“I see you’ve worked it out nicely on your own,” he said.
She flapped her hand toward the tent opening. “What church can match this mountain, this wilderness?”
Her father gave her a knowing smile. “Or the mysteries of the ocean? Or the mind?”
Barbara leaned over her crossed legs and asked, “Do you believe in God?”
“If pressed, I’d say I’m an agnostic. But, honestly, I don’t worry about it.” He retrieved the packet of chocolate from his food sack and offered her some.
Barbara let a pad of chocolate melt in her mouth. “Why don’t you and your friends have talks like this?”
“Most grown-ups just grind away at ordinary subjects. Don’t want to end up arguing, I suppose.”
“But isn’t this talk infinitely more interesting than gossiping about neighbors or complaining about bills?”
“Religion’s a private matter, something you shouldn’t interrogate about. And there are always neighbors to contend with and money to manage.” He brushed his hands together. “Except at times like this.”
“I love our trips, Daddy. Can we go canoeing next time?”
“Sure. If you’re big enough to climb a mountain, you’re strong enough to paddle a canoe.”
The walls of their tent buckled and billowed as the wind ripped at them. Barbara poked her head out for a view. Clouds shape-shifted, commingling like a covey of ashen ghosts. Rain pelted down in a roaring onslaught, sheets of it gathering on the tarp and streaming off in chaotic beads and streams. She narrowed her eyes against the shards of rain splattering her face. Along the mountain slope, tentacles of lightning flashed. Thunder cracked, louder than Barbara had ever heard as if the clouds gathered up the din and hurled it back at the rocky ground.
Her father asked, “What’s the weather report?”
Barbara pulled back in and wiped her wet face with a sleeve. “A little nor’easter blowing in, I suspect.”
He chuckled. “Not much scares you, does it?”
“Not like I haven’t seen a storm before. And you’ll protect me.”
“It’s my job. And not hard in your delightful company. Now, let’s get some sleep.”
Barbara burrowed into her sleeping bag. The crack and roar of the storm wrapped itself around her dreams, where she curled up in a den beside a big warm bear and slept cozy as a cub while the biggest storm ever raged outside.
CHAPTER TEN
BARBARA AT FOURTEEN
New Haven, April 1928
Barbara stood at the bottom of the stairs and called, “Mother, where are you?”
“Shush, Sabra’s napping.” Her mother traipsed down the stairs and motioned Barbara to follow her to the sitting room. “What is it?”
“There’s no mail today.” For weeks, each mid-afternoon, Barbara had camped out on the sofa, watching for the mail carrier. She should’ve heard from her father by now. How could he not respond to her compelling letter? His family needed him; they’d been happy together, he couldn’t possibly trust Miss Whipple. She was a fraud who possessed not a speck of honor.
“Oh, Lord.” Her mother plopped down on the sofa and patted the space beside her.
Barbara sat down. “By not responding to my letter, he shows what he’s thinking. He can’t justify his conduct. And after what I wrote, he knows it.”
With a sigh, her mother closed her eyes and snapped them open. “Yes, he’s in his own world.”
“Does he intend to strand us?” Since her father had taken up residence in New York, Barbara saw her mother in a new light, like an accomplice on a secret mission. Except her mother hadn’t devised any strategy to convince her father to come home. That’s why Barbara had written to him, though she wished her mother would do something—other than moping around the house all day long.
“It seems he has.”
“But I need him. He’s my inspiration.”
“Everything you wrote came from you, Bar. You’re the one who created Eepersip. And your father wasn’t along on your square-rigger adventure.”
“I rely on him so much. To steer me and cheer me on.”
“I know you do.”
“He was supposed to come with me to my newspaper interview.”
“He still might decide to join you.”
“I don’t want him to.”
Her mother slumped against the sofa back. “He’s been wretched to you.”
“I told him everything I could think of in my letter. At least what I could think of to make him come to his senses. And he still insists on staying with that Whipple.”
“I know it’s not the same, but I’ll go to the interview with you.” Her mother reached out and smoothed a hand over her back.
Her mother’s touch annoyed more than anything else, like the slobber of a hapless dog. No, having Mother along wouldn’t be the same. Maybe her father would show up. Celebrating her new book’s success might just remind him of all the terrific times they’d shared and bring him back to his senses.
✭
On the morning of the interview, Barbara fancied up in a plaid skirt, cream-beige sweater, and navy-blue poncho. She wrapped her Voyage of the Norman D manuscript in brown paper and secured it with string.
Spring was Barbara’s favorite season, and she usually delighted in the trees leafing out and daffodils poking up. But as she and her mother walked the five blocks to the trolley stop, she hurried past yards of elms, oaks, and the occasional magnolia, altogether preoccupied with her worries. The sharp scent of daphne even chafed as if to intensify her misery.
They came to the trolley stop, and her mother asked, “Are you excited?”
“Not really.” Barbara didn’t know what to expect. Was it possible her father had taken the early morning train up? Might he surprise her?
They boarded the trolley for the downtown offices of the New Haven Register. Her mother started droning on about how excited Barbara had been those weeks before her high-seas adventure. “And I can’t help thinking of that radio interview last fall. You managed it with such aplomb—quick with your answers, so charming and droll.”
“That seems like another time.”
“Just remember: This is an auspicious opportunity—a chance to get the word out about your new book and encourage sales.”
“That sounds so crass, Mother.”
“If the sales are strong, we can set some money aside for your college.”
“What? You want to send me away, too?”
Her mother frowned and tucked her chin. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Barbara gazed out the window. Their trolley trundled down a street lined with sturdy oaks and house after house of happy families.
Her mother nudged her. “There’s something you really ought to know, Barbara.”
She glanced sideways at her mother.
“If your father quits sending his Knopf cheques, we’ll need something else to live on.”
Barbara hadn’t thought about that. She’d heard her parents argue about money, but what bothered her most was how churlish they sounded. “He wouldn’t dare, would he?”
“I don’t see how he can send them indefinitely. He needs money to live on himself.” Her mother patted her knee. “But don’t worry about that. Just do your best today.”
✭
The reporter, Edward Stark, looked pretty much like his name, shaved smooth as glass and dressed in a white shirt, black trousers, and a broad-striped black and gray tie. He led the way past dingy-beige walls decorated with framed front pages: from 1925, “Quake Rocks New England”; and from 1926, “Valentino Loses Fight With Death After Valiant Battle.”
As Stark pointed the way to his desk near the rear windows, Barbara glanced around the bullpen-like room. Her father was nowhere in sight.
They walked by a man on the telephone hunched over his roll-top desk. He turned away and continued talking in hushed tones. The two reporters at desks lining the opposite wall looked up, nodded in her direction, and returned to their typing. The worn
pine floors creaked beneath her feet, and scents of cigarettes, burned coffee, and carbon paper mingled with the dustiness of a room shut up all winter.
Stark invited Barbara to sit in the chair opposite him, and her mother took the seat beside her. The clatter of typewriter keys bounced off the walls, and Barbara took comfort in the sounds—they reminded her of her father working in his study. He still might show up, here or at home, and apologize for his wrongs. Surely, he wouldn’t ignore her much longer.
Stark held his pen over a pad and leaned toward Barbara. “Tell me, Miss Follett, how is it that a girl of thirteen became interested in sailing on a square-rigger?”
Barbara concentrated on Mr. Stark. Anything she said today could end up in the print story for everyone to see. This was her chance to make her father proud—and sorry he was missing this fresh success. “Well, I’m desperately interested in pirates. I’ve read widely on all things piratical—starting with Treasure Island—and acquainted myself with the most famous pirates, like Blackbeard and Davy Jones. I wanted to write some pirate tales myself. And I realized it would be quite wonderful, even necessary for my writing, to sail the seas, just as the pirates had.”
“And how did you come to choose the Norman D?”
“Sadly, few square-riggers are sailing nowadays. But Mother discovered a neighbor who’d been a sailor, an old salt with a tattooed arm and the sea in every line of his face. He told us of a schooner that had recently put in at New Haven. The very next day, my whole family—my parents and my little sister and I—visited the pier. We hailed the captain and asked if we could come aboard. He and his crew were quite jolly to have visitors, and they showed us all around the ship. When I crawled up on the spanker boom, the captain said, ‘I see you’re a girl as likes to climb about.’”
“Not many girls have sailed aboard a schooner. And, as any sailor will say, the sea can be cruel.” Stark was getting into the spirit of things now, imitating her sailor-like cant and almost winking as he did so. “Did your parents resist the idea?”
“Very much so, at least in the beginning. That first day onboard, Mother warned me against climbing too high on the ratlines. But I couldn’t help myself, so taken was I with the prospect of looking down on the harbor from the crosstrees. And I wasn’t at all afraid, for I have a sailor’s way with heights.”
“I see,” said Mr. Stark, scribbling on his pad.
Barbara had taken satisfaction in defying her mother that day, and now that feeling mingled with a kind of resentment. She sensed her mother perched beside her, playing the delighted parent, nodding and urging her on. I’m fourteen now, she thought, and I don’t need my mother telling me what I can and can’t do all day long.
Barbara said, “Then when I got it in my head to sail, Mother didn’t want me to go. But I persisted, for I knew if she agreed, my father would go along. I told her I must sail, that I would stow away if she wouldn’t allow it. Finally, she said I could go if our family friend Gordon traveled as my chaperone—assuming, that is, the captain consented.”
“Was it difficult to get the captain’s permission?”
“Not terribly. We had visited his ship many times and invited him to dinner. And I began to think he would welcome me, for he was a great storyteller, and I loved listening to his tales. Each time I visited the ship, I improved my reputation by learning the ship’s parts, skipping about the deck, and helping with the ropes. And when we made the most important visit of all, to ask the captain if I could sail with him, my father took him aside for a private talk. I waited ashore, and with each passing minute, I feared all was lost, and my dream dashed. But then my father came tearing off the ship and down the wharf and announced that I would sail in a week’s time.”
Smiling, Stark tapped his pen on his writing pad. “I understand that arrangements came down to the hour, and you almost didn’t go.”
“Yes, when the captain was signing me on the ship’s list, we discovered I’d need some identification to cross into Canada. It is a foreign country, after all. Mother and I were topsy-turvy all day, running to the lawyer’s office, desperate to get an affidavit drawn up. But finally, we got the papers and arranged to have my birth certificate mailed to Nova Scotia.”
“What other preparations did you undertake?”
“I packed my sailing togs, plus an oilskin and sea boots. The captain recommended I bring some nibbles, such as crackers or fruit, in case I got seasick. The day before we sailed, I ate a big lunch and sat in the most tipsy rocking chair in our house and rocked wildly, just to accustom myself to lurching about on a full stomach.”
“And did you get seasick during the journey?”
“The first mate and cook made a wager on whether I’d be seasick. The mate, hoping to improve his chances, gave me some advice. But those are sailor secrets, and you must write in your article that people need to read the book to find those out—and to discover who won the bet.”
Stark asked, “Won’t you read a bit for us, Miss Follett?”
“If you like.” Barbara noticed the other reporters had abandoned their tasks and swiveled their chairs around. She untied the manuscript. “I can read about the first night at sea.”
“Excellent,” said Stark, setting aside his pad and pen.
Barbara undid the string on her manuscript, peeled back the wrapper, and turned a few pages. “‘When I saw the stars, I had a strange experience. Despite the small breeze that kept the sails from making their infernal racket, there was quite a roll and swing and swoop to the ship; she dipped her prow like the wings of a seagull. But when, looking up at the high stars, I picked out a bright one above the truck of the mizzen-mast and was trying to identify it, I saw it swinging about the mast in bewildering curves and flashes of gold. To my puzzled eyes, it seemed to leave a burning track behind.
“Now, I had seen shooting stars, and my first thought was that this revolving star was a magical shooting star. But I’d never seen a shooting star make curves and circles. I looked at the other stars, and they all seemed to gyrate crazily about the sky, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly. I could feel the mighty ocean throbbing beneath me, and again I looked at the mast, and it seemed stock-still against the wheeling sky. Yet, I could feel the schooner rolling and pitching in the swell. Of course, the sky was just as it ought to be: It was the mast and schooner that rolled as the sea heaved.
“The moon had not yet risen, and everything was pitch dark except for magical sparks of starlight. All afternoon we had passed small steamers and barges, and I had never thought they were beautiful. I was too devoted to my original idea of vessels with sails to pay much attention to these little chuggers. But at night, they suddenly became fairy-like. A small steamer would click slowly across our bow, with a swash of foam, and she looked like an enchanted ship from some mysterious land. Then a long string of barges passed us far ahead, all towed by a small powerboat, each one gleaming with red and green and yellow lights. One after another, they passed, at even intervals, until we began to think they would never end. And when they had gone, we were again alone in the darkness, except for the faraway lights onshore.
“And then I saw a strange, soft light in the east. I watched and watched, and I saw the top of the moon’s circle. Up she came, huge in the darkness and shining like sunlight on snow. I had often dreamed of sailing by moonlight. And now, my dreams were realized. The breeze held everything quiet, and, except for the swing and roll of the ship and the rushing of the foam divided by her cutwater, everything was silent—oh, so silent and beautiful!”
Barbara dropped the manuscript to her lap. Stark and the other men clapped.
“That was lovely, Miss Follett. I felt I was there with you.” Stark reached for his writing pad and looked to her. “Now, just one more question. Are you at work on another book?”
Barbara glanced aside. Her stomach tightened and twitched as if a fist were punching it from inside. She looked back at Stark. “No, sir, I’m only considering what I might write next.”
“Wait,” her mother called. “I swear you’ve grown new legs since your sea voyage.”
Barbara slowed and let her mother catch up.
“You were marvelous, dear. The way you answered the questions. The lilting delivery of the reading.”
“Please, Mother, can’t it wait until we get home?” Barbara headed for their trolley.
“What’s wrong, Bar?”
She didn’t answer. She felt all tangled up inside.
“I mean it. You were completely in control of that interview. None of those reporters could resist listening. You charmed the lot of them.”
Barbara turned away and boarded the trolley. She took a seat next to a stranger, forcing her mother to pass by and sit behind her. She let the trolley’s sweeping turns sway her this way and that.
Her father hadn’t responded to her letter. Even worse, he’d broken his promise to attend the interview with her. And she had no idea what to write about next. Or how she’d manage another book without her father’s guiding hand.
When they reached their stop, Barbara bounded off and dashed ahead. She didn’t want to talk to her mother, not even to hear her praise. What did it matter?
When she reached the house, she tossed her poncho over the stair post and bounded up to her bedroom. She threw down her manuscript. It broke out of its wrapper and spilled onto the floor. She collapsed face down on her bed. Tears stung her eyes.
A knock sounded on her door. Her mother said, “Bar, may I come in?”
She said nothing, but her mother pushed the door open anyway. The bed pressed down with her weight. Her mother stroked her back. “Bar, what’s wrong?”
She burrowed her face deeper into the pillow.
“Please tell me what’s bothering you.”
Barbara spoke into her pillow. “I hate him.”
“I know how much you wanted him there.”
“I want him here.”
Her mother lifted her wavy tresses off her shoulders and brushed them back.
The Point of Vanishing Page 5