Together

by Julie Cohen

  Suddenly, fiercely, he wished he’d gone with her. Adam couldn’t come, of course, but he could have stayed with a friend for a week – his best friend Luca’s parents would have been glad to have him. Adam had been away from home that long this past summer for soccer camp and he’d been fine. They had missed him badly, him and Emily, but Adam had come home exhilarated from the freedom and the new friends he’d met.

  ‘Separation is how they grow,’ Emily had said, that night in bed, her hand seeking his, wanting not to be separate.

  But Emily had left in such a hurry, to get to England in time for her mother’s funeral that he’d had no time to think about how he’d feel when she was gone.

  Surely this was a coincidence. Brandon was a common name. For all he knew, William wasn’t even using his name. It was unlikely that he’d turn up in Maine. Emily would say all these things, if she were here. She’d also tell him to find out more.

  He parked the truck in the lot. The lights in the workshop were already on and the sound of the radio came through. When he opened the door, the scents of diesel and bottom paint greeted him, wood shavings and pine tar. At the far end, he saw a figure in a flannel shirt and baseball cap bending over his work. Robbie put on a pot of coffee in the kitchenette near the office and poured two cups as soon as it was done. He added creamer and three sugars to one of them before bringing it over to Pierre L’Allier.

  ‘Early start?’

  The young man glanced up from the piece of cap rail he was fixing to the bulwarks of a wooden yacht. He’d been trying to grow a beard for the past few weeks; so far it was a bit of wispy hair on his chin and on the corners of his lip, which startled Robbie a little bit every time he saw it.

  ‘Oh yeah, good morning,’ Pierre said, his accent flavoured with Québécois. ‘My brother dropped me off on his way to work. I hope it’s OK to let myself in?’

  ‘Course it is. Wouldn’t have given you keys if it weren’t.’ Robbie nodded at the joint on the cap rail. ‘That’s a nice nibbed scarf.’

  Pierre flushed. Despite the wisp on his chin, or maybe because of it, he only looked about sixteen. He’d been even scrappier and younger-looking when Robbie had taken him on as an apprentice, two years ago, straight out of school. Robbie hadn’t been looking to take on anyone else – he already had three full-timers, five part-timers, and Pierre hadn’t ever even worked on a boat before. His family were loggers – his father was the best tree surgeon Robbie had ever seen; he’d taken down that big spruce in front of the Methodist church as if he were dancing a ballet with chainsaw and ropes. But Pierre had walked into the boatyard and as Robbie had talked to him, Pierre had touched the cedar planks waiting to be riveted on to the oak frame Robbie had built. He touched them almost reverently. Almost as if his hands could see the shape that the wood should take. And Robbie had taken him on that very day.

  ‘Tank you,’ said Pierre. His French accent always came out more when he was embarrassed or excited.

  Robbie sat beside him on the bench. ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you go down to Camden with Little Sterling last weekend?’

  Pierre blushed again, more fiercely. He was a year short of drinking age, and his father Gill was notoriously strict with his sons.

  ‘I don’t really care what you got up to,’ Robbie added. ‘It’s your own business. I just heard a story about someone that Little met there, who’s got my name.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Pierre slowly. ‘Yeah, we were talking about that. I was saying he looked a lot like you, but younger. Little was saying maybe you had a cousin. You know how him and his cousins are all the spit of each other.’

  Robbie was conscious of his heart pounding again. Oh, Emily, please let it be, after all these years. Please. ‘What . . . was his first name, do you know?’

  ‘Charlie? No. Bill. William.’ Pierre rubbed his forehead ruefully. ‘We had a lot of beers.’

  ‘William Brandon. You’re certain.’

  ‘Yeah, pretty sure.’

  ‘And he was working for Harkers?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely. Good boats, those, eh?’

  ‘How old was he, do you think?’

  ‘Dunno . . . year or two older than me? He was a better drinker, anyway.’

  Better, as in more accomplished. Robbie frowned into his coffee, and stood up. ‘OK. Thanks, Pierre.’ He put a hand on Pierre’s narrow shoulder and went to the office to turn on the lights.

  Inside, he closed the door behind him and stood looking out the window at the boatyard. Yachts shrink-wrapped for the winter in white plastic like fat-bellied ghosts. There was a man in his early twenties called William Brandon, a boatbuilder and a drinker, working not twenty miles from here.

  ‘Oh God, Emily,’ he whispered. ‘What should I do?’

  He knew the foreman at Harkers, had shared coffee and shop talk with him, and once had rafted up to his motorboat and done running repairs to his engine when they were both on their way to Matinicus Island. He found him overseeing work on a thirty-eight-foot sloop, every inch of it hand-built in this workshop. Harkers were among the finest vessels built in Maine, which meant they were among the finest built anywhere in the world: exquisitely crafted wooden boats made by men and women with rough hands and mostly bought by millionaires and billionaires as pretty toys.

  Robbie paused in the doorway, looking around for a half-familiar figure, but he didn’t see anyone new, so he strolled over to the boat to stand beside George and admire it.

  ‘Wish I could afford one of these.’ He touched the sloop.

  ‘You don’t need one. How’s Goldberg?’

  ‘She’s fine. I need to recaulk her bottom before I put her back in the water.’

  ‘Boats and women. Always more work than you think they’re going to be.’

  ‘Labour of love, though. How’s Joyce?’

  ‘The same. Emily?’

  ‘The same,’ he answered. She would be well on her way to Norfolk, now. On their trip down to Boston he had told her not to drive if she didn’t get any sleep on the plane, but he suspected she’d ignore his advice if she felt she needed to. Be careful, he thought at her, across the ocean.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘I’m set, thanks. Listen, George, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for an employee of yours.’

  ‘William?’

  The promptness of the answer made Robbie’s heart thump and his stomach sink. ‘Yeah. Is he here?’

  George shook his head. ‘Sorry, buddy, but I had to let him go.’

  Robbie’s stomach sank further. ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘He punched the head of the sales team in the nose.’

  ‘Ah. So . . . so he’s gone?’

  ‘That was yesterday. I don’t know how far he’s got. Is he family?’

  ‘He . . . might be.’

  ‘He’s a good boatbuilder, Bob. Very talented, and careful. When he’s sober.’

  ‘I understand. Where did he come from, do you know?’

  ‘South. Charleston, I think. He didn’t talk much about it. I get the feeling that he’s moved around a lot, and I can see why. But he picked up some skills somewhere.’

  In that small workshop, built out of leftover wood and corrugated iron, under the palm tree in their back yard in Coconut Grove. Curls of wood at his feet and sawdust in his hair, turning over a carved dolphin in his hands.

  ‘Do you have his address?’

  ‘I’ve got it in the office. But you’d have as good a chance going to the Scupper.’

  He tried the Scupper first. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and Robbie had to pause at the door before he opened it. He had not seen the inside of a bar for years. Not a real bar, where beer stained the floor and the smell of alcohol had worn into the plaster of the walls. He tested himself: it was bad, but not too ba
d. It was the thought of William that was bothering him, not the thought of a glass pushed across the bar, cold and wet with bubbles crawling up from the bottom.

  Well, that thought bothered him, too. But mostly it was the thought of William.

  He opened the door and walked into the beery fug of the bar. Hockey played on the TV on the wall and the place was mostly deserted, except Robbie didn’t notice any of that because sitting at the bar with his back to the door was his own self. Bent forward, shoulders shrugged down, dark hair mostly hidden by a baseball cap, feet in unlaced work boots propped on the rung of the stool. There was a duffel bag on the floor beside him. He was Robbie’s own self, twenty years ago.

  He had never seen William as an adult, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was him.

  He watched himself drinking beer from a bottle with the grim efficiency of a man on a mission. At three o’clock in the afternoon, William would have stopped keeping count of them already. Robbie would have lost count by now himself; the afternoon would have started to condense itself into mouthfuls taken, and lengthen itself into that no-time that started with the first drink and ended with forgetfulness.

  Robbie swallowed hard, hung up his coat on a peg near the door, and walked up to the bar. He sat on a stool beside his son.

  William was busy drinking. His eyes were on the hockey, but his concentration was on the beer in his hand. His profile was so familiar it hurt. Marie was in the tilt of his chin and the shape of his ears but the rest of him was like Robbie, down to the faint auburn in his unshaven beard. His hands had seen work and his clothes were the uniform of men all up and down the coast: plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, worn jeans, untucked T-shirt. Robbie wore a version of it too, though his shirt was solid navy and he wore a sweater over it. The barman approached him, and he said, ‘A Pepsi, please, with plenty of ice. And another Geary’s for William here.’

  At the sound of his name, William turned from the hockey and glanced at Robbie. The glance solidified into a stare. Robbie looked back at him.

  It had been eighteen years. William had been a child of four. A child of four, and asleep. Now he had a man’s face, unshaven chin, bloodshot eyes, a bruise on his cheekbone. He looked older than twenty-two. He looked like the stranger Robbie used to see in the mirror every day.

  ‘Who are you?’ William demanded.

  ‘I’m the man who just bought you a beer.’

  ‘But who the fuck are you?’

  ‘My name’s Robert Brandon.’

  The look on William’s face wasn’t surprise, but anger. He narrowed his lips and his eyes and Robbie knew this was the expression he’d had right before he punched Harkers’ sales manager in the nose.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘I told you. I’m buying you a beer.’

  The drinks appeared next to their elbows on the bar and Robbie picked his up and had a sip. Cold bite, not enough to quench the thirst, but good enough. It was all he needed. William didn’t touch his.

  ‘Is your mother Marie?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ William said. ‘Not now, this is a fucking joke.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Robbie. ‘And I didn’t expect it either. George told me to look for you here. He said you’d more likely be here than at your apartment.’

  ‘My apartment.’ William snorted. ‘Why were you looking for me?’

  ‘Because if Marie Doherty is your mother, then you’re my son. I haven’t seen you since you were four. And I didn’t know where to find you until now.’

  ‘You’re an asshole, is what you are.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Robbie. ‘I probably am.’

  ‘If you’re my father, where have you been?’

  ‘Right here for the past thirteen years. In Clyde Bay. Before that, I was in Florida, waiting for you.’

  William’s fist crashed down on the bar. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Robbie took his wallet out of his pocket. He put a bill on the bar to pay for the drinks, and he drew a photograph out of the back of it. It was creased, yellowed, and worn to the shape of his back pocket from being carried around in a succession of wallets over the years. He put it on the bar, next to William’s fist.

  The boy in the photograph smiled up at them both. He was missing one of his front teeth and his hair needed a cut, even by the standards of 1972.

  ‘Get. The fuck. Out of here.’ William’s voice was wet and furious.

  ‘This is my phone number.’ Robbie grabbed a pen and a cocktail napkin and wrote it down. His writing was unsteady, and so were his words. ‘I’d like to get to know you, William.’

  ‘Get the fuck out of here! Get out!’ William slid off the stool, knocking it over.

  ‘Hey,’ said the barman, ‘whoa now, what’s going on?’

  ‘Get out!’ William’s hands clenched.

  ‘I told you, Bill,’ said the barman, ‘it’s your last chance. No more fighting.’

  ‘I’m going,’ said Robbie. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going. Call me if you want to. Please. Or find me. Brandon’s Boatyard in Clyde Bay. I’ll be there.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets and left the bar. The air outside was cold, colder than the drink he’d ordered, and he breathed great gulps of it to try to quench his thirst.

  Chapter Nine

  There were new houses on the outskirts of Blickley, crowded together behind cramped gardens; the tiny school where she and Polly had gone as children had a new, ugly extension on its side. But the church was the same, squat and grey, exactly as it had been for hundreds of years before Emily was born. After the dirty snow of a late Maine winter, the green of an English spring was almost shocking. Daffodils bobbed around the edges of the car park, which was full; she saw mourners, wearing suits and dresses, walking up the path into the church. Some of them she recognised, but she didn’t see her father or Polly. Not yet.

  She was late. After twenty years away, she had not expected the traffic in England to be so bad. The M25 had been stop and go, and she’d been stuck behind a tractor for half an hour on the A-road, pounding her hands on the steering wheel, trying not to look at the clock on the car dash. Her mouth tasted of awful airline coffee and she still wore the clothes she’d travelled in: a wrinkled shift dress, dark tights, a jumper, a winter coat that was more suited to Maine’s icy temperatures than England. She turned the car around and found a space to park on the side of the road. Then she hurried up to the church, looking frantically for her father’s slender build, her sister’s curly hair.

  The man she saw at the door of the church was not who she expected to see at all.

  She came to an abrupt halt. ‘Christopher.’

  He was wearing a grey overcoat. His glasses were round, without frames. His sandy hair had receded, and although Emily was a parent, a doctor, and forty-eight years old, she was shocked for a moment that this person from her youth was a middle-aged grown-up.

  Christopher’s eyes widened. ‘Emily?’

  ‘I . . . didn’t expect . . .’ She stopped. ‘Of course you’re here. My mother loved you very much.’

  ‘And I loved her. It’s . . . good to see you again, Emily.’

  She knew he was lying, or at least as close to lying as Christopher ever got, but this was typical Christopher, typical politeness. Because it wasn’t good to see him again. It was strange, as if this person she knew so well had been dug up and replaced by someone else, someone nearly twenty years older whom she didn’t know at all.

  What was it going to be like to see her father?

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.

  ‘This is Lucy,’ he said, and for the first time she noticed that a woman was standing next to him. She also wore a grey coat, and glasses, though she couldn’t take in many more details than that. ‘My wife.’

  ‘Oh. It’s – it’s nice to meet
you.’ She put her hand out to shake, because that seemed the right thing to do, and Lucy took it.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you too.’ And Lucy actually sounded as if she meant it, so she couldn’t possibly know who Emily was. Christopher couldn’t have told her everything.

  She stared at them both, with too much to say to be able to say anything safely.

  ‘I think it’s time to go in,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about your mother,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said automatically, thinking that this was how both English people and New Englanders dealt with uncomfortable situations: falling back into polite truisms and a catechism of courtesy.

  They both stood back to let Emily enter the church.

  The pews were nearly full. The air smelled of damp stone and lilies. In the front of the church was the coffin, wreathed with flowers, containing her mother.

  She had not understood, not truly understood, that her mother was dead until that moment. That her mother was dead and not coming back. Forever.

  She felt her mother’s hand in hers, as she had when she was a child and they used to walk to the shops. She smelled the scent of her mother’s hair. She saw her mother one of the last times they had spent together, sitting near the beach on Key West with the orange sunset gleaming off the glass she held in her hand. How she smiled. How she laughed.

  And now she was gone, and what did anything else matter at all? All the other things that had happened between them?

  At the back of the church, Emily reached her hand out, touched open air, thought about touching the coffin’s polished wood. She thought about her mother inside. Her mother was beyond her reach in a way that she had not been for the eighteen years that Emily had not seen her, nor heard her voice.

  Once upon a time, it had only been the two of them. She was the first person Emily had ever known.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she whispered.

  The vicar, a strange vicar who was not the voice of her childhood’s Sundays, walked up to the pulpit and began to speak.