The story was banging all over the cabin, and after seeing the stunned looks on Grey's and Mr. Church's faces, I flopped in the chair and shoved my own stunned face into my hands.
THIRTEEN
Nobody said anything for the longest time. Then Grey muttered something about, "You're going to drown yourself in bodily fluids," and she had gotten a tissue and was actually wiping up my chin—spit, or maybe it was snot even. I guess they were waiting for me to say something, but I didn't want to cut up on Emmett. I could feel my brother's terror pulsing through my veins, and I remembered as a kid that he had had moments when he could believe in The She—even more than I had.
"Emmett, next time you hit your brother, your father's going to hold you down and I'm going to hit you. You understand?"
"I didn't hurt him, Mom! He just skeeves me out, always looking out that window at night, listening for spooks. He gets me so jumpy! It's disgusting!"
I wouldn't have gotten him jumpy over something he didn't believe in himself—at least at very tense moments.
"He did say not everything was in that book," I finally said, though it was hard to defend him for leaving out parts that would be personally embarrassing.
"I wouldn't call that omission a terrible thing, necessarily," Mr. Church said, quietly. "Maybe he felt guilty and ... stupid afterward. Those are hard emotions to write about, especially in light of his probable thought that he had lost valuable time, which might have saved them, when he panicked."
"Stupid..." My cackle sounded way crazed. Guess he never made that mistake again!
Church said nothing, but I could read some sort of victory sparkle in his eyes.
"He couldn't have saved them," I added quickly. "The Coast Guard can't beam up like on Star Trek."
"Is he convinced he couldn't save them?"
"Well, he's convinced they died off the Florida shoals after—" I stopped. Then I laughed more, taking the Lord's name in vain a few times. That kind of lets him off the hook, doesn't it?
But I was already shaking my head, already trying to disagree with myself. I couldn't get myself to believe my brother would ever fall victim to bad thinking. Especially not with Aunt Mel there looking after him.
"You know, you get me so turned around," I said to Mr. Church. "And I don't understand how you can sound so confident. You admitted a while ago that you sit out here and dream up these savvy little speeches you give."
He shrugged, and I wondered if it was even possible to make him feel insulted.
"But you've got nothing. Nothing. No mountain of facts, no evidence," I said.
"I'm sorry if I sound so sure, because I really don't know." Church faced out the window. "Except that I knew your mother and father I knew Connor Riley, too. They were apples and an orange. You put two sea captains together on the beach in a downtime game of Frisbee; sometimes they look so much alike. They're both laughing, playing jock, cursing like the seamen they are. But you know what I'm talking about. Some people, you see into them, you know they have a soul. Others ... you're not so sure. Do you have to be able to prove those insights before they become valuable to you?"
I didn't plan on answering, but out of my mouth came, "No."
Enough thinking. I was not a thinker. Church was standing there waiting, too nice, too, too nice. I figured he should have stayed a shrink. The world was missing out on a decent shrink. And he was reminding me of Santa Claus somehow, or of someone actually better You couldn't insult Santa Claus and expect him to be all, "Oh, well." I felt I could sit by him and give him a wish list, like a kid in need. He was old, and long past Emmett's and Aunt Mel's age of hungriness to become something other than who he was. He had nothing better to do, it seemed, than just be, and get absorbed in whatever problems fell through his door.
"I would like to take a boat ride out to the canyon," I told him. "I want to see the place where they died."
Two-thirty in the afternoon—we were heading out of the harbor between East Hook and West Hook toward the open sea in Mr. Church's thirty-one-foot Tiara, the Hope Wainwright. It was named after his mother he said, one of the two women he'd ever loved. He was better than Santa Claus. He had just waved me off when I promised reimbursement for his fuel, which would probably cost around two hundred dollars, and he had more gadgets and computerized screens on his dash than I had ever remembered seeing on the Goliath, which had been more than three hundred feet long. The gadgets gave me a mild feeling of safety. Though I did have my moments of paranoia passing through the harbor they had nothing to do with the things I felt sure I would have feared most—going four hours past the horizon, getting seasick, or memorializing the dead.
My paranoia had to do, first, with passing my grandfather's house, with so many windows, and I was sure Emmett was looking out of one. Mc Church had called Opa and told him he was taking me to the canyon, at which point he put me on the phone. I was surprised that Opa didn't object, considering what month this was. He said there was a "warm-water eddy over the shelf" that day, a term I had forgotten, but supposedly it meant we would have smooth sailing. I thought I detected some sort of gladness in his voice as he said, "Wish I had the health, I might join you." I told him not to tell Emmett, and he had said he wasn't that inconsiderate.
My other paranoia had to do with Grey, who had insisted on coming, and I didn't have the heart to stop her considering I had taken up her whole time with Mr. Church. I had nudged him when she'd gone into the hoagie store to pick up lunch and told him she'd been at Saint Elizabeth's with some kind of panic disorder and I wasn't sure this trip was a great idea. I had totally forgotten that he had an MSW. He had just shrugged it off, saying something like, "Well, if she's on an antidepressant, she probably shouldn't take Dramamine. Make sure she has a cast-iron stomach." I had seen Grey drink us all under the table, and I thought her stomach could probably hold its own.
Mr. Church paused at the drawbridge, and it opened up for us, sending the roadway straight into the air. We got a little wave from the drawbridge operator whose name came floating back out of nowhere—Mt Tommy Downs. I also remembered that my dad used to honk his thanks when we came through the passage in his own fishing boat, so I moved up beside Mr. Church to push the horn button. He must have thought I wanted to take the helm, because he stepped back, gestured at the dash, and before I knew it I had the wheel, and he was honking.
It felt weird gripping the wheel, and something made me turn and look back. Mt Downs was out of the gatehouse with his hands on the railing, just staring. Then I watched him do this thing that sent my heart into my sneakers. I knew why I had looked back. He put two fingers to his forehead and made a wide circle with his right hand.
"You see that salute, Evan? That's for Barretts only. That's for you, little man. Me and you and twelve generations. Give 'im a high one."
I kind of raised four fingers, and dropped them, taking in a glance of Grey with her feet on the stern, hands in her pockets, ski hat on her head, staring into the afternoon sun. She had a bouquet of flowers beside her that she'd picked up at the flower store beside Mac's, the hoagie place. She hadn't said why she bought them. I turned and stared out over the wheel, hoping she wasn't planning on giving them to me for some reason. This drawbridge thing with all the pomp from Mr. Downs was freaky enough.
What amazed me most was how much I remembered, just from my dad letting me drive the Goliath and the MaryEl, his smaller boat used for fishing. We had a following sea getting out of the harbor with good-size swells, maybe eight-foot, charging up on us, and I somehow remembered to speed up and ride one's back so the next wouldn't catch us. When we hit the sea, the swells came at us, and I remembered to tack them. Basically the water was calm when we hit open water and my eyes fell to a compass. The canyon was to the southeast, eighty-five miles, and I watched Mr. Church set the path on the loran receiver He pointed out a few things I didn't remember and then I just tried to feel under the boat for currents that would need a little fight and watch for swell patterns. I guess yo
u could say it was like getting back on a bike.
I drove like that for two hours, hitting little more than four-foot swells. Pretty soon after we reached open sea, Mr. Church left me and sat at the stern, eating hoagies with Grey. They had started an ear-to-mouth conversation, which I hoped was about her and her Girl Scout. I felt like a pig, stealing all her time back on Sassafras, but she looked strangely not-angry, almost as if my own problems were some sort of sponge that sopped the problems out of her. I saw them laugh a couple of times.
I didn't eat my hoagie, and I felt glad after two hours on the water. I got this problem I figured I should have thought about before I left shore. I had seen the Dramamine Mr. Church had swiped at in the cabin when I mentioned Grey's problem. It was the old-fashioned kind that makes you want to crash out, and I thought about the little packet Emmett had thrown into his overnight bag with a chuckle. Emmett's was the newer stuff, the kind that lets you stay completely awake. It was there, and I was here, and every swell I had to face was suddenly turning my stomach to sludge.
About four-thirty in the afternoon, I shouted for Mr. Church and made a motion toward the cabin, because I also had to pee. He took the helm. I stared into the cabin head after I went, wondering how soon I would have to drop to my knees.
"When I came out, Grey was inside, sitting in the kitchen booth with her ski hat on the table beside her mittens. She was blowing on her fingertips.
I sat down across from her; taking off my own ski hat and pinching my earlobes.
"You seasick or anything?" I asked, hoping I might not be alone in my idiocy. She had shut the door to the outside, and you could barely hear the engines.
"Moi?" She gazed at me. "You've got to be kidding. The only way my parents could ever get me off a boat in the summer was with a set of fins and a scuba tank."
"Really? You dive?"
"Dived my first wreck when I was eleven. Yup." She nodded. "I've done two or three a season every year since."
I nodded, remembering you had to be ten before you could take the scuba course at the Ocean Life Center in West Hook. I'd left after school ended in June of fourth grade, the first year I would have been able to take it.
"Maybe you can teach me sometime," I said, swallowing green.
She watched me for a minute and cracked up. "You know, I'm famous around school for three things: my partying, my downhill skiing, and my scuba diving. You wouldn't know about that last thing, because at the very first party we both went to, people were whispering to me not to talk about the Hooks around you. They said your parents' ship sank with them on it, and you had been a Hook native. They said if you heard any terms associated with salt water; such as diving, it would not be a good thing. I was respectful of that."
"You're kidding." I watched her crack up, awkwardly pulling at her mouth over the way she worded it, maybe. I tried to ignore that part. "I had no clue people even thought about it. Not even the most out-of-hand drunk at the most out-of-hand party has ever mentioned my folks."
It freaked me out.
"You've got a lot of friends, Evan Barrett." She grinned. "I won't send this day into the gossip channels when I get back to school, I swear it. But I would love to see people's faces if they could have seen you driving this boat, like you'd just done it yesterday. Didn't you used to go around telling everyone that your grandfather's house made you seasick because of the windows?"
I looked out the little porthole at nothing but blue.
"Dad! I'm really driving this whole boat!"
"You're really driving, little man."
"All by myself!"
"All by yourself."
"You swear? Mr. Lowenberg isn't up on the bridge helping me?"
"I swear on our ancestors."
I jerked my mind to the present and decided to take the high road with some humility instead of the low road about my driving prowess. "Yeah, it's true about Opa's house making me seasick. In fact, I'm very seasick right now. If I don't hurl, it's going to be a miracle."
That totally cracked her up, to where she was slumped over sideways, laughing into her sleeve. She sat up.
"You want some Dramamine?"
I suddenly had a clear recollection of my dad's opinion of Dramamine. A guy taking Dramamine to go to the canyon was like a guy wearing black socks with sneakers. We used to laugh quietly among the family on some fishing trips when he was off for a few days and taking some buyer out to catch marlin. Buyers were notoriously bad seamen, and Dad used to lecture me, "Now, don't laugh in Mr. So-and-So's face, but you can go tell him about the seaweed pie we eat in graphic detail, hee ha..."
"I think I'd rather ralph," I told her frankly.
She just shrugged. "Nothing I haven't seen you do before."
I flinched a little, thinking of a couple of parties I'd gone to as an underclassman where I'd paid a loud visit to the bushes, and I wondered which one she'd been at. I hadn't been thinking about the night she slipped me acid, because I hadn't hit the bush—at least not to my recollection.
I was wondering if maybe I should rethink those memories when she asked, "So, you still mad at me?"
I didn't answer her directly. "Well, you seem to be handling very diplomatically the fact that I stole your whole therapy session this morning. After you drove down from Philly for it, and I just walked across a bridge, having come down in a limo to eat turkey and lobster tails."
She waved her hand like it didn't matter but she didn't look entirely happy when she said, "I get to talk about my problems all day up at Saint Elizabeth's. That's all I do. Dwell on my problems. So today I get to dwell on your problems. I call that a nice break in the action."
I grinned in relief.
"I would like to have seen one of those hands-on thingamabobs that Mr. Church did to you last year. It would have put the icing on the cake." She ran her fingers through her hair and looked a little more serious. "Truthfully, I wouldn't mind him rapping on my head a 'little bit. If I could see the bottom of the deep right now ... if I could see a dead body down there ... it might at least keep me from seeing some huge sea hag chomping down on somebody I actually knew. What happens after she bites you in half? Are you dead or alive in that neat little hole under the canyon floor?"
"Grey."
"Sorry." She glanced toward my knees and then frontward again. "But I don't think I'm repeating any thoughts that you haven't already enjoyed for yourself. Especially right about now. You go over to see Mr. Church. He takes your brain apart, and then it's time to go look for the dead. What do you have now? First you thought it was a wave. Then you thought it was the Colombian mafia. Now? Based on what you see and hear from around the Hooks, you actually have more evidence that it's a witch than a wave that ate your mom and dad."
"Grey." I rubbed my eyes.
She pinched her face with her fingers to break her smile and rolled her eyes like she was sorry. "I'm actually overdue for a dose of Xanax. I can take it every four hours, and it's been"—she glanced at her Ripcurl watch—"six hours, and the sky hasn't fallen." She glanced across the ceiling. "I may actually be licking this panic disorder thing. If you can put up with my mouth."
"Uh, maybe it's not time yet to be such a hero," I said, trying not to roll my eyes.
"In other words, I'm driving you crazy."
I tried to find words that didn't totally bite. "You're about a twelve on the bluntness scale right now. I think I could handle you at your usual six or seven."
With that she grabbed for this little handbag she'd strung across herself under her jacket, tore open the zipper; and brought out a prescription bottle. She stared at it for a minute, then gripped it tightly in her dropped fist. "I've been talking with my therapist about how I've had terrible symptoms for years, actually. I would feel myself starting to ... croak, or spin out, or lose oxygen, whatever: And I could put off the inevitable by making some cutting remark. By, like, hurting somebody."
I watched her tap her knuckles on the table while gripping the bottle, kind of lost
in thought. "Seriously. When I was around ten, I only used to do it when my feelings got hurt. I was really sensitive, I guess, and would level back at somebody who made me feel cut to shreds. I don't know how it got to be such a compulsion. The doctor says it doesn't matter; but—"
She shoved the bottle back in her bag. "I really don't want to. You don't know how much this means to me. Not being on anything. Nothing. Not alcohol, not sleeping pills, not nothing. I'll try harden If I say anything wicked, just kick me, okay?"
She looked deadly serious, and I had to smile. I admired her guts.
"And let's talk about your life, not mine. It's so much more interesting. Your intuition is very, very cool. I wasn't even scared coming out here today. Did I tell you my book calls this She-Devil Month? I don't know, I just thought if anything was going to happen, your gut wouldn't have brought you this far."
My parents and the Riley boat had disappeared in November I remembered. But I felt pretty safe today. "My brother says my intuition is mostly just picking up on fine details that others miss, and putting them together in a flash. I feel safe because ... she's a rare visitor to the surface, whoever or whatever she is. I didn't hear the noise a lot as a kid. Maybe four or five times at the most. I'd hear her and have this strange heaviness in my limbs." I shook my fingers out, trying not to remember how heavy I'd felt while running up the stairs for Emmett the night my parents disappeared. "But I haven't felt or heard a thing, and this time of year there're freighters whizzing through the canyon at all hours. Nothing happens to them. It's kind of like ... a very safe game of Russian roulette."
She watched me for a few moments. "So, then ... what are you expecting to find out there, Evan Barrett?"
"I don't know. I know it's just water ... very, very deep water. With probably a hundred wrecks at the bottom."
I don't know exactly what pushed my stomach buttons, either the thought of so much water or some of the things she'd just said in that Grey Shailey frank way. I excused myself to the little bathroom, slammed the door and got sick in the toilet. I splashed my face off afterward, but there were no paper towels in there so I came out with water dripping down my face.