Celestial Navigation (32 page)

Now here was the narrow rutted road to the boatyard, pointed out to him so patiently by the driver. A line of cottages and trailers dotted the wild grass. Jeremy plodded along in the herringbone prints of some truck or tractor, keeping his head bent against a cold breeze that was blowing up. The soil was very soggy, as if it had rained not long ago, and soon his shoes and trouser cuffs were damp. He thought the dampness was pleasant—two cool hands pressing the soles of his feet. After rounding each curve he looked for a glimpse of the boatyard. He had no idea how far it was. But when he failed to find it he trudged on without minding. Some kind of rhythm had been set up, and his legs swung forward in a steady trundling gait that seemed to require no effort. He felt he could have gone on till nightfall and still not have tired.

Then up sprang a cluster of gray shacks and a sheet of water beyond them—silently, eerily. He almost thought he had caught them moving into place just out of the corner of his eye. Above the largest building, which was plastered with soft drink signs, a tin chimney seemed suspended from a thread of smoke. There were several shabby cars scattered about, and a rusty flatbed truck beside a shed, and boats lining
the dock and moored out on the water, but he saw no sign of humans. He approached the largest building as slowly as possible. Still, he felt he brought more noise and motion than the rules of this place would allow.

“Al’s Supplies” the sign outside said, with Coca-Cola circles at either end like giant red thumbtacks. Jeremy climbed the hollow wooden steps and went inside. He found a man sitting beside a pot-bellied stove, reading a tabloid. All around him were display cases full of astonishing objects, things made of brass and wood and leather. Coils of very white rope hung from the rafters. In the dimness beyond he saw tinned goods on shelves, and he could smell cheese. “Excuse me,” he said. The man folded his paper very carefully and creased the fold with his thumbnail before he looked up. “I was wondering if you knew where Brian O’Donnell’s house is,” Jeremy said.

“O’Donnell. No such fellow
here
by that name.”

“But—but there has to be,” Jeremy said.

“Nope.”

“Isn’t this the Quamikut Boatyard?”

“Yes, but there ain’t no—”

“He has a house here. His name is O’Donnell, a man with a beard.”

“Well, I never seen him and I know everybody roundabout, Mister.”

“But surely you—and there’s a woman there now with six children, staying in his house.”

“Oh! You’re talking about Mary Pauling.”

“That’s right, that’s who I mean.”

“She’s
here, but I never heard of no O’Donnell before.”

“Well, um, could you tell me how to find her?”

“Sure. You just go on a ways down that road you come in by. Pass the boatyard, you’ll find her place the very last thing. Her and the kids ought to be there right now, it’s Saturday.”

“I see,” said Jeremy. “Well, thank you.”

“You a friend of hers?”

“Friend?”

“I don’t want you going down there if you’re not welcome, now.”

“No, please, it will be all right,” Jeremy said.

He had to endure a long, silent inspection. The man tipped back in his chair and looked him up and down and chewed on his lower lip. Then he said, “Well, okay, get on.”

Jeremy hitched his backpack higher on his shoulders and walked out again. Some of his confidence had faded. Mary’s house was stamped with her name already, her schedule was familiar to people Jeremy had never laid eyes on, her safety was guarded by total strangers. And all in such a short time, a period he would have called sufficient for merely a visit. What was her secret?

He continued down the road past the shacks, alongside the water, across a gravel parking lot. What he was looking for was a vacation cottage, perhaps one of those shingled A-frame things that he had often seen advertised in the resort section of the Baltimore
Sun
. Instead he found a tipsy gray shanty with cinderblocks for a doorstep. Not
here
, surely. He moved around it, hoping for something more suitable just beyond. On the other side, standing on a wooden crate beneath a window, he found Mary. She was humming a cheerful, meandering tune and rolling up a sheet of newspaper. The wind whipped her skirt around her knees, and in spite of the cold she wore no sweater. While he watched she laid the tube of newspaper along the lower crevice of the windowframe, reached down to her feet for a wheel of masking tape, and taped the tube in place. Then she bent for another sheet of newspaper, which was anchored beneath her foot. As she straightened she caught sight of Jeremy. She stopped humming.
He thought her face grew pale, but her voice was perfectly calm. “Hello, Jeremy,” she said.

“Hello.”

He shifted his weight to the other foot.

“Well!” she said finally. “Have you come for a visit?”

“Yes, I—no. I thought—”

His awkwardness made him feel overheated. From one pocket he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead, and while he was doing that she stepped down off the crate and came over to him. “Jeremy?” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“How’d you get here?”

“By bus, and then I walked,” he said.

“Walked! You poor soul!”

She laid a hand on his arm. “Really, it was nothing,” he told her. “I’m not at all tired.” Then he was sorry he said it, because she let go of him and moved away again. He felt he had lost some opportunity that he had noticed only too late. Where her hand had rested, his arm seemed to have become more sensitive. He concentrated on it, re-creating the pressure of her fingers, wishing that his arm possessed some sort of magnetic power. All he saw of her now was her back, the springy tendrils of hair escaping from her bun and her skirt whipping and flattening in the wind. “You’ll want to see the children I guess,” she called back.

“Why, yes, I—”

She led the way to the front of the house. He still couldn’t believe that she would live in such a place. The cinderblocks made a gritty sound beneath his feet, the doorknob was a globe of solid rust and a bald patch in the linoleum nearly tripped him as he entered. At first all he could see was layers of diapers hanging up and down the length of the room. “Sorry,” said Mary, “we’ve had a rainy spell lately, I had
to hang them inside.” She went ahead of him, parting diapers. He felt like a blind man. It was impossible to tell what kind of room he was in. He smelled laundry detergent and cold, stale air. He heard the children’s voices but could see no sign of them. “Seven of hearts,” one said. “Eight.” “Nine, ten.” “Jack? Anyone got the pack?” “Children, Jeremy’s here,” Mary said. Then they broke the last diaper barrier and stood in a doorway, looking into a tiny bedroom. The four oldest girls were playing cards on a caved-in double bed. Edward sat beside them stirring up a deck of cards of his own, and over by the window stood Rachel—could that be Rachel? standing?—holding onto the sill and turning to smile up at him, wearing unfamiliar pink overalls and showing several teeth that he had never seen before. “Jeremy!” Darcy said. They piled off the bed and came to hug him. He felt a tangle of arms around his chest, another pair around his knees. Everywhere he reached out, he touched heads of hair so soft it seemed his fingers might have imagined them. “What are
you
doing here?” they asked him. “Did you come to stay?” “Did you miss us?” He was amazed that they were so glad to see him. After all, they might have forgotten him, or never even noticed his absence. “Well, now,” he kept saying. “Goodness. Well, now!”

“How come you’re wearing my backpack?” Abbie asked.

“Oh, I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed it to carry my supplies.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Also some gifts, I believe,” he said. “Let me see, here.” He hunched his way out of the backpack and set it on the bed. From between his two sandwiches he pulled the surprise balls, and then took forever trying to break into the plastic wrappings. In the end he had to chew through them with his teeth in order to start a rip. He distributed the balls in a great hurry, one to each child, one even to Rachel. “Open
them,” he said. “Go on. They’re surprises, no one knows what’s in them.” He was so anxious for the gifts to turn out all right that the children’s fumbling fingers strained his nerves. He reached into the backpack for one of the sandwiches, unwrapped it and took great tearing bites of it, chewing steadily as he watched the long ribbons of white crêpe paper unwinding onto the floor.

The first to find anything was Pippi. A little ping sounded at her feet. “Oh!” she said, and bent and picked up a flat tin whistle the size of a postage stamp. She turned it over several times. “It’s a whistle,” she said finally. She blew on it, but the sound that came out was whispery and toneless. She turned it over again. “Never mind,” said Jeremy, “go on unwrapping. I’m sure there’s more.” He took another bite of his sandwich. He looked over at Darcy, who had just found her surprise—another whistle. Everyone had whistles. Some had one, some two or three. The only difference between them was the colors. The gifts’ round shape was formed by a cardboard center, something like the core of a ball of string. The centers fell to the floor and rolled around with hollow sounds. Crêpe paper ribbons rose like mounds of spaghetti around everyone’s feet. One by one the children lifted the whistles to their lips, blew them, lowered them, and looked at Jeremy. They seemed not so much disappointed as puzzled. Their faces were courteous and watchful, as if they were waiting for some explanation. When Rachel cried out, holding up her own ball, which was still unopened but damp where she had chewed it, Mary said, “Here, Rachel, I’ll help,” and those faces swung toward Rachel all at the same second, as if they thought
she
might provide what they were waiting for. While Mary unwound the ball Rachel reached out with both hands, catching tails of crêpe paper. At the very end two whistles fell to the floor—one yellow, one blue. She crowed and stooped to pick them up, but Mary was too
quick for her. “No, honey,” she said. “You might swallow them.” Over her shoulder she called, “Darcy, find her something. Hand her my keys, will you?” But the keys were no good. Rachel threw them away and started crying, still straining toward the whistles in her mother’s hand. “Rachel, they’ll
hurt
you,” Mary told her. Then she said to Jeremy, “I’ll just save them till later, shall I?”

“Oh. Surely,” he said.

“As soon as she’s old enough I’ll give them to her. I know she’ll love them.”

Never mind, the last thing I need is
tact
, he wanted to tell her. I know they don’t care for whistles. And I know it doesn’t matter all that much anyway; I’m not a child, after all. But there was no way to say it out loud without bringing on
more
tact—reassurance, protestations. “J think these gifts are lovely,” Mary said. “Aren’t they, children? Wasn’t it nice of Jeremy to bring them?”

Murmurs rose up too quickly, on cue. “Thank you, Jeremy.” “Golly, these sure are nice, Jeremy.”

“Oh, well,” he said.

“You know how fond children are of things that make noise,” Mary told him.

He looked at her helplessly, at her kind, protecting, understanding eyes, and for lack of words he finished the last of his sandwich with a single chomp and wiped the crumbs off on the front of his shirt. Chewing gave him a good reason not to speak. He gazed straight ahead of him, chewing hard, conscious of seven faces turned in his direction and frozen there.

“How is your work going?” Mary asked him.

He chewed on. He couldn’t seem to finish. The bread and cheese seemed to have molded together like soggy newspaper.

“Jeremy?” she said. “Aren’t you working any more?”

Her face was so
concerned
. She was being so careful of him.
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “Of course I am,” he said.

“You are?”

“My work is going
very
well. Very well. I am very pleased with it.”

“Oh,” said Mary. “Well, that’s wonderful.”

“In fact, it’s going better than it ever has before,” he said.

“That’s nice.”

She turned and went out of the bedroom. Following her, he had to bat his way between the damp diapers. The children came behind him in a shuffling, whispering line. When he located Mary again—just easing herself onto a dingy mound of a sofa and arranging Rachel upon her lap—Jeremy sat down too, but at some distance from her. The children settled themselves on the floor, all facing their parents, completely silent now. He winced to see them on that cold, blackened linoleum. He noticed how shabby and unattractive they looked—ragged children with reddened noses and chapped hands and lips, their sleeves short enough to expose their wrists and their shoes muddy and curling at the toes. And the house filled him with despair. At each gust of wind outside the cold burst in upon him like little knives from several directions. The furniture seemed untrustworthy—infested or disease-ridden. He sat gingerly on the edge of the couch. He kept his eyes averted from the miserable attempt at a kitchen that he had glimpsed across the room. Why must she choose the very
worst
house to live in? Why had she gone husbandless to the hospital that time, no doubt calling down all the nurses’ pity and indignation? Was it purposeful? Was it aimed at him? Yet the next thing she said was, “We’re doing very well, too.”

He stared at her.

“We’re doing beautifully,” she told him.

Yes. She would do beautifully anywhere. There was no defeating her. He felt tired at the thought of her.

“I have a job now, you know,” she said. “I work at a day nursery in one of those cottages up the road. You probably passed it.”

“Do—but what about the children?” he said.

“Well, the younger ones I take with me. The others go to school.”

“School? Is there a school out here?”

“There are schools everywhere, Jeremy. They can walk out to the highway and catch a bus that takes them right to the door.”

He imagined them in a huddle at the bus stop, shivering in their thin, patched dresses, their bare legs blotchy with cold. “Mary, I don’t think—it sounds so—”