By Christina Reiss
Art: “Flood” by Nawmi Manaam

Dana left before dawn, reeking of the previous night’s alcohol, and cursing an alarm he forgot he set. Mary woke as he woke. Reaching for him, her hands came back empty. He said he was going fishing.

Later that morning, when Mary peered out the small cape’s large bay window, she had her doubts. An unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean revealed white caps cresting seal-gray waters. Leichester’s town pier, shaped like a beckoning finger, reached out to a solitary unmanned lighthouse skirted in foam. You could fish in those seas, but it would be neither pleasant nor productive. Fish weren’t stupid; they knew where to hide when the ocean roiled.

Mary had cleaned clams and cod for chowder. Sauteed onions and salt pork drained on a paper towel. She left the window and resumed peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. Several minutes later, she heard a persistent knocking on the front door. As she washed and dried her hands before going to answer it, the knocking became louder, more insistent.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she muttered, wondering if Dana had forgotten or lost his key. After a string of break-ins up and down the Maine coast, they had taken to locking their front door. Having grown up in the house, the sole child of two taciturn but doting Mainers, Dana took the crimes as a personal affront. He said he had every right to feel safe in his own home as if he was what the thieves were after.

The knocking became pounding. Mary opened the door to a fist prepared to deliver its next strike. Standing on the stoop, her daughter, Deidre, was flanked by a young boy and girl. The shock of seeing her only child was like a stick shoved into the gears of Mary’s mind. She stood still, her mouth gaping open. Eleven years had passed since Deidre left home at seventeen. Over time, the pain of losing her had dulled, but it had never subsided.

Still beautiful, a tad weathered, Deidre retained her regal bearing. It set off her sage-colored eyes, and the long tangle of honey-blonde hair, now darker at the roots, that crawled down her back. She was the perfect blend of Dana’s tall but slight frame, his albino white hair and beaky features and Mary’s swarthier coloring, generous curves, and doughy features. Deidre’s comely body, which had caused so much trouble with the summer people, was concealed beneath a black track suit and a gray windbreaker. “Cunning,” was how the Mainers described her as a baby. It meant something beyond mere looks—a warning of sorts. Be wary, be watchful with that kind of child Mary’s eyes moved to Deidre’s companions. The boy looked about ten, blond like his mother with her face too, the only difference was a brawn, a sturdiness his mother didn’t have. Mary wracked her brain for an image of the artist who’d taken Deidre away. She had only met Peter Chevalier once. He came to pick up Deidre in her hot pink crocheted bikini for a pool party in Falmouth Foreside, an upscale town down the coast. Mary vaguely recalled a meaty man with salt and pepper scruff prickling his chin and sprouting fiercely from his nose and ears. The boy must be his. The girl was much younger, four or five years old, with skin the color of Mary’s morning coffee and her mother’s green eyes under a blond afro. No telling who her father was.

“Can we come in?” Deidre asked impatiently as Mary gawked at them. Mary nodded, too overcome to speak. Leading her guests into the front room, she motioned them to the davenport while she sat down across from them in her upholstered chair, separated by a pie crust table from Dana’s La-Z-Boy recliner.

“Your father is out fishing,” she croaked.

She cleared her throat, as if something other than her daughter’s sudden appearance caught her words, and doubted Deidre was fooled. You couldn’t hide a thing from that child. She noticed everything, and with Dana’s schooling, had learnt to criticize it. Not only their modest home and clothing, but more wounding things as well. 

“Why aren’t you pretty?” Deidre asked Mary when she was too young to know it was a dagger to her mother’s heart. Reaching middle school, discovering her own beauty and the power it bestowed, Deidre had reared up on her mother like a cobra. Egging her on, Dana had enjoyed the competition, imagining that he was the prize. The summer people didn’t help, encouraging Deidre’s disdain for her origins, telling her she was different, more like them, and then making her that way.

Avoiding Deidre’s stare, Mary turned to the children, who were looking around the room with interest. Curious little kippers, she said to herself. She approved of them immediately, but she wondered what they’d been told about her. Nothing or nothing good, she suspected.

“I need you to watch my children while I do something,” Deidre announced.

Telling, not asking; it was Deidre’s way. She’d done it, at age fifteen, when the artist asked her to model for him during the summers in his studio on a promontory just outside of town. When Deidre relayed this proposition to her parents, Dana asked how much she’d be paid. Whistling when she told him the amount, he said she’d be a fool to turn down that kind of money. Two years later, Deidre had told them she was moving to the south of France to work in the artist’s studio there. Dana said they would save money without a teenager in the house, eating their groceries, taking long showers, and draining the gas in Dana’s pickup truck. Mary expressed her concerns, but she knew she couldn’t prevail if father and daughter were in cahoots, knowing that much about them, and herself.

“I can watch the children,” she said quickly before Deidre could change her mind.

She didn’t ask where Deidre was going. She doubted she would tell her. That wasn’t Deidre’s way either. She had indeed gone to France, sending a few postcards from a place called Antibes before they lost all contact with her. There had been no getting ahold of the artist either. The summer people would not reveal his whereabouts, as if Mary had no right to know. She suggested they hire a private detective but Dana had scoffed at the extravagance, telling her there was no way they could afford it, especially in a “fereign” country, and it would be a waste of money anyway.

Mary regarded Deidre hungrily, taking her in. Beyond the clothes on her back, she’d brought nothing with her except an envelope-like fuchsia purse that hung from her shoulder on a thick gold chain. Neither she nor the children were dressed for the weather. Mary wondered if there was a rental car parked in the driveway but she didn’t dare ask, didn’t dare get up to look and find out.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” Deidre said.

“That’s fine,” Mary assured her, even though on the morrow she would have to get up early and go to work. Her daughter probably thought her mother still pulled the night shift at the fish processing plant in Harpswell. It had long been demolished to make way for a strip mall of high-end outlets which was a hive of activity during the summer and a ghost town in the winter. Mary was now the deli manager at Leichester’s only grocery store. When she quadrupled the deli’s sales, she convinced the store manager to no longer use Styrofoam and plastic for the take-out items. He’d called her a “revolutionary,” but he’d given in, saying at least they’d keep the last of Maine’s paper mills in business. At the time, Dana was working on a barge that hauled waste out to sea at night. Ferried by the waves to the town beach where it festered, the plastic splintered and the Styrofoam disintegrated into thousands of tiny white balls. It had caused a stink among the locals and outraged the people from away. Dana said it was a hush hush operation but everybody in town seemed to know who was doing it. Lost in thought, Mary heard Deidre saying how little the house and town had changed, and how much her mother had. With her hawk eye for the extra pound, she probably noticed that Mary had put on weight since working at the deli. Moving uneasily in her chair, Mary considered transferring the pillow at the small of her back to cover her stomach. Folding her hands in her lap instead, she saw Deidre frown in her direction.

“Why is it always so cold in here?” Deidre complained.

Mary nodded but didn’t answer. It was cold because Dana didn’t want to pay for the oil their ancient boiler greedily consumed or the firewood that stocked their sooty stove. Although Dana took pride in Deidre’s beauty, he was immune to her monetary demands, never buying her the things she said she needed to fit in. Deidre had never forgiven him for this deprivation, or her mother for allowing it to happen, as if her parents had denied her food and drink.

Dana’s transgressions with his daughter, however, went deeper than his frugal Yankee ways. He didn’t take care of his child, proudly proclaiming he’d never signed up for kid duty and wouldn’t be forced into it against his will. Thankfully, Deidre had been healthy except for the time she caught the croup. With the child’s temperature soaring, rather than taking Deidre to the hospital in Bangor or even calling her pediatrician, Dana drove the shivering, barking child in her pajamas to the fish processing plant where his wife was working and dropped her off. The plant manager drove Mary and Deidre to the emergency room and offered to stay until Deidre was discharged. Mary told him her husband would pick them up in the morning, hoping that would prove true.

When Deidre rose to her feet, Mary was again caught off guard. If Deidre had left instructions for the children, Mary hadn’t heard them. The door, caught by the wind, slammed shut behind Deidre. The children seemed unconcerned, as if they’d been dropped off like this before.

“I’m making chowder,” Mary told them. “You can sit here and watch television or you can help me in the kitchen.”

The boy answered for both of them. With a disarming accent, he told Mary they would be pleased to assist her. Turning to his sister, he spoke to her in French before they followed Mary into her kitchen.

“What’s your names?” she asked.

“I am called Pierre like my father,” the boy answered. Pointing to his sister, he said, “She is called Marie.”

“Who is she named after?” Mary asked, taken aback.

“Someone very important,” Pierre assured her.

Mary regarded him with astonishment. It was inconceivable that Deidre had named a child after her.

“Who?” she asked.

The boy smiled beatifically before answering.

“The Virgin Mary, of course.”

Mary was as surprised as if she’d been identified as the girl’s namesake. She, herself, was named after the Virgin Mary but her religious convictions had faltered with her brother’s death. Mary had nonetheless dragged Deidre to Mass Sunday mornings even though she was almost too tired to stand. How she longed for the parts when the parishioners got to sit or kneel. There was no sign, not one, not ever, that Deidre had taken any of it in.

Mary finished peeling the last potato and turned to the boy with the knife in her hand, asking if he wanted to cube the potatoes. He accepted this task with the gallantry of a nobleman paying homage to an aging courtesan. Showing him how to do it before handing him the knife, Mary kept an eye on him while she moved a stepstool close to the stove and hoisted Marie onto it. Filling a measuring cup with milk, she explained they would add the ingredients to the milk and cook the mixture slowly until everything was tender. At the end, they’d add heavy cream to thicken the broth and produce a velvety texture. She doubted the child understood a word she said but when she handed Marie the milk, the child dutifully poured it in. Like sous chefs, Mary and Pierre brought Marie the potatoes, salt pork, onions, clams, and cod. Setting the pot on low heat, Mary stirred in pepper, salt, and dill. They washed their fishy hands and returned to the front room.

Out the window, the weather worsened, brooding clouds huddled on the horizon, and the ocean was white lace. Dana’s boat would head into harbor soon. She hoped he’d be delayed. After nightfall, he wouldn’t turn the children out—there would be nowhere to take them—but come morning he might call Child Protective Services and have them carted away. Mary couldn’t let that happen. This time she’d be prepared.

As the children watched cartoons in English, Mary sat next to them, laughing when they laughed, not paying attention. Names, she thought, conveyed a truth that you grew into. Long ago, when she hadn’t seen her daughter for years, she looked up “Deidre” and discovered it meant “raging daughter, broken-hearted, and sorrowful wanderer.” At the time, she’d doubted a single name could contain all of that. Now she knew it could. Dana had chosen well.

Called away from her reverie by the smell of scalding milk, Mary jumped up with a start to check on her chowder. When it was ready, she and her grandchildren ate it at the small kitchen table with its red-and-white checkered tablecloth and the hokey candle stuck in a straw-covered Chianti bottle for the nights when Mary dined alone. She served the chowder with the ciabatta rollsshe baked weekly which flew off the deli’s shelves.

After their meal, Mary got out the shoebox with Dana’s Matchbox collection and let the children play with the tiny cars, trucks, and rescue vehicles. From time to time, she got up from her chair to check on Dana’s return. He didn’t always come home straightaway. Oftener than not, he stopped by Tippy Batchelder’s tackle shack for a drink, sometimes staying so late that dinner was ruined.

When Marie could barely keep her eyes open, Mary carried her into the bedroom kept clean and fresh for guests that never came. Placing the child on the bed, covering her with a quilt, she told her she would stay nearby. Marie nodded sleepily. Within minutes, her eyes closed. Breathing rhythmically, a kitten’s purr, Marie’s cheeks flushed and her rosebud mouth fell open revealing pearly teeth.

Another beauty, Mary thought sourly.

Where males were concerned, beauty won the day. It trumped all other virtues, even the ones a hardworking, pleasant-tempered, plain woman might hold out like a consolation bouquet. When Dana found a woman attractive, he said she looked like a million bucks, marrying the two qualities he held most dear.

“Face it. Men like pretty women,” he told Mary bluntly.

She didn’t reply, didn’t contradict him. It was true after all. It had placed her under Dana’s thumb and kept her there. Growing up, Mary’s best friend, Colette, had been a French-Canadian beauty with a riot of dark curls and dancing brown eyes. After their first-grade teacher assigned Mary and Colette to be buddies, Mary shared in some of Colette’s popularity, caught in the limelight, while the prettier girl shined. As she got older, Colette had “put out” which was another thing men liked.

Colette’s father drove a long-haul truck and owned an apartment building, rendering Colette’s family what the locals called “Lestah-rich” which meant more money than most of the town, but far less than the tourists who descended like a swarm of bees from May to September. The summer people called the town “Laychester” and expected the locals to follow suit. They never did, laughing behind the tourists’ backs as they moored their boats, cleaned their cottages, sold them bait, and prepared their food.

Mary was from the Portuguese neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Her father and grandfathers were fishermen. Her older brother, Marco, had been one too. Dana wasn’t much better off, but his ancestors had settled on the coast which at that time was avoided by the upper classes who thought the sea air unhealthy. Later, of course, it was all the rage to live there. By the time Dana was born, his family’s wealth had been boosted exponentially by the location of their beachside home. The town people said it gave him airs. Mary, however, didn’t begrudge him anything. She was careful, however, to remain humble herself.

When they were teenagers, Mary, Colette, Marco, and Dana, two sets of best friends, went everywhere together. As Colette and Dana started dating, Mary and Marco became their hapless sidekicks, their audience. They tore through the town in a rectangle: Dana’s corner connecting on the upper tier to Colette’s corner, Mary connecting on the bottom rail to Marco’s corner, Mary and Marco reaching upward to Dana and Colette. Although Dana was out of Mary’s league, he included her in his hijinks which buoyed them all.

When Marco got his foot caught in a lobster pot line and was swept overboard in high seas, drowning instantly, the rectangle became a triangle from which Mary was expelled. She went away to a teacher’s college in Vermont, dragging herself back to Leichester to serve as maid of honor at Dana and Colette’s wedding, toasting them along with the rest of the town, pretending she was happy even though she was not.

Less than three years later, Colette caught a case of double pneumonia, which went undiagnosed and untreated until Dana finally took her to the hospital where she died. Dana mourned; Mary returned home to comfort him. When she got herself pregnant, Dana fought it, thrashing so violently against the descending net that he threatened to capsize them both.

“How do I know it’s mine?’ he asked.

“It’s yours. You know it,” she told him firmly although she trembled inside.

“Do I? You must think I’m very trusting.”

“That’s not what comes to mind.”

Dana shook his head like a swimmer coming out of the water.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” she said with as much force as she could muster.

“No,” he said again.

“I will tell my parents,” she replied, pausing before adding, “and yours.”

A month later their wedding took place before Leichester’s only priest, a fisherman who heard the call and became a fisher of men. Neither set of parents was present, not wanting to condone fornication although only Mary’s parents were Catholic. Dana’s Presbyterian parents didn’t mind their son sowing his wild oats; they only objected to the impoverished soil in which his seed was wasted. With the priest scowling at the blushing bride’s bulging belly, Mary and Dana said their vows, she with her heart overflowing, Dana with bitten-off words spat out.

Catching Dana hadn’t changed a thing. Mary was still competing with Colette, Deidre, every woman Dana looked at, and even now with this sleeping child.

“Ugly thoughts,” she said aloud.

The child shifted in her sleep, her forehead creasing.

Someday there will be wrinkles there, Mary thought before she could catch
herself.

Kissing Marie’s cheek in penance, she left the guest bedroom to check on Pierre. She found him lying on the floor playing with the toy cars, lining them up in the grooves of the braided rug.

“Are they going to race?” she asked him.

“No,” he replied. “Everybody is going to the same place.”

“Where is that?”

“Home.”

Mary smiled at him; he smiled back. She’d forgotten what it was like to keep company with a clever child. Deidre had been like that, a new chapter every day, Mary hanging on her every word. When Deidre was young, they had been close, so close, as if they shared a common beating heart, as if every breath Deidre took had been Mary’s own.

Outside the sky darkened, the sea frothing as the sun went down and the wind picked up. There was no sign of Dana. He would expect his chowder to be warm, but if she kept it on the stove, it would turn or burn. She took it off the heat and placed a lid on the pot, hoping for the best.

She was back in the guest bedroom with Marie, sitting in a chair next to the bed, when she heard knocking on the front door. As she walked toward it, she silently rehearsed her speeches—one for Dana, one for Deidre, whoever arrived first. 

She opened the door to Deidre, who was splattered with rain and holding the porch railing in a stiff wind. Coming inside, Deidre stood over Pierre, talking to him in French, her tone a staccato of commands. He did not look up as he mournfully placed the vehicles back in the shoebox, one by one, taking his time.

“Where’s Marie?” Deidre asked Mary.

“She’s sleeping. In the guest room. She just went down.”

“Wake her up. We must leave.”

Like a slashed tire, Mary tottered, grabbing hold of the back of her chair to steady herself.

“Where have you been?” she managed to get out in a high and unnatural voice.

“At the studio. To get my paintings,” Deidre answered testily. “I had a key made while he wasn’t looking.”

“Your paintings?”

“I’m in them. My body, my face. Nude. Oh, don’t look so shocked. Why else do you think I came here?”

“I don’t know.” Mary shook her head. “I was trying to figure that out. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Well, now you have,” Deidre replied.

Leaving the room to fetch Marie, Mary returned with the drowsy child in her arms, their heads touching as Marie snuggled into the crook of Mary’s neck. Deidre reached out to take the child. Mary paused, holding on to her. Dana’s sudden entrance prevented any scene. Red-cheeked, his eyes streaming tears, he was either wind-burned, drunk, or both.

“Wicked cold,” he said as he took off his overcoat, rain hat, and rubber boots and made his way to his recliner.

“We didn’t catch a thing,” he added cheerfully as he sat down. Scanning the room as if just noticing there were other people in it, he crooked a finger, directing Deidre to approach. She stood where she was, her hands on her hips.

“Whattcher doin’ here?” he asked.

“I picked up some paintings at Peter’s studio. I’m going to sell them in New York. We’re leaving to catch a flight from Portland. We’ve gotta go.”

Mary noticed a shift in Deidre’s voice. The sharpness, the irritation with which she spoke to her mother was gone. In its place was a matter-of-fact, impersonal tone, one you might use with a customs agent, or a gate attendant, enough information to pass, no more.

“Whoo, whee!” Dana slapped his knee. “Pirate’s booty!”

Mary now knew for certain that he was drunk, quite drunk, and in the happy phase that preceded the bitter phase where he blamed Mary for everything that had gone wrong in his life, openly mourned Colette, and told Mary she’d trapped him in a loveless marriage.

“We’ve got to go,” Deidre said again. “We’ve a long drive ahead of us.”

“These yer kids?” Dana asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s been nice seeing you,” Dana replied without sarcasm.

“Stay,” Mary pleaded. “I’ve made chowder and rolls.”

“It was delightful,” Pierre interrupted, still lying on his belly on the floor. “Like a bisque but silky.”

“The children helped me make it,” Mary added as if this might make Deidre consider it more favorably, might make her stay. Deidre could be like that, hard at first, softer in time. Deidre frowned and pulled Marie out of her mother’s arms, waking the child who murmured in French.

“What she say?” Dana asked, his gull-like features marred with confusion at the sound of a strange language in his home.

“Marie wants to stay,” Pierre translated.

“I would love that!” Mary exclaimed with an involuntary clap of her hands.

Dana gazed at her, suddenly sober, and shook his head. “Tain’t nobody who lives here but you and me.”

It was as close to a declaration of love as Dana had ever made.

“You see, Mother?” Deidre replied bitterly. “He’s always been this way. You chose him over me.”

“No,” Mary replied, shaking her head. “I just couldn’t hold on to you both.” It had never occurred to Mary that Deidre might feel this way, that Mary herself might have been the prize.

“Your mother hooked me and reeled me in,” Dana chortled from his recliner. Pushing the lever on its side, he upended himself. He spoke to his stockinged feet, he spoke to the ceiling, he spoke the absolute truth that drunkards sometimes stumble on.

Deidre turned to her mother, challenging her to deny it, or at least defend her own honor. Mary said nothing. Glancing at Pierre, she smiled down reassuringly at his upturned face.

“This ain’t no catch and release household!” Dana cackled at his own joke.

When no one else laughed, he crossed his arms and shut his eyes, a petulant look settling on his pinkened cheeks.

As Dana nodded off, the women prepared for Deidre’s trip. Gathering old blankets which they could discard if they needed to, Mary packed sandwiches, napkins, spoons, paper bowls, and a thermos of chowder.

“Hurry up, Mother, we’ll be late for our flight,” Deidre said as she made her way to the door with Marie in her arms. Mary bustled behind them with her offerings. Pierre lingered, standing next to Dana’s chair.

“I don’t want to go,” he said mulishly.

“Allons!” Deidre called to him from the threshold.

Dana’s eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and searching. They settled on the little boy.

“You go when you can no longer stay,” he said solemnly as if this great truth had sailed past him in his sleep.

Mary stopped in her tracks, her head turning to Dana, then to Pierre.

You go when you can no longer stay, she repeated to herself, her gaze settling on the things in her arms that she would give away. She shook her head, slowly at first, but then more vigorously. It was too late. Deidre was already out the door. Pierre, however, had seen everything. Taking her offerings, he nodded silently as he left her behind.

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Christina Reiss has published short stories in the San Antonio Review, Scribes Anthology, Fail Better, Watershed, Midway Journal, Rumen, San Fedele Press, and other journals. She lives and works in Vermont.