He waits for Noah’s wife to reach into the bag, to pull out the prints and pass them through the crowd; but she only sits more tensely with her hands pressed together in her lap and her face angled toward her knees.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmurs.
The color drains from the weatherman’s face. “What did you say?” he mutters.
She raises her chin and looks him in the eye. Her jaw is square, her gaze like granite. “There isn’t anything in this town that the people here can’t handle.”
Mrs. McGinn emits an audible, delighted gasp. The weatherman stares at her while the voices of her neighbors explode once more. For the next several minutes, they argue among themselves: some have been swayed by the weatherman’s warnings and the fear of the rising river, while others insist that the worst of the rain has come and gone and that the river has never flooded before. Already it is clear that they are becoming irrevocably divided: those who will stay and those who will go. They turn in their seats to quarrel with the people sitting next to them and behind them, proclaiming the point one way or the other.
Meanwhile the weatherman buttons up his slicker, steps off his stool, and storms over to the minister’s wife. “What the hell was that?” he demands, leaning ominously over her chair. “Some misplaced attempt at solidarity?”
She looks up at him, her eyes like mirrors. “Noah was called here,” she says. “He was called to rebuild the congregation and to save this town. We can’t leave until he’s done it.”
“Save the town?” repeats the weatherman with a quick, sardonic smile. “I’m sorry. My mistake. I thought that’s what I was trying to do here.”
“No,” she says, suddenly as stubborn as the rest of them. “You’re just out to save your own skin, not theirs. That’s why you want them to give up.”
He glares at her. He had expected the rest of this town to be foolish, but he had not expected it of her. Indeed, from the look of her—that delicate face, that colorless expression—and from the way she so passively accepted the favor that he asked of her, he was under the impression that she was the sort of woman who always did as she was told.
He soars toward the exit, his raincoat flapping in his wake. After the door slams shut behind him he pauses for a moment in the middle of the street, staring at the road that brought him into this silent, murky town—the same road that will take him out again this afternoon, as soon as he has packed up his car. The rain thuds against his shoulders and a mountain goat wanders past him, braying.
He is finished with this place. He is done with these strange people, and their strange little faith that all will be well if only they believe in it, if only they turn their backs on the facts. The world can only be the way that it is, the weatherman knows. It is rarely the way that one wants it to be.
twenty
Stan is afraid to go out beyond the breakwater.
“Look at those waves!” he says to Nancy. He stands with his feet spread wide on the rickety pier beside their boat, clutching his orange life preserver in two fleshy hands. His eyelids twitch, as they always do in direct sunlight. “Just look at them! I don’t think we’d survive out there, I really don’t—not for five minutes, even.”
Nancy looks. The sea is full of soft white peaks that arc against an indigo sky. The wind is high and she can see sailboats leaning to one side, all bowed in the same direction. The sun is pink and growing pinker, dropping like a stone toward the surface of the water.
“We don’t have much time, Stan!” she says. “Didn’t you say you’d go with me for a sunset cruise? The sun is almost setting! Now, come on—we have cocktails on the boat. A stiff drink is all you need. When we go on our trip we’re going to have to keep you drunk, that’s all.”
She laughs. Stan laughs, too, but less convincingly. This was not his idea.
In the beginning, when he was nervous about setting foot on the pier (as if those boards could hold a person’s weight above the water! he said to himself), it was Nancy who coaxed him out, day by day and inch by inch, until they were finally able to sit on the end of it—their toes dipping into the water, tempting the fish—and have a picnic. Nancy made cream cheese and tomato sandwiches (Stan’s favorite) for the occasion.
“Hurray!” she said to him, with a loud kiss on the lips. “We made it!”
It was kind of her, Stan thought at the time, to say “we” instead of “you.” It was kind of her to pretend that this was their obstacle, and not his obstacle alone. He is her husband, after all; he wants to be her protector and her provider (though he knows full well that Nancy would say she can both provide for and protect herself, thank you very much), but how is he supposed to do either of those things, how is he supposed to fulfill any of his roles if he continues to let his fear dominate him in this vexing manner? He can’t help it. He is an anxious man.
But Nancy loves him anyway.
After they made it to the end of the dock, the next step was to set foot on the boat. This took him several days—several days of pacing nervously on the dock just beyond the ladder to the boat while Nancy climbed aboard and worked at cleaning and sprucing, as she called it. From time to time she hailed him from the boat as she washed the portholes with warm soapy water or as she sat on the wooden benches near the helm, soaking up the sun and sewing white eyelet curtains for the cabin.
“How are you doing, my dear?” she would say, casting a loving look in his direction.
“Oh I’m just fine, Nancy, I’m fine!” he would say. He would continue to pace. “Any day now I’ll be right up there with you, I promise. I’ll help with the cleaning and everything.”
“There’s no rush, Stan,” she would respond. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Sometimes it seemed to them that their days were as long and empty as the ocean. Stan’s great-aunt had recently passed away and left them several very full bank accounts to be spent however they pleased. The day they heard the news, they quit their jobs and sat down together at the kitchen table to decide how best to use the money.
“Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do, Stan?” asked Nancy. She poured lemonade into a tumbler and reached for a wafer cookie.
Stan was surprised by the question. “No,” he said finally. “I can’t think of anything. I have everything I need right here.”
He patted her hand thoughtfully and then said, in a rather absentminded way, “What about you? Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do, Nancy?”
“Well—” she said. She pursed her lips and hesitated. Her tone was at once hopeful and concerned. “Well—this may sound crazy, Stan. And I know that you’re not a big fan of boats and so I suppose it could be a little bit of a problem—but to be perfectly honest with you, what I’ve always wanted to do is sail around the world.”
“Sail around the world?” repeated Stan, stunned. “You never told me that.”
“Well, we could never do it before!” she said. “But that’s what I’m saying—now we could! Think about it … the open seas, the wind at our backs, only you and me in the middle of the ocean, miles away from everything, stopping at exotic ports whenever we felt like it … wouldn’t that be amazing?”
“Amazing” would not be the word Stan ever would have chosen to describe such a venture. He finds the whole notion completely terrifying. He doesn’t like the water but he does love Nancy, and so after a few minutes of thinking about it silently (Nancy ate another wafer and considerately looked away while she waited for him to reach his conclusion), he heard a voice—that sounded suspiciously like his own—agreeing.
In the end, he was glad he did. He had not seen Nancy so delighted in years. She clapped her hands, childlike, and parted her lips in a girlish grin. Her teeth were even and gleaming.
And so this is what they have been doing, every day for the past two months. Taking small steps—very small steps—from the shore to the sea. Once Stan made it onto the boat, Nancy persuaded him to allow her to lift the
anchor and drift for a few minutes unmoored beside their pier. After this they began to take short cruises in the harbor, during which Nancy practiced zigzagging around other boats as if they were orange cones on an obstacle course, while Stan gripped the railing with aching fists and stared intently at the muddy green water, trying to calculate precisely how many feet he would have to fall before he hit bottom.
“Five feet,” he muttered to himself, glancing at the depth meter. “No, six. Seven. Six.”
The numbers fluctuated with the waves.
The other sailors in the harbor cast uncertain glances in their direction. In the beginning Stan found this embarrassing, but Nancy has done her best to reassure him.
“They’re not judging us, Stan,” she says. “They’ve all got their own problems to work through.”
She ties a violet cardigan across her shoulders and then lifts her arm to wave to the harbor magician, as she so often likes to do. She has a ring on every finger and her whole hand glitters in the sun.
“Hellloooo!” she calls. “Hellllooo there!”
Ever since meeting the unusual magician, Nancy has made it a point to invite the man in for dinner every few days. She will watch for the breaks in the afternoon when he finds himself without an audience, and then she will climb down from the boat with a swish of her white silk skirt and march over to speak with him. In general she tends to worry about people who stand alone for too long. Everyone needs a little company.
“Now, what do you think about tonight?” she will ask him. “Would you prefer the moussaka or the roast lamb?”
Nancy is a gracious hostess, as she loves having company, and she is conscious that she must get her fill now before taking off for the empty ocean. She has begun to serve all of their meals on the boat, and while the plastic folding table can be somewhat of a problem when it buckles or leans, she says that it is worth the trouble to be able to eat in the open air. The three of them shuffle feta and olives onto their forks as they watch thin white clouds waltz through blue skies. Seagulls cry, looping in great pinwheels above their heads.
The magician remarks on the beauty of the ocean and politely inquires how much time the two of them spend on the water. His uncovered forehead is growing pink in the sun.
“Well,” says Nancy, reaching back to adjust the tortoiseshell clip in frizzy hair that—despite her best efforts—has blown wild again in the wind. “We’re taking small steps from shore to sea. In a few months we’re leaving to sail around the world.”
“Really?” says the magician. “That’s unbelievable!”
“Yes,” says Stan with a profound sigh, his eyelids twitching again. “It is, isn’t it?”
Nancy shoots him a look. “We were fortunate enough to come into a little money,” she explains. “And then we thought—why not! Life is short! You never know what might happen to you tomorrow—so you’ve got to do everything now. Live to the fullest!”
Nancy’s cheeks are flushed with excitement. The magician glances toward Stan, but Stan is staring at Nancy, seemingly transfixed. His gaze is always steady when he looks at her.
“So far,” continues Nancy. “So far we’ve been scuba diving, we’ve gone swimming with sharks, we tried hang gliding, we jumped from a plane—”
“Your hands cuffed or no?” the magician wants to know.
“Our hands weren’t cuffed,” Stan assures him.
“And you’ve done all of this recently?”
“All of this in the past four and a half years,” says Stan.
Nancy nods. “Four and a half years,” she repeats. She stands abruptly and picks up the plates, carries them from the deck to the galley. Stan and their guest rise and begin to help her—collecting the silverware, the cloth napkins, the serving dishes—and once everything is cleared the magician thanks them and excuses himself so that he can practice some of his newer tricks of light and fire at the other end of the pier before the night grows too cold.
Nancy waves at his diminishing back until the magician has disappeared from sight, and then she turns to the sink. As she reaches for a sponge she bumps a ceramic vase on the ledge and it plummets to the floor, cracking in half and spilling a spray of lilies. Stan bends and reaches for them, a dish towel slung over his shoulder, and when he rises again he finds that Nancy is watching him with damp eyes.
“Everything breaks,” she says, suddenly seeming very, very small.
“Nancy,” says Stan. “You know that if you want to, I’ll sail around the whole world. And I’ll jump out of whatever you want to and scuba dive on down as far as you want to because I love you. We can keep on running and diving and hang gliding, but when it’s all over we’ll always end up right back here, right where we are now, and you know as well as I do that the weeks and weeks of sailing won’t have changed a thing.”
Yes—Nancy knows. She moves toward Stan and before he is prepared for it she has tumbled against him, her hair crumpled against his chest, her body heaving with her grief, her soapy fists pounding weakly on his shoulders. Stan wraps his arms around her while she cries.
twenty-one
Mrs. McGinn’s daughter has dreamed of getting married and leaving this town, of buying her own house with a breakfast nook and a laundry chute and a huge backyard—but she has never dreamed of having children.
She has seen firsthand what having a mother will do to people.
Of course she loves her mother, as everyone must, but sometimes she finds herself wishing that someone else had given birth to her—someone who was quieter and more discreet. Mrs. McGinn has the tendency to overpower the people she loves, pulling them into her orbit like small moons that have no choice but to reflect the radiance of her, their most significant star. Mrs. McGinn’s daughter has certainly tried to carve out her own path, to distinguish herself from her mother. Why else would she have gone to the trouble of piercing her own ears or painting her fingernails black? She desperately craves the disapproval of her mother, feels secretly thrilled at the fights they have after these slight physical adjustments. She loves it when Mrs. McGinn informs her that she looks like a gypsy.
“Angela Rose,” her mother had declared after the piercing. “Take that metal out of your head.”
“No,” retorted Mrs. McGinn’s daughter. “Never. Not a chance.”
She wonders why this is the first conversation that comes to her mind when she realizes that she has missed her period. She is seated on the edge of the tub, her thighs cold beneath her skirt, and her stomach still queasy. The floral-printed towels are frayed at the edges, the bathmat plush but faded pink. She has lived longer in this house than in any other; this has been her bedroom since her late adolescence. When she was younger the father figures rotated through her life like carousel horses, and her mother tried to make a game of moving in and out of houses. One set of framed wedding photographs came down, and eventually another went up. The furniture shifted, the wallpaper changed. The husband would leave his mark on the house and then he would be gone. Soon after, she and her mother would pack up for a new place, exchange their keys and move on. But try as she might, her mother never managed to leave her memories behind.
Mrs. McGinn’s daughter is determined that her own marriage will be different. Hers will be the kind that lasts.
If she ever gets to that point, that is.
When she is well enough to stand without feeling nauseated again, she stumbles over to the mirror and drags a brush of navy blue eye shadow over her lids before heading downstairs to the kitchen. As she enters the room with her heavy step, her ankle-high boots unlaced, Mrs. McGinn turns away from the stove to look at her.
“You’re pregnant,” says Mrs. McGinn.
Her daughter heaves a sigh of the long-suffering. There isn’t any point in asking how her mother could tell. That woman has the nose of an albatross—a bird that can smell a person’s lunch from a mile down the road and then come flying into windowpanes to get at it. Most of the townspeople have had to learn about the albatross the h
ard way.
“Are you out of your mind, Angie?” demands Mrs. McGinn. “You couldn’t wait until after the ceremony? My Lord, you two are like animals!”
“Just don’t tell anyone, all right?” snaps Mrs. McGinn’s daughter. She would prefer that Adam hear the news from her—but how will she break it to him? They have not been speaking. Although he sleeps above the diner, he spends most of his time out doing rounds without her, and when they pass each other in the diner or on the staircase, they avert their eyes and carry on in silence. She supposes that he is waiting for her to apologize, or waiting for her to say that she’s come around, that she will be happy to stay here, no problem. Well, tough luck. She isn’t happy, and she won’t stay here. She has been up-front about that since the beginning.
She turns her head away and her braid sails sideways. Her already rosy cheeks grow ruddier under the intensity of her mother’s examination.
Mrs. McGinn slowly exhales and removes the skillet from the stove. She marches over to her daughter, places her hands on the girl’s shoulders, and looks her in the eye. “This isn’t the way I would have liked to find out about my first grandchild,” she says. “But you know I love you. Jackson and I will support you until you and Adam can get a little more organized. These things happen for a reason, I suppose. Everything will be fine. You both can stay here with us until the rain dies down and things get back to normal around here.”
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