Mrs. Wilcox’s fingers began working her knitting needles again. “I don’t believe married couples should spend too much time apart,” she said. “When Gordon tells me he’s going fishing, I’m right there with a packed lunch and my embroidery bag.”
Graham leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Almost immediately it seemed to him that his mother spoke from directly behind him. Graham’s mother said, “Oh, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have had that happen for a million dollars,” and Graham looked down at his forearm and saw the deep gash he’d gotten climbing over Mr. Danbury’s picket fence. He clamped his left hand over the cut and watched the blood well up between his fingers, just like rainwater rising through the gravel in the sidewalk. And then he was sitting on the long bench seat in his mother’s Buick Century and they were driving to the hospital and his mother was saying, “Keep the towel on it! Hold on!” The Buick took the corners in long swooping turns, swaying like a ship, making Graham’s head rock on his shoulders and his elbow slam against the car door…
He woke up with a start.
Mrs. Wilcox was still talking. “I made Gordon the nicest fishing vest, and I embroidered it with every kind of fish I could think of and—can you imagine!—he won’t wear it. Says it’s too tight in the armpits and runs around wearing his smelly old canvas one.”
Graham didn’t know whether he’d been asleep for hours or minutes or seconds. He had a feeling it didn’t matter—Mrs. Wilcox would still be talking no matter what.
Matthew looked a little better. At least he was no longer frowning in his sleep.
“I did most of that embroidery using fishbone stitches, too!” Mrs. Wilcox said indignantly. “And that’s a very difficult stitch—you might say it’s only for people who are very advanced. I thought it would be a cute sort of pun, fishbone stiches on the fishing vest, but—”
“Excuse me,” Graham said. “I’m going to go up to the deck for a minute. If my son wakes up, will you tell him I’ll be right back?”
“Why, certainly,” Mrs. Wilcox said, and as a sort of punctuation, her knitting needles spat forth another soft pink square.
Graham went up to the deck and stretched. He got out his phone and saw that he had slept for almost ninety minutes. The boat had stopped moving, and all along the rails, he could see people with fishing rods. He went in search of Audra and found her on the top deck, talking to Captain Salty. Evidently she’d broken through his taciturn nature and they were discussing how Salty’s wife was mad at him for staying out all night.
“Now my suggestion,” Audra was saying, “would be to buy your wife a very nice classic leather handbag.”
“I think that might make her more suspicious,” Salty said.
“But that would be overridden by her love of the handbag,” Audra said. “If it’s the right handbag.”
Salty scratched his chin. “Sounds mighty expensive. Flowers’d be cheaper.”
“Yes,” Audra said. “But a handbag would last for years! For a lifetime, even. And every time she’d look at it, she’d think, What a thoughtful, loving gift! Salty is such a romantic, devoted husband! I love him so!”
“That’s not really the way she talks,” Salty said.
“But inside, she’d be feeling that way,” Audra insisted. “In her heart, she’d be thinking, I don’t care if he did stay out all night—I don’t want to be married to anyone else.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I tell you what—you come into the city sometime, and I’ll take you shopping for the handbag. My last name is Daltry, remember? We live on West Eighty-fourth Street. I can put my number right into your cellphone if you like.”
It was fairly remarkable that they had all not been murdered in their beds, the way Audra handed out their names and address. (Once she’d told a man in line at the hardware store that he should come right over and she’d give him some old drawer pulls they had and the man had said, politely, that he couldn’t come over because he was on work release from a correctional facility and had to be back by four o’clock. Graham had feared for a while that they would have to move.)
Salty’s eyes were flickering over Audra, whose hair had gone curly in the sea spray. Her lips were prettily chapped. She gazed up at him trustfully.
“Maybe you and me could have a drink after we go shopping,” he said. “Maybe one of them Salty Dogs you were talking about.”
“I don’t drink those anymore,” Audra said. “Not since that time I told you about earlier, when I woke up in Astoria not knowing where my purse was. But a glass of wine, sure—”
“Hey,” Graham interrupted. “Matthew still feels pretty sick. Where’s Derek?”
Audra looked around her in a startled fashion. Goodness, where was that child they were looking after? Dearie me, did he fall overboard back a ways? Graham sighed.
Eventually, they found Derek on the other side of the boat, wearing a filthy yellow slicker that one of the crew must have lent him. A bucket next to him contained two fish, swirling around like three a.m. thoughts.
Audra handed Derek a ham sandwich from the cooler she’d been dragging around and offered one to Graham. He shook his head and reached for the thermos of coffee.
And so the morning passed—as slowly as the morning passes when you’re waiting for a baby to nap so you yourself can sleep. Graham stayed with Derek, leaning against the side of the cabin and drinking coffee. The wind off the sea made conversation impossible—just the way Graham liked it. Audra went down to check on Matthew and presumably got sucked into the Mrs. Wilcox conversation vortex, because Graham didn’t see her or Matthew again until the bell rang. The crew announced they were returning to dock and made everyone reel in their lines.
Audra showed up then, Matthew stumbling after her, both of them blinking in the daylight. Graham put an arm around Matthew’s neck and kissed the top of his head, but Matthew was looking at Derek’s bucket of fish.
“How many did you catch, Derek?”
Derek shrugged, his eyes on his fishing rod. “Six or seven.”
“That’s fantastic!” Matthew’s eyes shone with admiration. He wasn’t even jealous.
“Whatever,” Derek said.
“No, seriously,” Matthew said. “It’s great.”
“I know,” Derek snapped impatiently, and went back to reeling in his fishing line.
Matthew shrank back as though bitten, and Graham looked at Audra. Her eyes were dark with pain, bleak-looking. She leaned forward to stroke Matthew’s hair.
Eventually, they got back to shore and into the car. They drove home in a silence that not even Audra broke, except once to ask Graham, “Have you ever heard of fishbone embroidery?”