Monterey Bay (13 page)

She leapt from her chair and stood beside it.

“I'm not that monstrous, am I?” he asked, shaking his head. “Sit down. Just sit down.”

Watching him carefully, she reclaimed her seat. His face was red and shiny, a veil of moisture across his mustache.

“It's hot down there,” he moaned. “Why are we out of beer?”

“I don't know.”

“Run and get some, will you?”

She shook her head. He frowned at her and then looked blankly around the room as if trying to remember where he was. Then he walked over to the desk and began to study her sketch of the worm. He stood there for several seconds in silence, his face and neck gradually regaining their normal hue, leaving only his large, jutting ears a vengeful shade of red.

“He told me to tell you to go home.”

She nodded in understanding but didn't move.

“You're working for him now?” he asked. “In the tide pools?”

“No. I'm doing the sketches. And the embalming.”

“But you're hoping for something more, is that it?”

She held his gaze for a second. When she was afraid her face had turned the same color as his ears, she returned her attention to the sketch and made a few swipes of her pencil, unsure as to whether she was making things better or worse.

“Well, keep at it.” Steinbeck sighed. “From what I can tell, you've already done an admirable job, and not just with the drawings. He likes to make things complicated, to put up a little fight, but at the end of the day, it's always the same. Like a goddamn goldfish, round and round the bowl, thinking he's found the ocean when he's really just mucking around in the same old puddle as always. And the worst part is that I believe him. I believe him every damn time. I believe him because I've never met anyone as smart or as good as him, and besides, I'm far too busy to be doubting things all the time. Do you have any idea how terrible it is? To have created something people care about? To get rich on account of it? We used to make fun of people like me but, my God, how times have changed. These days, I'm little more than a bank account. Without my money, I'd be even less useful to him than Arthur.”

He fell into another extended bout of silence. She stopped drawing and, in lieu of considering his words, reappraised her sketch, hoping for the same feelings of pride. Something about it had changed, though. Something had been vanquished as a result of Steinbeck's grim company.

“And I tell him,” he resumed suddenly, the sharpness of his voice making her jump. “When you've collected every little creature from the Sea of Cortez to Alaska, when you've fucked everything in lipstick and a Catholic school uniform, when all your jars are finally categorized and cross-referenced and
organized to some lunatic's version of order, when that damn essay has been revised and rewritten for the one-millionth time, do you honestly think you'll be any better off? Any wiser? Sure, you'll know the ocean inside and out, but people will still be a mystery, and there's nothing in this world more tragic than that.”

That night, she didn't return home right away.

Instead, she went to the place where Arthur had once given her the sketchbook and the bucket: the small promontory just south of her father's cannery, just east of the train tracks, the spot from which she could see not only the terminus of the Row, but the marine station on its outskirts. There were no scientists on the beach this evening, but there were lights on in the stattion building, and the lights were something she envied.

And this was the real crux of the matter. Envy. Earlier that afternoon, when Steinbeck had finally left her alone, she had succumbed to it. She had shuffled through Ricketts's desk drawers, looking for a draft of something she hadn't read yet, something Wormy had typed. Another essay or perhaps a poem: anything strange and dense enough to bang her head against
.
But the only thing she found was the carbon copy of a letter that had been penned years before her arrival and that seemed like a remnant from a different lifetime.
All quiet,
he had written,
until the glass case gets broken either from the outside or inside. And then maybe it's sleeping or comatose instead of just an exhibit. I mean the dream.

And, God, how she hated her tallness. Sometimes, it was a longing even more painful than her longing for Ricketts: the wish for a complete bodily distillation, a retraction into a more adorably compact form. Her father had always told her to take pride in her vertical inheritance. He had taught her to let it speak for her, to give her authority by proxy. But lately she had become convinced of a more evolved way of being. She imagined Ricketts and Wormy in bed together, their small bodies a perfect match, their union muscular and efficient and happily confined to a cell of its own devising, a cell in which she couldn't possibly fit. If anything, she was more like Steinbeck than Wormy. She was big and sour and needy, and what if Steinbeck's fears were true? If he were no longer the lab's sole patron, would he be cast aside and forgotten? Would someone else come in to take his place? Could that someone else be her? And that's when the realization dawned: an answer that caused her to turn away from the ocean and sprint up the hill.

Back at the house, she paused briefly in the sitting room. With the exception of the sofa and the good china and their personal belongings, most of which were still in trunks, there was nothing material that spoke to their presence here, nothing that could have told a curious observer who they were or what they prized. Similarly, there could have been nothing extrapolated by
examining their neighbors, all of whom differed from Anders and Margot in every possible way. And perhaps this was why she had been so resistant thus far to Ricketts's categorization of the world. She didn't glorify the distinction between those who lived here and those who lived elsewhere—the distinction between the locals and the tourists, the distinction between those who watched the party and those who joined it—because to do so would be tantamount to denying the boundaries of her own existence.

“Margot?”

When she entered the kitchen, she was alarmed at how bright it was.

“Did you get a new lamp?” she asked.

“No. I brought in the one from the bedroom.”

The can of grease was still on the windowsill, as it had been for more than a month now. Normally, she wouldn't have even noticed it. Tonight, however, it had company: first, a vial of shark liver oil similar to those Ricketts was always trying to convince people to drink; second, a Chinese joss stick jammed into the flesh of an unripe peach, the burned end releasing an irregular curl of musky smoke, its presence somehow both placating and aggressive, like the warning shot that comes before deadly fire, like the line in the proverbial sand.

“I heard you lurking,” he resumed. “I don't like it when people lurk. It means they want something but are too cowardly to ask for it.”

Heroes advance when it makes sense to retreat,
she quoted to herself.
And cowards retreat regardless of what makes sense.

“I'd like to ask your permission to visit the Agnellis.”

He put down his pencil and arranged his documents into a pile, the resulting déjà vu making her head swim. A newspaper sat on the far edge of the table. A headline read,
FISKE CANNERY TO CEASE OPERATIONS: UNIONS TO SUPPORT
.

“You didn't seem particularly fond the other day,” he replied. “I'm surprised you're so keen to socialize.”

“Oh, my interests aren't social.”

“You've a new plan in place. Good girl.”

She adjusted the strap of the satchel.

“Would you care to discuss it?” he asked.

“No. I think I've become a little superstitious, too.”

He smiled, but not gladly.

“I'm joining them for Mass again on Sunday,” he said. “You can accompany me.”

She nodded at the newspaper. “Soon we'll both have reason to celebrate.”

“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “I think you're right.”

NO MATTER WHERE SHE GOES, THOUGH—NO MATTER
which part of the aquarium's public spaces occur to her as a refuge—there's music. Music designed at her own behest. Music meant, if she's honest with herself, to replicate and revise how it once felt to be inside his lab.

She remembers sitting down with the composer, showing him the blueprints, describing the main exhibits, playing him a few examples of what she had in mind. Bach, of course. A well-known
kirtan
: “Hay Hari Sundara,” the 1926 Carnegie Hall version. Some Debussy, embarrassingly enough. That part in “Take It on the Run” where the guitar does a high altitude burn. To all of these, he nodded in time to the beat, scribbled down notes. When she reached the last song, however, he stopped writing. It was “Get Ready,” perhaps the Temptations' strangest offering. To be fair, she knew it was weird. For one thing, it was about a
stalker. For another, it didn't start out like all the other Motown relics, with a jolting, percussive call to arms. Instead, it began with a dirge of horns, persistent and menacing, followed by some violins gasping for breath. Then there was the part with the saxophone, notes stabbing the air in what should have been a solo but instead seemed like the disembowelment of one. On top of it all, the singer: a voice that sounded neither male nor female, neither completely sane nor completely unhinged, neither dangerous nor safe.
I don't want this kind of trouble
, the composer's face seemed to say.
Who would?
She, however, was sitting there with her eyes half-closed, certain that, had he lived long enough, this song would have either pleased Ricketts greatly or upset him to near madness.

So in addition to her infantile excitement about his messages, there's also a reaction far worse: the need to prove she's received them. In a sense, this was why the aquarium was created in the first place, to make his most famous, most accessible theory flesh. Instead of arranging things the traditional way—by species or taxonomic relativity—she's arranged things by habitat, by place of residence.
Things that live together should go together,
he once said.
And things that live elsewhere should go elsewhere.
She's even taken it one step further. She's demanded that, with the exception of special temporary exhibits—the one about the Amazon basin, for instance—everything in the aquarium must be indigenous to Monterey Bay. Every animal, every plant, every alga, every fungus. No cheating, except when she permits it.

And it's not something she will ever question. It's not a position from which she will ever back down. The problem, however, is that the bay is getting warmer and the skies are getting bluer, and not in a cyclical, El Niño–type way. No, this is something permanent, which means that species from the south—species that would have previously found Monterey unlivably cold—are moving in. The Humboldt squid and the
Mola mola
: two animals that were once seasonal visitors but now take up year-round aquatic real estate.
Accept it
, she tells herself.
Accept it and move on.
But her artist's eye won't quite allow it. If everything is embraced, nothing is said. A crowded canvas is proof of an empty mind. There's a moment at which even the most purehearted tribute becomes an ode not to the person being honored, but to the person doing the honoring.
And I'd be honored in return
, she tells him, the aquarium's ambient sound track egging her on,
if you'd quote me on that.

“AN ANGEL. SHE LOOKS LIKE AN ANGEL IN THAT
dress.”

Mrs. Agnelli's voice was gentle, off-puttingly so. The laugh, however—the one Margot had heard that day at the house—seemed ready to surface at any moment and break the veneer of her goodwill, like the air-raid sirens that had punctuated their last days in Manila.

“Thank you,” Margot muttered. “It's new.”

She yanked at the skirt. Yesterday afternoon, in anticipation of churchgoing company, her father had taken her to Holman's, the local department store. She had expected to be able to find something sturdy and anonymous and reasonable, like what the First Lady wore when she was photographed making speeches or visiting disaster sites. The store, however, offered women's
apparel of only one style: lightweight, lace-trimmed frocks so spectacularly ill suited to both Margot's tastes and the local climate that even Anders had been amused on account of it.

“Now I know why you always wear that sport coat,” he had said, chuckling.

Margot, however, hadn't laughed. She had suspected it would happen in time—her chest and hips and stomach resigning themselves to a puffier inevitability—but she hadn't expected it to happen so fast, and now, looking at Mrs. Agnelli, she could imagine the horrors with which it all might progress.

“Speaking of angelic,” her father redirected, “the Mass was sublime. So many kind tributes to your husband.”

“He is ailing, yes,” Mrs. Agnelli admitted, eyes downcast. “But the prayers of our community will lift him up.”

Anders nodded and appeared to contemplate this in silence. Margot, too, considered the service. In the Philippines, the natives had also practiced Catholicism, but a very specific version of it: riotous and colorful and brutally hierarchical, its practices closer to voodoo sometimes than Christianity. On some of the smaller islands, men fought each other for the honor of being nailed to a cross and paraded through the village streets on Good Friday. Here, however, there was none of that. The bread was not quite flesh, the wine was not quite blood. The same was true of the church's immediate surroundings. The homes of the boat and cannery owners could have been large and showy, but
they weren't. Instead, they were modest and well maintained: stucco beachheads with red-tiled roofs that looked sturdy and immortal against the white sky. Children played calmly on the porches. Street vendors made their rounds. Big, iron cauldrons bubbled in the backyards atop flaming beds of pine, the intestinal lengths of sardine nets tanning within.

“We had hoped to offer up a blessing for your imminent venture,” Mrs. Agnelli continued. “But I'm afraid it slipped Father Paraino's mind.”

“No matter,” Anders replied. “I'm not superstitious in the least.”

Mrs. Agnelli's face flickered with distaste before returning to its previous serenity. She was in her prime today: surrounded by her own kind, proud and at ease, her face absent of perspiration, her breathing unlabored. As for Tino, he looked exactly as sharp and fragile as before, especially in comparison to his brothers. All five were just as burly and bulletproof as he had implied, standing open-mouthed behind their mother in order of descending height like an unpacked set of giant Russian nesting dolls.

“Shall we, then? Our girl has cooked a wonderful roast.”

The brothers turned and began to clomp uphill.

“I'll be glad to accept your hospitality. Margot, however, will be staying behind. She has business with your son. The small one.”

And there it was again: a shadow of distaste. “In that case, I'd like to speak with her first.”

The brothers froze in place and closed ranks around Tino.

“By all means,” Anders replied.

Mrs. Agnelli reentered the church. With a glance in Anders's direction, Margot followed. Inside, it was quiet and cool, the walls white and bare. Father Paraino was fiddling with something on the lectern. The candles on the altar had just recently been extinguished, wicks still smoking. She remembered the séance in the lab. The broken circle.

Mrs. Agnelli sat heavily on the nearest edge of the rearmost pew. At the noise, Father Paraino looked up, bowed to her, and scuttled out of sight.

“There's been some trouble,” Mrs. Agnelli began, her voice even kinder than before, even softer.

“I'm sorry about that.”

“Oh, I don't want you to be sorry. I just want you to help.”

Margot shifted her weight to one foot and then the other, noticing how the dress swished timidly across her knees in response. In a situation like this, it was important to equalize the balance of power. She should be sitting next to the older woman, side by side as equals. But, on account of the space Mrs. Agnelli had chosen to occupy, this was nearly impossible. To join her on the pew, Margot would have to climb right over her or walk all the way around to the other side of the nave and slide down to
meet her, both of which were too awkward to even contemplate. So she remained standing and took a small step forward, which ensured that, when Mrs. Agnelli began to speak again, it would be to Margot's back and not her face.

Mrs. Agnelli giggled as if in understanding, and then continued.

“At first, you see, I thought your father was to blame, but then I realized it was most likely a shortcoming of my own. The truth is, I'm unaccustomed to the company of men. They're always out on the boats, often for weeks on end, which means they have a different way of seeing the world than we do. A different way of finding satisfaction.”

A rogue sunbeam shot through the stained glass window above the altar, the effect identical to what it looked like when light shone among the leaves and blossoms of the bougainvillea.

“You have six sons,” Margot countered. “All of whom work with you.”

“Yes, but working with someone and feeling bettered by their company are two different things entirely. I'm sure you understand.”

Margot resisted the impulse to look behind her. Mrs. Agnelli produced a short, crackling cough and then resumed.

“And I might be flattering myself, but I like to think that, when I put my full trust in my real allies—my fellow mothers and daughters, the ones who understand life's bloodiest battles
and how to win them—I can see it all much more clearly. Both the big picture and the small one. Or, as your friend Ed Ricketts might say, both the ocean and the tide pools on its border.”

From where she was standing, she couldn't see the sacristy, but she could hear a subdued commotion occurring inside of it: chalices clinking, robes shifting on their hangers, uneaten communion wafers being returned to their tins. There was a strange, unpleasant sort of pressure in the air, as if she were about to enter a tunnel. She turned around.

“What's your question?”

Mrs. Agnelli broadened her smile, her nose crinkling.

“Oh, I have several. The workers he's hired, for one thing. Not a single Sicilian—or even a Genoan—on his payroll. He's taken in all the mongrels instead: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Filipinos, the Okies, all the people that live even lower on the hill than you do. He's even allowing them to fully unionize, which is something I've been fighting against for years.”

“None of that was in the contract. So it's fully within his rights.”

“Oh goodness! You
are
clever! No, the real problem isn't the people he's hiring or the bureaucratic mess he's allowing them to make. It's what he's
not
having them can.”

She looked beyond Mrs. Agnelli at the iron-studded front door, biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling.

“You see, my most valuable property sold at a pittance. There's
an absurd surplus of product on my hands, and the biggest buyer in town refuses to buy.” She rose from the pew, the wood creaking. “And unlike you, I don't find it particularly funny.”

“He isn't buying from anyone else. He hasn't done anything wrong.”

“That depends on who you ask.”

“I'm unclear on what you want me to do.”

The sound of a car sputtering down the street outside, the jovial hollers of someone selling ice cream or peanuts. For a moment, Mrs. Agnelli seemed pinned to the floor. Then, without warning, she was smiling and laughing, pitching forward and pulling Margot into a hug.

“I'd like you to think carefully about your own interests. And then tell me what you decide.”

Margot couldn't see. She was in the tunnel now, and Mrs. Agnelli's voice was bouncing against the walls and her smell was, too: warm and thick and lovely. Margot held her breath. She tried to move her body but it wouldn't listen, so she called on her mind.
Run,
she told it,
before it's too late
. But it was just like that first morning in the tide pools: her limbs dead with panic, the unwanted memories rapidly surfacing. The discovery of the fake paintings in the root cellar. The bestowal of the penknife. The ghost-balloon of her mother's floating, omniscient head. But also something from much further back, from before she was of use to her father, from before she was of use to anyone. A toy made of tin and held aloft on little wheels, its mouth
clattering behind her as she pulled it across terrain that was far too rough for either of them to safely navigate.

When the embrace ended, she took a step back and stared at the floor.

“My interests are the same as my father's.”

Mrs. Agnelli waited for a second or two, lungs rattling. Then she brushed past her, footsteps weirdly silent. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

When she was gone, Margot sat down on a pew across the aisle from where Mrs. Agnelli had sat. She waited for a new noise, a new smell. She waited for the bare walls to suggest a color or a pattern. When she finally went back outside, everyone was gone except Tino, who was still standing on the church steps, just as she had left him.

“I'll do more sketches,” she said. “But only if you're still certain we can sell them.”

He considered this and then nodded. “You're financing an escape, too.”

“No. The opposite.”

He frowned in confusion.

“I'm pursuing some new business,” she explained. “With Ricketts.”

His eyes brightened. “Well, then you were right before. We should start at three dollars apiece. The Woolworth's on Alvarado will give you a discount on supplies if you purchase in bulk. I get fifteen percent of net.”

“Three seventy-five apiece. You buy supplies. Your percentage is ten.”

“Fine. But no sea creatures. Just people. Portraits on commission.”

“Come on.” She hurried down the steps. “Let's get started.”

“Right now?” he replied.

“Yes. Unless you can give me a reason to wait.”