her of the pregnancy, but she got no response. That devastated her; she cried and cried. The only person, in fact, who was at all interested in Mary’s pregnancy was her neighbor Rhonda Pommeroy, who, as usual, was pregnant herself.
“I’ll probably have a boy,” Rhonda said, tipsily.
Rhonda was drunk, as usual. Drunk in a charming way, as usual, as though she were a young girl and this was the first alcohol she had ever tasted. Drunk like wheee! “I’ll probably have another boy, Mary, so you have to have a girl. Did you feel it when you got pregnant?”
“I don’t think so,” Mary said.
“I feel it every time. It’s like click! And this one’s a boy. I can always tell. And yours is going to be a girl. I’ll bet it’s a girl! How about that? When she grows up, she can marry one of my boys! And we can be related! ” Rhonda nudged Mary so hard, she almost knocked her over.
“We’re already related,” Mary said. “Through Len and Kitty.”
“You’re going to like having a baby,” Rhonda said. “It’s the funnest thing.”
But it wasn’t the funnest thing, not for Mary. She got stuck on the island for the delivery, and it was a living nightmare. Her husband couldn’t take the screaming and all the women around, so he went fishing and left her to deliver the baby without his help. It was a cruel act on many levels. There had been bad storms all week, and none of the other men on the island had dared to put out their boats. On this day, Stan and his terrified sternman set out alone. He’d prefer to risk his life, it seemed, than help his wife or even listen to her pain. He’d been expecting a boy, but he was polite enough to conceal his disappointment when he came home from fishing and met his little girl. He didn’t get to hold her at first, because Senator Simon Addams was there, hogging the baby.
“Oh, isn’t she the dearest little baby?” Simon said, again and again, as the women laughed at his tenderness.
“What should we name her?” Mary asked her husband, quietly. “Do you like the name Ruth?”
“I don’t care what you name her,” Stan Thomas said, of his daughter, who was only an hour old. “Name her whatever you like, Mint.”
“Do you want to hold her?” Mary asked.
“I have to wash up,” he said. “I smell like a bait bag.”
10
What say you to a ramble among the fairy rock pools, weed-covered ledges, and gem-decked parterres bordering the gardens of the sea?
—Crab, Shrimp, and Lobster Lore W. B. Lord 1867
JULY ARRIVED for Fort Niles. It was now the middle of the summer of 1976. It wasn’t as exciting a month as it might have been.
The Bicentennial passed on Fort Niles without any outstanding revelry. Ruth thought she lived in the only place in America that wasn’t getting its act together for a decent celebration. Her dad even went out to haul that day, although, out of some patriotic stirring, he gave Robin Pommeroy the day off. Ruth spent the holiday with Mrs. Pommeroy and her two sisters. Mrs. Pommeroy had tried to sew costumes for them all. She wanted the four of them to dress up as Colonial dames and march in the town parade, but she’d managed to finish only Ruth’s costume by the morning of the Fourth, and Ruth refused to dress up alone. So Mrs. Pommeroy put the costume on Opal, and baby Eddie immediately vomited all over it.
“The dress looks more authentic now,” Ruth said.
“He was eating pudding this morning,” Opal said, shrugging. “Pudding always makes Eddie barf.”
There was a short parade up Main Street, but there were more people in the parade than there were people to watch it. Senator Simon Addams recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, but he always recited the Gettysburg Address from memory, given any opportunity. Robin Pommeroy set off some cheap fireworks sent to him by his brother Chester. He burned his hand so severely that he would be unable to go fishing for two weeks. This made Ruth’s father angry enough to fire Robin and hire a new sternman, Duke Cobb’s ten-year-old grandson, who was skinny and weak as a third-grade girl and, unhelpfully, scared of lobsters. But the kid came cheap.
“You could’ve hired me,” Ruth told her father. She sulked about it for a while, but she didn’t really mean it, and he knew that.