A Matter of Mercy (9 page)

Chapter 8

Her name tag said Teresa DiPaulo but no one had ever called her that. “It’s just Terry,” she’d say. The head librarian at the Truro branch where she worked didn’t think nicknames were professional, especially now that they were in their big new building which was airy and beautiful with computers, open stacks, plants and separate children’s room. Rhonda didn’t seem to notice that this same staff talked quite loudly among themselves and wore jeans to work. As long as they didn’t use nicknames, she seemed to think she’d dramatically elevated the standard from the old library, the size of the average walk-in closet, from which they’d recently moved. Rhonda herself, in fact, wasn’t all that quiet in the library, though she wore skirts, kept her hair in a neat pageboy and her bright red mouth in a librarian-worthy serious line.

Being called Teresa by her boss was a small price to pay as long as Rhonda didn’t make her work in the children’s section. When she’d applied for the job, she’d forced herself to ask if she’d have to.

“My assistant and I generally work in all areas of the library. After all, the rest of the staff each works part-time, and, of course, the community volunteers really set their own schedules. You see, the structure of the library is such that….” Rhonda had rambled on before skidding to a halt on, “Why do you ask?”

And Terry had intended to just tell the truth, except that she’d felt the underground river start to rise to the surface and decided that tears in an interview were worse than no answer. “Ah, no reason.” She felt Rhonda’s eyes light on the gold angel pin on her sweater, and involuntarily, Terry’s hand went up to protect it. Well, so she’d blown this interview. All right. She shouldn’t have asked. She should have sucked it up and tried to work in that room—with its little tables and chairs, bright colors, high border of sweet, fanciful animals. She plain needed a job now.

But maybe no one else had even applied and Rhonda had been desperate, because the next day, she called and offered Terry the job. There’d been no mention of working in the children’s room or not working there, but so far, she hadn’t been assigned there. Part-timers had shelved those books, or ordered the new ones, or catalogued the incoming orders. Terry showed her gratitude by trying to look professional for Rhonda. She took pains to curl her long hair which she’d turned blonde when she was fourteen, wore skirts, stockings, dress shoes, and, of course, her pin.

It was possible Rhonda had known. Maybe one of the job references told her and the position had been offered out of pity. Usually people who knew avoided her, though.

It wasn’t that John hadn’t grieved with her. He’d closed the shop, stopped eating, stopped showering, and choked on his sobs. But she could do nothing to help him. She was drowning herself, and didn’t even notice whether her husband had a worn a clean shirt or whether he’d shaved for the visitation. His sister came to attend to him while Terry’s brother and her mother, one on either side of her like crutches, had gotten her into St. Mary’s of the Harbor for the funeral.

The fourth week, John had gone back to work. He’d had to. There wasn’t insurance that would replace the income they were losing. By then, people from out of town had gone home, the casseroles that had been coming in daily slowed to four, then two or three times a week, and Terry and John were slowly left to stagger on by themselves, like robots or zombies. When Terry felt suicidal, John took her to Dr. Telmaun, who prescribed drugs that made no difference.

Around them, the house had a sterile, unlived-in look, yet was increasingly in a state of disrepair. One night during the second year, John pointed around him and said, “Look, we’re not even people anymore. We’re like shadows. On Saturday, I’m going to fix the garage door.”

“Don’t you think I want to go on?” Terry said later that month. They’d been in the kitchen, where it had been Chinese take-out again, as opposed to pizza, as opposed to deli sandwiches. It was May and the lilacs outside the baby’s window were blooming. They’d never stopped calling him the baby, even though chronologically, he wasn’t one. Not one item in his room had been changed. Some of the clothes he’d worn still had his smell, even if John didn’t get it. On her worst days, Terry shut herself in his room and buried her face in his red sweater or his denim jacket.

“We have to go on
together
,” he said, wrapping his arms around her back and stroking her hair with one hand. She’d forced herself not to pull away although she felt like something carved out of cold stone, like the marble marker over her baby’s grave.

“What do you want from me? I’m trying.”

“Let’s have another baby.” It wasn’t the first time he’d whispered this. Of course, family on both sides had prescribed it. “I am not trying to replace him,” John insisted that night. “I
am
trying to start over.”

“I’m not ready.”

“Are you ever going to be?”

“I don’t know. Goddammit, John, leave me alone.”

When he moved the stack of read-aloud books off the coffee table in the living room. Terry raged at him. “Put them back, put them back, put him back,” she shouted.

John started sleeping in the spare room, saying it was too frustrating to sleep in the same bed. They had a bitter fight about money; Terry was calling in sick a couple of days a week because of her headaches. She’d used all her sick time and then days and days more. Sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed.
Wouldn’t
get out of bed was the way John saw it, as in
not trying
. He said as much.

Still, when he actually left, it was like the cruel surprise of a patch of ice in May, one that flew her feet out from underneath her and landed her hard on her back, breathless and alone.

At first it was much worse to have no one there and then, finally, in a bizarre way it was better. No one criticizing her, no one serving up guilt like a daily gruel. If she got up, she got up. If she didn’t, well, she didn’t. Same with taking a shower.

Predictably, she lost her job in the hardware store. She was fired with great kindness. “We’d love to have you back when you feel better. We just have to have someone here every day.”

Suicide was forbidden in her religion but God was on her shit list so she no longer ruled it out.

Then, the strangest thing happened—something that affected her in a way the church she’d repudiated had not. Something that gave her peace unlike the drugs that hadn’t helped at all, or helped enough, or the trite and vacant words of well-meaning family and friends. Late one night when she was playing hopscotch through the channels, she landed on the shopping network where a woman was selling guardian angel pins, a psychic by her side. Viewers were invited to call in and the psychic would try to contact a loved one on the other side of the veil. If the psychic was able to receive a message, the viewer would presumably wish to purchase a fourteen karat gold guardian angel with the birthstone of the loved one as tangible evidence of the contact. The angel was available in yellow or white gold and a choice of twelve birthstones.

It took Terry forty-eight minutes to get through. She hadn’t expected to believe, in fact she’d expected not to. But when the psychic said, “I have only this message for you from the other side: your baby wants you to know he is all right, and whole now,” she couldn’t discount it. That word,
whole
. And then the psychic had said, “He loves you and he’ll see you again later.”

He’ll see you later! That’s what the baby had said after she or John had read him his last story and tucked him in at night.
I love you, sleep tight, see ya later, alligator,”
was their line, and the baby would answer,
love you, see ya later.

* * * * 

There really were only two downsides to the library job. Rhonda hadn’t asked Terry to work in the children’s section, not once in three years, but she did have to check the books out when someone handed them to her. The first time someone handed her a too-familiar-cover, she shut herself in a bathroom stall and stifled sobs, until she worked it out. After that, when any young mother with a toddler boy in her arms handed her a book like
Goodnight Moon
, she was ready. “I’m sorry, this should haven’t been shelved. It’s been reserved,” Terry would say, cool. Lying for her baby was easy. His favorite books should never be touched by children who wouldn’t appreciate them.
Goodnight Moon
would disappear, swaddled in a drawer at home with the others marked TRURO PUBLIC LIBRARY. Since Terry was in charge of book orders, there would be no replacement.

There wasn’t something comparable she could do when someone from her old life up in Provincetown happened into the library. Furtive studies of the angel on her shirt, then her face, then the quick, guilty aversion of their gaze galled her. Peoples’ eyes were palpable as cotton on her skin when they looked at her that way.

Terry felt that prickle when the tall woman with the highlighted hair checked out a strange sandwich of books. The top and bottom volumes were on funeral planning, the middle title was
Living With the Decision: A Woman’s Choice.
She saw the woman’s eyes read her nametag, then travel to her pin. Even as Terry’s hand was traveling to cover the angel, pinned on her blue turtleneck where a college girl would fasten a fraternity pin, her eyes brushed Terry’s face. The woman hadn’t intended eye contact; immediately, she pretended interest in the clock behind Terry and then studied the flurry her own hands were making of extracting her card and rummaging for her keys. Terry guessed that she must be from Provincetown, someone who’d worked with John or known a family member. She was one of the people who knew who Terry was, as if her ruined life gave off an embarrassing odor or left a scar on her forehead. Sometimes Terry wanted to slink and hide from those people and sometimes she wanted to draw a fist, or spit on their shoes.

Chapter 9

He’d made himself look like a real dickhead, and Rid knew it. It still ate at him as he picked the largest oysters out of the tray, weighing and checking each by feel, tossing empties and partially open shells onto the cultch-strewn bottom where they landed with a soft plash. Those that weren’t quite large enough yet clinked back into the tray. Rid was as fast and efficient as his father had been. He hardly had to look anymore to know exactly how good an oyster was.

He was bent from the waist over one of the big four-by-six-foot trays toward the back of the grant, exposed now at dead low tide. It was backbreaking and time consuming, but not absorbing; his mind was free to sail the coast of his worries. Too many of this tray had suffocated when he hadn’t gotten the sand off them fast enough after the hurricane in September. These were three year oysters, too, the most frustrating to lose. He hadn’t repaired all the trays that were damaged in that blow yet, either. He was behind in his orders, which could cost him even his most patient and loyal customers, because he was stealing work time to talk to people about fighting the lawsuit. And now he’d been an asshole to CiCi and he couldn’t say why, except that he couldn’t afford one more thing on his mind, even a woman he liked. Especially a woman he liked with a trunk full of her own problems who didn’t have the first clue about his.

He glanced over at her house. Or still her mother’s house, he guessed. He hadn’t seen a death notice in the paper. It had to be rough, and he felt bad for her. When his Dad died, his mother had moved in with his sister and brother-in-law down in Falmouth, and he knew he was lucky that way. By straightening up—which he had to do anyway, his back was complaining—and taking ten steps deeper into the bay, which let him stretch his legs, Rid could see the parking area to the side of CiCi’s house. There’d been a detached garage back there once, but it had been rebuilt into a studio for her mother. He could see its skylight glinting from where he stood. There were two cars there now, so he guessed CiCi wasn’t alone. Sometime he really ought to knock on the door and ask if she needed anything. Maybe leave off a couple dozen quahogs she could steam for dinner.

He shook his head at his own stupidity. Who takes clams to a dying woman’s house? It’s supposed to be soup or homemade something, like his mother or sister would do. Something way out of his league.

A couple of the guys had kicked in way more than he and Tomas had thought anyone would for the lawsuit. They’d collected almost five thousand and they weren’t through talking to everyone, so there was some good news. On the other hand, there was the ominous unknown. Just yesterday, Tomas had parked his truck below the high water mark but come directly onto Rid’s grant where he was already at work, rather than to his own. “Something’s up. Lorenz wants a meeting in his office in the next couple of days. Maybe Pissario got wind we’re organizing?”

“Or maybe
Lorenz
wants to
break
wind and have us there to discuss it so he can send another bill,” Rid had muttered. He and Tomas had fielded a lot of questions about how high the bill might go, and neither of them could even fake an answer.

“Yeah, could be that,” Tomas said, squeezing his forehead between thumb and forefinger and then rubbing his eyes. He looked tired.

It was the afternoon tide, still the front side, but Rid had been following it out, early for once, working each section of his grant as the water receded. A cold sting of offshore wind whipped spray against his face, chapping early this year.

“So what do we do?”

“We go. All we can do. I thought day after tomorrow rather than tomorrow because the second tide will be too late to work anyway—too dark. Wanted to check with you first, though. And Mario. Okay if I tell him three o’clock?”

Rid pieced the sentences together as a word here or there was swooped away on the wind. “Sure. Want me to tell Mario?” he said.

“I’ll do it.”

“I should finish with my list of people?”

“Now more’n ever.”

“Right.”

So today, he had to get ahead on picking for the weekend restaurant orders in P-town and Chatham. It was a good thing there wasn’t a private party or a wedding this weekend, though that was always good money, because he had six or seven more people on his list to talk to, and the meeting with Lorenz tomorrow. He had a heaping plateful to be worrying about now, and he just couldn’t add CiCi to the pile.

Rid turned and sloshed back to the oyster tray. He stood and looked down, studying it a moment, then raised his head and slowly took in the measure of his grant. His gaze covered the salt marsh where Blackfish Creek entered the harbor at his far left, up over Lieutenant’s Island and the Audubon sanctuary and the sailboat-dotted sweep of the bay all the way around to his right to what he could see of where the harbor jutted out on the far side of the horseshoe beach and on toward Great Island. His father might have liked his beer too much to be what anyone would call a good family man, but he’d sweated for this place, clung to it, babied it into abundance, put Rid’s name on it and taught him what he knew before he died. Once Rid had comforted himself that his father had loved him because he’d given him the grant, but as he stood ankle-deep and thought of losing it, he thought
no
, it all had to do with loving
this
. Dad couldn’t stand the idea of not having it any more. And, more amazing to Rid, he now understood and felt the exact same way.

Beneath him, Rid’s legs felt like broken pencils, wobbly, insubstantial next to this blessed bountiful beauty over which a late weak sun fought the cloud cover to unveil the first hint of sunset. He lifted his face to the west, toward the wispy tendrils of pale fire and thought
come on, you can win this
, and tears came until he wondered if he was melting into the water, his salt mixing into the bay as his father’s had.

* * * * 

Strange, all of them cleaned up this way again in the middle of the day. This only happened when they were going to a funeral. As soon as the word came to mind, Rid wondered again if CiCi’s mother had died yet, but he was immediately distracted by their attorney, who was tapping the eraser of his pencil against his desk as he spoke. It made him seem nervous, which made Rid nervous.

“Mr. Pissario has, I’m afraid, filed asking for an injunction to stop your work until the court rules on the suit.” Lorenz’s face did not flicker when he spoke and it was impossible to guess his emotion or if he had any.

“He can’t do that!” It was Mario, in an instant boil. Without even looking at him, Rid, in the middle of his two partners, shot a restraining hand onto Mario’s arm. The amount of pressure he exerted was a warning.

“He can try,” Lorenz said, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. “We have the opportunity to file a response showing why the judge shouldn’t issue the injunction. That’s why you’re here. We have to make that case. So let’s get to work.”

The attorney’s office, in the weak light of a waning gray day, was even less impressive than Rid remembered. It wasn’t exactly run down, but sparse and devoid of any particular sign of financial success, even though Barnstable itself was a wealthy area. It reminded him of a public defender’s office, and public defenders hadn’t exactly saved Rid’s ass in the past. Lorenz had had two things to recommend him. First, his initial consultation fee had been just over half of what the two big Hyannis firms had quoted. They were the ones, presumably, with the shoe-swallowing carpet, leather chairs, and precedent-researching paralegals. Second, Lorenz had been slow deciding to take the case, which made all of them think that they might have trouble getting another lawyer. None of it gunned their confidence to a roar, that was for sure.

“Who’s the judge?” Tomas asked quietly.

“Judge Atwood, most likely.”

Tomas sat back and grinned.

“I like seeing that on your face, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. If he knows you, or has any personal connection, he’ll have to recuse himself.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Sam.”

“Heard of him, don’t know him.” He swung his head to Rid and Mario in turn. “Either of you two know him?”

“Nope.” Mario said, not getting it.

“Not me.” Rid echoed.

“Excellent,” Tomas said.

“So what’s the deal?” Lorenz asked.

“Just that Atwood is an old, old Wellfleet name back from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lotta people named Atwood lost at sea. I mean, take your pick: Sukie Atwood’s house still is over on Chequessett Neck Road. Her first husband, her second husband, her son, then her grandson all went down. She’s the one who said, ‘the ocean is my cemetery.’ Sometime around 1870, that was. Anyway, in 1929 the family moved her house from South Truro to where it is now, overlooking the harbor.”

Rid started to grin widely, enjoying Tomas’ meandering because he knew where his friend was headed. Not too many people knew Wellfleet history like Tomas. Lorenz looked befuddled.

Tomas registered the attorney’s confusion, and disingenuously took the long route to clarification, enjoying himself. “Oh, yes, sure, she’s long gone. But see, there’s the Simeon Atwood house on East Commercial Street, too. Now that guy was a state legislator in the 1860s; did everything from that to being an inspector for the port of Wellfleet, a justice of the peace, a church choirmaster, and Republican moderator. Lived about six lives in one. Old, old family, like I said. Long roots buried deep. Mr. Lorenz, I’m just not thinking that a Wellfleet native is real likely to issue an injunction to shut us down because some washashore wants him to. You see where I’m coming from? Fishing
is
Wellfleet. It’s what we do and who we are. I’m not one to complain about the art stuff around town now. It’s fine, but it’s not what supports us.
The flats
are home to the natives.”

Lorenz tilted his chair back, a slow smile of comprehension starting in his eyes and spreading finally across his mouth. “Well. Well, well. All right then. From your lips to God’s ears. And you do understand that this is just the opening round. The suit itself is a different matter. That has to do with
ownership
. A sympathetic judge still can’t rewrite the law. Right now I’m looking into every precedent, every interpretation. And, you know, it’s occurred to me: I really should check the specific deeds for the Indian Neck subdivision. It’s time-consuming. I’m sorry about that.”

He was referring, of course, to the mounting bill. He sent it monthly, regular as the moon. They’d made three payments but each month the total was higher than it had been before they’d made the last payment.

Tomas was undaunted. “You know, I just have to believe that there’s more to ownership than a piece of paper. If Pissario got an injunction, I don’t know how we’d be able to keep going. But I’m betting it’s not going to happen.”

“He’s right,” Rid added, slapping his thigh lightly. “Tomas
knows
what he’s talking about.” He hoped this meant Marie would back off Tomas some. He didn’t know what he’d do himself if he had a wife and kids to worry about now.

“Yeah, man. A local’s not going to screw us,” Mario chimed in. Rid could tell Mario was dying for a smoke, going for the Marlboros in his shirt pocket and then dropping his hand back to his lap as he remembered he couldn’t light up in the office. He’d asked in the first meeting, and the attorney had said no.

“All right, then. Once again: from your lips to God’s ears. Let’s prepare the argument about the impact of an injunction. We’ve got to give the judge the excuse to rule with his sympathy, presuming you’re right.”