Eliza looked up at the gilded, gorgeous ceiling, and suddenly she felt like the luckiest person in the universe. She felt almost dizzy with the awareness of her luck, and also with the awareness that what she was feeling was more profound than luck. It was as if her soul and the souls of those around her were knitted together into a sum that was bigger than its parts: she and Rob and the girls and Judith and Charlie and, sure, throw Mary in there, throw in Val. (Not Christine Cabot, though—she wasn’t invited.) And how could Eliza ever have thought for a second that she didn’t belong here, that her place wasn’t right here?
Charlotte wrote the word humble in the web at the fair; Wilbur got the bronze medal; Fern rode the Ferris wheel with Henry Fussy; the circle of life, inevitably, heartbreakingly, claimed Charlotte.
One of the narrators had the saddest line of all:
Of the hundreds of people that had visited the fair, nobody knew that a gray spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.
That did it. Waterworks. Eliza thought she was being subtle enough, reaching into her bag for a tissue, but then she saw that Zoe was watching her in alarm, and she heard her whisper, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Eliza whispered back. “Good play, that’s all. So much emotion.” She swiped at her eyes with the tissue. No one was with her when she died.
She expected Zoe to roll her eyes and shift an inch away—tears plus the word emotion from her mother, of all people, in public—but she surprised Eliza by grabbing the hand Rob wasn’t holding and squeezing it tight, and Eliza noticed that Zoe’s fingers were now nearly as long as her own.
Then it was time for the bows, and Eliza knew Evie wouldn’t be able to pick her family out of the audience—the stage lights were that good, they’d raised extra for that during the renovations—but she waved and beamed anyway, and she watched Evie’s face, guileless and proud, searching, searching.
49
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Mary
Mary waited downstairs in the living room for ten minutes. Then she waited ten more minutes, and then she tiptoed back up the stairs. She pushed open the bedroom door, afraid of what she was going to find.
But all she saw was Charlie Sargent sleeping in his bed. He’d taken the photo of Joanie from beside him and had put it on his chest and he was holding on to it.
After a time, Charlie’s breathing became irregular; there would be long pauses where he wasn’t breathing, and Mary would think, This is it. And then he would draw a long breath. And then the same thing would happen again. That same thing happened many times in a row. Charlie’s mouth had fallen open, but his eyes remained closed. After a while, Mary pulled up a chair from the corner of the room and sat next to Charlie and held his hand. Once there was a really long pause between breaths, and Mary thought, This is definitely it. Then there was another breath. And then finally there came a breath that didn’t have anything after it although she waited and then she stood and moved the chair back and pressed the back of her free hand to her mouth and let out one sob—just one.
The strangest part, the part that Mary hadn’t anticipated, was how quickly Charlie Sargent’s body changed after that. It was pinkish, regular body colored, and then not five minutes later the pink was gone and his skin had turned a waxy yellow color all over. And that’s how Mary knew that it was done.
She touched her belly and wondered if somehow the baby knew something about what was happening.
Leaving Charlie’s house, Mary wasn’t looking around her to notice who might be seeing her or what was going on in the small road. She didn’t notice the clouds scudding by or the way the wind changed, sending the scent of the harbor right up through Charlie Sargent’s bedroom window. She just got in her car, and she gathered herself, and she put both of her hands on her belly for a moment before she put them on the steering wheel, and when she was ready she drove.
50
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
Rob and the girls took a room at Little Harbor’s only bed-and-breakfast for Charlie’s funeral. The bed-and-breakfast was on the Point, and while it was booked solid most of the summer the innkeepers opened a room they didn’t usually offer to guests and gave it to the Barnes family.
After Charlie’s body had been taken away by the funeral director from Ellsworth, Val had gone into the house and cleaned it and washed and changed the sheets. Eliza told her over the phone that she didn’t need to do that—she’d pay a cleaning service, Eliza said, she’d arrange for it all on the drive up.
“No,” said Val fiercely. “No, Eliza, I want to. Let me.”
The night before the funeral they were all sleeping, but Eliza couldn’t. She climbed out of bed and crept down the stairs and outside and drove to her father’s house, passing the beautiful homes on the Point, dark and quiet in the night.
She considered Charlie’s house from the outside: it was so small, so unassuming, you wouldn’t have given it a second look if you’d been driving past. And yet what full lives had begun and ended there. In fact, the little house seemed to know that; it seemed, in the pale light offered by the moon, to draw its very own rhythmic, settled breaths.
Eliza took her own shuddering breath and pushed open the door.
She flicked on the front hall light. She turned toward the living room, half expecting to see her father in the recliner, and it was like someone had punched her directly in the heart when he wasn’t. She inhaled carefully, and took in a scent of Pine Sol that called to mind her high school cafeteria.
Her foot slipped on something, an envelope with her name on it.
Dear Eliza,
Okay, here goes.
You know how gossip spreads whether it’s true or not especially in this town. I know how people talk here, and I know that what they’re talking about right now is some pills that were next to your dad on the nightstand when he died. I know people are talking about where he got them and if he meant to take as many as he did.
I know where he got the pills because I gave them to him. And I know that he meant to take them because he asked me for them.
Your dad helped me with something earlier in the summer. It’s a long story but basically I was in real trouble, and I was scared, and your dad made sure I was okay. He saved me.
The most important thing I want to tell you, Eliza, is that when your dad died I was with him. He didn’t ask me to stay with him. But it didn’t feel right to leave him alone and so I stayed and I’m glad I did. I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen anyone die before. But when your dad died he wasn’t scared or sad or uncertain. He was peaceful. He believed he was going to see your mom again and he was happy about that. I would say he was almost excited, or anyway relieved. He had pictures of you and your family all around him. He took the pills, and he went to sleep, and he didn’t wake up. That was it. And he wasn’t alone for any of it, I promise. I didn’t leave until it was over.
Your dad loved you so much. I’m telling you that because he seemed like the kind of man who might have some trouble saying it out loud. But he did, he lit up every time he talked about you. My dad is someone who was never around and I know the difference between lucky and not. I know that you are lucky and I hope that you know it too.
I know what I did is against the law in Maine. I know I could get in a lot of trouble for writing this down if anyone but you reads it. I know I could go to jail. I don’t think you will tell anyone else but I guess I don’t know that for sure so I’m just trusting you. I’m not writing to say I’m sorry, because I’m not. I would do it again. I know how sick he was and I know he didn’t want to get sicker. Your dad was a hero to me. He gave me hope when I didn’t have any. He was an angel. He’s more of an angel now, I’m sure of it.
Eliza read the letter three times in a row until she had committed it to memory and then she tore it up into very small pieces and she put the little torn-up pieces in her pocket and then she got into her car and she
drove to where her family was. Her grief was unbearable, a weight pressing down from high above and settling on her shoulders, in her gut, in her soul, but she knew she had to bear it, and so she knew that she would.
51
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
“Turn on the hauler, Mommy,” instructed Evie. “Let’s catch some lobsters.”
“I can’t, sweetie, it’s a Sunday.”
They had buried Charlie—the whole town had buried Charlie, there hadn’t been a funeral like that since, well, since forever. Then they’d had an early dinner at The Lobster Trap, and then they’d all gotten restless, so Eliza had suggested that she take the girls out on Charlie’s boat. Rob stayed back out of necessity—the sling—and Judith by choice, but the girls were eager.
“Ohhh.” Evie looked interested. “I forgot about that. What would happen if you did anyway?”
“Well, if I got caught, I’d lose my license.”
“You don’t have a license.”
“Even worse.”
“Who would catch you?”
“Marine Patrol.”
“What will happen to Grandpa’s traps?” asked Zoe.
“We’ll take them up,” said Eliza.
“Who will?”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Who will help you? Daddy?”
This made Eliza smile. “No, sweetie, not with his arm hurt.”
“Maybe Grandmother.”
Eliza laughed. “Maybe. But probably not.”
“Do you need someone strong?”
“Yes.”
“Deirdre’s strong,” suggested Zoe.
“She is.”
“But I don’t know if she’s the right kind of strong. Can I help you?” That was Evie. “I’m the right kind of strong.”
“No you aren’t,” said Zoe.
“I think you’re both the right kind of strong,” said Eliza.
“Can I help too?” asked Zoe.
“Sure.”
“Are you crying, Mommy?” asked Evie.
“No.”
“Why not? Aren’t you really sad?”
“I am really sad. Sometimes people get so sad they can’t even cry.”
“Are you that kind of sad?”
“I think I am.”
“Are you heartbroken?”
“That’s a good way to put it.”
Evie leaned against her and said, “Me too.” Then she said, “Can’t we just haul one? Nobody’s looking, I promise. Just one. Just to see what’s in there. We can put it right back down, I just want to look.”
For a split second Eliza thought about it. But the rules were far too ingrained in her; she couldn’t break them.
“I can’t,” she told Evie. “It’s the law. The law is sacred out here.”
“Sacred,” said Zoe. “Regarded with reverence. Secured against violation or infringement.”
“Wow,” said Evie.
Zoe shrugged modestly. “It was a vocab word last year.”
“Also, it’s dangerous, just me out here with the two of you, you could get hurt or worse if you got caught in the trap lines. It’s not worth the risk.”
“So how will you take them up, without Daddy?”
“I have a friend who can help me.”
Zoe said, “Grandpa told me once that you can’t touch someone else’s traps, but is it okay since he was your dad?”
“Sort of,” said Eliza. “If I had to I could get a special pass. But I don’t have to because Grandpa left me a note, to give me permission.”
“He did?”
“Yup.”
“Was that the last thing he ever wrote?”
“I think so.” There had been a note for Val, and a note for Eliza. Eliza didn’t know what Val’s note said. Her own, in her father’s distinctively sloppy scrawl, said, You and your mom were everything to me. Ive been as blessed as any man out there. This is how I wanted it.
You could know someone, but you didn’t always know them. You didn’t always know the depths of their soul. You didn’t always know they had such simple poetry inside of them.
She thought about the description of Charlie and Val in her mother’s letter, standing over a sick little Eliza. They looked like two parents.
And then she’d said to Val, That’s a long time.
A long time for what?
To love someone who doesn’t love you back the same way.
But who was to say for sure that he hadn’t? Charlie had been alone for years and years and years, after Eliza had gone. And Val had been alone too. Unless they weren’t alone. The heart, with its four chambers and its endless and unknowable and un-mappable sub-chambers—who was to say, really, about any of it.
Her father had let her think for so long that her mother had been perfect: he gave that to her, a gift, when she’d needed it the most. By being who Charlie Sargent was, and also by being who he wasn’t, he’d let her go, he’d let her fly, he’d let her soar, gliding like a cormorant. And look where Eliza, lucky, lucky person, wife and mother and daughter and friend, had landed.
Her mother had been right about a lot, but she’d been wrong about one thing: there was such a thing as a fairy tale, if you looked at the story the right way.
She thought of how her father had looked in the coffin, like himself and yet not, familiar and other at the same time. She thought of Zoe and Evie as babies—their pure skin and bright eyes, their pockets of perfect fat. From here to there, from that to this—it was hard not to wonder what the point of it all was.
Eliza motored out to the closest set of her father’s buoys and regarded them. Maybe the fishermen had it right all along, going out into the vast sea every day, voyaging, coming back home, doing it again and again, making a life out of that. Maybe the journey was the whole point.
Well, no use losing it now—it was hard to drive a boat when you were crying. A gull circled and then disappeared. The water was smooth as glass, no chop. At peace. The next day, or the day after that, she’d ask Russell to come out with her and help her. She’d give away the traps, as Charlie had requested, but she’d keep one and bring it back to Barton. She’d put it in the side yard and plant flowers in it and around it. She wondered if the yacht club would let her put the Joanie B on A Family Affair’s mooring, just for now. Just until winter.
Probably not.
Definitely not.
It was getting on toward sunset, and yellows and oranges were tiptoeing into the blue of the sky. Soon the whole sky would be flaming.
“I think I see Grandpa up there,” said Evie. “Looking at us.”
“No you don’t,” said Zoe. “That’s impossible.”
Eliza said, “Zoe” warningly, and Zoe clamped her lips closed.
Evie put her arm around Eliza’s waist and leaned into her, and that was not unexpected nor unusual, and then Zoe did the same, and that was both unexpected and unusual, so Eliza cut the motor and stayed as still as she could, not wanting to destroy the moment. Then came a sob, and another, and another, and Zoe was crying—not even trying to hide it, or play it cool, she was just crying, and crying, and crying, messy, unpretty crying, an eruption of gulps and tears. Eliza let go of Evie for a moment and wrapped both of her arms around Zoe and held her as tightly as she had when she was a baby, and when she was a little girl, and she thought, Finally.
When Zoe had calmed herself Eliza drove the boat back to the mooring, where they all climbed into Charlie’s old skiff. Eliza let each of the girls take a turn rowing and then she took over and rowed them back to the dock, where she could see two figures waiting. Judith and Rob, still in their funeral clothes. The juxtaposition was startling—Judith! At the wharf! Waiting for a skiff!—but at the same time it bolstered Eliza. The universe could tilt, two worlds could collide, and there was a good chance neither one would fracture.
“There she is,” said Rob, when they got close enough. “The captain’s daughter, a
nd the captain’s daughter’s daughters. What a sight for sore eyes, the three of you.”
52
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
“Rob,” said Deirdre, coming toward him. “Rob, Rob, Rob.” She laid a hand briefly on his forearm.
“Deirdre!” he said. Deirdre seemed to be emitting a glow. It was probably the light from the tiki torches surrounding the patio, of course. Tiki torches could make anyone glow. Rob was happy to check in with himself and realize that he was admiring Deirdre from a distance, as a casual observer. That was all. He was looking at her like she was a piece of art, something to be seen but not closely interacted with. He moved his head to indicate the patio, the beautifully set tables, the silent-auction tables, the blissful, pretty, moneyed people in early stages of inebriation. “It’s perfect. It’s everything you wanted. Are you happy?”
Deirdre was a little tipsy—in control, but tipsy. She sighed. “I am,” she said. “I’m as happy as I get.” She furrowed her brow and whispered, “Any news on the boat?”
“Oh, that.” Rob waved his good arm, spilling a bit of his cocktail as he did. “They’re still working on it,” he said. He couldn’t keep his voice from splitting. “Anyway. It’s just an object, right? It’s just a thing.”
“ ‘Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board,’ ” said Deirdre.
Rob said, “Pardon me?” Maybe Deirdre was drunker than she appeared to be.
“Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
“I see,” said Rob, who didn’t.
“Have you bid on anything yet?”
Rob didn’t want to say, “My financial situation is precarious at the moment,” so he just said, “No. Not yet,” and made a face that he hoped indicated that he simply hadn’t had a chance. Eliza was deep in conversation with Judith at a small bar table and had been for quite some time. What in the world could they be talking about?
The Captain's Daughter Page 34