CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, I GOT UP AROUND DAWN. IT WAS SATURDAY MORNING. The house was still, and the air was infused with a sepia-toned light. I grabbed a bowl of cereal, cleaned up, or so I thought— Ingrid later told me that she knew something must have been wrong when she found the milk in the cupboard along with the orange juice, and the cornflakes in the fridge. I left the water running in the shower. I wore my T-shirt inside out.
I drove to the dock where my grandfather kept the Seabird, a fully restored forty-three-foot antique wooden sailboat, a fractional sloop made from teak and mahogany. The Falcon had insisted we take sailing lessons when we were little. Pop, on the other hand, had no experience of boats. Every time we set sail, he was convinced we’d never be seen or heard from again. As far as Pop was concerned, boats sank.
“Your father,” my grandfather, referencing an old joke, once said to Bing and me, “thinks that yacht rhymes with hatchet.”
“You sure you want to go sailing today, Collie?”
Gil Evans operated the marina. He was a nice enough guy—I’d known him since I was six years old—but like a lot of people, he was a little overzealous in his level of concern about my grandfather and what he knew and what he didn’t know and what he should know.
Although the Falcon was preoccupied with matters of personal entitlement, he didn’t need to be. Keeping Peregrine Lowell happy seemed to be a pretty big priority for just about everyone he ever encountered, even those who noisily prided themselves on pretending otherwise.
“Just thought you should know, Mr. Lowell . . .”
It was Gil’s signature greeting, accompanied by muted voice and deferred glance, his perpetually doffed cap in hand. The Falcon used to parody his obsequiousness—referring to him as “trouble at the mill Gil”—but nevertheless considered it his due.
“It’s okay, Gil. I’m just taking a short run home. I’ll be back soon.”
He shrugged, frowning. “I’m not sure. . . . Does your grandfather know about this?”
“Hey, you old guys worry too much. It’ll be fine. Anyway, he’s not around. He’s busy terrorizing Chicago into submission. . . . Don’t worry about it, I’m just kidding around,” I added lamely, seeing the alarmed expression on his face.
“Oh, sure,” he said, forcing a smile.
I pulled a hooded fleece over my head and steered into the choppy current, setting a course for the Vineyard, my first trip back home since Bingo and Ma died, another tentative step on the road to getting over it. I hadn’t seen Pop or Uncle Tom since we’d buried Bingo and Ma.
I felt as if I hadn’t eaten anything in days, as if I’d been fasting so long, I’d forgotten how to eat, and all I could think about was that big empty house on the beach.
I shielded my eyes from the golden light of the emerging sun with my hand. The deck was glowing in luminous shades of orange and peach, wavering in the dreamy first light of day. The winds brisk, the sailboat skimmed through the indigo waves, cobalt sky on the horizon, and I was gliding toward home.
I walked along Squibnocket Beach after docking the boat a couple of miles or so from the house. I needed the walk. The waves rushed in, and white foam gurgled around my ankles. Bingo and I used to hit the beach at dawn on days like this, strip down to nothing, and ride the waves into shore.
Hundreds of white seagulls lining the morning beach soared suddenly skyward. I was standing thigh-deep in the Atlantic, ocean water bubbling around me like a cauldron. I wiped my wet face and pressed the palms of both hands against my eyes. I was up to my ass in water. The mist rising like steam, undertow dragging me sideways, I was in the waves and teetering, toes shifting and digging into the loamy clay bottom. It was a wild day in the ocean, and I should have been having the time of my life with Bing; instead I was just standing there and bawling like a baby.
As I opened the unlocked door leading into the kitchen, the dogs rushed forward, nearly overpowering me, barking and spinning, dashing past me and through me, between my legs, out to the driveway, noses in the air, looking for Ma and for Bingo.
It was early afternoon. Pop’s bedroom was empty, and Uncle Tom was still sleeping. I don’t know quite what I expected. I didn’t expect to see so many pies. There were pies everywhere—in boxes with clear cellophane windows. Pies all over the kitchen table, mounted in layers from one end of the counter to the other, stacked like books on chairs; there were pies being used as doorstops, and a pie box was turned on its side, holding open the kitchen window.
Several of the little dogs greeted me with lemon filling on their whiskers. Bachelor may have been in mourning, but still his muzzle was sticky and covered in cherry filling, crumbs decorating his deep chest. An empty vodka bottle on top of the stove presided over the pie population like a totem.
Mambo followed me up the stairs, goosing me all the way to Bingo’s third-floor bedroom. I hesitated before opening the door. Bingo’s room was painted ice blue, the walls, the woodwork and fireplace, the ceiling. There was an old wooden model sailboat on the dresser, its delicate sails blowing. A breeze came in through the open window. In a tall vase on the mantel, bunches of blue asters wavered.
Bingo’s bedroom window was thrown wide open. There were fresh linens on his bed. His shirts, newly laundered and pressed, hung in his closet waiting for him. And everywhere in the house there was the unspoken thought that Bingo was coming home.
This oasis of neatness in an otherwise topsy-turvy household was my aunt Brigid’s handiwork, the fragrance from her favorite perfume, Tweed, still lingering. She had flown in from Ireland for the funeral and stayed for a few weeks to help out Pop and Uncle Tom, but their drinking finally chased away her good intentions.
Bingo’s room never looked like this when he was alive—then the floor was littered with clothes and comics, dog hair and textbooks in piles in the corner, their spines uncracked. It was never quiet the way it was that day.
I was in the middle of this unfamiliar shimmering shrine to my brother, and my heart lurched into my throat. Mambo’s head next to my knee, I sat on the edge of Bing’s bed for what seemed like a long time. I got up and opened the closet and removed a handful of ties. Bingo never learned how to tie a tie. I always did it for him. I tried to teach him, but he was impatient and insisted he didn’t need to learn because I would always be there to do it for him. I sat on the side of the bed and made my knots, Mambo watching casually as he licked whipped cream from his front paws.
“So rumor has it that you’re a little the worse for wear,” Uncle Tom said, finding me stretched out on Bingo’s bed, Mambo beside me, his head next to mine on the pillow. I was scratching his ear. Every time I stopped, he made this low throaty sound and then thumped me on the top of the head with his big paw. I felt as if I were an enslaved oarsman on a galley ship.
“I’m all right.”
Tom sidled into the room from the doorway, giving the floor a lingering sideways glance—he had a habit of looking at you without ever looking at you.
“Say, he’s bold,” Uncle Tom said as Mambo gave me another whack.
“What’s with all the pies?” I asked him as he sat at the end of the bed, still avoiding my eyes.
“Charlie and I are trying to buck up the baker’s spirits, so we’ve been buying up his daily inventory.”
“Mr. Peekhaus?” I sat up on my elbows and looked at Uncle Tom.
Tom nodded.
“Why?”
“His wife of twenty-four years left him for another man. Just like that. No warning at all—he came home from his deliveries one day about three weeks ago, and she was gone. Vamoosed.” Uncle Tom punctuated the last word, using his hand to make a diagonal slash in the air.
“So I don’t get it. What have the pies got to do with it?”
Uncle Tom frowned, exasperated by my stupidity. “A man in his position likes to feel in some demand,” he said impatiently.
“What are you and Pop going to do with all of them? You can hardly get in the door. . . .”
Uncle Tom sighed with theatrical fervor and looked provoked beyond reason. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, drawing out each word.
“Okay, okay . . . I was just wondering,” I said, lying back down and staring up at the ceiling.
“So anyway,” he said, “as far as the matter of your mother goes, it’s a miss, but it’s a good miss.”
I leaned into Mambo, his nose touching my nose; he was panting, his moist breath sweet and warm, like an apple pie.
“As to the other, well, now he’s gone, I could use some help at the loft taking care of the pigeons. I’ve missed most of the racing season on account of all this trouble. He was helping me field a team this year, you know. You weren’t much help.” Uncle Tom glanced toward the open bedroom door.
“I know.” I wondered if my face was as blank as my brain.
“So, as usual, I’m left in the lurch.” He was staring out into the hallway.
“Yeah, well . . . he liked pigeons. . . .”
“He was all right,” Uncle Tom said, eyes directed on the floor.
Neither of us spoke for a few moments.
“Where’s Pop?” I finally asked.
“Oh, he’s around here someplace. The way he’s carrying on. . . . Well, I’m not impressed. Does the world revolve around Charlie Flanagan?” He shook my shoulder, forcing me to look up at him.
“You know, he’s not the only one who’s suffering. What about me?”
The weather had taken a turn for the worse, but I didn’t care. I hardly noticed. I took off without seeing Pop, and I left Uncle Tom in the kitchen making us something to eat—I could hear him chatting up the dogs, the refrigerator door opening and closing, the teakettle whistling in the background. He’d sometimes let that thing whistle until the kettle burned dry, he and Pop bickering about the same old things. I slipped out the front door and ran full out toward the water.
I just couldn’t face all those pies.
Barefoot, I jogged along the beachfront and back to where the boat was pulling and bucking, straining at its moorings. The waves rose and the wind whirled around me, sand cutting into my skin like pellets. The sun was gone, replaced by gray clouds and bruised skyline. The wind and the waves combined to make a single deafening roar, and everything on the boat was flapping, banging, and rattling. I pulled a sweatband from my jacket pocket to keep my hair, crazy as seaweed, from blowing into my eyes, and I went about the business of setting sail for Cassowary, where I knew Ingrid would be waiting for me with a glass of iced tea.
Where the hell was Pop, anyway? What were they thinking, loading up the house with pies, the dogs helping themselves, and Pop and Uncle Tom wandering around indifferent to the world they’d made, their stories and opinions preceding them, announcing them like trumpets?
Ma was gone. Bingo was dead. Everything had changed and nothing had changed and all I could think about was the view of the gardens from the fragrant back veranda at Cassowary.
A deafening crack of thunder overhead jolted me back to the Seabird as ocean waves shot up around me like catapults. Within moments I was staggering around, struggling to keep my balance and feeling sick to my stomach from all the lurching. Slipping and sliding, I somehow managed to make my way to the cabin, where I put on a life jacket before heading back up on deck. This trip home was beginning to seem like kind of a dumb idea.
The boat was rocking uneasily back and forth, from side to side, and up and down, when it began to shake violently. I had just finished zipping up my yellow nylon jacket and pulling the hood of my fleece over my head when I was sent flying, propelled forward and up off my feet by the force of an incoming whitecap. Trounced by gallons of receding bubbling water, I rubbed my knee and checked the back of my head where it hurt. I pulled my hand away and saw blood.
I was soaking wet from the spray and the dousing. My head throbbed. I headed straight into the wind—figuring it was better to take it on the bow than abeam—sailing into tall waves at a forty-five-degree angle to minimize the pounding. I was in the middle of making a hard tack when the boom, hit by a sudden high gust of wind, swung wildly out of control and knocked me overboard and into the churning Atlantic.
I went under briefly and then bobbed up from the tumult. Disoriented and momentarily stunned, I rubbed my eyes and looked around. The Seabird had begun to drift away. Instinctively I tried to swim toward her, diving under the water and beneath the waves, swimming fast and for as long as I could hold my breath, surfacing for air, the boat always just out of reach. I almost caught up with her, but the waves beat me back, picked up the boat, and carried her off some distance.
It’s hard to describe my feelings—horror seems too understated, terror too anemic; I’d need to invent a whole new word—as the impact of the wind and the waves flipped her over and then righted her just as quickly. The Seabird was quickly drifting away. I swam after her, but the waves were too strong and I had to give up and watch her disappear.
Waves hit one right after another, breakers colliding from every direction, swamping me, asphyxiating me—I was spluttering and gasping, coughing up gallons of water—where there should have been air, instead there was water. I barely had a moment to shake off the effects of one watery assault and I was sinking again and feeling pulverized, and all that kept repeating in my head was the phrase buried at sea, buried at sea, buried at sea.
I felt this panic rising, so overwhelming at first that it threatened to dwarf the ocean; my mind was scrambling. The waves were impossible to swim against, so I did the dead-man’s float—big intake of air and then facedown in the water. And repeat. My idea was to let the waves roll over me. My plan was to live with it. I had some setbacks; it wasn’t perfect, but it worked okay.
The waves finally died down after a couple of hours. As I treaded water, I took a sweeping look around. The ocean was a deep navy blue, smooth now but for the occasional indifferent ripple.
As darkness descended, there was a fitful drop in air temperature. I alternated between floating facedown, floating on my back, and bobbing with my knees to my chest. Every once in a while I ran my hand over my face, trying to read my features the way the blind interpret Braille. I was shivering from the cold. Something bumped up against me in the dark. I jumped, startled.
“Bingo!” I reached for him. My arms around him, I held him tight. Then I hoisted him on top of me, piggyback style, so he could rest, to help keep him warm, as he was keeping me warm. Deep into the night, I felt his body gently go limp and his head slide onto my shoulder.
I was sinking, falling; but slowly I fell, comfortably. Rather than resist what was drawing me downward, I relaxed into it. It was like falling asleep. I liked it. It felt good. It felt safe. It felt like something I should be doing.
To this day, I have no idea what it was that jerked me awake. I opened my eyes. Everywhere was blackness. I took a deep breath. And that’s when I realized I was underwater. I reacted in sheer terror of where I was. I reached out blindly. Where was Bingo?
Propelling myself upward, I broke through the water’s surface, gasping loudly. I called out for Bingo. I swam first one way and then the other. On my third attempt, I bumped into him floating aimlessly, still asleep. I took hold of him and vowed never to let him go.
It was dawn when they found me. A Coast Guard vessel picked me up. They told me how lucky I was to be alive.
“I can’t die,” I mumbled.
“You can stop a bullet same as the next fellow,” somebody said.
I tried to tell them that Bingo was still out there, but nobody would listen.
“There he is,” I said, pointing to where the first peach-colored rays of sunrise glimmered on the blue water. A kindly doctor on board gave me a sedative. And then I fell into a long, deep sleep.
When I woke up, I was back at Cassowary. The windows in my bedroom were shuttered, giving the room the obscure aspect of dusk.
“What in God’s name were you thinking?” The Falcon loomed over me, a black shroud blanketing my view of the world. “You could have been killed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, attempting to pull myself up into a sitting position, my back against the pillows. My head was spinning. I covered my eyes with my hands. “What happened? How long have I been sleeping?”
“Since yesterday afternoon,” he said, his face gray and hard.
“What day is it? What time is it?”
“It’s Monday. It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”
“Holy shit.”
“Your eloquence is an inspiration. Now, why in God’s name would you take the boat out in such threatening weather? Fortunately, Gil Evans grew concerned when you didn’t show up and called to see if I knew you’d gone for a sail.”
“It was all right when I left.”
“What kind of an idiotic explanation—”
“I’m sorry about the boat.”
“What’s wrong with you? Were you trying to kill yourself? Hasn’t there been enough tragedy in the last few weeks? The Coast Guard says you were insisting your brother was out there with you all night. . . . Look, if there’s a screw loose, say so and we’ll get it fixed—”
“I’m not crazy.”
“There comes a point when crazy is preferable to stupid and stupid is preferable to having a profoundly weak character. I’m not convinced that in your case we don’t have a trifecta happening.”
“What about Pop?”
“What about him?”
“He must be worried. I should call him.” I threw back the covers and started to get up.
“Allow me,” the Falcon said, taking me by the arm and leading me to the window. Puzzled, I looked down to see Pop sprawled out on his back on the ground below.
“Pop!” I called out reflexively, but he didn’t move, not even a twitch.
“Save your breath. He showed up here last night roaring drunk and then proceeded to loudly pass out under your window, nicely fulfilling expectations, I might add.”
“You can’t just leave him there.”
“Watch me,” he said on his way out the door.
Spread-eagle on the sweating grass, Pop was the picture of discord. He was wearing a suit—on the rare occasions Pop ventured onto Cassowary, he always wore a suit and tie—putting great if inexplicable faith in formal dress.
“Pop,” I said, my voice hoarse from exposure. Hesitant, kneeling next to him, I reached out and touched his shoulder. “Pop, you need to wake up.”
“Look all you like, but don’t touch,” he said, grinning, gesturing elaborately, striking his magician’s pose, waving an imaginary wand and slurring each word, settling back down into deep hibernation. His red hair gleaming in the morning light, deep blue jacket and pants covered in dew, Pop was drunk and drooling, abidingly subversive in a bespoke suit, posed inelegantly in the green garden, and around us the soft sound of sprinklers signaling a kind of soft, wary oblivion.
So this was what forever looked like. I stood up and, alone, made my way to the house.