Chapter 6
The traffic is interminable, inching over the river at an agonizing pace.
In front of Cece, a contractor drums an impatient beat with a paint-speckled hand against the side of his pickup truck.
Kayakers and paddleboarders, necks and noses slick with sunblock, slip underneath the drawbridge, making their way upriver.
Mystic, with its charm and whimsy, is nearly unrecognizable from its neighbors—Groton and New London—with their industrial ports and rugged self-reliance, and Cece wonders whether she’d be happier in a place like this, not that she can afford it!
The office for Rayburn Oyster Company sits on the second floor of a redbrick warehouse on Holmes Street.
It’s Sunday afternoon, and Richie has summoned Cece to the office.
He didn’t say what the meeting was about; he didn’t need to.
The pressure washer had required significant repairs, and while Cece has proven herself capable to drive the company truck, she has no illusions about Santiago’s opinion of her.
If anything, her responsibilities have shrunk, relegated to hosing down the boat, stacking crates, and tidying up.
Despite her dwindling sense of usefulness, there have been little pleasures, of course, unexpected rewards: the way she collapses into bed and sleeps a dreamless sleep; the way her worries evaporate under the beating sun and whistling wind; the way blisters have transformed into thick calluses on her palms. There is nothing abstract or theoretical about this work; it is real, undeniable.
Still, she wants more, more time on the water, a better understanding of the oysters themselves, these organisms they’re all working so hard to grow.
Taking the stairs two at a time, stomach in her throat, Cece prepares for the worst.
Sitting behind a metal desk littered with papers and cascading manila folders, Richie, peering at the gargantuan monitor of his ancient desktop computer, appears indifferent to Cece’s presence.
He gestures for her to sit down without taking his eyes away from the pixelated screen.
There’s an audible crunch—a pretzel, a potato chip maybe—while Richie, muttering to himself, navigates the mouse on his crowded desk.
With shoulder-length gray hair and unruly sideburns, Richie doesn’t look like a Richie at all.
When she’d answered the initial job listing, Cece was expecting someone much younger, someone wearing sneakers and khakis, a gingham button-down tucked into a rope belt.
At the time, her only reference for oyster farmers were the occasional stories in The New York Times about disillusioned millennials who’d given up their white-collar jobs to take over struggling agricultural businesses in an attempt to return to their agrarian roots.
There were never any follow-up stories about these people, only their initial burst of inspiration, when hope sprang eternal, when every challenge and failure was an opportunity to learn.
Cece can only assume this is the case because the ventures didn’t last long.
Is she any different from these people? The fear lingers.
Will she scuttle back to her old life whenever this performative venture has lost its luster?
In the oyster business for nearly twenty-five years, Richie doesn’t share these concerns.
He is a man whose only mission is to return the Sound and its tributaries to their former oyster glory, when bivalves once littered the banks and shoals, when the water was so clean it was said the Dutch could see straight to the bottom from their tall ships.
He is a man obsessed, who cares for little, unless of course it concerns oysters.
Sitting down at his desk, Cece hopes she can use this to her benefit, appealing to his passions rather than rationality, where she stands little chance of remaining employed.
While Cece sits, Richie pulls a pencil from behind his ear and looks over a yellow legal pad. A teardrop-shaped oyster shell dangles around his neck. Whatever is on the paper is displeasing, and he gnaws at the bottom of his already ragged lip. “You did a real number on the pressure washer.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Cece says hastily. She can’t get the words out fast enough. “It was a rookie mistake, and like I said before, just take out whatever you need to pay for it.”
“Don’t think you’ll have much left over.”
Cece swallows her panic and shrugs. “No worries,” she says, even though she’d been counting on the first paycheck from Rayburn to bolster her dwindling checking account.
Breaking up with Jonathan had proven more costly than she’d anticipated.
There’d been moving expenses and half the monthly rent for the remainder of the lease.
Jonathan didn’t need the money; he’d even rejected it when she’d first offered.
But she’d insisted. It was the principle of the matter.
Then, of course, there’d been dog food for Bernard, an unforeseen car repair, and more than a few profligate purchases from the local wine store.
Richie pushes papers around on his desk.
“I’m good for it,” Cece says. If times get tough, or tougher than they already are, she can always draw on her 401(k).
A proposition she can’t believe she’s considering, and for what, pride?
After scrupulously saving for nearly a decade, she’s miraculously managed to build a modest nest egg.
It was never too early to start saving for retirement.
She truly believed that. When it came to getting old, money seemed like the great equalizer to Cece, the only tool at her disposal to combat the terrifying unknown future that was growing infirm in the United States of America… She must be nuts.
Finally meeting her gaze, Richie looks up and takes her in, his deep-set eyes lingering on her hands and shoulders, like she’s a racehorse past her prime. “We could just call it even. There’s no shame in cuttin’ your losses.”
When she’d climbed the rickety stairs to the Rayburn office, Cece had thought being fired was the worst outcome of the current conversation, but she’d been wrong.
Being pitied by Richie is far, far worse.
He feels bad for her, so bad that he’s willing to forgo a few thousand dollars—just to be rid of her.
She’d rather he cuss her out, threaten to garnish her wages… anything but pity.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay on,” Cece says, annoyed by the quaver in her voice.
Countless data presentations, panels moderated, conferences attended—and this, bizarrely, is the most nerve-wracking thing she’s done in recent memory.
She’s never had to advocate for her own usefulness; the actuary exams did that—all seven of them.
The very nature of actuary work was indispensable to the insurance industry.
But this…her…She’s dispensable. There are a hundred people who could do a better job than her. That much has been proven.
A dubious frown works its way across Richie’s face. “Well…I—”
“At least let me pay you back in full for the pressure washer, and if you still want to let me go afterwards, I’ll go willingly.”
“I’m not really the one you need to convince.”
“Santiago.”
Richie nods.
“I’ll handle it,” Cece says, even though her determination is already crumbling.
Richie stands up and wipes his hands on his light denim jeans held up by red suspenders.
Along with a pilly button-down, he isn’t so much wearing his clothes as they’re dangling off him, like laundry drying on the line.
The crown of his head nearly touches the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and Cece thinks she can smell burning hair.
He reminds her of a Puritan preacher, about to rain fire and brimstone from the pulpit, cursing his parishioners for their sins.
Cece’s persistence seems to fluster him while he rummages through his shirt pocket for something.
“It’s nothing personal,” he says, giving Cece a forced smile full of tobacco-stained teeth.
“I understand.”
Richie digs out a toothpick from a shirt pocket and pops it cavalierly into the corner of his mouth. “If you can sort it out with him, I’m good with it.”
Cece thanks him and leaves before he can change his mind.
Aware Richie might be watching, she holds her head high until she’s out of view.
Not until she exits the warehouse into the blinding sun, jumps into her suffocatingly hot car, and puts the windows down while she drives out of town, avoiding the drawbridge in favor of the interstate, does she allow the disappointment to wash over her like a thunderous ocean wave.
The idea of winning over Santiago seems nearly impossible.
Cece is caught off guard by her emotional investment in the job.
What had initially seemed like a good way to pass the time and disengage from the tumult of her life feels suddenly urgent and necessary.
Even if it just means getting to work on the dock with the sorting equipment, Cece wants to feel like she’s making progress, learning something, proving everyone wrong.
The urge is juvenile and petty, but there’s no way around it.