Chapter 2
Sticky and hot, the base of her skull throbbing, Cece wakes to the whir of cicadas outside her window.
Bare walls and a curtainless window—it takes a moment for her to remember where she is.
Without a proper box spring, the mattress is strangely close to the floor, causing Cece to feel as if she’s been jailed in a bottomless pit.
Then she remembers—the walk by Mr. Shipyard’s house—and suddenly she feels deserving of this punishment.
The cicadas crescendo, the hundred-strong thick-thick-thick-thick-thick mocking and cruel.
At least they get laid before they die, Cece thinks, rolling onto her back and examining the ceiling.
Cece’s phone vibrates from under her pillow. She can already hear her mother’s voice: Don’t sleep with that thing so close to your head. It’ll give you a brain tumor!
Still groggy, Cece makes the mistake of swiping open the message before looking at the sender. It’s from Jonathan, her ex-fiancé: Just checking in. I know you said we shouldn’t talk, but I’m worried about you. Is this really what you want?
Rage detonates in Cece’s chest. The wording of the text, the blatant disregard for her feelings, the presumption!
It’s all so Jonathan. He always knows best, and not just for himself, but for everyone.
Cece had told him—in the plainest of terms—they were done, finished.
She’d given back the ring! And yet, here he is, only a few weeks later, pretending as if their breakup, the implosion of their four-year relationship, was a mere bump in the road, something to be repaired, filled, and tamped down like an irksome pothole.
Dragging the sweat-dampened pillow out from under her head, Cece places it firmly over her face, making sure to yank down on either side for the sake of the neighbors, and lets forth a guttural scream.
Why does he insist on being so willfully dense?
Does he really think he knows what’s best for her?
But even as she laughs at the absurdity of Jonathan’s message and squeezes her hands into fists, Cece catches herself, ever so briefly, wondering if he does, in fact, know what’s best for her.
Before Cece can consider whether to text back or block the number, a call comes through.
It’s Santiago, the supervisor from the oyster farm, and he doesn’t sound pleased.
It’s Saturday, but Cece had picked up the weekend shift to earn extra money, which means—she checks her phone—she’s already fifteen minutes late. Not a great start.
Cece takes a frantic shower, all the while fighting the urge to assume the fetal position.
It’s foolish—bathing before a job like this—but she can’t bring herself to show up in her current state: bloated, sunburned, somehow hungover.
She throws on a pair of sweatpants, a threadbare T-shirt, and takes Bernard for the quickest walk of his blissful canine life, tugging him along even as he stops to mark every tree and bush, eats two pieces of toasted white bread with cold butter, slugs a glass of tap water, and jumps in the car.
The docks are deserted, only moored boats and placid water—the occasional wheeze of a straining bowline.
Cece yanks on her rubber waders in the dusty gravel parking lot.
Two figures watch her impassively from the shade of the warehouse, its metal doors swung open below a faded sign: Rayburn Oyster Company.
As she approaches, Davi, the boy, heads off without a word toward the dock, his gait slow and resentful.
Santiago, his father, leans against a steel drum, a scar running ragged through his patchy beard.
“Sorry,” Cece says, weighing whether to make some sort of excuse.
Santiago gives her a shrug, as if to say, It’s okay—we don’t expect much from greenhorns anyway.
He digs around in the blackened pouch of his sweatshirt before producing a pack of cigarettes.
“It makes no difference,” he says. The tone of his voice reflects the unseriousness of Cece’s work.
“Richie said you wanted extra shifts, so we waited.”
Cece’s face burns. The irony is not lost on her that all the years of schooling, the job experience, the accolades at her firm are worthless in this particular moment.
Santiago points to the stack of black crates woven from plastic mesh.
“Same gig as yesterday. Power wash those. Fix any holes with zip ties.”
Cece wants to say she’s ready for some real responsibility, a challenge.
After a week of the same tiresome routine, she wants to get out on the water and show Santiago she’s capable of more, but he’s already walking to the boat, motioning, cigarette in hand, to his boy, who starts the engine, pale gray fumes curling upward.
The oyster crates are heavier than they appear. When she’d started work at Rayburn, she thought they’d looked flimsy and light, but now she knows they’re cumbersome and heavy, stinking of rotting seaweed and sea scum.
So, they’re not letting her on the boat until she’s proven herself.
That’s just fine, Cece thinks, unhooking the first cage.
The pressure washer is where she left it yesterday.
She wheels it outside and starts it up, the sound deafening and terrible in the morning calm.
She’ll clean the whole stack before Santiago and his boy return.
She can’t give them an excuse to tell Richie she’s no good, worse than inexperienced, lazy.
Basket after basket, Cece’s back is tight, and even after a break, her forearms still tingle and quiver from the power washer.
It’s only nine, but the day is already warming.
Cece pulls her T-shirt over her nose to check her BO, but all she smells is the ocean.
On her eighth bag, Cece encounters the first sign of damage, a hole the size of her fist in the plastic webbing.
Without gloves, the work is slow going and painful, the stiff plastic cutting into her hands, the zip ties sharp and unforgiving.
It’s not long before blisters bloom and reopen on Cece’s soft palms, but she persists, cursing herself for not buying gloves in a foolhardy attempt to exude toughness.
If Kim, her mother, could see her now…would Cece’s work ethic elicit pride?
Doubtful. More like shame, and most certainly a scolding.
What was the point of sending you to that fancy college if you’re going to end up with rough hands and a farmer’s tan?
Cece can hear her saying. If your grandfather were alive to see his granddaughter doing manual labor… I’d never hear the end of it.
The eldest of three, Kim was born and raised in Providence.
Her father was a sanitation plumber for the city.
He retired with full pension benefits at the age of sixty with forty-two years of experience.
He died a year later from complications related to pneumonia.
Kim was convinced his early death was connected to his work and exposure to toxic chemicals, but her mother refused to sue the city.
She was a quiet but stern woman who lived her life guided by three principles: Go to church, donate to charity, and don’t blame others for your own misdeeds.
Kim couldn’t get out fast enough when she turned eighteen, putting herself through school—two years at the local community college and then finishing up at URI.
Determined to avoid her father’s fate—body hobbled by decades of work, in the grave before he could enjoy retirement—Kim went straight to law school in New York City, dissatisfied with Rhode Island’s provinciality.
Her mother thought she was mad, spoiled even, for leaving.
What was so special about New York City?
How did she intend on paying Fordham’s hefty tuition, renting an apartment?
Kim took out loans, got roommates, hustled, lived in the library, worked harder than she ever thought herself capable of, because that was her only advantage—her tolerance for asceticism in all its forms. The sacrifices—missed family vacations, skipped holiday parties, ignored flirtations—they were all necessary if Kim wanted to craft a better life for herself.
She was wholly alone in her efforts. There was no family name, no legacy, no plan she could consult.
Much later, Kim would recount these events back to Cece before she went to college—a college Cece suspected would stretch her parents’ finances—as if the selective details of her mother’s life might help Cece understand a simple truth: For people like them—people without family legacies, people who had yet to forget the dirt under their grandparents’ fingernails—college was about stability and guaranteed success.
College was how you made sure you never tended bar or painted houses for a living.
College was where you met fine men and drew a blueprint, for you, yes, but also for those who would surely come afterward: your children, and their children, who would know nothing of dirt.
With her ear plugs in, the roar of the pressure washer is reduced to a murmur.
Despite arms turning to jelly and her back barking like a rabid dog, Cece falls into a rhythm, dragging a crate forward, unlatching it, hosing it down, then checking for holes and repairing anything that looks like an oyster might slip through.
She’s not thinking about the sweat stinging her eyes or the sun beating down.
Instead, Cece’s thinking about how there are parts of herself, parts she’d forgotten about, that prefer this kind of work.
Sure, it’s difficult and grueling, but there’s something deeply rewarding about watching the stack of crates grow.
This is real work, Cece thinks to herself.
Tangible. There’s nothing theoretical about the progress she’s making, no hypothetical scenarios to determine or consider.