Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

“You mean right now?”

“Why not?”

“But it’s — now it’s almost evening,” I said.

“We won’t be long.”

“All right,” I said. I was getting nervous. I felt fairly sure that he wanted to talk about Jeremy. Why else take me away from the children, and suggest a sail in that artificial voice that meant it wasn’t so spur-of-the-moment after all? I wondered if Jeremy had fallen ill, or died, or found somebody else. I felt my hands growing cold, but I didn’t tell Brian to break the news because I was too scared. I just sat there freezing to death on a warm summer afternoon, and Brian started the motor and steered us slowly out past the other moored boats.

When we reached open water he cut the engine. The quiet rolled down over us like a bolt of silk. I could hear water lapping, ropes creaking, Brian doing something complicated to tighten the sails. Oh, everything was so unfamiliar! I felt that this entire scene was foreign and bizarre, some trumped-up substitute for the world where Jeremy lived. Every move that Brian made, even the tone of his voice and the way his beard ruffled and parted in the wind, was makeshift; nothing like Jeremy at all. When he came to sit down beside me the sheen in the unknown fabric of his shirt made me want to go home. He laid an arm across my back and his hand rested on my shoulder — a big, wiry hand, as unlike Jeremy’s as a hand can get. Now, I thought, is when he will say it. They shield you and brace you before they tell you, as if the blow they are about to deal is a physical one. I knew all about it. (Don’t ask me how.) I swallowed and waited, and hoped that he wouldn’t feel me shudder when he started talking.

Only he didn’t. He didn’t talk at all. First I thought he was waiting for me to prepare myself, and then I thought he was having trouble finding the words. And then, when the silence had gone on for several minutes, I gave him a sidelong glance and saw him sitting perfectly relaxed in the orange light, one hand loose on the tiller and his eyes on the mainsail. He wasn’t looking for words at all.

Well! I was too surprised to be angry. Where were all those thin blondes that came visiting at the gallery or sauntering down to his dinghy in their crisp white bellbottoms? Or was he, perhaps, just laying an arm around me out of bachelor’s habit? I am not the type to jump to conclusions. I moved away, rising to peer off the stern of the boat as if I had seen something interesting. “Come here and sit with me, Mary,” Brian said. I was afraid I might laugh. He seemed so sure of himself, giving directions that way — it was a tone I wasn’t used to. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. I stayed where I was, staring at the streamers of the sunset in the water and fighting back the laughter and the tears that were swelling in my eyes. “Well,” said Brian finally. “Shall we head back?”

Going home, he used the motor all the way. Then when he had tied the boat to the mooring again he furled and bound the sails in silence. I wondered if he were angry. The only friend I had nowadays. And with all that I owed him! There suddenly seemed to be so many complications to life, so many tangles and knots and unexpected traps, that I felt too tired to hold my head up. I dropped like a stone into his dinghy, pretending not to notice the hand he held out to me. I sat slumped over with my elbows on my knees while he rowed us ashore. Then as we touched land, as I was stepping past him while he steadied the dinghy, he said, “Mary.”

The sun had set by now. In the twilight his voice seemed closer than it was, a little furry behind the beard. Whatever he was planning to say, I didn’t want to hear it. I spun around and smiled, giving him a good brisk handshake. “I certainly do thank you for the boat ride!” I said. “And I’ll be sure to tend to those sails, Brian, if we happen to have a rainy spell.”

But he held onto my hand and looked straight into my eyes, not smiling back. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to rush you,” he said. And after a minute: “Good night, Mary.”

That’s what they say in soap operas: Don’t worry, I’m not going to rush you. The romantic, masterful hero with the steady gaze. People don’t say it for real . There are no heroes in real life.

I went back into the house and found the children grouped around Rachel, who was standing. Not unsupported, of course — she had two fistfuls of the couch cover — but it was the first time she had managed it and they were all excited. “Come watch,” they told me. “Sit, Rachel. Sit down. Show Mom how you do it.” They uncurled each of her fingers and tried to fold her up, but she wouldn’t bend. She stiffened her legs, refusing to return to her old floor-level existence. I had forgotten how desperately babies struggle to be vertical. Always up, away, out of laps and arms and playpens. Why, in no time she was going to wean herself! All my children lost interest in nursing once they could walk. They took off out the door one day to join the others, leaving me babyless, and for a few months I would feel a little lost until I found out I was pregnant again. Only now, it wasn’t going to be that way. I hadn’t considered that before. I stood staring at Rachel, my very last baby, while she fought off all those grubby little hands that were trying to reseat her. “Look, Rachel,” they said, “we just want you to show Mom. Sit a minute, Rachel.”

For the first time, then, I knew that Jeremy was not going to ask us back.

Now it was deep summer, and the air under the tin roof was so hot that we spent most of our time outside. I bought the younger children an inflatable wading pool. They stayed entire days in it, splashing around in their underpants, but Darcy was too old for that kind of thing and she had trouble amusing herself. I would find her sitting in the scrubby brown grass, under the glaring sun, frowning at the river. She was so serious . “Why don’t you take a walk, honey?” I said. “Pick us some flowers for the dinner table.” Then she would look straight at me, narrowly, as if she were trying to figure something out. I thought probably she wanted to ask what we were doing here. She was old enough, after all, to see how strange it was. She had been yanked out of a school she loved; she had been separated from Jeremy without even telling him goodbye, and in some ways she was closer to Jeremy than any of the others were. But it was the others who asked the questions — when would they see him, and what was he doing that kept him so busy, and could they bring him back a present of some kind? Darcy kept quiet. “Why don’t you head over to the boatyard and see what’s going on?” I asked her. But if she did she took Rachel with her, as if she couldn’t imagine doing anything purely for her own enjoyment. She set the baby on her little sharp hip and walked off tilted, with her head lowered, plodding along on dusty bare feet. The knobs on the back of her neck showed and her legs were all polka-dotted with mosquito bite scabs.

Coming here was the most selfish thing I have ever done.

In the evenings I heated kettles of water on the hot plate and sponged off the little ones. Then I dressed them in fresh underwear — I hadn’t brought anything so inessential as pajamas — and sent them to bed. Darcy sat up reading movie magazines borrowed from the steelworker’s daughter. The whole house had the sharp smell of insect spray. Moths were pattering against the sagging screens and I felt as if I were coated with a thin layer of plastic, I was so salty and sweaty. It was the hardest time of day for me. “I believe I might go for a walk,” I would tell Darcy. “Will you keep an ear out for the baby?” Then I would step into the dark and go down to the water’s edge, and slip the dinghy from its tangle of weeds. All alone I would row out to the ketch — me! so landbound! It was the only place I could get free of the cramped feeling, those masses of hot little bodies tossing in a tiny cube of space, sticking to the red vinyl mats. To escape from that I was even willing to cross the black water and make the climb from the dinghy to the deck, trusting my weight to this mysterious object that somehow managed to keep itself upright fifteen feet above solid earth.