The Silver Boat (5 page)

He didn't answer, just checked on the lines, making sure they'd been properly cleated.

“Doesn't she like the boat?” Dar pressed.

“Of course she does,” he said, gazing at his masterpiece: twenty-eight feet long, the hull and cabin painted oyster white; the mast, boom, and other brightwork varnished golden brown.

“This boat's not like the others you make,” Dar said.

“Because she's our family's alone. I built her for us and not for pay.”

Her father had taken Dar sailing before—but always on other people's boats. He was so good, they'd hire him to design and build their boats, then hire him again to teach them everything he knew about sailing and the sea.

“My grandfather would be proud and I don't say that lightly,” he said.

“Why wouldn't you say it lightly?” Dar asked.

“Well, I don't like to brag. But I learned to be a carpenter in his shop, and no work was too fine for the old man. He could be critical. Very tough. But he taught me all his tricks. Will you look at that fairing?”

“Fairing?” Dar asked.

“Sanded so finely you can't see the seams.”

“She's the most beautiful boat I've ever seen.”

“Her name is
Irish Darling,
after my darling Dar.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Yes. And after your mother and sisters. With a name like that, she could easily sail from Menemsha to Cork,” he said. “Across the Atlantic and straight into Kinsale Harbor.”

“I want to go to Ireland,” Dar said.

“You will, Dar. I promise, someday. Not this summer, but soon. Once I bring back the proof.”

“The proof of what?”

“Of our birthright.”

“I still don't get it, Daddy.”

“Oh, it's a fairy tale about a troublemaker.”

“Is the troublemaker bad?” Dar asked.

Her father laughed in a way that gave her chills and made her beam. Even at twelve, Dar had magical threads running through her veins, picking up every sensation and emotion in her family. When her father laughed, there was nothing better.

“No, not at all,” he said. “Some of the best people are troublemakers.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“Can we go on board?” Dar said. Her father lifted her down from the dock and she went straight to exploring. She tried opening all the cabinets and hanging lockers, got the hang of the secret latch on each one. He'd sanded everything so carefully, made the wood fit even the tightest spots, painted the surface with glowing amber varnish, created narrow shelves above the berths so they would have a place to keep their books and notebooks and paints.

“Can you find the hiding place?” he asked.

“For a person to hide in?” she asked.

He laughed. “No. Smaller.”

She'd looked in every drawer and cabinet, reaching back, closing her eyes, feeling for spots that weren't supposed to be there.

Again he'd laughed, watching her try to figure it out. Finally he showed her: the deck looked solid, made of teak and holly. But if you pressed one tiny square of wood, a block of floor lifted out, leaving a hole just deep enough to hide passports, tickets, tide tables, and a brass sextant.

“It's so cool,” she said, hugging him, smelling the familiar mixture of smoke, sawdust, and varnish.

In the dream she felt him drifting away, not only his body but his mind, as if he had already left to cross the ocean, and Dar's chest ached, wondering how any document, no matter how important to him, could make him leave. She had woken up, sweating in a panic.

Most of the year, Dar's family lived in a cozy, gray-shingled, blue-shuttered house in the harbor town of Noank, Connecticut: a bus ride to school, a bike ride to the boatyard where her father worked. Her grandmother had bought the house for her parents soon after Dar was born.

But in Dar's artwork, their normal little house morphed. She wrote a series of graphic novels about Dulse, a girl whose father disappeared from her life—despite his promises—just as Dar's had from hers. Scenes of black, white, and gray; perpetual winter, dirty snow, ice across Mystic River and the contours of Noank Harbor.

The dream-house's windows overlooked a cove full of swans frozen into the ice. Dar floated through the rooms like a ghost, dissolved into vapor just as she had the day her parents separated. They didn't call it that; they just said he was going to sleep at the boatyard for a while. But Dar knew.

Then they said he was going to take a trip to Ireland. Dar had almost felt relieved. Maybe he could get that document and come home and everything would be better.

But things got worse and eventually fell apart. He sailed across the Atlantic, called once to say he'd made it to Ireland, and then never came home again.

Dar's bones had turned to water, and her skin had become as fragile as cobwebs. She had broken open, and she felt as if her heart had been stolen by one of the bald eagles that flew down from the Arctic every winter.

Their grandmother had come down to Noank from Boston. Dar remembered that she never cried or even looked sad—as if her mission was to lift the mood of her family, get them back on the right track, heal the children's sorrow, drinking endless cups of tea.

In Dar's dreams and her drawings of Dulse, her grandmother wore a crown. Her father used to complain about the Noank cottage, saying it wasn't the gift he so much minded, but the fact that his mother-in-law constantly reminded him from whom it had come—that he hadn't bought and paid for it.

Dar's dream spirit flew outside, down to the cove where she and her father had walked at night, to look up at the sky and learn about the stars. Lights glowed in town and the harbor, making the darkness hazy. He'd pointed out his favorite constellation, Orion, and she'd shown him hers, the Pleiades—sisters clustered together.

Waking suddenly before dawn, she forgot where she was and that she was solid, human, older than her father had been when he'd left. Andy slept beside her. She eased out of bed, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed a warm fleece blanket, and went outside to sit. Scup followed her, took a turn around the frostcoated yard, spread himself at her feet.

This was her discipline, morning and night. She sat on a low teak bench between the Hideaway and the beach path, watching the eastern sky lighten to lavender, bright stars swinging so low they seemed to brush the field and sea. It took time for her to settle, but finally she began to follow her breath, noticing as it went in and out. Soon she stopped noticing the cold and the sound of the waves breaking offshore.

Impermanence; all things must pass.

The need to accept the unacceptable had led her to this practice. She had been wild and sad, swinging back and forth, close to losing herself forever. She had done everything possible to numb herself, protect herself from the pain—drinking and taking refuge in her work, as if they could protect her from every loss, fear, and worry.

At first she'd wait until five to drink: a scotch while going over that day's work. Then wine with dinner, liter bottles of white wine, so many she'd started to feel ashamed about putting them out for collection. Scotch became vodka because it tasted cleaner and she hoped it would help what had become murderous hangovers.

Midnight phone calls she wouldn't remember; she'd wake in the morning and see her chicken-scratch handwriting on a pad beside the bed, unfamiliar area codes, illegibly doodled names. Once she'd hit redial, heard an old boyfriend's voice, and hung up softly, feeling mortified.

A heavy snowstorm when she shouldn't have been driving, arriving home after a Christmas party, tripping over a rock in the yard, waking up the next morning covered with snow. Left side of her face black and blue, temple cut with a line of frozen blood on her cheek, and instead of calling 911 she'd gone to the freezer for the Stoli, poured a tall glass and sat by the window staring at the whiteout.

But the worst part of drinking hadn't been the injuries, dramatic near-misses, embarrassing phone calls. It had been the long, slow loss of herself. Dar had cut herself off from friends, family, and life the best she could. She drank to feel alive, and then she drank to feel numb. There was no middle ground. Her hand began to tremble as she drew. Worst of all, the stories disappeared. Dulse went underground, and between hangovers and blackouts, Dar couldn't find her.

Sitting on the bench now, she wrapped the blanket tighter. With every breath she let her shoulders drop a little more. She found herself opening up, exposing her tender heart, feeling deep sadness. The contact was fresh and raw, but it was reality. For so long stillness had amplified her fears. She'd felt empty and alone, panicking and jumping up from the bench or cushion at the first painful feeling.

Two weeks after falling in the snow, she'd started going to Alcoholics Anonymous—a morning meeting at the hospital in Oak Bluffs. That was fifteen years ago. Andy had gotten sober there, too. Two people who needed solitude joining a group to save their own lives. Now Dar mixed it up, attending the early meeting less frequently. There were meetings all over the island, different times of day, whenever she felt like going.

When she was finished her meditation, the sky was deep blue. Standing, she stretched, and so did Scup. She went back inside the Hideaway to find Andy still asleep. She stared at him for a moment. They were both loners, had never tried to live together, but it thrilled her to see him in her bed.

She leaned down to kiss him, and he rolled over and pulled the covers back. He was long, weathered, with a sexy sideways grin, and he was hard. She stood by the bed, undoing her buttons, letting her clothes drop to the floor. He stared at her body, and she liked it.

He took her hand, pulled her into bed. He kissed her, one hand on the back of her head, then moved his mouth down her neck, shoulders, to her breasts. Her nipples tingled, and she could barely lie still. She eased her way down, took him in her mouth. He moaned, and she wanted to drive him crazy.

She felt him starting to come, and backed off. He was still on his back, so she climbed on top of him, so wet he slipped right inside her. He cupped her breasts in his rough hands, and she began to move in tight circles. She tried to slow down, but he wouldn't let her, and she didn't really want to. Arms thrown around his neck, she lowered her chest to his, moving her hips hard up and down. He made an aching sound and she did too as she felt everything inside her hot and melting.

She climbed under the covers and he wrapped them tight around her. They stared into each other's eyes. Andy had lines in his face and around his green eyes. His brown hair was going gray, but he still reminded her of the boy she'd grown up with. They'd hung out every summer, but it wasn't until five years ago that their friendship had become something more.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did that just ruin your meditation?”

“Made it better.”

“Last night you were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Words I couldn't understand.”

The language of Dulse,
Dar thought. They climbed out of bed, took a shower together. She wanted to make love again, and it was obvious he did, too. But they had to get going.

“Can I take you for a ride before your sisters are up?” he asked when they'd dried off and gotten dressed. “Show you the stone wall?”

“Yes,” she said, and they headed out.

He opened his truck door, and she and Scup climbed in. Andy drove out the driveway, tires crunching the frosty ground. He stopped at Alley's Store to pick up coffees, and Dar checked to see whether Harrison had replied to her note—he hadn't. Back in the truck, Andy headed down a private lane in West Tisbury.

Dar was silent. She needed to see Andy a lot, almost every night. But there were other times when she required solitude, when she had to go deep into herself, nature, and the memories that drove her work. On nights like that, she couldn't be with him. He was the same way. He needed his life alone in his pine cabin. It made her sad sometimes, that they couldn't give each other more.

He drove along, under a canopy of bare oak branches. The deeper woods were filled with tall pines. A vernal pool lay in a hollow, the still, dark water glistening with cold light.

Andy parked the truck, and Dar and Scup followed him down a path covered with pine needles and fallen leaves, taking care not to slip on the frosty surface. At the bottom was a rushing stream, icily coursing from a melting pond. They crossed the water, made their way up the opposite side, stood at the edge of a seemingly endless field.

“This was one of the original island farms,” he said. “That's its millpond.”

“Where's the house?” she asked.

“No house right now. Just a cellar hole and this pond. And the wall . . .”

“I suppose the new owner plans to fill the pond, maybe dig a swimming pool, and build a sprawling mansion bigger than the one he has in Greenwich.”

“No mansion,” Andy said. “He just wanted the wall repaired. Wait till you see.”

They climbed the hill opposite the pond, and there it was, massive and sturdy stones cut from granite, covered with silver-green lichens and glistening frost. It looked as if it had been there forever, sprung from the glacier that had formed the Vineyard.

“Which part did you repair?” Dar asked, examining closely.

“You can't tell?” he asked. “Then I've done something good.”

“You have,” she said. “It looks entirely eighteenth century.”

“Earlier,” he said. “Sixteen hundreds.”