What the Waves Know (5 page)

Never having been forced to chew raw roots of any kind before, I was unprepared for the intense burn in my mouth. Tears pooled in my eyes, and the rush of warm sugary heat left a trail clear from my tongue to my tailbone. Within seconds the lurching in my stomach slowed and, with two more straps of ginger, stopped altogether. When it appeared I was no longer at risk of dropping off the edge of the boat, Remy bent low and tossed a strap of ginger inside Luke's crate. He sniffed the string of ginger tentatively before gnawing halfheartedly at one corner while holding the other to the floor of his crate with one paw.

“There now, lay her flat, belly down, so she doesn't drown in her own bile.”

My mother did as she was told with surprisingly little rebellion, balling up her jacket and tucking it beneath my ear. Waves lapped up the boat's hull. I watched them carefully, every so often glimpsing a flash of silver darting below them. I wriggled the small hunk of amber from my pocket, tucked my hand below my head, and watched
for Yemaya until the bounce of light off the waves made me retch again. For an instant, I fantasized about rolling myself off the edge and into her arms just to free myself of the boat.

“Let her be while you use the hose there to rinse that crate clean,” Remy directed. “Otherwise, I'll have to charge you a clean-up fee for hosing down the deck. Besides, I'm dead certain my father will appreciate not having regurgitated dog chunks dropping all over his car. Runs the taxi stand on the wharf.” Remy tucked a loose bronze curl back into her pencil knot. “Even if he lets you aboard with that mess, I'm betting whoever you're lodging with on the island will not.”

“Thanks, but I can figure out how to take care of my own dog.” Looking her over carefully, my mother appeared to have gone the way of Lot's wife, paling to the color of salt.

Had I not still felt too woozy to write, I might have reached for the notepad I always kept in my pocket and reminded her that according to the governing rules of birthday gift giving, Luke was technically all mine and not hers at all. “And we're not lodging with anyone. We're staying at the Booth House.” She seemed preoccupied, as though turning a thought over and searching for a spot to set it down.

Now Remy, too, appeared to be reaching, trying to pull forth something that refused to come loose. She followed my mother, letting a steeliness settle in her slate blue eyes.
When she spoke again, her voice hit the air in measured tones. “The Booth House?”

“It was my husband's grandmother's cottage.” Her eyes seemed suddenly far away as she gave Luke's cage a shove.

I rolled onto my back, trying to remember the last time my mother had referred to Daddy as her husband. Was he still? I mean, technically speaking. It wasn't as if there had ever been a divorce.

“Well then . . . ,” Remy whispered. I squinted up at them, watching the expression on her face change, as though the thought she'd been tugging at had finally broken free. “I suppose you already know my father.” A moment of perfect silence passed between them before Remy added, “I guess that explains it. Why don't you bring your girl into the cabin? There's a cot in back she can lie down on.”

“Explains what?” My mother dug another cigarette from her bag, lighting it and taking a deep drag before leveling her eyes at Remy. Annoyance hung tight to her words, but Remy Mandolin's back was already turned.

“Like I said, there's a cot. She's welcome to it while you hose off that mutt and its cage.” She shook her head halfway across the deck as if in wonderment about something. “I don't want it stinking up my boat.” Breasts as round as grapefruits pushed her shirt into soft bouncy curves, the sort of which I dreamed would one day sprout from my own chest. She was dressed in faded jean cutoffs torn high enough for white crescents to peep out from the fringe
and a man's button-down shirt knotted at a waist as thin as a chopstick. Fleshy hips rounded into a peach-shaped rear end, which gave a mighty shake in my mother's direction as she slipped into the control cabin. The gesture was as good as any four-lettered word. I could not see my mother's expression but—my right hand to God—her hair tensed, pulling the black tresses up a notch.

“He's not a mutt!” My mother watched the engine room door until the tip of the cigarette burned her finger and she stomped it out on the deck. She took two steps in the direction of the door, stopped, and turned back to help me up. She must have seen the question scribbling itself across my face as I looked back and forth between the cabin and my mother, because as I struggled to free my notepad she stopped me with a sigh. “Her father takes care of Grandma Isabella's house when we're not here. That's all she meant.” And with that, she tottered me into the cabin before heading for the hose.

Closing my eyes once I was in the control cabin, I willed the sea to stop churning. Somewhere behind me a radio station was warbling in and out of range. The announcer was saying something about the Watergate trial, but I couldn't zero in on what.

“They ought to throw Nixon's sorry ass in jail,” Remy grumbled, more to herself than me. “Anyone too flipping stupid to burn a few audiotapes shouldn't be wandering around free society.” She spun the dial, stopping on John Lennon crooning “Sweet Bird of Paradox.”

Prying my eyes open to glance at her, I pulled Luke close, letting him curl into a comma beside me. Taped to the metal ribs of the cabin, a tall pretty woman with red hair looked down at me from a yellowing photograph. Cradling an armful of puffy pink flowers, she appeared to be laughing at the lumberjack of a man standing beside her who was planting an exaggerated kiss on her cheek as she tousled his hair with her free hand. Remy glanced at me, then back through the window.

“Pretty, isn't she? That's my mom.”

I nodded, staring at the woman, understanding clearly from what fire the blaze in Remy's eyes had been lit.

“There must've been a thousand peonies in my garden that year. Your grandmother and father knew her. They used to come to Tillings every year.” There was a slight catch in the statement, like the needle of a record player hopping over a scratch. An untrained ear might have missed it, but I didn't.

I spent my summers on a sandbar
, my father used to joke about the island.
One good wave and we all would have been swept out to sea.

“But that was a long time ago.” It was barely a wisp of air, as though Remy had wholly forgotten I was in the cabin and was speaking to herself. “Before everything.”

I waited for her to go on, but she didn't say another word until the boat's radio squelched to life and she started barking orders into it, leaving me staring at the photo and wondering over her choice of words.
Before ev
erything
. A chill began to move over me, and the more I wondered, the colder that chill became until I was frozen right up solid with a desperate desire to turn the boat around and go home—with or without a voice.

The
Mirabel
wobbled into dock just before five o'clock. The effects of the ginger were wearing thin and the sharp aroma of vomit clinging to my clothes only made matters worse. On shore, bicycles belonging to another century with huge metal rims and woven baskets strapped to the handlebars littered the wharf. Women wearing floppy-brimmed hats tied to their heads with satin scarves waited on the dock waving at visitors as they shuffled off. The only hint that the 1970s had made it across the bay to Tillings Island came in the form of a young couple snuggled close together on the break wall dipping their toes in the surf so that the cuffs of their bell-bottoms boasted dark rings from the water. The collar of the girl's paisley shirt, cut too low for fall and tied in a knot around her waist so that she showed an inch of belly, whipped in the breeze.

At the base of the
Mirabel
's ramp, a rickety sign weathering in the salt air read: C
OME ALL YE FAR AND WIDE TO THE
F
ESTIVAL OF
Y
EMAYA
O
UR
L
ADY OF
T
ILLINGS
. And then I saw her standing there, tall and lovely, gazing over the ocean with soft gray eyes the color of a perfect storm. A dolphin swam at her side, where the sea foam and her thighs tangled into one wave. Carved from a slab of mahogany,
she looked a thousand years old, with one hand cupped in the air. Beads of water dripped from her fingers into a pile of pearls at her waist like the pearls of water my father had sent skipping over Potter's Creek. Beneath a seaweed shawl, tiny rivulets snaked down her naked breast. A halo of cowry shells pushed the hair from her eyes, which appeared to be studying the horizon thoughtfully.

If you are very, very lucky you will see her.
My father's words rolled across an ocean and nine years. Closing my eyes, I felt them tinkle into the hollow space he'd left behind. I grasped to hold on to the sound of him, but as always, it slipped away.

The deep mournful bawl of the ferry's horn snapped me back to the present.

“Move along, please!” bellowed a deckhand.

Beside me, my mother wrangled the canvas bag and Luke's crate, rendered all the slipperier from having been hosed down. Before I could gather my ground, a fat woman with tangerine lips tottering on clunky green sandals, dyed to match the ribbon of her sombrero, knocked me forward and I was swept into the rapids of windbreakers, sweaters, and L.L. Bean tennis shoes. When I came to rest at the bottom of the ramp, it was just me, the cobblestones, and Yemaya.

The crowd was just starting to disperse when Remy whisked my arm up in an iron grip, hurrying me toward the statue. As we got closer, I could see three sea stones in Yemaya's outstretched hand. Instinctively, I ran my hand
over the lump in my pocket. Behind Yemaya's tiny waist, the hood of a purple Ford Thunderbird poked into the day with T
AXI
scrawled across it in a bow of red cursive. A fat white gull had settled on its roof and was screeching at the boat.

“Come on. They'll be driving the autos off any moment and the way these blokes drive they'll make a flapjack out of ya. Where's yer mum?” Remy looked at me, prodding. An old familiar wave of guilt sprang up in my chest from my inability to answer her. “I see. Well, I can't say I blame you. If it'd taken me this long to lose her, I wouldn't want someone traipsing behind me undoing all my hard work either.”

I tossed her a grin, chewing a tuft of skin hanging tight to the inside of my cheek by one corner.

“Still and all, the law says she's got to feed you and keep you warm. So, I guess we should track her down.” Remy glanced up, letting her eyes rest on a huge man with white wavy hair and a round belly leaning easily against the statue. She led me over to his side while he tapped a pipe out on the heel of his shoe before stuffing it with fresh tobacco. Behind him, the purple taxi sat with its passenger door open. He had only begun to suck the flame of the match upside down into the bowl, making the tobacco glow orange, when Remy Mandolin turned me by the shoulders so she could look at me squarely.

“I know just what you're going through. You see this old giant with a shipwreck for lungs?”

I nodded.

“He's my father, and I've been trying to rid myself of him my whole damn life; just keeps coming back to stink up my life like that dog of yours.” The grin on my face deepened, touching one off on Mr. O'Malley's face, too. He swatted his daughter on the backside with a rolled-up copy of the
Island Beacon,
shaking his head in the same manner Remy had done onboard. “And that,” she pointed at the car, “is the Great Purple Monster of Millbury. Now I'm going to go find your mother and your mutt; I'm sad to say you're stuck with her.”

I nodded again.

“It looks like we're going to be neighbors. Way back when the Booth property belonged to an old sea captain, he built two small houses that used to belong to caretakers. Those houses got sold off after he died. I live in one and this old goat lives in the other. I can damn near spit out my window into yours.” She laughed, sending the curls along her nape bouncing gently. “I bet your mum is real happy about that.”

Curiosity, and a grain of respect, sprouted in my eyes as I tried to make sense of this renegade of a woman that had just come crashing into our lives. She was either awesomely cool or awesomely crazy; it was difficult to tell. Clearly, she threw my mother entirely off kilter for some reason. But there was something else. She had said something on the boat. She knew about my father, and I wanted to know how.

“Okay, then. I'll be back. Since there doesn't seem to be an adult anywhere in the vicinity, I'll leave you in charge. Don't you let him smoke another pipe, you hear? Or his chest is going to collapse right where he stands. Then we will have to roll his big black lungs over to the edge of the dock and dump him, and I just haven't the time nor inclination for that today.” Then Remy disappeared, leaving me shifting awkwardly from foot to foot studying the statue Mr. O'Malley was leaning on.

I had never dumped a parent off the side of a dock, but after my father left, I had been plagued by a recurring dream in which I tossed my mother off the edge of the earth.

I could hear my father calling for me from within a dark jungle, could see his hand reaching through the branches, saying, “Don't let go, Be. Don't let go!” Each time I tried to run after him, my mother held my wrist until I was kicking and scratching like a bear in a trap. When my father's hand began to slip away, I used all my strength and shoved her into the mouth of a volcano to free myself of her grip. But I only made it three steps toward the darkness before I saw her pulling herself right back over the edge, yelling, “Jesus, Iz. Don't do it. Just this once, don't follow him.” I always woke from the dream pissed as a polecat at my mother for stopping me.

Why are you so angry with your mother?
Dr. Boni's voice flittered on the breeze.