In the morning Emma came down early with Tess. By the time her parents appeared, Emma was in the kitchen, wearing Alice Sullivan’s denim apron.
“How would everyone like your eggs?” she asked, as her father came in.
“His eggs,” said her father.
“Her eggs,” said Emma. “How?”
“Oh, eggs,” said Emma’s mother, coming in behind him. She was in khaki pants and a white turtleneck, a sweater over it. The turtleneck was frayed at the cuffs, and the sweater’s elbows were worn. “What a good idea.” She rubbed her hands together, nodding admiringly.
When Mrs. Kirkland was in charge of breakfast, people milled slowly around the kitchen in a dream of disorder, getting quietly in each other’s way, shuffling silently in and out of the refrigerator, all of them on private errands, all in a thick fog of early morning introspection. They spilled milk on the counter, unwittingly took each other’s toast from the toaster and struggled to spread the soft surfaces with icy chunks of butter. They put down the cereal box and set off for bowls, to return and find the box gone, put down elsewhere by someone who had then set off for bowls. And always the missing carton of orange juice, gone from the refrigerator, forgotten on the counter by the stove, where it stood warming slowly.
Now Emma set the big black iron skillet on the burner, while Peter and Tess set the table. Tess, kneeling on a chair, folded each napkin into an uneven triangle. Emma made scrambled eggs, scraping a soft steaming yellow cascade onto the plates.
When Mr. Kirkland finished eating, he leaned back and looked appraisingly at Peter, who’d just walked in.
“Thought we might go out this morning. East wind.”
“Sounds good,” said Peter.
“I could go, too,” Tess said, hopeful, diffident, but Emma smiled and shook her head.
“You’re staying here with me and Gonny.”
The three of them went down to say good-bye to the men. They set off in the dinghy, Mr. Kirkland rowing. Peter, in the stern, turned to wave as they moved off. Mr. Kirkland, facing them, frowned, pulling hard as the dinghy bucked over the wake of a passing motorboat. The women waved intermittently until the men reached the boat. Then the three of them walked back up the narrow clanging metal gangplank up to the high dock. On top of the dunes the wind was steady, and the flag snapped and rippled over their heads.
“They’ll have fun, I think,” Emma said cheerfully.
“Yes,” said her mother. “It’s nice he can sail.”
“His name is Peter,” said Emma.
Her mother squinted at the wind, and pulled her sweater across her chest. She said to Tess, “Come on in with Gonny and we’ll find you some crayons.”
Emma and her mother cleared up the kitchen while Tess sat at the table with a coloring book. Emma moved around the room, mopping up and putting away, while her mother stood at the sink.
“I’d forgotten these plates,” said Emma, holding one. It was white, with a wreath of bright blue chicory flowers around the edge. “I always loved these.”
“They’ve always been here,” said her mother, indifferent. She was running water, and Emma could see beyond her the slow rise of a stiff white landscape: suds. Mrs. Kirkland didn’t approve of the dishwasher. She turned off the water, tested it and turned it on again. The foamy landscape rose unevenly.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Mrs. Kirkland said.
Emma straightened, at once hostile. Her mother knew nothing about her life, nothing.
“I hope so too,” said Emma, brisk.
There was another pause.
“I’m afraid it will be hard on her,” her mother said, nodding toward Tess.
“I’m afraid it will,” Emma agreed. She snapped the mouth of the open milk carton closed and put it back in the refrigerator, shutting the door hard.
Did her mother think it had never occurred to Emma that divorce would be hard on Tess? And her mother had given no advice about marrying Warren. That was what Emma should have been warned about, not this, not Peter. But her mother’s experience was so different from hers. Mrs. Kirkland had married a man she respected, and with whom she had a decent life. Emma had married a man she came to despise, and with whom she had felt at moments suicidal. How could her mother give her advice?
“I’m sure it will be hard on Tess. It’s hard on all of us,” Emma said, her voice cold, “but it’s done. It’s final.”
“You’ve never said why you did it,” Emma’s mother said. She turned off the tap and turned to look at her daughter. She tilted her head to one side, waiting. In the silence Emma heard the steady seesaw strokes of Tess’s crayon.
Emma had not said why. She could not tell her mother about her marriage.
Mrs. Kirkland stood by the sink, looking at Emma. Her blue eyes were hooded by age. If she felt irritation at her unyielding child, who offered no hint of what her thoughts were, what her life was like, she gave no sign. Her hands hidden inside the radiant landscape, she waited.
Emma looked back without speaking. She could not tell her mother about the shame of her life with Warren. And she could offer her mother nothing instead, no rosy future. Emma didn’t know if she and Peter would get married. Sometimes she thought their marriage was wonderfully certain, and sometimes she could not bear the thought of living with Peter for another hour.
The silence between them made Tess raise her head. She looked alertly from mother to mother, from face to face, trying to read them. It was Emma who turned away first, pulling open a cupboard, putting the honey inside. She closed the wooden door with a soft kitchen thud.
“Do you want to save this or throw it out?” she asked, holding up a plastic bread bag. Two skinny end slices swung forlornly in its foot. Her mother would save them, and the bread would stay in the cupboard until it was petrified.
“Throw it out,” her mother said, turning back to her fragile white mountain range.
“Throw it out?”
“Yes,” said her mother shortly.
Tess, anxious at the tension, sat bolt upright. “I could take it,” she cried. She looked from her mother to her grandmother. “I could take it and give it to the birds.”
Emma handed her the bag.
“Good idea,” said her grandmother.
They both smiled at Tess, aloof to each other.
Outside on the lawn, Tess stood frowning. She tore the bread into big careless shreds and threw it angrily into the wind.
It was late in the afternoon when the men returned. Watching them cross the sandy lawn, Emma could see that the day had gone well. They walked side by side, their movements loose and companionable. They were wind whipped, red faced, salt haired and cheerful. Emma followed Peter upstairs to hear how it had been.
“It was great. He’s a good sailor, your father,” Peter said. He pulled off his sodden shirt and dropped it onto the floor. Emma admired the line of his bared arms, the spring of his chest. He looked very different now, standing in the little room, barefoot, shirtless, his hands low on his hips. The casual geometry of his limbs, his ease, the salt-wet shirt on the floor, all declared him at home beneath the slanting eaves.
“Did he shout at you?” asked Emma.
“All captains shout. Sailing is noisy. You have to shout to be heard. And things have to be done right away.”
“So you didn’t mind?”
Peter grinned at her. “Oh, I hated it. I told him”—he set his hands prissily and peeped shrilly—“if he yelled at me one more time I would lower the jib.”
“Very funny,” said Emma. “But why don’t you mind? It’s so rude.”
“Men don’t mind,” said Peter. “Men yell at each other all the time. I don’t care if your father yells at me.”
Emma shook her head. “I would care.”
Dinner that night was different: Emma had taken charge of the kitchen. She had gone out and bought groceries. She stewed a chicken; she made rice, a new salad. For dessert there was ice cream.
Her mother h
ad taken charge of the hors d’oeuvres. She had found a small group of carrots in the refrigerator, and set them out in a dish that was too large for them. They had been scraped several days earlier, and now were pale and dry, the woody streaks at their centers prominent, their ends curled up. She had found a second box of broken crackers: scarlet cartouches, pink squares. These bright scraps she put in a small glass bowl by themselves, like peanuts. They were salty as peanuts, but damp, and felt to the teeth like old root vegetables.
Sitting down to the table Mr. Kirkland rubbed his hands heartily.
“Well, that was a really good day,” he said, looking around.
“Where did you go?” Emma asked. She did not care where they had gone. You never went anywhere, sailing, you just flapped back and forth on top of the water. What did it matter which bit of water it was?
“Well, we had the tide with us, all the way to the mouth of Bass River,” Mr. Kirkland said with enthusiasm. He laid his fork down, the better to hold forth. “We had the tide with us, and the wind just off to starboard, so we were in pretty good shape. We only had to come about twice between here and the mouth of the river.” He looked around proudly.
“Only two tacks! Oh, that’s very good,” said Mrs. Kirkland, nodding.
Mr. Kirkland waited, but no one else responded. “I’ve made it out to the mouth before, tacking only twice, but I’ve never done it on one. Two’s my record. Steve Steadman has done it with only one tack, but I’ve walked the distance, and I figure his dock is about eighty feet closer to the mouth of the river than ours is. That doesn’t seem like much, but that eighty feet includes the beginning of the bend in the river. Now, that makes a big difference. I told him if he could make the mouth in one tack from our dock, that would be something.” He paused again, pleased, and looked down at his plate. “Then when we got out to the mouth, we decided to go out to the gong.”
“All the way out there,” murmured Mrs. Kirkland. “Goodness.”
Emma remembered it: the dreadful gong buoy, swinging endlessly back and forth on the deep green waters, its hollow, mournful tones echoing across the dismal waves. Chillingly far from shore, the gray bubbles sliding aimlessly and forever around its solemn rocking form.
“We had a good breeze going out. I had planned it so we’d have the tide with us, coming home.” Mr. Kirkland looked around. He had still not taken a bite of food. “Well, we would have, but the wind changed around and then dropped, and by the time we reached the mouth of Bass River, boy, that tide had started against us. We had a terrible time, beating back up that river.”
“It was fun, though,” said Peter, nodding.
Mr. Kirkland frowned, preferring “terrible” to “fun.”
“Of course, if you’re used to sailing in Maine, what we do here may not seem like much,” said Mr. Kirkland, offended.
Peter shook his head. “Anyone who sails up and down a narrow tidal river is an expert, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know anywhere like that in Maine.”
“Well,” said Mr. Kirkland, mollified. “we manage to have some pretty good times. You should come out racing sometime. We do have a little fun with the races.”
Peter said politely, “Sounds great.”
“Is Peter any good at all on a sailboat, Daddy?” Emma asked. “I have the feeling that he’s all talk.”
But her father frowned: Emma was being frivolous. He looked down at his plate and picked up his knife and fork.
“He’s not bad,” said Mr. Kirkland judiciously. “Not bad at all.”
“Well, you’ve finally done it, have you, Emmy?” said Mrs. Kirkland. She leaned back in her chair, looking at Peter. “For once.”
“What,” said Emma.
“Brought home a man who can sail. Neither of you girls has ever managed it before.”
Mr. Kirkland frowned again. He had not finished what he wanted to say, and felt he was losing control of the conversation.
“I’m not sure that finding a sailor has been Emma’s first priority,” he said:
“What about my daddy?” asked Tess. “He can sail.”
Everyone smiled at her; no one spoke.
“My daddy can sail,” Tess said, anxious. She looked at her grandfather, then her grandmother.
“You’re right that your daddy can sail. But he wasn’t—sailing wasn’t his favorite thing,” Emma said. “That wasn’t what he was best at.”
“Yes, it was,” said Tess. Her voice rose. “He was best at sailing.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Kirkland. He gave a small laugh. “I hope that’s not what he was best at.”
Tess looked at him, fearful. “Yes, he was,” she said, her voice rising further.
Mr. Kirkland looked at her. “I think I’m a better judge of that than you are, Tess,” he said. “Your father can’t sail worth beans, I’ll have to say.” He looked smug.
Tess’s face turned dark.
Emma interrupted. “Daddy, how can you say that?” she said. She looked at her mother, but Mrs. Kirkland was bent over her plate. She held a piece of chicken in both hands, delicately, with the tips of her fingers. Taking fastidious bites, she did not look up.
“It’s a fact,” said Emma’s father, closing his mouth on the last word. “This isn’t a question of being polite. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a fact. Your father couldn’t sail worth beans.” He smiled at Tess.
Tess pushed herself violently away from the table, the chair stuttering along the floor.
“Nothing to cry about,” said Mr. Kirkland. “A fact, that’s all.”
“I hate you,” Tess said shrilly to her grandfather. She started to cry.
“Daddy,” said Emma, furious. She stood, glaring, but her father shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, Tess,” Emma said. She picked up the sobbing child.
“No,” shrieked Tess, “no, no, no. Don’t touch me!”
Emma carried her off, raging.
When Emma came back to the kitchen, the room was silent. As she pulled out her chair Peter smiled and gave her a friendly blink, but no one spoke as she sat down.
“Daddy, you shouldn’t have said that about Tess’s father.”
“It was true,” Mr. Kirkland said, sounding satisfied.
“I don’t care if it’s true,” Emma said. “It’s rude.”
Her father drank contemptuously from his glass.
“It’s rude,” repeated Emma. “You can’t talk like that to anyone, even a three-year-old.”
“Emma,” said her mother.
“What?” asked Emma.
“Don’t make a scene,” said her mother. She was concentrating on cutting the chicken with the side of her fork.
“I’m not making a scene,” Emma said angrily. “Daddy’s making the scene, and pretending he’s not.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” said her father loudly. “And I don’t think you are in a position to tell anyone else how to behave.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Emma.
“You know exactly what I mean,” said her father.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“I mean,” said her father deliberately, “that you have surrendered the right to take a moral position on things.”
“Do you mean because I’ve gotten divorced?”
“Do you think divorce means nothing?” her father’s voice rose terribly. “Do you think marriage is of no consequence? Do you think you can casually renege on a promise of such magnitude?”
Emma felt tears welling up; she beat them back. “Do you think I did it on a whim?” She tried to steady her voice.
“I cannot imagine why you did it,” said her father. “But now that you’ve done it you must accept the consequences. You are a divorced woman. You are a single mother. You have broken your promise, destroyed your marriage and deprived your child of a father.”
Furious, speechless. Emma struggled to compose herself. What her father had said was what she herself most feared to be true. Her father w
atched her, his eyes narrowed, triumphant.
Peter straightened in his chair, lifted his chin, cleared his throat. “Emma,” he said formally.
Grateful, Emma turned. Her father frowned.
“Will you marry me?” Peter asked.
11
If there was one moment in which Emma fell in love with Peter it was then, the moment in which he dropped the jib on her father.
For a long, vivid pause there was silence at the table. No one moved. Mrs. Kirkland’s fork had neared her mouth; it stopped, she set it down. She and her husband stared at Peter. Peter looked steadily at Emma. Emma looked back.
“Yes,” she answered calmly. She straightened her spine.
Mr. Kirkland snorted, in an outraged way, and looked at his plate. His mouth went straight down at the corners. Emma’s mother raised her water glass, with an awkward, spirited gesture.
“Bravo!” she said, her full cheeks faintly pink.
Then Mr. Kirkland, now outraged by his wife, raised his glass as well. He said stiffly to Peter, “Congratulations.” He gave a formal nod.
Peter nodded back. “Thank you.”
Then they all lifted water glasses to the moment. They looked at each other, smiling, surprised, even Mr. Kirkland.
It was done.
The next evening in the car, driving back to New York, Emma said to Peter, “You were very brave.”
“Me! What about you?”
“You were brave. You took on my father.”
“He doesn’t scare me. And I’m on your side,” said Peter. “Remember that.”
Emma looked at Peter for a moment, then away, out the car window. They were driving through Connecticut somewhere, though it could have been anywhere. Outside was a strange landscape, springing alarmingly into sight within the strong beams of their headlights. Weeds, scrub trees, steep banks shone forth, radiant, then hurtled backward and were lost. At the tops of the banks were high blank noise barriers that concealed whole towns, concealed the passing geography. Cut off from the land it passed through, the road became a tunnel, featureless, infinite, lit only by the long swift glare of their passing selves.
This Is My Daughter Page 16