The Wideness of the Sea Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Wideness of the Sea

  Copyright

  Dedication

  On the Sea by John Keats

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author's Note

  Recipe: Tuscan Butter Basted Swordfish

  Recipe: Chicken & Spinach Casserole with Bacon and Caramelized Onions

  Recipe: Jacques Pepin's Red Wine Beef Stew

  Recipe: Indian Lamb and Spinach Curry

  The

  Wideness

  of the

  Sea

  By Katie Curtis

  The Wideness of the Sea

  Copyright © 2017 by Katie Curtis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the express permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are productions of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Piscataqua Press

  An imprint of RiverRun Bookstore, Inc.

  142 Fleet Street Portsmouth, NH 03801

  www.riverrunbookstore.com

  www.piscataquapress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-944393-40-3

  To Rob, RJ, Sophie, Lucy, and Andrew, who lived through

  the making of this book with grace, cheer, and love.

  On The Sea

  by John Keats

  It keeps eternal whisperings around

  Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

  Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell

  Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

  Often ‘tis in such gentle temper found,

  That scarcely will the very smallest shell

  Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.

  When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.

  Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,

  Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

  Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,

  Or fed too much with cloying melody---

  Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood,

  Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

  Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain.

  She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

  - Christopher Morley

  Chapter 1

  Anna had just finished the 10th grade the summer she first saw a blue lobster.

  Her mother strolled out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, and walked over to where Anna was sitting in a crab apple tree with her sister, Marie, who was back home in New Harbor, Maine from college for summer break. “They’ve found a blue lobster down at the harbor,” she called.

  A moment later, Anna and Marie were riding their bikes the mile and a half to the harbor co-op, where the lobster boats unloaded their daily catch. The morning summer sun made the water so bright you could hardly see past the harbor bell, the horizon line a blinding flash of white. She squinted her eyes as she eased her bike down in the parking lot and ran toward the wall of traps that were lined up along the edge of the dock. There was a crowd already gathered; the lobsterman who had caught the rare lobster held it in a white plastic bucket, allowing all the people – kids mostly, idle in summer break – to see the azure blue creature up close. Anna pushed aside shoulders and elbows and knees until she stood behind a boy she didn’t know hunched over the bucket. She stood on her tiptoes over his shoulder, balancing her palms on his back, straining to catch a view. When some kids pushed her from behind she was thrust into him until he fell over, catching himself on the sides of the bucket. “Hey, watch it…” he said, turning toward her.

  His eyes met hers, and a flash of recognition followed. He was friends with her brother, two years older than her. He stared back at her, the length of his gaze starting to make her feel uncomfortable, like she had vertigo, or had been staring at the sun too long. She tried to say “sorry” but no words could come out of her mouth. The strands of her dark hair that stuck to beads of sweat on her forehead blocked her vision, and she pushed them out of her eyes.

  “Here, do you want to take a look?” he asked, moving to the side. She stepped forward because she didn’t know what else to do. She peered down and saw the blue lobster, looking like a glass version of itself, with lighter blue around the claws, and a more concentrated pigment in its body, sitting in a few inches of water. She knew from living in a harbor town how rare this was – only one in two million lobsters were born with this genetic anomaly. But the lobster also triggered something else in her. She knew that color.

  “Ultramarine,” she said.

  “Huh?” Said the boy whose name she didn’t know, but whose eyes she did.

  “The color blue…of the lobster,” she stammered. “It is just like the paint color named ‘ultramarine’. I use it – I mean, my mom uses it all the time.” She closed her eyes and could picture a painting of the lobster in her mind. She would mix in white to get the color of the claws, some black to get the shading around the legs. She was aware of the boy standing staring at her as she closed her eyes. She opened them and looked across the bucket at him. Just then, other viewers jostled her from her spot and swallowed her up. She strained to see the boy again, but he was gone.

  That afternoon, she went into the barn and set to work putting the image in her head on a canvas. Her mother decided to join her and paint a blue lobster as well. As she worked, she kept thinking about those eyes. They were almost the same color blue. Andrew’s eyes. She had asked her brother what his name was.

  Anna Goodrich was pulled out of her memory by the voice of the man in front of her. He was tall, heavy set, and wore an expensive looking trench coat. He stood in the gallery where Anna worked in Mid-town, New York City, on a rainy Friday afternoon in April, weighing his decision between two paintings. One was an oil painting of a river in Upstate New York. The other was a painting of a lobster boat, the water a shade of ultramarine that looked electric, like a blue lobster, set off by the red and white of the boat.

  “I think I just feel this one more,” he said, gesturing to the lobster boat painting. “And I have loved the other works by this artist,” he added. “I think it is a better investment overall.” She knew he loved the painting; talking about the investment value was like giving the mind permission to fall in love, because it made sense. She had seen it happen before, and it was one of the reasons she loved working in the gallery when she wasn’t painting. She would have told the man she was the artist if she wasn’t so distracted by her daydream.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. “Can you have it delivered to my wife on Third Avenue?” he asked as he wrote down the address.

  “Of course,” Anna said. “My pleasure.”

  “Be careful with u
ltramarine, it dominates so easily, it must be balanced by the other elements,” her mother had said when she painted the blue lobster painting with Anna. By the time she had painted this picture of the boat, Anna had mastered this lesson.

  Later that afternoon after she had closed the gallery, the spring air was so fresh and fragrant it beckoned her to walk home instead of taking the subway. The rain had given way to a warm sun that felt almost tropical to the New Yorkers walking around in their boots and duffle coats. Everything with roots started exploding; you could almost see leaves and blossoms unfurl before your eyes. The treetops were a lacy green against the blue sky and the pink blossoms on the redwood trees looked like cotton candy. A group of teenagers walked past Anna with all their sweaters and long sleeve shirts tied around their waists, punch drunk on shedding their layers. Rows of giggling preschoolers passed holding hands, like a chain of cut out paper dolls.

  Anna skipped up the steps of her building, and made her way upstairs to the apartment she shared with her best friend, Georgia, a successful freelance photographer. The old floorboards creaked as she walked into her apartment, and as she set down her purse and coat, she saw that Georgia had dropped a stack of mail on the coffee table. It had been eight years since Anna had answered her roommate ad when she moved to New York, and in that time, she had never been able to put it in the basket Anna had set out in the kitchen specifically for mail. What she lacked in organization, though, she more than made up for in loyalty and spontaneous fun, which Anna considered a fair trade.

  She set the mail in the basket then made her way to her closet to get dressed for the rooftop party they were all invited to that evening. As she looked through her closet to pick out something to wear, the end of the week fatigue crept over her and she almost considered begging off the plans. She looked at the canvas in the corner of her room, an acrylic painting she was working on of couple at a table outside at a restaurant, and thought about how nice it would be to put on her most comfortable clothes, have a glass of wine and work on it. But she had barely seen her boyfriend, Raphael, at all that week, and he worked with the guys throwing the party. Georgia was also coming with her boyfriend Jake, so there was no way she could back out. Anna pulled out a black cowl-neck dress and resigned herself to a Friday night out.

  A few hours later, Anna stood with her long arm raised, black heels in an oily puddle, trying to hail a cab on Second Ave. As soon as she found one, she eased into the black pleather, staring out the window and letting the magic of the city lights lull her. As the cab stopped at a red light, she suddenly thought back to her day dream about the blue lobster. She closed her eyes and could picture painting with her mother in the barn, and could practically smell the mildew and cedar from the old abandoned stalls mingling with the smell of the paints. She loved having memories of painting with her mom, of learning from her. As she pressed her back into the seat, letting it hold up her fatigue, she held the whole lovely memory for a moment. When her phone rang, it popped like a bubble. It was Miranda, one of her favorite students at the Boys and Girls club, where she taught on Tuesday afternoons.

  “Hey Anna, are we still on for the Met tomorrow?

  “You bet. 10:30 sound ok?”

  “Sure, I’ll meet you by the front desk. Also, I wanted to ask you a favor – could you write my recommendation for the New School?”

  “Yes, of course,” Anna practically squealed. She had been hoping Miranda could talk her mother into letting her apply. A single mother, Maria Rivera was raising Miranda, who was 14 and her sister, Gabriella, who was 12, alone on a hotel housekeeper’s salary after their father died shortly after they had immigrated to the US from Mexico when the girls were little. Miranda had been taking classes with Anna since she was in third grade, and was a gifted artist. Anna tried to encourage her, and unofficially became a big sister to her. She loved her round face, infectious smile and shining dark eyes, and her big heart was always enthusiastic about something, whether it was a new paint brush or discovering a new artist.

  “Anna, have you ever seen a Caravaggio? He is amazing!” she would exclaim, tossing her long, dark hair over her shoulder. The next week, she would greet Anna with her eyes wide. “Did you know that Frida Kalho once lived in New York!” she gushed as she set up her paint and canvas for the lesson.

  Last month, Anna had gone to Miranda’s apartment in the Bronx, which was small and clean, with plastic flowers on the kitchen table, though the building had broken windows, and the sound of shouting from various directions made Anna feel uneasy. She sat down with her mom, Maria, to talk about the New School, an art high school for gifted students near Central Park and Anna’s gallery. Her mom wasn’t excited about the studio hours the students were expected to put in on nights and weekends. She was eager for her to pick up some shifts doing laundry at the hotel once she was in high school.

  “I don’t see how art fairs and rich friends are going to help Miranda get a good job,” she had said, her hair combed back into a pony tail, wearing the same red zip up hoodie that she had on every time Anna had met her. She was petite and curvy, and had a pretty face even without makeup. “I want her to get a good education, but the kind that gets you into a good college, not the kind that distracts you and helps you sell paintings in Central Park,” her mother had said, her expression firm, her hand gently sliding a medallion of Our Lady of Guadalupe back and forth on a chain around her neck.

  “She is so talented, though. This will get her into a good school, I promise,” Anna pleaded.

  “Let me think about it,” Maria had said.

  “How did you convince her?” Anna asked Miranda.

  “I begged her. And I promised her I would clean apartments with my aunt all summer and save for the school year.”

  “I’m so glad, Miranda. Let’s talk about the essay tomorrow at lunch after the Met, ok?”

  “Ok, Anna. Thank you!” her enthusiasm contagious.

  Anna smiled as she hung up her phone, and seconds later it buzzed again. She answered to the velvety sound of Raphael’s voice.

  “Hey hon, where are you?” he asked. “I just got here.”

  “I’m three blocks away, be there in a minute. By the way, I’m meeting Miranda at the Met tomorrow morning, so if you want to do brunch we have to go early. Did you still want to go with Georgia and everyone to dinner tomorrow night?”

  “As long as I get to see you at all of it, it sounds good to me. And I’m glad you’re going to see Miranda. You’re pretty great with her, you know,” he said, the sound of jazz music from the party seeping through the phone.

  “She’s a great girl. It’s easy,” Anna said. “Ok, I’m jumping out now, love you.”

  “Ok, see you in a second. Love you too,” said Raphael.

  Anna paid for the cab and threw her phone in her purse, and headed into the building.

  She left it there, stashed next to the toaster in the minimalist white kitchen while she mingled with Raphael and friends on the gorgeous rooftop, the jazz somehow a perfect complement to the incredible views of the city. She always had fun with Raphael at parties – he made everyone laugh, his charm and his ability to make people feel good on full display. It wasn’t until she saw the line for the bathroom and grabbed her phone for a distraction while she waited that she saw the messages; three from her sister, Marie, and one from her aunt. She set down her sweaty glass of Sauvignon Blanc in an empty space of the bookshelf and went back outside to call her sister. The air was pleasantly cool, and lights on the topiaries mingled with the lights of the skyline as she waited for her sister to answer. She glanced over at Raphael on the couch, laughing with friends, his brown hair slightly overgrown, making him look like a teenager. She wondered where her best friend Georgia was. She should have been here by now.

  “Hello?” her sister answered in a muffled voice.

  “Marie, what’s going on? I have three messages from you,” Anna asked.

  “It’s Uncle Charlie,” said Marie. Her voice faltered an
d sounded like she had swallowed syrup. “He had a heart attack, Anna. He didn’t make it.”

  The news hit hard, then slowly spread through her nervous system. The lights from the trees on the patio and the skyline blurred and she felt dizzy. She focused on the window in the building across the street, where an Indian couple stood in their kitchen making dinner, the woman’s red sari standing out among a sea of gray brick.

  “Oh God.” She let out the breath she had been holding. “Oh my God. How’s Aunt Catherine? How’s Dad?” She thought of her aunt, Uncle Charlie’s devoted sister, and her father, and how the three of them were always so close, their own unit with their own understanding of each other, how she had sensed this even when she was little. She cupped her forehead in her hand and then started to massage the muscles there.

  “Aunt Catherine’s in shock. Dad’s broken up, but still . . . Dad.” Anna watched the Indian couple, the woman gesturing at the stove as her much taller husband stirred what was in the pan. She seemed annoyed at whatever he had done to the dish. Anna had the sudden urge to check her phone for Uncle Charlie’s number, to call him up and hear his voice, just to prove that her sister’s words couldn’t possibly be true.

  “Should I come up there tonight? Or wait a few days? Do you know when they’re going to have the funeral yet?” Anna’s mind welcomed the switch from an unpleasant reality to simple, practical logistics. She started to think about her schedule, what she would have to cancel and switch around to make the trip. She worked at the Genevieve Keller Gallery in Midtown, just a few blocks from where they were tonight, and hoped that her boss would cover for her. She would have to cancel her plans with Raphael next week, dinner with friends and an art show. She looked over at him, his arm across the back of the couch, his other hand holding a Scotch, his face lit up from laughing. The discordant feelings of joy at seeing him and the devastating sadness seemed to crash together in her head, and it started pounding.