Blood Water and Sea Salt

In seven years of marriage, my husband, Jeffrey, was almost flawless. He was attentive, generous, and steady. His only flaw, or so I had always believed, was an absolute, visceral disgust for seafood.

My mother raised me by filleting cod and shucking oysters down at the coastal fish piers, smelling of brine, sea salt, and diesel from dawn till dusk. I grew up on the daily catch; if I went more than a couple of days without something fresh from the water, my entire body craved the sea.

Once, early in our marriage, my mother took an early morning bus into the city to bring us home-smoked salmon—a local specialty she had cured over hickory chips herself. The moment Jeffrey caught the rich, smoky, briny scent drifting through the foyer, he packed a weekend duffel, walked out the door, and didn’t return for three days. My mother was so mortified, so burdened by shame, that she never crossed our threshold again.

When I got pregnant the first time, the cravings hit me with a vicious intensity. Knowing how desperately I needed real, nourishing food, my mother woke before dawn, bought fresh haddock right off the dayboats, and simmered thick, creamy pots of traditional seafood chowder. Every three days, she took the forty-minute transit ride to our apartment building to bring it to me hot.

To appease Jeffrey, she refused to step inside. Instead, she waited in the cold, concrete stairwell behind the fire door, watching me eat from a heavy thermos while the wind whistled under the sill.

Whenever my eyes welled with tears and I tried to pull her into the warm apartment, she would plaster on a rushed, cheerful smile:

"No, sweetheart, I can’t stay. The morning rush is starting at the pier, and you know how busy the retail counter gets. Eat up while it’s hot."

Then came the night Whitney returned from London.

Whitney was Jeffrey’s childhood sweetheart, the girl next door from an old-money coastal enclave whose family had moved abroad years ago. At the upscale welcoming dinner held