the long driveway of the Ellis mansion and let the car coast to a stop. Ruth still pretended to be asleep, and Cal pretended to wake her up. He twisted around in the front seat and poked her hip.
“Try to drag yourself back into consciousness.”
She opened her eyes slowly and stretched with great drama. “Are we here already?”
They got out of the car, walked to the front door, and Cal rang the bell. He put his hands in his jacket pockets.
“You are so goddamned pissed off about being here,” Cal said, and laughed. “You hate me so much.”
The door opened, and there was Ruth’s mother. She gave a little gasp and stepped out on the doorstep to put her arms around her daughter. Ruth laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and said, “Here I am.”
“I’m never sure if you’ll really come.”
“Here I am.”
They held each other.
Ruth’s mother said, “You look wonderful, Ruth,” although, with her daughter’s head lying on her shoulder, she could not really see.
“Here I am,” Ruth said. “Here I am.”
Cal Cooley coughed decorously.
6
The young animals that issue from the eggs of the lobster are distinct in every way, including shape, habits, and mode of transportation, from the adult.
—William Saville-Kent 1897
MISS VERA ELLIS had never wanted Ruth’s mother to marry.
When Mary Smith-Ellis was a little girl, Miss Vera would say, “You know how difficult it was for me when your mother died.”
“Yes, Miss Vera,” Mary would say.
“I barely survived without her.”
“I know, Miss Vera.”
“You look so much like her.”
“Thank you.”
“I can’t do a thing without you!”
“Yes, I know.”
“My helpmate!”
“Yes, Miss Vera.”
Ruth’s mother had a most peculiar life with Miss Vera. Mary Smith-Ellis never had close friends or sweethearts. Her life was circumscribed by service—mending, corresponding, packing, shopping, braiding, reassuring, aiding, bathing, and so on. She had inherited the very workload that once burdened her mother and had been raised into servitude, exactly as her mother had been.
Winters in Concord, summers on Fort Niles. Mary did go to school, but only until she was sixteen, and only because Miss Vera did not want a complete idiot as a companion. Other than those years of schooling, Mary Smith-Ellis’s life consisted of chores for Miss Vera. In this manner, Mary passed through childhood and adolescence. Then she was a young woman, then one not so young. She had never had a suitor. She was not unattractive, but she was busy. She had work to do.
It was at the end of the summer of 1955 that Miss Vera Ellis decided to give a picnic for the people of Fort Niles. She had guests visiting Ellis House from Europe, and she wanted to show them the local spirit, so she planned to have a lobster bake on Gavin Beach, to which all the residents of Fort Niles were to be invited. The decision was without precedent. There had never before been social occasions attended by the locals of Fort Niles and the Ellis family, but Miss Vera thought it would be a delightful event. A novelty.
Mary, of course, organized everything. She spoke with the fishermen’s wives and arranged for them to bake the blueberry pies. She had a modest, quiet manner, and the fishermen’s wives liked her well enough. They knew she was from Ellis House, but they didn’t hold that against her. She seemed a nice girl, if a bit mousy and shy. Mary also ordered corn and potatoes and charcoal and beer. She borrowed long tables from the Fort Niles grammar school, and arranged to have the pews moved from the Fort Niles church down to the beach. She talked to Mr. Fred Burden of Courne Haven, who was a decent enough fiddler, and hired him to provide music. Finally, she needed to order several hundred pounds of lobster. The fishermen’s wives suggested that she discuss this with Mr. Angus Addams, who was the most prolific fisherman on the island. She was told to wait for his boat, the Sally Chestnut, at the dock in the middle of the afternoon.
So Mary went down to the dock on a windy August afternoon and picked her way around the tossed stacks of wrecked wooden lobster traps and nets and barrels. As each fisherman came past her, stinking in his high boots and sticky slicker, she asked, “Excuse me, sir? Are you Mr. Angus Addams? Excuse me? Are you the skipper of the Sally Chestnut, sir?”
They all shook their heads or grunted crude denials and passed right by. Even Angus Addams himself passed