Sarah tried to recompose herself, but ended up asking me to excuse her to go to bed, instead. I watched her wander to her bedroom, sorry for the hurt I caused by asking her about the five days, but certain, nonetheless, that she needed to know. I didn’t want to stay outside alone in the hushed, humid air so I slipped upstairs and sat on my bed replaying snatches of the conversation. I finally picked up the phone to call Cleo. She answered on the second ring and said, “I thought you were calling tomorrow.”
“It couldn’t wait. I know what happened now.” She gave me her complete attention while I repeated everything. As I told the story in my own words I saw the picture so vividly – my mother lugging her heavy bag over to the brown Buick. Her refusal to look at her stunned sister. Barely older than me and utterly, voluntarily, alone.
After exhausting the topic of what happened between my Mother and Sarah, I gave Cleo a brief description of the lines and Nathan, which didn’t interest her.
“So you all just read a line of something to each other,” she asked, unimpressed.
I sighed. “You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Cleo.”
“Romantic?” She said too loud. “Do you like the boy? Are you reading love sonnets or something? You’ve only been there two days!” Her voice dripped with derision.
“Not what I meant,” I said as tolerantly as I could manage. Truly, she is like talking to a calculator sometimes. Especially after getting used to Sarah. “I mean romantic as in the beauty of something. Appreciating the beauty of the words. The beauty of the night.” I sat up straighter, stunned by my own revelation. “Cleo, you don’t even recognize the beauty in yourself. I never thought … I never put it together before, but you never give anything credit for being beautiful.”
Her irritated groan filled the phone. “Don’t be stupid, Jennifer. I don’t emote all over the place, but of course I think things are beautiful.”
Undeterred, I asked, “what?”
“What what?”
“What do you think is beautiful?”
“I think you’re tired or overwhelmed with poetry or something. Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”
I laughed, glad to feel some of the heaviness of the night lift. “Don’t be a coward. Just answer the question.”
Her exasperated breath exploded in my ear and she answered in a monotone, “the wheat field. I think it’s beautiful.”
“Was that so hard?”
“Good night, Jennifer,” she said, her aggravation only intensifying my enjoyment.
She hung up before she heard me say “good night”, and it’s good, too, because I broke into laughter. One point for me for cracking her.
The next day dawned bright and breezy with less fog and an aqua blue tint on the horizon. The morning sunlight seemed to infuse Sarah with fresh courage. She met me peacefully at breakfast, but the puffy pink skin around her eyes testified of a long, sleepless night. Before I could ask how she was doing she said, “I thought I’d invite Nathan’s family over for dinner tonight. They are dying to be introduced.” Sarah unceremoniously pushed Chester off the kitchen table and he glared up at her with wounded dignity before stalking from the room with his tail raised high.
I took great interest in buttering my toast while Sarah talked about firing up her smoker that afternoon. “Would you do salmon, Jennifer? If I swear to make the meatiest, smokiest, least-salmony salmon you ever tasted, would you try it?”
I smiled and nodded doubtfully. “You can try. Maybe I’ll be converted, yet.”
I accompanied Sarah into town after breakfast to grab fresh salmon from the men on the dock. Sarah picked out a “little one” roughly the size of a Maine Coon cat. I averted my eyes and tried not to stare at the fixed, glassy eye of the slimy looking fish while a man nimbly wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with a length of twine. I stepped back, making it plain that I would not carry the cold, limp corpse. I don’t mind eating meat, but in Nebraska I don’t have to go to the slaughterhouse and pick my carcass. It unsettled me, the piles of floppy fish packed into long, ice-filled freezers.
“Thanks, Harv,” Sarah said to the man and he grunted pleasantly. He looked about Sarah’s age, but his chapped, red face was carved with deep wrinkles around his eyes; The face of man who lived on purpose.
His glance, which darted to me periodically as Sarah picked her fish, finally settled on my face. “That the girl? Claire’s girl?” He spoke as if I couldn’t understand him. I shied away, looking at his shirt pocket instead of his eyes.
“This is Jennifer. Claire’s daughter.” Sarah said it cheerful enough, but I sensed a deeper meaning to her words.
“Hmm,” was all he said as he gave me a thoughtful evaluation. I squirmed, shifted my weight and tried to guess what he saw when he looked at me so intently. It was a bit like being assessed by the Marlboro man. “Well, you look like a Maine girl,” he said gruffly and ended the conversation by turning back to his stack of fish.
Does one say thank you to that?
I made a noncommittal sound and followed Sarah off the dock, who didn’t speak again until we walked well out of the man’s hearing range. “That is a high compliment, trust me,” she said in a low voice. “In his own stubborn way Harvey called you beautiful.” And when she smiled at me I could see it: the fresh complexion rubbed clean by salt and wind, the muscular build from a life of battling the elements, and the strong independence in her footsteps.
Back at Shelter Cove I helped prepare the food, refusing contact with the fish, but happily snapping green beans and mashing potatoes while Sarah told me more about Nathan’s family. “I call them the Beckers, because that is Judith’s last name and they’ll all answer to it if someone says it, but they all have different last names. Nathan’s name is Moore, his sixteen year old sister is Claudia Morgan, Hester is eight and her last name is St. Jean and Darcy’s name is Cass. Not that you have to remember all that. I just thought I’d warn you because it can be confusing when it comes up.”
I concentrated on her words and tried to ignore whatever she was doing with a tiny silver knife and the heavy, limp fish. “All different,” I mused. “That makes for a complicated family.”
“I guess all families can get complicated,” Sarah said wryly.
“So Claudia is sixteen. How old is Nathan?”
“Seventeen. Almost eighteen. They’re barely a year apart.” She lowered her voice apologetically and said, “She is why Nathan’s dad left.”
“He didn’t want another kid?”
“Not one that wasn’t his,” Sarah said slowly, pausing between her words.
It took me a moment before I said, “oh” very quietly.
“Is the eight year old anything like Darcy?” I asked, reaching for a less controversial topic.
“Hardly. She is so much like Nathan. Just as bright, possibly more so. And painfully shy. But when you get to know her she is the most precious soul.”
I smiled, “Then not much like Darcy at all.” I realized my mistake and quickly corrected. “I don’t mean Darcy isn’t precious. I just meant the shy part.”
Sarah flicked her hand dismissively and laughed. “They are all gifted. All four of them. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nathan is the most obvious, but Claudia has a mathematical mind that will blow you away, Hester’s comprehension is light years ahead of her age and Darcy, oh sweet, sweet, Darcy. She’s too smart for her own good. She knows enough to be dangerous.”
“You teach them all?”
“Not Nathan. He finished High School when he was fifteen. He’s been taking long distance classes from the University of Maine.” Sarah grabbed an apron out of a drawer and looped it around her small waist. She caught me watching and said critically, “I don’t know why I do this. I’m not really worried about flour on my jeans. Force of habit. My mother always did it.” She made a face at herself and turned back to the counter.
“Why doesn’t Nathan just go away to school, if he’s been done with high school so long?”
Sarah stopped moving and raised her head. “‘Why’ is a hard question. He never gives me the real answer. He says he needs to save more money but colleges come begging for him. Lots of free rides. He scored perfect on the SATs. Perfect. Then he says he doesn’t want to leave the girls alone. His reasons are his. I don’t know, exactly.”
“Perfect? Can people do that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Just a special few. It’s not common, that’s for sure. And Nathan did it twice – just for good measure.” She smacked her bottom to clean off her dusty hands and looked over my shoulder at the mashed potatoes. “Those look good. You make them at home?”
“My specialty.”
“Well, there you go. Potatoes are something that Maine and Nebraska have in common.” She ruffled my hair affectionately. While Sarah finished the more complicated parts of dinner I chose a line and waited nervously for the Becker family. When I heard animated voices through the window I hitched on a forced smile as Darcy’s familiar clumps resounded on the steps.
“Sarah!” She called loudly. “Jennifer!” A small scuffle ensued followed by a “shut up and knock on the door like a normal person.” I replaced my fake smile with a genuine chuckle and opened the door to find too many heads trying to squeeze into the empty space surrounded by the door frame. Nathan hung back, but the girls jostled to position, trying to cross the threshold in a jumble of arms and legs and bodies, which thoroughly delighted Charlie as he raced into the room, black ear cocked and tongue waving.
I stepped back until they could sort themselves out and a petite blonde girl detached herself by shaking Darcy’s hand roughly from her arm. “Get off!” She mumbled. She looked at me for a long moment and then turned and smacked Nathan roughly in the arm. I jumped more than he did. Then the girl smiled at me. I might like one of them, after all.
As she opened her mouth to say something Darcy announced loudly, “This is Claudia Gale, my biggest sister.”
Claudia bared her teeth at Darcy, rolled her eyes and then turned back to me, her hand raised in a wave, “Claude. Just Claude.” I waved back, thinking that she looked more like a ten year old than a girl my age. She could only be five feet, tops. Her curly blonde hair framed a delicately featured face with a sharp nose, tiny pink lips and not a trace of make-up. Her slight body was stick straight, flat-chested and wiry. But she turned a warm smile on me that rivaled a mid-western welcome. One of the few I’d gotten up here.
“Did she say Claudia Gale?”
“Yes, but like I said …”
“No, I won’t call you that. But how do you spell Gale?” She told me and my mouth opened in surprise just as Sarah came into the room. I turned to my aunt and exclaimed, “My middle name is Gale, too! Spelled the same way!” It seemed too incredible a coincidence.
Sarah’s surprise mirrored mine, but for different reasons. “You’re Jennifer Gale? You never told me that!” She studied me with grave eyes. “That’s my middle name, too.”
“Are you serious?” My mother named me after
Sarah
?
“But half the girls in this town have Gale for a middle name. Tradition. It’s our way of naming them after her,” Sarah tilted her head to the windows where the sea glinted.
I tried to digest it quickly so I could return to introductions, but my dumbfounded face just kept staring at Sarah. Perhaps my mother didn’t make as complete a break as I’d been led to believe. Some Smithport lingered in her yet.
“My middle name is Jean!” Darcy said loudly, not wanting to be left out any longer.
“Good for you, Dear,” Sarah said absently and stretched out her hand to pat her on the head and ended up tapping her in the face instead. Sarah gave me a significant look and we each filed away the subject for later scrutiny. We had guests to attend to.
“Hey, Jennifer. Good to meet you. I’m Judith,” I turned my attention to Judith for the first time. I didn’t like her. I know that sounds rash, but as Sarah says, a story half told isn’t a true story. Her gruff voice, open posture and straddled legs made her too rough to be appealing. And Sarah was right, the accent sounded wrong on a woman. She smiled but the severe cut of her short blonde hair looked threatening.
Why do so many men love her?
I wondered as I gave a polite smile and a two finger wave. She walked up and threw her arm around my shoulder, squeezing too hard. “So ya like it he’e?” I nodded quickly and slipped out of her uncomfortable grasp.
“You already know Darcy,” Sarah said in one breath, pulling me to the safety of her side, “and this is Hester.” From the small mob emerged a willowy eight year old with light brown hair, freckles, and large, dark blue eyes the same deep color as Nathan’s. She kept her lips locked together and only spared me a momentary glance.
Introductions complete, the Beckers stood in a disorganized line in front of me while Charlie jumped from one to the next, desperate, as always, to get his tongue on as much human skin as possible. They better resembled a pack of strangers gathered randomly from the streets than a family. Nothing matched: not their looks or their personalities or even their voices. Nathan nodded at me and put a reassuring hand on Hester’s shoulder.
“Dinner’s on!” Sarah announced to the motley crew and we filed haphazardly into the kitchen where Chester sat, staring at the stovetop with a fierce determination, his only movement a spasmodic flick of his tail. “Oh, go on,” Sarah chided and scooted him with her foot. “I’ll put some in your bowl.”
“Salmon!” Darcy squealed in excitement.
Claude made an appreciative sound and said to me, “Sarah makes the best salmon I’ve ever tasted. Have you tried it yet?” I shook my head and picked a seat next to Sarah’s as she finished bringing dishes of food to the table. Everyone settled into place, Claudia taking the empty seat next to mine.
“Grace, tonight?” Sarah asked.
Darcy boomed quickly, “Me! I’ll say it. Dear God, thank you for our salmon and we are very sorry they are dead now but I hope you have a fish heaven with lots of seaweed. And I hope it’s the same thing as normal heaven because we love fish very much but Jennifer doesn’t like crabs so try not to let them get too close to her and thank you for helping me find my orange sock today because Hester didn’t think I would and please help us leave some salmon for Chester because he doesn’t like me unless I feed him …”