Harbor Lights

by Theodore Weesner

  He continued to pause and, staring once more over the horizon, still did not push the button that in its engaging of the wheel would bring line and seawater spinning and, in a moment, the first trap breaking the surface and draining in a rush. How could any wife do to a husband what she had done to him? Why had he settled into living with her infidelity when he could have made another life for himself?

  Rested, suppressing his coughing with his fist, Warren managed for the moment to glimpse the bounty of the sea, and with the anticipation which had thrilled him from the first time, as a seven-year-old, he hoisted a trap to the light of day. The thrill of fishing—you never knew what a trap might contain: A five-pounder the size of a first baseman’s glove? A three-foot sand shark thrashing within the cage? Five or six three-pounders in one trap, as in his father’s stories? An albino to deliver to the fish biologists upstream at the university’s Great Bay Estuarine Lab—or maybe a four-inch-thick flounder to take home and slice into filets for dinner and the freezer? The unknown sea. He had pulled traps all his life, and here in the bottom of the ninth, its eternal appeal had only grown deeper and more mysterious.

  The Lady Bee kept putting up bubbles in neutral, and, line in hand, holding his own against the pull between boat and water, Warren proceeded to the first trap. The Lady Bee’s hauler was positioned at the widest part of the boat’s pumpkin seed shape and, taking in a breath, he pressed the button that started rope and salt water spinning. Subconsciously measuring time, he watched for the wire mesh to break through, ready to hit the clutch and bring the trap to rest on the railing.

  The small climax occurred in a rush of water, and there followed the old disappointment of scanning the contents: some crabs and three undersized juveniles, a seeder loaded with eggs, maybe one keeper. His thought at the moment was that all he had ever wanted was to have her as his wife and to be a good husband, and that his inability to do so was a splinter in his heart he was trying yet to accommodate. Now this stupid cancer, sending tentacles into his lungs and throat. If there was a God in heaven—as he had been taught to believe—what kind of justice was this for a man already cheated by life for thirty years?

  Exhaling small breaths, Warren began processing the catch, tossing back crabs and juveniles. Lifting the seeder by her carapace—confirming that her tail was notched, probably by him—he settled her to the surface on her back that she might cascade into the deep and not lose eggs by being thrown. Returning seeders was the law of lobstering, that fishing might proceed indefinitely. Warren knew all about nurturing the sea and about life being unfair, and this latest blow to his well-being kept coming up anew. Where to from here? How could he get through to her with this added clock ticking in his ear?

  Beatrice

  At home on Kittery Point she was getting ready for work. A woman of independent means, she ran her own store, and her morning routine was one of charging herself like a battery for the day. She liked kidding with herself throughout the process, but had her routine down and meant to leave the house looking good and feeling right. Each day was a minor struggle, however insignificant the obstacles might appear to others to be. Being a woman was obstacle number one, Beatrice thought, and maybe one through ten. Did men have any idea of the games women had to play?

  Leaning to her bedroom mirror, Beatrice upflapped her chin with her fingers, all for naught, she imagined. She slapped her modest thighs and, over her shoulder, tried for a view of a butt some might say was pretty cute for a fifty-five-year-old, but which seemed to her to be on an eternal mission to smother any seat with which it came into contact. Staying pretty and a little sexy was a full-time job in itself, and stepping from the mirror for a more detached view, she said to herself, Come on, you’re not so bad. Just be vigilant. Think of the blubber and wrinkles that overwhelm so many. No sweets, sauces, rationalizations. Think how your chin will sag if you let them have their way! Be vigilant! Savor vegetables! Savor sweat! Thus Beatrice’s version of a morning pep talk—motivating herself to be in charge of her self and the day.

  Extracting a silk kerchief from her scarf drawer, she stuck it in the breast pocket of a camel’s hair blazer she had placed on her wooden dressing tree. The weightless kerchief added a flair she wanted—autumn leaves on a field of beige—and the walnut dressing tree was an English import she used each morning as a prop in preparing her schedule. Skirt, blouse, shoes. Appointments and calls. Revisions were easy: brighter shoes, lighter blouse, wider belt. Something a little French, or, if sun and season were right—as they appeared to be today—a touch of Vermont with its colors peaking. A steady smile to offset her sinking old face—if only the steady smile did not begin to hurt after two minutes.

  The kerchief helped, and her spirits were getting on track. Just before daybreak she had suffered another guilt dream, but now she felt high-spirited, a sensation that had been surfacing often lately. Was it dues paid, or a product of growing older? She felt young, in any case, and not clueless but the best kind of young: aware. She had only to remain vigilant in diet and outlook, in taking care of business. Keep going forward, she told herself. Don’t let the past drag you down like barnacles on a boat.

  Sometimes Beatrice made her wardrobe selections the night before and positioned an outfit and shoes on the way to bed—one of the acts her daughter, Marian, called her “Martha Stewart gene.” Then, in the morning, sipping coffee and making up, as she was doing now, she considered the outfit and once more previewed her day’s agenda. (Scandia rep at three, Windows tutorial at four, but mainly, at ten this morning, a coffee “talk” at a local business college that—let’s face it—had dominated her thoughts all week. Then lunch as usual with Virgil, and, finally, ad copy dropped off at the Herald before five. A coming and going day. An okay day, once she got through giving that talk, the thought of which kept making her seem to float with stage fright.)

  Red shoes? She imagined the business school girls being fun and wanted her outfit to convey a mix of quality and pizzazz, independence and femininity—something to express the person she had long been struggling to be. If she could have them thinking “that’s how I want to be when I’m her age,” anything else they got from her would be gravy.

  Studying a rack of shoes, she was wondering if Marian, who was now twenty-seven, would gain similar fulfillment in her life or if she would be handicapped for having grown up approximately happy? Beatrice worried at times that Marian had had things too easy and might prove short in grit over the long haul. What good was a legacy if your kid flopped at forty and had forty years yet to go? Early disappointment could prove ultimately creative; it was something she had used like fuel to drive herself, while Marian, an only child, had grown up more prosperous than most and had escaped, really, being inhibited by her father’s old-fashioned and possessive manner.

  Beatrice thought again that she could write a book about ultimate creativity. Wouldn’t that be something? The secret was that while everything had a price, the payments could be turned into fuel; the method lay in converting burdens and never forgetting where the power was coming from. Wouldn’t writing a book be something? That business school wouldn’t be inviting her for a coffee klatch; they’d be asking her to be a professor!

  Oh, you’re the ticket all right, she told herself, now get it moving.

  The ringing phone stabbed Beatrice’s train of thought like an omen in an old movie. Just as she was leaving, the phone rang once and stopped; its sound reminded her how quiet it was in the house, and though she dismissed the ringing as a misdialing, it threw her off for a moment. The sound raised in her the unpleasant sensation of having dreamt of Warren. Her dreams of him followed a pattern: bizarre narratives would raise guilt to a near-breaking pitch (that morning they had been in an open-air kitchen on a dock surrounded by high water, gulls, white yachts) only to have the sensation outdone by a greater horror of resubmitting to his authority, as in their first years of marriage. She awakened to a hammering heart, and here, being stabbed by the phone on leaving the
house, her heart was pounding again. Shake it off, she thought. Dreams are for venting, not for altering behavior.

  Trying to envision her business card (imagining confiding to the business school girls how much she loved the modest little token of self-worth), Beatrice had to jam her brakes when a dirty blue Toyota stopped short before her. There—as offensive as Warren in her dream—was the filthy car throughout the light cycle, and that was the impulse for her turning left, toward Jiffy Car Wash (she had time) rather than right to the Kittery Mall and her store.

  Another thought was on her mind: the college girls would see her pull in and park and would be impressed by her sparkling red LeBaron. That, and a prevailing thought: she needed to add her daughter’s name to her new batch of business cards, just as she wanted Marian to add her name to her own. It’s good PR, she’d explain to Marian when she came in. A mother and daughter in business together was something people would like. A small thing, but one of those small things that added up. Wouldn’t she like it if she were a potential customer? Say you’re undecided between a chain outlet like Pier I and a shop co-owned by a mother and daughter—where would you go? She could tell her where she’d go, and it sure wouldn’t be to some franchise stamped out with a cookie cutter! Beatrice anticipated getting a chortle from Virgil if she dropped the image at lunch. He enjoyed teasing her over her devotion to the store, and like a schoolgirl being teased over a boyfriend, it made her glow with pleasure every time.

  Returning north to the Mall, car glistening and dripping, she wondered again why the day had such a promising feel. Buzzing her window down, she realized what it was: the air was oddly warm and aromatic. Blue skies and sunlight were reflecting an aroma that reminded her of Southern California at daybreak—an experience she and Virgil had shared on a getaway trip a couple of years ago that not even Marian had learned about. Air off the Pacific had carried a warm scent of ocean, rose hips, wine—a California scent of exalted dreams, and one she had not thought of in months.

  She buzzed the window down all the way, like a teenager. Yeah, grand day for singing, Marian would say, some such droll nonsense, and they’d laugh and feel wonderful over being mother and daughter. What a blessing to have a daughter and to be in business together! Could anyone be luckier than she had turned out to be—if luck, she thought, had been the half of it? For she was in love with life now, that was the bottom line, even if that dark shadow continued to trail along. She was in love with her work, in love with her daughter, in love with the future. And now that Virgil was retired from office, who knew, maybe they’d shake things up a bit. Though what she fantasized about most was being celebrated in time by Marian and the children Marian wanted to have. In her fantasy they toasted her as the one who had started it all, who had made their lives complete. She only hoped they would gain half the satisfaction in what she left behind as she was knowing in its making. It wouldn’t be a smelly, blood and guts enterprise, that was for sure, though, heaven knew, Warren hadn’t lacked initiative so much as he had lacked flair. How sad his life had been; it constricted her heart to think of it—as she was doing just then, turning in at the Mall—and she told it and him yet again to leave her alone, to invade someone else’s thoughts.

  He wouldn’t have listened to reason anyway, and who could say his life would have been any better had she been a nice, little fisherman’s wife who talked to him by CB every time he was out on the water? The disdain he felt for her store and the years she had given to it—he had no idea, really, of the fulfillment an independent business could bring. He who had boat, traps, fishing rights handed to him by his father—had he been so independent? One thing was certain: however he spoke of his boat, he did not understand the companionship she derived from her business. For the store was all but alive, and moved with her day in and day out. Virgil understood. He knew that it was her passion and would smile and know just where she was coming from if she said something about the companionship of inventory, showcases, new orders. But even Virgil would be surprised at the depth of her devotion. For with the exception of her daughter, nothing or no one had become a closer companion to her than her store—its floor and aisles, its merchandise, the customers. To be there in the evening after closing, on Sunday morning before opening, to straighten (again) misplaced candle holders and salt and pepper shakers. For her, it was like touching back a strand of Marian’s hair when she was a child, or straightening her collar today, picking a piece of lint from her lapel and smiling, to have her know she loved her.

  Pleased (again, deeply) that her life included a parking space, Beatrice nosed in the glistening red LeBaron and turned off the engine. Check and double-check. Lights. Windows. 08:27. Disappointed that Marian had yet to arrive—they didn’t open until ten, but she had made it clear to her daughter that nine was managerial starting time—Beatrice gathered her purse and leather portfolio and unfolded into the unusual warmth of the day.

  Southern California along the coast of Maine—sea air and aroma in a crossing of stars and planets. As in all the songs, the day was evoking fantasies in her youthful-feeling heart. Let’s close this place and go to the beach, Marian would joke, but this morning she might just beat her to the punch with some such remark, Beatrice was thinking. She smiled in anticipation as she bypassed the rear fire exit, heading around to the main entrance. She readied her keys as she walked; just before her, behind twin locks in the glistening plate glass doorway, was her home away from home, her world of dreams.

  Marian

  She paused at the bottom of the stairs. Listening, she heard nothing. No movement, no water running. “Ron?” she said. Her mind traveled somewhere— she knew not where— and as she returned, she still heard nothing. “Ron, it’s after eight.”

  Back in the kitchen, rinsing her cup, it came to Marian how regularly she was alone with herself and how it was a state she had come to prefer. Overhead, the toilet flushed. Any minute Ron would clomp downstairs grumbling, and it also came to her that his arrivals had begun to interfere with her being alone with herself, rather than being small, filial fulfillments. Secretly pregnant, two plus months along, she let her belly touch over the rim of the sink before her. Mon petit bijou, her lips allowed in endearment to her secret child. A baby. A new person to grow up and be—a new person with a new life! Ron might go postal when he heard the news, but she didn’t care; the thrill it was giving her had to be the sweetest she had ever known.

  He passed behind her, going to the coffeepot, and she sensed again the interruption of her private universe. Say something nice, she thought of her husband, as if to allow him a chance to redeem himself. But by the time she finished at the sink and turned his way, he had said nothing at all.

  “Hey, good morning,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  He was reading their home-delivered Globe, and Marian, wondering yet again how to get him told of their impending addition, decided it was not the time, and moved toward the stairs. Always she said something of having to shower, get dressed, leave for work, but she decided here, in the superior and surreal status of herself as a mother-to-be, to say nothing at all.

  “Hh—Marian,” she heard as she began climbing the stairs.

  “Have to get dressed; I’m running late,” she said.

  “Hh,” she heard and knew he hadn’t missed a word in whatever he was reading.

  In the bathroom, getting naked as shower water heated, Marian took a look at her profile in the mirror. Not now, but one day in May she would resemble Demi Moore in Vanity Fair, one hand resting on her expanded belly. For now, there was but the merest sign at her midsection—well, no sign at all unless she imagined a vague expansion there. Ron. Maybe it would be fun to share nonsensical pregnancy thoughts with him, but it was also fun to leave him in the dark and keep them to herself. In truth, well, he wasn’t going to like having a baby. Why should he? He doesn’t like his job, doesn’t like who he is, is always out of sorts about money, and any threat of her not bringing in her share—however baseless
such a threat might be (like her mother would refuse her maternity leave)—triggered his insecurity, his immature something. Face it; your husband’s not old enough to be a father, she thought with a snicker.

  Maybe dear Jude from long ago, Marian considered, as she backed into the rush of warm water. As an only child, Jude, hey Jude, had been a make-believe friend with whom she shared confidences, sleepovers, backseats of cars, and it tickled her to think of resurrecting Jude as one with whom to share irreverent notes on what was happening. Her mother was in no way inept as a secret sharer, she’d have to admit, and it amazed her that the woman who read her like a book had yet to figure out what was going on. Soon enough, Marian thought—and all the more reason to get her told. But Ron first? Or her mother? A revealing question, wouldn’t you say, she imagined inquiring of Jude, aware that her every impulse thus far had gone not to telling Ron at all but to embracing her mother in celebration and squealing like a schoolgirl. I’m going to have a baby!

  Marian turned off the water, hung back her head, and squeezed her hair. She laughed, as if Jude, close by, were holding a finger to her lips. Yeah, it’s not real funny, is it, Marian thought. If only it were.

  As she stood drying herself, the bathroom door opened. Ron entered, and she said, “Do you mind?”

  “Tinkle time … like to scope some flesh while I’m at it.”

  Tell him right now, Marian said to herself. Get it over with. She caught him staring at her breasts and left the room. “We need separate bathrooms,” she said over her shoulder.

  A moment later he was at the bedroom door where, slipping on panties, she turned the other way. “Separate bathrooms … you’re so spoiled,” he said.