Changing tides, p.8
Changing Tides, page 8
She elected not to find out. Whatever it was, it interested her not at all. History wasn’t her thing. It was, well, old. Old and boring. She didn’t care about the past, only the future, even though, at the moment, she had no idea what hers held. She was free to do as she pleased.
Without purpose or direction, she simply walked. This was something of a novelty for her as, per the song by that new-wave band they played on KISS FM but whose name she never remembered, nobody walked in L.A. Not that she found the experience particularly enjoyable. If anything, it merely reminded her that she was without a car. Her father, apparently, didn’t consider this a handicap, as he hadn’t offered her the use of his or suggested any alternative.
When she grew tired of walking by the same stores (or at least they all looked the same to her), she turned around. Glancing at her watch, she saw that barely an hour had gone by. This seemed to her impossible, as her journey felt interminable, especially as it had resulted in the discovery of nothing of interest. But it was true. It was just after eleven, too early for lunch, and yet her day already felt as if it were over.
She sat on a nearby bench and considered her situation. Was this to be the routine of the rest of the summer? If so, she would be forced to kill herself. There was no way she was going to survive. She opened the Diet Coke, now warm and unsatisfying, and drank as much as she could stand. Then, turning her head, she looked back the way she had come. It was all uphill. She’d neglected to notice that. Now, faced with the thought of the climb back to her father’s house, she was exhausted. Even the potential distraction provided by Nick didn’t cheer her. She needed something more than that. But what that might be—and where she would find it—she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
CHAPTER 9
“Where are the fish count reports I asked you to print out from that Channel Islands trip in March?” Ben looked into the bewildered face of the young grad student.
She shook her head. “You never asked me to print those out,” she said.
“I did!” Ben thundered. “Christ, am I the only one who gets anything done around here?”
He went into his office and slammed the door. Immediately, he was sorry. He hadn’t meant to yell at Angela like that. He hadn’t meant to yell at all. And the fish count reports weren’t important anyway, at least not at the moment. The sheephead population of San Clemente Island was going to be the same whether he had the report or not; all that mattered was that they were declining.
He leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. What was he going to do with Caddie? Why should he have to do anything with her? It was like Carol had just dumped her on him with no instruction manual. How was he supposed to know how to be a father when he had no real experience at it, at least not with a child Caddie’s age.
He looked at the telephone. He wanted to call Carol, to tell her to come back and take Caddie home with her. Barring that, he wanted her to tell him what to do. She was good at that; why couldn’t she do it now? Maybe if he asked, he thought, she would give him some advice.
He reached for the phone, but drew his hand back as if, like the pan that morning, it would burn him. He couldn’t call Carol. That would just prove to her that he was incompetent, which he knew full well she already believed anyway. And right now he couldn’t say he didn’t agree with her.
He looked at the framed print hanging on the wall across from his desk. It was an antique image—torn from some outdated scientific journal published who knew when—of a sea cucumber. The artist’s rendering, although not entirely accurate, was nonetheless beautiful. The animal was shown in cross section, its innards painted in completely unrealistic reds and purples, the intestine that composed most of the body looping around on itself in graceful coils, while the featherlike respiratory organs were done in blue, presumably due to their association with breathing. The cucumber’s skin was depicted in mottled browns, the most authentic aspect of the painting. Ben had always assumed that was because the outside of the creature was the only part actually seen firsthand by the artist.
Carol had given him the picture upon his graduation with his doctorate from UC Santa Barbara. It had cost her more than she could then afford, and he had been touched by the gesture. The print had hung in every office he’d since inhabited, a reminder to him of what had attracted him to marine biology in the first place, the deceptive simplicity of the ocean’s creatures.
How easy it was to understand how a sea cucumber worked. Essentially a bag containing digestive, respiratory, and reproductive organs, it ingested food, processed it, and shat it out. The cucumber had no worries save eating and not being eaten. It didn’t question its place in the order of things or have to negotiate the land mines of interpersonal relationships. Even its mating was offhand, involving the releasing of ova or spermatozoa into the surrounding water and letting someone else worry about it.
He longed for a diagram of Caddie, some neatly labeled chart that would point out the salient details and make understanding her a matter of memorization. He didn’t mind study, or even research, but understanding something as complex as a sixteen-year-old girl apparently seemed to be beyond his capabilities.
A knock at the door interrupted his thinking. “Come in,” he called out, and Angela entered, holding something out.
“The reports,” she said.
“Thank you,” Ben said kindly, hoping his tone would pass for an apology.
Angela nodded and turned to go. Ben stopped her. “Angela, can I ask you something?”
The young woman turned. How old was she? Ben wondered. Probably twenty-two or twenty-three. Still young. “Sure,” she said.
Ben motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down,” he said.
“Is something wrong, Dr. Ransome?” the girl asked as she took a seat in the chair.
“No,” Ben reassured her. “I just want to ask you something.” He hesitated while he thought about how to frame his question. “What do girls want?” he said finally.
“Sorry?” asked Angela, looking taken aback.
Ben, replaying in his mind what he thought was a clearly posed question, realized his mistake. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that my daughter—”
“You have a daughter?” interrupted Angela.
Ben paused, seeing the look of surprise on the young woman’s face. How long had he known her? A year now? Well, yes, he supposed the news that he had a child might come as a surprise. “Yes,” he said. “She’s staying with me for the summer.”
Angela nodded, although astonishment remained in her eyes.
“She’s sixteen,” Ben continued. “And I don’t understand her.”
He stopped speaking. Angela continued to stare at him. When he didn’t say anything further, she said, “Is that all?”
“Yes,” said Ben. “I think so.”
Angela laughed. “If she’s sixteen, that pretty much explains it,” she said. “No one understands you when you’re sixteen. Did your parents understand you at that age?”
Ben thought back. At sixteen, he had been a shy, awkward boy, given to spending long hours alone in his room. His parents had seldom asked him anything about himself, and it had never occurred to him that they might want to know anything. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I bet they didn’t,” said Angela. “I know mine didn’t. At sixteen I was going through this phase where I wanted to be a militant animal rights activist. I put a big MEAT IS MURDER sign on the refrigerator. I told my mother that her eyeliner was responsible for the painful deaths of millions of innocent bunnies, and I wouldn’t wear anything that was made out of leather. In short, I was a pain in the ass.”
“How long did it last?” Ben asked hopefully.
Angela shrugged. “About six months,” she said. “Then I fell in love with a guy who wore a motorcycle jacket and lived on hamburgers, and I reevaluated my stance.”
Ben didn’t know whether he was supposed to find that funny or not, so he just said, “Thank you.”
Angela stood to go. “I know I didn’t really answer your question,” she said. “You know, about what girls want. If it helps any, she probably doesn’t know what she wants either.”
With Angela gone, Ben began to worry the question of Caddie again, like a determined dog struggling with a rope. Despite Angela’s reassurance, he still believed there must be some way to understand his daughter. After all, weren’t they composed of the same DNA? Weren’t the genetic codes that programmed her responses at least partially the same as his?
He decided to go out. The air in the office was too close. He couldn’t breathe. He’d never liked being inside; now he found it completely unbearable.
He felt better once he was breathing open air. The sun was warm, and walking gave him purpose, even if he was going nowhere in particular. He headed, by both habit and the position of the lab, toward the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was a trip he made often, and his feet carried him there the way a horse’s always returned him to his own feed trough.
The tourists annoyed him, even though he recognized their importance to the local economy, and particularly to the continued financial health of the aquarium. Still, their aimless waddling and tendency to walk four abreast, their baby strollers and the maps clutched in their hands as they looked for local landmarks, made him despise them. If one, sensing that he lived there, asked him for directions, he always politely answered, all the while wishing they would just go home and leave him in peace.
Ahead of him, a clutch of Japanese tourists stood in a confused knot, half pointing in one direction and half in the other. One of them caught his eye, and he quickly crossed the street, leaving her to get directions from someone else.
He passed the aquarium, knowing that going in at this, the busiest time, would make him wish for the destruction of all mankind. Instead, he walked swiftly down Cannery Row until the crowds thinned and the air felt less suffused with the intolerable stupidity of people on summer vacation.
He walked until he came to San Carlos Beach, where he paused to watch the divers entering and leaving the water. He had more tolerance for them because he was one of them. Even so, he found himself wishing there were fewer of them, or at least fewer of the ones for whom the ocean was nothing more than a playground.
On the beach, a dive instructor was leading a group of six wet-suited bodies into the surf, demonstrating the proper way to enter the ocean in the presence of moderate surf. The students followed, stiff-armed and awkward, their backs to the ocean and their fins slapping the wet sand. How many of those fins, he wondered, would soon be kicking up the sea floor, disturbing the homes of untold numbers of small animals?
He wondered, too, how many of the divers who used the beach knew of its other name, the Edward F. Ricketts Marine Reserve, or, if they did, knew who Ricketts was. Then again, how many of them knew that San Carlos Beach got its name from the San Carlos Canning Company, one of the area’s largest and most profitable operations at the height of the sardine-packing industry? Mysteriously burned to the ground (as were many of the canneries when the boom ended due to overfishing) in 1956, all that remained of the San Carlos Canning Company were the beach that bore its name and several intake pipes that still stretched out into the sea.
The establishment of the Ricketts Marine Reserve was the work of several dedicated local divers who wanted to save the area both from overfishing and the planned erection of a gold museum. Surprisingly, it had been a difficult battle, with even the aquarium and Ben’s own Hopkins Marine Station fearing that imposing restrictions on usage would limit their access to the area. Ultimately, though, the measure passed.
And Ben approved of it. There were enough places along the coast where divers interested in hunting could spear game; it was good to have one place that was off-limits. Even the clumsy feet of beginning divers were preferable to fishhooks and those who were interested only in how many pounds of fish they could remove from the water.
He walked the length of the beach, ending at the Coast Guard pier. The sound of sea lions barking greeted his ears, followed quickly by the ripe scent of their excretions. It had been a particularly fertile year for sea lion pups, and the water was full of them, splashing and jockeying for position within their established society. He stood and watched as two whiskered young males spun in the water, playing some game known only to them, chasing one another between the pilings while an older bull, feigning disinterest, sat on the deck of an unused fishing boat sunning himself.
“Damn sea lions. Eat all the fish.”
Ben turned around to see who had spoken. On the other side of the pier, the side facing the beach, a man stood with a young boy. Both held fishing rods, and the man was helping the boy bait his hook. The man looked once more at the sea lions and scowled.
“Like this,” he told the boy, who couldn’t have been more than eight years old. The man took the boy’s rod and, hanging it over the edge of the wall, dropped the baited hook into the water. He handed the boy the rod and began baiting his own hook.
“If you feel something pull, then you tug,” he instructed the boy.
Ben walked over, pretending to look out at the water. “What are you fishing for?” he asked casually.
“Rockfish, mostly,” the man answered, flinging his hook into the water, where it sank directly over a group of divers who were making their way along the edge of the Breakwater.
“You know, the rockfish here are pretty small,” Ben said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice.
“They’re big enough,” said the man. “I’ve been fishing here since I was a kid. I don’t see ’em getting any smaller.”
“Look,” Ben said. “This is a marine reserve. You’re not supposed to fish here.”
The man groaned. “Oh Christ,” he said. “Here we go again. Look, Mack, why don’t you mind your own business. You and I both know that no-fishing bullshit isn’t enforceable. It’s just something the city passed to keep you hippies happy.”
“Hippies,” Ben repeated. “Right. Maybe forty years ago those of us intelligent enough to know that conservation is a necessity would be hippies. Today, though, we’re scientists. I happen to be a marine biologist.”
“A hippie with a degree,” the man said, and laughed. Beside him, his son laughed too, although nervously. “Like a fish or two makes a difference.”
“Multiply a fish or two by five thousand assholes like yourself, and that’s a lot of fish,” said Ben.
The man snapped around. “Who you calling an asshole, buddy?”
“Do you know why there are no more canneries here?” Ben asked him, ignoring the question. “Because people assumed the fish would last forever. Well, they didn’t. In something around thirty years, they took pretty much every last sardine out of these waters. It’s taken the last fifty to get the levels back up to where they were.”
“Maybe,” the man said. “But they’re back, right?”
“You’re missing the point,” said Ben.
“No, you’re missing the point,” the man argued. “I’ve been fishing here for forty years. My father fished here for seventy-three years. And my son is going to fish here whether you like it or not. Got it?”
Ben stared him down, debating what to do next. He knew he could call the local police. He’d done it before after catching two men spearfishing for lingcod off the beach. But the man was right; there wasn’t much the local authorities could do. If he really wanted action, he would have to call in Fish & Game, and those boys more often than not sided with the local fishermen, most of whom were their friends.
“Fuck you,” he said finally.
The little boy looked at him, his mouth hanging open in shock. Ben doubted it was the first time the kid had heard the word used, but he bet he’d never heard it directed at his father and, indirectly, at himself. He looked genuinely hurt. Ben kept his eyes on the father. “Fuck you,” he said again. “Asshole.”
He walked away as the man called after him, “No. Fuck you!”
He almost wished the man would attack him, use his fists instead of his mouth. Then Ben could fight back and, maybe, not feel completely helpless. Part of him wanted to hit the ignorant son of a bitch, maybe even push him off the pier in front of his kid.
He knew he was being childish, but he couldn’t stop himself. Anger raged in him like a fire looking for a way out of a sealed building. He hated the man—all men like him—every man who thought it was his right to do as he pleased simply because he’d always done so. Thoughtless men, every last one of them, who honestly believed that their desire to live a certain way was more important than protecting the world’s resources. Who told the forefathers of these men, when they first decided to become fishermen or crabbers or whatever, that their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons were owed some debt payable by the sea? Who told them that they had a right to take, even when they took too much? And how dare they be offended when the ocean refused to give them any more.
He had no sympathy. Turning, he once again faced the fisherman and his son. “I hope you get anisakiasis!” he shouted. The two of them stared at him, uncomprehending, and he gave them the finger before moving on.
As he reached the end of the pier, he encountered the dive instructor coming back with his students. The man, seeing Ben, held out his hand. In it were two hooks, still baited, several inches of line trailing from them. “Score one for the rockfish,” he said, winking at Ben.
Ben began to chuckle. He imagined the expression on the man’s face when he pulled his empty line up. He would just get another hook, some more bait. Still, it made Ben happy. Sometimes life surprised you in a good way, he thought, trying to remember why he’d needed to get out of his office in the first place.
CHAPTER 10
“So I says to her, I says, ‘Since when did the county go and make you alcohol commissioner?’ And she stands there gawkin’ at me like I just told her she could go to Hell.” Tom laughed. “You shoulda seen it, Charlie.”
