The Great Wide Sea (26 page)

“I came to get you,” he said. “They're making us something special for dinner.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Dylan and Gerry are waiting. We need to go back.”

“I said I'm not hungry.”

He stopped talking for a minute then said, “You're angry with me, aren't you?” He rubbed the rusty edge of the drum, then studied the orange spot on his fingertip.

“No,” I said, “it's worse than that.” I turned away from him and squeezed the acorns in my hand. “I hate you,” I said, and threw the whole handful into the ocean. They fell like a shower of bombs. “I hate you,” I said again, and started to walk away.

“Ben!” I heard Dad's feet behind me. His hand gripped my arm. “Look at me!” He spun me to face him and grabbed my other arm.

“Let go,” I said.

“No. I want you to tell me what's wrong.”

“You want to know what's wrong? Okay, I'll tell you. You tried to kill yourself. Why did you do that?”

He dropped my arms and stepped back.

“Then Gerry almost drowned and Dylan almost died. And even Mom. You made her—”

“So,” he said. He was shaking. “So.” He swallowed hard. “I see.” He looked quickly toward the dirty beach and then back at me. “You left before I could tell you,” he said. “A special plane is flying in tomorrow. We can roll Dylan's bed right onto the plane—IV, traction, and all. They're taking us to the hospital in Miami. In a few days, we'll be able to go all the way home.”

“Home.” I spit the word back at him. “You like that word now, don't you?” I looked toward the sea, then back at him. I shook my head. “I won't go,” I said. “Not with you.” Then I walked away.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

WHEN I LEFT Dad, I walked to the marina and sat at the end of the pier so all I could see was the ocean and the darkening sky. The wind lifted my hair off my neck. It would have made a perfect reach south. Two slips behind me, three guys loaded provisions on a cruising yacht. They were leaving tomorrow for Hawaii through the Panama Canal to deliver the boat to its new owner. They were shorthanded and they were worried.

We would have loved that. Dylan, Gerry, and me, island hopping to the Canal. Dylan would tell us about the stars and Gerry would play in the cockpit. I would hold the tiller and watch the sails. We would see whales. We could have done that. Or I could have taken care of them in the little house. But Dad came back. He just walked in and said, “Let's go,” ordering us around exactly the way he had done before.

I had said I wouldn't go with Dad. I meant it.

I walked across the dock to where the guys were talking. “I can help,” I said. I lied about my age, but I told the truth about how much I'd sailed. They were glad to have me. Seven thirty tomorrow morning, they said. Don't bring much stuff.

I shook hands with my new mates.
That was easy,
I thought. I had a job now and could take care of myself. I didn't need Dad for anything. I sat on the bench by the grocery store and clenched my jaw tight and waited. The only thing I needed now was to tell Dylan and Gerry good-bye.

When it was late, I walked back to the hospital just in time to see Dad leaving with Gerry in his arms. When Gerry rested his head on Dad's shoulder and Dad rubbed his fingers in Gerry's hair, I suddenly remembered the sharp feel of the bones in Gerry's butt weighing on my arms and the softness of his cheek against my collarbone. I felt the slightly damp place his tears left on my shirt. I felt that long night stretch out before me, and I was scared all over again. Scared and helpless and responsible.

Then Dad and Gerry were gone, and I crept to Dylan's room. The lights were turned down for him to sleep, but as I opened the door, the hall light caught in his open eyes. The door closed behind me, and the room was dark again, lit only by the light through the window. Dylan held out his hand. I took it. It was still smaller than mine—much smaller—but I felt stronger holding it.

“You didn't come back for dinner,” he said.

“I wasn't hungry.”

“Dad's bringing a special plane tomorrow,” he said. “We're going home.”

I nodded. “Dylan.” I let go of his hand and pressed my palms against my forehead. “I came to tell you—I'm not going. I won't go with Dad.”

The pillow rustled as Dylan turned his head toward me.

“But it was an accident, Ben. I was right.”

“It's not just that. It's everything—the boat, the Bahamas, Bermuda.” I took a deep breath. “Look at you, Dylan. Your leg. You almost—” I stopped. “And Gerry. The nightmares. Dad hurt you, Dylan. He hurt Gerry.” I shook the bed rail and Dylan winced. I let go and walked to the door.

“Wait,” Dylan said.

I opened the door and looked back. The light from the hall lay in a long rectangle across the room. I could see a duffel bag full of new clothes sitting on the floor.

“I just signed on as crew for a yacht delivery to Hawaii,” I said. “We leave in the morning. I'm going to see Hawaii, Dylan. And maybe Tahiti. Who knows? It'll be exciting. I'll let you know where I am. I'll always let you know where I am.”

“You're really leaving?” He pushed himself up on his elbows. “Don't go.”

As I walked out, the door closed soundlessly behind me.

I walked the dark streets searching for Dad's motel, and then there it was, low and dark with all the rooms opening onto a patio. Through the opened curtains of one window, I saw Gerry sleeping alone on one side of a double bed. Dad was gone. When I tried the door, it wasn't locked. I slipped inside.

Gerry breathed gently and steadily. When I bent over him I could smell the soap of his shower. When I touched his cheek, it was damp with sweat. Carefully I pulled Blankie off his neck and laid it across his open hands. In his sleep, he moved slightly, then closed his hands on the worn white cloth and raised it to his face.

The floor was a mess. Several open duffel bags spilled across the straw rug. An unopened pack of Batman underwear lay beside one bag. A pile of little-kid books had fallen under a table. A box of markers and a pad of paper sat on Gerry's nightstand. I picked them up to write a note, but I didn't know what to say. In the end, I wrote three words,
Good-bye, little Noogie
. I signed it
Love, Ben.

When I turned away from Gerry, the door was open and Dad was standing just inside the darkness. “I've been waiting for you,” he said. “The other bed is yours, and that bag of gear.” He pointed across the room to a large, unopened duffel bag.

I crossed the room and unzipped it. On top lay five magazines, the latest issue of every car magazine there was. I felt around inside. Two adjustable caps, clothes, and on the bottom some kind of electronic game and CDs. I couldn't tell exactly what it all was just by feeling, but I knew Dad had brought me everything I needed for my new job. I hoisted the bag to my shoulder and shoved past Dad into the cooler air of the night.

“Wait,” he said, following me and closing the door quietly behind him. “We have to talk.” He sat in one of the chairs on the patio and gestured for me to take the other.

I put my bag on the table and stood in the dark.

“Dylan had the nurse call from the hospital,” he said. “You can't do this, you know. You can't just—”

“You can't stop me,” I interrupted.

Dad closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead hard with his fingertips. “Ben,” he said, “I didn't try to kill myself. Why would I do that?”

“Why would you do a safety check in the middle of the night?”

“I was stupid.”

I shrugged.

He drew in breath slowly. “Okay.” He looked away. “I did think about it—killing myself, I mean. Right after your mother's accident, I thought about it a lot.” He closed his eyes. “When I went overboard, I knew all I had to do was let go of the EPIRB. It would have been easy.”

He looked up at me and his voice turned hard. “But I didn't let go. I didn't
want
to let go.”

I shifted my weight in the dark. I wondered if there was blood on the ledge where Dylan had lain. I wondered what had happened to the life jacket Dad had been wearing when he fell into the sea. I wondered who was riding Mom's bicycle these days.

“And you think what happened to your mother is my fault,” Dad said. “I know what you mean by that, and it's not fair.” His fingers marked the width of the chair arm. “It took me a long time to figure that out,” he said. “But I did, and I can tell you it's not fair.”

He looked at me again. “I loved your mother, Ben. I love her now. Her face. Her voice. The way she laughed at me.” He shifted his gaze to the bushes at the edge of the patio. “The way she needed me,” he went on, “sometimes just to hold her.”

He looked at his hand gripping the chair arm. “The way you reach for the wall sometimes,” he said, “just to steady yourself—like when you stump your toe and the pain makes you dizzy.”

He let go of the chair arm and breathed in deeply. “And I needed her,” he said. “When she died, there was nothing to hold me up, and I fell.”

He paused then looked up at me. “You've been so brave. You saved them.”

“We saved each other,” I said.

“Dylan told me everything. And Gerry's been asking for you all night.”

I reached for my bag. “I'll be writing them,” I said.

“But you can't leave them. They'll miss you.”

“They're tough. They'll be okay.”

“And you'll miss—”

“No,” I said quickly. “No, I won't.”

Dad sat still in his chair. I fingered the strap on my shoulder. The sounds of the sleeping town rose up around us. Car tires crunched on the street. A door shut somewhere in the hotel. The breeze pushed an old palm frond against the side of the building. We watched it slap the concrete helplessly with one worn brown leaf.

Dad stood. “One more thing,” he said. He reached into his pocket and held something out to me.

I put the bag down again and took it. It was a soft, silky square. Like a tiny pillow. I turned it over in my hands. A faint scent came off it. Mom. Mom's sachet.

“Where did you get this?” My voice was sharp.

“The boxes.”

“Where are the boxes?”

“At my place.”

I breathed in the fading perfume. I swallowed. “You didn't give away her stuff?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“I thought—” The scent was making me dizzy. “Why did you bring this to me?”

“I brought one for each of you.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn't bring your mother.”

I turned my back on him and walked away.

As I walked, the sidewalk tilted up and down under my feet. I felt the lump of silk in my hand and the shaking inside me. I found myself again beside the sea. I lay down on the little sandy beach and the trembling stilled. I held the sachet to my cheek.

The stars were swimming in the sky. I blinked again and again, and they came into focus. I had them memorized. I could see them from the bow of
Chrysalis
, from the beach of our island, from the bottom of the dinghy. The pinpricks of light glittering like broken glass, spilling in mysterious patterns across the night sky.

Dylan had finally made me understand that the stars don't change. We do. We see them from a tilting, spinning earth circling the sun. We can see them only when the sun is behind us. And even then we see only that tiny portion of the vast universe that is directly above the pinpoint of space we are pointed toward at that single moment in time.

The earth had shifted and I could see Orion again with his belt of three brilliant stars. There were the Pleiades too, shining together like a dusting of silver on the sky.

Pleiades
means “the sisters.”

We never had any sisters. Mom said once that someday our wives would be her daughters. She told us to love them because without love, she said, you are just another person. But with love, you are a power. I remember she was holding my hand on one side of her and Dylan's on the other and Gerry was sitting in her lap. She had been trying to explain about the baby who had died, the brother who would have come after Gerry. Then she was telling us about how much she loved us and Dad. And then she was holding our hands and crying a little, and we were watching.

What if she knew about it all?
I thought. What would she say? What would anyone say? It had been awful, but it was over. We had survived. Tomorrow Dad and Dylan and Gerry would leave on a plane, and I would leave on a boat. Finally I would be free. I would be alone and empty and free.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

WHEN I WOKE up, I was wet with dew and sticky with sand. I sat up in the early sun, still holding the sachet, and realized I had left the duffel bag sitting on the patio table. My big dramatic exit, and I had screwed it up. I would have to go empty-handed. As I walked up to the marina, I saw the taxi driver standing by his cab and sipping coffee from a white mug. Just as I recognized Gerry's blond head in the backseat of the cab, Dad walked out of the marina office.

“There you are!” Dad said when he saw me. His face was tight. I could see he hadn't slept all night.

Gerry turned and looked through the open window at me.

“Hi, Ben,” he called, his face breaking into a happy, little-kid grin.

I smiled back.

“We're going home today,” Gerry said.

I nodded a little. The cabdriver slid back into his seat and shut his door.

“The ambulance is already on its way to the plane,” Dad said. “Once Dylan's out of the hospital, he needs to get to Miami right away. We can't wait. We have to hurry.” He shook his head. Then he turned to me. “Please, Ben,” he said.