Atlas and Alice, Issue 20
Amy R. Martin
Oysters 1. Like some old-timey aristocrat, she sent my husband a clipping in an envelope sealed with a crimson wax heart. When I opened the envelope, it fluttered to the ground like a lady’s handkerchief, like an invitation: Pick me up, it said. It was from the Travel section of The Evening Standard: “The Limfjord is home to the world’s largest concentration of wild European oysters.” She’d drawn smiley-faced stick figures of herself and my husband—miniature flat-shelled bivalve enthusiasts, half-pint hunter-gatherers in rubber gloves and waders—holding hands on the beach at Aalborg, next to a basket brimming with mollusks. 2. “I will not lend thee a penny,” says Falstaff to Pistol in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Pistol replies, “Why, then the world’s mine oyster, / Which I with sword will open.” Oysters are notoriously difficult to open, but perhaps inside loiters a pearl, nacred, iridescent, a pale porcelain-white or bluish-gray beauty with a dark speck at its core. Something worth something. “The world is your oyster,” I say to my children. Yours for the taking—with violence, if necessary. 3. oyster shell drop a bombshell shell company in a nutshell she sells seashells by the seashore shell game shell shock shell out walk on eggshells with silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row come out of your shell no crawl back into your shell you are a shell of your former self 4. Tourists and adulterers alike bring garnishes like sherry vinegar and shallots, horseradish cream, or dill and lemon juice to Limfjord. Oysters are also delicious with wood sorrel and parsley oil, a Nordic favorite, or, more exotically, with ponzu sauce made with sugar, fresh lime juice, mirin, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar. 30
