Storm Tide (37 page)

Good, Laramie seemed to be saying. This is the way.

“Remember? You said you didn’t want to borrow money from me?”

Her grip on the glass seemed to loosen.

“Well, that’s when I asked the lady from the cottage colony. Because she was looking for a family to move in as caretakers. For no deposit. That’s when I spoke to her.”

“That was two months ago,” Crystal said.

“That’s right. And I haven’t spoken to her since.”

Go on, the boy seemed to say.

“Because it’s just fine for you and Laramie to be here. Because you can stay here as long as you want.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course I mean it. This house is your house too.”

“Mine and Laramie’s.”

“I don’t know what my mother was talking about. She gets confused. That’s why I think it’s best that she has a real nurse. That’s why we’re getting Mrs. Falco to come in. Because Mom needs real care. She’s getting older ….”

“She is. She forgets things,” Crystal said. “Just last week she forgot Laramie’s name and ran through all the kid’s names before she got to his. It was really funny. She said Kara, Allison, David … before she got to Laramie. Remember?”

The little boy nodded.

Crystal looked at the gash on her arm as if it was nothing, an insect
sting, a rash. She placed the broken goblet in my outstretched hand. “You really do want us to stay here, don’t you?”

“This is your house now. I mean that sincerely,” I said. And I did. It was all hers. If she wouldn’t move, I would come up with another plan. I looked at Laramie, wondering at his calm. He seemed ashamed for his mother, but not surprised. I could not risk another scene like the one I had just been through. Neither could I stay in this house.

D
AVID

    The Board of Selectmen was divided. Two men, Ralph Petersen and Fred Fischel, were said to be in Johnny Lynch’s pocket, while Sandra Powell and Lyle Upham had been elected with Judith’s help. I knew why I couldn’t call Judith—I had nothing yet to say. I hadn’t moved out yet. I had plans to gradually detach, cut back. But I thought of Judith. I wanted every meeting night for her to show up, hoping to explain afterwards. It was like being in a storm and remembering a quiet clear place. I missed her voice, her intelligence, her body that seemed an extension of her personality and her mind, instead of a sexual morass into which I had sunk almost over my head. But I understood Judith would not be with me while I was living fulltime with Crystal. The way things were now, I rarely saw Judith, and never alone.

The hearing before us was a simple conversion of a license, from wine and beer to a full liquor license. Powell and Upham were opposed and presented arguments against drunk driving, teenage alcohol abuse, and high school kids crossing the line from Wiggins Neck, the next town over. Lyle stood up to address the crowd and asked if one more place to buy hard liquor would improve life in this small town. “I don’t think there’s anyone here tonight who can forget about last year’s rape in the parking lot.” This was greeted with a loud rumbling in the audience, gaveled down by Chairman Petersen, who recognized Fred Fischel, a retired accountant with delicate, almost paper-white hands that he nervously rubbed together throughout the meeting. “You can’t legislate morality,” he said. “These people run a good clean business and follow all the rules. An incident like that can happen outside anyone’s store, or anyone’s home.” Petersen voted with Fischel, for the full liquor license; Powell with Upham, against.

“How do you vote, Mr. Greene?”

Gordon told me Upham had contributed to my campaign. I knew he was pro-environment. That he’d voted for a new school. Sandra ran the local day care center. She was a perky five-foot-two who wore enormous red-framed glasses and her hair in bangs. Her youngest daughter, a budding star on the high school track team, had been hit by a truck a few years back and walked with a permanent limp.

“Mr. Greene?”

Didn’t Sandra have the kids’ interest at heart? Didn’t Petersen and Fischel always toe the Johnny Lynch line? “I vote no,” I said.

Promising to take us to court, the owners stormed out. Petersen demanded silence. The next order of business was called. I was warmed from the inside with a feeling of having stood up with the forces of good. I acknowledged a demure smile from Sandra Powell.

On the way out that night, Johnny Lynch grabbed my arm. “Tell me something. Did you know Sandra Powell’s nephew just married the owner of the liquor store across the highway?”

I continued past him. “Don’t know anything about it.”

“Got married three weeks ago Sunday.” He would not let go of my sleeve. “You gave them some wedding present there, Davey Greene. Took away their only competition. Nice work.”

It was Johnny Lynch who made sure I do everything in my power never to be ignorant again; Johnny Lynch, eyeing me from the back row, waiting for me to fail, who unknowingly encouraged me to study the state ethics laws and the statutes concerning conflict of interest, to dedicate my weekends to research at Town Hall. I would not be used again. I would question and dig and ferret out every small connection and innuendo until I had it right. I would not be caught unprepared. I studied policies and labor contracts, reading sentences twice over, repeating them aloud until they made sense, studying half the night through sometimes, hoping Crystal would fall asleep before I got to bed.

We had stopped using condoms three months ago. When I put one on again, Crystal laughed. “What is that for?”

“Just extra protection.”

“Against what? I take the pill, David. You know that. Or do you think I’m sleeping with someone else? Is that it?”

“I never said that.”

“Did you pick up something from Judith? Some kind of infection?” Crystal said. Then hopefully: “Is she fucking someone else?”

“It’s not about Judith. It’s me. I don’t think we’re ready to have a child right now.” Liam’s voice had never quite left my mind. Beneath the anger, I’d heard a desperate terror. She tricked me, I could still hear him say. She’s poison. “I want to use a condom, okay? There’s nothing wrong with being safe.”

“Fine. Use a condom,” she said. “But you won’t feel anything.” Crystal lay on her back, legs spread, eyes on the ceiling, as still as a frightened bride, determined not to feel anything either. In turn, I moved on top of her with grim determination. “Enjoying yourself?” she asked.

The boat captain wore a sleeveless black tee-shirt and orange rubber boots that squeaked as he entered the hearing room. One infant son in the crook of his arm, his lean cocoa-skinned wife holding the other two boys—Saltash’s only triplets—Dominic approached the selectmen like a jungle cat protecting his young. Those of us who weren’t moved to sympathy understood his threats. “I got me a lawyer now and I ain’t gonna be shoved around no more.” He kicked the chair in front of him. “I already been punished for what I done. Fined by a judge. If you people take away my license, that’s double jeopardy. It ain’t right and it ain’t legal.”

Dominic Riggs was nineteen. His father had fished in Saltash, and his grandfather before that. Tall and wiry, with a patchy red-blond beard and a long red ponytail trailing from the back of his baseball cap, he had the kind of drive you encounter in young corporate executives who’ll do anything to get to the top. But as a dragger captain, the top wasn’t high enough to buy a home and support a family. Dominic was often on the wrong side of the shellfish warden: caught scalloping before the official start of the season, caught in areas closed to fishing. The warden warned the kid repeatedly and often looked the other way, but this time he was pissed off. He not only took Dominic to district court, where he’d been fined for possession of twelve bushels of oysters when the legal limit was ten, he was asking the selectmen to suspend Dominic’s license.

“That fine was five hundred dollars. And another seven fifty for the lawyer.” Dominic stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his wife, Jamaican born and herself the daughter of a fisherman. “You people are killing the working man.”

According to the warden, the oyster harvest had been dwindling for the past two years. If some guys took more than the legal limit, there was less chance for the others to survive. Shellfish would go the way of the halibut and the cod; the resource would disappear.

Nonetheless, Sandra Powell said the boy had been punished enough. Who would feed his family if his license was suspended? Weren’t we in the business of helping young people? She moved we deny the warden’s request.

“Second.” Lyle Upham repeated the dangers of opening the town to a law suit. Fred Fischel, facing reelection, was counting votes in the audience, packed with shellfishermen who preferred to curse the selectmen in the lobby, rather than speak their minds in public. Dominic smiled; opinion was moving in his favor.

“Mr. Chairman,” I said.

Petersen responded tiredly, “Mr. Greene,” as if this was not the first time I’d raised my hand to speak this evening but the fiftieth. Obviously, once was too much.

“Mr. Chairman, I move that we take the shellfish regulations of the Town of Saltash and flush them down the nearest toilet.”

“Order.” Petersen banged the gavel. “I said order!” He quieted the crowd. “There’s a motion on the floor, Mr Greene. I assume that was meant to be a facetious remark.”

“No, sir. I’m waiting for a second to my motion,” I said. “Everybody in this town knows everybody else. Everybody is somebody’s neighbor or daughter or cousin or friend. We try to look the other way when one of us breaks the rules. Okay. But that means we have no rules. Why pretend we do? Let’s just flush them away. Now I know Dominic, and I know he works hard to feed his kids, but so do a lot of other guys. If we start ignoring the rules for every one of them, there’ll be no harvest at all. Now if that’s what we want, fine. But then let’s not pretend we have regulations. Let’s just flush them down the damned toilet and call it like it is.”

Fred Fischel raised his hand. “Mr. Chairman, I move to order the previous question.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

The chairman didn’t even look at me. “It means debate is closed, Mr. Greene. Do I hear a second?”

Within minutes the vote was taken. Dominic won.

“You’re in the newspaper!” Crystal said, spreading the
Saltash Eagle
on the kitchen table. Laramie propped his chin on his fists to watch. She read: “‘At last Monday night’s meeting, Selectman David Greene likened unenforced regulations to that which is commonly flushed down the commode …’”

“I didn’t say anything like that.”

“You know what Mr. Lynch said? He said you had real balls to take on the Riggs family.” Crystal dropped her hand in my lap. “And don’t I know it.”

I was embarrassed in front of Laramie, who just smiled dreamily at his mother and me. Crystal thought that his stock had risen since my election, that kids who’d never been interested before were pursuing him. I thought the few new friends he’d made came from his association with my sister’s girls. If anyone’s social life had taken a turn for the better, it was Crystal’s. Like my mom, whose status had soared when I
pitched for the high school team, Crystal imagined herself the First Lady of Saltash. Sometimes people would call the house with questions—When is my road going to be repaved? Is it true they’re planning to build a bike path through the woods?—which Crystal would officiously try to answer. Sometimes she came home with advice from Johnny. “He says never tell reporters anything unless you want it published. Don’t mistake them for your friends.” One night I heard her tell Laramie, “You have to set an example. People are watching us.”

Crystal’s wound was shallow but wide. It formed a scab quickly but needed to be protected or it opened and bled again. This happened once when we were in bed. Several times I saw Laramie bandaging it for her. She could have done so herself, but it seemed a ritual for them. Seriously and awkwardly he would put far more gauze around the wound than necessary. The oversized bandage served as a warning to all of us.

After the liquor license hearing, I spent almost all my time at home reading, an activity Crystal elevated to the legal ruminations of a Supreme Court justice. As soon as I opened my briefcase, she would deny Laramie access to the TV. She would make me a pot of coffee and clear the kitchen table and tell anyone who telephoned, “David is studying policy,” in the same protective voice my uncle Georgie had used to clear kids away from my practice sessions behind the school.