She was amused when semen started showing up in her art — semen as an image in her poems to describe the stars that spread over the ocean at night, or in her paintings in the thick paint she used to show the foam of the breakers that surged around the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. It wasn't that she was horny or that Seth didn't see to her needs. It was metaphysical semen, poetic, and she supposed it meant something about nature. Nature had come to obsess her ever since they moved out to this old lighthouse and converted it into a bed and breakfast, and it consumed her in a way that she couldn't discuss with Seth--as some vague yearning that went beyond anything she'd expected when they'd bought this place. Sometimes in the late afternoon she would walk off the little island on which their property stood, cross the bridge and head down the highway to a little point from which she could look back and watch as the setting sun colored the white-washed lighthouse pink and then orange. Against the slate gray of the sea and the darkening sky, it was phallic enough to be embarrassing but still lovely, and it made her smile even as it stirred and excited her with emotions she couldn't explain. At such times, she had no doubt that moving here had been a wise choice.
Seth wasn't inattentive, but the kind of attention she wanted now had changed into something she couldn't understand or describe, let alone express. She couldn't make sense of the paintings and poems she started producing, but they'd lost that clarity and innocence they'd had when she was working in the city and that troubled her. It had been her vision of an idyllic country life as expressed in her paintings that had driven them to buy this place and set up their eco-friendly inn, and the fact that her work had now became confused and muddy might merely be a sign of the move's lingering turmoil, but it troubled her.
Seth, on the other hand, adapted surprisingly well. After working for a big corporation in the city, he found the simple exigencies of dealing with nickels and dimes to be wonderfully purposeful and refreshing, and he threw himself into it with an ecologist's sense of mission and a capitalist's fervor. Julia helped him as much as she could throughout the winter, fixing up the outbuildings and finding suppliers for their all-organic kitchen, but now that spring was here and guest were starting to arrive she was once again free to pack up her easel and paints and climb the rocky bluffs on the mainland and paint at the verge of the dark forest, or sit by the ocean and try to capture the incessant sounds of the sea in a poem.
It bothered her that what she so often heard by the water's edge was not the slow, reassuring sounds of the sea, but a kind of hostile and derisive snarling. When she painted near the woods, the raw spring wind would toss the pines and make them rock with what seemed like secret and perhaps contemptuous laughter. This wasn't the gentle and benign natural paradise she'd assumed it would be, and she felt like a stranger.
Still, in the early dawn when she'd sneak out, or as the sun was setting and painting the rocks with orange and pink, she could feel her heart lift in her chest at this place they now called home. It was later in the day, when she would help Seth unload the organic produce and see to lunch and dinner that she felt this strange sense of menace and unease. The wind was always blowing, sometimes in, sometimes out, but always blowing, and at times it grew quite irritating, like a playful dog that doesn't know when to stop.
She was painting down near the sheltered cove that served them as a beach, and struggling as usual with the sea and sky (why couldn't they stay the same for even a second? They changed every time she looked away, as if it were a joke) when she finally gave up. Clouds were moving in from the east and ruining the light, and the pines on the bluff looked sleek and expectant, as if they knew something she didn't.
She turned around to face the cove itself and saw a boat tied up to the old rotting jetty and a man in rubber boots wandering among the tide pools on shore with a net in one hand and a bucket in the other. There were signs clearly posted on the jetty warning people off. It was dangerous, and he was clearly trespassing.
Julia laid her easel and paints down so the wind wouldn't take them and clambered down the rocks. This wasn't a tourist boat or anything nice, but some old converted lobster tender, squat and ugly, with signs of hard use all over it.
"Excuse me!" she yelled, cupping her hands to her mouth. "Excuse me, but that jetty isn't safe! And you're on private property!"
The man didn't seem to hear her, but in the course of scanning the rocks he saw her and gave her a friendly wave.
Julia turned her baseball cap around so the brim protected her eyes, and scrambled down the granite rocks. It was early spring and the stone was warm where the sun had touched them, but dead cold in shadow. The man walked over to meet her, smiling easily.
"Sorry," she said as she dusted off her jeans. "But this is private property. Besides, that jetty's totally unsafe. No one's supposed to use it."
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," he said. He had sandy hair and a clean, square jaw, and something about him made her believe he might be British. There was a kind of eager formality about him, and behind his yellow-tinted glasses, his eyes were honest and curious. He wore a thick, white fisherman's sweater that looked like he'd actually fished in it, and his green work-pants were rolled to the knees above a pair of thick rubber boots. "I'm Patrick Malone. I own Sea World Cannery back in Douglass? You must be from the lighthouse."
She knew there were abandoned canneries along the piers in town and their emptiness had given her and Seth a kind of grim satisfaction. She hadn't known that any still operated, but still, that didn't make him the enemy, not just yet. She saw no reason why not to shake his hand, so she did. "Yes," she said. "I own it. Me and my husband. I'm Julia Peavey. Seth's my husband"
"Glad to meet you, Julia." He seemed genuinely pleased. "I'd heard it had been bought, but this is the first time I've been out this year. I should have come around sooner to introduce myself, but I spend a lot of time in Boston these days. Don't get out to the factory as much as I'd like."
"Just what were you doing here, Mr. Malone? If you don't mind my asking."
"Oh, just puttering around, exploring." He lifted the bucket with some embarrassment, and Julia could see some dim creatures inside, moving with febrile urgency. They made her uneasy. "I like to get out on the water whenever I can, and your cove here is one of the few places where a little boat can still put in. Your tide pools here are excellent."
"Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you not to do that anymore. The jetty's not safe, and the cove is for use by our guests."
"All right," he said. "Fair enough. I hear you're running something of an eco-tourism place, is that right? All unspoiled and natural?"
Julia braced herself. They'd run into a lot of this from the locals when they first bought the place and their plans became known, but most of the merchants accepted them, welcoming whatever business they could bring to this rust-bound town.
"That's right," she said. "Is that a problem?"
"No, no. Not at all. I'm all for preserving the environment and all that. I think it's wonderful. In fact, that's what I'm doing out here, poking around in the pools to see what's what. Do you know what a nudibranch is, Julia?"
She stepped back, realizing he was about to stick his hand in the bucket and pull out one of these creatures, no doubt some sort of slimy, mucousy thing, but he saw her reaction and he stopped.
"A theoretical nature lover, eh?" He smiled. "That's okay. Not many people appreciate a sea slug or a northern comb jelly, but that's what you've got here. Lovely little buggers. And back you go now." He poured the bucket out into a large pool, and Julia saw she'd been right to refuse. There were some quivery, viscid things in there, as if people had blown their nose into the bucket, from what she could see.
"Just what kind of cannery do you run, Mr. Malone?" she asked
"Oh, just pilchards. What you call sardines once they're all packed up."
