The Leaving Year

by Pam McGaffin

  Duh, of course, they’re talking about Dad. I’ve got to get my head out of the clouds.

  “Thanks,” Mom says. “Thanks so much.”

  I steal one last glance at David and his bluer-than-blue eyes and a zingy sensation ripples through my body, leaving a pleasing tickle.

  “I was kind of thinking,” Mom says after settling herself behind the wheel of our station wagon. “Would you like to get lunch at the A&W? I’m craving one of their root beer floats.”

  If I nodded my head any more enthusiastically I’d give myself whiplash. The A&W is perhaps the only thing that can get my mind off David. We turn down Commercial Avenue to go through the middle of town, passing under a street banner advertising the annual Summer Salts Festival.

  “Oh God, that stupid festival,” Mom says.

  “Dad likes it.”

  “Well your dad’s just a big kid.”

  “Yeah.” When I was little, he got me over my fear of Salty, the salmon mascot, by making me “shake fins” with it. Up close, I could see through the black mesh in Salty’s mouth that it was just a man in a gray foam-rubber suit.

  “Salty looks more like a shark than a salmon,” I say, which makes Mom laugh as she pulls into the A&W parking lot. The stalls still have those speaker boxes that let you place orders from your car, but Mom insists on sitting inside at a table. Her tolerance for fast food only goes so far.

  We hardly ever eat out when Dad’s gone because Mom likes to watch expenses and calories. But this small splurge has become a tradition to celebrate the news of Dad’s homecoming. Mom orders her root beer float and a plain hamburger, no cheese. I order a bacon burger with cheese, and she cringes a little but doesn’t say anything.

  When we get our food, Mom spoons up a dainty amount of the ice cream froth in her root beer. “Oh, my,” she says, closing her eyes. “That is so good.”

  “I wonder where he is right now.” I take a big bite of my bacon burger.

  “I guess we’ll find out tonight.” Mom cuts her burger in half with a plastic knife.

  “Do you think he’s through Johnstone Strait?”

  “I don’t have a crystal ball, honey. And don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  I swallow and think of that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy is in the fortune-teller’s tent and sees her Auntie Em calling her name.

  “I wish we did … have a crystal ball. Then we wouldn’t have to worry all the time.”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m better off not knowing what your father’s up against.”

  Waves as high as the Majestic. That’s Dad’s description of what happens when high winds meet high seas in the Gulf of Alaska. The Majestic is Annisport’s only hotel and its tallest building. Three stories, with a cupola on top.

  “So what were you talking to Mr. Mackey about?”

  Mom blots her lips with a napkin. “Oh, the usual stuff.”

  “You said you weren’t worried. Worried about what?”

  She clears her throat. “I’d simply asked him if he’d heard from your father.”

  “So, had he?”

  She hesitates. “No, not since Tuesday, which is when he called us. I’m sure we’ll hear from him tonight.” Her voice has that bossy edge that means she’s done explaining.

  “Okay, I was just curious.” I eat some more of my hamburger, making sure to swallow before I speak again. “David says it was hard to find fish.”

  “Hm, I’m not surprised. They’ve been catching less and less every year.”

  “And staying out longer,” I add. “David says he’s so tired he’s going to sleep for three days.”

  Mom doesn’t say anything, and I feel myself blush despite every effort not to.

  “You’ve got quite the crush on him, don’t you?”

  I can’t help my grin.

  “He’s cute. I have to admit.” She sighs long and slow. “But you don’t want to get involved with a fisherman, trust me.” She wipes her hands with her napkin and leaves it crumpled on her plate. She digs her lipstick and compact out of her purse and applies a fresh coat of color. She rubs her lips together and checks them in the mirror.

  “We really should do this more often, you and me.” Her pretty coral mouth spreads wide and thin.

  “Can you take me back to the dock?”

  “Hm, I could really use your help getting the house ready,” she says, shaking her head. “And you’ll want to be there when Dad calls.”

  I know that he usually doesn’t call until well after dinner, but something tells me that now is not the time to argue.

  I wish we lived in one of the big houses on the ridge with a view of the channel. That way I could watch the boats through binoculars like Mrs. Thompson does. But our house is on the Slav side of town. Mom calls it “modest,” which I think means it’s unremarkable in every way except for her climbing rose bush, which, in early summer, looks like a pink polka-dot blob that’s eaten half the fence. By now, though, most of the blooms have started to brown and fall apart. Dad has never seen Mom’s pride and joy at its best.

  We park behind his truck full of rusty boat parts, Mom going through her checklist of stuff that still needs to be cleaned, including my room. So that’s where I start, while she goes to hers to change out of her too-dressy dress.

  My room isn’t that bad. Sure, there are clothes on the floor, but that makes it easier to tell what’s dirty and what can be worn again. I figure I’m saving on laundry by wearing the same T-shirts, jeans, and cutoffs over and over. The only people I see during the summer are my cousins, and they don’t care. I scoop up an armload—it smells of sweat and Coppertone—and carry it to the clothes hamper in the hallway. Three more trips and my floor is clean.

  Now for my shelves. I wet one of my dirty socks and wipe around my collection of troll dolls and the big glass snow globe Dad brought back from Juneau with a mother polar bear and her three cubs inside. I dust around my books and put back the copy of Moby Dick I started in June. It’s been buried under my clothes for weeks. Someday.

  When I get to my dresser, I take the sock off my hand and look in the mirror at a face too fleshy to be pretty and hair too frizzy to stay down. It frames my head like a Christmas tree. Dad has the same thick, dark hair, but short, of course. In the one family photo I’ve tucked into my mirror, the resemblance between us is obvious—same hair, same longish nose, same tall, broad body, except his is muscled from hard work. The three of us stand on the Port Dock. Dad has his arm around my shoulders. Mom’s on my other side, arm around my waist. Next to my tan, Mom’s pale Irish skin looks almost ghostly. She’s pretty, in a delicate way. Dad used to call her his blue fairy because he thought she looked like the character in Pinocchio. I don’t know about that, but the only thing I seem to have inherited from her are my green eyes.

  Dad’s eyes are brown. Warm. I take the photo out from the mirror and pinch a little slit on the edge between Mom’s head and mine. Working my way down, I tear her part of the photo off so it’s just the two of us, me and Dad. I slip the two-thirds photo under my pillow and lie down on my unmade bed.

  The clock on my nightstand says it’s only a quarter past one. I thought it was later. Six more hours till we hear from him. Then what? Two days? Maybe three? What’s three days when I’ve already waited four months?

  “Love you, Dad. Please hurry.” I say the words out loud, hoping, through some miracle, that he can hear them. If telepaths can bend spoons with their thoughts, then maybe, if I concentrate really hard, I can help pull the Lady Rose home.

  AT seven o’clock I take a seat next to the telephone and watch Mom wait without obviously waiting. She putters around doing other things—wiping down counters, pushing in chairs, watering the plants. When seven thirty ticks by and he still hasn’t called, she sits down across from me and straightens the pile of magazines covering the state of Washington. Our coffee table, with a map of Dad’s route to Alaska preserved under a thick coating of clear plastic, was his gift to Mom after t
hey were married. My finger makes a long, greasy smear as I try to feel where along that twisty waterway he might be.

  “He’s late tonight,” Mom says.

  I grab the deck of cards that’s next to the phone for just this purpose. “Want to play some five-card draw?” We don’t call it poker because we don’t play for chips.

  Mom sighs. “Sure.”

  Dad taught me how to shuffle, and I do it three times before dealing our cards. I get a pair of kings and discard three. Mom discards four.

  “Pair of fives,” she says placing her hand down.

  “Two kings.”

  We play for an hour, me winning most of the hands because Mom’s heart isn’t really in it. Outside, it’s starting to get dark. The sun is setting earlier every day as we head toward fall.

  “I’m done,” Mom says putting down her cards and picking up one of the magazines she straightened earlier.

  At ten o’clock, she gets up to go to bed. “He’ll probably call once I’ve fallen asleep. You should get to bed, too. Readjust your clock for school.”

  I nod. “In a bit. I’m going to have a little snack.”

  She shoots me a little look of disapproval but doesn’t say what I know she’s thinking—that I shouldn’t eat before bed if I really want to lose weight. She must realize that tonight we have more important things to worry about.

  I fix myself a PBJ with extra jelly and pour myself a glass of milk. If Dad were here, he’d have one, too—he loves PBJs—but I don’t know how he can eat them without milk. “Simple,” he says. “I’d rather not get sick, thank you.” I think of all the wonderful things he’s missed out on—cheese, ice cream, whipped cream, gravy—and thank God I didn’t inherit his lactose intolerance, if such a thing can be inherited.

  I finish my sandwich, put my glass in the sink with the dirty knife, and head upstairs. If Mom were still up, she’d remind me to brush my teeth. Since she’s not, I go straight to my room. It’s 10:13.

  THE mast is as big around as a tree. I try to hold on as my boat gets tossed by the waves. A bell buoy rings, warning me that I’m too close to the rocks. But I can’t let go. And I can’t steer. The bell keeps ringing to warn me, taking on a shrill tone, like a fire alarm.

  That’s no bell. It’s the telephone in Mom and Dad’s room. He’s calling. I roll out of bed and run to answer it, but Mom’s already there. I find her sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightgown.

  “Okay,” she says into the receiver. Her voice is soft and slow. Then her face goes slack and she drops the receiver to the floor. It lands with a thud. She collapses next to the bed. My stomach flutters—softly at first, then in a rush, like a flock of panicked birds. They fly into my lungs, those birds, threatening to choke me as I ask the question: “What happened?”

  “Dad’s not answering his radio. They’ve called a search.” Her chin quivers. She picks up the receiver and throws it. “God damn it!” It clangs against the hardwood floor, just missing my feet. I pick up the receiver and return it to its cradle on Mom’s nightstand. She starts to cry.

  I’m frozen. This isn’t real. I’m still dreaming. I’m not conscious of forming the words, the same words Mom has used with me when I’ve cried, words I don’t really believe, but I hear myself speak: “It’ll be okay.”

  She leans over and strokes the top of my bare foot. I slide down next to her. My blood whooshes in my ears and the birds beat themselves silly in my stomach. I don’t move.

  I don’t know how long we sit like that, but it’s long enough for the soft shadows of morning to turn sharp.

  I was five when Dad gave me my first boating safety lesson. We were listening to the strange language coming over the ship-to-shore radio, and I asked him what a “vessel” was. “Pretty much anything that floats,” he said, launching into an explanation of the CB. After that, I could expect a quiz whenever I came aboard.

  “Okay, what do you say on the radio if you need help?”

  “Mayday! Mayday!”

  He’d always plug his ears in anticipation of my high-pitched shouting. It was a routine we had: him plugging his ears, me yelling way too loud, using comedy to lighten up a serious subject. He wanted me to be prepared but not worried. It worked. I came to think of Mayday as an all-powerful word unlocked by the magic of a silver box.

  Dad never sent out a Mayday.

  CHAPTER 2

  All Hands

  Entire ship’s company, both officers and enlisted personnel

  My family and Dad’s trolling buddies, whose homecomings I missed, pace the floors of our house drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The Mackeys are here, but no David. This is an adults-only gathering. I probably wouldn’t be allowed if I didn’t live here.

  Sitting at a kitchen table full of snacks people brought, I don’t eat. The hollowness inside me can’t be filled with food. Or reading. Moby Dick rests, unopened, in my lap. Mom’s in the living room, sitting next to the phone with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Grace. They seem to be shielding her from a stiff wind. On any other day I’d be amazed by this show of closeness, but today we’re all united in worry. Not that anyone’s being obvious about it. My relatives hug me and ask about school starting, as if I would be thinking about that right now. They don’t say anything about Dad. They know how these stories usually end. As someone who’s grown up in a fishing town, I do too. But I refuse to give up. As long as he’s still missing, there’s hope.

  All this sympathy food concerns me, though. When the freezer in our refrigerator can hold no more, Aunt Janet hands me a couple of casseroles wrapped in grocery sacks and asks me to put them in the spare ice box in the basement.

  The stairs creak as I make my way down into what Mom calls “Dad’s Lair” because he’ll spend hours down here in the winter making his nautical-themed creations. He has a vast collection of knick-knacks—ropes, lures, maps, old coins, and stuff—that he “floats” in plastic tabletops, trays, and coasters. I never come down here in the summer. There’s no reason to. He’s gone and his workshop is cleaned up and closed for the season, the smell of curing epoxy replaced by a musty staleness.

  What if they don’t find him? What if he doesn’t come back?

  I can’t think like that. He will be found. He will come back.

  My shadow breaks the squares of light thrown by the windows. The freezer box is in the corner, next to the sinks and the washing machine. I open the lid and place the donated food on top of the packages of frozen fish left over from Dad’s last fishing trip in Puget Sound. The lid makes a hollow whump as it closes. As I turn to leave I see something stir out of the corner of my eye, but when I look back the only thing moving is a swirl of dust motes. I take the stairs two at a time and burst out of the dim into the brightness of a sunlit kitchen.

  “Whoa, there!” Uncle Pat grabs me by the shoulders, steadying me. “Good thing my coffee cup was empty.” He walks over to the stove, picks up the still-percolating pot, and pours himself a fresh cup.

  “You and Dena will be in the same school again,” he says. “She’s going to be graduating.” He whistles through his teeth. “Seems like last week you two were babies. Where’d the time go?”

  I don’t think he means for me to answer. I shrug and smile.

  “Listen.” He leans in, the lines around his mouth turning down. “No matter what happens, your mother’s going to need lots of help getting through this. You know you can call on us any time, day or night.”

  I nod even though I can’t imagine a reason to call someone in the middle of the night.

  “Good girl.” He pats my shoulder and leaves to join the other adults in the living room. No one seems to be eating the food.

  THE telephone rings three times that day. Each time, everybody stops talking and hangs on Mom’s timid “Hello?” They try to read her expression as she listens to the voice on the other end. It could be the marine operator calling with news. But each time all Mom says is, “Okay, thank you,” because the only news is that they still haven
’t found anything despite the widening search for my dad.

  THE following evening, the fishermen’s wives hold a candle-light vigil on the Port Dock. Mom can’t bring herself to attend, but everyone else goes, including all five of my cousins. Gregory and Jonathan, Uncle Alex’s boys, are too young to really appreciate the gravity of the situation, but they’re here because they love Dad. All my cousins do. He’s the fun uncle who plays Santa every Christmas and doesn’t mind making the more than two-hour drive south to Seattle for a matinee. If he were part of our sad procession down to the waterfront, he’d try to lighten the mood with a funny story or a comment to remind everyone how lucky we are to be alive. He’d definitely stop to appreciate this sky, glowing pink as the sun slips behind a bank of purple clouds.

  Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.

  But Dad’s not here, so no one says anything about the sunset or anything else, not even Dougie, my motor-mouth middle cousin. I walk with his sister, Dena, behind Uncle Pat, who leads the way, suit tails flapping in the wind. The air smells faintly of wood smoke, the first sign of fall.

  At the dock, we’re each handed a candle in a Dixie cup and a mimeographed copy of a poem with a picture of Dad on the Lady Rose under his full name, “Stephen James Petrovich,’’ as if he’s dead, though in the picture he looks so alive. He’s wearing his lucky sweater and grinning like he couldn’t be happier. Seeing that smile just makes me hurt. So does the size of this crowd. Even the mayor of Annisport is here, standing, because there aren’t enough folded chairs. I get the seat of honor, center front, between Aunt Janet and Dena. What I’d give to be someone on the fringe, a friend of a friend.

  I spot something red at my feet; I bend down and pick up a carnation that must have fallen off of Mrs. Ward’s bouquet. I sniff its sweet scent and let the flower drop through my fingers. The sun slips below the horizon as Father O’Neal takes his place facing us, his back to the water. It’s strange seeing him out of church, but he actually appears holier against this bruised sky, his robes rippling in the wind. His eyes scan the crowd, landing first on me, then on the other members of our family. If he’s asking himself where my mother is, it’s not obvious. He says a few words about my dad and God and His love, leads us in the Lord’s Prayer, then directs us to the poem on the sheet we were given. Turns out, it’s a hymn to be sung. I’ve never heard it before so I try to follow along as best I can. Most of it doesn’t make much sense, but there’s a repeated line I kind of like: O hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.