The From-Aways (11 page)

“Special order,” Carter says. “You want one?”

“Why would I?” I ask, even though I do.

“The Turks wear evil eyes. Why not one of these?”

And so it is that after my name, the second thing my father gives me is a sightless animal’s eye. I slip the marble of a fake fox eye into my pocket and let my fingers linger there a moment. On the first day of first grade I accidentally called my teacher Mom and got heckled for the rest of the year. I’m terrified of making a slip like that here. The word
Dad
could just slip off my tongue. This isn’t working. I resolve to try a new tack.

“Mr. Marks,” I say.

“Carter,” he says, which is equally weird.

“Carter,” I say. “If you could be either Woodward or Bernstein, who would you be?” He looks confused. “Woodward and Bernstein as played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film
All the President’s Men
,” I clarify.

“The Watergate guys? Either, I guess.” But he’s not done mulling this over yet. Unbelievably, he’s taken my question seriously. This is not a man who balks. In fact, he seems to be exactly the sort of person Marta needed in her life. A man who could encompass her crazy and love her anyway. I tried to be that person for her, but I was always coming up short. Here, here is what she was missing. The third figure in the portrait to balance us out.

Carter says, “I’ve always thought of it as more of a Butch Cassidy versus the Sundance Kid situation. Wouldn’t you know I always wanted to be Sundance? My whole life. But I’m a Cassidy through and through. Just can’t shut up.”

I almost tell him everything, right then. Not just because he’s taking me seriously, but because he’s right. I’d never really considered it before, but there are parallels. Woodward’s a bit like Sundance. Stoic. And maybe an inability to blab about your feelings doesn’t necessarily mean you’re broken. It’s too much. I’ve got to get us back on track.

“Why Elm Park?” I ask Carter.

“Ms. Lynch, I was born here. I’ve been back over twenty years, and all the good things I remember from growing up are changing. The town budget has never been voted down before, and with the recent purchase of the Penobscot lots, the majority of the town’s waterfront is now controlled by out-of-staters. Are you aware that the owners of that new house control the property all the way through Neversink Park? The carousel and park have been maintained by the Sanford family for the past sixty years. Now the Sanfords live in North Carolina. Who’s going to maintain that park, Ms. Lynch? Summer people who aren’t here three-quarters of the year?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Every time he calls me Lynch I feel a twist in my guts. He looks at me then, his head cocked, like he knows me from somewhere he can’t recall. I can’t stand it. I look away. There’s a set of big glass doors looking out on his backyard, and through them I see a cat. A tabby with a bell, rubbing against the doorframe.

“Is that Derek Jeter?” I say.

“There are a lot cats around here,” Carter says. “I put out food. They come and go.”

I get up and open the door. The cat comes in and circles my ankles, purring loud. I pick it up and look at the license.
Derek Jeter.

“Who was that on the Georges’ doorstep?” I say.

Carter leans back, his shoulders relaxed. “I couldn’t begin to tell you,” he says. “But I give Jethro Newkirk use of my father’s taxidermy studio. Perhaps you should ask him; he’s the only one who’s used it in years.”

And sure, I’m relieved Carter hasn’t done it. Relieved that it’s a bait and switch and the cat is fine. But now my plan is all shot to hell. Carter starts rubbing the cat under the chin. He’s too close, right next to me, and I lean in a little so our arms are touching.

Do you know what the bitch of this is? This is a man I wouldn’t have wanted to hate. This is a man whose approval I desperately would have wanted to win. The irresponsible asshole who spent his days on the road while Marta went crazy back at home, the man I hate, is gone, gone, gone, and all I’ve got is this guy, this mild guy who, in the way of many aging men, does not quite fill out the seat of his jeans.

I take a step back. I hold the cat tight to my chest. “Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Marks. I’ll just go ahead and cite you in my article. That’s
M-A-R-K-S,
right?”

“You go ahead and use my name,” Carter says. “Just get the quotes right. I hate to be misrepresented in print.” He looks at the nothing where my notepad should be. “You think you can handle that?”

“I’ve got it,” I say, and tap my temple.

“Real journalistic vigor,” he says, and shows me out.

13

Leah

I
can’t believe Quinn wouldn’t tell me something like this. I also can’t believe she left. This was supposed to be my story too.

“Charley!” I bang into her office. “Quinn and I are supposed to be on assignment together. Where does Marks live?”

“Let her be, Leah.” And Charley looks almost sad as she says it. Like for me to bother Quinn now would be an intrusion too terrible to consider. But has she read Quinn’s copy lately? I like the girl but the idea of her going solo on the only interesting story to hit Menamon since I got here drives me crazy. The accusations are against her dad; there’s no way she won’t go easy on him. It’ll be a mess. A little intruding is definitely in order.

“Always together. That’s what you said,” I say. I hate being kicked off a story. “Where, Charley?”

Charley leans back in her chair and says, “If you need something to do, go interview your friends in Elm Park. You can contribute quotes to the piece.”

“I’ve never met the Georges,” I say.

“I’m sure you’ll hit it off, they speak Jeter,” she says. Her disdain is so idle it’s infuriating. This woman is my sister, and I feel cheated. I want someone to call when things are bad at work, or Henry is driving me nuts. I need a sister. Even if it’s Charley.

“What would you say your problem is, Charley?” I say. “If you had to put a finger on it?”

She throws her hands up. “I don’t have a problem. I just don’t like it when a reporter, a damn
Gazette
reporter, who I’ve hired, by the way, who is on my staff, asks stupid questions. You and Henry sell Pop’s boat to buy the house, you waltz around like it doesn’t even matter. Fine. That’s personal, I deal. But here? You work for me. You’ve been working with Winters for weeks now and you didn’t realize she was Marks’s daughter? The only semifamous person in Menamon, she’s his spitting image, and you’re dumb enough to miss it? Learn your fucking beat, Leah.”

The window is open and the world outside is dizzying through the screen: sea and sky chopped up into pieces. “What boat, Charley?”

I can tell she wonders if I’m screwing with her because she starts stacking papers she hasn’t touched since I’ve worked here. Tapping the bottom out on her desk while biting her lip. “You don’t know this,” she decides. “Of course you don’t know this. Because the two of you are
children
.”

It creeps up on me. The first assignment she sent me on. The one Quinn called hazing. “The
Menamon Star
,” I say. “The lobster boat at Deep’s. It was yours?”

She sighs. “How the hell did you keep a job in New York?” she says. “The
Star
was Pop’s lobster boat. The paper came later. After he died I got the paper and Henry got the boat. Family businesses. Then Henry says he’s leaving. Going to New York. You know what he said? ‘Just give me a few months away and I’ll come back and take it over.’ ”

I feel seasick. I don’t want to believe what she’s telling me, but I can hear Henry making that vow, offering up that timetable. It’s just the sort of thing he would say.

Charley smacks the table. “But he didn’t, and you know why? Because he met a girl. Henry sold the
Star,
used the money to pay off the bank’s share of Mom and Pop’s house, and lost us our lobstering license.”

I think of Henry beaming proud as he gave me that shiny ring of keys with the green ribbon. The money. He just
made it work
.

“Henry doesn’t even fish!” I say. Because it’s so improbable. Henry as a lobsterman. My Henry. I would have known. “He’s a gardener,” I say, then regret it. I wish I’d said
landscape architect
.

Charley goes back to the papers on her desk, through with me. She says, “There’s a picture of the
Star
above your mantel. Unless you’ve been redecorating.”

She sighs, pinches her crooked nose. “Just leave Winters alone on this one. That’s all I was trying to say.”

O
UR FIREPLACE IS
made of smooth rocks that Henry’s grandparents picked out by hand. Riverbed rocks, schlepped back from inland, his grandparents’ arms growing strong and their palms callused, Henry told me. Henry’s grandfather caked them together with mortar and built this hearth. In the top right corner is a lumpy stone that Henry says his grandmother made his granddad dive for. The family legend is that she claimed it was shaped like a heart, asked for it to make her husband show he loved her. He dove for it and now love is cemented in with stones. History. Everything that has happened to this town, everything that has happened to Henry’s family, the local celebrities and their obvious estranged children . . . this unknown history comes between me and everyone I am trying to reach.

Like Charley said, resting on the mantel is an architectural drawing of a boat, blue on blue, the original plans for the
Star
. I have been living with the ghost of this boat for months now. Ghosts of boats and of people I will never meet. I cannot believe Henry did not tell me this thing everyone in town clearly knows and resents me for. He is doing the opposite of helping us live here.

I pour a large whiskey and head into the attic through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Detritus is piled in stacks: a mustard-colored velvet armchair, several empty aquariums, a pair of wheelless roller skates, a rifle, blackly marred bottles that once contained ink. There are fishing poles and lures: rubbery, squidlike baubles that glint and wiggle so that even I want to put my mouth around them. There is a mirror so thick with dust that it reflects nothing but the time that has laid its ashes there. There is something that looks like a coffin, but of course it’s only an old storage box, made of cheap pine. Not for the dead but for their trappings: documents, photos, and files.

I flip through documents until I find what I am looking for: the registration papers. The
Menamon Star
had been a functional lobstering rig since 1935. There was a brief hiatus in function (though not in license) during the Second World War when Henry’s great-grandfather served. The
Star
resumed function after the war with Henry’s grandfather at the helm. It continued on that way until his father died. Until Henry met me.

He
made it work,
he said. The photos, the keys. He was so happy and so was I. But he lied, Henry. A lie of omission, but still a lie. How many times do you lie to someone when you are married? I think the answer might be: a lot of times.
No, I don’t mind, I am not in the mood, you look wonderful
. But big lies, lies like this one? Certainly you can only have so many of those.

Does Henry think I am the sort of woman who he can keep things from? Is this the sort of guy he is: a secret keeper? A glosser-over? No, he is not. I don’t think so. I did not marry a fisherman or a secret keeper, I do not think.

It is, however, possible that I was underinformed about who Henry was and was not when we got married.

There is a chance that in our few months of courtship we did not really take the time to do our due diligence. But who slows down for such a thing when they are in love?

I leave the attic and run outside. I am going to show Henry that I know things. That he should not keep secrets from me. That he too may have been underinformed about who
I
was and was not. Outside the one-lane road is wet and black. I start running and I do not stop until I get to town, my wet hair slapping around my ears.

The bells chime a frozen tinkle as I walk into the hardware store, which smells like rubber piping and rat poison. The neon hammer sign is pulsing pink and blue in the window. The tumbler of Red Hots is near the checkout and an old man squinting at the rain asks if he can help me.

“I need some paint,” I say.

“What kind?”

“The kind that sticks to a car,” I say, and hand him part of the file I’ve taken with me, a photo of the Lynch family lobster buoy. “These colors.” He collects a series of paint chips and splays them like a winning hand of cards. He has a pair of glasses on a dingy braid of string around his neck and he puts these on.

He says, “I suspect what you want is some tadpole green, honeysuckle orange, and walking-on-eggshells white. Will that be all, Mrs. Lynch?”

“That will be all,” I say. I scoop some of the Red Hots out of the jar. I let them clack against my teeth and then I crunch them. Sugar and spice. Mrs. Lynch.

I
T
’
S STILL RAINING
, so I keep the car in the garage, but open the door so I don’t asphyxiate myself. The garage lights are a warm orange color and I clonk the open bottle of whiskey on a plywood shelf next to a drum of gasoline. I have a portable radio, so besides the sound of the rain there is also the sound of Motown. Squeaky-voiced men harmonize with other squeaky-voiced men in a way that is beautiful.
I’m moonin’ over you
and
I’m thinking about my baby
and
ain’t that peculiar.