“Jesus, Eliza.”
“Sorry! Sorry.” Some years ago Russell had married a girl from out of town—Beatrice Prince. That was the name of Russell’s last boat, before Legacy. Eliza had never met Beatrice Prince, neither person nor boat. (She’d gotten all of her information from Val.) They’d been married three years and then Beatrice Prince had decided the lobstering life wasn’t for her; she’d taken off for Bangor or Augusta or wherever it was she’d come from, and she’d taken a bunch of Russell’s money with her—the money he’d been saving for a new boat. That’s when Russell had left town for a while, tried out the civilian life, found it didn’t suit him, come back home, started again, taken out loans, bought Legacy. Eliza knew money was a worry, always a worry. “Sorry!” Eliza said once more. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
Good riddance to bad rubbish, Val had said about Beatrice Prince.
Russell excused himself to use the bathroom and to talk to a couple of men at the bar. Elton Cobb, who ran the co-op. There was Ryan Libby, and there was Jack Cates. There was Michelle Davis, one of the two women in town who owned their own boats. Most people in the bar were varying versions of the men and women she’d known her whole life: hardworking, hard drinking, loyal, independent.
Eliza peered into her beer bottle; it was nearly empty. Holy lobster traps, four beers, on an almost-empty stomach. The turkey sandwich had been a long time ago. Eliza had earned her drinking stripes early, but they had faded over time.
The last time Eliza had had more than two drinks had been at the Colemans’ holiday party the previous December, where she, and many others, had been brought down by the innocuously named Angel’s Delight. Rob had been hungover for at least thirty-six hours after that party. He always got oddly quiet and remorseful when he drank a lot, like a chastened schoolchild, but he was even more so after that night. Eliza, hungover, became short-tempered, hungry for French fries, and irrationally aggravated by clutter. It wasn’t the best version of herself.
Currently, though, she was really enjoying the feeling the beers were giving her. They were cushioning her from her absence from home, and from her fight with Rob, and from the pounding terror she felt over her father’s health, and, after spending the long day with Russell in close quarters, from the Thing They Would Never Talk About.
A flame like that is going to burn itself out.
She looked around the bar; it was filling up now, all the lobstermen back from the haul, and there was a merry, reckless feeling in the air. In the corner there was a jukebox—a jukebox, in this day and age. How ridiculous. How wonderful. Eliza felt like she’d stepped right into a Springsteen song: workingmen, their girls, their troubles and triumphs.
Flames could burn themselves out, but did they ever flare back up again?
The year before her mother died—Eliza would have been eleven—was the first time her dad let her ride in the back of his truck on Trap Day. The traps were piled five or six high. You had to hang on when the truck hit a bump. When you got to the wharf, you had to load them all on board for the first set. And then you were off: another season begun.
The year after Joanie died Eliza told Charlie, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go to Trap Day. Can I stay home? I want to stay home and read.”
“No way,” said Charlie.
“Why not?”
“How would that look, Eliza? A daughter of mine, not helping out. You know how it is. No one goes till everyone goes.”
And then, at the end of that day, the light low in the sky, a strip of orange racing across the horizon, the last of the boats pulling out, the traps piled so high they made the boats look lopsided, she loved the town all over again.
Now she felt a door in her mind unhinge, and from it tiptoed a thought that she couldn’t quite capture. It slithered away from her, herring-slick. When Russell came back maybe she’d try to articulate it. She was facing the door to the bar when it opened and in came Mary from the café.
“Mary!” called Eliza. She waved her over enthusiastically—more enthusiastically, it was true, than she might have without the four beers.
Mary looked around the bar and moved toward Eliza. She wore a cautious expression and her movements were sparse and economical, like she’d spent her bottom dollar on them and couldn’t afford to be wasteful.
“Sit down! Have a seat.” Eliza gestured toward the space Russell had left. “You’re not here to have a beer, are you?”
Mary shook her head and slid into the seat.
“Too young for that anyway, right?”
Mary looked startled. “I’m seventeen,” she said. “I’ll be eighteen August third. But anyway I don’t like beer. Well, sometimes I do. But not now.”
“That’s a nice birthday. August! Mine’s in January, it’s completely dreary.”
Mary nodded.
“Want a Coke or something?”
“No, I’m good,” said Mary. “I’m just—I’m looking for Josh.”
“Your boyfriend.”
“That’s right.”
Eliza lowered her voice and, emboldened by the beer, said, “How old is Josh, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.” It had been in college when she’d first heard people saying my asking, instead of me asking. All those years of saying it wrong, she couldn’t believe it. She was humiliated.
“He’s twenty-four.”
Eliza absorbed this; she was torn between feigning indifference and stepping in as a mother figure, saying, I forbid you to see him. I order you to find a boyfriend your own age immediately.
Mary smiled uncertainly at Eliza, and Eliza, seized by a desire to be kind, said, “Hey, you know what? My father was older than my mother and they had the greatest love I’ve ever witnessed.” She said that though she still had the image in her mind of Josh skulking outside the circle of men at the wharf, creeping like a fox outside a den of chickens. Mary’s smile widened but not so much that it reached her eyes. Then Eliza said, “I haven’t seen him. It’s crowded over at the bar, though, who knows. He could be there.”
Mary nodded again and made no move to get up. She looked tired, and the skin underneath her eyes had a lavender tint to it. Eliza suddenly remembered the Fourth of July missed call and said, “Hey! Did you try to call me? Over the holiday, when I was home?”
Immediately Mary’s eyes filled—quickly, like inside there was a tiny tap that someone had just turned on—and Eliza said, “Oh. I’m sorry!”
“No, that’s okay, it’s just—” Mary swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and then she folded both hands on the table as if she were at prayer and took a deep breath. The bar noises receded to the background, and Eliza fixed her gaze steadily on Mary. Mary leaned in toward Eliza and said, “I did try to call. I just—I just wanted to talk to someone.”