“Either. Both.” When Eliza had come home after beginning her cadaver dissection in med school he’d thrown up just hearing about it. He turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes.
“But blood is so interesting,” said Zoe. “It tells us so much. It’s, like, the secret to everything.” She held up a thin white stick and said, “This is an EldonStick. I’m squeezing a drop of blood onto each of the sticks and mixing them into the water drops on the card. See?”
Rob opened one eye and looked at the smears of blood in the circles on the card. He felt a little bit nauseous, but he also felt awestruck by his own daughter. He used to carry her on his shoulders! He used to feed her mashed carrots and bananas with a tiny spoon! He used to push her in a baby swing! And now she could figure out his blood type like it was no big deal. The world was a wonderful, wacky, confounding place.
Zoe tipped the card one way and then tipped it the other way. She moved her lips, counting, and finally she said, “Okay. Here you go. It should be dry.” She squinted down the card and then looked back at the directions. “You’re O negative,” she said. “Just like Evie.”
“Good to know,” said Rob. “That’s very good to know.” Then he said, “You know something, Zoe?”
“What?” She collected the debris the blood-testing kit had amassed and swept it into the wastebasket.
“You’re going to make a very good doctor someday. If that’s what you decide to do.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. She smiled. “I hope so.”
“Just so we’re clear,” he said. “I’m going to request to follow this…this Finsta account. Your mother is too. And if you don’t accept us, or if you do and we don’t like what we see, it’s gone. The account, the real Instagram…”
“Rinsta,” said Zoe.
Rob sighed. “Are you serious? Is it really called that?”
Zoe nodded.
“Okay, your Finsta, your Rinsta, your Zinsta, your phone, all of it. It’s gone. Am I clear?”
“You’re clear.” Zoe held up the card and said, “Look! It’s all dry.” She placed a thin piece of plastic over the card and handed it to Rob. “You can keep it,” she said. “As a souvenir.”
44
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
“Um,” said Mary, on the phone. “I’d like to cancel my appointment?”
At first it came out too much like a whisper, or a question, so she said it again, louder, more firmly: “I’d like to cancel my appointment.”
The woman took Mary’s name and her number and then she said, “Okay, then, you’re all set.” It was that easy.
All set. Just like that. Don’t you see? Mary wanted to say. Don’t you understand what this means, this changes everything, everything about my life is going to change now. But the woman wouldn’t see, and why should she? She was just a voice on the other end of the line. She got calls like this every day, every hour. This was her job.
Mary lay on the bed for a while and tried to think about how she felt. She’d taken the day off from work, and now she didn’t need it. She needed the money more. She could call Daphne and Andi, see if she could come in anyway. Maybe one of them wanted the afternoon off. Maybe they both did, maybe they wanted to go out for the evening, maybe she could close. She shuddered, thinking of the last time.
Mary swung her legs over the side of her bed. She opened the closet door. There was a knock on her bedroom door, and she jumped nearly out of her skin and slammed the closet door closed.
“Knock knock!” sang Vivienne, opening the door. She was wearing a birthday hat, striped, with a ridiculous purple pom pom on the tip. She was holding one for Mary too, and, in her other hand, a cake, supermarket bought, with two candles in it, a one and an eight. Luckily the candles weren’t lit, because Vivienne’s hair was dangling over them, almost in the frosting.
“Happy birthday, baby,” she said, looking at Mary expectantly. “Happy, happy birthday.”
45
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
“You sure you want to go out today?” asked the Marshall twin. “There’s supposed to be some weather coming.”
Eliza was going to drive home for Evie’s play; Evie was at rehearsal and Zoe was at science camp, and he had the morning. Without Cabot Lodge, and without the houses of Mrs. Cabot’s friends on the horizon, exactly the thing Eliza had predicted was going to happen. He was going to have to sell the Hinckley. Soon, before he lost his nerve. He was going to have to do it on the sly, without telling his mother. By the time she found out, the thing would be done.
He had to say goodbye.
“There’s always weather,” Rob told the Marshall twin. “And, yeah, I’m sure.”
The launch pulled up alongside the Hinckley, and the Marshall twin let out one of his world-famous low whistles. “Sorry,” he said. “I just can’t get over this boat.”
“I know,” said Rob. “Me either.” He felt part of his soul shrivel up and die. This was what he got, for loving a material thing too much. This was what he got. He deserved to have to sell it.
“You going out alone, for real?”
Rob had promised Eliza that he’d never try to sail the Hinckley alone.
“For real,” he said.
Rob unlocked the hatch. Down below, he turned on the battery switches. He let the diesel engine warm up, took the cover off the boom. He untied the mooring line and tossed it overboard. These were actions he’d performed hundreds of time—thousands, even, on different boats, throughout his life—but it seemed to him that he had never been so focused on each little task and the sensations surrounding them. There was the feel of the mooring line in his hand, and the sound of the engine coming to life. A lone gull overhead, unleashing on Rob and the ocean a large, ominous, bossy cry. There was the slapping of Rob’s shoes as he ran to the helm to put the boat in gear and head it into the wind.
Rob put the boat on autopilot, set the throttle, studied the sky. He would put the mainsail up first. He attached the main halyard to the head of the sail, then headed back to the cockpit to raise the main. Two or three cranks of the winch and the main began to rise. No problem.
Okay, this part was a little more difficult on his own, he could admit that. He’d like to be in the cockpit, it would be helpful to have somebody else guiding the main. But. It was nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d guide the main himself.
Now the main was up, and it was a glorious sight. It never failed to take his breath away. There was enough wind now, so he could turn the engine off. He trimmed the main.
“Easy day,” he said aloud, though of course there was nobody there to hear him. Even the lone gull had taken off. Four knots.
Would this be his last time on the boat, before he put it up for sale? It might be. But even here, on the water, the peace Rob sought was elusive. It was his phone, his phone was teasing him; his phone wanted him to check his emails, check his texts.