The Turn of the Tide

by Rosanne Parry

  Kai had felt the anxiety of the engineers in the room. His father was looking for an anchor, and Kai could be that for him. Five thousand miles from home, it was all he had to give.

  “DINNER!” JET HOLLERED out the kitchen door. There was a smear of flour on her forehead and the front of her shirt, a splash of cooking oil on her shorts, and a blob of bread dough in her hair.

  Jet waited. There was an answer from her mom but none from Oliver. She looked out the kitchen window at the tree house. It was dumping down rain. Jet sighed and rubbed the last bits of bread dough off her fingers. The pot of chowder was bubbling on the back of the stove. She’d already given the salad a toss. Setting the table was Oliver’s job. Where was the twerp? There was no point in yelling. If he was reading he wouldn’t hear a tornado. She finally found him in the laundry room, sitting on a pile of towels, under the spell of Sherlock Holmes.

  On the way back to the kitchen, Jet hadn’t meant to eavesdrop—neither of them had—but they heard Mom say, “Now about Oliver—” just as they passed the living room door. They both stopped in their tracks.

  “—and the news,” Mom said. “Maybe this isn’t how your parents would do this, Kai, but for now, I want us to look at the news after Oliver’s asleep. He’s a born worrier, and he’s only eight. All those terrible pictures and the endless guessing about the things that could still go horribly wrong….It’s not good for him.”

  Oliver turned to Jet. He was the picture of silent outrage. Of all the names to be called—worrier. He was working himself up to a shriek of protest. Jet took him by both shoulders and steered him into the kitchen.

  Oliver was still sputtering when Jet closed the kitchen door. She handed him a stack of plates.

  “Oh, buck up!” Jet said. She grabbed the bowls and followed him to the dining room. “She could have called you a nose picker.” They set places around the table. “Or a bed wetter.”

  Oliver glared. She handed him the basket of silverware.

  “Or a banana-slug handler.” Jet went on getting glasses out of the cabinet. “Let’s see, what else would be worse? Landlubber? Dredgeling?”

  Oliver let out a snort against his will.

  “Bet you can think of something better than that.”

  “Um, detested parasite?” Oliver said thoughtfully. He laid out spoons and forks. “Vile bunch-backed toad!”

  He was into it now. He took a few thrusts and swipes with a butter knife.

  “Lump of foul deformity! Moldy rogue! Swollen parcel of droppings!”

  Everyone agreed reading Shakespeare out loud to Oliver had been a huge mistake.

  “That’s the spirit,” Jet said.

  Back in the kitchen, Mom handed Kai a basket with warm bread wrapped in a napkin.

  “Per was going to get you a phone on the way home from work today,” she said. “But this weather…” She gestured at the kitchen window, which was rattling in the wind. “He’s in for a rough crossing tonight. We’ll get your phone tomorrow.”

  Jet grabbed the bowl of salad and led Kai to the dining room. Mom followed with the pot of chowder. Kai took a spot beside Oliver, who had shut up the second his cousin stepped through the door and was now doing a convincing impression of a barnacle.

  Jet stifled the impulse to roll her eyes. Mom was going to talk too much, and Oliver wasn’t going to talk at all. And Dad was going to be late, maybe hours late. She hadn’t had a minute to check the storm tracker on the NOAA website since she started cooking. She was itching to dig out her phone and take a quick look, but Mom had rules about phones and dinner. Commandments, really.

  They passed around plates, and Mom launched into the news about the summer festival that was coming up. Kai stared at Jet in a way people didn’t usually stare. Jet was not the pretty one, like Skye. For sure she wasn’t the curvy one, like Bridgie. At the last sleepover, Bridgie told Jet she’d be super cute if she did a thing with her hair, something about bangs and a swoop. Jet convinced her to give Skye a makeover instead. The two of them had talked about boys nonstop. Bridgie had found something to like about almost everybody, but Skye liked Roland, of all people—some nonsense about black hair and brown eyes. As if good looks made up for bullying people.

  So far Jet had only seen her cousin fall asleep, and already she would bet cash money he had a better personality than Roland. They did have the same color hair and eyes, though. She gave him a closer look. Kai was her only cousin. He didn’t look like her—not the nose, not the chin—but they both had freckles. For two awful weeks last October, Roland had called her Spot, and Jet had silently planned his epic downfall.

  Mom was still carrying on about the Scandinavian Festival in July. Every now and then Jet tossed the ball to Kai.

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  Nod. Mumble.

  “Play any sports?”

  Mumble. Nod.

  The wind whistled around the corners of the house, and when the lights flickered Mom lit the candles on the table and in the window, even though the power stayed on. Oliver paddled his spoon around in his soup and cast frequent looks at Dad’s empty chair.

  “Oliver,” Mom said quietly, “if he missed his jump, we’d have heard by now.”

  “It’s been hours,” Oliver said. “There aren’t supposed to be storms in June.”

  “Sorry about this, Kai,” Mom said. “Per really wanted to be here for your first dinner, but sometimes crossing the bar takes longer in heavy weather.”

  Kai looked confused, and Jet wondered if he knew what bar pilots did. Uncle Lars must have told him something, but maybe he focused on the fair-weather crossings. When Dad talked about Uncle Lars being a nuclear engineer, he for sure didn’t mention meltdowns. Oliver looked like he was going to be sick. He was a worrier. When he was littler he used to hide under the stairs during stormy crossings. What he really needed was some distraction to get him through.

  “It’s not the worst storm we’ve had this year—” Mom began.

  “Twenty-foot swells and thirty-knot winds. Tricky!” Jet barged in. She glanced at Oliver to see if he’d make a connection to the Beaufort wind scale. If she could get him thinking about science, he’d stop thinking about Dad.

  “He’s piloted in far worse,” Mom said. “I’m sure he’ll be just—”

  “It’s the Graveyard of the Pacific!” Jet said, changing tactics. She turned to Kai. “Most dangerous dozen nautical miles in the hemisphere. Dozens of shipwrecks happen here. Hundreds!”

  Oliver was a big fan of local history. He could lead tours, easy.

  “The Peacock,” Oliver said very quietly.

  “Eighteen forty-one,” Jet announced with a flourish.

  “The Grand Republic. No, the Great Republic.”

  “Eighteen seventy-nine.”

  “The Peter Iredale.”

  They ping-ponged names of wrecked ships and dates back and forth for ten minutes.

  “But…,” Jet said with a smile.

  “But Daddy’s never lost a ship,” Oliver said.

  “Not even one pound of cargo,” Jet added proudly.

  “So no need to worry,” Mom said. Oliver started eating, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Good!” Jet said, completely satisfied with herself. “So.”

  She turned to Kai, who suddenly looked like he’d lost his last friend. Maybe shipwrecks were the wrong topic for a boy who’d narrowly escaped drowning. Jet had a gift for saying exactly the wrong thing. She had a feeling this was one of her especially gifted moments. Even her mother seemed at a loss for words. Jet searched for a not-ocean topic of conversation. School? Nope, his had been swallowed by the tsunami. Music? Movies? They would be on his phone. Also lost forever. Better to get him thinking about something else.

  “Mom, can we take Kai to Fort Clatsop tomorrow?”

  “Great idea!” Mom immediately snapped up the new topic of conversation and launched into the story of Lewis and Clark.

  Finally Dad’s truck rolled up the driveway
. Mom set down her fork and closed her eyes for a moment. Jet felt a stab of guilt. Mom worried, too. If Jet became a pilot, Mom would worry even more. She’d seen her mom pace the front porch in a storm. She knew what the candle in the window meant.

  KAI HEARD A truck in the driveway and saw Aunt Karin breathe a sigh of relief. Jet brought the candle from the window back to the table.

  “Dad!” Oliver yelled. He raced to the back door. There was a thud and a grunt from the kitchen.

  “Aargh! Woman of the house! Save me from this troll!” Gales of laughter came through the door. “I’ve met my death, woman! I’ll never move again.”

  “Whatever will you do?” Aunt Karin said calmly, in spite of the splat of heavy wet things dropping on the floor.

  Oliver begged for news about the storm. It took only a little bit of begging.

  “It was a fearsome thing! Waves as big as skyscrapers! Wind roaring like a jet engine!”

  “Were there pirates?”

  “It wasn’t a fit day for pirates of any stripe. Not even Vikings would have dared a crossing.”

  “Aw, no pirates?”

  “But there were dragons!”

  “Ooh!”

  “Two of them!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Never a more deadly pair. They were last seen swallowing a cruise ship whole.”

  “You had better not be giving my child nightmares,” Aunt Karin said, a little louder.

  Captain Ellstrom came to the kitchen door, filling it completely.

  Kai stared. The man was as tall as his father, with the same blond hair and blue eyes. They could have been twins, except that where his father had the pale and clean-shaven face of a scientist, his uncle was as red-faced and wrinkled as a rice farmer. His cousin had both arms clamped firmly around Uncle Per’s neck and dangled down his back. Uncle Per stopped at Kai’s seat and reached out to shake his hand.

  “They were ryūjin, I’m sure of it,” he went on. “Did I say it right?”

  Kai nodded, feeling a little shell-shocked.

  “Ryūjin!” Uncle Per continued in the same booming voice as before. “Cruise-ship-swallowing dragons, brought over by some foreign visitor, no doubt.” He winked at Kai.

  “The dragons would have gotten clean away, but they had to stop and spit out all the Finns and Norwegians aboard.”

  Oliver giggled.

  “You’re not with the Sons of Norway, are you?” Uncle Per said to Kai. “The Finnish Brotherhood?”

  “I don’t think so!” Jet said with obvious scorn.

  “God help us! He’s one of those black-haired Irish, like your pirate brother!” He turned and glared at Aunt Karin. One sharp look from her, and Uncle Per burst out laughing.

  “Your nephew is as Swedish as your own children,” Aunt Karin said.

  Kai looked from one face to the next. Who shouts in his own house? Makes fun of a guest? What was the matter with these people?

  “Does he wash dishes?” Uncle Per said, still much louder than necessary.

  “I’m sure he’ll learn,” Aunt Karin said.

  “Heave him overboard the minute he gives you trouble.”

  “Per.” Karin folded her arms and gave him another look. He grinned broadly, strode up to her chair with Oliver still dangling off the back of him, and gave her a kiss.

  “Last windstorm of the season,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

  She sighed. “There never used to be storms like this in June.” She stroked his still-damp hair.

  “I could retire,” he said softly. “We could move somewhere where there isn’t weather of any kind.” He kissed her again. “The moon, for example.”

  Kai looked from his aunt to his uncle. He had never heard his parents talk to each other like this. For sure he’d never seen them kissing.

  Per mistook Kai’s look of surprise. “P-E-R is the correct spelling for Peter.”

  “It’s the Swedish spelling for Peter,” Jet said. “You’ll get used to it. At least you’re not—”

  “Danish!” Per laughed. “Or worse yet, German!”

  “Or a river pilot,” Jet finished with a wicked smile. “That would just be embarrassing.”

  “Enough,” Karin said, and gave Per a nudge toward his chair.

  “All right then,” Per said. He turned and then jumped with exaggerated surprise at the empty chair.

  “Where’s my Oliver?” He turned from side to side. Oliver held on tighter and stifled a laugh.

  “You didn’t lose your brother again, did you?” He glared at Jet.

  “Dad,” Jet rolled her eyes.

  Oliver burst out laughing.

  “Wait! I can hear him. Oliver! Where are you, boy?” He took a lap around the table in a few long strides with Oliver giggling even more loudly. He stopped and gave the breadbasket a meaningful look. He lifted up the napkin that covered the bread, peeked underneath, and then heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Oh, Per, for heaven’s sake!”

  “He’s…um…behind you,” Kai said.

  “Behind me?” He reached back and grabbed Oliver around the middle, lifted him up over his head, and held him upside down. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Oliver reached his hands for the floor as if he were trying to swim out of his dad’s grasp. “Put me down. Please?”

  “Eh? What was that?”

  Oliver took a breath and let out the biggest dinosaur roar he could muster.

  “My ferocious,” Uncle Per said proudly as he set the still-wiggling Oliver down headfirst in his chair.

  “The boy who kicks over a dish at this table will live to regret it!” Aunt Karin said.

  Both Oliver and his dad froze. Uncle Per silently turned Oliver right-side up, dusted him off, and arranged him so he was sitting up straight with shoulders back and hands in his lap. He turned to his wife, gestured in Oliver’s direction with a flourish, and gave her a smile that begged for approval.

  Aunt Karin was laughing quietly through the whole charade. “Yes, thank you. That’ll do.”

  Jet leaned across the table. “Sorry,” she said to Kai. “He’s like this. You’ll get used to it.”

  Uncle Per turned to Kai. “Yoku kitana. Welcome aboard, Kai,” he said quietly. “Our home is yours. Stay forever if you like.” He put a hand on Kai’s shoulder. “Or for as long as you can stand our ill-mannered company.”

  Kai had no idea how to respond. His uncle looked so familiar—the way he smiled more on one side of his mouth than the other, the deepness of his voice. But he seemed twice as big and half as smart as his own father. Kai opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You do belong here, Kai,” Uncle Per said. “Seafaring men in our family have lived in this house for a hundred and thirty-seven years.”

  Kai glanced around the room. Not a single thing felt familiar.

  “And stouthearted women,” Uncle Per added, a little more loudly. He turned to Jet. She stiffened in her chair.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Stuff,” Jet said.

  Oliver said something about the park with a mouth full of bread and chowder.

  “Good weather for a sail.”

  There was a long pause.

  Is she in trouble? Kai wondered. For sailing? His father had often spoken of sailing with Uncle Per when they were boys. He’d loved to sail and was happy when Ojī-san took Kai out in the Ushio-maru. Wouldn’t Uncle Per want his daughter to love the sea as much as he did? Kai took in the way Jet was sitting, hands jammed in pockets, chin up, mouth in a resolute line.

  Aunt Karin was looking, too. “Whatever this is about, you’ll settle it away from my table.”

  Jet dropped her eyes to her plate, and Uncle Per smiled at her tenderly. “Talk when you’re ready,” he said.

  Jet nodded without looking up.

  “And until you’re ready, stay off the water. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was different in that yes, and Olive
r hopped up without a word, ran around the table, and leaned his head on Jet’s shoulder like he was her pet puppy. She messed up his hair and then kissed the top of his head.

  “Go away,” she said, back to her normal voice.

  Oliver clamped his arms around her and squeezed.

  “I mean it, Oliver. If you don’t eat more than that, you’re going to shrink.” She waved in the direction of his half-finished soup bowl. “Go on,” Jet said more gently, giving him a shove.

  “Dad, how did you say hello today?” Oliver asked. He broke up pieces of bread in his soup.

  “I said ‘namaste’ to my old friend Captain Gupta from…”

  “Mumbai,” Jet said.

  “And what do you think he was carrying?” Uncle Per went on.

  “Computer parts? Clothes?” Oliver said.

  They went on guessing ships, first the country and then the cargo, as relaxed in their talking as they’d been stilted before.

  “Story after dishes!” Uncle Per announced when they were done eating. Oliver hopped off his chair and started bussing the table at warp speed.

  “Make yourself useful,” Uncle Per said to Kai. “If you can’t find something you need, ask.”

  “Let him be,” Aunt Karin said. “He’s had a very long day.”

  “I don’t mind,” Kai said. He stood up. “Please. It would be familiar.”

  “All right then.” Aunt Karin smiled. “Don’t let Jet boss you around in there.”

  Kai followed his cousins into the kitchen. Jet swept the floor. There was a teetering stack of dishes to the left of the sink and not a trace of a dishwasher anywhere. Oliver set the last of the plates beside the sink and dashed off to the living room with a thick book under his arm. Kai ran the hot water and looked under the sink for soap and a sponge. Jet stood by with a dish towel to dry and put away.

  He and his obā-san had done this together a thousand times. He told her the news from school. She told him ghost stories. The rhythm of it was familiar, and he didn’t have to think about whether he was doing it right. A clean dish is a clean dish, no matter where in the world you’ve landed.