Laura Lippman: The Last Place

The seventh book in the Tess Monaghan series, 2002

He begins his day on the water. The way his father did. The way she does.

Not that he can quite admit to himself that he has come here to see her this morning. He has legitimate reasons to be on this idling motorboat as day breaks. He smiles at his own turn of phrase: legitimate reasons. Legitimate. A funny word, when applied to his life, and yet fitting. He draws it out, reveling in its syllables, imagining it in the accent of his youth. Legitmate.

He has cut the engine for the last part of his journey, gliding to a stop beneath a low-lying overpass. Not many people know about this small inlet off the wider waters of the Patapsco, south of the city and the Inner Harbor. Those who do probably think it’s too shallow to be navigable. Good. That’s why he chose it. But he has seen her here, once or twice. Which is okay, as long as she stays on the water, doesn’t get out and poke around. He can’t imagine why she would. But you never know.

Another day, another dollar. His father had said that, heading out every morning, and it was almost too literal in his case. Those were the years when the bay began to betray them: the bay and then the politicians, with their limits on this, their moratoriums on that. Starve this generation in order to feed the next, that seemed to be their plan. But who was going to harvest the oysters and catch the crabs if they let the watermen die out? Oh, they loved the watermen in the abstract, paid lip service to the history and the tradition, and they sure as hell loved the food when it came. Here in the city, they make a similar fuss over the Arabbers, the black men who sell fruits and vegetables from horse-drawn carts. But it’s the horses they love, not the men. The people who do the dirty work aren’t flesh and blood to those who rely on them, no more human than threshing machines or cotton gins. Folks seem to think the food appears on their tables by magic, and that it will keep appearing if the watermen could just get over being greedy.

He knows, better than most, how memories ripen to bursting over time, but everything really was bigger and better in his youth. Fried oysters big as your fist, bursting in your mouth, all brine and cornmeal. The steamed crabs were eight to ten inches across, monsters who could take a toe or a finger while alive. Then everything began to get smaller, smaller, smaller. The oysters, the crabs. His family. Even the island itself.

Yet his parents knew no other life and never wanted to. His father thought he was the luckiest man in the world because he spent his life outdoors, on the water. The bay rewarded his love by hastening his death by several years. What the sun didn’t do, the water finally did, poisoning his blood. A simple cut became a death sentence when the dumb mainland doctor sewed it up, sealing the bacteria into his not-old man as neat as you please. Yet his father never once complained, even as the infection crept up his body, destroying it limb by limb. He had lived life on his own terms and taught his son to do the same. Do what you love and you’ll love what you do. That was his father’s mantra, his father’s legacy, and he had taken it to heart.

But it hadn’t escaped his notice that what you love might be the death of you.

He leaves the inlet, satisfied that all is well. He is in the Middle Branch now and his boat heads toward the Cherry Hill Marina, almost of its own volition. He does not risk this, not often. But he needs to see her today. He needs to see her with increasing frequency. It is hard now to remember a time when she was unknown to him, when she did not come to him in his dreams, promising him the one thing he wants. It frightens him to think of the coincidence that brought them together. What if he had not…? What if she had not? He can no longer imagine a world without her.

He sees several eights on the water, a couple of fours, but no single scullers. He’s too late, he thinks, and his heart, which seldom speeds up, lurches. The seagulls sound as if they are mocking him: Too late, too late, too late. The coxswains’ exhortations seem meant for him as well. Half slide. Full slide. Legs only. Full power. The seagulls shriek back: Too late, too late, too late. The girlish voices rise, emphatic and shrill. Full power. Full power. Full power . The seagulls win the argument as the boats slide away, the nagging voices of the coxswains dying on the wind.

But no, she’s the one who’s late, the last rower to pass under the Hanover Street Bridge this morning. He knows her by her broad back, the brown braid that hangs straight as a second backbone. He cuts his engine and she gives him a chin-only nod, acknowledging his courtesy without looking at him, for that would disrupt her rhythm.

She is not pretty-pretty, and he has decided that’s a good thing, although he once preferred a more delicate beauty. But a pretty-pretty face, or even a cute one, would have been a mistake on that body. Handsome is a word some might use, but he won’t. Handsome is a word for men.

And there’s nothing manly about her. The body-why, that belongs on the prow of a ship, in his opinion. It reminds him of Hera, in that cheesy movie with the skeletons, watching over Jason as he headed out to find the Golden Fleece. Stupid Jason: He used up Hera’s three wishes so quickly, despite her warnings. Her long-lashed eyes closed, and she was lost to him forever. Jason deserved everything he got and more. Not that the movie told that part, oh no. But it had sent him to the myths on which it was based, just the way teacher had intended when she set up the rickety film projector and screened the movie as a treat on the last day of school. He had fallen in love with all the Greek myths, stories that seemed to have been written just for him. Aphrodite rising from the sea, only to be bestowed upon earnest hard-working Hephaestus, the one ugly god. Psyche and Eros, Pygmalion and Galatea. Epimetheus and Prometheus, racing to create the earth’s inhabitants.

But the Golden Fleece remained his favorite, if only because it was his first. And the book was so much more thrilling than the movie. He was pleased to read of Medea’s vengeance on faithless Jason, to watch Jason’s new bride writhe in agony beneath the bewitched cloak that seared her flesh, to see Jason demeaned and demonized.

The only thing that bothered him was Medea’s escape. It seemed an imperfect ending. She betrayed her father for a man, then killed her sons when the man betrayed her. Someone should have chased her dragon-drawn chariot across the sky and brought it crashing to the earth. Medea must die for the circle to be completed. Medea must die.

She has a tank top on today, he can see all his favorite parts, which are not the obvious parts, not at all. He likes those defined muscles at the top of her shoulders, those little dents that look as if someone’s fingers lingered there the night before. He admires the long pouting collarbone, a shelf above a shelf. She has a beautiful forehead, as broad as a marquee, and a juicy bottom lip, overbit to begin with and sucked in beneath her top teeth this morning, a sign that she’s concentrating.