“Okay, I guess.”
A small gap opened up in the conversation then and seemed to spread. It got larger and larger and Graham thought someone might actually fall into it, but then Audra suggested brightly that they play Twenty Questions. “Now, Derek, you’re the guest, so you go first. Do you know how to play?”
“Yeah,” Derek said, and his voice sounded agreeable. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Graham felt his hands loosen slightly on the wheel.
“Now you can ask the first question, Matthew,” Audra said.
They all took turns guessing but nobody got it and after the twentieth question, Derek revealed that he was Ivan the Terrible. (It wasn’t like he chose Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer, but that was really the nicest thing you could possibly say about his choice.) Fortunately, the game lasted until they got to the marina.
The blue-trimmed Sapphire was moored at the dock and looked promising, with an enclosed cabin and the upper deck shielded by a bright blue canopy. In an ideal world—the one Graham pictured—the captain of the Sapphire would be a young, handsome guy, perhaps resembling the Brawny Paper Towel Man, who was kind and enthusiastic and good with children. Instead they walked down the dock to find an old man with whisky blooms on his face and a harsh expression standing next to the boat with a clipboard. He wore stained shorts and a faded T-shirt and uneven grizzled whiskers.
“Hello,” Audra said cheerfully. “Are you the captain?”
“Uh-huh,” said the man, his breath damp with the smell of Budweiser. (It was just past six-thirty in the morning.)
“It’s so nice to meet you!” Audra said. “I’m Audra, and this is my husband, Graham, and our son, Matthew, and his friend, Derek.”
Graham and the boys looked at the captain expectantly, but he just grunted.
Audra was undeterred. “And what is your name?”
“Captain.”
“But Captain what? What’s your first name?”
The man had a cough drop in his mouth and he caught it between his teeth for a moment. “Some people call me Salty.”
Audra smiled encouragingly. “Like Salty Dog, the drink?”
For the first time, the captain looked even mildly interested. “What’s in that?”
“Oh, let me think,” Audra sounded thoughtful. “Vodka and grapefruit juice, and maybe gin, too.”
“How much vodka?”
“I guess half vodka, half grapefruit juice.”
“Then where’s the gin come into it?”
“I’m not sure,” Audra said. “But any bartender should know how to make them.”
A few other people came up behind them then, so Captain or Salty (or whatever the hell the man’s name was) checked them off on his clipboard and they went aboard the boat. Audra carried a cooler, and her sneakers squeaked on the deck’s varnished boards. Two crew members—Graham noted with satisfaction that they were younger and friendlier than Salty—took the boys over to a rack in the center of the boat where the fishing rods were stored.
Both Derek and Matthew seemed excited, and the water was as blue as a marching-band uniform. Even the ropes tethering the Sapphire to the dock seemed to creak with anticipation. Salty rang a bell and the boat pulled out of the marina.
It seemed that in the excitement—excitement? that was the wrong word—in the distraction of arranging this trip to woo Derek Rottweiler, Graham had forgotten how prone to seasickness he was. Within twenty minutes of the Sapphire leaving the harbor, he felt dizzy and nauseated and sweaty. Saliva was thick in his mouth, like a raw oyster, like a blood clot.
He glanced down and saw that Matthew looked as bad as he felt.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay, buddy?”
Matthew shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He was standing near the railing next to Derek, but now he slid down until he was sitting on the deck.
Graham and Audra crouched beside him.
“What’s up, sweetie?” Audra asked, rumpling Matthew’s hair.
Matthew’s eyes were huge. “I want to lie down,” he whispered. Graham could barely hear him over the sound of the boat’s engine.
He helped Matthew to his feet. They left Audra with Derek, and Graham led Matthew toward the cabin. “It’ll be better when we’re at sea,” he said, having no idea if this was true. The deck seemed to sway beneath their feet until Graham felt like they were trying to walk across a floor made of cargo netting.
The cabin, which had looked so inviting when the boat was docked, smelled like fish and oil and vomit—the olfactory history of a thousand fishing trips, a thousand miserable souls. Matthew groaned and slumped down on one of the hardwood benches.
A lady about Graham’s age was sitting on one of the other benches, knitting, and she looked up and smiled at them. “Oh, is your little boy seasick? That’s a shame.”
Even to Graham’s inexperienced eye, something was wrong with the way this woman was dressed. She wore a high-necked flowered blouse with a ribbon around the collar, a vest that seemed to be made of a furniture doily, and a patchwork skirt. Her clothing wasn’t just unseasonal and inappropriate for a fishing trip—there was some other thing wrong with it, too. It took a Graham a moment to figure it out: her outfit was homemade. Way too many patterns and frills and embellishments. He seemed to remember from high school that girls dressed that way for a while when they first mastered the sewing machine.
Graham sat on the end of the bench where Matthew lay. Matthew had closed his eyes, but his face was pale and slick with sweat. Graham squeezed Matthew’s ankle.
“Seasickness can be just terrible,” the lady said. Click went her knitting needles. “Luckily, I have never suffered from it. Otherwise I couldn’t accompany my husband on all his fishing trips.”
“Is your husband the Captain?” Graham asked politely.
“Oh, no,” the lady said. “I’m Mrs. Wilcox. My husband is one of the men fishing. I’m just with him for company.”
“I see.”
Matthew’s breathing had already deepened. His skin had a pinched, lavender look, and his eyebrows were drawn together. Graham had never seen someone look so pale and wretched in his sleep. The rocking of the boat made Graham feel like a bubble of air was blocking his throat.
Click, click, pause. Mrs. Wilcox picked a small pink square off her knitting needles and showed it to Graham. “I’m making an afghan for my niece’s baby. Pink and blue squares because she doesn’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. Don’t you think that’ll be pretty?”
“Oh, yes,” Graham managed to say.