Mary was out of school and spent her time helping her mother around the motel. Or, more often, not. More often, she’d walk down long stretches of beach, past where the tourists sat, with their umbrellas and coolers and distended flesh. She’d walk to the point where the beach became a state park that no one went to, where the dunes were roped off to protect the nesting sites of tiny shore birds that rushed the sand as the waves retreated and hurried back to the grass when they advanced. Mary would sit and watch them, holding still enough that they stopped avoiding her, that they didn’t widen their berth as they went back to the safety of the blades. Mary would sit and watch them until they no longer realized she was there.
Once, without thinking, Mary grabbed one. Her hand moving independently of her mind, she took the little bird. Bringing her nose near its beak, she looked into its black eyes, which didn’t register terror, as she might have expected them to. At first, the bird held still, then its legs bicycled around, and it let out a peep. “You have to be careful,” she said. Then she set it gently back onto the sand, and with a fury of flutters, it was gone. “Now you have a good story,” she said, over her shoulder.
She felt different; she knew she did. But it wasn’t in any way she might have expected. She wasn’t retching into the toilet in the morning. She wasn’t suddenly craving pickles. Instead, she was simply hungry. Hungry and so tired that she’d fall asleep on the sand, her limbs angled out around her, her black hair hot from the sun.
“Were you at the beach all day?” Diane would ask, inspecting the red hue to her skin, the bloom of tiny freckles on her nose.
“Yeah,” Mary would reply, letting her bag drop on the floor. “I went for a walk.”
Diane would stop and square her hand to her hip. “Well, I needed some help getting the rooms cleaned up for check-in!”
Mary would roll her eyes. She’d walk right past Diane.
“Don’t you think I’d like to spend my days at the beach?” And Mary would start down the hallway to her room. “You really are a piece of work, Mary Catherine Chase!” Diane would call after her. Adding, when she heard Mary’s door shut, “What would your grandfather think, huh?”
If Mary knew that she was pregnant, it was an abstract understanding. She wasn’t panicked. Not really. The boy was coming back. He’d told her so. He’d return in the fall just as the winds changed and the earth was leached of green. He’d sail over the sapphire sea in his white boat. He’d come right to her. They’d whisper their plans, and she’d leave that night, her black hair waving in a sky as dark as pitch.
The day Mr. Pool had a huge catch of albacore at the trenches off the coast, Alice called over to the Water’s Edge. Mary was lying in bed, pressing her hands into her belly, feeling the taut roundness that was forming there, pushing it from side to side, up and down. As if she could prove that it wasn’t part of her. That it was something alien. Diane appeared in her doorway, her arms crossed in front of her. One of Mary’s hands casually flattened against the plane of her belly; the other slid toward the book that lay beside her. But Diane hadn’t noticed anything. Diane was looking at Mary’s face.
“You have any plans tonight?” she asked. It was early evening, and she had her hair in rollers. Mary assumed that Barry was coming over, as he often did to spend time with Diane. She couldn’t leave the Water’s Edge, not really. Not in the summer.
Mary didn’t look up. “No,” she said, her knees angled up, her back against her pillow.
“No friends you want to see? Allison hasn’t come over in a while.”
“She’s babysitting for the O’Nearys,” Mary said, though she hadn’t spoken with Allison in months. She turned to angle her back toward Diane, her open book in her hands.
“Well, Mrs. Pool just called,” Diane finally said. “She said Stan got a bunch of tuna and the charter group he was with didn’t want it. She’s putting it up tonight. Wanted to know if we wanted some.”
“Do we?”
“You like tuna,” responded Diane. “I like tuna.”
Mary remained silent.
“It’s probably going to take Alice all night to get that fish canned. I’m sure she’d love some help.”
Mary carefully folded down the corner of her page, running her finger along the crease. She knew that Diane was worried about her, was wondering why her teenage daughter slept all day and went for walks alone, why she didn’t see her friends. Why she seemed to be putting on weight. “Okay,” Mary said. She liked helping Mrs. Pool in her pale-blue kitchen. She liked the amicable silence. “I’ll go over.” And the relief on Diane’s face was undisguised.
The processing was already underway by the time Mary arrived. She stepped into the warm humid kitchen, letting the screen door clatter shut behind her. Mrs. Pool was hunched over the white stove, the coil burner below the pressure canner glowing red. On the small kitchen table lined with newspapers were mountains of pink flesh, slick and shiny, and the fan overhead cast its whirling shadow around the room.
Mary stepped up beside Mrs. Pool. Without saying a word, she rested her hand on Mary’s back and smiled.
“Mom said you needed some help.”
“More like some company,” she said. It was the great tragedy of Alice Pool’s life that she could never have children and the great grace of Diane’s, for it was the childlessness of the Pool household that created a void the Chase girls helped to fill.
“What should I do?”
Alice tilted her head toward the piles of fish behind them. “You can get it into jars. Get it ready.” In a box on the floor were clean mason jars. On the table, a small cutting board and a knife.
Mary pulled out the chair and sat down. “Are you going to can all of it?”
“I think so,” said Mrs. Pool, as she peered down at the gauge on her cooker.
“How full should I make them?”
“You can pack it right up to the bottom thread,” Mrs. Pool replied. “Just get it into chunks first.”
Mary took one of the large hunks of meat. It was still cool and smelled only of seawater. Then she brought her knife against it, and with an elegant stroke, the meat was severed in half. Mary didn’t mind this kind of work. When she was younger, she used to go out with Mr. Pool on the boat, and he’d taught her to run a blade along a fish’s spine, to remove all the bones and innards with a few deft slices.
They worked for more than an hour before either of them uttered a word. If Mary appreciated one thing about Alice Pool, it was her ability to stay quiet. When Mary was alone with Diane, Diane was on a constant quest for information. How is math going? Is Angie Barclay’s mother feeling better? Have you seen Kathy lately? Ann? Laura? But Alice Pool didn’t ask questions. Alice Pool just quietly hummed.
When she finally did speak, it was a statement. “Stan says that the Japs eat fish raw.” Her voice was distant and light, as if lifting to meet a passing thought. “They don’t even cook it first.”
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Beats me,” said Mrs. Pool. “They’ve got some funny ideas.”