Mr. O’Malley was just docking the boat when we arrived. A deck full of passengers shuffled toward the steps in a rush to be first off. Leading the pack, a woman with a toy poodle draped over one arm tottered forward in spiked fuchsia heels. The dog’s fur had been tufted into a white fountain sprouting over a pink ribbon between its ears.
“Good Lord Almighty.” Remy sighed, shaking her head at the woman. “Looks like Mr. O’Malley picked up a crew from Bloomingdale’s Tacky Gear for the Fat and Wealthy department.”
I tried to force a grin, fighting the sick feeling left behind by the sight of Riley grabbing the tie line on the ferry and wrapping it three times around a piling. This property belongs to my grandfather, I remembered him saying. He was Remy’s nephew, Mr. O’Malley’s grandson, which explained why every time I turned around he was standing there in the shadows. Then the kiss Remy had met the sheriff with pulled sharply into focus: he was not her boyfriend but her brother.
“Why the blazes do you people drag fleabags around with you everywhere you go?” Remy shook her head across the pier at the woman and her dog. “Though this time I’ve got to admit, I’m split right down the middle about which one’s worse, the dog or the owner.” She sighed. I did not point out that, for all her proclamation about disliking dogs, on more than one occasion I’d caught her sneaking Luke treats. “I’d better let her off and fast before the cream puff and her damn poodle get overexcited and pee the deck.”
The white heads of ten-foot swells sloshed over the break wall, rolling inland in a foamy curl. The Mirabel teetered and tossed along with them, back and forth, bumping clumsily into place.
“Riley! Tie that off and come here.”
He looked up, flipping the hair out of his eye. His expression darkened when he saw me.
“Let’s go! We’ve got to get these people off and turn this boat around.”
Riley gave the knot a yank and sauntered over to Remy. “Here’s the log.” He handed her a clipboard, which she propelled at me without hesitation before heading for the ramp.
“Izabella’s going to guide people off.” Her eyes bobbed between us. Though busying myself with the names on the clipboard, I caught the fringe of a look that passed between them. “Show her where to stand when you drop the ramp.”
“I’m busy.” He started to walk away. Remy caught him by the back of the shirt.
“Not as busy as me. Now show her.”
“Why can’t Grandpa show her?” He pointed at Mr. O’Malley, who was now sitting on a large reel of rope beside the ferry while Telly guided the cars out from the lower deck.
“Because Grandpa isn’t feeling well. And I told you to do it, so go.”
“Come on,” Riley snapped, leading me over to the boat. “Just hand people a map and one of these when they get off the boat.” He kicked a box of flyers for the Yemaya Festival set haphazardly on the wharf, sending three of them fluttering onto the boards like broken-winged moths.
“Steamship wharf is right here,” he said, poking a finger at a red star on the map fixed to the clipboard. “Main Street’s right there. If anyone asks you where something is just send them to Main Street, doesn’t matter what it is. Unless it’s a taxi. Anyone needs a taxi, just wave to Telly and he’ll sign them up.”
What about my Yemaya Stone? I thought, glancing at his pocket. Is that on Main Street?
Of all the people on Tillings, what were the chances that this one belonged to Remy? That Riley hated me was clear, even if the reason was not, but I wasn’t too keen on him, either. Forget that he was cute, or had the greenest eyes in the whole wide world.
“Think you can manage that?”
Before I could answer, he’d hoisted himself up a side ladder on the boat and was pulling the pin free to drop the ramp.
The cream puff and her poodle pushed ahead of everyone else. Halfway down, the woman stalled—bringing the whole parade to a halt—and reached her free hand into her blouse between her breasts. Extracting a handkerchief, she dabbed the beads of sweat blooming over her brow and collarbone. When she was satisfied, she tucked the cloth back into her shirt, the corner sticking out of her collar, and marched straight for me. When at last they reached the bottom of the ramp, I handed the woman a map and flyer just like I’d been told.
“Can you please tell me where the Brass Lantern Inn is?”
I pointed to Main Street.
“Over there?” She smushed her nose up, squinting at the map. “Are you sure? Because they said take a left out of Steamship Wharf. That’s not left.” Turning the map sideways, she ran a finger along the names of hotels. I glanced down, pretending to look with her. “I don’t see it on here anywhere.”
I pointed to Main Street on the map while the poodle sniffed at my shoulder, leaving a wet spot.
“But they said left.” Her voice raised a notch, causing several passengers to gaze back at us as they stepped off the ramp, and I felt my chest tighten. The palms of my hands grew clammy, making the clipboard difficult to grasp. Hanging off a rope above me as he wiped a splotch of ketchup from the side of the boat, I felt Riley watching.
“Ahh . . .” Barely audible, a second strangled hiss came out of my mouth.
“Are you okay?” The woman looked at me oddly.
“Go to Main Street and take your second left. The Brass Lantern’s three blocks down on the right.” Still in midair like a chimpanzee, Riley continued to scrub, never looking down at the woman.
“Second left,” she repeated. “Maybe I should take a taxi. These legs aren’t what they used to be. And Pixie doesn’t really like to walk much anymore.”
“Over there,” Riley pointed at Telly, who was walking away. Thankfully, the only other passengers left were those waiting for a taxi, so they followed the cream puff and Pixie toward Telly in a small frenzied herd.
I found Remy and Mr. O’Malley bickering inside the ticket stand. I tapped on the window. Remy unlatched the door, clutching tight to a mop, and relieved me of my clipboard.
“Just look at the thermometer, you old polar bear. Forty-one degrees! Cold enough to preserve your frozen carcass for thirty days before rinsing it down the disposal,” she scolded from behind a gray wool knit scarf, yanking a glove from each hand and waving her fingers in front of the small space heater. “Get your jacket from the car before Telly takes off with it.”
“I’m not cold.” Mr. O’Malley poked a mound of sweet sticky tobacco into his pipe, choking back a cough so determined it turned his face bright red and shuddered his whole body.
“Good Lord have mercy! There’s your reason for feeling no cold. Your body’s so damn heated from trying to cough up a lung, you’re generating enough electricity to warm half the island. I’m going to be stuck half way across this bay with you hacking up a vital organ. Are you looking at the thermometer? Put your glasses on, old man!”
“My eyes are good enough.” Mr. O’Malley lit his pipe, fixing his gaze out the window while I pulled my sleeve over my knuckles.
“Then it’s your mind that’s going,” she shot back. “It’ll be twenty degrees cooler on the ocean. Not to mention that you’ve been under the weather all week. You’ll freeze to death.”
“I expect I’ll be good,” announced Mr. O’Malley.
“Mmm hmm. Good and dead from pneumonia.”
“Then I guess I won’t be cold.”
“Get your damn jacket.” Remy handed me the mop as Mr. O’Malley pushed his way out of the stand, leaving a puff of smoke sweetening the air behind him. As he passed, he tossed me a wink and I gave him a grin. In my mind, this is what my father and I would have been like if he hadn’t gone—him barreling off across the waves with me chasing after him waving a life preserver in the air. Someone else might have heard the exchanges between Remy and Mr. O’Malley as bickering, but I knew the truth. This was their way of saying, “I love you more than all the stars in the galaxy.” Even if the sentence did end in “you stubborn old goat.”
“Bring Riley that mop. You
can grab a bottle of Comet and help me with the bathrooms on the ferry.” The growl in Remy’s voice said she’d gained some small satisfaction in being able to make somebody do what she wanted without argument.
I lugged the mop across the planks, looking for Riley and his bucket. When I found him, my heart jumped into my throat, and not because he was so handsome. He was hammering in a loose peg beside the ramp and Lindsey was standing shotgun chatting away. Her hands were folded across her chest and I could see the bright orange of her polish peeping out from where the fabric of her shirt bunched up. Remy must have read the hesitation in my step.
“I’m watching, there’s nothing to worry about.” Her voice was softer than the moment before. “Go on.”
Taking a deep breath, I pushed the hair away from my eyes and tried to walk a little taller, telling myself I’d already stood up to Lindsey once, sort of—even if I was going to sweat my morning milk making up for it. Coming up alongside them, I tipped the handle of the mop at Riley, who ignored me flatly. Lindsey took one look at me and laughed.
“Oh my God! Riley, is this your new janitor?”
Riley glanced over at me, unamused, before driving another peg flush with the deck.
“What the hell was your aunt thinking?” Beneath Lindsey’s snootiness, there was a flash of annoyance at my being there—something only another girl would have recognized. Wrestling the mop skyward, I shoved it at Riley, who continued to ignore me. I looked over my shoulder for Remy, who was standing beside the front of the ferry clutching a bottle of Comet and a toilet brush, watching.
“What’s the matter?” Lindsey’s words sang into the world all sugary sweet. “Cat got your tongue?”
After considering my options, I let my lips curl into a smile and brought the mop down hard against the bucket’s edge. The force of it flipped the bucket cleanly on its side, splashing the soapy water from her shins up to her perfectly painted face until she looked like a melting Rocket Popsicle with one color dribbling down over the next.
“You little . . .” She kicked the pail and drew her arms back as though she might shove me.
“Knock it off!” Riley caught her midswipe, balling his fingers tightly around her arm, green eyes blazing.
Lindsey wrung her hands out in front of her, letting water drip from her polished nails. Suds had caught in her blond hair and her mascara had left raccoon rings around her blue eyes. More than once, I’d wished for corn silk hair and sapphire eyes like Lindsey’s, to be one of those girls who shuffle their way through boys’ hearts as quickly as a deck of cards and leave them pining into grandfatherhood. Girls like that don’t have to speak a word for the whole wide world to fall in love with them; but they always do. They can twitter out a song strong and sweet as canaries in the morning sun.
But just then, for a moment, at least, Lindsey was as speechless as me.
“You’re gonna pay for that,” she whispered, collecting herself and pushing past me. I propped the mop handle against the boat beside Riley and marched back to Remy, trying to conceal the shock on my face from Riley defending me.
“Ha! Now that might have taught Miss Lindsey a thing or two,” she snickered, handing over the Comet. “Let’s go. That was a sound start, but we have more shit to clean off this boat before we go.”
By the time we’d finished the bathrooms, a thick curtain of fog was rolling in. Remy squeezed the lever on the shortwave radio, informing a bodiless voice in the box that we were pulling out, when a lanky figure lumbered across the deck. My stomach tightened as I realized Riley was still aboard.
Ten minutes later, people going to the mainland shuffled up the ramp, weaving in and out of one another to claim a place beside the rail until they blended together like a hive of bees and one passenger did not stand out from another. Then one did, a tall brown-haired man wearing a striped sweater and jeans. Three paces behind him, a woman with long hair cascading across her shoulders like spilled ink fought the crowd to keep up.
Here’s how it works in my fantasy: I am walking down the beach among a thousand people. I trip over a tall lemonade someone left in my path, and when I scoop it up to hand it back, there is my father staring up at me with a huge dimpled smile asking what took me so long.
Somewhere in my heart, I knew it wasn’t him. But fantasies are powerful beasts, and my stomach dropped straight out from under my ribs at the sight of the man leaning against the rail. Light-years away, Remy was yelling to Telly to draw up the ramp. Before I knew they were moving, my feet were heading down the steps two at a time toward the striped sweater until I found myself sneaking up behind the man. Had I been paying attention I would have noticed the woman with him returning from the snack bar with an open bottle of Coca-Cola. But I wasn’t. I tumbled right over her leg, grabbing the man’s arm as the circle of people surrounding him gasped, hopping back when fat splashes of cola flung toward them.
“What the . . .” the man shrieked. “Let go!” Those very words had repeated on me every minute of every single day since my father had plucked me off his leg like a diseased tick. The words that had long ago shriveled up inside me like winterberries crept up my throat: I’m sorry . . . sorry . . . sorry.
Recovering from the shock of me dousing him with a wayward bottle of cola, the man helped me back to my feet before peeling his sweater off over his head and dabbing at my sleeve.
“Sss – sss - orry.” The word spit into the air between us on its own, and when I looked up to find Remy standing beside me holding Riley’s mop, I saw the question move across her eyes.
“It’s just cola.” A silky softness settled into the man’s voice, but it was all wrong. No lemonade or excited hug, no dimples, and when I blushed, turning my head away, the only thing left of the beach was a shrinking strip of sand.
When the mess was mopped clean, I followed Remy back to the control booth, passing Riley on the stairs.
“Told you,” he whispered at Remy, who nudged him quiet.
I climbed back up the stairs and into the control room numb as a shot of Novocain and crumpled into the seat beside Remy. Every bit of me wanted to cry a thousand tears, drain out the embarrassment and hurt inside, but my throat was so tight it wouldn’t come. I just sat, letting the cyclone inside me die down.
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Remy took hold of a wayward sprig of hair, coiling it around her ear, and began flipping switches on the panel until a burst of static broke over the radio. “You dump a bucket a’ water over Lindsey Stuart, and the world turns right around and soaks your butt right back! Damn karma. Gets me every time.” She laughed lightly, as though there was something cosmically hilarious about the whole thing. “Either that girl’s got one hell of a reach, or it’s poetic justice. I wonder who that poor guy down there dumped on to deserve a good drenching!” She glanced down at the man, who’d been reduced to a T-shirt on the deck below. “He must’ve done something.” She chuckled again.
When I didn’t answer she added, “So I thought maybe we’d bring your mum her car this time. Then I thought, nah.” She tossed me a wink, making no mention of the fact that she’d heard me speak, and I count this as the precise moment I knew for certain somehow she understood the storm blowing out of control inside me. “We need some sort of fun in our lives.”
Kch, chh, the radio squawked. “Clear the docks,” Remy ordered into the receiver. Kch! “Mirabel departing.”
Then she pushed the black AV box and, as sweet as Grandma Jo’s gooseberry pie, her voice came over the loudspeakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be pulling into open water momentarily. Please make yourself comfortable. Our traveling time will be approximately one hour and ten minutes, give or take twenty-five hours for fog. Anybody out there have radar vision?” A soft rumble of laughter rose from the crowd.
“They think I’m joking.” She laughed. Tossing the mouthpiece aside, she eased the ferry on course and leaned against the control panel, politely watching out the window as I blew my nose.
Neither
of us moved again until we were a mile from land.
“I don’t guess you want to tell me what bee buzzed your bonnet out there?” Remy asked, laying a sheet of paper and pen in front of me.
I looked at it but made no move to pick up the pen.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Then I guess I’ll tell you something instead.” Leaning over the controls, she studied me with a cautious glance. “Nobody’s legs are built to run forever, girl. One of these days they’ll either drop right out from under you or run you right in a damn circle.”
With that, she turned back to the windshield, and the Mirabel slipped through the narrow throat of the break wall toward Tillings’s pier. I got to my feet and made my way onto the skinny deck outside the control room, breathing deeply. The houses on Tillings stood on tall weathered gray stilts just visible through the mist. A lone osprey sat on the break wall, nothing more than a crooked black shadow against the white rock watching us.
“Anybody up to walking into town?” It was the afternoon of my sixth birthday. Through the window the sun dipped low on the horizon preparing to dive beneath the waves. We’d only been at the Booth House for half an hour, but I could hear the excitement in my mother’s voice even though it was muffled behind the bathroom door. On the other side, I was dancing around the hallway waiting for her to come out to save myself the sprint down to the first-floor powder room. What one single person could be doing in there for so long was a mystery. “Maybe we can stop and get ice cream.”
“I’ve got to get some work done. Why don’t you and Iz go ahead?” My father shuffled into view with a stack of papers, pausing to laugh at my frantic dance. “You’d better unlock that door and let this girl in or we’ll be mopping up a puddle in the hall.”
What the Waves Know Page 15
