Danny gave him a cheer. “Takes balls to jump into that shit.”
Libby peeked out from under her hat as if to verify that he’d actually done it and not just thrown a rock into the water. But Melissa sat all the way up, having to move quickly out of his dripping, panting way.
“You alright?” she asked.
“Just hot. Water’s nice, you should go in.” She looked skeptical and, pressing into her feet and one hand, like a crab, lifted herself from the float, pulled her towel out from underneath her, and handed it to him. He scrubbed his back and head vigorously and then sat down beside her with it draped over his shoulders. They looked out toward town. Libby flipped over. Danny adjusted a life jacket behind his head.
“That’s new,” Tom said, nodding at Melissa’s suit.
“You like it?” she said, smiling, pulling at a strap.
“Aren’t you a little old for a bikini?”
A thumb still strung under her shoulder strap, her smile gone, she stared at him. Then she stood, turned her back on the town and the water, lifted the towel from his shoulders, and walked up the ramp toward the house.
Danny shaded his eyes with his hand. “Dude, you will never get laid with comments like that.”
“I don’t think getting laid is your area of expertise, Dan,” Tom replied.
Danny leaned out over the rim of his boat and with a sweeping arm showered the edge of the float with water, with Libby bearing the brunt of the splash. Libby sat up quick as if the water burned her, her hat falling into her lap.
“Holy!—Danny, what is your problem?” Libby smoothed the drops from her legs and arms.
“Sorry, Bibs. Was aiming for Tom.”
Danny’s such a child, Tom thought, still reverting to violence.
“Yeah, well, I’d be careful who you catch in the crossfire; that boat isn’t the best cover.” She pushed at the bowline with her foot, and the Little Devil immediately started rocking. But she was already losing interest, leaning back on her elbows, the soporific sun had too strong a hold on her.
Tom realized as the two of them settled back in that he shouldn’t have said it. He didn’t even know if Danny was sleeping with anyone; he just assumed not. He assumed that if Danny had actually done it that he would’ve told him. Not that Tom told Danny much of anything, but that was different. A man’s marriage was private; a man’s conquests were not.
White downy thunderheads rose soft on the horizon and gave the water a porcelain cast. The sea’s native green lost beneath the reflection. Tom wanted to be this, to reflect the purity of the clouds, to let the green darkness within him stay sunken with stones and traps. He would let himself be wide, expansive, smooth water that had more to do with the sky than the sea, more to do with clouds than sailboats and rowboats and other things that grow barnacles on dark undersides of their hulls. Tom picked up his T-shirt where he had dropped it. It had grown hot in the sun. He put it back on, then pulled the Whaler in from the outhaul, hand over hand, untied the line from the soggy loop, stepped in, and pushed off. He’d go glide across that porcelain sky.
NINETEEN
ANOTHER SUMMER
Their mother takes the sheets off the bed. First the pillows shaken from their cases. She removes one blanket at a time, folds each carefully and lays them over the back of the rocking chair with the broken cane seat. She tugs the top sheet up and off, luffing like a sail. Clambering across the bed, she unhooks the banded corners of the fitted sheet, too well secured to come up with a simple yank. These sheets she rolls into a ball hand over hand, making a muff around her wrists. Then she lets it fall to the floor on top of the dead pillowcases. She lies down on her back on the bare mattress, striped ticking, like an engineer’s hat. The hard buttons dig into her shoulder blades, sink into the flesh of her rear and the backs of her arms. She lies perpendicular to the bed, her feet hang off the edge. She opens her legs and arms, stretches and becomes an X in the middle of the bed. She closes them and becomes a line pointing toward town. She opens and closes, an X for here, a line for there.
Here, there.
Should she stay here and let the thing grow, like the ocean between this island and her husband’s boat? Not a call from him, not a letter. She wonders if the All-American is with him. She wonders if that would make a difference, if he came back. Will he come back?
There.
In the town there is the ferry. On the ferry is the long hour of islands on the horizon, of porpoises chasing the boat, of chance after chance to change her mind, to take the boat back, the one that crosses their path at the midway point. Off the ferry there is the taxi ride to the hospital, to the doctor who will tell her it is a miracle at her age, though she has never felt old before, just a year out of her thirties. Is this when miracles start? Do I need them already?
The doctor will ask her, “Is four really too many; with one about to go off to college, it’s like a trade-in, a newer model.” She hasn’t changed a diaper in ten years. After their littlest’s first day potty training she and her husband sat on the porch, watched the sun set down across the water, over the town, and toasted to no more diapers.
Here.
Maybe this will bring him back. Maybe it will keep him away.
There.
If I get rid of it, maybe he’ll never forgive me. She brings her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them. She wants to freeze time, make no decisions, hold everything as it is. Not just this thing inside her, but her oldest too, hold him home.
He stays out longer and longer. He comes home and ignores her. At night he sits at the kitchen table, eating bowl after bowl of cereal, keeps the car keys in his pocket, says he’s going out again. She can’t force him to stay, all of seventeen. But still too young.
She squeezes her legs tighter and rolls on her side. It is inside me like this, she thinks. She wonders if it can cry in there. Can eyes that don’t open squeeze out tears? She will have to write him, explain. She never understood the ship-to-shore. But where to send it? She doesn’t know which port, doesn’t even know his course. Has he told anyone? Is there someone to notice if his ship goes missing?