Returning to Shore (10 page)

Clare looked up at Richard now.

“The company took off. Vera decided she wanted to marry Peter. So I had to decide if I was going to return to the East Coast or make my life out there.”

Clare waited.

“It seemed simpler to stay out there,” said Richard.

Clare felt as if she had been slapped. “What about me?” she asked.

Richard stood up. At first she thought he was going to walk off, leave her question behind. But instead he stretched and rubbed his hands through his hair. Then he sat down again.

“You've gotten to the core problem, haven't you? What to do about you. I decided—and perhaps I was wrong about this—that it was better for you if I stayed out of your life completely. Vera and Peter seemed to be a stable parental unit, and I wanted you to have that. Have them.”

So he had given her Peter. She would never have thought about it that way, would never have imagined that her relationship with Peter was at all dependent on
Richard's generosity. But even so, he had abandoned her. He'd supported her financially, but he'd gone off and left her behind.

“I always thought that you just didn't want to see me,” said Clare.

Richard shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “That wasn't it.”

“You never visited once, my entire childhood—years and years.”

“I didn't want you to grow up with divided loyalties. I didn't want you to feel confused.”

“I wouldn't have been confused. My friend Susannah has a stepfather but she sees her real father a lot, too, and he lives in Colorado. And that's a lot better than not seeing him at all.” She couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

“I'm sorry, Clare,” said Richard quietly. “There were reasons that I thought it was better—there were certain difficulties. I cared for you a great deal, and I did what I thought was best—please believe me—given the situation at the time.”

“And now? What's different now?”

“You're older; things have changed. I've been trying
to arrange for you to visit since I moved back East two years ago. I wanted you to know that I did want to see you, all those years. I wanted you to understand that.” He stopped and seemed to gather himself. “And there's something else, too.”

Clare's fear came back. There was something else. But maybe Richard didn't really want to talk about it. And maybe she didn't have to know it, not if she didn't want to.

Richard lifted the peas from the board and dropped them back in the bowl. Clare picked up the marbles and dropped them, one at a time, back in the box, where they clicked against the marbles that hadn't been used. Glass against glass.

If you didn't want to know things, you didn't have to know them. Things didn't become facts until someone actually spoke them. Until then, you could just go on acting just the way you had been acting and even if you suspected there was something that would change everything, you didn't have to acknowledge it; you didn't have to let it in.

Diamondback terrapins, Clare learned from Richard, came up into estuaries to feed at high tide, and returned to the bay at low tide. If you wanted to catch them you needed to do that from kayaks at high tide, or net them as they swam out across a narrow channel as the tide went out. Every terrapin caught was marked, measured, recorded, then released.

“What's the point of that?” asked Clare.

“We don't know much about these creatures,” said Richard. “We're collecting data so we can learn about them—we need to learn about them so we can figure out the best ways to protect them.”

Richard gave Clare a net with a long aluminum handle and they set out in the kayaks for a cove Richard called “the terrapin singles bar,” where turtles met potential mates. It didn't take Clare long to get used to handling a kayak again, and she felt like an authentic naturalist, not just someone paddling around for fun, with the net propped in the kayak next to her. She kept up with Richard paddling to the cove. He checked over his shoulder to make sure she was close behind, but he didn't seem to slow his pace for her benefit. In the field he became a man of purpose, his eye on the goal ahead. Clare was relieved when they reached the cove and came on shore at a small beach, where Richard unloaded his equipment.

“We'll circle around the perimeter once and see what's happening,” said Richard. “Let me know if you see a turtle. Look underwater and also watch for its head. They have to come up to breathe.”

“What if it's a snapping turtle?” asked Clare.

“They're in freshwater; this is salt,” said Richard. “The only turtles here would be our babies.”

When they were back out in their kayaks Richard demonstrated how to use the net. “The trick is to
swoop it under the terrapin, but keep your center of gravity so you don't tip your kayak.”

“What do I do with the paddle?”

“Tuck it next to you. And if you go over, it's OK. You've done it before and it's no problem.”

Except for getting back into the kayak again. But she didn't say anything.

Richard had her do some practice sweeping with her net, then they started off. Clare paddled behind him, scanning the water on both sides of her kayak. In places the angle was wrong and the sun glared on the surface, giving a reflection rather than a window through. They were up in a small inlet when Richard cried out, “Got one coming towards us on the right.” Clare studied the water, but didn't see anything.

He popped up in his seat, did a quick maneuver with his kayak, swooshing his net and paddling so fast that Clare couldn't make out what was happening.

“Lost her,” he said after a bit, and he sat back in his seat. They paddled farther along, but didn't spot that terrapin again, or any others. After a while Richard suggested Clare continue hunting where they were, and he was going to check things out across the cove.

“This way we can cover twice the territory,” he said. “If you see anything, give a shout.”

“But I shouldn't try to catch one, should I?” asked Clare. She was rather hoping he'd say no.

“If you feel up to it, and have an easy shot, give it a try,” he said.

“And what do I do with it if I catch it?”

“Drop it in the bottom of the kayak and I'll be right over.”

Too soon he was paddling off and Clare was on her own. She paddled slowly parallel to the shore. She saw something that looked like a turtle head and paddled fast towards it, but it proved to be only a stick. And something she spotted moving underwater turned out to be a horseshoe crab. Still, it was pleasant bobbing in the kayak and when she was paddling where it was shallow, the long grasses made a lovely rustling sound as they brushed the bottom of the boat. She was tired now. When she came to a quiet inlet she decided to have a rest. She put her paddle beside her and took a long drink from her water bottle. She pulled her legs out up on top of the kayak. Her life jacket was hot and she unzipped it halfway, but she thought Richard
might be a stickler about such things so she zipped it back up again.

Richard was a small figure moving along the far shore of the cove. How different he seemed today from the night before. It was as if they hadn't talked about anything. Maybe it was only when the house was muffled by darkness and rain that they were able to talk with each other. In the open sunshine Richard was a man who seemed to have no interest in talking, a man who was involved with terrapins, but nothing more. It was a relief, too, in a way, Clare thought. Out here, in her kayak on the water, she could almost forget that there was something that she had chosen not to know. It was still there, but maybe she could outwait it, and it would just disappear.

The water here was calm and the surface was un-rippled. It was like looking through the glass of an aquarium. A spider crab picked its way along the bottom. A school of silvery fish, small as dimes, darted around the grasses. Suddenly Clare spotted a turtle—it was unquestionably a turtle. It was swimming in a leisurely way, right alongside her kayak, totally unaware of her. It was a big turtle, twice as big as any of
the painted turtles on Tertio's pond, and it looked just like the terrapin whose picture Richard had showed her on his computer. She forgot entirely that she was supposed to try to catch it; she forgot, even, to call out and let Richard know that it was there. She was entirely caught up in watching it. What fascinated her was how graceful it was, how it moved so effortlessly through the water, just by stroking with its feet. It was a remarkable design, this turtle, a perfectly balanced buoyancy. Although it looked like a creature that would be rock-heavy, it did not sink to the bottom, nor was it so light it rose, as if inflated, to the surface. It navigated through the water with the confidence of a fish, holding its breath so long that it was easy to forget that it was a creature who, just like her, needed to breathe the air. It swam underneath her kayak, but when she looked for it over the other side, it had disappeared so completely that it was easy to believe she had just imagined it.

When she looked up to call Richard she saw that he was already paddling towards her across the cove.

“I saw one,” she told him. “It was right here—but I was watching it and forgot to try to catch it. I'm sorry.”

Richard smiled. “That happens,” he said. “But come with me back to the beach now; I've got two that need to be measured.”

“You've got two?” Clare exclaimed. “Where are they?”

“Right here,” said Richard, and he pointed down inside his kayak.

Suddenly Clare spotted the head of a turtle pop up just in front of them. “There's one,” she cried, and pointed. The head popped down back under the water, but Richard had seen it, too. He was after it in a flash.

“Get your net ready!” he called. “She's heading towards you.”

It happened so quickly that Clare didn't know how she actually did it. Some instinct had taken over and in a second she'd spotted the turtle, reached out with her net, and the next thing she knew she was struggling to hold on to the weight at the end of her net and keep her kayak from tipping over. Richard's kayak was beside hers in an instant.

“Great job!” he said.

The turtle was a clawing, thrashing creature, big as a dinner plate and heavy as a rock. It scratched Clare's
arm and she almost dropped it, net and all. Richard got it out of the net and held it for her to see. Clare stared at it and it stared right back at her. It had a wild, prehistoric look, like a dinosaur or a dragon.

“Isn't she a beauty?” Richard asked.

They brought the terrapin back to shore and Richard got out his equipment for measuring and marking them.

“Yours is a female,” he told Clare. “They're always bigger than the males. And she's one who's never been captured before. We'll do her first.” Richard showed Clare how to hold the turtle so it couldn't claw her, but it was difficult to hold on to that heavy weight and keep her hands free of the sharp claws.

“Steady, Sweetheart,” he said to the turtle.

“What happened to her shell here?” asked Clare.

Richard rubbed the damaged spot with his thumb. “Got hit by something,” he said. “Probably a boat propeller, but it's healed up fine. It isn't slowing her down.”

The turtle didn't like to be weighed. She didn't like to be measured with calipers. And she did not like having the edge of her shell notched with a file.
It seemed like a cruel procedure to Clare, but Richard assured her it didn't actually hurt the turtle. Every turtle had a different series of notches that stood for numbers, this was #1430 and it would be entered in the database.

“This little lady's gravid,” said Richard.

“What's that?” asked Clare.

“Full of eggs. She's going to be coming up on the shore any day now to lay them. Here, you can feel them inside her.”

Richard held the turtle and showed Clare where to slip her fingers in the back, between the shells. It seemed like too intimate a thing, an invasion of the turtle's privacy, but Clare didn't want to say so. And it was miraculous, after all, to reach in among the folds of turtle skin and feel something like marbles, which were the eggs the turtle would be laying, future baby turtles.

“Could we give her a name?” asked Clare. “I know she has a number, but wouldn't it be nice for her to have a name, too?”

“Certainly. What do you want to name her?” asked Richard.

Clare looked at the turtle. The turtle's eyes were bright and intelligent looking. She looked a bit like a photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt in Clare's social studies textbook.

“How about Eleanor?” she asked.

“That's fine by me,” said Richard.

When they were done recording all the information about the turtle, Richard handed her over to Clare to take back down to the water to release.

“So, she's going to have to swim all the way out into the bay, and around Blackfish Island, watching out for boats, lobster traps, fishing nets, and all sorts of dangers, then climb across the beach and up to the dunes and find a place to lay her eggs?”

“That's the way it is,” said Richard.

“Couldn't we just find a nice spot for her and take her there?”

Richard shook his head.

Clare held the turtle out at a safe distance and walked down the beach looking for the best place to put her down. She waded out into the water and picked a spot where there was nice eel grass to slither away into.

“OK, Eleanor,” she said. “You're on your own.”

She set the turtle down in the water and it scrambled out of her grasp before she had quite let go. Without looking back once the turtle took off, swimming just as fast and gracefully as the turtle Clare had spotted on the other side of the cove. She was gone in an instant.

“Good luck, Sweetheart!” cried Clare.

Clare helped Richard with the other two terrapins, and then she released them both into the bay. One was a male and the other was a female. The male was missing a back leg.