“I have a friend who can help me.”
Zoe said, “Grandpa told me once that you can’t touch someone else’s traps, but is it okay since he was your dad?”
“Sort of,” said Eliza. “If I had to I could get a special pass. But I don’t have to because Grandpa left me a note, to give me permission.”
“He did?”
“Yup.”
“Was that the last thing he ever wrote?”
“I think so.” There had been a note for Val, and a note for Eliza. Eliza didn’t know what Val’s note said. Her own, in her father’s distinctively sloppy scrawl, said, You and your mom were everything to me. Ive been as blessed as any man out there. This is how I wanted it.
You could know someone, but you didn’t always know them. You didn’t always know the depths of their soul. You didn’t always know they had such simple poetry inside of them.
She thought about the description of Charlie and Val in her mother’s letter, standing over a sick little Eliza. They looked like two parents.
And then she’d said to Val, That’s a long time.
A long time for what?
To love someone who doesn’t love you back the same way.
But who was to say for sure that he hadn’t? Charlie had been alone for years and years and years, after Eliza had gone. And Val had been alone too. Unless they weren’t alone. The heart, with its four chambers and its endless and unknowable and un-mappable sub-chambers—who was to say, really, about any of it.
Her father had let her think for so long that her mother had been perfect: he gave that to her, a gift, when she’d needed it the most. By being who Charlie Sargent was, and also by being who he wasn’t, he’d let her go, he’d let her fly, he’d let her soar, gliding like a cormorant. And look where Eliza, lucky, lucky person, wife and mother and daughter and friend, had landed.
Her mother had been right about a lot, but she’d been wrong about one thing: there was such a thing as a fairy tale, if you looked at the story the right way.
She thought of how her father had looked in the coffin, like himself and yet not, familiar and other at the same time. She thought of Zoe and Evie as babies—their pure skin and bright eyes, their pockets of perfect fat. From here to there, from that to this—it was hard not to wonder what the point of it all was.
Eliza motored out to the closest set of her father’s buoys and regarded them. Maybe the fishermen had it right all along, going out into the vast sea every day, voyaging, coming back home, doing it again and again, making a life out of that. Maybe the journey was the whole point.
Well, no use losing it now—it was hard to drive a boat when you were crying. A gull circled and then disappeared. The water was smooth as glass, no chop. At peace. The next day, or the day after that, she’d ask Russell to come out with her and help her. She’d give away the traps, as Charlie had requested, but she’d keep one and bring it back to Barton. She’d put it in the side yard and plant flowers in it and around it. She wondered if the yacht club would let her put the Joanie B on A Family Affair’s mooring, just for now. Just until winter.
Probably not.
Definitely not.
It was getting on toward sunset, and yellows and oranges were tiptoeing into the blue of the sky. Soon the whole sky would be flaming.
“I think I see Grandpa up there,” said Evie. “Looking at us.”
“No you don’t,” said Zoe. “That’s impossible.”
Eliza said, “Zoe” warningly, and Zoe clamped her lips closed.
Evie put her arm around Eliza’s waist and leaned into her, and that was not unexpected nor unusual, and then Zoe did the same, and that was both unexpected and unusual, so Eliza cut the motor and stayed as still as she could, not wanting to destroy the moment. Then came a sob, and another, and another, and Zoe was crying—not even trying to hide it, or play it cool, she was just crying, and crying, and crying, messy, unpretty crying, an eruption of gulps and tears. Eliza let go of Evie for a moment and wrapped both of her arms around Zoe and held her as tightly as she had when she was a baby, and when she was a little girl, and she thought, Finally.
When Zoe had calmed herself Eliza drove the boat back to the mooring, where they all climbed into Charlie’s old skiff. Eliza let each of the girls take a turn rowing and then she took over and rowed them back to the dock, where she could see two figures waiting. Judith and Rob, still in their funeral clothes. The juxtaposition was startling—Judith! At the wharf! Waiting for a skiff!—but at the same time it bolstered Eliza. The universe could tilt, two worlds could collide, and there was a good chance neither one would fracture.
“There she is,” said Rob, when they got close enough. “The captain’s daughter, and the captain’s daughter’s daughters. What a sight for sore eyes, the three of you.”
52
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
“Rob,” said Deirdre, coming toward him. “Rob, Rob, Rob.” She laid a hand briefly on his forearm.
“Deirdre!” he said. Deirdre seemed to be emitting a glow. It was probably the light from the tiki torches surrounding the patio, of course. Tiki torches could make anyone glow. Rob was happy to check in with himself and realize that he was admiring Deirdre from a distance, as a casual observer. That was all. He was looking at her like she was a piece of art, something to be seen but not closely interacted with. He moved his head to indicate the patio, the beautifully set tables, the silent-auction tables, the blissful, pretty, moneyed people in early stages of inebriation. “It’s perfect. It’s everything you wanted. Are you happy?”
Deirdre was a little tipsy—in control, but tipsy. She sighed. “I am,” she said. “I’m as happy as I get.” She furrowed her brow and whispered, “Any news on the boat?”
“Oh, that.” Rob waved his good arm, spilling a bit of his cocktail as he did. “They’re still working on it,” he said. He couldn’t keep his voice from splitting. “Anyway. It’s just an object, right? It’s just a thing.”
“?‘Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board,’?” said Deirdre.
Rob said, “Pardon me?” Maybe Deirdre was drunker than she appeared to be.
“Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
“I see,” said Rob, who didn’t.
“Have you bid on anything yet?”
Rob didn’t want to say, “My financial situation is precarious at the moment,” so he just said, “No. Not yet,” and made a face that he hoped indicated that he simply hadn’t had a chance. Eliza was deep in conversation with Judith at a small bar table and had been for quite some time. What in the world could they be talking about?
“You can set it up on your phone, you know. If you haven’t already. There are instructions over at the table, on those small white cards. That way you’ll know if someone outbids you and you can place another bid.”
“Cool,” said Rob noncommittally. Just what he needed: an opportunity to spend money he didn’t have.
“Your mother is going for the African safari.”
“Wow.”