by Luanne Rice
“Here’s something new,” Zach said. “It’s a song.”
“A song?” Josie asked, frowning. Belinda and T.J. played songs on their stereos. They each had favorite songs, and it made Josie feel left out. Music, when she could hear it at all, sounded harsh and tuneless to Josie. She didn’t like that Zach was about to teach her something she wouldn’t understand. She felt afraid she would feel stupid, and she ducked her head. Her chin began to wobble; she didn’t want to cry.
Zach tapped her hand, making her look at him.
“It’s fun,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Josie wanted to look away, but she didn’t.
“Will you try?” he asked.
She hesitated. She didn’t want to.
“Please? Just try?”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” he said out loud.
Josie understood the words “little” and “star.” She sat very still, feeling dumb for knowing only two words. She could never learn a song.
Now Zach signed, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
Though she didn’t understand the word “twinkle,” Josie tried to form all the words with her hands. Each time she made a mistake, Zach would correct her. She moved her fingers slowly, with precision, wanting to get every word right. After the second time she got all the way through, she started to feel excited.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” she signed.
“Excellent, Josie!” Zach signed back.
She kept signing the words. After a while, she could do it on her own. It felt different from anything she had ever learned. The words were pretty, and she liked the way they went together. She pictured the sky at night, and she began to imagine what the word “twinkle” meant.
“Would you like to try some more?” Zach asked.
Josie nodded, and then she signed, “Yes.”
“Okay,” Zach signed. “Here we go.”
The night before Billy was to leave for his first trip on his new boat, Cass slept badly. At one point she dreamed of having two husbands. One was her lover—Billy as he had been on the boat, as close to Cass as a husband could be. The other was an unbending Billy with thick, cloudy glasses, who refused to see, who thought all change was bad. When she woke up, sweating, Billy had already gotten out of bed.
Hearing the shower run, she drifted in and out of sleep. The clock said four-fifteen; it was pitch-dark outside. She tried to wake up, to go downstairs and make coffee, but bed felt too delicious. Just another five minutes, she told herself, snuggling under the comforter. Her feet found the warm spot Billy had vacated.
Now he came into their room, a towel around his waist. He moved silently, dressing in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a red-plaid flannel shirt. While Cass was watching, he didn’t look at her. She knew he had a mental checklist, things he had to do before heading offshore. But she worried a little; he had seemed distant since their argument a few nights earlier.
“Are you still mad?” she asked from under the covers.
“You’re awake?” he said, sounding surprised.
“Slightly.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight making the mattress bend. “I’m not mad,” he said.
“Disappointed?”
“In what?” he asked, frowning.
“I don’t know,” Cass said, thinking of her own disappointments. “In me. In our life.”
He sat still for a long moment, saying nothing. “Maybe I’m disappointed in myself,” he said. “For not rolling with it.”
“With what?”
“Everything. Being a father. I don’t know.” He chuckled, making light of what he’d just said, but Cass didn’t think he was kidding. He checked his watch: time to make his getaway. “Got to leave,” he said, bending over to kiss her. He stroked her bed-tangled hair, kissed her ear, the warm curve of her neck, and finally her mouth.
“Have a good trip,” she said, hating to have him go. She wanted to pull him under the covers, feel their bodies moving together.
“Me, too,” he said, even though she hadn’t said a word. Then he pulled a heavy wool sweater over his head, stepped into his shoes, and left for sea.
21
Cass worked at her desk, figuring the accounts for the early part of November while Josie stood behind her, playing hairdresser. She brushed Cass’s hair with slow, gentle strokes.
“Call me Deb,” Josie said.
“Okay, Deb,” Cass said, knowing that Josie was making a leap of faith. Since Josie couldn’t see her lips, she could only assume that Cass was playing along.
“You pretend to be Mrs. Clay.”
“I will.”
“Mrs. Clay, you have pretty hair.”
“Thank you, Deb.”
A few fishing boats tossed on their moorings. The November wind whistled through their rigging; halyards clanked, and the Minturn Ledge foghorn rumbled down the bay. She glanced out the window, wondering when Billy would get back. So far he’d been out three days on Cassandra’s maiden voyage. She had made an appointment for the Monday before Thanksgiving to visit North Point. She wondered how he would react.
“Two of my favorite girls.” Cass looked up to see her father entering the office.
“Call me Deb,” Josie said.
“Hi, Deb,” he said. Cass smiled; you could tell he’d raised three daughters. He began rummaging through a file drawer. His posture was stooped as if with defeat, and he moved slowly, as if he ached.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Old property-tax forms,” he said.
“In the bottom drawer.”
“Thank you,” he said without looking up.
Cass felt frozen to her seat, lulled by Josie’s playing with her hair. She stared at the window as if by sheer will she could make Billy’s boat appear.
“What do you need with the property-tax forms?” Cass asked, slowly turning to watch her father.
He riffled through files, sighed, leaned on the sturdy oak drawer. “Thinking of making some changes,” he said.
“Changes? Like what?”
“Thinking of retiring.” He grabbed a handful of manila folders and brought them to the desk.
“Yeah, sure,” she said, smiling.
“Bet you won’t even miss me,” he said.
“You’ll still be around, Dad,” Cass said. “This’ll always be your business.”
“The funny thing is, Cass,” he said, settling across the desk from her, “I never really felt this was my business. My father meant for my brother to run it. And if he’d lived through the war, he would be here now.”
“You really think so?”
“I know it. I came home on leave from the merchant marine, and this place was going to hell. My father never got over Ward dying in action. So I stepped in.”
“And never left.”
“No, never did.”
“What would you have done?” Cass asked curiously, noting the cold, far-off look in his eyes.
“I wanted to run cargo and salvage wrecks.” He flashed a smile—the old Keating charm. “I’d have been a sea bum.”
“Probably you’d never have married Mom, gotten saddled with three daughters,” Cass teased.
“Nothing could have kept me from that,” he said. “But you’d have grown up in Tahiti.”
Josie was braiding Cass’s hair. The first braid hung off-center, just behind Cass’s ear, in crooked steps.
“Very pretty, Deb,” her father said, pointing. He nodded enthusiastically at Josie. Josie concentrated, her tongue between her teeth, beginning a second braid. She smiled at her grandfather, happy to have an audience.
“She is a little heartbreaker,” he said. “Going to drive the boys crazy, just like her mother.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Cass said wryly, remembering their last conversation about Josie.
“You’re still mad at what I said before, aren’t you?” he asked, amazing Cass. Her fath
er hardly ever admitted he was wrong.
“Sort of. More hurt, I guess.”
“Well, I’m sorry. You’re a wonderful mother.”
“Thanks,” Cass said. Then a silence fell; she didn’t know how to respond to an apology from her father. He looked very serious.
“You’ve been doing a terrific job all along.”
“Two compliments in a row?” she asked. “What have I done to deserve it?”
He stared at his hands on the desk, first the backs, gnarled and veined, then the palms, surprisingly smooth for a man who made his living by the sea.
“I’ve asked Willis to come down, take a look at these tax records,” he said bluntly.
“Willis?”
“He’s a real estate expert. He seemed like the best person for me to talk to.”
“What do you need with a real estate expert?” Cass asked.
Her father looked at her dead-on, and she knew she was going to hear bad news. “I think we ought to develop the wharf,” he said.
She wasn’t sure she’d heard clearly. She stared dumbly at her father, watching his face while Josie rebraided her hair.
“I said I think we ought to develop the wharf,” he said, a defensive note in his voice. “It’s prime waterfront. We can get plenty for it. You throw in this warehouse and Lobsterville … what are you smiling about?”
Cass grinned as if her father had just told the joke of the century. “And we’ll all be rich with nothing to do,” she said.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about it,” he said, scowling.
“I think it’s hilarious,” she said. “You’re going to sell our land so someone can build brick condos? We’ll have places called Whale Cove and Lobster Pot Way sitting right here, instead of the warehouse. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
“No.”
“Wonder what they’ll do with Lobsterville? Probably rip it down and build a nice high-rise with a view out to Block Island.”
“I never thought it would come to this, but we can’t afford not to sell, if you think about it,” he said. “Just look at the waterfront, up and down the bay. No shortage of people wanting to live by the water. We can’t afford to hold on.”
She stared at him, the smile dissolving from her face. “Are you really serious?”
“Yes.” Her father stared angrily at his hands.
“You can’t be.”
“You’ll be glad to get your share of the money,” her father said bitterly. “Just wait till Billy hits a dry spell, and the income isn’t rolling in so steady. You’ve got three educations to pay for. I wonder if Billy thought of that before he bought that southern tub.”
“Are you doing this out of spite?” Cass asked, her voice rising. “Because Billy got his own boat?”
“You’ll be glad for the money,” her father repeated.
“That’s crazy,” Cass said. “I don’t want the money. I want us to keep the wharf. Not just for us—me, Bonnie, and Nora. For our kids, too.”
“The fishing business isn’t what it used to be, and it’s only going to get worse. You don’t see that, do you?”
“I know we’ll get by.”
“You and Billy had it too easy,” he said. “I’ve always said so. Sure, you’ve had a setback or two, but you don’t know what it’s like to struggle. Your mother and I, we lived through the Depression. We don’t look at this world through rose-colored glasses.”
“Maybe not,” Cass said, thinking how rare and bizarre it felt these days for someone to say she had it too easy. “But I still don’t see us developing the wharf. I love it here, Dad.”
“I love it, too. But I want to do what’s best for the family, even if it means changing things. Your mother feels the same way.”
“Mom knows about this?” Cass asked, feeling even more frightened.
“Sure she does.”
“You’ll wreck it,” she said. “Everything we grew up believing in.” Cass didn’t know many people her age who had stayed so close to home. She and Billy were the only high-school sweethearts she knew who were still together; she and her sisters had stayed in Mount Hope, working for the family business. Aside from John Barnard, most of their childhood friends had scattered.
Ignoring her, her father examined documents in the manila folder.
“Did you hear me?” she asked, her voice shaking. It seemed impossible, that this place could cease to exist.
“I’m talking about a tough choice,” her father said. “I’m not out to wreck anything.”
“But that’ll happen,” Cass said, wishing Billy were there.
She checked the clock: time to go home. Josie, still playing hairdresser, had unbraided Cass’s hair and was now brushing it.
“Come on, Deb,” she said to Josie. “Let’s go.”
“Mrs. Clay, you forgot to pay me.”
Her father chuckled. Cass glanced at him, startled. “She is definitely one of ours,” he said.
Cass pulled some change from her pocket and handed it to Josie. “Is that enough?”
Josie nodded.
Cass and Josie went to kiss Jimmy Keating goodbye. Josie slung her thin arms around his neck and gave him a hard hug. When Cass leaned over, he looked up, directly into her eyes.
“Don’t do this,” she said.
“Drive safely,” he said. “They’re calling for freezing rain.”
“I’m definitely supposed to go to Florida,” Alison said miserably, huddled against T.J. in the school bus.
“For Christmas?”
“Yeah. And she’s definitely going to be there.”
“That sucks.”
Alison nodded, her head pressed into his shoulder.
“Maybe your mom could tell your dad she needs you here. You know, the first Christmas since the separation, and all.”
Alison made a sound T.J. had never before heard come out of her: something between a snort and a guffaw. That such a delicate girl could make such an embarrassing sound made him love her even more. He gave her a squeeze.
“My mom wants me to go,” she said. “She can’t wait. She has a new boyfriend, and they’re going to go skiing in Colorado. No one in my family’s upset about the divorce.”
“Except you.”
“Yeah.”
T.J. held her tight, smelling her beautiful perfumy hair. He wanted the bus ride to last forever, till way after dark. You could tell it was going to snow any day now; he imagined a wicked snowstorm with drifts as tall as buildings, so the school bus would get marooned, and the temperature would drop and Alison would have to press close to him just to stay alive.
“I can’t believe I’m grounded,” he said. “It’s lousy not seeing you after school.”
“You can manage,” she said in that sharp, borderline-mean voice that always shocked T.J.
“Maybe I can sneak out today. Depends on if my mom works late or not.”
“Oh, I can’t today,” she said, lifting her head.
“Why not?” T.J. asked, jealous of whatever could keep Alison from seeing him if he were to risk everything by sneaking out.
“My mom’s making me go shopping.” She stuck out her tongue.
“Oh,” T.J. said, a little confused. Personally, he hated shopping, but he thought all girls loved it. Perfecto and Emma did, and so did his mom, and even Josie.
“Shit,” he said, as the bus air-braked. His stop. “I’ll call you later? When my mom’s busy.”
“We won’t be home from shopping till late,” she whispered, tilting her face up for his kiss.
He was still tasting her strawberry lip gloss when he stepped off the bus. Walking along, watching the bus turn onto Beacon Street, trying for one last glimpse of Alison, he hardly noticed Sean walking beside him. Belinda, even lugging her schoolbooks, was way ahead.
“Hey, man,” T.J. said. He’d been ignoring Sean for a while, ever since he’d started going out with Alison, and it made him feel kind of guilty. Sean needed a lot of attention; he didn’t have a
ny self-confidence, and he was really porking out, on the way to being as big as Aunt Bonnie.
“Hey, man,” Sean said. “What’d you get grounded for?”
“Driving my old man’s truck.”
“Yeah?” Sean asked, sounding psyched.
When they reached Sean’s corner, T.J. could tell that Sean really wanted to talk to him, because he didn’t say goodbye or turn toward home. He had this twisted expression on his face, like he had to go to the bathroom really bad. T.J. figured that Sean wanted to ask him about buying condoms or something else embarrassing.
“So, how’s Alison?” Sean asked.
“She’s great.”
Sean didn’t say anything for a minute, and T.J. was getting cold, just standing there. “You still into Satan?” T.J. asked, because he couldn’t really think of anything else to say.
“Yeah, I’m thinking of stealing Jesus out of the manger when they put up the Christmas stuff.”
“Sean, don’t do that,” T.J. said. The idea of Sean ripping off Jesus made him feel totally depressed. Ever since they were little kids their mothers had taken them to see the crèche at Our Lady of Mount Hope, and even though T.J. had outgrown it, he wanted it there for other little kids. Like Josie.
“Maybe I won’t,” Sean said. “I haven’t really decided yet. You think I shouldn’t?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, I probably won’t.”
T.J. nodded. It depressed him even further that just by showing a little disapproval, he’d talked Sean out of his plan. He didn’t like having that kind of influence over someone. He started edging down the street. Maybe Sean would take the hint and go home. “So, see you tomorrow?” T.J. said, walking backward.
“Listen, man,” Sean said, spit flying out of his mouth. He looked all red, like he’d just cut a big fart in public. “It’s probably a lie, I don’t know, but I heard Emma telling Belinda she heard Alison is kinda going out with a senior. Or she likes him, or something. But they’re, like, seeing each other. I’m only telling you what I heard on account of how much you’re in love, all that shit. But it’s probably a lie.”
“Emma told you that?”
