The wind pressure on the sail was now so great that the boat was beginning to heel. Rob wrestled with the sail, but alone he was no match for the wind. And, anyway, he should be at the wheel; he should have another guy, maybe two, with him, so they could pull the sail.
Rob’s breath was coming fast now, and he braced himself against the wind.
It was then that the autopilot’s compass lost its memory. Rob, still struggling with the sail, had no say in what direction the boat was headed, because it steered itself wildly back and forth, the autopilot searching for a course. It was as though the devil himself had taken the wheel. And maybe he had.
Now the question was whether or not to leave the sail and run back and take the wheel himself. An unfair choice: between bad and worse.
The grease from the bacon that long-ago morning in Rockport, his father’s hand on his shoulder, the sensation of being utterly cared for. The certainty that all things were in their place, that all was right with the world.
That was what he wanted for his kids, for Eliza, for their lives. He wanted to give them that sense of order, of being loved unconditionally—his three females, with all of their flaws and foibles and beautiful hair and delightful quirks and confounding social media habits. He wanted to deserve being loved back the same way. And if he’d failed them in the past, he wouldn’t fail in the future.
That’s what he was thinking when he was thrown to the deck with a force as strong as a gunshot, and the world went black.
46
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
Eliza didn’t want to leave her father, but she had promised Evie ninety-three different ways that she’d be home for Charlotte’s Web, and home she would be. Besides, Val was there. She’d stay the night with Charlie, if he’d let her. Eliza had washed and replaced the sheets for her own twin bed in case.
As she drove out of Little Harbor, and through Ellsworth, and past the lakes and ponds along Route One, she put the words in her mother’s letter on repeat: I’m so sorry I left you, Eliza. But I’ve never, ever been sorry I came back.
Not only that, but this: Then I found out that there’s no such thing, no fairy tale. I guess that’s Lesson Number Five.
And, finally, this: I know a lot more people will love you in your life but nobody will love you the way I have.
Her mother, who Eliza had always thought was perfect, had not been. Her mother’s happiness, which Eliza had accepted as an absolute truth, had been fragile. She, Eliza, as a little girl of two, had been deserted, and then reclaimed. She didn’t know what to do with these new pieces of information, but she couldn’t let them go either, so she just kept turning them around and around in her mind, breaking them into jigsaw puzzle pieces, trying to fit them back together again.
She was crossing the Wiscasset bridge, more than two hours into her journey, when her cell phone rang. The screen showed her father’s number. Her nerves were already on edge because she hated driving over bridges, but now the too-familiar ball of panic and dread rose in her throat. This was it. He was having another seizure, or worse. She swallowed around the dread and scraped out her question in place of a greeting: “What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Guy can’t call his daughter?”
“Do you need to go to a doctor? Are you in pain?” She kept her eyes straight ahead, her peripheral vision snagging on the steel-gray water, tinted here and there with azure, with turquoise. “Have you been taking your AEDs?”
“Don’t know what that means.”
“Your anti-epileptic drugs, Dad. Your seizure meds.” Deep breath, and she was over the bridge.
“I took the pill, just as I was supposed to. My head’s fine,” said Charlie. And: “Why would I want to go to a doctor now, after all of this time not going?”
“Maybe you changed your mind.”
“Nope.”
“Does something else hurt?”
“Not a thing.”
“So why’d you call?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice, Eliza, something wrong with that?”
“Of course not.” Except that it was wildly out of character.
“Your voice sounds just like your mom’s did, you know that?”
The ball of panic and dread took on weight and rolled back and forth somewhere deep inside Eliza. “Dad. You’re scaring me. Do you want to come stay in Barton for a little while? I’ll turn right back around and get you. I’m only two hours away, I have plenty of time. I can set up the guest room for you, I promise you’ll be comfortable, you can see the girls, see the play tomorrow…” She pulled over into the first parking lot she saw and prepared to reverse her journey. Sprague’s Lobster, with the requisite picnic tables, the signs for lobster rolls and clam fritters, the tourists.
“I just saw the girls. I wanted to say goodbye, that’s all. I was sleeping when you left. Getting lazy, I guess.” He forced out a little laugh that made her want to cry.
“Dad. Not lazy. Obviously. You’re sick. Your body is fighting itself, you need to sleep. Let me come back for you.”
“No. I just missed saying goodbye to you, is all. Wanted another shot at it.”
Eliza pulled back out into the traffic. She said, “You said goodbye, last night, remember? When I was packing up. I said I’d leave early in the morning, I wanted you to sleep in.”
“That’s right. Yuh. Must’ve forgot.”
Eliza blinked and concentrated on the road, on the car in front of her. The car had Maryland plates and she could just make out the words TREASURE THE CHESAPEAKE before her watering eyes started to make them blur. No, stop it, Eliza, no crying. She just had to get used to the new reality of having a sick parent, that was all. This could drag on for months, a year, more. She couldn’t panic over every short phone call, she couldn’t read disaster into every tone of voice. She’d drive herself crazy. She’d definitely drive Charlie crazy. What she needed was a plan to get through each day. So her plan for now was that she’d go home for Evie’s play, and then the very next day she’d come back, and she’d be the best caretaker the world had ever known, and she wouldn’t give up on trying to get her dad to Zachary Curry, and no matter what she wouldn’t leave her dad’s side.
“Sorry,” he said now. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”
“That’s okay, Dad.”
She thought about what Val had told her; she thought about herself at sixteen, running out the door, into Russell’s truck, not looking back, leaving her father alone in the living rom. At eighteen, packing for college, salivating at the thought of starting fresh. At twenty-five, thirty, thirty-two, thirty-five, setting up a whole different kind of life while all along Charlie continued his: up every morning, out on the boat, each day so similar to the one that had just passed and the one that would follow, just like her mother said in the letter. She thought about how Charlie had carried that burden around with him forever, the knowledge that there had been times when he hadn’t been enough for his wife or his daughter.
“Daddy?” she said after some time. She tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” The way Charlie’s voice was gruff and vulnerable at the same time tore a little hole in Eliza’s heart.
Stop and go, stop and go, the car with the Maryland plates couldn’t make up its mind.
“For being a jerk,” she said. “When I was sixteen. Running around with Russell Perkins, thinking only about myself. Leaving you alone all the time.”
“Eliza, when you were sixteen you were an angel. The best I could have asked for.”
“There’s no way that was true.”
“That’s how I remember it, and how I always will.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry for a thing. Not a thing, Eliza. Not ever. Goodbye now.”
There was more she wanted to say. But what? Sorry that I failed you? Sorry that I made you feel like you weren’t enough for me either? Sorry that you won’t let m
e help you now, when I might be able to?
No. It wasn’t possible. It was all unsayable. So instead she said this: “Bye, Daddy. I love you. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
Outside of Wiscasset the traffic eased suddenly, and Eliza felt the liberation of unrestricted movement; it felt like a breath of fresh air after leaving a stifling room.
47
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
Late in the afternoon on the 3rd of August, two days after she turned eighteen, Mary Brown knocked on the door of Charlie Sargent’s house. She didn’t hear an answer, and her first thought was, Okay, maybe it’s done already, so she let herself in. Then she heard his voice.
“That you, Mary?”
“Yup.” She sounded small and frightened.
“Come on up, if you don’t mind. Come right on up to the bedroom.” He sounded pretty chipper, considering.
Mary walked up the stairs. There were two bedrooms at the top, one on either side of the staircase, and she followed his voice to find the right one. Charlie Sargent was on his bed, propped up by pillows so that he was sitting with his legs straight out in front of him. His hair was wet and neatly parted and combed over to the side, and he wore a long-sleeved plaid shirt that looked new, or at least recently ironed, and a pair of blue jeans. It took Mary a minute to figure out why he looked so different from how he usually looked and then she realized that he wasn’t wearing one of his usual ball caps. Almost all of the lobstermen wore ball caps, almost all the time.
She had expected this to be a somber occasion, but Charlie smiled at her, a big, open smile, and she realized she was smiling back.
“You have what I’m looking for, Mary Brown?”
“Yes.” She pulled the baggie out of her pocket.
“Orange!” he said. “Aren’t they sort of cheerful.”
“Um. Yeah. So, I did some research. Sixty milligrams each. Which means between three and four to get to two hundred, which is the amount you want. So I guess four?” She tried not to let her voice crack when she talked but it cracked anyway. When in doubt, choose brave. Choose brave choose brave choose brave.
Charlie nodded. “Sounds right.” Then he said, “I hope it was no trouble, bringing these to me. I never did want to cause anyone trouble.”
“I know you didn’t. Don’t worry.”
Mary saw then that next to Charlie on the bed were the photos she had seen downstairs the last time she’d been here: Eliza and her mother, and the photograph of Eliza’s family. It was seeing the photographs that made this all seem real, and suddenly her hands were slick with sweat and her face was warm and her eyes were wet.
“Are you scared?” she whispered.
“Nah,” he said. “Not anymore, not like I was last time we talked. My head was hurting something awful this week, but all of a sudden it’s not hurting anymore.”
“Okay,” she said. “Good. I’d be scared.”
“I bet you wouldn’t.”
“I bet I would.”
When in doubt, choose brave.
“Now, Mary. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to put the pills down but don’t hand them to me. And then I want you to leave. After a little bit, maybe an hour, I want you to call Val and ask her to come by the house. Just tell her I asked you to, that’s all. There’s a note with her name on it in the kitchen. Never been much of a writer, but I did my best. She’ll find it, you don’t need to worry about that. There’s one for Eliza too. Val’ll take care of talking to Eliza, so you don’t need to worry about that either. I know Eliza, she’s going to make a lot of bother about it, but my note explains that this is exactly how I wanted it, and you’re not going to be involved.”
“Got it,” Mary said. She didn’t know exactly what she had expected, but definitely not for it all to be so…so businesslike. So organized. On the nightstand was a glass of water with two fresh ice cubes in it. She did as she was told, putting the bag of pills on the nightstand.
“The most important thing is you get out of here, okay? No reason you should be around for any of it.”
“But then…but then you’ll be all alone.”
“I’m not going to be alone at all. I’m going to see Joanie again. Soon I’m going to be less alone than I’ve been in twenty-five years.”
Well, that did it. She couldn’t talk any longer, she was crying.
“Don’t cry, Mary. Hell, I’m not crying.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding and wiping at her mouth. “Can I—do I, uh, say goodbye?”
“Hell yes, Mary. Come and give me a hug.”
“That’s okay, for me to do that?”
“I’m not so fragile, not yet. Could do with a hug.”
When the hug was over Charlie’s voice got softer and he said, “You’re my angel, Mary, and I thank you for what you’ve done for me.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, because You’re welcome seemed too formal, and also too casual.
“Now it’s time you were getting out of here.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Right. I will.”
Downstairs Mary opened the front door and then closed it again, so if Charlie was listening he’d hear the sound of that. But she didn’t leave.
48
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Eliza
Evie’s play took place in the auditorium of the high school attached to the girls’ private day school. Eliza drove Rob, Zoe, and herself to the play. Rob couldn’t drive. His arm was bound up in a sling, and he was jacked up on prescription painkillers—he said he felt pleasantly fuzzy some of the time, but when the medicine started to wear off he just felt glum. He looked glum. His arm hurt, and his pride hurt, and even more than his arm and his pride, his heart hurt. His heart hurt the most.
Judith said she’d meet them at the play—she’d been running lines with Evie for weeks, and she wanted to see how the whole thing turned out.
(“The spider dies,” Zoe had said in reply. “That’s how it turns out.”)
Eliza couldn’t help looking around the auditorium and wondering how, without Cabot Lodge, without Judith’s money, without the prospect of more work for Rob, they’d ever be able to keep the girls in that school. Maybe she could get a job, but she was basically just a medical school dropout, trained only in quitting, mothering, and hauling traps. The lobster population in the waters near Barton was minimal, not enough to support a family of four accustomed to living at a certain level.
Eliza sat between Zoe and Rob, and Judith sat on Rob’s other side. Rob immediately got caught talking to another parent, a dad who was obviously only thirty percent okay with missing work to attend an amateur theater production. He kept looking at his phone. Judith’s eyes were searching the auditorium, probably wondering if they sold cocktails in the lobby like they did at the Ethel Barrymore on Broadway. Zoe was tapping away on her iPhone. Eliza reached over and slid the phone gently from Zoe’s hands and into her own bag.
“Hey!” said Zoe.
Eliza shrugged unapologetically and tilted her head toward the stage, where the curtain remained closed but of course could open at any moment. Zoe made slits out of her eyes and regarded her mother. Eliza regarded her right back and remembered when Zoe was a chubby, bald lump of pudding who dissolved into laughter anytime Eliza bent over her crib. Ancient history.
Then, as though she were reading her mother’s mind, Zoe allowed herself the freedom of a smile, a real smile, as wide and bright and forgiving as sunshine itself, and she looked suddenly the same way she’d looked at age six, the year she’d started losing teeth. She also looked, oddly, like Mary on the day Eliza had driven her to her appointment in Ellsworth and Mary had gotten out of the car and smiled at Eliza. Was that odd? It was, but also maybe it wasn’t. The two were not so far apart in age. And maybe all of the girls in the world were just different versions of all of the other girls in the world, with their universal femaleness, female problems and wisdom, challenges and triumphs, female perspectives. The g
reat, universal sisterhood.
Eliza turned her eyes back to the curtain, which was a deep, delicious red, darker than cooked lobsters, more like the color of rubies and also of the lipstick Eliza remembered her mother wearing when she got dressed up. She felt little pinpricks of tears, and she blinked them back aggressively: this was neither the time nor the place to wax nostalgic. Eliza remembered the massive fund-raising that had gone into restoring this auditorium two years ago, and she took a moment to appreciate the golden proscenium arch, the better-than-Broadway seats, the plush carpet, the teardrops of lights suspended from the ceiling.
Then the curtain opened to reveal a white picket fence, a tilting farmhouse and barn, and everything else went out of Eliza’s mind. When Evie said her first line, from offstage—Where’s Papa going with that ax?—Zoe nudged her and she nudged Zoe and Rob took her hand with his uninjured one and squeezed and Eliza could see that Judith was beaming.
The play went on, Act One, Act Two, the farm, the pig, the spider, the county fair.
Normally Eliza would have known every line to this play, from practicing with Evie; she would have been reciting in her head along with the actors. But her dad’s illness had forced her to forgo many of the normallys, and as it turned out her memories of the story were hazy. Each scene contained a delightful revelation. When she stole another glance at Judith she thought she saw her lips moving along with Evie’s. Eliza was a little envious, but it was also sort of nice, to see Judith doing that. Fair enough, thought Eliza. Let her have this.
Then the funniest thing happened. Evie was saying one of her lines—an innocuous line: Scrub Wilbur up real good, Aunt Edith. He’s got to win that blue ribbon tomorrow—and there was something about the set of her jaw and the way she moved her hands that looked so much like Charlie that it seemed not just like a coincidence but like an actual homage, and again the pinpricks of tears threatened.
The Captain's Daughter Page 33