who lived there first. “The sea is my cemetery,” Susan was known to have said; every male in her family, seamen all, had been lost to it. In Wellfleet, history was close as your pillow at night and your mirror in the morning.
In towns like Wellfleet, when there’s one thing everyone does, people start thinking it’s the only thing anyone can do. Respect and disdain rub uneasy elbows and become indistinguishable as they join, and local becomes a term of derision and deference at once. Caroline’s mother had managed what only a skillful few had done before her. Eleanor was a local who’d kept the deference and lost the derision by becoming part of the wider world while never forsaking home. Caroline’s father, Bill, was the Cape Cod rep for a Connecticut marine insurance company who’d married Eleanor right after he graduated from Boston College. Eleanor had been in art school then, on her way to becoming a potter whose work sold briskly in a glutted market. When she inherited her parent’s house on the Wellfleet bay shore, Eleanor wanted to go back for good.
“It’s the Cape, Bill, my home .”
Of course, she wasn’t coming back to work the flats or bag groceries at Lema’s Market. She was returning as an up-and-coming artist to the Wellfleet village where Main Street was already becoming an arts mecca, especially in high summer when gallery doors are propped open for the tourists with their Gucci sunglasses and platinum credit cards.
Bill transferred to his company’s Cape Cod branch, and they built Eleanor a separate studio behind the house, her design, with a skylight, a good wheel, kiln, and plenty of shelves. She taught part-time at the Castle Hill Art School in Truro and tried to keep up with orders for her work. Caroline, an only child, had the gift of their expectations, attention and income.
She’d had every chance. Although CiCi was from an old native family which established her in the community, she hadn’t had the pall of it over her head like Cape fog. Her parents weren’t involved with fishing, and Eleanor smartly affected expectations for her daughter by quietly working the schools, where the life stories of the locals were often written at the same time the pregnancies were announced: early marriages and menial support jobs for the girls, the flats or the sea for the boys. Although Caroline hadn’t been raised a snob, to her mother’s mind, perhaps she turned out a bit of one. Or got a dram too much of her father’s washashore blood. Either way, by the time she graduated from Provincetown Regional High School, and left for college, CiCi could have been anything, done anything. And she did. She’d had everything until she didn’t anymore, until here she was, back home with nothing.
Chapter 5
Rid turned the key in the ignition as he slammed shut the truck door. The engine churned but caught quickly enough and with the same smooth mesh of motion, he had the truck in reverse, his head swiveled and his foot weighing the accelerator. The weather was unsettled after the storm, dank, the morning’s onshore wind shifty. As he backed up from the protected place he and CiCi had left the truck, between the access road and the beach, he saw that the others were out on their grants, checking and resetting nets and trays and that the outermost part of his grant was already partly submerged. “Shit,” he yelled as he banged the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. He thought of heading out on his grant now, leaving Lizzie another couple of hours. But since she was with him pretty much all the time, and would have been last night if he hadn’t tried to spare her the incoming blow, something she was afraid of, he was already guilt-pocked at having left her at all.
Now he’d done worse, left her to shiver it out alone under his bed, unfed and in the dark with no one there to let her relieve herself. No, he had to make a quick run to go get her first. As he shifted into drive, he
In towns like Wellfleet, when there’s one thing everyone does, people start thinking it’s the only thing anyone can do. Respect and disdain rub uneasy elbows and become indistinguishable as they join, and local becomes a term of derision and deference at once. Caroline’s mother had managed what only a skillful few had done before her. Eleanor was a local who’d kept the deference and lost the derision by becoming part of the wider world while never forsaking home. Caroline’s father, Bill, was the Cape Cod rep for a Connecticut marine insurance company who’d married Eleanor right after he graduated from Boston College. Eleanor had been in art school then, on her way to becoming a potter whose work sold briskly in a glutted market. When she inherited her parent’s house on the Wellfleet bay shore, Eleanor wanted to go back for good.
“It’s the Cape, Bill, my home .”
Of course, she wasn’t coming back to work the flats or bag groceries at Lema’s Market. She was returning as an up-and-coming artist to the Wellfleet village where Main Street was already becoming an arts mecca, especially in high summer when gallery doors are propped open for the tourists with their Gucci sunglasses and platinum credit cards.
Bill transferred to his company’s Cape Cod branch, and they built Eleanor a separate studio behind the house, her design, with a skylight, a good wheel, kiln, and plenty of shelves. She taught part-time at the Castle Hill Art School in Truro and tried to keep up with orders for her work. Caroline, an only child, had the gift of their expectations, attention and income.
She’d had every chance. Although CiCi was from an old native family which established her in the community, she hadn’t had the pall of it over her head like Cape fog. Her parents weren’t involved with fishing, and Eleanor smartly affected expectations for her daughter by quietly working the schools, where the life stories of the locals were often written at the same time the pregnancies were announced: early marriages and menial support jobs for the girls, the flats or the sea for the boys. Although Caroline hadn’t been raised a snob, to her mother’s mind, perhaps she turned out a bit of one. Or got a dram too much of her father’s washashore blood. Either way, by the time she graduated from Provincetown Regional High School, and left for college, CiCi could have been anything, done anything. And she did. She’d had everything until she didn’t anymore, until here she was, back home with nothing.
Chapter 5
Rid turned the key in the ignition as he slammed shut the truck door. The engine churned but caught quickly enough and with the same smooth mesh of motion, he had the truck in reverse, his head swiveled and his foot weighing the accelerator. The weather was unsettled after the storm, dank, the morning’s onshore wind shifty. As he backed up from the protected place he and CiCi had left the truck, between the access road and the beach, he saw that the others were out on their grants, checking and resetting nets and trays and that the outermost part of his grant was already partly submerged. “Shit,” he yelled as he banged the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. He thought of heading out on his grant now, leaving Lizzie another couple of hours. But since she was with him pretty much all the time, and would have been last night if he hadn’t tried to spare her the incoming blow, something she was afraid of, he was already guilt-pocked at having left her at all.
Now he’d done worse, left her to shiver it out alone under his bed, unfed and in the dark with no one there to let her relieve herself. No, he had to make a quick run to go get her first. As he shifted into drive, he
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