Oyster Belly

It must have been an oyster, she says.

It’s big though, don’t you think? her husband responds.

Unmissable, on the beach, I couldn’t pass it up.

I know how you don’t like to take things from where they’re planted.

Right, but this, I had to.

Not negotiable, and he smiles at her, gently, returns to the stove, gives the soup a stir.

It’s broken, their son says, interrupting. Full of holes.

Yes, she replies, ignoring their son, not negotiable.

I will take it to town, she thinks, first thing tomorrow. She will start with the man at the grocery store. He’s friendly enough, has a wall of marine knick-knacks, photographs of men in boats. He might find it interesting, invite her behind the counter, comment on how it looks like a heart, and she would agree, say she thinks so too.

She tells her husband this, her intentions, and they figure it out between them, how the day will unfold so she can do what she set out to do. She knew he wouldn’t mind, that he preferred to take their son with him, the two of them surveying the shoreline, counting birds, making notes. They gifted their son a set of binoculars when they arrived on the coast, and the enthusiasm with which he had set about using them had made their intention to homeschool seem unnecessary. Her mother-in-law sends letters accusing them of being lax, always adding an adverb before the word—stridently lax, unequivocally lax, dangerously lax.

They finish their soup and share an apple, cut into thin slices. The sea is calm, low tide bringing the strong scent of seaweed, touches of sulfur. Even as the weather grows colder they keep the windows open, not yet used to it, still wanting to take it all in, but the time comes to close them, to make some tea, and for her to watch the two of them pick through their findings—shells, feathers, bones—and for her husband to record the birds he saw, the types, how many, their songs.

It’s true, she usually lets things lie, but her husband and son belong to a different sort, having the collector’s habit. It seems that the person who had occupied the cottage before had the same inclinations, not surprising given its scientific purpose, a station her husband calls it, far superior to a cottage (she will always call it a cottage). When they first arrived, and she had deep cleaned, she came across hidden nooks, each with a beachcomber’s find. She never told the boys about it. It was her secret, she thought, and winked at the things, assuring them that they wouldn’t be handled, it was her own small way. 

She crawls into bed beside her husband, their son rolled in a blanket at their feet, only one room between them all (the cottage being meant for just one person), and she thinks about the hole in the shell she found, how it invited her to place it up to her eye, peer through, its surface cracked and cold on her cheek. It seemed, at that moment, the tide rising, she must get on with it, her day, and that now the getting on with it included this shell, this thing she had found and taken.

The man at the grocery store is not interested. He looks it over quickly, what of it, and then leaves her to help another customer. She hadn’t gone there to buy anything, but felt, after his disregard, that she must fake it, as if the shell was a second thought. Of course, she shrugs, what of it, and decides on two cans of soup, a marker, a pack of gum, a nervous grab, quite unnecessary. She sets the items on the counter, along with the shell, to free her hands, digs in both of her jeans pockets, hoping for loose change, a dollar bill or two. The man looks her over, picks up the shell, turns it over in his hands, sniffs it. She becomes desperate, drops coins on the floor, miscounts and counts again, and when she finally gathers what is needed, he takes the money from her, the register dings, and only then does he give the shell back. She places it in the bag with the other items.

The path to the cottage is heavy and wild, a seaside forest nobody thought to cut down for homebuilding or paper, or other such things, and she can’t help but think she is surrounded by a landscape that is getting away with something, which makes her smile and forget about the grocery store clerk, if only for a minute. Nobody in town ventures this way, walking their dogs and so on, which seems odd to her, to have access to this (she gestures around her) and not use it. It occurs to her that this habit has something to do with the way they treat her, a stranger set upon them, emerging and disappearing from behind the trees, but hadn’t there been people before her, men like her husband, other women?

Sometimes, while walking, she would come up near where her husband and son were observing, she could hear them through the trees and they would call out to each other. She loves this yelling, higher or softer depending on the weather, the sea.

When she reaches the cottage, she unpacks the bag. The shell smells like him, tobacco, Ivory soap. She wipes it off with the hem of her shirt and puts it down on the table. She places the soup cans on the shelf with the others, keeps the gum in her pocket (frivolous and hiding), and the marker she leaves on the table, a gift to her son. This is why she went out, she thinks, to get this for him, a gift just because. She fills the kettle and places it on the stove. She settles in, makes coffee, waits for them.

That night she realizes there is another errand she needs to do in town. She knows her husband likes to read the Sunday paper and that the boy who sold them often stands outside the diner, catching all the regulars before or after church. She tells her husband this the next morning, that she would be happy to walk into town early Sunday, the day after next, and get his paper. He nodded, said something about a late report he’d be wrapped up in, then started to chase their son around the small room, pretending he was some kind of prehistoric bird. The two of them roared. She couldn’t have been happier.

She hadn’t picked up the shell since her trip to the grocery store. It had been moved by either her husband or son a time or two, mostly to get it out of the way, and ended up in a small basket with other flotsam and jetsam. When Sunday comes she gets up at dawn, gets dressed, then picks up the shell, holds it tight to her chest, feels all its ups and downs, pokes her finger through the hole.

In town she goes directly to the newspaper boy and, money ready this time, hands him the correct change. He hands her the paper and the transaction is complete. She decides that it doesn’t make much sense to return home so quickly, having walked the whole way there, and given the fact that the diner is open and the smells coming out so delicious, she decides it is a perfect day to treat herself to scrambled eggs and toast.

She enters the diner and takes a seat in a booth, sets the newspaper on her right side and the shell on her left. She eyes a waitress, her short hair secured behind her ears with bobby pins, face makeup free other than a bright orangish lipstick, something that makes her eyes pop, her mother-in-law’s phrase coming to mind. She says the word out loud, pop, and runs her finger over the tiny holes that cover the shell, pop, pop, pop, and she feels an energy go through her, wants to keep on with it, but then there’s the waitress, who hesitates on approach, but then follows through. Without asking, she puts down a mug and fills it with coffee, steals a small dish of cream and sugar packets from another table, and places them for the woman to use.

Do you need more time?

Scrambled eggs and toast.

Butter or jam?

Both, she responds, is that possible?

Yeah. The waitress walks away.

Minutes later, the waitress returns with the eggs and toast. Need anything else?

No thank you. Maybe if she asks the woman the color of her lipstick, or how long she lived here, in this town, this diner, maybe such questions could serve as icebreakers, but she can’t muster it. Instead, she eats a few forkfuls (delicious), glances at the front page of the newspaper, nothing local, all national, and then places the shell on top of it, gently pushes it around like the planchette of a Ouija board (a game she’s never played), landing on letters, spelling her name, her husband’s, her son’s, and saying pop, sometimes to herself, sometimes out loud.

After some time, the waitress comes by and refills her coffee, glances at the shell. Want me to set a place for that, honey? She walks off laughing, a table of men across the way laughing too.

A few days later she tries again. There is the mail to get and send, she tells her husband. He’s eating breakfast at his workstation, a small pull-down desk the last occupant had installed, a man he knows from work, a man he admires. She knows he likes her seeing him there, working at this station, where someone greater than him worked before. It suits him, and she doesn’t like to interrupt. Yes, of course, he says, and waves her off, but smiling.

That desk suits him very much indeed, she thinks. She walks to the window and tries to spot their son, who rose before dawn and rushed outside, eager not to miss low tide, to see what there might be to see. She knows he will be gone for some time and places a tea towel over his breakfast, a leftover biscuit and an apple. She moves the honeypot beside the biscuit, and then steals a glance at the shell, sitting idly on top of a stack of books.

That afternoon she borrows her husband’s satchel, places the shell inside, and walks to town. The weather is calmer than usual. The remaining leaves dropped in the last storm, creating a much more expansive view, trees bare and sculptural, glimpses of water on both sides of her, and soon the town up ahead, a row of old houses and shop fronts, no great effort gone into their restoration, mostly looking precarious, leaning into each other as if they were undergoing a slow thaw. If one goes they all go.

She accomplishes what she needs to at the post office (quite proud of how easily it all goes), sending off another of her husband’s reports and accepting two letters, one from her mother-in-law, the other from her husband’s work. Once outside, she puts the letters into the satchel, retrieves the shell, and walks about.

The grocery clerk is inside stocking onions and she watches him, notices how his apron is too long, realizes he is quite short, for a man, she supposes, and it makes her like him all the more.

The waitress is working too, wiping down the booths and refilling ketchup, things to fill the slow hours, and she is wearing that same orangish lipstick, is it clementine maybe, something fruity for sure, maybe some kind of melon? It occurs to her this would be a good game to play with her son, how many melons can you name? She thinks of a few—honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon—but quickly comes to a dead end, truly there had to be more, or perhaps she could make it easier (and here she looks again at the waitress's lips), just orange fruits, that would be it, that would pass some time—oranges, apricots, peaches, so many—anything remotely orange could be included, she would be loose with the rules.

Near the end of Main Street, she passes a shoe store she has been in before, when they first arrived and she realized her son would need a sturdier pair, and so would she, only her husband came properly shod. The woman inside was quite knowledgeable, not only about shoes, the right brand for your arch, but also local history. In her spare time she had started a museum, housed in a corner of the shop, where she kept important proclamations, deeds, letters, and a few artifacts, mostly to do with the founding. Certainly this woman would find the shell interesting, would have something to stay about it.

Can I help you? the woman says, as if they had never met before.

Just looking, she responds, turning the shell over in her hands. Minutes pass. Perhaps, she thinks, this turning over of it in her hands is not enough, and so she puts it to her eye, peers through the hole at a pair of black suede heels and is reminded of the time she wore a similar pair. She was with her husband, attending something, an event or dinner, and they walked back in the rain, his arms around her, soaking through, and when she had put on the same shoes days later, they had turned stiff and reluctant. They no longer fit properly.

The woman approaches her, pointing at the shell. Something you found?

Yes.

Here? and she gestures to the sidewalk.

On the beach. 

Mmm.

It seems like an opening, and so she decides to use it again, to look through the hole at other shoes, inviting more from the woman, surprising herself with the fun of it, a child looking through a cardboard tube, a telescope, looking through and seeing the universe.

Are you going to buy something?

Not today, I think, not today.

Weeks pass and she ignores the shell, adds it to the basket with the others. Winter comes on and they keep things tight, but still a chill through the cracks, woodsmoke, snow, high, rough seas. They play games together, the one where she says a sentence, her husband adds on, and then their son, and they keep going, weaving a story. Her son still goes out with her husband, the two of them telling her about the birds at dinner, that there are fewer, but they seem stronger and stranger, more so than expected, his work will be happy.

Some days it’s too cold or windswept for her son to join outdoors and so she does math with him, fractions while cooking, or she underlines strange words in the books they had brought and has him memorize them, pronounce them, spell them. They all have to do with birds, they could only bring books that would be useful, and so the words are lessons for her too, syrinx, hallux, alula. How smart he would be, how just like his father.

Sometimes they sneak out for a quick walk on the beach, gloved hand in gloved hand, and marvel at how the sand has frozen, how they have never thought about that before, how sand can freeze, and then they would feel frozen, would laugh at themselves, their faces numb and barely moving.

Still there are times they are bored, her son especially, and it is one of those days she can’t draw him into anything and he drifts and complains until she needs to turn her back from him, setting herself up at the workstation, circling more words to study—lek, nidifugous, emargination—and before long she loses herself in it and doesn’t notice the quiet.

When she turns the scene is serene, her son on the floor with the basket of shells, marker in hand, the one she had gifted him, smiling and she smiles too, until a panic washes over her, scanning the floor and seeing her shell (had she ever referred to it as hers before?) off to the side, two black eyes drawn above the hole, a small round pig nose, a gaping, comical look. There are other shells too with wide smiles, eyelashes, one with ears on the side, marker smudged in places, touched before dry. She yells out, angry now, how could he, and demands he leave, just leave. He doesn’t at first, questioning her, unclear, but backs away, and she keeps saying it, leave, leave, leave, and so he does.

He returns later with her husband, who found him huddled on the side of the cottage, and she looks at him, her son, at his face red from cold, and demands he apologize and he does, his father urging him on, the two of them trying not to notice that she had pulled a piece of kitchen twine through the hole of her shell, had tied it around her neck, letting it hang down to her belly.

Her husband leans in close to her that night, right up to her ear, a private conversation, and asks if it is a good luck charm? A talisman of some sort?

Yes, she says, and he kisses her and feels better, for surely no harm could come from that. But she is thinking something entirely different, trying to calculate just how long she left her son out in the cold.

One night, awake and unable to sleep, she sits near the stove for warmth, hoping it might bring a heaviness to her eyes. She holds her shell up close to her face, looks into its childish eyes, feels grief of some kind, pressure in her temples, a headache coming on. She sits there for some time, staring at her shell, and everything seems to dissolve around her, until she hears a laugh, not a weak one, but something guttural, jolly, and she gets up, walks over to the bed, leans into her boys, but both are sleeping, gentle rises and falls.

She turns around the room, peeks out the window, and then stands still for just a moment, feels vibrations against her stomach, and when she looks down to investigate, there it is, her shell, laughing. She starts to laugh too and the two of them stay up all night laughing, so much so that her stomach aches the next morning, she barely touches her breakfast. She can’t help but wonder how long it held that in, such joy, such eager laughter, meant to be shared, meant to be heard.

She sits with her shell again the next night and soon it opens up to her, starts with small things, like how, when young, it became nauseous at all the movement, the pushing, the pushing, but how it eventually found its sea legs (they both laugh at this) and realized it had control, could make decisions against the tide.

The next night it tells her the empty tubes across its surface once belonged to worms and that it had welcomed their company, that they had doors they closed when frightened, that they tucked themselves up in, and how, after they became encrusted, they tickled.

It tells her the smartest beings on the planet are pebbles. Think of all the time, it says, the tossing, and she nods, she can’t disagree.

Around dawn her shell falls silent. She makes coffee, opens the door a crack to sense the cold, see how the sunrise is figuring, considers breakfast, and waits for her husband and son to wake. The first few days she’s certain they must hear the conversation, but they never stir. Perhaps the wind and surf cover it all up, so that even in such a small space, there can be secrets.

Several nights later it tells her about the hole on its surface, how it was drilled through by a person like herself, how the person had taken it, forced it open against a rock, drained its contents, and then used a nail of some kind. It did not know why the person had done this, only that it was an act, not a pastime.

She asks if it felt any pain, but it says no, just a different shape entirely.

That same thing happened to her, she says. There is a church near her house, her real house, not this one, with a beautiful bell. At first it seemed it might be an annoyance, but she became used to it and then it structured her day, became important, helped her keep track of all the things. One day, she was invited to a meeting to ensure its survival, the need being extensive maintenance the church couldn’t afford. There would be events, money raising, communicating its value to the community, in short there would be rallying, only she felt, for the first time, not able to rally.

There had been a time in my life, the woman says, where I, the only word for it, participated, but then there was a time I didn’t want to anymore.

The shell agrees, a different shape entirely. 

The weather eases and her son is able to rejoin her husband outdoors (although, in her letters to her mother-in-law, the lessons persevere). The woman starts sleeping again, continuing to converse with her shell, but in a more diffused way, her thumb across its surface, her palm laid over top, gently pressing it into her belly, sometimes she asks it a question, something inconsequential (this sweater or that, coffee or tea), and it makes a suggestion, veers her one way or another. It still hangs as a necklace, only now it’s tied around her neck with a red satin ribbon that adorned a Christmas present.

Her husband runs his finger down the ribbon, skimming her collarbone. It really makes it pop, he says, his mother talking.

Pop, pop, pop, she replies, playfully.

She’s getting ready to walk to town. It has been a month since her last visit, her husband taking over the errand running when conditions warranted it, better suited, he said, and she wonders if the people in town thought so too, imagines what it was like to be him at the post office, to be him at the diner, to be him noticing the waitress with the orange lipstick.

She arrives in town, boots mud slicked, her shell displayed on top of her coat, an old tweed number that she thought looked smart with her jeans. She came together that morning, presented nicely. She could have hidden the shell—pop, pop, pop—beneath her coat, but chose not to, and in choosing that she felt she was actually choosing something else, she felt it in the way the shell shifted about, made itself known.

As usual, people look her up and down, always landing on the shell, eyes rolling, unaware of the decision that had just been made, unaware of the late-night conversations between herself and the shell, all that had passed between them, how she had moved from one point to another, and her without the language to tell them. That’s time for you, she says or her shell says, she isn’t sure.

It looks tribal, the grocery store clerk says as he packages up her items. Just a few things, pencils, more soup, rice, condensed milk. It seems to her tribal is a good place to start, but she backs away from him, holding the shell in her hand, says thank you and nothing else. Outside she considers that her understanding of the clerk just expanded, onions, Ivory soap, tribal, deep down a knowing that she could do something with that.

Each time she walks to town, something similar.

The waitress pours her coffee, eyes her shell. Hope you didn’t pay too much for that, she says. The woman shrugs as if to say, maybe I did, then orders her eggs and toast.

That night she wonders about the cost of things, what she has paid for things, what others have paid for things, like melon colored lipstick.

 A few days later, the newspaper boy huddles with two other boys as she approaches. They exchange money for paper. She walks away and they laugh, calling to her, oyster belly, oyster belly, oyster belly.  

Her husband and son are made for spring, all they talk of is return, and she enjoys seeing them run about, ready themselves, leave as if they hadn’t done the same thing the day before, wouldn’t do it again tomorrow, each day something fresh, those two. They make bird sounds at her as they get ready—pu-we, pu-we, jug jug huh, jug jug huh, aaawh, aaawh, and she smiles at the wildness of it all.

There isn’t an errand to run. She mailed her husband’s latest report the day before, the pantry is fully stocked, and it not being Sunday, there’s no newspaper to get. Still, she planned to go to the diner, cleared it with her husband before bed last night, but a short, stabbing pain started in her stomach that morning, left her with no appetite, made it hard for her to walk. She hasn’t been sick in some time, wonders if it’s something she ate, or something to do with her period (which seems so reckless these days).

When her husband and son return they find her in bed gripping her shell, scraping her nails down it. They make her soup she doesn’t eat, rest their hands on her forehead, check for a temperature, unsure what they should feel, how hot or how cold, and the husband curses, is upset he doesn’t know this, how does he not know this? They talk over how long they should wait before getting help, how the son (who is also upset he doesn’t know how hot or cold his mother should be) would be left in charge while he went to town, is this okay, would their son be okay?

 She tried to remind them that her body has done this before, given out in a strange way, and that they shouldn’t worry. Remember the time her limbs went numb after she saw a pedestrian struck, or the ringing in her ears after she had eaten too many eggs, or the acid boiling up her throat after she overindulges? She’s silly, remember, sensitive. She says all of these things, or doesn’t. She has to admit to herself that things are getting a bit fuzzy.

Her son claims it is the shell, that it’s heavier than they think, causes soreness where it meets her body, bounces up and down, up and down, presses into her at night when she turns. He’s too smart to believe any of this, of course, but he has grown tired of seeing its silly face looking out at him. It’s hard to see his mother through that.

It’s getting closer to dusk and her husband decides to go for help. He kisses her forehead and leaves the two of them there, promising to move quickly, to be back in a flash.

She looks down at her shell, sitting on her stomach, over top of the pain, its face shifting about a bit. Is this you doing this, she asks, is this you, go on tell me, I won’t be mad. 

Her son, out of nowhere, responds, no, Mom, absolutely not.

The doctor is going over his finances, something he does often in retirement, when he hears the knocking at his door. He served proudly as the town doctor, and often takes stock of his finances as a way to remember just what he has accomplished, and it always gives him the feeling of comfort, readies his stomach for dinner.

He opens the door and squints at the man, who is notably anxious and immediately places him. The company this man works for had come to the doctor years ago, asked that he ensure safety for the men they stationed there, providing him with a handsome compensation to do so, and one that he had agreed to continue into retirement, since truly he had been called on so little over the years—there was that flu, food poisoning a time or two, a hammered thumb.

He invites the man in, insists he sit, take a stiff drink, and while the man does all of those things, the doctor puts two and two together. This must be about the woman, for if it was the boy the man would have carried him here in his arms, but not the woman, no, although he is undeniably strong enough to carry her, the doctor knew quite well the man didn’t know how to carry her. A sick woman is an awkward thing, and from what he knew of the woman, she was quite awkward indeed. For a minute, less than that to be fair, it crossed his mind that it wasn’t his duty to tend to her, just the man, but that passed quickly.

The doctor grabs his things and draws out the symptoms from the man brilliantly—the shape of her, the sounds, the color of her skin, the words she had chosen that morning—so by the time they reach the cottage, the doctor knows just what he’s up against. He hasn’t had to perform many surgeries during this tenure, but it was something he could do, albeit a bit rudely, as most doctors in distant towns must.

When the doctor enters the cottage, he sees the woman immediately. She’s on her side, turned towards him, hugging a pillow, grimacing in pain, but otherwise not unattractive, full in places, nice eyes. The way she is lying, the pillow, the grimacing, all in line with his initial thoughts, but still he will test her before administering anything, before catching the husband up to speed, before sterilizing things.

As he approaches her, he notices her shell about her neck, nods, smiles, introduces himself, and then slowly slides the ribbon up over her head and gently lays her shell on the pillow beside her.

It will keep watch, he says, smiling, thinking, people and their things. Whether or not she notices this kindness, he doesn’t know, but suspects not (the lot of a truly good doctor).

The son joins his father on the opposite side of the cottage, and the doctor is grateful for the space. He gently presses her abdomen, rotates her legs, listens to her cry out, asks her questions she has trouble answering, and thinks of all the other possibilities, especially with women, he reminds himself, there are always so many more things to consider, but the truth is if his instincts are correct, he needs to act.

He talks over the diagnosis with the husband and son—acute appendicitis, he says, and asks that the man and his son go to town and get transport, some way of getting her from here to town, and then onto an ambulance. She will need to go to the nearest hospital immediately, but he needs to remove it now before it bursts.

He does all the things that need to be done, the morphine, the sterilizing, the gentle assurances, the running through things in his head, the flash of excitement that even now, in his retirement, he’s living up to his potential. He watches as she slowly nods off.

Only, when he reaches inside, it isn’t there, the appendix. Surely, if it had already been removed, the husband would have said something. He rests there for a moment, fingers tucked inside her, growing concerned with the blood, afraid now. He notices her shell then, it has fallen just off to the side, and there it sits mocking him, that hole made into a mouth, the pretty red ribbon in folds that, he imagines, smell of her neck.

Strange woman, he says and looks at her face, eyes closed, still attractive, he thinks, just a little off. Something clicks for him then and he shifts his position, closes his eyes, surprises himself by how well he navigates the insides of her, just a little off, little off, off.

That’s very uncommon, the doctor says, for it to be there and not here, and he gestures on his body with his hands. In his mind he searches for a percentage, something to give the circumstances the weight they deserve. His books would tell him this situation occurs only thirty percent of the time, but that wouldn’t do, for him or for her, and so he says five percent.

He says five percent to the grocery store clerk, the postman, the shoe seller, the waitress at the diner, he says five percent to the newspaper boy.

That’s very uncommon, the postman says.

Something special, the grocery clerk adds.

Five percent, the waitress repeats, and she sat right there, gesturing to the booth where the woman sat, handled her shell, said pop, pop, pop.

They ask about her, wonder when she might return, keep her booth open, her favorite soup stocked, a pair of black velvet heels reserved, because there isn’t anybody else around that’s five percent.

Best to get you home, her husband says, not negotiable.

Yes, her son adds, not negotiable.

She sits in just one room, despite there being many, on the couch by the window, and thinks about how, while away, she mostly sat on hard things, except the small bed, of course, and the sand, but that too was sometimes hard. She repositions herself. She’s good at this now, repositioning in a way that reduces the pain, promotes recovery. Neighbors see her in the window and wave and she waves back, but she can’t remember their names, or the names of their pets. She thinks of the diner booth and tries to remember whether it was hard or soft, tries to remember, but can’t, because when she thinks of it, all that comes to mind is oranges, and that certainly has nothing to do with texture.

So be it, if oranges are what comes to mind.

She plays games with her shell, slides it across a page in a book, eyes closed, stopping when it feels just right, and then taking whatever words she can see through the hole as a fortune, a piece of poetry, something of import, and so her days are filled with thoughtful things

more shipwrecks

through the hedgerow

not a soul

a different shape entirely.

Every hour on the hour, the church bell rings.

Teresa DeFlitch is a writer, educator and historian. She designs creative leadership workshops and explores the intersection of place and writing. She grew up outside of Pittsburgh and now lives in Rhode Island, where she was selected as a 2023 Linden Place Writer-in-Residence.

Published January 15 2025