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Looking back on it after ten years, I think my mother is responsible for my first kiss.

Not in too immediate a fashion. She didn’t point me at the girl and say “Now slip her the tongue, show her some of that Fitzpatrick moxie!” But not in too removed a fashion either. I don’t mean it in the cosmic way, in the “if my mother never had me and raised me, I never would have been alive to have kissed that girl… whoa, man, that’s deep” way, either.

However, in an intermediate fashion, she was responsible, and sometimes, late at night, I wonder what would have happened, what my life would have been like, if my mother wasn’t so pushy and talkative.

Pesci’s Fish House was locally famous, for several different reasons. One of them was that, in a island town where more and more of the prime seaside real estate was being snapped up by out of town developers who were knocking down the old beach shacks and local points of interest and putting up impersonal concrete hotel towers and five franchise restaurants in a row, Pesci’s was still family owned and operated in the same broken down shack they had been operating out of for six generations, though for a mile on either side of the building there was nothing to be seen but skyscaping hotels on the beach side of the road and neon signs with nationally syndicated cartoon animals and clowns endorsing restaurants on the inland side. Locals, barely scraping by, wondered how the Pescis did it. The more creative locals said that the Pescis had found sunken treasure, a hundred years ago, and never needed money again. The cynical ones said that they would go under soon. However, they’ve managed to keep their head above water for a hundred years, and look to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. At every neighborhood clambake on the island, somebody would have a brand new story about how they were eating at Pesci’s, and some unsuspecting out-of-towner would have found Sal Pesci and made him an offer on his restaurant. About half the time the story would end with the developer beating a hasty retreat and diving into his SUV as Sal chased them out of the building, shaking a cleaver. The other half of the time, if the developer was especially obtuse, obstinate or if Sal was just feeling unkind, the story would end with the developer floating in the ocean, wondering how exactly he had gotten there, and if his cell phone would ever work again.

The thing was, however, Pesci’s was entirely family owned and operated. From Sal, who was the nominal head, and served as host and barkeep, to his wife Annette, who was actually in charge, and ran her sons and daughters, nieces and nephews with the iron fist that only little old ladies can truly develop, to the six year old Little Tony, who was supposed to clear the tables and sweep, but for the most part danced and clowned to the amusement of the patrons, nobody worked there who wasn’t, in some way, related to the Pescis. Even the fish supply came from family, who operated the boat the Sea Fox, which set out every morning at sunrise from the dock behind the restaurant and returned at noon, brimming with fish. “We Pescis are born to the ocean!”, Sal would often thunder after having had a few, and sometimes when he hadn’t had any. So, when I turned sixteen that summer, and was legally permitted and familialy obligated to work, I was arrogantly superior, in the way that is unique to those who have just gotten their first taste of driving and freedom, when my mother suggested that I apply to be a cook at Pesci’s.

“Mother,” as I called her when I wanted to condescend, “Sal would never hire outside of his family.” Calling adults by their first name was also a newly acquired habit.

An hour later, most of which was taken up by a lengthy phone call from my mother to Annette Pesci, my mother was driving me down the beach road to the Fish House, for my first day of work.

I’ve never been able to accurately remember what my mom said to Annette. The gist of it, I believe, was that I was a good boy, and would be a hard worker.

The first part, for the large majority of the time, was true, but the second part I didn’t even get to test. Officially, I was hired as a cook-slash-dishwasher, reportable to Big Tony, Little Tony’s father, brother of Annette and head chef of the Fish House. However, Big Tony was very involved, as a head chef, to an extent that I’ve found is not representative of the industry as a whole, leaving ninety percent of my job to be a dishwasher, not fifty percent as my job title might lead you to believe.

Another thing that Pesci’s was locally famous for was the fact that the only thing on their menu was locally caught fish. No concessions to tourists that came to the island, ostensibly for fresh seafood, only to order Alaskan king crab, flown across the entire continent, and frozen for weeks at a time. No concessions to the tourist who, out with his seafood loving family, said that he was a “steak and potato man” only. The only thing on the menu that wasn’t based entirely around local seafood was the kid’s section, which had favorites like chicken nuggets and fries and mini corndogs and mashed potatoes. I’ve been eating at Pesci’s all my life, and only once, when I was barely past Gerbers, did I order from the kid’s menu. The chicken nuggets tasted like a microwaved tv dinner, and the next time we came I moved on to the adult menu.

The ten percent of my job that was cooking was to be the kid’s menu. I quickly discovered the reason why it had tasted like a microwaved tv dinner- the kid’s menu consisted entirely of the Kid’s Cuisine brand of tv dinners, purchased at the Safeway on the island and kept in the only freezer in the kitchen. When a child, or a particularly finicky tourist, ordered a kid’s meal, my responsibility was to get it from the freezer, microwave it, and spoon it onto a plate.

The restaurant itself only seated forty patrons at a time, and people eating at Pesci’s tended to linger, so my dishwashing responsibility was never very taxing. Big Tony insisted on washing all his own cooking apparatus, saying that to allow anyone else to do it would sully his craft, so I was left with lots of free time at the Fish House.

Fortunately for my sanity, the Pescis were a talkative lot. The kitchen was a bustling hive of activity, with Big Tony serving as queen bee. Over a typical evening, as I microwaved and scrubbed, the nieces and nephews, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles would spin in and out of the kitchen, placing orders, picking up orders, refilling drinks, fetching napkins and silverware, getting the broom and dustpan, riding the broom like a horse in the case of Little Tony, and all the time talking, talking, talking. Talking to each other, talking to Big Tony, talking to me sometimes, if only, most of the time, to clarify some point of family history or another that the current subject of conversation was referencing. It felt like I was one of those Kansans that witnesses a F-5 tornado firsthand- “It sounded like a freight train!”, indeed.

The only Pesci that was relatively quiet was the girl who was just about my age, as far as I could judge. She bussed half the restaurant, splitting the duty with Albert Pesci, a boy in my grade at the island’s high school. She carried trays of dishes to me at my dishwasher station quietly, while Albert tended to be yelling most of the time. If they were both coming into the kitchen at the same time, Albert generally yelled at me.

“Hey, big Johnny! Going to try out for the football team this year, John-boy?” With my gangly body, I had a better chance to be the goalpost, rather than make it on the team.

“I don’t think so, Al,” I muttered into the suds. Albert laughed, and used his quarterback arms to dump the dirty dishes he carried directly into the sinkful of water. Grey suds splashed up into my face as he laughed again, and sauntered out of the room. Big Tony glanced up at me over the cod he was filleting, and then looked down at the fish again, slowly shaking his head.

“Hey,” said a small voice behind me. I turned around, to see the Quiet Pesci. “Why do you let him treat you like that?” she might have said, if life were more like the cheesy teen movies I loved at the time. Instead, she said, “Wow. You’re wet.”

I looked down at myself. My bright red apron, printed with a smiling fish urging the viewer to “Eat at Pesci’s Fish House, Locally Famous!”, was soaked, turning a bruised maroon from my belly button down. My hands were soap covered and pruned from being sunk into dishwater, sixteen year olds being way too cool for rubber gloves. I quickly ran my fingers through my shock of unkempt blond hair, getting soap in it and further mussing it up, but at least getting it out of my eyes.

I looked up at her. Brown hair, with red shimmering strands strategically strewn throughout, cut shoulder length, to bounce enticingly on her neck. Tight red tshirt (also extolling Pesci’s, but in smaller print), over a body that, while it may have been sixteen like mine, was winning the puberty wars with much greater aplomb than mine was showing, white apron folded in half, hiding her shorts in a little fishtail of apron fabric and glittering rolls of silverware tucked into the apron pocket.

“Yeah- totally wet,” I replied, mentally cursing myself for both the awkward pause and the less than scintillating conversation. I made a mental note to kick myself over it later, again and again.

“You’re not a Pesci,” said the girl. I realized that this was the first time I’d heard her talk in the week that I’d been working there. She had an intriguing accent, something I couldn’t quite place.

“What tipped you off?” I played for time.

“Well, I could say that it was your gentle manner, or your kind eyes, or your obvious quiet intelligence,” she began. Oh my god, was she flirting with me? I hadn’t had much experience with the matter, I wasn’t sure. “But it was mainly your blond hair.”

“You’re not a Pesci, either, are you?” I guessed, randomly. I think I just didn’t want the conversation to end. The girl looked slightly surprised and eyed me suspiciously. I grinned nervously.

“Actually… I’m not. Our families are friends, of course, but I’m a Racconto. Kinda a semi-Pesci, by marriage.”

“A Racconto? There aren’t any Raccontos on the island- believe me, I would know, my mom knows everyone on this place.”

The girl looked down and away, searching the tiled floor for an answer. “We live- out of state. My parents sent me here for the summer- I was kinda getting in trouble at home.”

That would explain the accent. “Well, hopefully you won’t get in trouble here. Or not too much trouble, anyway.”

She caught my eye, and winked. “Maybe a little bit of trouble, could be fun.” She was flirting with me, I was sure of it, now. If only I knew what to do with that information at the time.

Big Tony put the finishing touches on an entree and looked up at us, standing a little bit too close, looking into each other’s eyes. “Marena, I’m sure Albert could use some help clearing tables,” he said, a little too loudly.

Marena, I repeated to myself, as she walked away, glancing once over her shoulder, causing me to duck my head quickly. Her name is Marena.

Over the rest of the summer, we grew closer and closer, catching slow moments in the kitchen, when it was just her and me and Big Tony, to flirt and chat. Big Tony quickly gave up trying to get Marena to get back to work, but the rest of the Pescis kept her moving, when they found her lingering with me over the rinse sink, or waiting for the salisbury steak to be thoroughly zapped. Albert was especially quick to make a sneering comment or remark, which on their own wouldn’t do anything, but which would get his uncle Big Tony to send Marena on an errand.

It might have been because of, rather than despite, the family’s interference that Marena’s interest in me seemed to grow, rather than diminish over the summer. By late August, she would find several excuses a night to touch my arm, or fix my hair as it fell into my eyes, or just grab my hand for a second or two. If I had been older, more might have come from it, but we were both so young, so very young.

One night late into the season, I was working particularly late- Little Tony had caught the chickenpox, and his sweeping responsibilities fell to me, as an outsider to the family was considered almost as responsible as a Pesci six year old. The restaurant had been closed for an hour, and I was taking my time sweeping up, relishing every minute of being out past curfew, and getting paid for it. I had thought the doors were locked and that everyone had gone home, and I was right on the first part but wrong on the second. As I swept around the bar, making quite a mound of the shells of the peanuts that Sal kept in a never-empty bowl in the middle of the bar, a hand touched my shoulder.

“Oh my God! What the hell!” I yelled from the pit of my stomach, hitting the octave that I had stretched for, but never achieved, singing hymns on Sunday.

“John! Shush! John, it’s okay!” Spinning around, I encountered Marena, who was hurriedly whispering reassurances. I stopped yelling, but started hyperventilating right into her face. To her credit, she did not take a step back immediately.

“Marena,” I whispered, unintentionally in the whisper that actors employ when they want to reach the back row of a Broadway theatre, “What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering me, she turned around and walked to the back of the restaurant, to the door to the dock that led out over the water. Pausing with her left hand on the door, right hand on the knob, she looked back over her shoulder, through her intriguing brown red hair, and locked eyes with me. The moment lasted a year and a nanosecond, and shot a jolt of adrenaline that went from behind my ears straight to my groin and then to my heart, which started trying to escape my chest. Marena opened the door and walked out onto the dock, into the dark.

I did not drop the broom and immediately rush after her. I swept the pile of peanut shells I had gathered into the dustpan, put it on top of the bar, leaned the broom into a corner, and rushed after her. Pushing open the door, I turned left, following the dock that half the restaurant was built on as it went further out into the ocean. The moon at midnight lit the sea, creating a road that seemed to extend down into the water, leading down into some imaginary kingdom- maybe filled with mermaids, maybe Atlanteans, maybe those super smart dolphins from DSV.

The air was rich with salt, a fresh smell around the dock, and the waves lapped around the pilings with hungry tongues. I skirted the edge of the tiny bait shop that serviced the local fishermen and slumming tourists that used the dock for early morning sea fishing. Sal’s brother Marcus ran the shop- he was second in popularity on the island only to Sal. I figured that Marena and I would have three hours or so before Marcus showed up and started brewing coffee and bagging nightcrawlers for the early rising fishermen. Three hours- but in which to do what? My feet, previously so confident, missed a step and stubbed my toe on a board of the dock, and I went tumbling around the corner of the bait shop, falling to my face in front of Marena, who was seated in a golf cart that was parked behind the bait shop. Sometimes I had seen Big Tony driving himself to the Safeway to pick up what I can only suppose now would be Kid’s Cuisine meals in that golf cart.

If life were a movie, Marena would have leaped to her feet in consternation at my fall. Or gasped in surprise as I appeared out of nowhere, around the corner of the shop. Instead, she started giggling quietly, and muttered in a low voice to me, “Not that you would want to join the team with Albert, but I don’t think you should even go to the tryouts.”

I quickly scrambled to my feet and slid into the empty spot of the golf cart’s bench seat before I lost my nerve. My left leg, my knee sticking out of my khaki shorts, was touching Marena’s smooth, shiny right leg, of which only the hip was encased in cutoff jeans, as the cut was very high. I remember that very very vividly. The feeling, if I close my eyes, is still a ghost sense on my leg.

“Hi, Marena,” I said, my voice quivering slightly. I hoped as hard as I could that the quiver was only audible to myself.

“John,” she said, eyes turning up into mine, their blue visible only as a gray in the moonlight, “They’re sending me home tomorrow morning.”

“Oh,” I said. There didn’t seem to be much more to say. My eyes remained locked on hers, my body becoming paralyzed. “Oh.”

“John. I… I just wanted to… I don’t know…” she trailed off. Suddenly Marena didn’t seem as cosmopolitan, as advanced, as beyond me as she had all summer. Suddenly, as her eyes searched mine, flickering back and forth like a pair of blue Betta fish in bowls that were too small, I saw her as not a Goddess of Womanhood, but a girl my age. My hand, acting on its own, reached out, and gently lifted her chin. She swallowed lightly, and tilted her head ever so slightly to her left. I tilted my head to my right, and we bumped noses as our mouths opened. We both laughed a little, and I tilted my head to the left as well.

And suddenly we were kissing. Her tongue was flicking between my lips, mine was tasting her mouth, salty from ocean spray or from tears, I didn’t know. We both tilted our heads to our rights, and kissed each other deeper, my hands going around her waist, awkward in the golf cart, her hands clenching my already mussed hair.

We kissed each other so long that my lips still felt it when we finally came up for air. Ten years later, and I can still barely taste her mouth as I walk on the beach. She looked into my eyes, and I looked into hers, and I leaned forward for another kiss and she dropped her head to my chest. “John,” she whispered. “John… will you always be here for me?” I tensed, not knowing quite what to say to that.

“John!” my mother’s voice rang out from the front of the restaurant. “John! John, where are you?”

I quickly sprang up, and put my finger to my lips. Marena looked at me with slightly scornful eyes, as if to say that of course she wasn’t going to say anything. I leaned close to her ear, my mouth brushing her hair, and whispered, “Stay right here, I’ll be right back.” As I turned to go to the front of the restaurant, I caught a glimpse of Marena’s look at me. I could be wrong, it could be a trick of the memory, but I think it was wistful and wishful.

I ran on the dock around to the front of the restaurant, untucking my shirt and trying to straighten my hair as I went. When I got to the front, my mother was just about to scream my name again. Dressed in a nightgown and holding her car keys, with the car parked haphazardly across three spaces in the middle of the Fish House’s lot, the only car there besides my ten year old bucket of bolts, she looked frighteningly mad.

“John!” she yelled, waking up perhaps half of the forty floor hotel to the Fish House’s right. “Just where have you been? What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call?”

It took ten minutes before I could talk any sort of sense into her, and explain myself. I promised that I would be home two minutes after she would, I just had to get my keys. Placated, she finally drove off. I quickly jogged back to the golf cart. Turning the corner around the bait shop, I whispered, “Sorry, that was my… mother…”

Marena was gone. She had left her red tshirt, her cutoffs and her sandals in the golf cart, but no other sign. The only way off the dock onto dry land was around the front of the restaurant. She had to have slipped into the water… right?

Sometimes I wonder what she would have done if I could have said yes, yes I will always be here for you.

Ten years later, and I still wonder. I wonder about Pesci’s, which only serves fresh fish, caught locally on the Sea Fox by family. The Sea Fox that doesn’t have any commercial fishing nets, no trawling equipment. I wonder where the Pesci family comes from- they certainly never talk about it. I wonder if the rumor about the pirate’s treasure is true. I wonder where the Pescis go at night- they don’t stay at the restaurant, and they only have one small house in town, not big enough for the whole family, certainly. I wonder about a semi-Pesci named Marena, and if things could have been different. I wonder if where she is now, if she looks up, up the road of moonlight, out of the water to the dock, and remembers me.