Telling a Story of Fish and Love

I went to a writers’ showcase today, and I read a story called Fish Widow.

I love this story very much. It has a through line (a term I also love very much) of love, how someone could fall for a guy with a great smile and then spend her whole life with him filleting the fish he caught every day in Lake Superior. Then, when he dies, she mourns – not just the loss of him but the loss of the fish, of the fish smell, their connection.

People so underestimate the endurance of love. The character in my story filleted the fish her husband caught for thirty-one years fueled by the power of his heart-stopping smile. Long-time marrieds have their own version of filleting fish for the sake of a smile, a look, a laugh – the inexplicable, irrational, magically durable connection.

Here’s the story if you’d like to read it.

Fish Widow   

            Her hands still stank of fish.

            At first, when she had just married Ronnie, she rubbed her hands and arms with lemons to get rid of the fish smell. She’d read about using lemons in a novel about a girl who worked in a fish restaurant in Maine. The girl was in love with a fisherman but it didn’t work out.

            She looked at her hands, folded in her lap, and she could still smell the smell. The whitefish, the trout, the trace of fish guts, cut heads, eyes lolling, put aside on the cutting table for the cats, all of it was living on her hands like she had just walked in from the shed where she filleted fish for thirty-one years.

            “Mom. Mom, Mr. Harry is here from the Fish House. He wants to talk to you.”

            Grace looked up from her hands at Trina, her oldest daughter, but she made no move to stand up.

            “Mom, he wants to give you his condolences. You should talk to him.”

            Grace raised her eyebrows and nodded toward the front of the room. Her husband’s forehead and nose were visible above the edge of the casket. If she went closer, she’d see again that his hands were folded, just like hers but his across his chest over his oldest watch cap. He drowned wearing one just like it. She shook her head.

            “Mr. Harry can shove his condolences up his ass.” Grace brought her fingers to her nose to decide if her hands really did still stink or she was just imagining it.

            “Mom. I know. But he feels real bad and he says he wants to set things straight with you.”

Trina knelt down and put her hand on her mom’s knee. The outline of Lake Superior was tattooed on her wrist. Trina had fished. Fished with her dad. Everyday except the day the boat was swamped and sank.

            “It’s not Mr. Harry’s fault that a storm came up. Dad would say the same thing. Weird shit happens on that lake, you know that. You, of all people.”

            “Tell him to write me a letter. And put a check in the envelope. A big one.” There was silence from Trina but then she stood up and walked to the back of the room or at least that’s where Grace supposed she went. She didn’t turn around to look. Mr. Harry, the owner of Ronnie’s boat, it was his fault. He’d screwed around with the maintenance, put stuff off. Ronnie could’ve outrun that storm if the engine hadn’t quit. She didn’t have proof that the engine quit, that’s just what she believed.

* * * * *

When Ronnie proposed so long ago, she had wanted a big wedding in Munising. The Methodist Church there was on a hill overlooking the bay and Grand Island. And then there was Ferguson’s, the restaurant right on the water where they could have their reception. At night, there were candles on all the tables and a fire in the fireplace. It was so romantic.

Ronnie said no. First of all, it was too far and who would come all that way just to see them get married? And it would cost so much money. And since her parents already said they wouldn’t help out because, after all, she was marrying a fisherman after they’d spent thousands sending her to college to make something of herself and find a college man to marry, well, there was no way they would pay for a big do. And the two of them sure couldn’t.

“You shoulda snagged that guy in your accounting class, girl. Then you could have a great big wedding down there in rooty-tooty Bloomfield Hills.” Ronnie’s face curled into that wreath of a smile that was his trademark. What girl would need a big wedding if she had that smile shining on her? His thick arms around her waist didn’t hurt either. Never mind the fish stains on the sleeves of his Carhartt jacket and that smell of fish and Irish Spring on his hands. When he smoothed the hair away from her face to kiss her forehead, she breathed in the smell of his hands like it was life itself.

* * * * *

It took just a few weeks to wear a path between their trailer and the shed that would be their ‘fish store.’ His figuring was that the tourists driving on H-58 on the shore of Lake Superior would think it was special to get whitefish fresh from the fisherman. So he painted the shed blue and yellow and hung a carved fish from a pole near the road. “Ronnie’s Fish.” She didn’t think that maybe it should be “Grace and Ronnie’s Fish” until after Trina was born and she had to move the baby swing in the shed while she filleted fish and waited on customers.

Ronnie still flashed his electric smile every noontime when he came back from the lake with his washtubs full of whitefish and trout and at first they’d go in the house for a bit to celebrate, that is, if the baby was sleeping. But then Trina got bigger and there was no celebrating going on anymore, just the fish dumping and then Ronnie going in the house to collapse in his recliner and watch reruns of Hawaii Five-O while Grace sharpened her fillet knife on a strop that had been hanging in the shed for a hundred years.

She kept a bowl of lemons on the counter where she displayed the filleted fish for customers. When one came in, they’d point to one fillet or another and she’d hold it up for them to see and appreciate, then they’d talk about how big their pan was at home, and whether the fillet should be cut in half which she was loathe to do, they were already perfectly cut. She quartered the lemons then to rub on her hands and her arms and sometimes her neck when she was very hot and thick with fish smell.

* * * * *

Ronnie was buried in the town cemetery just a couple hundred yards from their trailer and fish store. She’d put a “Closed” sign in the window of the store, thinking it might be permanent because there’d be no more fish, at least not by Ronnie’s hand, and it seemed crazy to sell somebody else’s fish. She still owed Mr. Harry rent for the boat Ronnie leased from him. Even though it sank, he said he had to collect because, you know, a deal was a deal and Ronnie was an honorable guy and wouldn’t welch on a promise.  

She told Mr. Harry she’d rather jump off a cliff than pay him and then spent the money he was owed to buy Ronnie a headstone that had a man casting a net carved on the side. The man wore a watch cap like the one Ronnie held in his folded hands, the one he was still holding under the earth, but he was looking away at the big lake and the sun so she couldn’t see Ronnie’s heart-stopping smile, she could only imagine it when she leaned up against the stone and closed her eyes. When she covered her face to say a tiny prayer for Ronnie and for herself, her hands smelled of lemons and soap.