He waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, just sat on the end of the bed looking at the floor, he cleared his throat.
“She’s been in there for over a year,” he said again, and this time I heard the blame in his voice. I felt a surge of anger roll through me. Before I could stop myself, I scowled at him.
“I know she’s in there, Jack. Do you think I just forgot?”
We’d argued, and gone to bed without speaking, and when my alarm went off, Jack’s side of the bed was cold and empty. He hadn’t said good-bye before he left for work.
Now, I was in my mother’s kitchen, having a cup of tea while Kat got ready for camp. The sugar wasn’t fully dissolved in my mug, and I was listening to my mother tell me how Roger had sent her the kindest letter, and she’d cried when she read it.
“You should go home to him,” I said. “He misses you.”
She spooned a dollop of honey out of the jar and held it out to me. I waved it away, and she put the spoon in her tea instead.
“He understands that I want to help up here. He’s no stranger to this kind of stuff, you know.” Roger was my mother’s boyfriend, a widower who’d lost his wife after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
“When are we going to meet him?” I asked, blowing on my tea.
My father died of a heart attack in his sleep when I was sixteen. If my mother dated after my father died, I didn’t know it. When I went to Emerson College in Boston, she moved to Florida. She’d started dating Roger right before Maddie died, and now, a year later, we still hadn’t met him.
“Let’s not worry about that. I’m here to help you, and Jack, and the girls. To do what I can to make an unbearable time more bearable.” She patted my hand.
I thought back to the days I couldn’t manage to get out of bed. My mother had dropped everything and basically moved in, taking over the daily care of the girls—cooking, shopping, cleaning. Had I thanked her? Was there even a way to say thank you for that? I reached over and squeezed her fingers.
“I don’t know what I would’ve have done without you,” I said. And it was the truth.
“Well, like I said. I’ll be here for a few more weeks. And then I do have to get back.”
I thought of the argument the night before with Jack. The weight of it sat heavy on my chest.
I took a deep breath. “I need to figure out some stuff before you leave.”
My mother looked up from her tea.
“Just things. You know. That I want to do. Before you leave.”
We were quiet then. I knew if I said the word ashes, if the word even stayed too long in my mind, I would start crying.
And I didn’t want to start crying on another random morning out of the blue.
My eyes filled, though, and I swallowed hard to keep the tears from spilling over.
My mother reached out and put her hand over mine. “I know,” she said.
“I know you do,” I said, grateful for her support.
She sighed. “No. I mean I really know. I wasn’t going to mention it, but I’m no good at that. I took a bath last night, which I never do . . . but I have all these bath salts Roger keeps sending me piling up in the bathroom. Anyway, apparently there’s a heat vent in the bathroom that connects to your bedroom.”
“So you heard us arguing about—” I waved my hand for her to finish so I wouldn’t have to say it.
“About spreading her ashes. Yes. I heard a little before I managed to get a towel on and get out of the bathroom to give you privacy. I’m not trying to interfere. I’m not. It’s just . . . if I can help, is all.”
I nodded, a knot in my throat. “I know Jack’s ready. And he has every right to be. It’s been a year. I get that. It’s just . . . hard.”
“I know it is,” my mother acknowledged. She started to say something, then paused and brushed a crumb off the table.
“What?” I asked.
“Have you talked about the Salt House?”
“Talk? No. It’s another thing we fight about.”
“Well, you’ll be ready when you’re ready.”
“I wish it were that easy, Mom. I wish I could name one single thing between me and Jack that was easy right now.”
“Well, you know what they say. Falling in love is the easy part. It’s staying in love that requires work.”
She stood up, squeezed my shoulder, and went to the sink to take the rollers out of her hair, leaving me to ponder this nugget of wisdom.
There seemed to be nothing that couldn’t be solved by one of her quotes. Half the time, it was simply annoying. The other half, she was right.
I watched her at the sink now, letting my mind wander back to a time when it had been easier between me and Jack.
I’d met him more than twenty years ago on the same dock he fished out of now.
I’d taken a job as a reporter for the Sun Herald after college. One of the first pieces I was assigned was to write a profile on a Maine fisherman. My editor suggested I head east as far as Lubec, to get someone authentic. I assured him Alden had plenty of those.
My research was limited to a trip to the Wharf Rat. I knew that some of the lobstermen who worked out of Calm Cove had a drink before heading home.
Sure enough, Big Jim and Little Jim, a father-and-son duo, were sitting at the bar. After three rounds, and my repeated assurances that I was a local, they invited me to tag along.
I met them at dawn the next morning, and they looked as though they hadn’t gone home from the bar the night before. Smoke swirled around the cigarettes hanging from their lips; the round button top of a stainless flask peeked out of Big Jim’s flannel chest pocket.
“Here’s your Lois Lane,” Big Jim said to his son, pointing to me standing above them on the wharf.
Big Jim hadn’t seemed too keen on my coming out with them. He’d barely looked my way the entire time we’d sat at the bar. Little Jim had been the one to invite me. He was a scrawny guy with small eyes that darted to and from my face when I talked. Now, he looked a little too pleased to see me.
I noticed a guy on a lobster boat on the other side of the wharf. He wore a flannel shirt under orange bib pants. His dark hair was damp and combed. He was drinking a cup of coffee, and his boat was immaculate, the hull gleaming and bright even from where I stood thirty yards away.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Little Jim looked over his shoulder. “Who? Kelly?”
I looked at him, and he scowled. “Ah, you don’t want him.”
“Is he a lobsterman?” I asked.
Big Jim came up behind us and spit a large ball of phlegm into the water, where it floated away like a giant oyster.
Little Jim put his arm around my shoulder, the stench of fish making my breath catch. “Come with us. We’re more fun.”
“My grandmother’s more fun,” Big Jim sneered, a half grin forming on his lips, only the second time I’d heard him speak.
“And she’s fuckin’dead!” Little Jim added, punching my arm like we were old buddies.
“You know what? I’m not feeling so good,” I lied. “Go on without me. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”