A Matter of Mercy Read online

  Terry clicked the mouse on the story. Doubtless, there’d be a picture of Caroline Vance, nee Marcum, of Wellfleet.

  Chapter 15

  December was killing her softly, as the song said, although now that Christmas was within shouting distance, the bleakness was relieved by the year-rounders’ determination to drape Christmas lights on anything that moved or didn’t. The days were the color of dirty wash water, though, and crawled in a relentless lonely line. Day after day Caroline made up excuses, postponed and procrastinated. She’d learned a lot about aquaculture, not that she knew why—well, there was Rid—except that she needed an excuse to watch Terry. I want to know if she’s all right. A lie. She already knew it was impossible. A few times she caught Terry looking at her, and her pulse sounded like surf in her ears as heat rose on her cheeks. But then Terry would give her small smile. The look had been innocent, Caroline could see that, and relief would slow her pulse. What am I doing? she said over and over, what am I doing? and had no answer, skating on ice she knew she couldn’t trust.

  Caroline had gone to the Truro library Monday morning, knowing Terry should be there. The staff schedule was posted on a bulletin board to one side of the circulation desk near the Internet sign-up sheet. When no one was covering the desk, it was easy to go look like she was signing up for Internet time. Then she’d pretend to be distracted by something—say, a school class was out in the parking lot and the kids were like thirty springs bouncing noise and color before their teacher shushed them to come in all quiet and respectful, which wouldn’t last forty seconds—and instead of looking out the window, she’d study the schedule and memorize Terry’s for the next two weeks.

  Only Terry wasn’t there. Caroline asked a familiar volunteer with a squirrel face who wore a denim jumper like a uniform if she could speak to her. The volunteer’s eyes twitched and darted as she said, “Oh my dear, I think she took some vacation time. Did you need something? Rhonda is here. She’s in the back.” She spoke anxiously, poking back her gray bangs, perhaps worried that Caroline was going to ask for help with one of her esoteric research questions.

  “No, that’s all right,” she’d answered. “I’m all right.” The farthest thing from the truth. She’d picked up her things and gone to her mother’s car in the parking lot. Her car, she corrected herself, sitting behind the wheel, wearing Eleanor’s old blue goose down jacket, the idling motor indistinguishable from the buzz in her head. She felt as if she were floating, her mind unanchored and adrift while she waited for Eleanor to reappear. Now she put her head down on the top of the steering wheel and wept.

  Five minutes later, when another car parked next to her in the library lot, though, she hastily lifted her head and started the engine. She got herself home, washed her face, combed her hair, microwaved some tomato soup—which immediately gave her heartburn, she should have remembered—and tried to pull herself together. The tide was at two-twelve, so Rid would be arriving sometime close to one. Not all the oystermen came every day now, but even while he was still harvesting legal size, Rid was taking his youngest oysters off the grant for the winter months. She’d seen him the last days piling his truck with racks and cages and driving them off. Obviously he had a pit in his yard in which he stored them. She’d read about it, labor-intensive, but insurance against damage and loss. The quahogs would stay buried under their nets.

  Caroline took up her Rid-watching post by the side window in the living room. A little earlier than she’d expected, his truck bumped over the access road and out on to the beach. She could even make out the silhouette of his dog in the passenger seat. Perhaps because Terry hadn’t been there, perhaps because she was in a hormone fog, perhaps because she was alone and grieving, on impulse she slid her arms into Eleanor’s jacket, pulled boots over her sneakers, wrapped her mother’s white scarf around her neck and checked the pockets for gloves. The screen door—she’d not figured out how to change it over to the storm door—banged behind her as she headed toward the shallows. She needed him.

  * * * *

  “Rid? Rid?” Caroline felt every inch a pathetic idiot, calling and waving, trying to get his attention. His back was to her. She’d timed the first call all wrong, just as he was trying to lift a rack to his shoulder. He was in the very front of his grant, at the first apparatus to be exposed as the tide receded. When he turned mid-hoist in the ankle-deep water, the rack blocked his vision and teetered precariously. Caroline hurried to help balance one end of it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she berated herself.

  “Hey,” she said. She pulled one hand back. Bay water from the soaked wood had already penetrated her glove.

  “Hey yourself,” he answered, pleasantly enough as he got control of the wooden frame. The air was quieter than usual for December, the plashes of the bay soft around their feet. Still, it was dankly cold, sky low-hung and opaque, water the color of pencil lead. Only a few other oystermen were out today, widely scattered.

  “I thought I’d see if I could give you a hand. I’ve got time to burn. Are you picking today, or just pulling stock out to move it to your pit?”

  He looked at her strangely. His face looked raw and chapped.

  “Mainly, I’m pittin’ oysters, but I’ve got a good size order to fill too, so I gotta get moving.” Was he correcting the way she’d said it?

  “Is it for oysters or quahogs? Well, either way, I could cull them for you….”

  “Huh?”

  “What didn’t you understand? I’m just offering to help.”

  He started moving toward his truck, gesturing with his chin to lead them off in that direction. “Since when are you such an expert on aquaculture?”

  “Sheesh, who said I was?” Awkwardly, holding her end of the rack, she sloshed alongside him toward the open tailgate. “I didn’t say I was.”

  He stared at her.

  “Don’t we sound like we’re back in junior high school….” she said. A small awkward laugh.

  “You didn’t speak to me when we were in junior high school. High school either.”

  Tears started in some strange place behind her nose or in her throat, not making it to her eyes, but turning into anger. “Well goddamn. Who peed in your Cheerios? I came down to offer to give you a hand.”

  “Who asked for your help? Next thing I know you’ll be suing me for spoiling your waterfront view.”

  The anger in his voice stunned her. She stopped moving in concert with him and let go of her end of the rack. Perhaps a third of the oysters spilled out into the sandy cultch-strewn water.

  “Shit, now look what you’ve done.” Rid used a knee to brace the middle of the rack, caught Caroline’s end with his other hand and staggered the rest of the way to the truck bed. He grabbed a bucket and came back to pick the fallen oysters out of the water.

  “I didn’t mean to let those drop,” she said as he scooped them in. Her voice was neutral, neither conciliatory nor hostile now. “Oh. These aren’t legal size yet, are they?”

  “What do you mean?” he challenged, standing up with the bucket. “What is it you want?”

  “I did come to offer to help. And I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t need help. Look, I didn’t mean to sound so….”

  “So mean?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean to sound so mean. I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now. I’m being sued, I’m trying to do my own work, and I’m trying to do deliveries for a friend who doesn’t have his truck. It’s just a bad week is all.” He paused, relaxed his face, and smiled at her. “I’m actually a very nice guy masquerading as a prick lately.”

  Caroline shivered, and tucked the hand in the wet glove under the opposite armpit. “I’m really sorry. I—I’ve been putting this off. I wasn’t going to say anything, but….” She used her free hand to raise the scarf over the lower part of her face to so her breath would warm her chin and cheeks.

  Her apology both warned and alarmed him. “What? Are you getting in on the lawsuit action? Jesus.”


  “Rid, this has nothing to do with that.” A breath, and on the exhale, “I’m pregnant. I haven’t completely decided—”

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant,” she reiterated. “I should have told.…”

  He took a step backward, shock registering across his features, which stopped her, diverted into watching Rid struggle to process the complete sentence she had gotten out. He closed his eyes a moment, shutting his face down. When they opened, he wore a rigid mask of suspicion.

  “Rid, listen to me, I’m—”

  “And what’s to say it’s mine?” he interrupted on the offensive, but then flushed and backed up a step.

  “I’ve not been with anyone else, not once, not before, not since, not in years. You have my word on it.” Caroline felt sorry for him then.

  “What do you want from me? I’m telling you, I don’t have a thing to give you. I mean, I can help pay for an abortion, I guess. I mean, you’re having an abortion, aren’t you? Why haven’t you? That was months ago….” Stammering.

  “I planned to get one. I just haven’t, I don’t know why. I guess I’m thinking about keeping it. Keeping the baby. I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”

  “If you’re thinking you can get money from me, you’re thinking about blood from stones. Bad, bad time to think about getting money from old Rid. Go right ahead. Slap a goddamn paternity suit on me. Everybody else is suing me. Get in line.” His eyes glittered, wet.

  “Rid…”

  He turned his back and went to his truck, setting the bucket down hard in the bed and closing the tailgate in a hard slam. Another slam of the driver’s door, and the truck was moving back onto the beach and the access road, leaving Caroline surrounded by the apparatus of Rid’s grant, his undone work, the retreating tide.

  * * * *

  Twice. Twice she’d made her way back to the house from Rid’s grant rejected. She was on fire with embarrassment, as if the few oystermen at work and the people up on the bluffs and over in the little houses by hers were watching from behind their horizontal blinds and knew exactly what had happened. Caroline walked off the grant, cultch crunching under her boots. She even tried to continue heading on up toward the marshes and Blackfish Creek—the tide was out far enough now that it was possible to get there without climbing up on the rocks—just so her phantom observers would think she had just stopped to chat while out walking, and Rid had hurried off to an appointment. As she did, though, the self-consciousness started to mix with anger, fear, humiliation, sadness and (this was new) protectiveness for the baby. “How dare you!” she said aloud once.

  She didn’t even make it an eighth of a mile before she turned around. Now she was doused with cold, one hand was wet, her baby’s father was a prick, and she was alone in the world and at the decision deadline, if she hadn’t passed it already, for a simple procedure. Which was nobody’s fault but her own.

  Caroline walked well below the tide line, where the sand stayed moist and hard-packed and made for less effort. She was undone so quickly these days, falling asleep sitting up sometimes, blanketed by exhaustion. She’d been keeping her eyes on the sand just ahead of her feet, avoiding clumps of rockweed and some larger stones. Now she raised her gaze to her own house, disheartened by how far away it was, and her utter isolation.

  She saw movement. Something or somebody was on the side of her house, under her kitchen window. She couldn’t make out a form. Whatever it was looked like the bushes, but she was almost sure she could make out a head in relief against the siding. Immediately her eyes flew to her driveway, checking for a car, but there was none except hers, where it belonged. Maybe she was wrong. But then she saw movement again. Someone’s looking in my window. She picked up her pace, squeezing her to make out what was there. Frightened, she checked the access road, hoping Rid might still be in the area. Of course he was long gone, and it was a silly thought anyway.

  * * * *

  “Elsie? It’s me, Caroline. How are you?” Caroline was splayed on the couch after supper that evening. She’d had an organic frozen dinner, spinach lasagna this time, and a green salad with avocado slices and baby tomatoes. She thought she was doing a pretty good job on that score. If she was to keep the baby.

  “Caroline, it’s good to hear from you! How are you doing?” Elsie’s voice sounded a bit tinny and distant, but familiar and warm, like home.

  “Oh, loose-ended, I guess. Elsie, I just need somebody to talk to.”

  “Go right ahead, dear.”

  The endearment started to undo Caroline. She could almost feel herself regressing. She wanted her mother, she wanted to curl up and cry and be comforted.

  “I—I tried to talk to the uh, the father today.”

  “So you haven’t had an abortion.”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve decided not to.”

  “That’s the thing. I haven’t decided not to, and I haven’t decided to. It’s like I’ve fallen in some hole, and I can’t move and I can’t even see daylight. Finally today I made myself tell him, you know, just tell him. So I walked out to where he was working.”

  “Is he one of the oystermen?”

  “Not only that, he’s one of the one’s being sued, Elsie. You remember about that lawsuit?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not that the lawsuit was going on when I got pregnant.”

  “So how did he take the news?”

  “He was terrible. He got mad and stormed off, left me standing out in the water. Just threw stuff in his truck, slammed the door, and peeled out, as much as you can on a beach with sand flying from the back tires. He just assumed that what I wanted was money.” Indignation was mixing into her tears now.

  “What did you want?”

  “I … ah … I don’t really know.”

  “It might have been hard for him to meet your expectations, then.”

  “Well, I didn’t expect him to be a total shit,” she defended herself. Now Elsie was letting her down, too. The night looked unrelieved by moon or stars beyond the living room windows, and she was getting cold. She should have closed the blinds before collapsing on the couch. She should have laid a fire, she should have turned on the radio, she should have moved the afghan from the chair back to the couch, she should have made herself a cup of tea. She was so tired of being alone, of having to think of everything.

  “I shouldn’t have bothered you,” she said. “I was just having a bad night. I’ll get off the phone now.” She wiped her eyes with the bottom of her sweatshirt. When she picked it up it exposed her abdomen. She couldn’t button her pants. That had been the case for several weeks, of course. Now, though, even zippers wouldn’t reach the top. She was using an oversized pin. She’d have to buy maternity clothes right away. If.

  “Hold on, there. I wouldn’t be doing my job as your Mom’s stand-in if I didn’t say some of the hard things, would I? Aren’t I sort of your connection to her right now?”

  “I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” Caroline said.

  “What would she say?”

  “She always wanted me to have a baby,” Caroline said. “You remember, right before she died I told her I was pregnant.”

  “But you don’t have to have a baby for your mother. That’s not a good reason. What do you want? For you? She might have had her thoughts about what that would be, but in the end she’d have let you decide.”

  “Elsie, I’m so scared that something will be wrong with the baby.”

  “Like what do you mean, wrong?”

  “Like maybe that it will be deformed or….” While talking, Caroline shifted from her back, which was starting to ache again, onto her side. As she did, she thought she saw something at the side window. A quick ducking movement, a blur, really, and it vanished. Had it been a face? Like an overturned bug, she struggled for a moment trying to get up. “Hang on a second, Elsie. I’ll be right back,” she interrupted herself.

  In an awkward, rolling stumble, she made her way off
the couch and to the window. Nothing. Heart speeding, she went to each window and lowered the blind, letting each drop hard and fast on its sill and hurrying on to the next.

  On the way back to the couch she grabbed the afghan and shawled it around her like a cocoon. “I thought someone was looking in my window,” she said into the phone.

  “Maybe you should call the police.” Controlled alarm.

  “I thought someone was around my house this afternoon, too. But I’ve looked outside and I don’t see anything.”

  “Just stay put and stay on the phone. I’ll be right back.”

  Keeping the phone to her ear, Caroline sat upright, scanning the windows and doors. Elsie’s alarm heightened her own some, but the crime rate in the area hovered between nothing and practically nothing.

  Two minutes later, Elsie’s voice came back on the line. “I’ve called the Wellfleet police on my cell phone, just to come check around your house. You stay on the line with me while they do that. Don’t be frightened when they pull into your driveway.”

  “I feel like an idiot, I’m sure it’s all right. I probably just got spooked, you know?”

  “Don’t feel foolish. It’s the safe thing to do. In the meantime, your worry about a deformity? Every mother worries about that, but it’s very rare. You’ll have ultrasound in the fourth or fifth month, too. It’s routine now. Are you thinking of adoption or raising it yourself?”

  “Raising it myself.” The words were scarcely above a whisper, tentative and apologetic. Weren’t the sins of parents passed to their children? What would Elsie know about that?

  “I think you’d be a wonderful mother,” Elsie said warmly. “I’m sure that if you take this on, it means you’ll have thought it through and decided you can do it yourself. Do you have the resources?”