the shells and extract with a pick the spotted, pink meat. Adaline does not dip her meat with her fingers into melted butter as do the rest of us, but rather soaks it in a bowl of hot broth and eats it from a fork. She works her way methodically through the bright red carapace, missing not a piece of edible flesh.
Thomas goes above to the deck when he cuts his thumb on a claw. After a time, Rich, who may feel that Thomas needs company, also goes above. Billie, too, leaves us, happy to turn her back on the pile of claws and red detritus that is forming in a stainless steel bowl and is becoming vaguely repulsive. Across the table, I watch with fascination as Adaline pulls tiny bits of meat I’d have overlooked from the body of the lobster. I watch her suck and chew, one by one, each of the lobster’s spindly legs, kneading the thin shells with her teeth.
“Did you grow up on a farm?” she asks. “Were your parents farmers?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, they were,” I say. “Where in Ireland did you grow up?”
“Cork,” she says. “It’s in the south.”
“And then you went to university.”
“Yes,” she says. “Billie is wonderful. You Ye very lucky to have her.”
“Thank you. I do feel lucky to have her. How did you end up in Boston?”
“I was with someone,” she says. “When I was in London. He worked in Boston, and I came over to be with him. I’ve always liked Boston.”
“How did you come to know so much about Thomas’s poetry?” I ask.
She seems surprised at the question.
“I think I’ve always read Thomas,” she says. “Even at Dublin, I thought he was extraordinary. I suppose, after the prize, everyone reads Thomas now, don’t they? That’s what a prize does, I should think. It makes everyone read you, surely.”
“You’ve memorized his work.”
“Oh, not really”
There is an accusing tone to my voice that seems to put her on the defensive.
“The thing about Thomas is that I think he wants to be read aloud,” she says. “One almost has to, to fully understand.”
“You know he killed a girl,” I say.
Adaline slowly removes a lobster leg from her mouth, holds it between her thumb and finger as she rests her hands on the edge of the table. The blue-checked oilcloth is dotted with bits of flesh and yellow drips of butter that have congealed.
“Thomas killed a girl,” she repeats, as though the sentence doesn’t scan.
I take a sip of wine. I tear a piece of garlic bread from the loaf. I try to control my hands, which are trembling. I believe I am more shocked at what I have just said than she is. By the way I have said it. By the words I have used.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
She puts the spindly leg on her plate and wipes her fingers on the napkin in her lap. She holds the crumpled napkin in one hand.
“The car accident,” I explain. “Thomas was driving.”
She still seems not to understand.
“There was a girl with him. In the car. Thomas went off the road, caught his rear wheel in a ditch, and flipped the car.”
Adaline reaches up and, with her finger, absently picks at a piece of lobster between her teeth. I look down and notice I have a spill of lobster water on my jeans.
“How old was she?”
“The same age as he was, seventeen.”
“He was drunk?”
“Yes,” I say.
I wait.
I see it then, the moment of recognition. I can see her processing the information, reciting lines to herself, suddenly understanding them. Her eyes move to the stove and then back to me.
“The Magdalene Toems,” she says quietly.
I nod. “But her name wasn’t Magdalene. It was Linda.”
Adaline flinches slightly at the word Linda, as though the commonness of the girl’s name makes it real.
“He loved her,” she says.
“Yes,” I answer. “Very much. I don’t think he’s really ever gotten over it. In a way, all of his poems are about the accident, even when they seem not to be.”
“But he married you,” she says.
“So he did,” I say.
Adaline puts her napkin on the table and stands up. She walks a few steps to the doorway of the forward cabin. She has her back to me, her arms crossed over her chest.
Rich bends his head into the cabin. “Jean, you should come out here,” he calls. “The light is perfect.”
He stops. Adaline is still standing in the doorway with her back to me. She