Blue Moon (3 page)

He was nearly home. His eyes roved the church spires, the
wooden piers clawing the harbor, American flags flapping from the yacht club and every hotel roof, white yachts rocking on the waves, two trawlers heading out. He waved to the skippers, both of whom he had fished with before. Manuel Vega waved back, a beer in his hand.

Billy couldn’t stand skippers who drank onboard. It set a bad example for the crew. You had to stay keen every second. Billy had seen terrible things happen to fishermen who weren’t paying attention—fingers lost to a winch handle, a skull split open by a boom. On Billy’s first trip out with his father-in-law, Jimmy Keating, a crewmate with both hands busy setting nets had bitten down on a skinny line to hold it in place, and a gust of wind had yanked out six of his top teeth.

Stupid. Billy had no patience for stupid crew members, and dulling your senses with alcohol, at sea on a fifty-foot boat, was stupid.

“Docking!” Billy yelled, and four guys ran up from below. John Barnard, Billy’s first mate for this trip, stood with Billy at the bridge. They had gone to high school together; they’d fished as a team hundreds of times. They never confided in each other, but they had an easygoing way of passing time for long stretches.

Strange, maybe, considering that John Barnard was the only man Billy had ever felt jealous of. Cass liked him too much.

Not that anything had ever happened. But Billy knew she’d get that look in her eyes whenever she was going to see John. Before Christmas parties, Holy Ghost Society dances, even goddamn PTA meetings. Cass was a flirt, for sure; it only made Billy that much prouder she belonged to him.

Cass and John had dated a couple of times after high school, when Cass had wanted to marry Billy and Billy had been too dumb to ask. Billy, delivering scallops to Lobsterville one night, had met Cass’s mother in the kitchen.

“I want to show you something,” Mary Keating said. She began leading Billy into the dining room.

“I can’t go in there,” Billy said, sniffing his sleeve. His rubber boots tracked fragments of scallop shells.

“You’d better, if you don’t want to lose her,” Mary said. Five-two in her red high heels, Mary Keating had a husky smoker’s voice
and the drive of a Detroit diesel. Standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking waiters, she pointed across the dining room. There, at a table for two, framed by a picture window overlooking a red sun setting over Mount Hope harbor, were Cass and John having dinner together. Bonnie and Nora, in their waitress uniforms, hovered nearby.

John was tall, with sandy-brown hair and a movie-hero profile, and the way he and Cass were leaning across the table, smiling into each other’s blue eyes, made Billy want to vault across the bar and smash John’s face into his plate. He left without a word, but the incident brought Billy to his senses; two months later, he and Cass were married.

Billy pulled back on the throttle as they passed the No Wake buoy.

“Almost there,” John said.

“Can I grab a ride with you?” Billy asked. The Barnards, like most fishing families, lived in Alewives Park.

“Sure,” John said. “No problem.”

The deck hands checked the dock lines, then stood along the port rail, waiting to jump ashore. Billy threw the engine into reverse, then eased the boat ahead. She bumped hard once, hard again, and then settled into a gentle sway.

Billy paid out the shares, and he and John climbed into John’s truck.

“You planning to talk to Big Jim?” John asked.

“What about?”

“Shit on the boat. You know.”

Billy knew. His father-in-law was a skinflint, always cutting corners. Billy, the
Norboca’s
paid skipper, made excuses for him, but certain things could not be overlooked. With a crew of five, the life raft contained three survival suits. The engines needed an overhaul. Twice in two days the generator had crapped out, and Billy and John had had to start the bilge pumps by hand.

“I’ll tell him, but you know what he’ll say,” Billy said.

“’I’ll look into it,’” John said, imitating Jimmy’s heavy Mount Hope accent. “The cheap son of a bitch. I’m getting my own boat.”

“You’re as predictable as he is,” Billy said. “You always say that.”

“I’m serious. I’m working on it,” John said, stopping in front of Billy’s house.

“I’ll beat you to it,” Billy said.

“If you ever got your own boat, quit fishing for Jimmy, he’d make his daughter kick your ass out of bed,” John said.

“Dream on,” Billy said, laughing, grabbing his gear out of the pickup. Waving as John drove away, Billy caught the glint of John’s headlights on gray metal: the back of a sign that hadn’t been there two weeks ago, when he was last home. Billy didn’t have to read it; he knew what it said.

T.J. didn’t expect to hear his mother run for the front door, but he listened anyway. He heard the door open, then his father’s heavy boots in the front hall, then quiet voices in the kitchen. His father’s homecomings never used to be quiet.

He and Belinda were in the TV room, supposedly doing their homework. Belinda Perfecto sat hunched over her math book, probably algebra or some advanced trigonometry they gave eighth-grade whiz kids. Josie had tuned in to cartoons, and until he’d seen John’s headlights, T.J. had been watching Wile E. Coyote chasing Road Runner through the desert. With the sound turned off, their mother would never know.

“Dad’s home,” he said.

Belinda practically tripped over her books, flying out of the room. He heard her footsteps running all the way down the hall.

T.J. reached into his pocket for a pack of Lobsterville matches. He lit one and watched it burn down, a tiny blue flame, until it hit his thumb and finger. He pinched it out, feeling the pain. He lit another.

“Don’t smoke,” Josie said without turning around. She sat smack in front of the TV, crouched like a cat.

“Josie,” he said. “C’mere.”

She didn’t reply.

“Josie,” he said, louder. He hated that she couldn’t hear right. She had to watch your mouth to understand what you were saying. She would stare so intensely, her eyebrows frowning, her mouth
moving along with yours, no sound coming out, as if she were rehearsing for the day when she could talk normally.

He lit a third match, and that did the trick. Josie turned around, holding her nose. “Smoking stinks,” she said. “It’s gusting.”

“I’m not smoking. Come here.”

Josie was tiny. None of his friends had a brother or sister this little. Standing there so small and stern, she reminded him of his grandmother. “Belinda’s a jerk,” he said.

“No,” Josie said, shaking her head sadly. “Not a germ.”

“I said a
jerk
,” T.J. said, emphasizing the “k.”

“Okay, maybe,” Josie said. She’d make fun of Perfecto just to please T.J., even though he could see she worshipped the ground Belinda walked on. Belinda did not deserve it. She was at that age when everything embarrassed her, even Josie. T.J. had heard one of Belinda’s eighth-grade asshole friends calling Josie “Earmuff Head.” Belinda didn’t say one thing, and she had screamed at T.J. when he called the friend “Slut Wannabe” right to her face.

His father came into the room. With his hands on his hips, he filled the doorway. Belinda was right behind him. “Hey, hey, hey,” his father said. “Look who’s home.”

Josie squealed and climbed up his leg. Now he had Belinda on his back and Josie around his neck. People told T.J. he looked just like his father. He didn’t think that was too bad. His father was tan with thick dark hair like Mel Gibson’s.

“Hi, Dad,” T.J. said. “Have a good trip?”

“Long and hard, and it’s good to be home.” He unloaded the girls onto the loveseat and took Belinda’s chair.

“Did you see any whales?” Belinda asked.

“A couple.”

“Certain whales are endangered. They get caught in fishermen’s nets, and they could become extinct,” Belinda said.

“You ought to get a medal for wonderfulness,” T.J. said. “It’s probably on its way right now.”

“Thank you,” Belinda said, and T.J. had to wonder if she thought he was serious. Belinda was living proof that being a brain had nothing to do with being smart.

“No Nukes, Save the Whales for Christ,” Dad said.

Belinda laughed without understanding that their father was teasing her. T.J. could tell by that panicky look in her eye. Their mother came to the door and everyone looked up, even Josie.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said.

“We held dinner for you, Dad,” Belinda said. “I told her you’d be home in time.”

“She did,” Mom said.

“Perfect predictions every time,” T.J. said.

“Hey, I’m here, aren’t I?” his father asked, oblivious to Belinda’s glaring at T.J..

Their mother was looking around, trying to decide where to sit. T.J. wished she would sit on Dad’s lap, the way she used to. If there were twenty empty chairs, his mother would sit on his father’s lap. She was heading across the room, away from Dad, to the wing chair. T.J. couldn’t figure out why, but it made him sad that his mother needed a chair now.

“Here, Mom,” he said, standing, offering his mother the seat nearest to his father.

“Thanks, sweetie,” his mother said, sounding surprised. She kissed the top of his head and sat down. Now that T.J. had given up his seat, he couldn’t figure out what to do. He looked at his parents and sisters staring silently at the soundless cartoon, and he left the room.

J
osie put her feet on the sand, to make sure she could stand with her head above water. Then she put the snorkel back in her mouth, bit down on the rubber, and dove under again. She blinked behind her mask. There was her mother, just a few feet away. Josie fluttered her feet, swimming forward, to take her mother’s hand.

Under the sea was Josie’s favorite place. Sunlight pierced the clear water and bleached her tan skin pale. Eelgrass swayed in the waves, like mysterious cartoon dancing girls. A school of minnows slashed through the grass. Delicate hermit crabs skittered along the bottom.

Cass squeezed Josie’s hand. She pointed out a baby shrimp, jetting backward through the water. It seemed so funny that Josie let out a laugh that bubbled to the surface. She wondered if the air contained sound, if someone in a boat could hear laugh bubbles. Underwater, hearing didn’t matter.

Josie sometimes hoped they would find a school of big fish, like the ones her father caught, the kind that had tiny teeth and ate sea plants. She wouldn’t be scared. She would swim with fish as big as girls. But thinking of big fish suddenly made her stomach flip. T.J. had a shark’s tooth bigger than an arrowhead. He wore it around his neck, hanging from a rawhide shoelace. Thinking of T.J.’s necklace made Josie swim closer to her mother.

They saw a lobster pot. Its buoy had broken off, and it had drifted in close to shore. Josie and her mother hovered above it. Their arms moved in slow, graceful strokes, keeping them steady. Cass
glanced at Josie, then pointed. A lobster was caught in the trap.

Josie watched her mother take a deep breath, then dive down. She shimmered through the water, quick as a fish, to unlatch the trap door. Josie watched her hand reach inside, her fingers closing around the lobster’s back.

Cass swam up to Josie. Josie reached out, taking the lobster from her mother. The lobster reached back, its claws clicking, trying to pinch Josie’s hand. Josie smiled. She had held hundreds of lobsters. She looked at its big, round eyes, and she touched its long, skinny, green, ribbed antennae. Then she let it go.

It drifted through the water for an instant, then flapped its tail to swim backward. Josie watched it hide under a rock ledge covered with blue-black mussels. Her mother tapped her hand.

Josie knew it was time to leave, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to watch the crevice, to see if the lobster would appear again. But she followed her mother anyway, into the shallow water. She touched the sand with her toes, craned her neck to breathe without the snorkel.

Her mother tossed her head from side to side, letting the water drain out of her ears. Josie copied her. Then she raced out of the water, to crouch in the damp sand below the high-tide line. Shivering in the salty breeze, she began packing sand into a sturdy castle. She knew her mother would soon join in. They always built a sand castle before leaving the beach.

When Cass and Billy first married, years after falling in love, friends of her parents would come to the restaurant and ask, “When are you two going to start a family?” Some would even add the words “of your own.” The question had boggled Cass’s mind. How could two grown people with parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters “start” a family? Just leave the past in a photo album, take a deep breath, and begin again? To Cass it would be like chopping down the family tree to plant a new one.

Then T.J. was born. There in the delivery room, the moment the doctor placed their son on her stomach, Cass felt the world change. Soaking wet, numb from the waist down, she held her baby. Billy
tried to find a way to hold them both. Their newborn had Billy’s black curls. Cass remembered looking Billy straight in the face.

“I love our family,” she said, and for the first time in her life she wasn’t counting the extended Keating clan. She was talking about three people—Cass, Billy, and T.J.

So why should it have surprised Cass when her son, learning to talk, had given short shrift to his ABC’s and animal noises, and had seemed more interested in nailing down the intricacies of their family?

“Are you Gram’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m your son,” T.J. would say with satisfaction. The mother-son part he had picked up right away.

“Right,” Cass would say.

“Are Aunt Bonnie and Aunt Nora your aunts?”

“No, they’re my sisters.”

“And they’re my sisters, too.”

“No, they’re your aunts.”

“Then who are my sisters?”

Cass would explain, again, that T.J. didn’t have any sisters, that for the time being he was an only child, but that he had his great-grandmother Sheila, his grandparents, aunts and an uncle, and two parents who loved him very much.

Belinda had learned to talk the same way. When Billy would call, Belinda would say, “Daddy, would you like to speak to your wife?” When Nora would call, Belinda would say, “Your brother-in-law is on a fishing trip, but your sister is here,” then hand the phone to Cass. It had cracked Cass and Billy up.