only blushed—can
you believe it?—and said he wanted nothing, just for me to have them, and then he went off. I felt kind of bad for having suspected him of being a slime, but better safe than sorry. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the picture of Dad and me eating the stolen chicken. It must have gotten lost somehow when I was taken from the house after Dad’s arrest. But the other one I have. I kept this one, the photo of us laughing, inside a folder filled with random stuff I’d saved over the years, like an article about the dinosaur bones some scientists had recently found in New Mexico, and old birthday cards from Dad. I knew he never went through the folder.

  I threw the folder out before I left Arizona, all except the picture. Now it lives tucked into the frame of the mirror over the desk in my room.

  Looking at it then, after Dad’s phone call and the fight with Verity, I felt insanely confused.

  Verity has to be at fault somehow; she has to have done something to drive Dad away, even if she wasn’t a violent crack addict like Dad said she was.

  She said she and Dad had broken up not long after I was born. What she meant was that she left him, and that was what must have made him so depressed that he . . . But wait. He told me she’d tried to hurt me, and that’s what had made him take me away. Is it all true or only part of it or none of it?

  Just this morning, before I got out of bed (the mattress is more comfortable than the couch cushions) it occurred to me that maybe I’m the one to blame for the mess that is my family. Maybe I’m the one to blame for my parents splitting up, which as far as I can tell—assuming Verity really wasn’t ever a violent, abusive drug addict—led to my father’s running off with me. Hang on, it might make sense. I mean, people have babies for all sorts of stupid reasons, right? So maybe Verity and Alan were trying to save their relationship by having a baby, but then when I came along they—she? he?—realized things were still screwed up and that my being there actually made things worse and . . .

  And what? How does that explain Dad’s running off with me?

  It doesn’t. Nothing explains it.