The Midcoast, page 19
When I asked Steph if she regretted making the choices she had made, what I meant was this: She was dealing with a man who, above all else, believed in the virtues of sacrificing his own safety, maybe even integrity, in the name of supporting his wife and family. Perhaps you could call it a noble outlook, but it’s also a dangerous one, and doubly so when held by someone who gets away with something for as long as Ed did.
In the end, Ed was determined to change everything, right away, because Steph had asked him to make it so. And that’s where, I contend, she may have gone wrong.
* * *
—
My lunches with Ed stretched into the fall of Allie’s senior year at Lincoln, at which point the Thatches started going on official visits to all those programs that seemed most promising. The first of these trips was to Bates College in Lewiston, and I remember very clearly the exchange I had with Ed once he returned. He told me all about their stay, giving me every detail—or every detail he was willing to share—from the moment they arrived to the moment they left: the drive to the school, the football game, the campus tour, the hotel on the other side of the Androscoggin River.
In early April of this year, I made the forty-five-minute drive up to Bates to take in a men’s lacrosse game. I was planning to retrace a few of Ed’s steps, imagine the world as it had appeared to him, but the Thatches had arrived on campus in the prime of autumn, on a glorious afternoon, whereas the day I chose was quite the opposite of that, the whole school cast in late-winter grays. When I walked into the stadium, there was a ring of snow around the turf, the sky overhead oppressively dull, and there was not a single leaf budding on any of the trees. All the lacrosse players stood shivering on the sidelines like a herd in peril, huddled close for warmth, their limbs buried in extra layers of Under Armour. I had chosen this weekend in particular because Bates was playing Amherst and I knew that an Amherst parent named Chip Smith would be on premises, watching his son play for the visiting squad. Chip had also been in Lewiston on the weekend in question, when his daughter, Victoria, like Allie, had been a senior in high school and still undecided about which college she would attend (eventually, inevitably, she followed in her brother’s footsteps and applied early to Amherst, upholding a family legacy that went back several generations). Chip, I thought, might be able to unearth some clue regarding Ed’s behavior during that weekend.
I found him just inside the fence, a purebred Bernese tethered to his wrist. I had spoken to Chip on the phone but never met him face-to-face—unless we had introduced ourselves at the reception on the Thatches’ lawn the previous spring and forgotten all about it, which we both admitted was a possibility. I was wearing my dad’s old down parka and ski gloves with duct tape around the thumb, this in contrast to Chip who appeared perfectly insulated and appointed in an Irish flat cap, a cashmere scarf, a green Barbour jacket, and an impeccably clean pair of rubber-soled Bean boots. I got the sense that no weather pattern had ever caught Chip off guard, that his wardrobe could handle any occasion in any climate. He’s fit for his age, early sixties, his face etched in vertical lines rather than what might look on another man like wrinkles. He lives in Weston, Massachusetts. When I Google-Street-Viewed his house, all that was visible was a stone wall, some treetops, a glimpse of a complicated roofline, a handful of chimneys, and, by the gate, a fleet of GMCs all belonging to the same landscape architecture firm.
We shook hands and exchanged a few words about the game and Amherst’s prospects that season—the team was young and talented, ready to make a deep run into the playoffs, Chip told me. He pointed out his son, a midfielder with monstrous calves and, I found out soon enough, a rifle for a shot. We watched the game silently, and then, during a break between quarters, I started asking Chip about the recruiting trip. Chip nodded beyond the fence to the glassy, modern student center. “They had a tent for all the girls set up right there,” he said. “But Ed and I had both snuck away to watch the football game, and we happened to be standing near each other. Close to where we’re standing right now.”
“And Steph was here?”
“Steph was also here. But I didn’t know her at the time, so I couldn’t tell you what she was doing. Most likely getting acquainted with the other mothers.”
“How did you and Ed start talking?”
“His hat,” Chip said.
“Oh, right.”
When we’d chatted on the phone, Chip had sounded reluctant to speak with me. He wanted to know why I’d reached out to him specifically. I said I understood that Allie and Victoria had become friends and the two families had spent some time together—postgame meals and such. I told him I was a writer who’d known Ed since my days working as a dockhand at the Thatch Lobster Pound. He knew the Pound, he said. He’d been there once a long time ago. He and his wife Sandy used to sail the coast. They loved it. He mentioned Ed’s hat, which said THATCH LOBSTER POUND above the brim, told me it was the original connection, which is how I found out that the Smith family had also been in Lewiston when the Thatches visited Bates. When I asked if we could meet in person to continue the conversation, Chip hesitated, then said, “Gladly,” and we made arrangements, but it felt like something had changed, like in the course of our phone call, Chip had started wondering if I might be of some use to him.
“What’d you and Ed talk about?” I asked him in April, standing by the turf field, watching his son’s lacrosse game.
“Oh, our daughters. The recruiting process. Ed’s views on the recruiting process. Sandy and I take a laissez-faire approach when it comes to those types of decisions, but Ed did not. At some point I admitted to Ed that I was an Amherst man, that my son already went there, so I had a personal bias that I had to make sure didn’t influence Victoria’s decision-making. Ed said, ‘So Amherst is your top choice?’ And I said, ‘Well, no, since I’m the dad, I don’t really get a top choice, do I?’ But this line of reasoning sunk like a rock with Ed. He was determined to have a say. It made me wonder if maybe Sandy and I had been too lax in our own parenting. Maybe a mother and father ought to be more involved.”
“They shouldn’t.”
Chip smiled. “No, I guess not. But I’m a geezer at this point anyway. I can’t tell my children what to do.”
“But they both chose Amherst.”
“Well, they’re bright kids,” he said, “despite their old man.”
“You said on the phone that you and Ed talked about Lewiston.”
“We did, yes. I admitted that I was worried about sending a daughter off to live in a city with such a high crime rate. I don’t know if you’ve spent much time in Lewiston—well, I guess you would know, being a writer from Maine—but it’s a little rough around the edges.”
I couldn’t tell if he’d emphasized writer from Maine on purpose, or if I was only imagining it, but he sounded skeptical, like maybe he’d googled my name + writer and nothing had come up. “How did Ed respond?” I asked him.
“He seemed agitated by the notion. So I dropped it. I assumed that Ed was also troubled by the city’s reputation, that I was making him think about something he didn’t want to think about.”
“You probably were.”
“Right. At any rate, I regretted bringing it up, and that was just about the end of the conversation. He said he was going for a walk, and we said goodbye.”
I looked across the campus. Because there was no foliage, it was easy to see into the distance, all the way to the far side of the quad, where the brick academic buildings ended and the off-campus housing began. On a brighter day, I’m sure the view would have represented an idyllic picture of the collegiate life, but not in early April. Early April in Maine can feel pretty desolate.
“That was the last I saw of him,” Chip said, “until the next morning.”
“The next morning?” I asked. Chip hadn’t mentioned this second meeting on the phone.
“Mm-hm. I was up early, as I usually am. I found Ed sitting in the lobby of the hotel. He seemed a little loopy, but I hardly knew him, so I didn’t think much of it. He told me he hadn’t slept because he was worried about his daughter, and I took that at face value.”
“He seemed ‘loopy’?”
“Yes, a little punch-drunk, a little slow. In our previous interaction, and in all subsequent interactions, I found him to be much sharper. But I figured it was just the sleep deprivation.”
“What did you talk about?”
“The lobster trade. I was fascinated. He told me all about it.”
We watched the game for a minute or so, but it was as good as over by then. The Amherst players were trying to run out the clock and the Bates players were trying to chop their opponents’ arms off.
“It’s funny though,” Chip said. “Ed didn’t remember a word of that conversation.”
“He didn’t?” I had never known Ed to forget anything.
“No, I brought it up with him at some point. I’d been reading up about the lobstering industry. I’d stumbled upon an article and then done a little digging. I’m ignorant when it comes to most subjects, so I try to read up just so I can hold my own.”
“Right,” I said, but already I was getting wise to Chip’s brand of humility. People who self-identify as “ignorant when it comes to most subjects” but then do something about it almost always end up well versed in a great many subjects.
“I had come across a study,” Chip said, “that contradicted what he told me—but I found that Ed had very little recollection of our previous discussion. Maybe enough time had passed for him to forget all about it, or maybe I was simply more interested than he was. Still, I thought it was odd.”
“Very odd,” I said. I was trying to picture that early morning exchange between Chip and Ed in the hotel, but it was hard to imagine Ed acting punch-drunk or slow. I thought back to all the time I had spent in Ed’s presence. Even during his long quiet spells at the Pound, I always knew Ed’s mind was working on something.
“Huh,” I said.
“What?” Chip asked, turning from the game.
“I don’t think Ed was sleep-deprived.”
“Well, he said he was.”
“That’s not why he was acting loopy though.”
“It’s not?”
I shook my head.
“Then what was it?”
“I think he was concussed.”
* * *
—
Once I had said goodbye to Chip, I walked across the quad until I was no longer on school property. The first few blocks, once you’re off-campus, are lined with Victorians, neither perfectly maintained nor falling apart, the banners of various NFL teams hanging in the windows, red plastic cups stuck in hedges, the smell of stale beer wafting from basement windows, hand-me-down luxury cars with out-of-state plates parked in the driveways. This is where Bates upperclassmen find rooms to rent, and the streets feel like any other neighborhood that might surround any other small college in America.
But after a few more blocks, the buildings get a little more ragged. What might be considered “campus adjacent” begins to erode into Lewiston proper: The streets are all one-way, the buildings all triple-deckers, perfectly block-like, slapped together cheaply, some with fire escapes that look ready to collapse in a heap in their cement backyards, held upright by an endless tangle of telephone wires and laundry lines. Dented cars with Maine plates loiter at the curbs, dented beer cans collect by broken stairs. This is the Lewiston that Ed had come to know after doing business in the area for so many years (although it’s interesting to note that Ed’s knowledge of the city wasn’t exactly firsthand; EJ handled most of the interactions with Lewiston while Chuck was the one who dealt with the Canadians).
Their primary counterpart in Lewiston, Ed would later tell Steph who would later tell me, worked out of the stockroom of a liquor store—and it was in this general direction that Ed was headed. He remembered roughly where the store was located but wanted to see how great, or small, a distance separated the students from the dealers, and he also wanted to see if he could find Dougie Page, whose name had come up the day before when Ed was having coffee with EJ in the Schooner. Ed had mentioned their weekend plans and asked EJ if he wanted to come to Lewiston with the rest of the family, but EJ said he had to work. “And honestly,” he said, “can’t say I’m all that sorry to miss out on a weekend in Lewiston.”
“Don’t say that to Allie,” Ed said. “She’s excited about it.”
“She is, or you are?”
“She is.” Ed pulled at his beard. “She likes their coach. Bates is right near the top of her list.”
“The top of ‘her’ list?”
“I have my own list.”
“I’m sure you do.” EJ finished his coffee, checked his watch, then pulled his hat from the bar and climbed off his stool. But before he left, he leaned close to his father’s ear. “Hey, while you’re up there,” he whispered, “you might want to say hello to Dougie.”
“Dougie Page?” Ed asked. Dougie had worked briefly for the Thatches as one of their runners, but Ed had refused to take him on full time because he felt the boy was too ambitious, the type to grumble to his colleagues every time he received his cut, which was bound to be thinner than those received by the more senior members of the crew. Ed also thought of Dougie as a suspicious character because he and Allie had spent some time together before the Thatches moved north to Damariscotta. Ed hadn’t heard his daughter mention Dougie’s name since then, which constituted a minor victory, but you had to stay vigilant with a kid like Dougie or else he’d return again and again like some kind of skin condition.
“Yup,” EJ said. “Dougie Page.”
“What the hell is Dougie doing in Lewiston?”
“Looking for work, apparently.”
“That’s the wrong tree to bark up.”
“That’s what I told him, too.”
“So he’s with Lew now?”
“Hard to say. But I think he’s trying to be. He’s up there most days. I’m sure you’ll find him if you swing by the liquor store.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” Ed said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
So here he was in Lewiston, seeing what he could do, walking several more blocks until he found the liquor store. Across the street from where he stood. There were ads pasted by the entrance for Keystone Light twelve-packs and cases of Malibu rum. This was where Ed, EJ, and Chuck had been just a week prior, telling the man they called Lew, short for Lewiston, that the Thatches would no longer be using their boats to bring product in from Canada. Lew hadn’t taken the news well, but Ed had let EJ do most of the talking, and his son was good at delivering bad tidings in the manner of a bored cop, someone who was above the fray.
Now, from where Ed stood on the sidewalk, the liquor store looked innocuous, like any other slum-town packy. To the southwest, in the direction of the river, was a dead industrial desert, flat rooftops and pointed church spires, a black funnel of birds cycling somewhere between the city and the horizon. To the northeast rose the college’s green-domed bell tower. Only five blocks stood between there and here, between the dormitories and the liquor store. This was why Bates had never been very high on Ed’s list. He agreed with Chip, even if he hadn’t said so: Lewiston was no place to send a daughter for four years.
A cloud began to slide across the sun just then and a gust picked up from the direction of campus, flipping a Styrofoam to-go container down the sidewalk toward Ed. He stomped it with his boot, but the box wouldn’t dislodge from his heel as easily as it should have, so Ed had to kick it against a telephone pole until it shook loose, and then when he looked up, he found himself staring at Dougie’s green Ford Ranger. One block down from the liquor store. There was an old, faded LHS sticker on the back window. Lincoln High School. Rings of rust rimmed each wheel well, and a patch of Bondo had been slapped on the driver’s-side door. The Ranger had belonged to Jason Page, but then Jason bought a new Tahoe with money he had earned working for the Thatches and passed the old ride down to his little brother.
Ed and EJ hadn’t discussed what to do about Dougie, specifically, but it seemed prudent to appraise the situation before taking any kind of action, so Ed moved away from the liquor store, staying across the street, continuing past the Ranger until he found an uninhabited home. The front yard was choked with weeds and plastic bags, and there were several newspapers, all yellowing with age, scattered across the front porch. On the top step was a flyer for a Chinese restaurant, which Ed picked up and used to wipe away the dirt and dead flies. Then he sat and waited. He could see the front entrance of the liquor store and the alley that led to the back door. He watched for over an hour but saw very few customers go in or out.
A little after three, Ed finally decided to go inside the store and look for Dougie himself, and he was about to rise from the stoop when he saw the front door swing open, and then Dougie emerged, walking and talking with a heavyset young man in a shiny athletic jacket who had black hair that sprang from his head in little corkscrews. Dougie and his friend were heading in Ed’s direction but traveling on the other side of the street, so Ed wasn’t overly concerned about either of them looking his way, but, just to be safe, he leaned back on one elbow, hoping to make himself look like some kind of porch dweller. He put one hand above the brim of his hat and over the crest, shielding the embroidered THATCH LOBSTER POUND from view. As they passed on the far sidewalk, Ed reassessed the man who walked next to Dougie. He wasn’t that heavyset after all. His size, it became clear, was an illusion created by his oversized coat and thick wrestler’s neck. Dougie required less of a look. Ed knew the boy well enough. The only thing about him that appeared different was his beard, which grew most prominently on the underside of Dougie’s chin and looked from this distance like a shadow of his face. After walking together for a block, Dougie stepped off the sidewalk and cut back to the driver’s side of his Ranger. The other man stayed on the other side of the street and turned behind one of the triple-deckers to Ed’s right.
