North of Boston (10 page)

So I'm not really surprised at Thomasina's breaking-and-entering behavior. There's even a perverse sweetness to it, because she did it for Noah's sake. It does bother me, though, that she is trying to cull a bit of virtue out of the situation for not having had drugs on her. As if dodging that bullet was more significant than the fact that she left Noah alone. It is part of the general craziness of Thomasina these days that nothing she does is properly described. She blows smoke as unthinkingly as she exhales.

“But wait,” she says suddenly. “You've got to see this.” From the folds of the purse comes the manila envelope, curled at the edges from being stuffed inside. She opens it and hands me the title and bill of sale.

“What?”

“Look,” she says impatiently, pointing to the lines on the title marked
seller
and
buyer
. “Ned bought the
Molly Jones
from Ocean Catch.” She flips to the bill of sale. “For one dollar.” She stares at me. “Do you get it?”

“Not sure.” My head is molasses that doesn't want to be stirred. “Maybe. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Even used, this kind of boat is probably worth over a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It was a gift.”

“Exactly. Now look at the date. It was purchased
after he quit
.
Why would they do that?”

“Severance?” I say, grasping at straws.

“Please. Ocean Catch? They're the greediest bastards around. The only reason people around here work for them is that they're the only big fish company left. And guys are always quitting. Nobody cares if you quit.”

“But Ned had been there for twenty years, so maybe they figured they owed him some kind of reward for his loyalty.”

“A gold watch, maybe. But a lobster boat? I don't think so.”

The invoice describes the
Molly Jones
as a steel-plate offshore Gamage lobster boat with a length of 45 feet, a weight of 26 tons, and a 660-gallon fuel capacity.

“He told me he was disgusted with the way Ocean Catch was fishing,” Thomasina says. “He didn't say why, but I figured they must be exceeding quotas or trawling illegally. You know, breaking some of the sustainable fisheries things. But I was surprised, because he never cared about that stuff before.
Let the environmentalists worry about the environment,
he used to say.”

“If Ned was criticizing the company, why would they turn around and buy him a boat?”

“Right. That's what I'm saying! And he quit so suddenly. Never breathed a word that he was even thinking of leaving, then all of a sudden he's gone. Out of there. And he's lobstering practically the next day in the
Molly Jones
.”

We're still sitting in my car in the parking lot. The brick back of my apartment building rises in front of the dirty windshield. The sun is claiming a tiny portion of the eastern sky now. I see in the rearview that one of my neighbors is a real early bird. She gets in her car and drives away.

I flatten the documents on my lap, go over them again. There's a handwritten note at the bottom of the invoice, just a sentence in a small, dainty cursive, the kind of genteel penmanship they used to teach in parochial schools years ago.
May the wind be always at your back. Take care, Mrs. Smith.

Thomasina and I are silent, thinking things over. Ned. The boat. Quitting. Ocean Catch. A metaphoric brick wall to match the real one we're staring at.

“By the way, did you steal Ned's computer?” I say.

“Steal his computer? Of course not.”

“Phyllis thinks you did.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She left a nasty message on your machine.”

“Jesus, what a bitch.”

“No argument.”

“His sister probably took it for her kids.” Thomasina stirs, turns her head to gaze out the passenger side window. The extra distance helps her admit something difficult, personal. “I'm worried, Pirio. About me and Noah.”

“You ought to be. You're in deep shit, and you're hurting him.”

She gives a short, ironic laugh. “What kind of friend says something like that?”

“An honest one.”

She sighs. “I know I've got to do something. I have to take control of my life.”

“It's more specific than that. You have to stop drinking and doing drugs.”

She turns to me abruptly, allowing herself a flash of anger. “I'm
trying
, Pirio.”

“Really? How hard were you trying last night?”

“It's not as easy as you think,” she says wearily.

“Noah was terrified. I traveled all night to get here. What if I wasn't around?”

“I promise it won't happen again.”

I shake my head in disgust. “I wish you hadn't said that.”

As I start to get out of the car, she puts her hand on my arm. “Wait. Would you mind driving me out to East Milton? I need to pick up my car.”

“Take a cab,” I say curtly. It's early, and I haven't slept. And I'm getting that familiar creeping resentment about cleaning up after her mistakes. I have my own life, my own worries, a job I've got to get to, a freezing tank to swim in at some point. And Noah's got to get to school.

—

At five that afternoon, at Noah's request, the three of us trudge up a hill behind one of the parks with which our city abounds. Thomasina is carrying a Christmas gift bag she dug out from her closet. The plastic container with the remains of Jerry is inside. The path up the hill is twisted and rutted from runoff. Noah scampers; Thomasina and I step carefully around protruding rocks. We come out onto a small clearing with a view of the city. Boston is close as a handshake but visible in its entirety. It is the hour before dusk settles and the workers in the skyscrapers are exhaled. In the middle of the clearing is a fire pit rimmed with stones, crossed with charred branches. A surprisingly tidy affair.

This is the kind of place only kids know about, where they go to let their imaginations run and get away from us. I'm surprised Noah has found it; he's not as timid and housebound as I thought. But I always knew he was secretive.

He indicates a place under a ragged pine where we are to dig, and Thomasina and I kneel obediently with serving spoons she brought from home. After a while she tires of the task and stands apart on a rocky ledge, wisps of hair dancing around her face in a slight breeze that must be coming straight from the ocean a mile off. All this time she's been wearing her big sunglasses, as unnecessary now as they were this morning, and I see that she's not really with us at all, but adrift in private thoughts. She mouths some words and sways a bit, cradling herself tenderly in her own arms.

She's taken something, I realize. Valium or Percocet. Enough to get her through the lingering hangover and make the world seem friendly and soft.

There's a sharp drop down from the rocky ledge.

“Come back a bit,” I tell her.

Noah, who had taken up her discarded spoon, glances up from his digging. “Mom, come back.”

She smiles beautifully and calls us angels. Then she sits cross-legged on the ground. “Do you remember when
you
were in jail, Pirio?”

Noah gasps. “Pirio was in jail?”

“Uh-huh. At boarding school they used to make us sit in a little room by ourselves when we did something wrong. We called it jail. Pirio was in there a lot.”

Noah turns to me with wide eyes. “You were?”

“I can't deny it.”

“How long did you have to stay there?”

“Oh, a few hours, I guess.”

“Longer than that.
Much
longer,” Thomasina says with admirable restraint. “I used to go down in the middle of the night and talk to her through the door so she wouldn't be lonely. Remember, Pirio?”

“Yeah, I do.” Thomasina kept me sane through much of that time. Back then, she took life as it came, sailed with the breeze. I was the one who fell down stairs and walked into doors, metaphorically speaking.

“Remember when I read the
Kama Sutra
through the door? Remember those positions? The blossoming, the bird's amusement, the thunderbolt. We were hysterical, rolling on the floor.”

I have to smile. There is nothing funnier to fifteen-year-old girls than detailed descriptions of sexual positions written in sacred-sounding prose.

“What's the
Kama Sutra
?” Noah says.

“Just a stupid Indian book. Old as the hills. You wouldn't like it,” I say.

“Remember when I used to play harmonica? That was back in my Joni Mitchell phase. Once I started playing it in chemistry, and the teacher sent me down to Dickhead Bates. Remember the lisp?
Thomathina, Thomathina. Thurender your inthrument
.
I had to hand over my harmonica. You know, he never gave it back.” She laughs brightly. “I got another one, though.”

“That was mean for him to take it,” Noah says sympathetically.

“Yes, it was.” She gazes toward the Boston skyline.

“You're not supposed to play harmonicas in school,” Noah mentions.

Thomasina smiles at him wistfully. “Bless you, sweet boy.”

We fall silent. Noah and I keep chipping away at the hard ground with our spoons. Finally the time comes. The grave is about eight inches deep, and the Christmas gift bag sits on its smooth edge. Noah indicates that I am to have the honors. I take out the body and place it at the bottom of the hole, wrapped in its dish towel. I try to make the process long and solemn for Noah's sake.

When I start to push some of the dirt back in, he grabs my arm in panic. “Wait. Shouldn't we say something?”

I never learned a single prayer. I could speak extemporaneously on the virtues of Jerry, but I didn't know him well enough. All I know is some Russian literature. I concentrate and manage to drag a few fragments of Pushkin out of my memory bank. Lines that describe the usual mournful sentiments: how time is fleeting, how all is dust, how our hearts are always aching for those we lost. Appropriate funeral material.

But when I look at Noah's urgent, trustful face, I know I have to come up with something different. To my surprise, a line of Yevtushenko springs fully formed to my lips, as if it had been waiting offstage all along, eager for its chance: “I was madly mistaken / in thinking that my life was over.”

Noah is quietly satisfied. Although his eyes and cheeks are dry, a deep sigh reveals his emotion. I can't begin to guess what this line of poetry means to him, but it seems to have done the trick. We gently push the dirt into the little grave until the earth is flat and patted down. Then we lean back on our heels and spend a few moments in silent reflection.

Thomasina sings softly to herself as we walk home in the twilight. We stop at Christo's for pizza and laugh a lot effortlessly, but by the time we're saying good-bye in front of my apartment building, her face has grown stiff and pinched. The drugs have worn off. She seems unwilling to go home. She asks Noah if he has both my phone numbers programmed into his cell.

“Uh-huh,” he replies. “But I can't find it.”

“You lost your cell?”

“I don't know where it is.”

“What do you mean you don't know where it is? When's the last time you had it?”

“Not for a long time.” He looks worried. It's unlike him to lose things, and he feels his mother's mounting ire.

“Why didn't you tell me? What if something happened? You've got to start paying attention, Noah. You can't just leave things lying around.”

“I didn't leave it lying around. It disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Nothing disappears. People are careless. That's why things get lost.”

Noah pats down his army jacket. “It was in my pocket.”

“We'll look for it when we get home,” she says between tight lips.

We're all as tense as if a bomb were ticking.

“Mom?” Noah's pleading with her,
Please be OK.

She leans toward him. “You have to have a cell phone, Noah. You
have
to. I don't want you to go out of the house without one. Or be at home, or anywhere, without a phone. Not for one minute. You understand?” She doesn't have to say why she feels this so strongly. We all know he needs a phone on him for the next time she fucks up.

Noah's suddenly near tears. “Mom! What if I can't find it?”

“You
have
to find it, Noah.”

“But I looked already!”

The desperation in her son's voice starts to drag Thomasina back from whatever hellish place she's in.

“Come on, take it easy,” I murmur.

She blinks a few times, puts a hand to her forehead. Then she sighs, kneels before him. “Oh, sweetie. I'm sorry. It will turn up. And if it doesn't, we'll get you a new one. Are you OK? I'm sorry to scare you. I'm just kind of tense right now. Oh, Noah. Please forgive me.” She pulls him close, and he stays quietly pressed against her for a while.

Her eyes look up, linger on mine, dull but burning. I can see how much she wants to take care of him, yet she's pleading for help.

T
he rising elevator is rickety and industrial and smells like fish from the ground-floor processing factory. It chugs slowly past the second floor,
pings
at the third, and opens its doors onto another world: an airy, carpeted, expansive office space lit by bright lights. About a half dozen cubicles in muted beige and gray occupy the center of the room. They're all empty, although it's four-thirty on a Tuesday. On the left there are two glass-walled offices hung with semi-sheer curtains. Those are empty, too. To the right tall clean windows look down on Boston Harbor from a modest height.

I wander farther into the office space; no one stops me. I'm an unauthorized visitor here. That, and the fact that I've skipped out of my own job early again, gives me that old high school truant feeling, a mixture of guilt and thrill. When I reach a corridor on the right, I hear human voices emerging from the last doorway. I head that way, conscious of the way the carpet pads my footfalls. I tell myself I have no reason to feel sneaky; I'm just looking for information. But it's information I'm not really entitled to.

The voices blossom into a happy hubbub as I turn into the room. It's a lunchroom with a large round table and cabinets along one wall. A refrigerator, a sink, and a cork board with various announcements pinned on it. Ten or twelve people are gathered around the table, mostly women, mostly middle-aged. There are balloons taped to the cabinets and a shiny red banner proclaiming “Congratulations, Libby!”

No one notices me. Everyone is looking toward a gray-haired woman who is holding up a plastic knife. She's wearing a pilled green cardigan that is buttoned incorrectly, leaving one side longer than the other, heavy green corduroy trousers, and big round plastic glasses. She can't be an inch over five feet. A broad smile adorns her wrinkled face. “You're too sweet. Every one of you. Too sweet!”

“Are you speaking French again, Libby?”

“Tout de suite, tout de suite!”
she says, laughing. “Now I'll have all the time in the world to study French and take Jasper to Paris. He'll look so cute in a beret!”

“What else will you do?” someone asks.

“Painting classes, my dear. Oil paints. I've always wanted to learn. I'm going to become an abstract expressionist!”

“We're going to miss you, honey,” one of the larger women says.

Libby's eyes fill. “Oh, my dear friends. I'm going to miss you, too.”

She begins to cut a large pan cake on the table in front of her. It has chocolate frosting, pink lettering, and pink flowers. She slaps each piece onto a paper plate, adds a napkin and a plastic fork, laughingly calling out “Who wants a rose?” The plates get passed from one person to another until they reach the back of the room. One of them is thrust at me. I smile and say thank you. Why be impolite?

A tall man in a gray suit is standing beside Libby. He's a bit stooped and nearly bald, and there's a tremulous, fretful quality to his voice. “I have a few words,” he says, and everyone immediately quiets down and stops moving about. The instant dampening effect he has on his audience suggests that he's some kind of boss.

“I've known Libby since I was a boy,” he says. “She used to give me cookies, and later, when I was in high school, we'd talk about basketball. If I recall correctly, I also got some good advice from her about the opposite sex.” With a burble of self-conscious laughter, his thin lips stretch into a smile.

The audience replies with a tepid chuckle.

“I never dreamed I'd be returning to Ocean Catch as owner and president. I thought it was off to New York or Los Angeles for me after my MBA. But when my father died . . . well, I guess I just had to come back. This place is home to me, and I just couldn't sell or let it go to anyone else. But taking over a fishing company isn't easy, believe me. If it wasn't for Libby here, I don't know what I would have done. After thirty-five years as my father's secretary, she knew this place top to bottom and inside out. There wasn't a practical problem she couldn't solve, and she did it all with such wonderful enthusiasm. I don't think I've ever heard her complain. She spreads sunshine wherever she goes.” He turns to the woman beside him, raising a celebratory paper cup. Because of their difference in height, his arm is about a foot above her head. “Here's to you, Libby Smith! The heart and soul of Ocean Catch for forty years. This place just won't be the same without you!”

“Hear, hear!” a man calls out, and Libby's colleagues start to clap and cheer.

“Now, stop,” she says, blushing, her voice just audible through the applause. “Blarney, blarney. Stop already.”

When things die down, the woman beside me asks if I'd like coffee. I'm munching cake, so I just nod. “Cream and sugar?” I nod again. When she comes back with my cup, she asks what my name is. I respond in what I think is a normal volume. The room gets suddenly quieter.

“Are you the . . . ?” The woman seems to be having a hard time finding the right word.

Now everyone's looking at me. “I'm a friend of Ned Rizzo's,” I say with bright confidence, as if that fact clearly explains why I, a complete stranger to Libby Smith, have appeared at her retirement party.

“You're the woman who survived!” someone says.

I look at all the wonder-struck faces. “I got lucky,” I say, shrugging it off.

People crowd around me, offering condolences, congratulations, awe, friendship—all of it mixed with a tincture of silent terror. I try to be gracious, but every time I'm reminded of that day, I smell seawater and want to vomit.

Libby Smith fights her way to my side. “Dear, I've wanted to meet you. I knew Ned for twenty years. He was such a good man. It was heartbreaking.”

The owner is behind her. He pushes through, offers his hand, introduces himself as Dustin Hall.

I field questions as best I can. Eventually the thrill of meeting me dissipates, and the workers and Dustin Hall move smoothly back to the cake pan and coffee machine. I'm left standing in a corner with Libby Smith, who begins to dab at her eyes with a crumpled tissue.

“I'm sorry. It's just that I can't think about what happened.” She tucks the tissue up the sleeve of her cardigan. “But look at you . . . you're here, and looking so well.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith. It's nice of you to say that. You know, I wanted to ask you something.” I mention a few general things about Noah, his mother, and how they're getting along; then I bring up the boat and the subject of insurance; finally, I say that it's come to my attention that Ned bought the
Molly Jones
from Ocean Catch for one dollar. “You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?”

She seems to have frozen in place, her eyes suddenly dry. “I can't really speak about that, I'm afraid. Maybe you'd better talk to Mr. Hall.” She leads me out of the lunch room to a wood-paneled door at the end of the corridor.

Dustin Hall's office is carpeted in navy blue, with heavy mahogany furniture and leather seating. Behind his desk there's a huge map of the North Atlantic.

He looks surprised to see me, but offers me a seat. Libby Smith leaves quickly. But since I know they'll probably talk about it at some point, I have no choice but to take a seat as directed and ask my pointed question again.

With remarkable adroitness, Hall manages to frown slightly and smile politely at the same time. “I can't imagine where you got that idea.”

I describe the title and bill of sale found in Ned's drawer.

He says he has no knowledge of any such gift, that Ocean Catch has a fleet of trawlers and long-liners but owns no lobster boats as the company is not now, nor ever has been, in the lobstering trade. That even if they did own a lobster boat, it would be highly irregular to make a gift of it to a former employee. Nevertheless, he'll look into the situation and see what he can find, and if he gets any more information he'll be sure to let me know. That's it. A flawless wall of professionalism. It's no use banging your head against these people, because they only get more pleasant and patronizing with each parry. I thank him and leave.

I'm standing in the brightly lit office space waiting for the elevator when Libby Smith materializes beside me. The elevator doors open, and we enter the cramped space together.

“Do you like dogs?” she asks as our reflections appear in the closing stainless-steel doors. Before I can answer, she hands me a photo of a cocker spaniel. “Jasper. My baby. Eleven years old.”

The dog looks like every cocker spaniel I've ever seen. Rumpled and a bit daft.

“I always walk him at six o'clock around Jamaica Pond. Do you know where that is?” she asks.

I tell her I live not far from there.

“Such a nice place to walk in the evening. You ought to join me sometime soon.” She speaks with surprising force, as if determined to make me agree.

“How about tonight?”

“Perfect.” The door slides open, and we get off together on the first floor and go our separate ways as if we hadn't talked at all.

—

The earth is falling into night, but there's still a pearly glow in the western sky. Libby Smith is sitting on a bench in front of the boathouse. She's wearing a canvas jacket with patch pockets and a multicolored crocheted cap. Perched beside her, Jasper tilts his head with canine curiosity as I approach.

“Let's walk,” she says, and we set off along the path that winds around the pond. She takes small steps in worn brown Wallabees. The pom-pom at the top of her hat bobs just below my shoulder. Jasper trots ahead of us on the end of an embroidered leash.

“As of today, I'm a free agent,” she says with tired gaiety. “I don't know what I'll do tomorrow. Maybe sleep till noon and take my coffee at a café.” She offers me a wry, collapsing smile. “It's awful how we keep having to make the best of things, isn't it? You'd think at my age I'd have learned to just tell the truth. I'm excited, I'm happy, and I'm very, very scared. Who will I talk to now? Ocean Catch was my life, and all those people . . . they were my family in a way. Oh, we say we'll keep in touch, but you know how that goes. I'll have to get new friends now. But where? At the senior center? There's nothing but old people in that place!”

I smile at her tenderly. What can I say?

Jasper stops to do his business in the dirt. Mrs. Smith takes a baggie from her pocket, scoops the dog's waste and disposes of it in a nearby trash can. She pats and praises him while his brown eyes glow up at her from under a fall of fur.

“You know, Ned did the strangest thing before he left the company,” she says as we follow a curve in the path. “I gave him his bonus check, and he waved it around in the air, and said, ‘This is my last one, Libby!'” Then he whooped like a boy and gave me a big smacking kiss on my cheek. I was delighted, but also very surprised. I knew, of course, that he wanted to leave the company, but most people don't have that reaction to getting their last check.”

“A bonus check? Was that some kind of severance?”

“No, some of the men got bonus checks for extra work they did. Actually, that's what I wanted to talk about. I've wanted to tell someone for a while now, just to get advice, but I didn't know who to turn to. I was sworn to secrecy, but now that I'm not an employee anymore . . . And then you appeared at my party today out of the blue, and asked about the
Molly Jones
. I'm sure Dustin didn't tell you anything, but I started to feel very strongly that you should have the answer you're looking for. You were a friend of Ned's, and you've been through so much.” She looks up at me inquisitively, as if to check if her trust is misplaced.

“I'll try to help if I can.”

A circle of teens huddled around a bench stop their conversation. They're wearing bandanas and puffy jackets, and stare in aggressive silence as we pass.

“You won't tell anyone I told you this, will you?” she says.

“No, I won't.”

She takes a deep breath. “You see, for years I handled the official payroll with federal and state tax deductions. When Dustin came in, he wanted to use an agency, insisted on it. ‘They're more accurate,' he said. Only that's not true: they make more errors than I ever did. Oh dear, I'm already getting off track! Bear with me, please. My mind is so scattered these days. Anyway, in June 2007 Dustin started giving me a list of names and telling me to cut what he said were bonus checks, and to do it by hand. No other paperwork. No e-mails or computer entries. Just the list, handwritten. My instructions were to make out the checks, keep them locked in my drawer, and give them to the men in person when they came to me. I was never to leave them on top of my desk, or mail them, or give them to anyone but the intended recipient, and I was never to speak about the bonuses to anyone in the company. This would happen several times a year.”