The Rattled Bones(5)

I’m not sure what I know anymore. I turn and head back to the boat.

Filled with resentment toward Hattie.

And forgiveness.

And everything in between.

*

My father owned exactly one dress jacket, but I wanted him buried in his favorite sweater, the one with frayed cuffs and a high fisherman’s neck. I found his suit jacket at the back of his closet. It is navy blue and stubborn. It refuses to let go of my father’s smell, so I wear it over my dress as we return home from his funeral the following day.

The jacket’s interior lining is silk and slips off my shoulders when I move. I pull the front of the blazer tighter across my middle as if the fabric is strong enough to keep the liquid spill of my heart from drowning our kitchen table.

“It was the finest kind of service.” Gram doesn’t turn from the stove, where she is literally watching a pot that won’t boil. “I can’t think of a soul who wasn’t there.”

I don’t point out the obvious.

Gram adjusts the mesh silver tea ball steadied over one of the two waiting mugs, her small, practiced movements too much like his. “Your father would have been some touched by the speech ya gave today, Rilla.”

A hiccup of grief jumps high in my chest, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. I turn to the window, toward Gram’s flowers. My eyes cloud as they watch a bumblebee hover over the cone of a deep purple lupine. The insect’s bright color and free wings beam in direct contrast to the black wall of suits that stood in the church today, the straight broad shoulders of the fishermen who carried Jonathan Brae’s casket out of the church and across the cemetery green.

I watch the bee crawl into the bloom, depositing a story, Gram would say. Bees sew stories through the earth, leaving one tale while raising up another. They carry the stories on the whisper of their wings, Gram says.

I pull my eyes from the bee emerging from the lupine. “What do we do now?”

The snake hiss of the kettle builds. “Now we get on with the business of living, hard as that may be.” The teapot screams.

Gram sets my mug in front of me, and lemon steams the air. Gram uses fresh lemon rind, shaved into thinness before she adds it to her tea leaves. I hadn’t grown past her knees when she first taught me about how the citrus skin would soothe my sore throat, how ancient healers believed inhaling the zest would improve a person’s mood. Today, though, I’m calling bullshit.

Gram settles her mug onto the opposite side of the table before taking her seat. Even this small act reminds me how off-balance our family is now. We are a tripod missing a leg.

“I think I have to notify the University of Rhode Island, let them know I won’t be coming.”

“Is that what ya want?”

“It doesn’t seem like the universe is particularly interested in what I want.”

“Maybe so.” Gram rounds her gnarled fingers around the curve of her cup. “But I’m not asking the universe. I’m asking ya, Rilla.”

I shift in my seat just to feel the cool silk of my father’s jacket slide across my skin. “I need to stay here. Someone has to fish.” And Gram is too old to lobster. “If I don’t keep lobstering, you know Old Man Benner will claim our grounds before my bags are even packed for school.” I fail to mention that my bags have been packed for the University of Rhode Island for weeks.

“And would that be the worst thing?”

We both know the worst thing has already happened. I bring my fist to my chest to keep the sadness from rising, too late. A sob escapes. “Dad wouldn’t want to forfeit our legacy.”

“No.” Gram stirs honey into her tea. “He wouldn’t want that for him. But he certainly wouldn’t want ya sacrificing your future for his past either.” She tinks her spoon against the edge of her cup before her gaze challenges mine, forces me to look away. “From where I’m sitting, it feels wholly possible for ya to go to college and fish the summers. We’ll manage.”

My head screams: How? How could we manage? Who will pay the bills? Watch out for Gram? Leaving is absurd; it’s no longer an option.

I’m grateful when the doorbell announces Brenda Sherfey on the step offering tuna casserole and condolences. I abandon Brenda’s food to the counter because the fridge is already crammed with sorrow. Then I leave Gram to the soothing words of her bridge partner and disappear upstairs to my room.

I’m not surprised to see Reed there, at the dormered window seat that overlooks the water. Reed Benner, the only good Benner. Old Man Benner and my dad hated when we started dating, and maybe that’s why we did it. At first. Reed’s been using the rose trellis to climb into my bedroom for the last two years, like our time together is a secret even if everyone knows about us. He turns when he hears me enter my room, pats the window seat cushion next to him. He is mere feet away, but it takes so long to reach him. My steps seem too slow, like time and my body are being dragged forward against my will.

Dorm room cubes wait against the front wall of my room. They hold strangely normal items, like flip-flops and an extra-long twin sheet set. The sheets are sun yellow. The shower shoes are a size too big. I’d planned to exchange both, except now I can’t. How can I surrender the gifts my father presented waiter-style, a platter of sheets and shoes with an oversize hoodie from the University of Rhode Island perched on top? And his smile then, how it welled with pride for the first Brae to attend college. I dust my fingers over the edge of the sheet square as I pass and I’m surprised by how these insignificant items scream with importance now. It wasn’t like this with my mother, who has stayed away for years by choice, who left before making memories for me to miss.