An hour into oyster picking, Olivia realized that sitting on an egg crate and leaning forward to dig through cages should have sent her back into spasms but, incredibly, aside from a slight tension just above her waist, she felt fine. Better than fine.
Every so often, she looked up at the blue sky or out at the water surrounding them and felt the unfamiliar sensation of peace. There was nothing else she needed to be doing, nowhere else she needed to be—or wanted to be.
It struck her at one point that if her life had not taken this strange turn, she would at that very moment be sitting in a Manhattan office eating salad out of a plastic takeout container and worrying about the quality of a celebrity’s vacation photo on Instagram. Looking back on it, she had been like the oysters trapped in the cages by her feet.
Beside her, Marco worked silently. They spoke only when she wasn’t sure if an oyster made the cut, but she was increasingly confident about assessing them and so even this minimal conversation was rare.
She kept stealing glances at him. The sunlight shining from above and reflecting off the water around them made him seem even more golden. She tried to be professional, tried to limit how often she set her eyes on his face, but it was impossible to resist. Every time she looked his way, she felt a rush. At one point, her gaze lingered just a little too long and he caught her. Mortified, she tried to think of something to say to make it look like she had turned in his direction to talk.
“So, um, you don’t have any employees that help you out? It’s just you and Jaci?”
“I had a part-timer in the spring, a merchant marine who helps me during his eight weeks off. But I’ve had more employees who’ve stayed for only one day than I can count. People think they are up for it—they romanticize being out on the water and all that—but when they experience the reality, they quit. It’s one of those things; you either love it or hate it. There’s no middle ground.”
“Who wouldn’t like this?” she said, looking pointedly at the natural beauty surrounding them.
“In the interest of full disclosure, this is the easy part of the job. The fun part. In April, I was spending most of my time dealing with a barnacle bloom and knocking mussels off my bags.”
“How do mussels get on the bags?”
“Mussels are predators. Do you eat mussels?”
She shook her head. “I know I already said I don’t eat oysters but I’m not anti-seafood or anything.”
He smiled. “Just anti-shellfish.”
“I eat shrimp.”
“Okay, then. Now I know what to cook if you ever come over for dinner.”
If you ever come over for dinner. Was he simply making a point about her limited seafood palate or was he truly suggesting that there was some scenario in which he would invite her over?
“Mussels are predators,” Marco said again. “There’s a beard on them that you remove when cooking. The beard affixes to the place on the oyster that oysters filter water through. Oysters filter between twenty-five and fifty gallons of water a day. So the beard goes into there and it sits in there, stopping the filtering and killing the oyster. And I’m not talking about a few mussels.” He reached for the cover of the cage he was working in and latched it closed.
“I get that it’s messy and physical work,” she said. “But it’s impressive. You’re doing something real. The idea that these are going to end up on someone’s plate is amazing.” It was hard not to think about her own career by comparison. How much time and energy had she spent staging fake photos to post on someone’s phone to see how many times strangers pressed a heart button? And it had meant so much to her—everything. How absurd it all seemed now.
Marco smiled at her. “Thanks. So what do you do when you’re not out here on vacation?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m not on vacation. I came out here because I thought my mother was sick.”
“She’s sick?”
Olivia shook her head. “No, I thought she might be. She sort of implied she was sick. Or maybe it was just a misunderstanding. I don’t know. But I rushed out here because it seemed like something was wrong.”
“The call of duty,” he said.
“Yeah. Basically.”
“I think that’s admirable. I wish my sister were more considerate when it came to our parents.”
“She’s young,” Olivia said. “And to be honest, I wasn’t that generous with my attitude when I got out here. I couldn’t wait to leave.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
He grinned and looked pointedly out at the water surrounding them. “We’ve got time.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Right now there’s no reason to run back to New York. I’m regrouping, I guess you could say.”
“What about your job? You mentioned that night at Rachel’s house that you do social media stuff.”
Incredulous, she leaned back on the crate to see him better. “You remember that?”
“I mean, it wasn’t that long ago.”
No, it wasn’t that long ago. But it had been such a throwaway comment and he’d barely seemed to recognize her that night. Maybe she’d misread the situation. “Well, yes—my career is about social media. Was about social media. Now, I don’t know. I messed up at work and everything unraveled. One careless mistake, and eight years of nonstop effort was just completely destroyed.” She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. She could only imagine what Marco thought of her in that moment. Pathetic.
And yet there was no indication of judgment on his face when he said, “Maybe it wasn’t a mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might have done something subconsciously to sabotage yourself. Happens all the time.”
“Trust me, it was a mistake. My career means everything to me.”
And yet, now that she could reflect back on that time from a distance, she had to admit she had not been happy. She had not been happy for a long time.
Maybe not until that very moment.
They settled back into their work rhythm until the tides were ready to turn and once again submerge the cages. Marco transferred oysters from the buckets into mesh bags and she closed the cage she was working on and fastened the latch.
Water had soaked through her gloves, and her hands were uncomfortably moist. Now that she was done handling the oysters, she peeled the gloves off. “Do you need help carrying stuff?” she said, wiping the back of her shorts. At some point her knapsack had fallen to the ground and it was now covered with sand, seaweed, and salt deposits. She felt sweaty; her hair was matted down under her baseball cap. She could only imagine what she looked like—didn’t want to imagine.
“Can you grab the crates?”
They walked side by side back to the boat.
“So what happens to the oysters now?” she said.
“The first thing is to get them cooled down quickly. Ever hear of vibrio?”
She shook her head.
“Well, since you don’t eat oysters anyway, I know I’m not risking turning you off.”
You couldn’t turn me off if you tried. “Oh, wait—does it cause food poisoning?” she said.
He nodded. “We gotta get these oysters down to at least forty-five degrees, and we do that by submerging them in a mixture of salt water and ice. It’s called a slurry. And then they’ll be tagged with all the info, like harvest date, time, harvest area, and time of icing.”
“Do you need help with that?” she said.
“Thanks, but I can take it from here.” He looked at her. “You really find this interesting?”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t?”
He stopped and adjusted the bags in his hands. “A lot of people,” he said with a look on his face that seemed almost wistful. But then something in the sand caught his attention. “See that indentation?” he said.
She looked down and nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“That’s from horseshoe crabs mating. It’s their season,” he said.
She let out a nervous giggle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wasn’t expecting to hear about crab sex today.”
“Too much information? I guess I didn’t want to end the day on vibrio.”
She swallowed hard, looking at him and thinking she didn’t want to end the day at all.
“Not too much information at all,” she said. “It’s been perfect.”