Authors: Luanne Rice
“What?” he said again.
“I just can’t take it anymore,” she said. Her voice quavered, but from something hot, like anger. Her brows scrunched into a frown. She looked at him straight on.
I can be different, T.J. wanted to say. I can change. Let me take care of you. But his voice wouldn’t work.
“It’s too intense, okay? Last week I thought I was pregnant. I’m not,” she said hurriedly, probably frightened by the sight of his face.
“I wish you were,” T.J. said. He didn’t care if they were only fifteen. He loved her so much, he’d marry her tomorrow. He’d fish on his father’s boat and support Alison and the baby, find them a little place where they’d all love one another.
“God, that’s sick!” she said, looking disgusted. “When you talk like that, T.J., I don’t know what to say. Don’t love people so much; you scare them.”
“You can’t just decide to love someone less,” T.J. said. He had to hold himself back from pleading with her. The effort caused him actual, nauseating pain.
“I just can’t take it,” she said. “We were getting too serious. Even my mother noticed it.”
“I thought your mother didn’t care.”
“I just want to see other people for a while,” she said.
“Martin,” T.J. said.
“He’s another person.” Alison stood there, her chest pushed forward and her nose turned up. T.J. stared at her, as if he were memorizing her features, trying to figure out how so many beautiful parts could make a girl look so cold and snotty. He started walking away.
“We can be friends,” she called after him.
T.J. walked past room 301, where he was already missing English class, down the north stairs, out the north door, and across the football field. Snow flurries swirled in the wind. He’d left without his jacket or his books, and he just kept walking. He couldn’t have said exactly why, whether he wanted to scare Alison or prove to her how completely desperate he felt, or whether he just wanted to show her he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill wimp lovesick sucker, but T.J. was on his way home to get the gun.
Marriage agreed with Nora; she never would have believed how much she loved it. She felt utterly transformed, like one of those women in a magazine makeover who start out drab and listless and, three pages later, turn out to be beautiful. Her parts were all the same, but suddenly her eyes sparkled, her hair had a sheen, her skin glowed. Nora felt as new as her name: Nora Randecker. She couldn’t wait until after Thanksgiving, to send out boxes of Christmas cards imprinted with the message: “A Happy Holiday Season from Mr. & Mrs. Willis Randecker.” Yesterday their new checks had arrived, printed with both their names, and Nora kept peeking at them, as if she couldn’t quite believe they were real.
Since their marriage, she’d changed her hours. She worked lunch and early dinner, and she left the restaurant in time to fix dinner for Willis at home. An hour before lunch one cold November day, as she gazed out Lobsterville’s picture windows, wondering what Willis was doing, she saw Bonnie’s station wagon weaving backward down the wharf, Bonnie at the wheel. Bonnie backed right up to the warehouse loading dock.
Nora pulled on her long black alpaca coat and headed into the wind. By the time she reached the warehouse, Cass was on the loading dock, too, pushing a tire. The Keating girls stored their snow tires in the warehouse from April till November every year. At the first hint of snow, they would switch their tires. Nora glowed; just this morning Willis had taken her tires from the warehouse, driven her 280Z down to Ledoux’s Garage to have them mounted and balanced.
“They’re forecasting six inches,” Nora called.
“Wouldn’t you know it?” Bonnie moaned. “My first gig’s in Newport this afternoon, and we’re having a blizzard.”
“It’s not a blizzard,” Cass said, shoving the second tire across Bonnie’s tailgate.
“What gig?” Nora asked.
“It’s a quilt expo,” Bonnie said. She was bundled warmly in a scarlet mackinaw that made her look like a magnificent red bell pepper. “I’m selling my brownies at the food table.”
Nora peered into the front seat and saw an enormous basket covered with a linen towel. Bonnie whipped off the cloth. She’d wrapped each brownie in cellophane and attached a hand-lettered sticker. Nora read the labels: Mocha Toffee Crunch, Fudge Lava Whirl, Peanut Butter Sticky.
“Do you think the names are stupid?” Bonnie asked, her brow tight with seriousness.
“They are delicious names,” Cass called from the loading dock. Nora was thinking she might have toned them down, but Cass threw her a warning look.
“I’d buy one,” Nora said.
“Get moving,” Cass said to Bonnie. “There’s going to be a tire
line at Ledoux’s, and you want to hit the road before the snow starts.”
“You can take mine if it’s ready first,” Nora said.
“Thanks!” Bonnie called. Cass and Nora waved as she pulled away.
“Where’s Josie?” Nora asked, glancing around.
“With Belinda. Belinda stayed home from school today.”
“Oh, is she sick?”
“A bad case of VR. Can you believe it?”
“Belinda has her period already?” Nora asked.
“She’s thirteen,” Cass said. “She told me she’d spent the night curled in a ball, wishing she’d been born a boy. Also, she has three tests tomorrow. That might have something to do with it. My good student.”
“Doesn’t take after her mother, that’s for sure,” Nora said fondly.
“I saw Willis this morning,” Cass said, crouching on the loading dock so her head was level with Nora’s.
“It’s the little things about marriage,” Nora said. “I never imagined how it would feel to have my husband tell me to sleep late while he had my snow tires put on.”
“I haven’t experienced that, exactly,” Cass said. “Billy’s always fishing at the first snow. I’m quitting work in an hour or so; I’ll get mine put on then. Dad’s been hounding me all morning. Just cause he’s so efficient and thought of it last night.”
“I love being taken care of,” Nora said. She had the feeling she’d said the wrong thing; she wondered if maybe Cass and Billy had had a fight. Nora had always wondered what their fights were like, whether they had knockdown-dragouts, like thunderstorms, to counterbalance the steady pull of electricity between them.
“Willis is being really patient with Dad,” Cass said.
“Isn’t he?” Nora said, thrilled that Cass would notice. “He drives down almost every day to talk to him.”
“Are you as upset as I am?”
“About Dad?”
“About him wanting to sell out.”
“Well, I would be, if I thought he’d actually go through with it.”
“You don’t think he will?”
Nora shook her head. “Let’s face it. Dad loves his big ideas. But how often …”
“Does he actually go through with them?” Cass said, nodding her agreement.
“I think Willis is helping him.”
“Dad loves talking real estate, and Willis is a great listener. I just stay in the background, trying to keep my mouth shut. Dad’s determined to leave us all ‘set for life.’”
“I know. Willis has to break it to him gently that selling the wharf isn’t exactly like winning the jackpot. After taxes and everything, there wouldn’t be all that much left.”
“I can see how Dad feels,” Cass said, squinting as she looked over the harbor. “We love this place so much, we feel like someone would
have
to pay us a fortune to get it away from us.”
Suddenly Cass’s gaze traveled down the pier, and Nora looked over her shoulder. Here came Al Sweet, dressed for the North Atlantic, running at full tilt.
“Oh, great. My old flame,” Nora said before she could stop herself. Al had a very sarcastic way of calling her “Mrs. Randecker” every time he saw her.
“Slow down, Al,” Cass called. “The fish’ll wait for you.”
“Nah,” Al said, skidding to a stop. “I hear Billy Medieros is catching them all, cleaning the banks right out. The big shot, with his own boat.”
“
My
big shot,” Cass said, rocking on her heels.
“Hey, Mrs. Randecker,” Al said, kissing the back of Nora’s hand. “How’s married life treating you?”
“Fine,” Nora said crisply. As if she’d ever discuss her marriage with Al. His big mustache drooped, and he looked hurt.
“You know I want the best for you, Nora. You’ve gotta know that.”
Cass raised her eyebrows, urging Nora to be nice.
“Okay,” Nora said, smiling at Al. “Thank you. Sincerely.”
“You’re sincerely welcome,” Al said. He continued down the dock and began throwing his gear into the
Aurora’s
cockpit.
“You can afford to be big about it,” Cass whispered, squeezing Nora’s arm. “He’ll never have anyone like you again. You’ve gotta know that.”
Nora laughed. “I do, don’t I?” On top of everything else, marriage to Willis had given her a sense of humor.
His fourth day at sea on his new boat, with black ice coating the deck and turning the rigging silver, while Cass and her sister stood laughing on Keating’s Wharf, Billy Medieros made his first call to the Coast Guard.
“Mayday, mayday,” he said into the microphone. “This is fishing vessel
Cassandra.
We need assistance.”
“Coast Guard station Nantucket, we read you
Cassandra.
What is your position?”
Billy leaned across the chart table, peered at the log. He’d taken a loran reading two minutes earlier, just after the accident, but now he couldn’t read his own writing, his hand had been shaking so badly. Fumbling to draw the book closer, he knocked over the sleek black flashlight Cass had stuck in his stocking last Christmas.
He read the coordinates to the Coast Guard operator. “One hundred twenty miles south-southeast of Sankaty Head,” Billy said. “We’re taking on water.” He paused, catching his breath. “And we’ve lost two men.” He blinked, seeing Frank Santos and Jesse Gabriel slide down the stern, through the trawl door, into the bottle-green wash. No more than five minutes had passed since it had happened.
“Dispatching rescue vessels,” the operator said.
“It’s an emergency,” Billy said, and the words sounded hollow. Why else would he be calling the Coast Guard? At first he’d thought they’d caught a sea monster—its slimy black head rose up above the surface, with the
Cassandra’s
dark nets cascading like a mourning veil, trapping it. Then the water parted, and the dark hull of a submarine glistened, hovering on the surface. They’d trapped its periscope.
“Cut loose!” Frank had yelled, heading for the starboard winch.
But it wasn’t a submarine; it was a sea monster after all. They’d snagged a humpback whale, its tail thrashing in the nets, trying to free itself. It breached, shooting straight out of the sea like a missile from hell, its entire sixty-foot body clearing the water, its tense white flukes just missing the transom. Crashing into the sea, it displaced a wall of water that washed over
Cassandra’s
decks, draining in a sheet through the trawl doors.
Billy had held the wheel, feeling his boat cant backward, the stern tipping under. In that instant he’d been sure they’d all drown, be dragged straight to the sea bottom. Tony Domingus, his first mate, grabbed the rifle.
At the helm, feeling his boat pull backward as he drove forward, Billy knew a shot would be futile. Tony would have to hit the brain on the first shot to kill the whale. Even dead, the creature’s sheer weight would drag them under. But before Tony could clear the cockpit, the whale sounded.
“We’re sinking!” Jesse shouted. The whale swam straight down, a torpedo to the center of the earth, its great white flukes disappearing in the murk. Billy felt his boat lurch beneath his feet, tipping so the bow arched toward the sky and the stern went under. The cockpit’s rear wall became the floor, and Billy stared through the glass beneath his feet to see Frank and Jesse drop into the sea, their fingers scrabbling across the icy deck, their screams howling through the wind as they vanished.
Then, suddenly, as if there had been no whale, the Cassandra righted herself. She rode with grace, rolling across the rhythmic waves of a stormless sea. Billy and Tony moved cautiously at first, inching their way out the cockpit door, across the deck. Then they ran for the stern, to look for Frank and Jesse. Tony threw two life rings into the empty current.
“It freed itself,” Billy said. Two hundred yards off the port quarter he saw the whale blow, arch its massive black back, and dive.
“What the fuck happened?” Paul Skillin, who’d been off watch, sleeping down below, clambered onto the deck.
“We snagged a whale,” Tony said, his teeth chattering. “Frank and Jesse. Shit—”
“What are you talking about?” Paul asked, following Tony’s gaze. Then, “In the water? They went over?”
“Just look,” Billy said. “Keep looking.”
“Water’s pouring in,” Paul said, gesturing at the companion ladder, leading below. “It’s bad. The fucker pulled some fittings loose.”
“They just went over,” Tony said, scanning the surface. “It happened so fast.”
“Go down and start the hand pump,” Billy directed Paul. “We’ve got maybe five minutes to get those guys onboard.”
“They’re finished,” Tony said fiercely. “They’re frozen.”
Billy saw something bright just below the surface. He grabbed the boat hook, plunged it into the sea, and caught Frank’s crimson watch cap. It dangled off the long hook; Billy tried to pull it onboard, but the wind grabbed it away.
“Haul in the nets,” Billy yelled to Tony. He sprinted to the cockpit, worked the engine through its paces; it didn’t seem to be damaged. Once Tony got the nets onboard, Billy would beat in widening circles until he found the men. They would have cut their boots off; maybe they’d grabbed onto the life rings and could see
Cassandra
even now, a little distant to hear their calls, but not so far off they’d have lost hope.
“Hang on, hang on,” Billy said, more to himself, searching the waves with binoculars. He shivered in his warm jacket, his hands numb in their black leather mittens. Icicle daggers hung everywhere, sharks’ teeth in the rigging.
The winches groaned, hauling in the heavy nets. They had just started dragging a new area, just before they’d caught the whale. Billy turned away, to check his loran position. At that instant, the framed photo of Cass and the kids caught his eye. He focused on Cass, her soft blue eyes telling him to stay steady, not to panic, to keep his head.