Last Rob knew Jonathan Junior was at a wilderness treatment facility in Montana; they’d thrown him to the actual wolves.
“Mom. She chose those cabinets, she picked them out. She liked them when she chose them!”
“Well, she doesn’t like them now. So you’ll help her, right? You’ll fix it? The customer is always right. Isn’t that what you all say?”
“I think that’s what they say in Home Depot.”
“Don’t be fresh, Robbie.”
It was hard to feel chastised and angry and nervous all at the same time, but, as Rob learned at that moment, not impossible.
“Robbie? Are you still there? You know Christine has several friends who want to build houses even bigger than hers in that same area. Work like that could keep you busy for years. If you are intent on making your own way in the world.”
“I know, Mom. That’s why I took this job in the first place.”
Ruggman called, “Hey! Barnes! We need you over here!” Rob liked being called by his last name. Made him feel salt-of-the-earth.
“Mom, I’ve got to go. I’m working, Mom—”
“But you’ll help her sort it out?”
“Of course I will.”
The elf with the hammer: tap, tap, tappity tap.
“That’s my boy, Robbie. I knew you’d get her in by Thanksgiving.”
He looked down. “Mom, Eliza’s on the other line, I have to go.”
Eliza was crying. More than crying. She was sobbing. He hadn’t heard Eliza cry like that since—wait, had he ever heard Eliza cry like that? He couldn’t make out what she was saying. The paddleboarder had reached the dock. Ruggman was striding toward him.
“Rob?” asked Eliza, from another world. “Are you there?”
A cloud passed over the sun, and for an instant the world went dim.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.”
10
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
This can be fixed. That’s what Eliza thought after she got off the phone with Rob, who had listened while she sobbed, and waited until she could speak, and then offered to drop everything and drive up to Little Harbor that minute. That didn’t make any sense, they both knew that, but she loved that he offered.
Everything could be fixed, with enough determination. Eliza was a firm believer in that; she was always repeating those words to her daughters. Torn math sheet? No worries, we’ll download another from the teacher’s website! Colored outside the lines on the social studies poster? Scribble over the blue part with a white crayon, there, good as new. Broken car? Heart? Dreams? All repairable. This can be fixed. She repeated it on her way to the wharf, over and over again, like a mantra.
Was it money that was holding Charlie back from talking to her? Well, she had money, they had money. Rob’s mother had gobs and gobs of money, more than she knew what to do with. You couldn’t buy yourself a new brain. But you could buy yourself the best doctor in Boston, you could buy yourself options. She just needed her father to come in off his boat so she could talk to him. She picked her pace up to a jog, then a run. When she arrived at the wharf she was breathing aggressively.
Oh, damn. She was hoping to be alone, but the girl from the coffee shop was there, the sweet girl who made the uncertain designs in the cappuccinos. Mary. She turned when she heard Eliza approaching and her face had such an open expression that Eliza felt terrible for wishing her away.
“Hey,” said Eliza. “Hope you don’t mind if I join you.” She tried to make her voice sound normal and sociable, not at all like someone who’d just learned devastating news. She didn’t even know yet what she would say to her father; she hadn’t worked that part out yet.
“Sure,” said Mary. She did something interesting with her body where she didn’t really move but appeared somehow to make extra space for Eliza beside her.
“It’s Mary, isn’t it? From the café?”
“Right.” Mary smiled shyly at Eliza.
“Eliza.”
“I know. I remember.”
“Are you waiting for someone?”
“Yeah,” said Mary. “My boyfriend. He’s…” She cleared her throat.
“He’s a fisherman?” Eliza supplied.
“Yes.”
“What’s he doing coming back now? It’s only—” Eliza checked her watch. “Two thirty.”
“Yeah. Sometimes he, I don’t know. Sometimes he doesn’t go out all day. If he had a bad day the day before. He gets sort of, I don’t know, upset.” Mary laughed, but it was that uncertain girl-laugh that Eliza sometimes heard from Zoe and her friends. That laugh made Eliza feel both incensed at and tender toward young girls. She wanted to say, “Don’t laugh if you don’t think it’s funny, you don’t owe this world anything!” and at the same time she wanted to say, “Come here, sweetie, let me give you a hug, it’s going to be okay.”
She turned and studied Mary: she was really very pretty, with pale blond hair and gorgeous skin. But she didn’t hold herself like a girl who thought she was pretty. Eliza had given up on the gorgeous skin after so many years on lobster boats; there was no amount of high-end products that could undo her freckles. Now, when she went out on sailboats at home, she slathered herself with sunscreen, though to hear the dermatologists tell it the damage had been done long ago. It was all a lost cause.
Eliza could see the Joanie B out on its mooring, and she could even see her father moving cautiously around on it, and she tried to ignore the way her brain kept repeating the words He’s sick he’s sick he’s sick over and over.
After a while she said, “Sometimes I think about how many people have sat here waiting for these boats to come in. Through the ages. You know? It’s such a funny thing, a town like this. I mean, growing up here it seemed totally normal that this was what most of the men did for a living, disappearing in a boat and then coming back at the end of the day. And then I went out in the world and I saw that most people don’t do that, most people go off in cars and go to offices and move money around or design buildings or manage international businesses…” She trailed off. Tumor tumor tumor, went the little voice in her head.
“I never thought about it that way,” said Mary.
“Why would you?” asked Eliza. “This is your world. Am I babbling? Sorry if I am. I do that, I babble when I’m trying to keep my mind off something.”
“That’s okay,” said Mary. “I don’t mind.”
Cancer cancer cancer.
“My mother used to wait here for my father. In fact, she met him right here. She was a summer girl, and she fell in love, and that was that. She never left. She always told me it was like a fairy tale.”
“That’s beautiful,” breathed Mary. She smiled.
“She died when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come right out with that. It’s just—I guess I’m just feeling maudlin.”
Glioblastomas were almost universally fatal.