49
WHEN THE Adriatic returned to port she went straight to the Chief to get the story on the tug. A plank had popped on the way south, Laney told her. They diverted to Petersburg, where the boat was hauled out on a railroad winch. The ordeal convinced the cellists that the boat, in the end, wasn’t suitable for a music camp.
“Fairweather San Franciscans,” Laney said. “I’d include myself in that group,” she added.
They were sitting at the galley table, drinking wine. “So you still interested in the boat?”
“I am.”
“And you know you need to get the engine running, otherwise the harbormaster sinks her.”
“I understand. I’m reading up on it.”
At the bank she deposited a pile of cash. This gave her twelve thousand, including payment from the tender. Then she went to the coffee shop and selected a card of a totem pole in the woods.
December 21, 1998
Dear Connor,
Just as she began to write, a shadow fell over the page. Betteryear stood above her, a mug of tea in one hand. Without asking, he slid into the bench beside her.
“You know,” he said, slipping on his glasses, pointing at the card. “This is a Tlingit funeral pole. Here”—he tapped with a long finger—“in back of the carved raven is a hole for the ashes.”
She was in no mood for this.
“There’s something wrong, Tara. I can see it in your face.”
She sighed. “I just want to get this off.”
“Are you writing to your father?” he asked.
“No. A friend.”
“From where?”
“Home,” she said.
“Home?”
“From Philly.”
“What does ‘home’ mean to you, Tara?”
She did not want to have some philosophic conversation. She wanted him to go away.
“I’ll leave you alone, Tara. I’m so sorry for interrupting your thoughts.”
When he finally left, she scrawled on the front, just beneath the totem pole.
I’m lonely. I love you. I’m sorry. I wish you could come here. It would be so much easier if we could touch. I need to tell you something. To just write it.
She stared at her handwriting. It looked like graffiti, barely legible. After a minute she ripped up the card, dumped it out with her coffee, and started the long walk back to the clearing.
50
ON THE TWENTY-THIRD, she pulled herself out of her sleeping bag. Newt bought beers and told her to meet him at the channel marker. On impulse she swung by Fritz and Fran’s to see if Keta was there. At first the dog seemed to ignore her, hardly looking up as she pet him. Then she knelt and whispered in his ear.
“Hi, sweet you,” she said. “I’m so glad you didn’t leave with those people. I thought you might have forgotten about me.”
When he didn’t move she turned his head toward her, pressed her forehead against his skull, and stared into the dog’s unblinking eyes. Funny, I was thinking the same thing, the dog seemed to say back. She switched tacks. “Hey, monkey. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. Okay? But I’m here now. I promise I won’t abandon you. My resolution for the year.”
After a few seconds he freed his head, gave her a quick look, then trotted out in front. When they got to the breakwater, he wouldn’t go out on the rocks until she was there beside him, her fingers trailing along his back.
“Dog likes you,” Newt said as Keta picked his way among the boulders. “See how he keeps making sure you’re okay?”
When they were arranged in their usual spots, Tara leaned against a steel post, calmed by the rhythmic flashing of the light, Newt handed her a beer. Keta sat on his haunches, the sun reflecting gold off his white fur. Clouds swam like fish across the sky.
“Any word from Plume?” Tara asked.
He looked up at her, veins blue beneath his pale skin. “Not a word.”
A whale exhaled toward the end of the landing strip at the airport. Keta watched the white funnel of mist come apart in the breeze.
“You know, my old man called me at the processor, just before I went out with Jackie.”
“That right?”
“He said there was something he wanted to talk about.”
They drank, watching the clouds for a couple minutes. “What’s he like, your dad?” Newt asked.
She stroked Keta’s silky head. “You know, today was the day she died.”
Newt said nothing. She felt her stomach heave, then took a breath.
“Right before I left, like six months after my mother was killed, I’m coming back up the stairs late at night, sandwich in one hand. And there he is, favorite mustard cardigan tucked into his sweatpants. I’m standing there holding my cheese sandwich. He asks me something, like if I was planning to start giving him a hand at the bakery anytime soon. I must have looked down for a second, because then I hear this crack, and he’s got his fist through the plaster, hollering that it was my fault my mother died, that I never lifted a finger around the house, that all I did anyway was watch TV and eat his food. Spoiled good-for-nothing brat, that’s what he called me.” She swallowed. “I told him he could go fuck himself, ran out of the house in my pajamas, then spent three months at Connor’s. That’s when I called Acuzio, who got me the job with Fritz.”
Keta whined softly. She was petting him too hard. The breeze blowing through the hemlocks along the coast made a brushing sound.
“Well, all I can tell you is—”
“I know, Newt. Do what you can, and let the rough end drag.”
“Well, that too,” he said. “But I was gonna say he sounds like a prick. Maybe he’s calling with his tail between his legs.”
Tara shook her head. “Urbano Marconi doesn’t do tail between his legs.”
“Well, then here’s another one. We’re put on this green earth to learn to love honestly and cleanly. Simple as that.”
“So?”
“So we’re all tumbling around in the Alaskan laundry out here. If you do it right you get all that dirt washed out, then turn around and start making peace with the other shit. Maybe even make a few friends along the way.” He winked at her.
“I’m trying,” she said.
“I know you are,” he said seriously. He stood and slap-boxed on the rocks with Keta, who bared his teeth and growled. “It’s pretty damn obvious.”
51
AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY the Alaskan Travelers filed out of the woods in a ragged procession, responding to whatever magnetism drew them hither and yon. With their sleep rolls and scavenged bones and unused cans of bear spray lashed to their backs, fishing rods broken down, blanks rubber-banded together. A mammoth tooth hung around a neck with dental floss, a new tattoo of the state on the underside of a wrist. Then it was just Newt, Thomas, Tara, and Frauke.
It snowed. One afternoon, walking in the half-light back home from work, she found Betteryear mounting his bicycle in front of the Muskeg. They chatted for a few minutes.
“You said you wanted to learn to hunt—now is the time. Yes?”
Even if he made her uncomfortable, this was something she felt she needed to do. The season closed at the end of the month.
“Yes. I’d like that.”
They drove in his pickup to the shooting range at the end of the road. He showed her how to brace the stock of the rifle in the notch of her shoulder, breathe in, exhale, squeeze the trigger at the bottom of the breath. The gun lurched, the sound echoing against the mountainside. Betteryear looked down-range at the target with binoculars.
“You’re up and to the left,” he said. “Which means you’re squeezing the trigger too hard, pulling it.”
“The barrel’s bent,” she said.
Betteryear squinted. The snow made everything bright. He walked the length of the range, at least a football field, and set up a can. “Let me see,” he said when he came back. He lined up on the stand, closed one eye, and pulled the trigger. The can hopped, making a tinny nois
e as it fell to the gravel.
“Not bent that much,” he said.
“Wow. Kickass,” she said, genuinely impressed. She had been shooting from twenty-five.
They spent another couple hours at the range. By the end she was hitting the can at fifty yards as often as she missed it. But Betteryear still wasn’t pleased.
“You’re distracted,” he finally said, picking brass shells from the gravel. “I don’t hunt with people who do not have a clear head. It’s supposed to snow again in a couple days. We’ll go then.”
That night she crossed the river in the rain and started up the trail, cursing the old man and her whole situation. She had been dreading zipping into her damp sleeping bag, how clothes piled at her feet constricted her legs as she slept. The incessant chatter of the river grated on her ears.
When she climbed the hill she saw Frauke moping around the edge of the clearing, the woman’s skull visible in the rain beneath her wet blond strands.
“What’s wrong with her?” Tara asked Newt.
“Brown bear ate her dog,” he said, settling beside the fire.
“What?”
“The two of them were out Red Lake Road, came upon a sleepy sow. Ripped the dog open like a sardine can, apparently. Frauky-kins covered herself with the bike frame to save her own skin.”
Tara looked across the clearing. The woman was picking notes from her pouch, mouthing the words, then putting them in her mouth and chewing. Newt lifted his eye patch and swiped a finger.
“Don’t scratch at that,” Tara said.
“You call your old man?” he asked.
“Nope.”
He nodded slowly, then rose and headed to the platform. “Don’t be so stubborn. Or, be stubborn when it comes to the tug. Not with these things.”
As she went to sleep that night she got that lightheaded, thin sensation of dread that came right before she did something difficult. Although not as bad, and not as deep as she had felt it before.
Her friend was right. It had been a month. Tomorrow she’d make the call.
52
THE NEXT MORNING she woke in the dark, dressed without making a fire, then picked her way along the trail. She walked quickly beneath the lights of Papermill Road. Huddled against the cold, the ocean a black sheet in the dark, she dialed Wolf Street from the library payphones.
“Hi,” she said, confused when a woman answered. “Is Urbano there?”
“I think he is sleeping,” the woman said in accented English.
It was almost nine in Port Anna, which would mean one in the afternoon in Philly.
“Who is this?” Tara asked.
“It is Eva. Tara?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh. Yes. Please wait.” Static. Bizarre that Eva, with her grim lips and that flowered apron with the red fringe, who had been mopping tiles at the bakery when Tara left, was now answering the house phone.
Her father came on, huffing. “Figlia. I have been waiting to hear from you. You’re back on land.”
“Yes. I am.”
Silence. “How are you?” he finally asked.
She flipped her hood over her head to better hear him. “Fine. How are you?”
He gave a small laugh. “I’m sixty-two now, and my belly grows. Your mother and I shouldn’t have waited so long to have you. Did you celebrate Christmas?”
She had expected him to be angry she hadn’t called sooner. And Christmas—it was always her mother’s job to bring up cardboard boxes of ornaments from the basement, wrap gifts decorated with twine and twigs from the maple tree outside, and, of course, do the lights. It surprised her he would bring this up.
She couldn’t take it anymore. “Pop, was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
His voice grew even. “Figlia, I must ask you something.” He took a breath. She swallowed, a shiver moving up her spine. “Since you left town, I’ve talked to people. To Vic. He said something happened to you.”
And she knew.
It was as if winter accelerated through her body: leaves dropping, pond icing over. Such shame.
She took a breath. If you’re going to say it, she thought, say it.
“Is what Little Vic told his father true?” he asked.
She never thought she’d have to do this. Bile rose in her throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
An edge moved into his voice. “Don’t lie to me, Tara.”
She exhaled to a slow count in her head, trying to remember that feeling of not being angry. “I’ve got to go, Pop.”
“Tara, you tell me what happened. As your father I have a right to—”
“I really need to go, Pop. I have stuff to do.”
“Do not leave me, Tara.”
And she hung up.
It was almost dark by the time she climbed the hill to the clearing. Thomas was busy pumping the knob on a red gas canister, trying to start a camp stove. Newt’s voice floated out from somewhere between the trees. “Need to prime it first, goof.”
As she approached the platform, she smelled gas.
“What’s up?” Thomas asked, taking a lighter from his ripped Carhartts and drawing up flame. Frauke kneeled beside him, watching the stove vacantly.
“Did you leak in the bowl, dumbass?” Newt shouted, stepping into the clearing. “If you didn’t prime the goddamn—”
It was as if someone had switched on a floodlight. Frauke tumbled off the platform, slapping at her cargo pants. Thomas seized the pot of glogg he had been preparing and tossed it over the flames, which just roared higher. Fire clawed up the near wall, tarps melting in great yawns.
“You are one true fucking idiot,” Newt shouted, running toward them. Tara dragged her duffel from the platform, then tried to grab her sleeping bag, but it was already melting, the heat seeming to shrink the interior fabric. They used five-gallon buckets to douse the planks with water from the river until the wood was charred and steaming, the wool blankets ashed, their home destroyed.
She started to walk away. “Hey!” Newt shouted, breathing heavily. “Where you going?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. She waved a hand over her head. “Away.”
She could hear his voice at her back, but the river drowned him out.
As she walked out of the woods, and up the hill toward Betteryear’s cabin, her father’s question played over and over in her head. Is what Little Vic told his father true?
In the end, she decided, the only person who really needed to know the truth was Connor.
It was time to write the letter.
53
27 January 1999
Dear Connor,
I had a phone conversation with my father that didn’t end well. I don’t know what people in the neighborhood are saying. But it’s time you know something. I’m sorry it took me so long to do this.
Do you remember my 16th birthday when you had tickets for us to go see a play? “The Lovers” I think it was called. I ended up asking if we could do it some other time, some weak excuse. That night, March 18th, Friday, my birthday, I went out with these girls I met at the roller rink up in the northeast.
First off, as you know, I never really had girlfriends at St. Vincent’s. (My mom kind of played that role, I spent so much time at the bakery.) So when this one older chick asked if I wanted to go out, I was all nervous. She could drive, and said she’d come by my house to take me out. I had on this mini-skirt and remember looking in the mirror, thinking it was cool. Adult. Putting on purple eyeliner like I had seen the girls wear. Of course when I came down the stairs Ma said no chance in hell, and sent me right back. So I found a skirt I could fold up and shorten when I got out of the house, and put the eyeliner and lipstick in my purse. Did my hair, then heard a honk.
I remember Ma holding the storm door open as I climbed in that Pontiac blocking traffic on Wolf. Already I could hear her in the morning. “Che cazzo fare with these cozze”—“the fuck are you doing with these ugly girls?” T
he back of that car smelled of car freshener. Zooming along Delaware Avenue out of the gravity of South Philly felt amazing. (Maybe it’s how you felt after writing that letter to me. Like you were escaping some weight.) We drove under the El into Kensington, a neighborhood my father always said was forbidden. We pulled up to this building with a bass so heavy it made the windows of the car rattle. I remember half of me hoped the bouncer wouldn’t let us in. But when we reached the front of the line, he just waved us through.
Inside it was the exact opposite of all those corny St. Vincent’s dances, you know where the nuns came around with a ruler and told us to leave room for the Holy Spirit? Of course I tried to act all grown up, nodding my head to the music. When I opened my eyes this guy in a rugby shirt was asking me if I wanted a drink. I said no. “Take a bump from the stump,” he shouts, and shows me this mound of white on the back of his hand. I looked around for Christina. “Go on,” he says. What the hell, I thought, leaning over, sniffing. Immediately the world grew sharper, like my fingers were electrified. The guy said he wanted to go for a ride. I found my friend, making out with some dude in the corner, and told her I’d be right back.
You remember our senior year the time we drove to the shore, to Runnemede and took a blanket onto the pitcher’s mound of that diamond? And I said I didn’t want to take the Ben Franklin Bridge over the Delaware? Well, this is why—it reminds me of being in his BMW convertible. At first it was cool, watching the buildings grow small in the mirror. I had this soapy drip in my throat, my nose burned, the world seemed to be coming on so fast. He wore some sort of braided necklace and tapped the top of the gearshift to music I couldn’t hear. His wrists made him look like he was on the wrestling team—I tell you this to try and explain. I remember him resting a hand on my thigh, and then I put my palm out and let it dip and rise with the wind. I remember thinking of you back on Manton Street, reading a play on the couch, or working on some stage set. “I’m taking you to Avalon,” the guy yelled. “My parents have a house there.” And that’s when I started to freak out. I say I have a curfew and we should turn around, and he tells me to relax. And then my mind splits into like ten different interior screens, and I’m looking at them all at once. I can’t figure out which to focus on. My body numb, like I’m slowly spilling out of myself. There in front of my eyes I see everyone I love—my mother, my father, Big Vic, my Nonna, Grandpa Joe. And you.
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