The Silver Boat (11 page)

HECTOR ST . JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR ,
WRITTEN ON A 1783 MAP OF THE VINEYARD

K
nowing that one's parents wrote love letters to each other changes the way a person sees life. Dar had read her father's words long ago—back then her mother had kept the envelopes in her bedside drawer. With him living out of the house, Dar had been extra alert for any signs of good or bad between her parents, any clues to what the future might hold.

Like many oldest children, Dar had the characteristics of a good spy. The first time she'd seen her mother get the mail, hide a blue envelope in her pocket, clearly too precious to sit among the bills and circulars, Dar had known something was up. She had shadowed her mother, had seen her take the letter onto the side porch, read it with her head bent down, drinking in the words.

After a few more letters had arrived, Dar had been unable to stop herself. She'd waited for her mother to be busy in the garden, then gone upstairs and opened the drawer. Dar had felt guilty just touching the envelopes. But the sight of her father's writing, even though he was living close by at the boatyard, made her feel so homesick for him. She'd wanted to peek, just to pick up some clue about what was going on.

Dar was only twelve that year. She'd never read a love letter in her life. But her heart was so connected to her father's, she could feel the longing and sorrow he felt for what had come between him and Dar's mother. He wrote about a sunset they'd seen once, with the sky blazing red and the mainland a smoky blue outline, and how they'd held hands and known they were seeing something they would never forget, how the memory would unite them forever.

Reading those words had told Dar what she'd wanted to know. No matter what else he wrote about his desire to make her proud, give her more than she'd ever ask, be the best father to their girls, live up to his own expectations of himself, that sunset was the image Dar never forgot. She could almost see her parents silhouetted in its fiery light.

While her sisters were at the beach, she went back to the Hideaway and read all her father's letters again. He wrote so clearly, she could hear his voice. She had never known him—heard him or spoken to him—as an adult. He wrote of love and yearning; she heard shame for not having brought enough to the marriage. He hadn't set out to marry a rich girl. He had fallen in love with Tilly even as he'd stalked the land on which she lived.

Life is full of reality, no matter how talented the Irish are at avoiding it
, he wrote. The truth he'd sought to avoid was that he felt ashamed of his lack of worldly goods when in the company of his mother-in-law. And he feared that no matter how deep his and Tilly's love had once been, it had changed along the way. A girl used to having everything she'd ever wanted now had to content herself with being the wife of a boatbuilder, to live in a small house provided by her mother, and to scrounge to make ends meet.
You're tiring of it, God knows I am. We—I—cannot go on in this way. I see the disappointment in your eyes
, he'd written.

Was it true or not? Knowing her mother, Dar could not believe it was. She heard desperation in her father's words—as well as a sense of resentment and a strong ambition to sail to Ireland.
I won't come back home until after I retrieve what I'm owed
.

Won't come back home:
the line that had risen from memory to haunt her, sitting with her sisters at their mother's grave.

Dar stared at that letter for a long time. She looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes until she could feel Dulse. Her hand itched to draw; it was the only way she ever made sense of emotions this strong. Moving to her desk, she opened her pad to a new page.

Her drawing summoned up a spirit of water, seaweed, bitter taste, red sunset. They weren't following any story Dar had ever drawn before; she let her pencil move, let Dulse take over.

Anger made her press down hard, break the pencil point. Twisting more lead, turning the mainland into a mountain, switching to color, outlining the slope dusky blue, dipping a brush in water, then vermilion, painting the sky blood red.

The image didn't reflect the tenderness of two people holding hands, witnessing a brilliant sunset. It boiled up from deep down inside Dar, a vision of the world—or her family—ending. She painted a midnight blue sea, lapping against the mountain's wide base, and in the middle of the water, a sailboat.

The small boat's sails caught the light of a full moon rising in the east, illuminating the way. Painting the moonlight soothed Dar's hand, made her brush more tender, let her follow the boat and not push it away, let her keep her despair yet soften toward the words her father had written decades ago—
I won't come back home
—and made her want to understand them more.

 

 

“Okay, so what are they?” Rory asked after Dar had produced the blue silk pouch, explained the basics, brought forth the envelopes for her sisters to open. “Are they love letters or good-bye letters?”

“They sound like both,” Delia said, reading one.

“Mom saved them,” Rory said. “They obviously meant a lot to her.”

“Why didn't you ever tell us about them?” Delia asked.

“Because she was being Dulse,” Rory said, and Dar knew she was right. Her sisters had always been able to accept life in a more straightforward way. Dar had had to struggle, sometimes take on the spirit of her character, make herself invisible, keep the most painful things to herself, hide them deep in memory, yet transform them into her stories.

“What if he did get to Cork?” Delia asked, restarting the conversation they'd had in the cemetery.

“How can we know?” Rory asked.

“We had that one phone call from Kerry, and then nothing. No letters from Ireland at all . . .” Delia said.

“That makes sense to me,” Dar said. “If he made it to Cork, he would have been completely focused on getting his proof. He wouldn't want to give us half-assed progress reports.”

“I sort of get it,” Delia said. “It must have been awful, feeling he couldn't measure up. It's a little like Pete going to Alaska. He wanted to make his own money, show us he could stand up for himself. Big plans don't always work out the way people want them to.”

The three of them took notes as they read the letters he'd written before he left. Any mention he had made of places in Ireland, people he could contact, dates that might matter. Dar couldn't get over the strange sensation of reading her father's letters and judging him: he had decided to sail solo across the ocean.

“Hang on,” Rory said, reaching for her laptop. “Let's Google him. Michael McCarthy, Cork, Ireland . . . fifty thousand hits.”

“Narrow it down. Try Cobh,” Dar said. “It's pronounced ‘Cove' but spelled C-O-B-H. He keeps mentioning it.”

“Well, lots of McCarthys in Cobh, too. Here's McCarthy Manufacturing,” Rory said, staring at the screen. “Dad was a boatbuilder, not a machinist or whatever they do at manufacturing companies.”

“Just type in ‘McCarthy, Cork,'” Delia suggested.

“Hmm,” Rory said. “There's the McCarthy Bookshop in Skibbereen. And a list of obituaries in the
Irish Examiner
. . .” She scanned them. “Thomas McCarthy. Nuala McCarthy. No Michaels, at least this week.”

“Wait,” Delia said. “Shouldn't we be checking out West Kerry? That's where we last heard from him . . .”

“I know,” Dar said. “But I don't remember any details about the town, or the harbor, or where he was calling from. Since we know his ultimate destination was Cork, I think it's good we're starting there.”

“Whether he made it or not?” Delia asked, skeptical.

“Is there a number for the bookshop?” Dar asked.

“Yes,” Rory said, reading it off.

Dar checked her watch. “It's nearly seven over there. Let's give it a try anyway.” She dialed the number on the house phone, and got the
beep-beep
tone familiar from calling her British publisher. Then an answering machine picked up, with a message spoken by an Irishman. Dar barely registered the words; his accent sounded just as she remembered her father's.

“They're closed,” she told her sisters.

“Shit,” Delia said. “We're on the early boat tomorrow. There won't be time to call before we leave.”

“Dar will call and let us know what happens,” Rory said.

“I will,” Dar promised.

The sisters spent the rest of the afternoon—their last before leaving the next morning—sealing boxes, loading some into their cars, setting others aside for the movers. They could barely look at each other without tearing up. Where would they congregate when this place was gone? There had never been any other place—not since they had left Noank. Dar stayed focused on the boxes, but every so often her heart flipped, thinking of the bookstore.

“That wasn't Dad's voice on the answering machine, was it?” Rory asked, half joking, glancing up from a carton carefully packed with dishes.

“No,” Dar said. “He had the same accent, though. But he sounded young. Dad would be nearly eighty by now.”

“What if he's alive?” Delia said. “He never found what he was ‘owed,' so he didn't come back home. That's what we're all thinking, isn't it?”

Rory nodded.

“That, and could we find him in Ireland?” Dar asked.

At dusk, Andy and Harrison arrived for a farewell dinner and blowout Scrabble tournament. Andy had picked up steamers and lobsters, Harrison provided the Heineken, Rory and Sylvia made a huge salad, Delia slid stuffed potatoes back under the broiler to brown, Jenny made place cards, Obadiah was allowed to light the candles, and Vanessa looked on from her bouncy chair. Dar knew Pete should be there, so she stepped out of the kitchen to try him on her cell phone. But the call went to her nephew's voice mail, and she didn't leave a message.

 

 

The evening was warm and still, so they ate on the porch, on the long table overlooking the pond and dunes. A harrier hunted, flying low over the pink-tinged dunes. Everyone talked and laughed, pretending this wasn't the last porch dinner. The sounds of cracking lobster claws and clamshells being tossed into buckets filled the air. Melted butter dripped everywhere. Harrison got caught letting Sylvia take a sip of his beer.

“She's only fourteen!” Rory said.

“Hypocrite, my love. Remember us at fourteen?” Harrison asked.

“Shut up,” Rory said with a warning glance.

“No,” Harrison said. “Syl, Obes, Jenn . . . what you all need to know is that your mother was, is, and will always be the hottest woman alive.”

“Hey,” Delia said.

“I was getting there,” Harrison said in the tone of a man who doesn't like being rushed through his stories or speeches. He took a long quaff of beer. “And your aunts are the loveliest aunts any children could ever have.”

“That's not like being called hot,” Delia said.

“Well. You both are. But I'm singling out Rory just for the evening. She has been much too serious this week, and she needs to remember being fourteen.”

“I remember,” Rory said. “Everything was wonderful except for one part. You lived in Edgartown, and I lived all the way out here, and we couldn't drive.”

“Uh, except the time I did,” Harrison said.

“You drove when you were fourteen?” Sylvia asked, sounding thrilled.

“Nooooo,” Harrison said. “I was thirteen. Big difference. And do what I say and not what I do. That goes in all instances, not just taking your father's brand new Caddy and tooling up-island to see your lady friend.”

“Did you get caught?” Obadiah asked.

“Well, eventually,” Harrison said.

“What do you mean, eventually?”

“He did it all summer,” Delia said. “Drove out here to see Rory.”

“Yes. My parents were conveniently in Europe and had left me with the nanny.”

“Anika,” Rory said. “I still remember her. She was gorgeous and blond. I wanted to look like her.”

“She had a little problem with power,” Harrison said. “She'd lock me in my room while she made out with her surfer boyfriend on my parents' bed. But I climbed out the window every time.”

“It's true,” Andy said.

“And drove out here, twenty miles each way,” Harrison said.

“What did your mother say?” Obadiah asked Rory. “Didn't she get mad?”

“Once again, do as I say, not as I do,” Harrison said sternly. “Do you think I was stupid enough to park in the driveway where any mother or grandmother could see me? Ha. Give me some credit. I parked at the beach and walked back along the sand to get here.”