“I wasn’t before,” Fernando says. “But now? Yeah, I think I am. I don’t like when people talk to me that way. I don’t put up with it.”
“Good,” she says, taking off her apron. “Saves me the trouble of quitting.”
“I had high hopes for you, Kristie. I thought you were going to be one of the good ones.”
It bothers her more than it should that she’s disappointed Fernando. “Good luck finding a replacement.”
Fernando snorts. “You think I can’t find a replacement? I’ve got a stack of applications a foot high in my office. I’ve got college kids coming out of my ears right now.”
“Okay,” she says. “Well, that’s good for you then.” He’s probably right.
She folds her apron and leaves it in the back room. She collects her credit card tips for the night from Amber at the bar, who givesher a fist bump and a sympathetic look. She hugs Natalie, who’s standing at the bar, waiting on her drinks. She leaves the order for table seven on her notepad, not entered in the computer. She takes the notepad with her. Good luck, table seven.
She tries to slam the door on the way out, but it’s the kind of door that doesn’t actually slam.
She should have told Fernando she’s pregnant. She’s pretty sure you can fire someone for shitty work or careless dropping of a seafood pie onto a woman with a perfect high bun but if you fire someone for being pregnant it’s most likely illegal, and she could fight it. Would she even want to fight it, though? She’s tired of summer people who can order thirteen-dollar cocktails without a second thought, and she’s tired of people asking her where the spiral staircase in the middle of the restaurant goes (nowhere!), and she’s tired of rolling silverware into napkins, and she’s tired of coming home smelling like the Captain’s Platter, which has four different types of fried seafood. Beyond all that, mostly she’s just really, really tired.
She stands for a minute in the parking lot, looking out at the water, at where the pier stretches out into the middle of the harbor. In the short time since the four-top sat, the sun has begun to set; the moon is on the rise. She can hardly see the boats tied up at the end of the pier. The moon shimmers beyond the breakwater, and it lights up the water in a way that would normally lift her heart.
But not now. Her mother is gone. Danny won’t stick around once he learns about the baby. When Danny leaves, her connection to Ships View will vanish, and that’s the only reason she’s up here anyway. Where will she go next? How will she start over once more?
She trudges home, following Ocean Street to where it briefly becomes Scott, and then back to Ocean, hooking a right on Linden. There’s a light on in their apartment but the lobsterman’s house is quiet and dark. Danny has told her that lobstermen haul everyday but Sunday. She pictures the little girls with their heads on their pillows, their eyelashes long against their cheekbones. Their place can’t be much bigger than Kristie’s; the girls must share a bedroom. Maybe they sleep separately, in twin beds side by side, or maybe they share a single bigger bed. Sisters. Her heart constricts, then expands.
She climbs the stairs, each lift of her leg like picking up a log from mud.
Danny is understanding about her losing the job at Archer’s—Danny’s cousin Amanda once worked at Archer’s, and his mother’s ex-boyfriend’s son was a line cook two summers ago, and neither had anything good to say about Fernando—and also optimistic that she’ll find something else. In the meantime, he says, he’s happy to cover more of their expenses.
But Danny doesn’t know about the money the debt collectors are after, and he doesn’t know about the pregnancy, and he doesn’t know Kristie’s real reason for being in Maine.
The day after the firing, Danny is working for Gil in a house in Rockport—he might be late getting home because they are putting in some new trees, and you can never predict how long new trees will take. He’s so excited about the trees that he wakes her up early and they make love. In bed she’s not tired, but everywhere else in the world she’s exhausted.
“Wow,” she says, after. She kisses him on the nose and then once on each eyelid. “I guess you really do get excited about planting trees.”
“It’s my favorite part of the job,” he says. He’s like a kid about to look inside his Christmas stocking. He talks about the trees: two eastern redbuds and four Fort McNair red horse chestnuts. All flowering, but they won’t bloom until next spring.
As soon as Danny leaves, her exhaustion returns, covering her like the weighted X-ray vests the dentist uses.
By the time Danny’s trees bloom she’ll have a baby.
After Kristie drags herself out of bed and showers she revisits all of the restaurants where she dropped off applications at the end of May. If nobody was hiring before, twice as many nobodys are hiring now.
“We’re coming up on the middle of July,” says the manager at Cafe Miranda. “I’m not anticipating any changes.”
She’s right back where she started.
“Nope, sorry. Nothing.”
“All staffed up.”
Rustica. Time Out Pub. Brass Compass Cafe: all the same.
“Sorry, hon,” says the woman at Rock Harbor Pub & Brewery.
“No, I get it,” says Kristie. She feels like she should apologize for even asking. “I totally get it.”
She’s walking out the door, feeling the doleful slump of her own shoulders, and that new, vicious fatigue, when the woman calls her back. “Hey, hon. This isn’t a restaurant job, but I know they need someone down at Renys. My brother-in-law’s cousin works there, she was just telling me over the Fourth.”
“Renys?” says Kristie.
