My own memories start on a boat. I was small enough that Daddy cut me down a rod, I think, though it might even just have been a stick with some twine tied to it. Whichever it was, it did the trick: I went to cast my line and I hooked Daddy's lower lip with my lure. The metal was speared completely through the flesh. Blood spilled out of Daddy's mouth, the silver dangle of the lure flashing in the sun. I remember that I cried when he yelled at me, but he says that I've got the story wrong, that it was the other way around, that he yelled at me because I cried, and that sounds about right for my father. He can't remember why it was just me with him out on the boat, what my sisters were doing — "probably at home with your momma, just waiting for your brother to be born" — but he can remember the weather and the low tide time for every day stretching past more than forty years. He says that was why he married Momma, so he'd have somebody to remember things for him, like birthdays. That's the only way he talks about my mother anymore, as if she were some sort of prank he pulled.

From The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner ©2014. Published by Knopf Canada.