Seashell Season

by Holly Chamberlin

  I finally got to sleep, and when I came down to the kitchen this morning, Gemma was already there. She had started the coffee. After breakfast, she asked if she could use my laptop for a while. I told her she could, and she took it to her room. She’s been there ever since.

  A little while ago I saw Mrs. Pascoe peering at our house through the curtain in her kitchen window. I suppose I should introduce her to Gemma. After all, we are neighbors, and she is a nice enough woman. But like Annie said, one step at a time.

  Chapter 29

  I took Gemma to my studio at the college today. My work is so integral a part of me, of who I am in the world, that of course I hoped my daughter would appreciate it, at least a little bit. At least, that she would appreciate the fact that the work means so much to me.

  I was disappointed.

  She looked around the studio, with no obvious sign of interest.

  “This is where I make my sculptures,” I told her. “It’s also where I teach. Over here is where my various modeling tools are stored, calipers and smoothing ribs and clay shapers. Casting materials are stored in the next cabinet to the left. Those are armature stands in the corner, and that’s my trusty torch wheeler, not something you want to mess around with, given the propane in that tank.”

  There was no reply to any of this.

  “These days,” I went on, “I’m working mostly in wood, but I haven’t given up clay or bronze.” I pointed out a poster with the words—well, a few of them—of Sir Francis Bacon. “This is one of the truest things I know,” I told her. I read the words aloud: “ ‘There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.’ ”

  Gemma still didn’t comment. I wondered if she’d ever heard of Sir Francis Bacon.

  I continued the tour of the studio, and while Gemma dutifully followed me, I had no idea if she was paying attention to what I was saying and to the things I was pointing out, like the new supply of walnut and mahogany that had arrived only the week before and the carefully laid-out selection of gouges and mallets I kept a close eye on, as I do all my tools. When the tour was finished, I turned to her and said, “Well? What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have much use for art,” she said. “Any use, I guess. I mean, what good is it? What does it do for anyone?”

  It was such a ridiculously ignorant question, I wondered for a moment if she was joking. And then I realized she was quite serious. “That’s a pretty big question,” I said, hiding my shock, “with a lot of very big answers.”

  “Like?” she challenged.

  “Like art brings beauty into our lives, for one. For another, art can challenge us to think differently about all sorts of things. It can change our lazy assumptions into thoughtful opinions. It can make us aware of the world around us, of different cultures.”

  Gemma yawned. “Whatever.”

  I hid my disappointment as best I could—and, it must be admitted, my annoyance; had Alan never scolded her for being rude?—and we left the studio not long after that.

  On the way home, we stopped at the bakery in town for a loaf of whole wheat bread. I’m pretty sure Gemma’s never had whole wheat bread in her life. Maybe that’s an unfair assumption to make, that Alan never fed her anything healthier than McDonald’s fries and squishy chemically compacted white bread.

  When we came back out to the sidewalk, bread in tow, I spotted a familiar face. “See that woman over at the gas station across the street?” I said to Gemma. “The one wearing the orange T-shirt?”

  “Yeah. What about her?”

  “That’s Amanda Jones. She would have been your third-grade teacher.”

  “But she wasn’t,” Gemma snapped. “Why do you always go on about what would have been? It’s seriously annoying.”

  Was it? Had I been going on? How could I explain to my daughter that in some ways what would have been—what should have been—was more important to me than what really had happened? All the special moments that were stolen from me: Gemma’s first missing tooth; her first day of school; her graduation from grammar school. I was even deprived of the opportunity to care for her when she was sick with a cold or with chicken pox. An act as simple but as meaningful as trimming my little girl’s hair had been denied me. I needed to think about what would have been—even if it drove me a little mad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Gemma shrugged. “Whatever.”

  I guess I’m just going to have to get used to the shrugs and the whatevers. “So,” I asked, when we’d gotten back into the car. “What was the name of your third-grade teacher? The one who really was, not the one who might have been.”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “No, wait, I do. That was the time we moved in the middle of the school year. One of the times. We ended up in a different county or something, so I had to transfer. I don’t remember the name of the first teacher I had, but the second one was Ms. Butler. We called her Ms. Butt. She had a huge ass.”

  I was angry. If I had raised Gemma, you can be sure she would not have been making fun of a teacher, especially at such a young age, and using such crude language. But I said nothing. How could I? Life with my daughter reminds me of the proverbial walking on eggshells. No matter how carefully you tread, shells are going to break and your feet are going to get cut. Better to suffer in silence and keep the criticisms to yourself, especially when you suspect the criticisms will only invite anger.

  Chapter 30

  Nature versus nurture. Which is the more important and influential in the end? It’s an unanswerable question, in my opinion. Well, in everyone’s opinion, I guess.

  But it’s a question that’s been obsessing me ever since I took Gemma to visit my studio this morning. Ever since she’s been back home with me, really. Face it. Except for those first weeks of Gemma’s life, Alan has been the one in charge of the nurturing part. He’s been the one in charge of the social training, the daily instruction, the forming of habits, and the gathering of opinions.

  To a large extent, Gemma is Alan’s product, just as all children are to a large extent the product of their parents’ style of upbringing.

  But I so want to find connections between Gemma and me! And I so want to find the Gemma who isn’t tainted by Alan’s peculiarities, even if that Gemma has, in the end, little to do with her mother.

  What I don’t want is for her to see my desperation to relate, to connect. I don’t want her to despise me.

  Gemma likes Gala apples. I don’t know if she realized that the apples I brought home from the farmers’ market the other day were Gala, but I watched as she devoured one after another of them (glad she was eating fruit and not candy) and saw that that was one small thing we have in common. A liking for Gala apples.

  Then again, Gemma has “no use for art.” And to a great extent, art—the making of it and the appreciation of it—is what defines me.

  But there are the physical similarities that unite us, undeniable to anyone who really looks at us. The thick dark hair with the widow’s peak. The large dark eyes. And Annie’s pointed out that we cross our legs the same way. I never gave any thought to anyone crossing her legs in a way that is distinctive, but Annie swears she saw what she saw. Strangers see the resemblance too. The other day a clerk in the shoe department of Macy’s, in the mall in South Portland (Gemma badly needed new footwear, and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s more practical in the end to invest in a decent brand up front), asked, “What size sandal does your daughter wear?” He might have recognized us from the papers, but somehow I don’t think that was what was going on, because his affect was polite but impersonal. Then, when we stopped into the Apple store, also in the mall, a place I’d been only once before and that was a few years back, one of the employees, someone I’d certainly never met before, said, “We’re a bit backed up at the moment, but someone will be with you and your daughter shortly.” Again, I didn’t get the feeling we were being recognized as local celebrities. But who knows, maybe we
were.

  I don’t know how Gemma feels about these incidents—well, yes, I do; she hates them; the eye rolling is one indication—but I love them, I hold them in my mind like one holds a precious gem in the palm of one’s hand (not that I’ve ever held a precious gem), carefully, almost reverently. Our bodies and our faces, if nothing else, proclaim us family.

  Does my daughter really have no sense of beauty? Has Alan never taken her to a museum or to a gallery or even to a run-of-the-mill arts and crafts fair? Or is this attitude of supreme indifference largely an act? (It hadn’t seemed like an act in my studio, that’s for sure.) It’s an attitude Gemma displays to almost everything I introduce to her, to almost everything I offer her. The shrug. The whatever.

  I know there are all sorts of reasons, and good ones at that, why we haven’t really begun to bond. But still, it hurts.

  It hurts a lot.

  Chapter 31

  We were in town this morning. Verity had to coax me to come along—I think she’s worried I’m going to do something stupid if I stay home alone, like accidentally set the house on fire or purposely set myself on fire—and by the time I agreed to come along, I was seriously annoyed with her. But at least she stopped bugging me.

  We had just come out of the convenience store when this man about Dad’s age coming into the store stopped right in front of us, and I swear, the look on his face made me think, Oh crap, this guy is going to faint.

  Verity must have had the same thought, because she took the guy’s arm and gently moved us all out of the doorway.

  “Gemma,” she said quietly. “This is Bill Morrison. He was one of the lead detectives on your—on the abduction case.”

  The man, who looked a little bit more alive now, put out his hand. I don’t like touching people a lot, but I took it. I swear I felt it tremble, though it was a big, strong-looking hand.

  “Retired now,” he said. “I can’t tell you how good it is to meet you. Of course I’d heard you’d come back to us. And I have to admit, I had to restrain the urge to go running over to your mother’s house to be sure it was real. To be sure you were real.”

  I felt kind of embarrassed and awkward. Being the center of attention isn’t for me, but there was something really sincere about this guy so I smiled a bit and said, “Thanks.” And then, suddenly, he started to cry. Not loud bawling, but real tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “It’s just that I’ve been carrying around this awful guilt all these years about not finding you. My own daughter was just about a year old at the time of the kidnapping. I guess you could say I took the case very personally.”

  I really was tongue-tied now. I tried to smile at him again, and I hope I did smile and not grimace by accident. Verity, I noticed then, was also crying. Crying was the last thing I felt like doing. I guess by then I was feeling kind of numb and confused.

  The guy went off then, after shaking Verity’s hand and wishing us well.

  “He was so good to me,” she said as we watched him go into the convenience store. “They all were, after I was cleared of suspicion.”

  That took me by surprise. “The police suspected you? But why? You weren’t the one who disappeared. Dad was.”

  Verity sighed. “It was thought I might have killed you, and Alan. I might have conspired with Alan to take you and then plan to join you both later on. Though why I should do such a thing was always a mystery to me. The point is, the police are thorough. As they should be.”

  “Not thorough enough that they found us,” I said, and then I wished I hadn’t.

  “No. Not thorough enough.”

  On the drive home I thought about how Cathy Strawberry has it so easy. Two parents right there. No complications like detectives and manhunts and a father in jail. And a dual identity. And a mother who was a suspect in a mysterious disappearance.

  Here’s something. Meeting that guy, the former detective, makes it all so real. I mean, sure, it’s a fact that my father ran off with me—I’d have to be stupid to deny that when he himself admits it—but what I mean is, meeting the detective makes what happened to Verity much more real to me.

  I snuck a look at her profile. She frowns a bit when she’s driving. I guess she’s concentrating. (I remembered how she told me she’d almost caused a bad accident that time because she wasn’t focused on the road but on thoughts about my website.) Anyway, I can’t help but think that if I allow myself to actually like Verity, I’ll be being disloyal to Dad. I mean, he might be flawed, but he’s still the guy who made me pancakes every Saturday morning and put a Band-Aid on my knee when I fell off my bike (the times when I had one). Actually, now that I think about it, Dad’s kind of squeamish, so it was usually me who put the Band-Aid on while Dad cringed and said things like, “Please, please be all right”—but at least he cared. And he was the one who was there, and that should matter for something.

  Then again, he was the one who was there because he abducted me from Verity. See? He didn’t give her a choice. Too freakin’ complicated.

  I wonder if Dad ever realized Verity would be under suspicion of foul play. He must have. Maybe he didn’t care. Well, of course he didn’t care. He hated her. To hate somebody so much that you would . . .

  You know what? I’m sick of thinking about it.

  Chapter 32

  Alan’s mother called me this morning, as is her habit. Once a week, usually on a Tuesday, she calls me on my landline. If I’m not there to take the call, she leaves a message on voice mail, and I call her back that same day. It’s our little routine.

  “When can I meet her?” Marion asked after the preliminaries. “You will let me meet her?”

  The need in her voice was touching. Once, I might have found it pathetic. But that was when I was furious with Marion for deceiving me about Alan’s past. Now all I feel for her is sympathy.

  “Of course you’ll meet her,” I said. “She’s your granddaughter. How about you come over this Thursday afternoon, around three?”

  Marion breathed what must have been a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  After the call, I had a momentary twinge of misgiving. Things aren’t exactly going swimmingly with Gemma and me. Maybe I should have postponed the meeting with her grandmother, given Gemma more time to adjust to her new life. Then again, how could meeting Marion cause any more damage than meeting the Strawbridges or Bill Morrison or the guy behind the counter at the convenience store? As long as Marion doesn’t start going on about how wonderful Alan was—like she’d done with me in the old days, before things got so bad between her son and me. A doting mother’s glossy view of her less than glossy son.

  And I certainly am not going to tell Gemma that her grandmother kept her son’s bad behavior and criminal past a secret from me. I doubt Marion would ever reveal such a thing either. She was ashamed of what she did to me, I know that, keeping me in ignorance while Alan became increasingly controlling and even abusive.

  When I learned soon after the abduction that Marion had withheld Alan’s past from me, all the while encouraging our relationship and pretending to be my friend, I lost it. I opened my mouth and screamed at Marion. I told her I never wanted to see her again. I told her to go to hell. And then I stormed off. Really, thinking back on that scene now, I’m mortified I behaved so badly. But at the time it seemed justified.

  She tried to contact me after that awful encounter, even going so far as to wait for me outside work (shades of Alan’s stalking days?), but I’m ashamed to say I ignored her pleas for reconciliation. Once I even yanked my arm out of her grasp when she grabbed ahold of me, tears streaming down her face.

  It took a few years before I could bring myself to reach out again to her. And it wasn’t because Yorktide is a small town and avoiding her was difficult, almost a chore, and it wasn’t because in the end, getting along with a person is often a lot easier than not getting along. It was because I’d come to realize that in som
e ways Marion was also one of Alan’s victims. I know I should have been able to see that from the start, but I hadn’t been able to. Or maybe I’d been unwilling to embrace her as a fellow victim. But better late than never, right?

  Is that always true? Will it prove to be better for Gemma that she was reunited with me, her mother? Or will it prove that meeting me, especially in these circumstances, is the worst thing that could have happened to her?

  I don’t know.

  Chapter 33

  “There’s someone else who wants to meet you.”

  Great, I thought. Some gawking local yokel wants to see The Little Kidnapped Girl up close and personal. The detective guy, nice as he was, had already freaked me out. But I said nothing. It was bad enough, being stared at whenever Verity and I were in the grocery store or stopped at the gas station or even going through a tollbooth. I’m not kidding. Yesterday afternoon, when Verity couldn’t find her E-ZPass thingy and we had to stop to pay the toll in cash somewhere in Kennebunk, I think, the lady in the booth practically fell out of it in her excitement at recognizing us. “You’re the woman,” she cried, pointing a long bony finger at us. “And you’re the girl!” Verity didn’t answer the woman and sped out of the booth and though she said nothing about the incident, I could see by how tight her hands were on the steering wheel that she was upset.

  “It’s your grandmother,” Verity went on, when I didn’t reply. “Your father’s mother. Remember, I told you her name is Marion.”

  The woman I was told had been dead for twenty years. Like my mother was dead. I shrugged. “Whatever.”