Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“He knows. I told him, I wrote him a note.”

Then I thought, Suppose he never saw the note. Is that why I haven’t heard from him? I said, “Did he say he doesn’t know my whereabouts? Have you seen him? Did he ask you?”

“I saw him, yes. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem to want to mention your going.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, you can tell him, Brian.”

“Of course I wouldn’t bring the subject up myself. But if he asked, you see, I felt that I was in an awkward—”

“Bring it up, I don’t mind. Tell him, It isn’t as if this were a fight or anything.”

“What is it, then?”

I pulled my coat tighter against a breeze.

“I don’t want to pry,” Brian said, “but is this something permanent you are doing?”

I didn’t answer. I had questions of my own. I wanted to know how Jeremy had looked and whether he was getting enough rest and eating right. (He was always so fond of sweets and he didn’t like meat.) But I knew those were housewifely questions that would make Brian smile, and anyway he wouldn’t have been able to tell me. Oh, sometimes I think of other artists’ wives, people that Brian must run into all the time. I picture them fragile and blond and hollow-cheeked, the kind that model in the nude and lead unscheduled lives in garrets and never, never complicate things with children and plumbers. When I used to come clumping into the gallery every month, wearing my nursing bra and my best black dress with the spit-up milk down one shoulder, I imagined that Brian looked stunned. He would stare at me, and if he happened to be talking with other women they would hush and stare too. I suspected that they were feeling sorry for Jeremy. “An artist — married to her?” Then I would pull my stomach in and stuff the straggles of hair back behind my ears, and when I was looking at paintings I spent longer before each one than I wanted to, just showing I could appreciate art. I wouldn’t have been caught dead mentioning anything domestic. And now all I allowed myself to say was, “I hope he’s making out all right.”

“Oh, you know Jeremy,” Brian said. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He smiled down at me and said, “Don’t worry, Mary. I’m sorry I brought it up. Go back inside now before you catch a cold.”

The next time he came he didn’t mention Jeremy at all, and I was afraid to ask.

Now more and more boats were tethered at the docks and bobbing on moorings. Weekdays, when not many people sailed, I could look out over a stretch of black water prickling with masts, and I liked to pretend that I was some fisherman’s wife living in a hut at the edge of the ocean. The river did have the feeling of an ocean. There was no opposite shore in sight; from this boatyard you sailed due east into the Chesapeake Bay, which looked like white veils at the limits of our vision. Late Friday afternoon the city people would begin to arrive from Baltimore and Washington — couples dressed for yachting, carrying ice buckets and windbreakers and Hudson Bay blankets. My children would crowd along the dock to stare at them. We saw their sails scudding away all Saturday, converging on us again all Sunday evening like birds flocking home. While we ate our supper doors would be slamming in the parking lot, motors revving, voices calling goodbyes. By Monday morning all that remained were their tire tracks in the gravel and those naked masts lined up again beside the docks. A few people drove in during the week to sail on their own or make minor repairs, but they were quieter and the only time I was aware of them was when I ran into them at the store. Then their solid, confident city voices startled me, and I would stand gawking like any country woman as they read off their long extravagant lists. Ice, they wanted, and a Phillips screwdriver and a can of rust remover and a sack of potato chips. Luxuries, every one. We took our food unchilled, or bought it from the store refrigerator just before time to eat; our tools we borrowed from neighbors or made ourselves from scraps; we stripped that everlasting salt-air rust off them with the Coca-Cola left in discarded cans. As for potato chips! I made the children eat protein foods instead. I have never liked being stingy with food but what else could I do? I fed them lots of eggs and cottage cheese and powdered milk. I gave the baby bits from my plate. Gerber’s was too expensive. Even doing the laundry was expensive. Once a week I carried the dirtiest things to the store washing machine and dropped my quarter in the slot and sprinkled on the detergent, rationing every grain. I lugged the clothes home wet and hung them up to save fifty cents, even if it was rainy and I had to drape the living room with them and bat my way between damp blue jeans for a day and a half till they dried. Then here came this city man with his list so long that it filled two separate pages of his memo pad, not to mention what he idly tossed in from the counter displays as he wandered about the store whistling through his teeth. I doubt if he noticed me. If he did he probably thought I came from one of those shacks beside the store, where the boat mechanic lived or the carpenter or the old retired steelworker and his daughter. Poor white trash with dusty paper flowers before the madonnas on their windowsills and cotton balls on their screen doors to keep the flies away. That was what I had become. My children ran in and out between counters with their faces dirty and their dresses unironed, their feet bare and callused even before the summer had set in.

When Brian came he almost always offered to take us sailing, unless he had brought a girl along or a group of his friends. I was afraid he felt he had to offer. “Brian’s here! Brian’s here!” the children shouted when they saw his car, and I would say, “Stop, now! Hush. I want you to stay in here with me.” They couldn’t understand that. They always crowded around the windows and cheered when he knocked. To make up for them I kept my back to the door and was slow answering and pretended to be surprised when I saw him. “Just stopped by to see what you were doing,” he would say, and usually hand me something — a little patterned rug he had been keeping in storage, towels he said were cluttering up his apartment, most often a sack of some kind of candy for the children. “How about it, kids?” he would say. “Feel like a sail?” He said he needed the help on deck. I didn’t believe him. I was afraid he felt responsible for us in some way. I didn’t want to say no to the children — what other treats did they have? — but usually I stayed home myself and kept the baby. I only went sailing twice all spring. The first time was the first sail I had had in all my life, and I didn’t think much of it. I don’t like to be floated to places, willy-nilly. But I stood on the deck with Rachel on one hip, pretending to enjoy myself, and he didn’t keep us out too long. The second time was unplanned. It was in July, after several days of rain. He came late one afternoon when the little ones were off playing somewhere. “I wanted to see if you’d do me a favor,” he told me. “Oh, anything!” I said. I was so glad to have him asking me for something.

“After rainy spells, if I don’t have a chance to get down here myself, would you row out to the boat and dry my sails for me?”

“Do what?”

“Come out; I’ll show you.”

So we left the baby with Darcy and pulled the dinghy out of the weeds in front of the house, and he showed me how to row. Well, that much I more or less knew already, having been to Girl Scout camp on a muddy pond the summer I was ten. But then we reached the ketch and I felt so clumsy. I hated that clambering up the side, wondering if I might kick the dinghy out from under me or tip Brian into the water when he offered me his hand. Up on deck I shook myself out and smoothed my skirt down and gave a little laugh. “Well!” I said. “Now tell me what to do.” He taught me how to unfurl the sails and run them up. It didn’t look hard. “Let them stay awhile, an afternoon or so,” he said. “Bring the kids if you want.” Then he said, “Let’s take her out, shall we?”