Blue Water (25 page)

“Nobody's saying that,” I said, quickly.

“But that's what she's thinking. Toby, too. Who can blame them? I keep screwing up. I just screw everything up. Look at this place. I mean, it was helping. Some of it was weird, sure, the part you saw, but the counselors were great, the people, you know? And then, this morning, the day nurse comes and says there's a problem, I have to speak to Joanna. Thirty thousand dollars! Everything I've touched, everything I've tasted—toothpaste, bottled water, those fucking scrubs we had to wear—there it all is, like a grocery bill. And I thought these people
cared
about me.”

Silently, I returned the package of tissues.

“It should have been me that got killed in that accident. It's true. All of us know it. And it would have been such a
mercy
.”

For no reason, for every reason, I started to cry again. “I have to stop doing this,” I said. “Whoever said that crying makes you feel better was—”

“—so absolutely full of shit. I know.”

We were approaching the interstate. I slowed, waiting it out, like an unexpected squall. It could have been a few minutes. It could have been an hour.

“What are you doing here?” Cindy Ann finally said, only now her voice sounded flat, far away. “I signed the settlement, in case you didn't hear. There isn't much left, but you'll get something, at least.”

Glancing at her, I recognized the look I'd seen on her face at the grocery store. I'd mistaken it, then, for indifference. Now, I saw it for what it was. There would be no making this right, and she knew it. She was waiting, without resistance, for whatever it was I might say. I could hurt her, now, perhaps even kill her, with a single, well-chosen word.

I followed the ramp onto the interstate, my burning eyes fixed on the broken, white lines, until I was ready, after so many months, after so many years, to answer her question. “I wanted to tell you I'm sorry for what I said. When you told me about Dan Kolb.”

Her hands worked against each other, hard, in the core of her lap.

“I was upset,” I said. “I wasn't thinking straight. I always wanted to tell you that.”

After a while, she said, “I always wondered.”

Then she said: “Oh, Meggie.” And we drove for what seemed like hundreds of miles, the darkness like a thick bandage over a wound.

“I am,” she said, “so sorry. So unspeakably sorry. Too.”

 

At the mill, Toby's truck and Mallory's Nova were nosed into the hay bales along the south wall. I crowded the Mercedes beside them,
trying to get as much protection as I could. According to the dashboard thermostat, it was three below zero—ten degrees colder than it had been when I'd first set out for Twin Lakes—and as I got out of the car, I imagined Rex, perched on
Chelone
's bow in his shirt-sleeves. Looking up at the same night sky. Listening to the tinkle of Christmas carols floating across the Cove. Every year, the marina held a Christmas dance, ending with a Candlelight Promenade: drunken couples stumbling toward the beach, howling carols at the moon. Eli had regaled us with the stories. From the beach, the party would migrate over to Island Girls. More dancing. More drinking. An annual adult talent show that Ladyslip regulars spoke about in whispers and guffaws.

How strange, how foreign, it all seemed to me now, as I helped Cindy Ann across the icy parking lot. The medications she'd been taking made her dizzy, she said, especially after she'd been sitting for a while. Her face and hands were swollen, bloated. Her hair was falling out. She walked with the stiffness of a very old woman, staring at the ground. Surely, I thought, as we started up the steps, if Rex could be here, if he could actually see—

My father's cell phone started to ring. It startled us both; the jolt rippled between us. I suppose we were imagining Joanna, swooping out of the darkness on her broom. “It's just my mother checking up on us,” I said, searching for the sound inside the deep pocket of her coat. At last, I found it, flipped it open, pressed its icy cheek against my ear.

“You've caught us on the landing,” I said, breathless from the cold. “Come out and let us in.”

“You're where?” Rex said, his voice as clear, as warm, as if he'd materialized beside me. I stopped where I stood—Cindy Ann stopped, too—and my cold cheeks flushed with heat. I felt as if I'd
been caught doing something shameful. Sexual.

“Where are you?” I said, turning away from Cindy Ann.

“Nantucket,” he said, then laughed.

“What?”

“Okay, a Beneteau fifty-seven called
Nantucket
. Hey, listen, you want the good news or the bad news?”

My heart seized. “Bad news.”

“Of course you do.” He laughed again. “
Chelone
needs a new compressor for the refrigerator.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Now for the good news.
Nantucket
has a used one we think is going to work. I'm talking on her world phone—it's this cell phone you can use almost anywhere. Isn't it amazing? We need to look into getting one of these!”

The door to Toby's apartment opened. Mallory stepped out.

“Are the girls still up?” Cindy Ann called. She climbed the last few steps alone; Mallory embraced her.

“Toby's parents took them out to see
A Christmas Carol
. They had these tickets—”

I'd forgotten about the tickets. Rex was still talking. “Just a minute,” I said, because now Toby was on the landing, too.

“I'll be right in,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the wind, and then I turned, walked back down the stairs into the cold. A little alcove stood just beneath the stairs; I ducked into it, pressed against the cinder-block walls.

“What's going on?” Rex said. “Who's there?”

“My family.”

“What are they doing up so late? Waiting for the animals to speak?”

“Something like that,” I said. For years, Evan had believed—as
I had, as my parents had, as my German grandparents had, long ago—that on Christmas Eve, at midnight, all animals everywhere could speak with human tongues. It seemed wrong of Rex to joke about it now. Quickly, to change the subject, I said, “So how's
Chelone
? Aside from the compressor, I mean.”

As Rex told me about the test sail he'd taken, the stress fractures he'd discovered in the whisker poles—
whisker poles?
—I could hear music, voices, laughter. I could also hear, in Rex's watery tones, the faintest lisp, which meant he'd been drinking.

“You've really been working on the boat?” I said, interrupting him, and he said, “Of course I've been working on the boat, haven't you been listening?”

But my chilblained ear was absorbing the lyrics to “No Woman No Cry,” courtesy of the world phone's excellent reception.

“Sounds like quite a party.”

“For Pete's sake, Meg. It's Christmas Eve. I came aboard to look at the compressor, and Jack invited me to stay.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's just—everything
will
be ready to make passage, won't it? As soon as I get there?”

“As soon as we get the new whisker poles installed. I just ordered a set through a rigger in Miami. You'll have to pick them up, okay?”

“A real blue water passage,” I said. “Away from everything.”

“
Nantucket
spent some time in Tobago a few years back—”

“Tobago,” I said. “That's perfect.”

“—Jack and Nancy. I think you'd really like them. And they're giving us a great deal on this compressor, if I can figure out how to get the damn thing through the forward hatch. Solves a problem for them as well.”

Wind beat around the corner of the mill, roared into the alcove, doubled back. The gust tore Rex's words from my ear, scattering
them like grain.

“What?”

“I said, Have you talked to Arnie yet?”

“No,” I said. “But I saw the photographs.”

“And?”

“They're very upsetting,” I said. “In every possible way.”

For a minute, neither of us said anything.

“Hello?” Rex said.

“Do you love me?” I said.

His laugh was abrupt, broken by static. Even the world phone's connection, it seemed, was doomed to the uncertainties of distance. “Meg.”

“I need to be certain. I need to know what I'm coming back to.”

“You're coming back to me,” Rex said, and now the sounds of the party seemed to fade. “To us.”

I waited, not breathing, willing the connection between us to hold.

“I love you. More than ever.” There was no pause, no slur. “I don't know how I'd live with myself if I thought you didn't believe that.”

“So if I don't sign the paperwork—” I began.

“—how brave you are, going to the wedding, looking Cindy Ann and her sisters in the face. I've been wanting to—”

He hadn't heard. Now there was a humming, like the drone of a distant plane.

“Rex, I have to tell you this. I've made up my mind not to sign.”

“—things haven't been right between us. I know I haven't…all that I should—”

“I missed that, honey,” I said.

“What?”

“This is so very difficult,” I said.

I would wait to tell him, I decided, until I'd returned to
Chelone
. Perhaps until we were back on blue water, en route to a place like Tobago, the chart kits unfurled in our laps. Slow waves rising and falling all around us. Nothing but time to work things through. Again, I lost the sound of his voice, and it was as if he'd been swept away from me by an unforeseen gust of wind. I remembered that first squall, when he'd been knocked from the cabin top. I remembered the lightning strike, the smell of ozone like an ache behind my eyes. Now, clinging to the phone, I repeated,
“Are you there? Are you there?”
An incantation. A prayer. And then, suddenly, I could hear him again.

“—Rubicon,”
he was saying. “At least, that's what she told Audrey…could…back to North Carolina after all, but—”

He was talking about Bernadette. “Did you say they made Miami?”

“—haven't heard, so I guess—”

Static like the sound of rising water.

“I'm losing you,” I said. “Can you try calling back?”

“—home?”

I took a guess. “After New Year's. After I pick up the whisker poles. Do you have a street address?”

The phone chirped sweetly. The call had ended. I waited for another minute or two, in case it might ring again. Then another blast of wind sent me scurrying up the stairs and into the relative warmth of Toby's apartment.

 

Mallory had made a late supper for us all—lentils and rice, homemade naan, a creamy yogurt sauce to go with it—and we crowded
around the small kitchen table, breathing in the smell of jasmine, curry, the pungent sandalwood incense Mallory set to burn on the counter. “Purifying,” she explained. And, indeed, as we ate, it seemed as if something unpleasant were being siphoned from the air, making it easier to breathe, to speak.

Pass the bread, please.

Pass the salt.

The girls, it turned out, would be spending the night at the Pfister; my mother had already tucked them into my canopied bed, wrinkled and red from sitting too long in the deep Jacuzzi bath. I could sleep on the couch, Toby assured me, or in one of the girls' twin beds. Or—if I preferred—I could have Mal's place, where they now lived, across the hall.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. I was utterly exhausted. Numb. Grateful to know I wouldn't have to drive all the way back to Milwaukee.

This is delicious.

Thanks. Want more?

I can't believe how great this place looks.

One by one, the cats appeared, butting their heads against our ankles, blinking their strange, gold eyes. Abruptly, Mallory said to me, “Thanks for your help today,” and Cindy Ann said—I could see how hard she was trying—“I'd still be sitting in the lobby. Me, Nurse Ratched, and her little dog, Toto.”

“What was it like there?” Toby said.

We looked at each other, Cindy Ann and I.

“It was nuts,” I said. “It was like
The Twilight Zone
.”

Mallory flushed, started to object, but Cindy Ann stopped her.

“It's true,” she said. “But there were good parts, too. Being with the other people, women just like me. Who have experienced things—” Her face colored as she spoke, but then she continued. “I
mean, like what Dan did to me.”

I glanced at Mal's face; of course, she knew. Perhaps Toby had told her. Perhaps she'd always known.

Cindy Ann pushed a limp strand of hair from her face. “Most were alcoholics. Or drug addicts. Some were cutting themselves, starving themselves. It's the first time I haven't felt like a freak.”

“Nobody thinks you're a freak,” Mallory said.

“My girls do,” Cindy Ann said. She was directing her words to the arrangement of dried milkweed pods at the center of the table. “They knew I was coming home tonight, right?”

“Of course,” Mallory said.

“That's why they stayed at the hotel.”

“You shouldn't take it that way,” Mallory said, and Toby said, “It's just that they were exhausted. And we thought it would give you a chance to get settled in, you know, get some rest.”

Cindy Ann pushed the lentils around on her plate. “I want to see them,” she said. “I want a chance to explain. Things are going to be different now. I want everyone to know that.”

“You can tell them tomorrow,” Mallory said.

“Is Amy coming, too?”

“For Christmas dinner.”