The Heart is Just a Mussel - Kate O’ Sullivan
“Did you know mussels have beards?” My little sister asked, her smile toothy and wide.
“What?” I chuckled.
“They have these stringy things that they use to hang onto surfaces, like small tentacles with no suckers.” She flipped her book towards me, the marine encyclopedia as large as her head, and presented the illustration. The orange mussel nestled in the black shell, around the size of the pad of my thumb, and like she said, had long thin tendrils reaching out to grasp onto a piling.
“Can you eat them?”
“Hm,” she pondered, and looked back at the book. “It says that they’re tough and can be sandy, so they aren’t advised to be eaten. But they’re not toxic or anything.”
“That’s pretty cool Dede. Should I get a tin for our review next week?”
“Yes! Yes!” She cried, giggling and jumping up and down with the encyclopedia.
“That’s my little bottom feeder,” I teased before scooping her up into a hug. My little sister and I try a new tin of fish every week, and write a review together in our binder. I’m twenty years older than she is, but Dede is more adventurous than most of the adults I know. I always come up with some samples from the tinning facility I work at. Smoked salmon in chili oil, rainbow trout, mackerel in lemon and capers, and even mussels. Curious, she asked one day what I was eating. I’d just made a cracker with some dill cream cheese and a bite of a sardine, spines still lightly visible.
“It’s some fish from my work, a sardine. Do you wanna try it?” Dede, ever the marine enthusiast, nodded her head and gently plucked the cracker from my hands. She inspected it with great fervor, circling the cracker like her prey, her six year old eyebrows furrowed in analysis. After a quick smell, and what I thought to be a grimace, she popped the cracker in her mouth. It was the slowest I have ever seen someone eat a cracker. Sure she was about to spit it out, I stood up and walked across the kitchen to grab a napkin. In the few seconds I was gone, she’d taken the fork and made herself another cracker, the cream cheese dotted around her lips.
“You like it?” I laughed.
“Mm-hmm!” I pulled her up onto my lap and helped her make herself some sardine crackers. What other six year old likes sardines? Since then, we’ve been reviewing tins together, her scribbles filling the pages alongside our collective rating. We resolved to be picky, having yet to give anything a perfect ten.
When I went to work the next day, I asked if the factory produced any tins of mussels. To my delight, they did. They had smoked mussels, mussels in garlic, even a thai coconut mussel tin. I selected the simple smoked mussel, and picked up a fresh baguette on the way home to soak up the yummy juice. Pairing is everything with tinned fish.
Together, Dede and I made a beautiful plate. The rectangular tin rested in the middle, surrounded by slices of fresh baguette, some sun dried tomatoes, cucumbers for brightness, and red grapes.
“Alright, you ready?”
“Open it, open it!” I carefully pulled the tab of the tin, not wanting to slice my thumb, and we both gazed upon the olive oil sea of fat orange mussels.
“How are you gonna make it?” I asked Dede. Her brow screwed into concentration as she took a slice of baguette and plopped a few sun dried tomatoes over it. With her fork, she skewered one of the soft bottom feeders, and spread it atop the bread. Finally, a hint of flaky salt, because Dede loved salt, and she held it out to me.
“No no, that’s yours. You first.”
“Okay.” She opened her mouth and bit down on the crunchy baguette, wrestling for a moment to tear off a bite. As she tasted it, her head began to bob side to side.
“How is it?”
“It’s so good!” She cried.
“Your rating? Madame fishmonger?” She skewered another mussel, this time plopping the mollusk on her tongue to taste the flavor straight.
“It’s a ten! A ten!” Again and again she went in for the mussels, taking out one at a time and making slices for us both. It made my eyes sting. Eventually I’ll tell her about her Dad, and how he loved mussels too. Anything briny and savory he could get his hands on really. Pickles, pickled ginger, capers, you name it. But mussels were his favorite.
Mussels hold onto life with their tiny little beards, she’d said. Clinging to rocks, piers, anything they can wrap around. Maybe Dede is doing the same, holding onto him this way, even if she doesn’t know it yet. The heart is just a mussel. Soft, briny, a little strange, but strong enough to hang on.
