Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

“Lobster restaurant,” Tennie said. “In town. You can’t miss it.”

Delilah did not want to work in a restaurant. Dean Markbury waited tables at Denny’s, plunking down Grand Slam breakfasts and club sandwiches for two dollars an hour. He had to wear polyester pants. But what if Delilah had no choice?

She pulled apart her biscuit; the flaky layers were like the pages of a book. She wanted to learn to cook. She wanted to meet the black sheep woodcutting son, who in Delilah’s mind looked exactly like the man on the bus, and get married.

Or not. She would see.

Nantucket town on a mellow spring morning: no tourists to speak of, shopkeepers sweeping geranium petals off the brick sidewalk. They smiled at Delilah, and stared at her a few extra seconds, trying to place her. Is that so-and-so’s daughter? No, no, it’s someone else, I don’t know who that is. It was liberating to be a stranger.

She found Vern’s on her own. It was impossible to miss, at the base of Main Street. The sign in front said “Vern’s” and another sign said “Lobster.” Delilah wandered in. Well, it wasn’t Denny’s. There was a dark wood bar lined with tall stools, the seats of which were made from upside-down lobster pots. There were scarred wooden tables and hanging fishing nets and brass portholes fixed into the wall and green and red port and starboard lights. The door had been left wide open; a sweating glass of water and a bowl of lemons were on the bar. Delilah thought maybe the place was open for lunch, but it was empty.

“Hello?” she called out.

A muted TV was on over the bar-it was the midday news-and Delilah filled with dread. She did not want to think about the outside world, about Michigan or her weeping family. She watched the screen for a second-bad house fire in a place called Dedham. There were hundreds of millions of people in this country; Delilah Ashby gone missing would not register beyond the limits of the South Haven School District. Right?

A man came out of the kitchen wearing brown rubber pants held up by suspenders.

“Hi,” he said. “You’re the girl living with Ma?”

This was Vern. He had thinning blond hair and a permanent sunburn and a thick New England accent. He said he would hire her even though she had no experience, because she could stay the whole season, right? She wasn’t going to leave him in the lurch in the middle of August like Little Miss Smarty-Pants from Radcliffe, right? Right, Delilah said. He told her she could expect to make a hundred dollars in tips a night. The lobster dinner was $29.95 and included baked potato, corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw, and a dinner roll. Most people liked to start with a bowl of chowder or a plate of steamers, and most people liked a glass of chardonnay or an ice-cold beer, sometimes two or three of these, and then most people could not turn down the homemade pies, all in season-this week was lemon meringue-and hence the average bill was up there.

“Come Friday at three and I’ll train you,” Vern said. “Bring your working papers.”

Working papers? Delilah fretted. She stood up to leave. What would she do about working papers?

“Before you go,” Vern said. He nodded her back to the kitchen, and a warning bell went off in Delilah’s head. Was this where he tried to have his way with her? And if he did try to have his way with her, might he forgive the fact that she didn’t have working papers?

She followed Vern into the kitchen. It was immaculate-shiny countertops, sparkling stainless steel. In the sink was a wire bucket of clams. Vern took a shell out and pried it open with a short, dull knife.

“Cherrystones,” he said. “Went out this morning myself and got ’em.”

Delilah peered at the snotlike globule attached to its home shell.

“Mmmm-hmm,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Vern said.

Go ahead what? she thought. Touch it? Take it home? She smiled, sort of.

“Eat it,” he said.

Eat it? She tried not to make a face. She breathed. If she ate this phlegmy-looking raw mollusk, would he forgive her the lack of working papers? She reached out two pincer fingers; he pried the clam loose with his knife. He was keen for her to taste it, not in a little-boy go-ahead-I-dare-you way, but in an avuncular, professorial way. She held the shell. Was she really going to eat it? She was from the Midwest, where there weren’t even any sushi restaurants. Delilah was pretty sure, however, that Thoreau would have eaten the clam; he would have sucked it down for his own edification. Delilah would do the same.

At first it was foreign in her mouth. Slippery, chewy. Then it burst with sweetness. Sugar from saltwater. She swallowed.

Vern said, “Food doesn’t get any fresher than that.”

Delilah headed back to Tennie’s at four o’clock. She chewed on the concrete problem of working papers; it was a relief, actually, to have a concrete problem rather than the abstract ones of whether she would be discovered and whether she was living deliberately or simply falling into another routine.

She opened the door to Tennie’s house-she had been given her own key, which she kept clipped to her belt loop-and she heard a man inside. Her heart tripped up a second as she thought of the black sheep son, the woodcutter. She saw a man’s head, black hair, visible even over the high-backed chair. A big man.

Tennie said, “Well, hello!” in a tone of voice Delilah had not heard her use before. A saved-for-company voice, or maybe an I’m-in-danger voice. Was Tennie being held captive?

“Hi,” Delilah said. She stepped into the living room. The man turned.

It was her father.

One evening after a particularly difficult day, Delilah left the boys with Jeffrey and walked into town. She sat on the curb opposite Tennie Gulliver’s house on Pine Street.

Had that story really been true?

Yes, every word, or approximately so, since that was what memory, or memoir, was: an approximation of the truth. Certain things were crystal-clear-eating the raw clam, seeing her father’s face-but other things were hazy. Like what she and her father had said to each other on the way home. Or how Nico had actually found her. (When she’d asked him, he said, I followed your breadcrumbs .) Or what had made her give up her Thoreau dreams and do what was expected of her: finish high school, attend the University of Michigan, graduate in four years, pack up her room, kiss her parents, and then at the age of twenty-two return to Nantucket, where she was able to secure a job at Vern’s as if no time had passed at all. And then she fell in love with the farmer who delivered Vern’s corn on the cob and salad greens. She fell in love with Jeffrey Drake, even though he was not the black sheep woodcutter son, Gully, but rather a man just like her father.

Predictable.

Tennie Gulliver had been dead for years, and Vern had sold both Tennie’s house and his restaurant, taken the money, and bought a place in Florida. Delilah pictured him now as an older man, eating Grand Slam breakfasts at Denny’s. Was he happy?

She fantasized about running away again. Her anger at Andrea Kapenash was a tumor in her lung that was keeping her from breathing properly. Her secret knowledge of Greg’s continuing affair with April Peck was an ulcer in her gut, and the guilt of her silence on that final morning was meningitis, inflaming her brain. Her bones ached with regular old sad sadness. She felt strapped to this island like a crazy person to a bed. If she stayed, she was sure she would die.

Delilah stood up from the curb. A family by the name of Hebner had bought Tennie Gulliver’s house, and it looked a lot better now. The Hebners had jacked up the house and squared the foundation; they had replaced windows and painted the trim and replaced the old door knocker with a brass clamshell. Still, it was Tennie’s house, the very same house where Delilah had spent exactly one night the May she was sixteen. She had been so brave and so stupid. Delilah was older now by more than double; her own life’s circumstances had been squared and given a new coat of paint. But really, nothing had changed.