Authors: Luanne Rice
Cass knew that people with hearing loss often compensated in other ways: they had sharper vision, or they sensed a person’s approach before anyone else in the room could actually hear it. Josie, lacking clear words, had developed superior family intuition. She loved to hug and cuddle, and she knew when T.J. needed to be left alone. Although she didn’t always pronounce the names right, she knew who was who. But sometimes her thoughts would pile up, and she’d wail and rage until Cass scooped her up, patting her head
and whispering into her ear, because even if Josie couldn’t hear right the warm breath had to feel good.
Right now Cass and Josie were on their way back from snorkeling. They decided to stop at Lobsterville, just to say hello. Billy had taken T.J. and Belinda to a Red Sox game, and Cass needed some company.
People drinking cocktails milled about outside. The Keatings had initiated an Early Bird Special—half-price lobsters—from five o’clock to six-thirty. This was Nora’s latest idea. Nora was the family moneymaker, this generation’s answer to their grandmother. Sometimes Cass had the sense Nora stayed up all night thinking of the business to avoid feeling lonely. Nora was a spinster. Not just “single” or “unmarried,” but somehow pinched and increasingly ungenerous. All the Keating girls had what Cass liked to call their “romantic histories,” but Nora had slept with one too many womanizing yachtsmen, and she’d turned bitter.
“We’re going to see the ons, we’re going to see the ons,” Josie said, doing a happy little high-step.
“Hello, sweethearts,” Mary Keating said.
“Hi, Mom,” Cass said.
Mary stood behind the reservations desk. A cigarette dangled from her mouth, and she squinted through the smoke at the thick green reservations book. Mary was tiny—several inches shorter than any of her daughters. Cass saw she’d gotten a new perm. Her hair curled in tight steel-gray rings, and the red lipstick she wore made her mouth look enormous. She always matched her lipstick to warm shades in her dress, and today she wore crimson.
Josie scrambled up the tall wooden stool to see what her grandmother was doing. Waiters wearing white shirts and madras ties—a fashion innovation of Nora’s; Cass liked the skinny black ties better—rushed in and out through the kitchen’s swinging doors.
“Where’s Bonnie, Mom?” Cass asked.
“Around. Behind the bar, last I saw.”
A portly man, balding, wearing aviator sunglasses, approached the reservations desk. “Mary! How’ve you been? You remember me.”
From her warm smile, no one but the family would know that Mary Keating had no idea who this guy was.
“Could you make me a reservation for eight people at eight o’clock?” he asked.
Mary glanced at her book. “Sorry, hon. We’ve got before six-thirty or after nine-thirty,” she said.
The man slid a folded bill across the desk. Cass watched Josie, to see if she’d seen. Of course Josie was staring at her grandmother’s closed hand. “We just cruised down from Edgartown,” he said. “Would’ve called you from the boat, but the marine operator couldn’t get a line. Everyone’s going to be damned disappointed. A trip to Mount Hope wouldn’t be the same without dinner at Lobsterville.”
“That’s right, dear,” Mary said. “Okay, I’ll squeeze you in. Eight o’clock sharp. In the Tap Room. No harbor view, but if you’ve just sailed down from the Vineyard, you’ve had enough of the water.”
“That’s great,” the man said. “We’ll see you then.”
“Mom …” Cass said, nodding at Josie. She didn’t approve of Josie learning graft from her own grandmother.
Mary shrugged her shoulders. “This is the restaurant business, honey,” she said.
“He gave you money,” Josie said.
“He was just paying for his dinner in advance,” Mary said. “That way there won’t be any squabbling over the check.” Cass didn’t consider the lie an improvement; Josie had an unnerving knack for discerning the truth. Cass watched her now, regarding her grandmother with puzzlement.
“Me have candies?” Josie asked, sensing that she had mysteriously gained the upper hand.
“No, it’s too close to dinner. You can call someone on the loudspeaker, though.” Mary ran her finger down the reservations list. “You can call the Wilsons. Table for two.” She handed Josie the microphone.
“That’s okay,” Josie said, shaking her head. Shy about speaking, she would never talk on the loudspeaker. All the other kids had loved it. Cass remembered watching Belinda lift the heavy chrome
microphone, flip the red switch, and blow softly into the speaker. Then in a steady voice she’d call the party, unconsciously imitating her grandmother’s Thornton accent.
Mary called the Wilson party, and they came forward: a high-school-aged couple, dressed for a prom. Mary had to smell the girl’s white rose corsage, comment on the boy’s pearl-gray tuxedo. Then she called Vinnie Fusaro, a waiter not many years older than the Wilsons, to lead them to their table. “Make sure they have a view,” Mary commanded. “Aren’t they cute?” she said to Cass.
But Cass was watching Vinnie Fusaro from behind. He had brown hair, dark and silky as a polished table. It curled over the collar of his white shirt. He didn’t walk; he swaggered. He carried the leather-bound menus as if they meant nothing to him, objects that had simply materialized in his left hand. Cass thought of Billy twenty years ago: cocky in high school, carrying his school-books as if they were air, as if he never planned to read them, anyway.
“Who does Vinnie Fusaro remind you of?” Cass asked her mother.
“He’s the spitting image of his father, God rest his soul.”
“That man looks like Daddy,” Josie said, oblivious to the conversation.
Cass glanced down and wondered if Josie looked in the mirror and also saw her father. Josie had Billy’s wide dark eyes, his tangled curls, a tan in June that Cass would kill to have in August.
“Well, hi,” Bonnie said, untying the white apron that covered her black uniform. “What perfect timing. I’m just about to leave for the day. I have to get home and feed your cousins,” she said straight to Josie, hugging her.
Bonnie weighed one eighty-three. She had always gained weight easily, but in the last few years she had piled it on steadily, as if becoming fat were her goal. She ate a handful of mints from the reservations desk.
“You shouldn’t eat those,” Mary said.
Bonnie ate another handful.
“Where’s Nora?” Mary asked. “My feet are killing me. She’s supposed to take over for me here, and I want to go home. Your
father is all alone with his mother, and you
know
they’re driving each other crazy.”
“We’ll go find Nora,” Cass said. “Josie, will you be a good girl for Gram?”
Josie did not answer, and Cass, walking away with Bonnie, knew that she hadn’t even heard the question.
The noise level was high tonight. A few fishermen stood along the mahogany bar, but mostly the crowd was from out of town: women wearing obvious eye makeup, men slightly overdressed in pale suits and ties. It was too early in the summer for the blue-blazer crowd.
“Hey, sailors!” Cass yelled to John Barnard and Al Sweet. They motioned her over, but she just blew them a kiss.
“You’re a married woman,” Bonnie said. “Good thing your husband’s not here.”
“I wish he were. Got to keep him on his toes,” Cass said.
Nora stood between John and Al, shooting dagger looks at Cass. “My God, is she still going after Al?” Cass asked.
“She’s lonely,” Bonnie said. “But it turns my stomach, the way she throws herself at him. You know he couldn’t care less about her.”
It made Cass sad, the way Nora had no respect for herself. It showed in her face. She had pale, thin cheeks, the complexion of someone who smoked and drank too much. She had bleached the red out of her hair, and blond waves fell to her narrow shoulders. Nora was seven years older than Cass, four years older than Bonnie. As teenagers, all the Keating girls had tried to scrub away their freckles, squirt lemon juice into their hair to dull the red. Now, watching Nora talk to John and Al, Cass thought Nora looked more Nordic than Irish—someone from another family.
“Let’s leave her alone,” Bonnie said. “I’ll take over for Mom for a while. Let the little creeps starve. This morning they missed the school bus on purpose, both of them. They’re doing it to torture me. It’s punishment for their father, I think. Every time he does a long trip, they act up. He’s been out thirteen days, scallopping with the O’Tooles. You’d think they’d have outgrown it by now. I mean,
teenagers.”
“A hunger strike,” Cass said, glancing again at Nora. “We have to find her a boyfriend. Someone you wouldn’t necessarily have to describe as ‘halfway decent.’”
“All these guys talk. Gavin says you wouldn’t believe the sex bragging on the boat, even about Nora. Dad’s paying their wages, and they’re talking about his daughter.”
“They’re skunks,” Cass said.
“You must admit,” Bonnie said, making a matronly little clucking noise, “that she does bring it on herself.”
Cass didn’t reply. Bonnie was the family earth mother, everything in her life as comfortable as old clothes.
Nora needed help, not criticism. She was so lonely, she would drink too much and start making phone calls at night. She’d call her sisters, friends, people she hadn’t seen in ten years. Sooner or later she’d call some horny guy just back from fifteen days at sea without a woman. Nora would tell him to come over, and things would start up.
Cass saw John Barnard watching her, his smile all crooked and sultry, wanting her to really notice him. “Come on,” she said to Bonnie. “Let’s get out of here.”
Mary Keating turned the reservations desk over to Bonnie. Bonnie rolled her blue eyes, listening to Mary tick off familiar instructions: give the Pentwarses a good table; keep an eye on Sandy and make sure her checks match what people order; offer the lobster-stuffed sole to the best customers only, the regular seafood stuffing to everyone else.
Billy, T.J., and Belinda walked through the front door. The kids were wearing Red Sox caps.
“Will you look who’s here!” Mary exclaimed.
Billy kissed Mary, Bonnie, and Josie. Cass felt a force drawing her to him. He looked her straight in the eye, but she gave him no encouragement—just to see what he would do. He pulled her close, gave her a hot kiss, didn’t let her go as soon as she expected. His rough hands felt smooth running down the back of her yellow cotton sweater. Leaning back, he gave her a questioning smile; perhaps, like Cass, he was wondering why this feeling so seldom hit them at home.
“Who won?” Mary asked.
“Red Sox,” Billy said.
“Oh, good. Jim should be happy. He’s probably been listening on the radio.”
“We brought you a cap,” Belinda said to Josie.
Josie gasped with pleasure. She shimmied on the stool. “Where is it?”
Billy reached into his back pocket and fit it on her head.
“Kitty cat, kitty cat. Where is it?” Josie asked.
Bending down to Josie’s level, Cass looked straight into her eyes. “’Cap,’ not ‘cat.’ It’s on your head.” Josie began slapping her own head, as if there were a live animal on it, and howling with fright and frustration.
“Oh, God,” Belinda said, mortified. She escaped out the door.
Cass tried to reason with Josie for exactly thirty seconds, until she realized that Josie had worked herself into a frenzy. When Cass tried to lift her, Josie turned into rubberchild. Over and over she performed a boneless slither, slipping through her mother’s arms, screaming “No, no!” as alarmed patrons glanced up from their drinks. Cass fought an urge to shake her like a dust mop. Billy stood there, motionless.
“Can’t you do something?” Cass asked him. She heard the outrage in her own voice. She stood aside.
Billy put his arms around Josie—loosely at first, then more firmly. She stopped struggling. She was crying so hard, tears flew out of her eyes. “Kitty cat, kitty cat,” she wept. Again, she swatted her head, slapping Billy’s eye in the process. But she let him hold her.
Billy lifted Josie into his arms. “We’ll be in the car,” he said, leaving the restaurant.
Cass leaned against the reservations desk, watching them go.
“Special help, special help is what you need,” Mary said, as if she hadn’t said it too many times already.
Cass half expected her mother to whip out a brochure for North Point Academy for the Deaf. Mary would get something helpful but meddlesome in mind, then work her point home by beating aggressively around the bush, until you wanted to scream.
Cass turned her back. She started to walk out, but Bonnie caught her arm and pulled her into the corner.
“It’s hard,” Bonnie said, her voice older-sister confident, “but you’ll figure it out.”
“She acts like I don’t know what’s best for my own daughter.” Cass paused. “Not that I do.”
“Like any of us do.”
“Billy handles her so easily. Did you see?” Cass asked.
“He’s not with her all the time. It’s the same with Gavin. They aren’t around half the time, and when they come home they want to be the good guys.”
“He won’t talk to her,” Cass said. “He’s afraid to. He just hugs her and thinks everything will be fine. You have to make her understand things. He treats her like a doll, not a daughter.”
“Tell him,” Bonnie said.
“He knows,” Cass said, looking at Bonnie straight-on. “He’s heard it a hundred times.”
Cass sat in Mrs. Kaiser’s waiting room, watching Josie walk her Barbie doll along the sofa back. Dolls made Josie feel safe. Lately she carried this naked Barbie wherever she went. Cass couldn’t convince her to put it down, even to take a bath or go to bed.
Mrs. Kaiser’s door opened. A boy about Josie’s age hurtled into the waiting room, his mother and Mrs. Kaiser close behind him. He stood beside Josie, saying words that sounded like “Row, row, run, row.” He wore two hearing aids. Josie snatched her Barbie, as if she feared he would take it from her. She ran to Cass, and the boy ran crying to his mother.
“He’s just saying hello,” the boy’s mother said pleasantly, making sure Josie could see her mouth.
“
My
Barbie!” Josie said, shaking the doll at the boy.
Cass shrugged at the boy’s mother, and the mother shrugged back as she led her son out of the office.