The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley (autobiographies to read .TXT) š
- Author: Colleen Oakley
Book online Ā«The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley (autobiographies to read .TXT) šĀ». Author Colleen Oakley
And then Piper remembered the Teredo navalis. Three months earlier, Tom had spotted damaged wood on the hull of his trawlerāa few drill-size holes, as if someone had shot a BB gun clear through the wood. Upon further inspection, he discovered he had shipworms, a parasite that fed on docks and boats and had been wreaking havoc at marinas for centuriesāthere was even a mention of them in Moby-Dick. To kill them, Tom had the boat pulled out of the water and sprayed it down with a hose, and after a few days without saltwater, the worms curled up and died, their carcasses like little circles of copper wire. (Piper, of course, took one home to study under her microscope.) The boards needed replacing, but by that time, they had already run through most of their winter savingsāand the little bit they had left needed to go to new crab traps for the season. Tom hoped, until he could scrape the money together, that any water that came in through the tiny holes could be handled by the bilge pump.
Piper wasnāt sure why she was thinking of the worms, except that Tom was an experienced boater and maybe she was searching for what could have possibly gone wrong. But she quickly dismissed the thought, because speculation wasnāt going to get her anywhere, not to mention it ran counter to the only thing BobDan said that she wanted to believeāthat everything was going to be fine.
āI believe I might join the search effort, if you want to tag along,ā he said. āShirlene is gonna man the marina, in case anyone calls with news.ā
Piper considered this offer, but decided she wanted to be there, on the dock, when Tomās boat came chugging into the harbor, his mouth bursting to tell the wild story of his dayās adventure on the sea. And so she waited, on the bench, not noticing the growl of her stomach when suppertime came and went, and trying not to notice the other watermen that came in to dock one by one, their hats in their hands like BobDanās, their heads bent toward the ground, their eyes avoiding Piperās at all costs.
Four days later, the boat was recovered by a diver at the bottom of the sea.
Tomās body was not.
ā
While the rest of the town knew the worst had happened, Piper held out hope. Maybe Tom got disoriented and swam in the wrong direction, washed up on a deserted island, and was currently eating coconuts and writing messages in palm fronds for passing airplanes. Or maybe a ship of Somali pirates picked him up and he was being held against his will, unable to negotiate his release due to the language barrier. Or a whale swallowed him whole and he was contemplating his escape from the depths of its belly. Each of her theories was more outlandish than the next, but to Piper, none were as ridiculous as what the rest of the town believedāthat Tom was gone. That she would never lay eyes on him again.
In the days following the Coast Guardās announcement that they were calling off the search for Tom, Piper found herself growing increasingly intolerant. And not just with the rescue teams who were, in her view, prematurely giving up. She couldnāt stand the way people started looking at her, their eyes filled with pity. She couldnāt abide the way they began referring to Tom in past tense. But the final straw was when the members of the islandās Methodist (and only) churchāwhere the Parrish family had been attending for as long as the church had been on the island, and where Tom and Piper had exchanged vows and thin gold bandsāstarted planning a memorial service for Tom. Upon receiving that news, Piper locked herself in her one-bedroom carriage house behind the Oleckisā bed-and-breakfast. She didnāt answer the phone, or the door, not even when Lady Judy stopped by with enough smoked ham and beaten biscuits and peach cobbler to feed half the island. She left the food on Piperās stoop and it sat there all afternoon until the sun set. Until Mrs. Olecki retrieved it and set it out in the main houseās toile-covered living room for her current boarders to enjoy for supper.
Piper missed the memorial service altogether, where Tomās mother, glassy-eyed and catatonic, stood propped up by her brother Frank on one side and her nephew Steve on the other and the Valium that had been pumping through her veins daily since her husbandās aptly named heart attackāthe Widow Makerāhad made good on its promise. Where Tomās cousin Steveās newborn interrupted the reverend with her insistent squalls, eyes screwed shut tight, giving voice to the pain the watermen were too stoic to show. Everyone asked after Piper, murmuring their condolences to every Parrish in attendance. Poor girl, they said, shaking their heads, offering various superlatives: too young, most in love, the worst.
But Piper couldnāt hear them. She was in her bedroom, staring at the dent Tomās head had left on his pillow when his alarm clock prompted him to get up at 4:30 a.m. two weeks earlier. Piper didnāt dare touch itānot even to try to inhale his scent that surely remained on the floral cover. Nor did she touch Tomās near-empty mug of coffee sitting in the sink, a film of mold growing on the top layer of liquid still left in the
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