Monterey Bay(50)

Margot took a deep breath and then released it without a sound. She looked over at the saint. Her arms were outstretched in a gesture of simultaneous menace and supplication, a glint in her glass eyes that Margot recognized. The workmanship here was crude but passionate, and there was something about it that reminded her of taxidermy. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

“You know her, my dear?” Mrs. Agnelli was using the other voice now, the sweet one. Margot remembered the hug, then shook her head to clear the memory.

“Santa Rosalia,” Mrs. Agnelli continued. “The patron saint of the sardine fleets. Last year her blessings were unprecedented. And this year is certain to bring more of the same.”

“Not according to Ricketts’s estimates,” her father interjected. “Which I’m assuming you haven’t read.”

The name made Margot twitch.

“Oh, I read them,” Mrs. Agnelli replied, the sweetness gone. “But I found them less than sane.”

“His methods are unorthodox, yes. But I’m certain he’s right.”

“And I’m certain he’s out of his mind. Him and his writer friend, that bloated communist. Stomping around in those tide pools, slobbering over each other and bickering like a married couple. Your daughter knows what I mean.”

Her father looked at her. Her heart almost stopped.

“He’s the only good biologist in town,” Anders replied. “Miles ahead of everyone at Hopkins.”

“He has no degree. Biologists have degrees.”

“He runs a legitimate business.”

“Oh, Anders, that business hasn’t been legitimate in years. The only reason it’s still afloat is because Steinbeck supplies all the funds that Ricketts and his army of sluts and vagrants sees fit to drink away.”

“He’s done the research. He’s got the numbers. He knows things are changing and you’re a fool if you think you can—”

“A fool?” Mrs. Agnelli shrieked, the last traces of her earlier gentleness falling away.

Then, a commotion from the rear of building, an assembling of bodies. It was not the brothers, Margot realized, who had been hiding in the darkness. It was a squadron of women—many of whose portraits Margot could clearly remember sketching—emerging now from the blockade of crates and cans, arranging themselves in a line behind mother and son. She looked at her father’s face, expecting to see the blank, emotionless scrim it usually acquired during moments of challenge or confrontation. Instead, she saw his cheeks turn bright red, his eyes sparking with anger and uncertainty.

“If anyone’s a fool,” Mrs. Agnelli continued, “it’s you. And your kind.”

“My kind?”

“Blustering and preening like you’ve made the world and everything in it. Never even the barest understanding that there was something here before your arrival, and that there will be something here long after you depart.”

“Come, Margot. We’re done.”

“No, no! She should stay. She should know the truth.” She turned to Margot. “He had been here before, you know, when he was just about your age. Made an absolute mess of himself.”

She couldn’t look at her father anymore. All she could do was guess at his response: the color in his face fading away, his eyes going dark.

“And I’ll be happy to paint the picture for you, even though that’s usually your job.”

“One more word to her, and I’ll—”

The women made a collective step forward. Anders fell silent.

“It was squid back then, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Agnelli began again. “And it was Chinamen who fished for them. They would usually start up around midnight. A lighted pine-pitch torch on the bow to draw the shoal of spawning squid to the surface, two skiffs following behind the boat, towing the purse seine. The skiffs would circle the shoal and then pull the line to close the purse. Then they would drag the net to the shore by hand, if you can believe it, down there in the water with all those little copulating monsters.”

When Mrs. Agnelli coughed again, Margot could feel the sensation in her own lungs, her own throat.

“And there were women working alongside the men, running into the water to help the men bring in the net, all of them tanned and half-undressed and bareheaded. If you think it smells bad now, you don’t know the half of it. When they would split the squid and dry them on the rocks outside their village, it smelled like the world was coming to an end.”

Mrs. Agnelli paused for a moment and inhaled deeply, as if the smell were still present somewhere, still captured inside the warehouse walls.

“And your father—our dear, young Anders—would sit on China Point and watch them fish. When he wasn’t doing that, he would hang around the Hotel Del Monte. He couldn’t afford a room there, of course, but he would slip onto the grounds whenever he had a chance, pacing the gardens, pretending he belonged. One night, he even crept into the ballroom. Everyone was so happy and drunk they didn’t even notice the poor boy in their midst. He could have done anything he wanted. He could have eaten their food, sipped their wine, but all he wanted to do was confess himself. All he wanted to do was unburden his poor Methodist soul to the Chinese girl who, when she wasn’t busy gutting squid, was busy breaking his heart.”