The Silver Boat

by Luanne Rice

  Everyone chuckled, and Sylvia asked what else he’d done when he was thirteen. Harrison told her those stories were for another night. Dinner was over, the table cleared, strawberry-rhubarb pie and coffee served, teams formed, and the Scrabble board brought out.

  Darkness had fallen; instead of switching on the porch light, they lit more candles. The sound of the waves grew louder as if magically amplified at night. Dar and Andy sat on the glider, and it creaked as they rocked back and forth. They formed the word opine.

  “Sounds like a drug,” Harrison said.

  “It means to express your opinion,” Sylvia said.

  “Whoa, smart and gorgeous,” Harrison said.

  Rory and Jenny laid down the word pithy, and Harrison and Obadiah did itchy, and Delia and Sylvia got a triple word score on exempt. They played in silence while Vanessa chattered in Delia’s arms, and then Harrison lumbered out of his seat and said he had to go see a man about a horse.

  “What’s that mean?” Jenny asked.

  “That he has to pee,” Rory said.

  “Why isn’t he going inside the house?”

  “Well, I guess he’s used to things being pretty simple, living in the storage unit,” Andy said as a faint smell of pot smoke mixed with the sea breeze.

  The game went on, and when Harrison returned he said he just wanted to watch, but instead stretched out on a teak bench, arms folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. After a while, the game broke up.

  No one wanted to move, or leave the porch. Andy held Dar’s hand, rocking in the glider. She stared around the porch at her sisters, nephew, nieces, and Harrison. Time seemed to stop, and they all just stayed where they were, listening to the waves, holding on to the feeling of being together, wanting the evening to last forever.

  The next morning dawned deep blue, with streaks of pink in the east, and the evening star balancing on the western horizon. The sisters let the kids sleep as long as possible as they shared one last coffee before ferry time. They sat at the kitchen table, hunched as close as they could get to each other.

  They held hands, bowing their heads close. After so many years and happy and crazy and sad summer and winter memories, this house would no longer belong to them. They cherished every floorboard, window, brass sconce, wicker chair, every surface their family had touched.

  The minutes ticked by, drew closer to ferry time. Slowly they woke the kids up, got them ready to leave. Dar poured orange juice into a silver baby’s cup, and Delia gave it to Vanessa. Harrison had slept on the porch, and he took the orange juice from Dar’s hand and drank from the bottle.

  “Is this going to be sad?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” Rory asked.

  “Okay.” He held his hands up as if a gun were trained on him. “That means I have to leave. I’m going to kiss everyone now, but we’re not saying good-bye. It’s my rule. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Sylvia said, raising her cheek to be pecked.

  “Good-bye!” Obadiah yelled when Harrison shook his hand.

  “Obes, you are my man. Rule-breaking first thing in the morning.”

  “I won’t say it,” Jenny said.

  “That’s because you’re sweet as sugar,” Harrison said. “Okay, c’mon, Rory and Delia, over here. Quick. I can’t take it much longer.”

  “Love you,” Rory said.

  “Love you more,” Harrison said.

  Stepping outside, they heard birds singing. Spring migration had begun, and the first warblers hopped around the trees’ upper branches. Nearly overnight, the grass had turned green. The sun was rising over the pines, painting the tips of their needles orange; it was going to be an achingly beautiful day.

  Harrison helped load luggage into the cars. He broke a sweat, even though the lifting wasn’t heavy. Rory hugged him from behind, and his eyes filled. “Shit, get me out of here. Everyone, you know I love you. Dar, catch you later.”

  “Good-bye!” everyone called as he climbed into his blue van and sped away.

  They heard his engine booking down South Road, fading away. The kids stood at the end of the driveway, waving until he was gone from sight.

  Dar, Rory, and Delia held each other.

  “This week passed so fast,” Delia said. “I just wish Pete had been here! He loves—loved—it here so much.”

  They stood facing the house, unable to look away until Delia checked her watch, said they’d have to hurry for the ferry. They hugged again, and climbed into their cars.

  Dar led the way, Scup at her side, his eyes sad and eloquent, as if he understood. She almost expected one or both of her sisters to peel off and return to the house. But they didn’t, and they reached the boat on time. Dar wanted to get out of her car for one last hug, but as if her sisters couldn’t handle that, they just waved, and drove onto the waiting ferry.

  Dar parked in the lot, and she and Scup walked down to the ferry dock. The deckhands cast off, the captain blew the horn, and the Island Home began to back out of the slip. Dar scanned the decks for her sisters, but she didn’t see them. Sylvia, Obadiah, and Jenny stood at the rail, waving madly, yelling, “Good-bye, Scup! Good-bye, Aunt Dar!”

  “Good-bye!” Dar called to them.

  She knew why her sisters weren’t there. She could almost picture them in their cars, making the crossing in the hold instead of topside in the fresh air. The light was too bright, the sights too familiar, the newly conjured idea of their father too raw, and they were leaving it all behind. Dar watched the boat as long as she could, until it left the harbor and rounded West Chop, heading for Woods Hole.

  Then she and Scup climbed back into her car, and even though the ferry was out of sight, she stayed right where she was, staring at the spot she’d last seen the big white boat bearing her sisters away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dar planned to spend that night alone in her old room in the big house. She wanted to see Andy, but even more she needed time to herself. She had the number of the McCarthy Bookshop; even though she’d tried during Irish business hours, she still got the answering machine.

  Right now it didn’t matter. Dulse floated in her mind, reminding her that loss was a force. It could pounce when you least expected it, surround you like a hurricane and rip your familiar life apart. Or loss could sneak up gradually, the slow march of fog creeping in.

  Dulse’s forces of loss had filled pages of Dar’s books. She could see them coming, miles off at first, just dark specks on the horizon. She might start to believe they would never actually arrive, that the forces might decide to leave her intact.

  Illness and death were two levels of loss; disappearance without explanation was another. Dar put that at the pinnacle; she assumed her father was dead, but they’d never had the chance to say good-bye or lay him to rest. There was no lichen-covered gravestone to visit, no anniversary onto which they could focus their grief and remembrance.

  Dar and her sisters treasured their family’s objects, but everything needed to stay right here, where it had always been. The table, the chairs, the paintings, the rugs, wouldn’t make sense in any other context.

  Her bones tingled, her entire body on high alert. She wanted to curl up under the covers. She wished she could wind it backwards, even if it meant reliving old events, to a time when everyone had been together.

  Alone in the big house, Dar left her room and walked downstairs. The five cats had gone out to hunt. Scup lay by the kitchen door, waiting for the sisters and children to return. Dar crouched, petted him behind his ears.

  “Where are we going to live?” she asked. “What are we going to do?”

  At the Hideaway she’d filled a notebook with places she’d always wanted to live: Paris, Eze, Portofino, Dublin, Connemara, Donegal, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Big Sur, the San Juan Islands. Cork was at the top of the list.

  How would it be to live in a small town near Cork, never knowing if she’d see her father walk past? For now, in the mood she was in, Cork was off the list.
Besides, she didn’t want to move at all.

  Dreaming of new places was one thing, but actually leaving was another. The Vineyard was in her blood. She had never seriously wanted to live anywhere else. Besides, there was Andy.

  Her cell phone rang, and as much as she didn’t feel like answering, she did.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Aunt Dar?”

  “Pete!” she said, thrilled to hear his voice.

  “I saw you called,” he said. “Your number was on my cell phone. A missed call. You didn’t leave a message.”

  “No, I know,” she said. “It was our last dinner here, and I was just thinking of you so much.”

  “Last dinner.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Shit. The sale’s going through? I should have been there.”

  “Oh, Pete. What are you doing? Are you in trouble?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your mother misses you so badly. And you have a beautiful daughter. Don’t you want to take responsibility, show up for yourself?”

  “You sound like AA,” he said

  “How would you know?” she asked.

  “Uh, never mind. Let’s just say I walked into a church basement once.”

  “You’ve been going?” she asked, taken off guard.

  “Trying, but . . .” he said. “I’m coming home. My truck broke down outside of Denver. I wanted to get there in time to help pack up the house. To see Mom and meet . . .”

  “Vanessa?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dar held the phone, feeling a smile inside.

  “That’s doing the right thing,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Finally. So, once I get my truck fixed, can I come to the Vineyard?”

  “I think you should go home,” she said. “To Maryland, see your parents and daughter.”

  “If I do that, can I drive up and say good-bye to the place?”

  “Sure,” Dar said. “But hurry. The closing is in two weeks.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve gotta get my truck fixed, and then I’ll be there.”

  “Good, after you go home,” she said. Something about his voice scared her.

  She wanted to help him, to offer him money so he could get to Delia faster, but before she could say anything, the connection broke. She waited a minute, but when he didn’t call back, she tried him. She got his voice mail, and this time she left a message.

  “Pete, we got cut off. Call me back?”

  Aside from heavy furniture, the house was almost empty, cartons stacked in the corners of each room, waiting for movers. But she opened all the first-floor windows to let the wind blow through. It smelled of ocean and new grass. She heard the pinkletinks singing from the swamps, ponds, and woods.

  Stepping outside, she sat on the stone step facing the salt pond. Scup leaned against her. They looked up; silhouetted against the moon were Vs of geese, migrating north. She ran inside for the long brass telescope, hurried out again. Pointing the scope toward the moon, she saw clouds of other, smaller migrating birds, flying through the night: flycatchers, larks, swallows, wrens, hummingbirds, kinglets, thrushes, and so many more, back for the warm weather.

  Some would land on the island, others would continue to other destinations. She knew that birds liked to return to their favorite places, were guided back year after year. They’d fly at night, find green and wooded places to land at dawn. Egrets and herons filled the ponds.

  “Come on,” she said to Scup. Leaving some windows open for the cats to jump back into the house, she grabbed her car keys and backed out. It was only about nine o’clock. She drove down South Road to State Road, then found the winding lane that led inland to the sandy hills and scrub trees behind Oak Bluffs.

  Halfway there, her phone rang again, and it was an overjoyed, almost giddy, Delia.

  “Pete’s coming home!” she said. “And you don’t have to pretend you don’t know, because he told me he talked to you. Did you convince him?”

  “He was already on his way.”

  “Well, I’m just so glad,” Delia said. “I miss you already, Dar.”

  “I miss you, too,” Dar said.

  “Did you call the bookstore?”

  “Yes. Still just the answering machine.”

  “Well, let me know what happens,” Delia said.

  “You know I will. Love you.”

  “Love you,” Delia said.

  By then Dar had pulled onto the sandy road that led to Andy’s house. Gold moonlight streamed through the thick salt pines. She and Scup got out of the truck; at the sound of the door slamming, Andy came to stand outside.

  Barefoot, Dar walked up the steps. She put her arms around him, and kissed him for a long time. Scup stood by, wagging his tail. After a minute Andy pushed her back just enough to see into her eyes.

  “You said you wanted to be alone tonight.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “I was pretty sure you didn’t,” he said.

  There were already bowls of water and dry dog food in the kitchen corner. Scup walked over and drank happily and sloppily. Andy’s kitchen was small and efficient. Dar smelled something good simmering on the stove, but Andy led her into the living room.

  It was about the size of the farmhouse mudroom, and gave into an even tighter bedroom. This had once been an old icehouse, and Andy had preserved the rough-hewn walls and timber beams. A curved whale jaw embraced an eight-pane window, looking out over the fields and trees in back.

  Dar realized how rarely she’d been inside here. Usually Andy came to her. She touched the whalebone.

  “What kind do you think it was?”

  “A young sperm whale,” he said. “My great-grandfather caught it.”

  She nodded. The Mayhews were an old Vineyard whaling family, just as the Daggetts, her maternal grandfather’s family, had been.

  The rest of the room had a green couch and lounge chair, nature books and birds nests of all sizes on shelves he’d built. Dar glanced into one finely woven nest of brown twigs and was surprised to see it lined with black hair.

  “Came out of your lilac bush a few years back,” he said. “After the babies had fledged and the mother had abandoned the nest.”

  She kept looking around, and found a photo he’d taken—on a hike last September, around the Aquinnah lighthouse and down to Lobsterville. It showed her smiling, sun glinting as she tried to shield her eyes. But you couldn’t miss the affection she had for the man who’d taken the shot. She stared at it, barely able to realize that her mother had been alive at that time.

  “So much has happened since then,” she said.

  “It hasn’t all been bad,” Andy said, standing beside her.

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  She stared at his collections of seagull and osprey feathers, an owl pellet, quahog and razor clam shells, a tobacco tin holding old rusty lures he’d hooked while fishing—she remembered him telling her about hauling in a fifty-two-inch striper, finding three other lures hanging from his lower lip.

  Twisted driftwood, sea-polished and sun-bleached, picked up on beach walks. She felt his hands on her shoulders and turned toward him. He kissed her hard, and she pressed her body into his. He led her to the bedroom.

  It was dark, the only light coming from the other room. They knew each other’s bodies by heart. She reached down, felt how hard he was, lay back on his bed. Eyes closed, she felt his mouth on her, making her writhe. He was on his knees, and she held his head in her hands, arching her back.

  She could have come right then, but she needed him inside her. “Andy,” she said. She tugged at him. Her knees fell open even more as he slid up the bed, and she felt him hot inside her. She felt his hips banging into hers, harder and harder. He reached down between their legs, touching her, and she shuddered and thrashed, and so did he.

  A long time passed. She fell asleep. When she woke up, she felt him behind her, arm across her chest. He’d covered them with a quilt.

&n
bsp; “You awake?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Waiting for you to be.”

  “Should I go to Ireland?” she asked.

  “You could,” he said.

  “But not now, right?” she asked. “I should wait till after the closing, and go then.”

  “You could do that,” he agreed.

  Her heart tipped over. She wanted to stay here forever. She and Scup and the cats.

  He turned her around, pushed the hair back from her face, kissed her so tenderly she felt it in her toes.

  “Darrah McCarthy,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “I think you have to. You and your sisters, or whichever one can pry herself loose from life with the family, go over to Ireland and turn over every damn stone till you find your father, or what happened to him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Andy said, staring into her eyes. “You know you have to, and I know you want to.”

  She nodded, knowing she’d just made the decision to go to Ireland. She pressed herself against Andy’s body, closing her eyes tight. He felt so warm; she wanted every inch of her skin to be touching him. Invisible threads connected them, holding them in a private world that existed whether they were together or apart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Over the next days, Dar called her sisters to check in and talk about the plan. They’d both hoped to accompany her, but now Delia needed to stay home and wait for Pete. Rory had called on Jonathan to take the kids and Sylvia for a week or two. He lived within their school district, so nothing would be interrupted.

  “What about Alys?” Dar asked.

  “Jonathan is actually seeing reason on this. He wants the kids so badly, he’s telling her she has to move out until I get back.”

  “Good for Jonathan,” Dar said.

  Morgan Ludlow was out showing properties when Dar phoned, so she left word that she would be in Ireland for a few days. Morgan could contact her by phone or e-mail. Meanwhile, she could deal with the same real estate lawyer Dar’s family had always used—Bart Packard, in Edgartown.