Chapter 11 #2
“Maybe,” Santiago mutters.
Richie’s already halfway to his truck, sandaled feet ghostly white in the sun. “Get along, you two. We’re a team, Goddammit.”
Sun blazing overhead, a stiff breeze off the water, Cece relishes her victory. Santiago inspects the grader carefully, like he’s expecting it to fall to pieces at any moment. “You fixed it,” he says.
“Sure did.”
“What was the problem?”
“Dented frame. The rollers weren’t tracking properly.”
Santiago chews a thumbnail mercilessly. “Okay,” he says. “We’re good.”
They walk toward the boat where full racks wait to be off-loaded. “About missing yesterday. It won’t happen again. Thanks for covering for me.”
Ahead, the boat floats effortlessly. Dock lines creak. “Let’s go to work,” he says.
It’s late, close to ten, by the time Cece pulls into her parents’ driveway.
The Friday traffic had been interminable on I-95 and then the Merritt, stop-and-go all the way from New Haven to the bridge.
Oddly enough, Cece had been more than happy to languish, bumper-to-bumper, the only worry being Bernard’s bladder.
Sitting in her car only meant more time to revel in her breakthrough at work, more time to replay her days out on the boat, working in tandem with Santiago, as a team.
Piloting them out of the harbor, flipping cages, measuring and recording oyster size, pulling mature oysters and hoisting them onto the boat where the cages shed seawater and glistened in the sun.
On land, they’d worked the grader seamlessly.
Santiago showed her how to adjust the belt speed and the water pressure for the nozzles.
Finally, she’d earned his trust. He showed her how to pack the bins with ice and prepare the oysters for shipment.
For their labors, they had twenty bins filled with fresh, ready-to-eat oysters.
With the help of a hand truck, they stacked them in the back of the pickup.
Santiago cursed Richie (that cheap bastard!) for not buying a forklift.
Maybe when they expanded, he said. Then the operation would be too big not to buy more equipment.
They’d clocked out together at five. A breeze swept in off the water, cooling the sweat on Cece’s brow. Santiago grabbed two bottles of water from the storage shed fridge and tossed one to Cece. They drank thirstily, nothing but the sound of gulls in their ears.
“See you Monday,” Santiago said. “Good work today.”
Santiago’s muted praise had sustained her all the way from New London to Tappan.
There are only a few lights on in the Tudor’s slender windows. Bernard whimpers from his crate, familiar with his surroundings. Before Cece can get the cage half-open, he’s out, bounding up the stairs to where Kim stands on the brick landing under the porch light, circular and golden.
The summer vacation seems to have done her mother good, or maybe it’s her new blond highlights and youthful athleisure wear.
Over the past few months, Cece’s noticed a subtle shift in her mother’s wardrobe, coinciding with a budding obsession with personal fitness.
When Cece and Wynonna were kids, Kim would deride New Jersey for all its shortcomings, only crossing its borders for cheap gas and lack of sales tax on clothing, but lately, she’s been venturing deep into the Garden State, to Ridgewood, Paramus, and Woodcliff Lake for classes at the likes of SoulCycle, Pure Barre, and Orangetheory.
And while Cece doesn’t necessarily approve of Kim’s newfound love for Lululemon crop tops and skintight yoga pants, she must admit there’s a new vivacity in her face and certain tightness to her figure.
“Thanks for watching him all this time,” Kim says, stooping to give the dog a brief pat before opening the door. Bernard shoots through the gap in search of Cece’s father. He’s always been Barry’s dog.
Cece gives her mother a hug. “You look amazing, Mom.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t take these classes before. It’s a real community. And the endorphin rush. I’m addicted. I’ve got a hot yoga class tomorrow. You should come…I swear, I feel better than I did when I was your age.”
Cece can’t imagine anything worse than group exercise with feisty middle-aged women. “Where’s Dad?”
“In the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches. He was worried you’d be hungry.”
“He’s cooking?”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
Barry isn’t known for his prowess in the kitchen.
Whenever Kim worked late when Cece and Wynnona were younger, dinner had been served at a variety of hours: Wise potato chips and tuna fish sandwiches at 5, or grilled cheeses at 7:45, or more than not, something canned with boiled hot dogs at 10 p.m. “Don’t tell your mother,” he’d say to the girls, making them feel as if they were part of a grand conspiracy.
“She’ll have my head if she knew we were eating this junk.
” Kim knew, of course, but she never reproached Barry in front of them, at least when they were younger.
Back then, Kim was still an adherent to the values evangelized by popular parenting books at the time, the ones that encouraged parents to present a “united front,” saving all disagreements for the privacy of their bedroom.
And even if Kim hadn’t read all those books, she was too tired from working long hours at the law firm to supplement Barry’s paltry income—when his advertising business was still in its infancy—to start a fight.
The house is just as Cece remembers. The formal dining room table, unused since Thanksgiving, is cluttered with framed photographs.
Most of them are old, pictures of Wynonna and Cece when they were young: high school graduation, family vacations at the beach, Cece standing on a podium draped in gold metals.
There are a few new additions, all of Wynonna and Devin, staged photos with their kids, like they’re auditioning for J.Crew’s next fall catalogue.
From the den, the murmur of a sports announcer.
Cece already knows its swimming. A shiver slinks up her back, shoulders tense, forearms goose bumped.
Even after all these years, the early-morning wakeups, the sting of chlorine… her body remembers.
From the kitchen, the sound of sizzling cheese and a hundred “good boys.” Barry is kneeling on the terra-cotta tiles rubbing Bernard’s belly.
While Kim seems downright effervescent, the same can’t be said for Cece’s father, who’s returned from their summer excursion stouter and plumper than she remembers.
His gray widow’s peak more pronounced than ever, the war has almost been won by his receding hairline.
Seeing her father like this—dressed in a Bucknell Swimming T-shirt and stained sweatpants, a week’s worth of stubble papering his face—softens something in Cece, if only for a moment.
This man—diminished and disheveled—is not the man she’s been holding grudges against in her imagined memory.
Cece remembers the anger in his voice, the sheer disappointment in his eyes when she refused a third shoulder surgery, told him she was done swimming.
For Cece, swimming was hell; or rather, everything surrounding swimming: the practices, the workouts, the dieting, every second of her life structured, measured, and weighed.
The actual swimming, putting one arm in front of the other, was pure bliss, but her father had ruined that for her, taken it too far.
Yet Cece can’t be so sure now, seeing him, happy to see her, showing off his shirt with a smile on his face, talking to her about the latest results from the World Aquatics Championship.
Barry doesn’t remember the tears, the tantrums, and later, the grievances and flat-out refusals to continue doing something that only served his ego.
She’d told him as much, screamed the truth in a small booth at a pizzeria in Lewisburg, where families had turned and gawked—this father and daughter at loose ends.
He’d listened then, sat there and taken it.
Still, here he is, hugging Cece, talking to her about a new display case he made for all her medals, like none of it was ever awful, like it was the happiest time of her life.
Bernard keeps his whining to a minimum while Cece polishes off two grilled cheese sandwiches with a tall glass of iced tea.
She notices Kim eyeing her, but she doesn’t care.
Ever since she started working at Rayburn in earnest, Cece’s appetite has only grown.
Bernard, pleased to be home, sits patiently, nails clicking on the tile, in anticipation of a scrap.
If this is the extent of his begging, Cece will take it.
Her parents would run her out of the house if they knew what Bernard ate while under her care.
Cece likes to believe they have a pact, one signed in leftovers.
Cece wipes her mouth with a paper napkin. “How’s work, Dad?”
“Solid as ever. I mean it’s not like the ’90s, but there’s still the Newark office. And sure, we might have fewer clients than we had twenty years ago, but the ones we’ve got are loyal.”
Cece watches her mother while Barry talks. If she’s bothered or stressed by the seemingly dire straits of the business, she doesn’t show it, tapping away on her phone with freshly manicured nails, an amused smile on her face.
“You’re not worried at all?” Cece says, searching her dad’s face for a bluff.
“Me? Not a chance. We’ve always found a way. Just in a slump. But we’ll run into something soon. We’re doing a big physical installation for Beefeater at the duty-free shop at JFK. I’ll show you the prototypes. You’ll love them. We got a huge cardboard cutout of Big Ben.”