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Dee cackles and Essie hides a smile behind her hand.
I squint across the street at the placard above the fruit bin. Bananas are fifteen cents each.
So, in reality, I can’t get a banana.
The price is high considering there’s a banana grove in the cottage’s back garden, dozens of yellow bananas dripping in great clumps down the pearl-necklace-like chains.
Another drop of sweat trails down my back and the smell of fish guts drifts up on the humid breeze. Sean lets out another “Uh-oh!” while Maranda and Essie begin a heated debate about the best way to cook grouper.
Dee sends me a gentle smile, the soft lines of her face folding, her salt-and-pepper hair sticking up in the ocean breeze. She’s wearing a rubbery apron. We all are, but hers dwarfs her she’s so small.
“Not feeling like yourself?” she asks quietly, the sound of her knife thunking on the plywood table.
“I guess,” I say, considering the fish in the crates waiting to be cleaned and gutted. “I’m trying to figure out why, exactly, it’s my dream to gut fish.”
She laughs then—her high, amused cackle. “You do it to keep us honest,” she says, her eyes dancing with laughter. “Essie always tries to cheat us out of five cents. It adds up.”
“Really?”
“Or ...” She thinks for a moment. “You do it because you love your Maranda. She loves the fish market, being useful, seeing her neighbors, but she’s not strong enough anymore to carry the crates or do the deliveries. You do that for her now.”
I give Dee a startled glance and then look over at Maranda, my dream grandma. She’s still arguing with Essie about the merits of coal fires on the beach versus cooking in a smoker. Both of them are slicing at their fish, cleaning with efficient, practiced hands.
According to Dee I’m here, on the hot, humid beach gutting fish, because I love my grandma and I want her to feel useful.
I let that knowledge settle inside me. I don’t have a grandma in real life—both of them died before I was born. Neither of my parents ever talked about them.
I didn’t realize there was a hole in my heart the shape of a grandmother with quick hands, no-nonsense eyes, and a ready smile. I didn’t realize I had that longing. But then Maranda looks over at me, catches me staring, and winks.
She slides into my heart right then and there. In that empty space.
A grandma.
One who loves me.
At my stunned look, Maranda pats my hand and I grip hers. Her skin is papery thin and wrinkled, her warm hands fine-boned and calloused.
“Done,” Essie says, wiping her hands on her apron.
Sean hits the sand with his shovel and says, “Bana bana bana.”
Essie gives him a quick nod. “Yes, time for banana bread. You smart, smart boy. He takes after my side of the family.”
Maranda snorts and releases my hand. “Hardly. He clearly takes after Becca, who takes after me.”
And they’re off again.
The next two hours are spent selling fish to anyone who stops by. The remaining fish are packaged in heavy coolers, and I’m pushed by Maranda down the road with a pointed finger to the Saunders’ house, to the restaurant called—from what I can see—EAT, to Junie’s shop, to the community center where a group of kids are playing in a yard with free-roaming chickens, a slide, and a merry-go-round, to the house with the green kayaks out front.
Maranda chats with everyone we see while I carry heavy loads of fish and Sean devours fistfuls of banana bread with Essie and Dee in the shade.
At ten the sun is a bright slice of light lacing through the palm trees, baking the sand. I’m ready for a cold iced drink. The lukewarm water in Sean’s baby bag is not quenching my thirst.
It’s then, after Aldon hands me five cents with a twinkle in his eye, and while I’m cleaning off the plywood table, I see Aaron.
He’s down the sandy road, past Odie the crossing guard, near the edge of town. He’s at a small, square yellow house, kneeling next to the wooden porch, swinging a hammer.
Okay.
