Chapter Thirty-two

I think that it’s still there, Ray’s Clam Shack. Across Quincy Shore Drive from the beach, back in those days they served food fried in a deep fat fryer filled with liquefied Crisco, a maxed-out cholesterol feast and absolutely divine. I was a kid from the Midwest. Fresh seafood was a treat, and that fried mess of clams and french fries and tartar sauce was exotic to me. Keller insisted we get clams with bellies, suggesting that clam strips were akin to eating margarine instead of butter—just not good enough. I admit that it took a bit for me to get used to the taste and feel of the contents of a clam belly, but once I did, I never went back to the untutored Midwesterner’s version of clams.

Even though the place was only a few blocks from home, we took my car. Partly because Rick’s take-out dinner would be cold if we walked it home and mostly because neither one of us was interested in prolonging this excursion, leaving Rick home alone and potentially helpless. What if something happened? That sentence should be in all caps. Pax was there, at the ready to retrieve anything Rick could point to. Keller had refined the dog’s mission to include getting Rick’s sweater, which lay at the foot of his bed, or dragging his lap robe up and over his knees. Should the evening paper arrive when we weren’t around, the dog would push his way out the front door and take it in to Rick, this last without a command or, to the best of our knowledge, anyone training him to do it. We still hadn’t seen him open the front door to get back in. But, with all that, the dog couldn’t dial a phone or put out a fire. Worst-case scenarios plagued me.

The other reason I thought we should take the car was because we were still very shy with each other and this whim of Rick’s was best accomplished quickly. Without the third party of Rick, or even Pax, we were only a little better than foreign dignitaries without a common language.

We took our dinner to the beach, finding an empty bench to sit on side-by-side, the greasy bags between us. And we talked, as parents of young children do, of our two common interests. Rick and Pax. How funny Pax was with that squeaky toy hanging out of his mouth. How much better we both thought Rick was using his left hand.

Conversation petered out and we sat back to admire the view of the Boston Harbor islands.

Keller scuffed his feet in the sand. “This is lousy sand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kind of, well, kind of city sand.”

I laughed. “You’re a beach sand connoisseur?”

“Sort of. Spent a lot of time standing in it.”

“Where?”

“Little place called Hawke’s Cove. Up north of here. I lived for a while with my great-uncle.” Keller lifted a whole clam dipped in a coating of tartar sauce to his mouth, chewed. “He’s a commercial fisherman, mostly close to shore.”

“That must have been nice, being on the water.”

Keller didn’t say anything for a moment, then shook his head. “It wasn’t vacation. It was hard work.”

There was no nostalgia in his voice, as there might have been with a lot of men. Even hard work has its nostalgic quality—a pride of purpose, of accomplishment. With Keller, it sounded more like he had survived something. He didn’t elaborate then; only later did I learn about his virtual slave labor and understand that he had indeed survived something.

“Is that where you learned to eat clams with bellies?”

Keller gave me one of his infrequent smiles, and for the first time I saw that he had a really nice smile and wished that maybe he’d use it more. “That and how to make a mean chowder.” He pronounced it in that quintessentially New England manner: chowda. “I’ll make it some night if you want.”

“Rick would love that. It was always what he ordered when we went out.” And then I remembered that Rick avoided using a spoon. “Well, maybe not yet.”

Keller knew what I meant. “He will. I promise.”

The scenery recaptured our attention. A small boat was powering its way toward one of the islands, and I couldn’t imagine what reason it might have for such a journey. As far as I knew, there were no inhabitants on the tuft of island that the boat was headed toward.

“That’s a lobster boat; he’s out checking traps. He’s probably got them set where there’re rocks. Lobsters like cover.” Lobstas.

“Another thing your uncle taught you?” I crumpled up my empty cardboard clam boat and shoved it in the paper bag.

“Yeah.” Keller followed suit, and grabbed both empty bags. We needed to pick up the order for Rick. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Rick was a ballplayer, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, why won’t he let me bring in a radio so we can listen to the games? You’d think that he’d want to keep up.”

Hadn’t Keller noticed the fact that Rick left the sports section unread? I chalked up his insensitivity to youthful callowness. Of course, he wasn’t a youth and it wasn’t callowness. Eventually, I figured out that his bluntness had more to do with his upbringing, or lack thereof. “It’s too painful. He was slated to become a starting pitcher with the Boston Braves, but instead he went to war and lost his dream.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“If you want to listen to the games, feel free. But don’t think that you’re going to get him to.”

“I thought that if he’d listen to the radio, he might, I don’t know, start to feel better.”

“By being reminded of the loss of the thing that meant the most to him?”

“Look, he’s in there all by himself, staring at the wall. Unless you’re in there, or I’m making him play chess, he’s probably only thinking of his loss.”

The thing Keller couldn’t know is that I understood Rick exceedingly well, including his aversion to the topic of sports. For a long time, I felt the same aversion every time one of my ballpark acquaintances or a friendly neighbor down the block announced that she was pregnant, something that was happening postwar with startling regularity. Or I stood next to a mother with a pram beside her in the butcher shop, watching out of the corner of my eye while she tucked the baby in more securely and smiled down with that Madonna smile all women are capable of. I tossed out the baby pictures my Iowa girlfriends kindly sent to me, inviting me to share in their joy.

Maybe making Rick listen to ball games was a good idea. After all, I was a little better now, having a new focus forced upon me with Rick’s challenges, so that the sight of a pregnant woman on the street corner no longer made me avert my eyes. And there were so many of them. It was as if the world had gone procreation crazy in order to make up for the staggering losses of war.

“At least now he’s got Pax. And you. Before it was…” I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t admit that those months of being Rick’s only caregiver had been anything other than a privilege.

“Just you. Yes, it’s a good thing that I’m here to help. And it’s really good that Pax can at least get him to smile once in a while. But, Francesca, it isn’t enough.”

I was done with this conversation. I know he hadn’t meant to, but he was making me feel like I had somehow failed Rick by not making him listen to baseball on the radio, forcibly reminding him that life and baseball had moved on without him. Well, they also recommended rubbing dogs’ noses in their messes to punish them. “Let’s go get the order and go home.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up trouble.”

“It’s not like I don’t see what’s wrong, Keller. You never knew him as the man I married. He was charming and funny and sexy and full of life. He was full of life.” I hated the way my voice broke. I hadn’t cried in a long time, not since I realized that tears really never relieved. They just pushed my thoughts inward, until I felt sorry for myself.

“The war took that from him, didn’t it? I get it. But he’s got the whole rest of his life to live, and if he can’t even leave his room, what kind of a life is it going to be? For him, and for you.”

The little lobster boat had moved out of sight around the curve of the island. A pair of seagulls had landed close by, attracted by our impromptu picnic. I had nothing to toss to them. We had eaten every bite. “Do you plan to stay on?”

“Do you want me to?”

“We do, but the question is, do you want to stay?” It came to me that Keller was done with taking care of a man who hadn’t come through the war in the same way he had, with his limbs intact and his spirit undiminished. He didn’t answer right away, and I could feel my heart hammering at the fear he would say good-bye and leave me once again alone with my husband.

“I do.”

I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath until I released it. “Oh, good. Good.”

“But it’s not enough.” A coincidence of words, or had this been what he’d meant earlier about it not being enough?

“We can’t pay any more, honestly.” It was a pittance, eked out of Rick’s benefits. We were feeding Keller, and providing a place to sleep. Even living with us, he had expenses—a car, clothing, and so on. Here he was at the beginning of his postwar life, living like a Victorian servant.

“No. That’s not what I mean. I’m thinking of taking advantage of the GI Bill and going to college in the fall. I can do both, go to school and help out with Rick. If I can stay on with you, I mean.”

“Of course you can.” I almost giggled in relief. He’d stay. I felt reprieved and I knew that Rick would be pleased, even if he didn’t say so.

Keller tossed the bags into a trash can and we dashed across the street, back to where Rick’s dinner was waiting to be picked up. I don’t know why, but we dashed hand in hand.