The Lobster Kings (34 page)

I knew without having to look at the clock behind me that Rena’s warning meant that it was almost eight o’clock. There was a peal of laughter from Carly in the kitchen, and then another crack of thunder. Outside, the rain came in gusts, and the harder blows made the glass of the sliding doors ripple and shake. After a momentary lull, there was a prolonged series of sheets and strikes across the sky, and the door rattled enough that Stephanie involuntarily scooted back. The wind would do anything to get inside the house, I thought, and then I decided that I was ready for another half glass of wine.

I paused in the doorway of the kitchen. At the sink, their backs to me, Kenny and Carly were framed neatly in the window. Carly had one hand on Kenny’s arm, near his shoulder, and the other resting on the edge of the sink. They’d turned off the overhead lights and were washing dishes with only the fixture over the sink turned on. Past them, through the window and into the night, I could see the lighting rolling across the sky, an occasional bolt threading down to the ocean, close enough that the crackle spilled into the room and overpowered the single light fixture, casting shadows over their faces. I stood there, just watching the two of them. Their voices were low enough that I couldn’t understand what they were saying over the music, but I could hear Kenny’s rumble. I thought I heard my name, and then I saw Carly smile, shake her head, and then shake it again, for emphasis. She was wearing one of Momma’s old aprons, her hair pulled back, and for a minute Carly reminded me so strongly of Momma that it made me want to fall on my knees. And then Carly touched her neck
the way that Momma used to, and I all I could see was Momma standing at the sink, wearing her pearls even as she washed the dishes. It was a quick thought, a blink, a flash of lightning before the vision was gone, but it was enough to make me gulp at the air.

The sound I made turned Carly toward me. “Cordelia?” She took a step away from the sink. Kenny looked up. “Cordelia?” Carly said again, and this time she took another step and then another, and put her hands on my shoulders. “Why are you crying?”

I hadn’t even realized I was crying, and I let her reach out and place her palms on my cheeks. She stared at me for a second and then glanced back over her shoulder. “How about you give us a couple of minutes, Kenny?” He nodded, put the towel on the counter, and went out the back of the kitchen toward the hall bathroom.

“Cordelia?” Carly said. “You okay?” I closed my eyes, and heard her give a small laugh. “Dumb question. What’s wrong?” Her voice got softer and she wrapped her arms around me. I let myself fold into her, putting my head down on her shoulder.

I stepped back from her and pulled the small cloth pouch from my pocket. I could feel the pearls through the thin fabric, rubbed the seeds between my fingers and thumb, and then pressed it into Carly’s hand. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Are—” she started to say, but then she closed her fingers around the pouch and felt the necklace. She looked at me and then down at her hand. “Are you sure?”

I wrapped my hand around hers and squeezed it tight. “I’m not going to be the one to tell Daddy you’ve had them all this time. That’s a conversation that the two of you can have without me. But as far as I’m concerned they’re yours. You’re so much like Momma.” I let go of her hand and wiped at my eyes.

Carly stuffed the pouch into her pocket and then stepped back into me, putting her arms around my shoulders and pulling me tight. “Thank you,” she said.

I heard the close of a door and then Kenny’s footsteps. He hesitated in the doorway of the kitchen.

“You go take a break, Carly. Sit with Stephanie,” I said. “Kenny and I will finish up in here.”

Kenny came to the sink and picked up a towel from the counter and slung it over his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I pushed my sleeves up over my elbow and stood next to him, my hip brushing against his. “How about we do that thing when we both just pretend that I wasn’t crying, that nothing unusual happened?” I said.

“I like that idea better,” he said.

There was another crackle of lightning outside, and then, barely a full second later, thunder that rattled the windows. We both reached into the sudsy water at the same time. It was warm, like bathwater, the soap soft and slippery against my hands, a sweet smell of flowers drifting up. Our hands collided underneath the water, and he squeezed my fingers.

He was looking into my eyes, still holding my hand under the water, when the lights over the sink flickered and dimmed. They came back to full for a moment before finally disappearing, the house left in darkness aside from the candles in the family room, where Fatty and Guppy were cheering the power outage. Lightning struck again, and the room was filled with sharp whiteness, the light matched only by the sound that accompanied it: a crash and rattle that made me jump. Something banged against the glass in front of the sink. There was a scream from the other room—Rena’s voice—and then others following it. Fatty and Guppy. Mackie. Stephanie.

It was Kenny who moved first, pushing past me as he ran into the living room, and I followed slowly behind him to see, in the frequent bursts and sheets of light from the storm outside, Daddy collapsed on the rug. My sisters were on their knees, over him, and I had the thought—and the thought lasted only as long as one of the strikes of lightning—that everything was going to be okay, that this was one of his fainting spells, but then I saw the way that he had his hand clutching at his chest.

P
ort in a Storm
is held privately, and I’ve never seen the painting as anything other than a reproduction, which is a shame, because the size is something that everybody who sees it in real life can’t help but mention.
Port in a Storm
is Brumfitt’s smallest painting: it’s barely the size of a magazine cover. Not that Brumfitt often worked in a grand scale, but most of his paintings were large enough to, as one pissy art critic once said, “make for good kindling.” Clearly not a fan.

Size is one of those odd things about art, because it can change the way you view a painting. Monet’s
Water Lilies
, which is a pace or two longer than the
Kings’ Ransom
, feels, to me, intimate, despite its grand scale, while
Port in a Storm
is grand and sweeping despite its diminutive size. Maybe the compactness of
Port in a Storm
was a function of Brumfitt’s age; he painted it the second-to-last year of his life, in 1780, and I imagine that the smaller canvas would have been easier for him to deal with, something he could tuck under his arm if he felt like working out-of-doors.

The lines in this painting are less clear than much of Brumfitt’s earlier work, and I’ve often wondered if maybe his hands
had started to shake. The cruel betrayal of age for an artist. That muddiness in the work is what makes it so hard to figure out if the brown daub of paint in the sea is supposed to be more than the swirling of darkened waters. I like to think that it is supposed to be something more. Brumfitt was eighty when he painted it. He must have known he was going to die soon. For me, the painting is about the voyage that Brumfitt knew he’d be taking, and the brown daub of paint in the sea is more than just a slip of the brush. I think it is supposed to be a seal, his wife, the selkie, returned to the water in order to guide him home.

Though, of course, sometimes I read too much into Brumfitt’s work.

I
grabbed Kenny’s coat on my way out the door, but the rain soaked through my pants before I’d made it halfway down to the water; even with the choking stone in my throat, I still wished that I’d had my coveralls and boots to put on. Almost as soon as I saw Daddy lying on the floor, the lights came back on. His skin was white, like it had been treated with a thin coat of gesso; he looked dead, his hand clawed to his chest. The second Rena said that he was still breathing, I tore out of the room to get to the
Kings’ Ransom
. I didn’t bother waiting for Carly’s call to reach whomever it was on the mainland who was going to tell her that there was too much weather for a chopper to make it out to the island.

Down at the docks, I passed by my own skiff with its oars and got into the next one over. I didn’t care whose boat it was: a motor was a motor. When I primed the pump and yanked the cord, she fired up nicely. Even with a hand up over my eyes, I had to squint with the rain. I had the throttle turned all the way, and the boat skipped waves, landing like the water was concrete. The rain was already falling plenty hard, and with the speed of the boat, it felt like tiny nails of ice were being driven into my
hand and face. The twenty or thirty seconds it took me to get out to where the
Kings’ Ransom
was moored seemed to last forever. Once I was on board, it was a relief to have some shelter in the cabin. I was already shivering, and I tried to remember if I had a change of clothes in the lockers. I knew I had a spare pair of bib overalls, and worst-case I’d put them on over my soaked pants and take the small amount insulation that they offered. At least Kenny’s coat hadn’t soaked to the skin yet. I turned the motor over and Mackie’s voice kicked through the radio: “—elia, soon as you can get to the dock. Please respond, over.”

“I’m here, Mackie. Got her fired up.”

“No dice on a chopper. Kenny and George are loading him in the truck. Your sisters will meet you down at the dock with him,” Mackie said. There was the white of lightning and then, close enough that I couldn’t tell if there was even a separation, the thunder that rolled with the strike. “Mainland said to meet at the docks in Blacks Harbour. They’ll have an ambulance waiting to take Woody to Saint John.”

“It’s a forty-five minute drive from Blacks Harbour to Saint John. What about James Harbor or Northport or Calais? That would be quicker.”

“Honey,” Mackie said, “it’s not much longer to Saint John than Northport or Calais. An extra five minutes. This isn’t a thing for the clinic in James Harbor, and Saint John has a much better hospital than Northport or Calais. Doesn’t matter if it’s a stroke or a heart attack or whatever. We’ll get him where he needs to be. Besides, if you’re worried about time, why don’t I hear your engine in the background?”

“Burning gas as we speak,” I said, and punched the throttle. I could hear the radio start to rattle with voices, but the sound of the motor drowned them out. The goddamned radio, even on Thanksgiving, was turned on in the background. It was the background of all of our lives on the island. I knew that there were families who’d stopped eating to listen to our private drama, crowded around the radio, volume turned up. I also knew that
there would already be a crowd of fellows at Rena’s house, helping to get Daddy out the door, the wives inside finishing washing whatever dishes were left and getting ready to cook some more. By the time we got back from the hospital there’d be casseroles packed into the freezer in Daddy’s house, tucked into the refrigerator.

The
Kings’ Ransom
plowed through the waves, my knees grinding as I took each hit from the water. Even with the rain so hard that the wipers might as well not have been working, I knew where I was going. A lifetime of trips to and from the docks, a lifetime of being ready for this moment. I throttled back as I got close. I could see the headlights of Tucker’s truck moving down the docks, stopping halfway, where there was a halo of clustered lights. A crowd, I realized. Two or three dozen people milling around the docks, holding flashlights and lanterns. With their heads tipped forward so their hoods kept them covered from the rain, they could have been praying. Probably were praying, a few of them. The rain gusted. Through the sheets of rain I saw Chip Warner and Paul Paragopolis reaching out to take the rail of the
Kings’ Ransom
, holding her steady, while other men helped George, Tucker, and Kenny get Daddy out of the truck, helped carry him across the dock and onto my boat. Rena and Carly fussed at the edges, while Stephanie made herself useful on deck of the
Kings’ Ransom
, cleaning space, chucking the empty bait barrel, an odd trap or two, onto the dock.