Half-Shell | Rachel Critelli

I was wading in the depths of a finance spreadsheet, when my phone rang. The sound was distant, as if I was hearing it from the bottom of a well. It took me a moment to register my office around me and engage my vocal cords. I picked up after a few rings, and said “Elouise speaking.”

It was Deirdre, from Kingslee Seafood Co. We met through the farmer’s market, where I’m on the board of directors. Something fun for me to do in the evenings. I put the call on speaker, then adjusted my pearl ring.

“Elouise,” she said through the desk phone, ”I’d love to get your take on the farmers market situation.” She paused briefly and emitted a staccato cough, and although her voice sounded scratchy, she spoke with vigor and vitality. “How would you like to come to Kingslee to enjoy some oysters with me Saturday? My treat.”

The mention of oysters buoyed my spirit. I thought of my mother, her silk shirt with the bow around the neck, her manicured fingers wielding a tiny silver fork. I stood up, leaned against the side of my desk, and looked out the window of my 30th floor office. Fog was swirling in the wind. “I’m not so sure the board, or our attorneys, would recommend me doing that.”

Three weeks ago, a young mom had the bright idea of giving her toddler a raw oyster, and the kid promptly died from food poisoning. The mom lawyered up and sued the Farmers Market into submission. We had to pay her thousands in damages, and ix-nay Deirdre’s company from our roster. Nothing personal against her or her company. Strictly business. It was a bold move on Deirdre’s part to call me though, and I respected that. Plus, Deirdre intrigued me. She had tried to light up a cigarette during the board meeting the first time she attended. Her overalls seemed as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time. She was wild, different from the buttoned up c-suite types I usually deal with.

“Sure, I understand,” she said, and then coughed. “Then just two friends having lunch. Our relationship is important to me. I want to hear how things are going with you.”

I sat back down in my swivel chair and pulled my orchid terrarium towards me from the corner of my desk. Condensation coated the inside of the glass dome, and beads of water striped the glass. A dead orchid flower lay crumpled at the base of the plant, which I pincered between my acrylic fingernails and threw in the trash. I agreed to meet her this coming Saturday at two in the afternoon, before I hung up the phone and went back to my spreadsheet.

At the end of the workday, I gave my orchid water and fertilizer, one spritz each, before I went to the elevator and rumbled down to the underground parking garage. My purse hung heavy on my tired shoulders, and my ankles wobbled in my black leather high heels, which I took off in my car. Barefoot, I backed out of my parking spot, circled my way to the exit, and finally mounted the surface. The streets that wound around the high-rise buildings in the financial district were like a maze, but I finally made it back to the main road towards the freeway. Small bars and restaurants butted up against the sidewalk like mouse holes, pitch black inside under the glare of the late afternoon sun. The electrical poles that flanked them were caked with flyers, and steam billowed up from the sewer vents.

I stopped at a red light, and when it turned green, I got on the freeway onramp, put my car on autopilot for the long straight line back to my home in the suburbs.

 ***

When I used to come home, the first thing I’d see was our hundred-year-old oak tree, but after living there for a few years, all I could see was the yellow lawn below it. The acorns’ harsh tannins, the brown leaves’ caustic acids, and the harsh shade cast on the yard all conspired against our grass. The top of the tree reached a height of seventy-five feet, well past the top of our two-story house. The tree was originally one of the main reasons I had put the down payment on this house. It gave the house so much character, I thought back then. Now, pulling into the driveway and watching the landscapers rake huge piles of mustardy-brown leaves into the black trash bags, I knew that character didn’t come free, and the price I paid was round the clock landscapers. And even then, the grass was still a sickly green-ish yellow at best, and a few stray leaves freckled the weak lawn.

I put my high heels back on to walk from my car to the front door, and when I entered the house, I was instantly greeted by the Morodov, the crown jewel of our art collection, Woman Eating Apple. I set my purse on the entryway table, and kicked my shoes back off, all the while looking at the translucent apple juice dripping down the woman’s chin and fingers in the black and white photograph. Under the spotlights that shone down on the piece, the juice looked lush and sticky.

“Hello,” I yelled, walking across the living room to the kitchen, but only our dog, Ricki, looked at me from her kennel in the backyard through the french doors. Not even a tail wag. She just raised her head, looked back at me over her haunches, and went right back to sleep. Theodore was probably still out getting the boys from school, arms laden with their dreaded crayon drawings and macaroni art.

I poured myself a glass of wine, and took it back over to the Modorov, where it was illuminated under the spotlights. A few cobwebs blighted the corners, and I made a mental note to tell the housekeepers they missed a spot. Before we had the Modorov, one of my own photographs hung in that same spot, albeit without any spotlights, but it was there. Behind the Modorov’s frame, there were puncture marks in the wall where we had stuck it up with push pins. It was my husband’s idea to switch out the photos. The Modorov obviously deserved to be front and center. From the day we installed it, we kept it illuminated day and night, even when we were all sleeping, like our family’s national flag.

 ***

Saturday came, and when I arrived in Kingslee, I walked down the boardwalk, where our meeting place loomed a short ways away. Deirdre had told me to meet her in a place called Candie’s Oyster Shack. The building’s slanting aluminum roof, its proximity to the edge of the pier, and the tall wooden pilings it stood on gave the impression it was sliding into the water. I should have known Deirdre would have taken me to a place like this. She was a fishmonger, not a restaurateur.

When I entered Candie’s, the counter was to my left, and the kitchen was dark beyond it. To my right was a long wall that stretched from the front door, past the cash register and the dining area, all the way to the end of the room, and was covered top to bottom with bits of paper and things tacked to the wall. All manner of receipts, photos, drawing, notes, dollar bills, take-out menus, even a few pages ripped out of what appeared to be Moby Dick, each pinned up with its own brass tack, flapping in the breeze whirling through the restaurant. The closest junk tacked up included a photo of a man holding a fish with a nose the length of a broomstick, and a postcard that read “Holiday Beach, Florida.” Farther down the wall, a whole stuffed plush seal was pinned by the tail. It went on like that for thirty feet. I stood in the entryway and considered it. My mind flashed to the old photo that used to be pinned up in my entryway.. 

From farther inside the restaurant, I heard a voice say, “Well I’ll be damned!” The sound of her voice came at me in high-fidelity, the same husky voice as when we’d spoken on the phone. I took my eyes away from the bulletin board wall and saw Deirdre, sitting towards the back of the restaurant. She stood up and approached me, and as we closed the distance between us, the click of the beads on her dangling wood earrings became louder, and the grooves in her tan corduroy overalls came into focus.

“Deirdre,” I said, holding out my hand, “How lovely to see you.”

“We’re out of town now, Elle,” said Deirdre, opening her arms wide and coming in for a hug. Her curly hair tickled my nose and cheeks. She smelled like lavender soap and cigarettes, and her wool peacoat felt rough under my hands. She pulled back from the hug, and her eyes wrinkled at the corners with her smile. “Thank you for coming,” she said, then gave a tiny cough. “Come take a load off. I ordered us oysters!”

I  followed Deirdre to the high-top table in the back corner, next to a window looking out onto the rest of the boardwalk. The transom window near the rafters was open and pulling in cold air that flapped the ephemera. I balanced the little gold feet of my leather purse on its own metal stool, and unbuttoned my overcoat, when Deirdre cried out, “Hey Travis, bring us those oysters now!” I started at the sound of her loud voice.

The man from the cash register came over to the table just then, and set down a plastic tray in the middle of the table piled high with hideous oysters, and it was then I knew there would be no sparkling ice, no crystal stemware, no tiny silver utensils. The oysters were still wet, as if just quickly washed, and piled up carelessly, the same way I dump my dog’s wet food into the dish. Bits of muck and seaweed clung in the ridges of the shells. Some of them even had barnacles clinging to their sides, a shell growing on a shell, like some kind of freakshow. I would have expected them to take a little extra care in this instance, as I assumed they wanted their business back at the Farmer’s Market, even if unofficially.

Travis stepped back from the table, wiping his hands on the front of his greasy black apron, and said, “Watch out for pearls!” I looked down again at the pearl glistening in my ring and wondered how such a beautiful thing could come from a dirty rock dug out of the ocean muck. I centered the ring’s white gold band on my ring finger, and by the time I looked back up, the waiter was gone.

“Don’t you just love oysters?” Deirdre asked, already cracking into her first shell. A shucking knife was in her right hand, and her left was armed with a chainmail glove and grasped the oyster. She cracked it open with a swift twist of her wrist, spooned in horseradish, and tilted the oyster meat into her mouth. “We supply oysters to all the neighboring resorts,” she continued, chewing an oyster. “Big contract. Can hardly fish enough to keep ‘em happy.” 

I rotated my pearl ring around my finger. “Is that right.”

“Yeah,” Deirdre said, reaching for another oyster with a muddy hand. “They fish for them in Lullaby Trench. It’s the deepest spot along this coast, where the water is colder.” She cracked open the shell and tossed back another mouthful of meat, chewed, then added another shell to the growing pile next to her. “Deep water has a higher mineral concentration. It gives the oysters a special flavor. Travis, our mermelier, says this recent catch is one of the best we’ve had in a while. Try!” 

“They probably clean them up a little bit better than this at the resorts, I assume.” I pinched an oyster between my fingers and held it up. A green strap of seaweed dangled off the side. “The way these things look, it makes me think, ‘no wonder that kid died.’”

“Elouise, this is the pure and natural state of the oyster! Don’t worry about appearances. Focus on the sensory experience. Breath in the ocean. Taste of the oyster the way I know it: fresh. And I mean really fresh. Of course we clean ‘em up nice for the resorts, and the farmer’s market–or, at least, did while that was happening. But when we eat ‘em ourselves, we like it like this. They don’t need cleaning.”

I squinted at her for a moment, and said, “Well that’s a relief,” unconvinced. I gave in and picked up an oyster. I held the shucking knife perpendicular to the shell on the narrow edge I thought of as the mouth.

She watched me struggle and said, “You’ve got to get it at the hinge,” pointing to the thicker end. She demonstrated on her own oyster, with a cut to the connective tissue and it gave way with a crack. She spooned more horseradish, and prodded the meat with her white plastic fork. “I’m not talking about children, here. I’m talking about you and me. What I’m showing you here today has nothing to do with what happened to that kid. The only thing that went wrong with my oysters is that mom got a hold of them. I didn’t say ‘feed raw seafood to children,’ did I? No, I did not. If that lady didn’t understand basic food sanitation, that’s not my problem.”

I had been instructed by our attorneys to not comment on the current situation, even though the case had been closed. But I wouldn’t have been able to comment even if I wanted to, the way I was puzzling over the oyster. I held it close to my face, and, while trying to ignore the dirt, attempted to identify the hinge. I poked the very tip of the knife in, then twisted, but nothing happened.

“You’ve got to jiggle it,” said Deirdre, pantomiming with her fist, twisting back and forth.

I pressed harder and jiggled, and the knife slid in and it opened with a crack. I set down the knife, and pried the shell open. The repulsive exterior opened up to reveal sandless, cream-colored meat. Some of the beauty I was looking for was here, splayed out on a platter of mother-of-pearl shell. I felt a sudden relief, as if the answer to a deep mystery had been revealed. The flash of iridescent milky blue was the same flash I’d seen each time I’d ever eaten oysters before, the same flash I sometimes saw in my pearl ring. I set the oyster and the knife down, and added a little horseradish with a plastic spoon, then tipped my head back to slide the oyster meat into my mouth. I chewed, and it was cool and briny. A freshness erupted in my throat and the back of my mouth, and the creamy ocean taste overwhelmed my senses.

I closed my eyes, heaved a sigh, and thought back to a time before I knew Deirdre, before that kid died, before Theodore took my photo down to make room for the Modorov, before I started hiding my kid’s artwork in the closet, years and years ago, when my parents took me out to dinner to celebrate my first photography show. We all crowded on one side of a small round table that looked out over an endless sapphire ocean. Craggy cliffs loomed out into the orange sunset, and seagulls flew headlong into the wind going nowhere. We swirled our zinfandel in its crystal stemware and ran our tiny silver forks between the oyster meat and their shells. We smiled at each other. We talked of potential, talent, hustle. We hoped my art show would be the first of many. My mom told me I should use the proceeds from the sale I made to host my next show. She wore her silk shirt with the bow around the neck. She patted my hand. That was a long time ago.

 ***

When I drove home that night, on the dark windy road back from Kingslee, I could have put the car on autopilot, but I decided to drive by hand. It was slow going in the dark and fog, but I relaxed into the curvy cliffside roads. It was late when I arrived back home, and my husband and two boys were probably already asleep, but the Morodov greeted me at the door. The cobwebs were gone from the corners, but juice on the woman’s chin and arm looked wet, like a spill that needed mopping. I kicked off my shoes, went to the light switch that controlled the spotlight, and flipped it down. The light extinguished and “Woman Eating Apple” became, for the first time, shrouded in darkness.

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Rachel Critelli is a self-taught writer who lives in Tacoma, WA. Inspiration from her writing comes from anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and the burnt remains of unrealized pet projects. When she isn't writing, she is running into light-up, singing children's toys in the middle of the night.