A Simple Thing (11 page)

“I hope it doesn't make you seasick, too,” Barefoot said. “And if it does, remember: the first rule of boating is puke over the rail.” He stepped aside so she could take the wheel again, and then took another long drink, screwed on the cap, and put it back inside his jacket. They were in open water now, beyond the bay.

“So your sister drowned, eh?” Barefoot said. “She go over the side?”

Susannah nodded, numb. She wasn't about to explain to Barefoot how Janie had fallen overboard. She'd never told anyone except Matt.

“Okay. Then let's review what to do if someone goes over the side.”

“Oh, God, no.”

Barefoot glared at her. “You don't want to talk about it?”

Susannah kept her eyes on the bow, on the gray waves in front of the boat. “No,” she said. “I'm not interested in reliving that particular day.”

“Jesus Christ! No one's asking you to spill your guts. I'm telling you what to do if you're on a goddamn boat when someone falls overboard. You live on an island now. You've got two kids. Like it or not, you're going to spend a lot of time in boats in all kinds of weather. If you can't handle that, then once we get to Friday Harbor you should hop on the next ferry and head home. I'll ship your kids after you.”

“Okay. You're right.” The boat continued to chug steadily forward, and the swells were gentle, even out in the open expanse beyond the bay.

“As I was saying,” Barefoot said, “the first thing to do is point and yell.” He jumped up and shouted, “
Man overboard
!” and pointed to the side of the boat. The wiry hairs of his eyebrows stuck straight out from his face underneath the edge of his red bandanna. “Man overboard
port side
!”

He looked at her. “You get that? You spot the person and name their location and don't take your eyes off 'em, no matter what.”

Susannah nodded.
If only it had been that easy
.

“Then, you swing the stern and propeller away from the person in the water. Then throw anything that floats at 'em—a life jacket, a cushion, even an empty cooler. Maneuver the boat as close as you can, then cut the engine so you don't chop 'em up with the propeller.”

Oh, Jesus. She was going to need the entire flask of heart medicine.

“Then get 'em up the ladder. That's all there is to it.” Barefoot gave a satisfied nod. “People fall overboard all the time. Hell, a goddamn puppy fell off the ferry a few years back and they turned the ferry around and lowered a lifeboat and saved the puppy. Local newspapers loved it.”

“That's good,” Susannah said. “I mean that they saved the puppy.”

Barefoot looked at her. “Getting the feel for it? It's not that hard. That snotty daughter of yours could even do it.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Susannah said. “I'm not sure I want her behind the wheel of anything.”

Barefoot pointed out the window to Susannah's right. “Look.”

She looked at the waves and couldn't see anything. Then, all at once, a huge dorsal fin and glistening black back broke the surface, then another one, and then another.

“Orca,” Barefoot said.

She watched them, the fins rising and disappearing in the waves.

“You see 'em all the time,” Barefoot said. “Anyway, I could teach your girl to drive the boat.”

“Oh, no. No thanks.” Susannah wanted to change the subject. “Do you have kids?”

“Nope. For one, I've never been married and never wanted to be. For two, the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket, and I don't know why I'd add to the misery by throwing another human being into the mix. We should euthanize at least twenty percent of the ones who are already here. Total waste of resources.”

“You can't mean that.”

“Maybe I do; maybe I don't. I could give you a convincing argument either way.” Barefoot leaned over and spat onto the floor. “I like plants. And birds. More than most people.” He shook his head. “Too much has changed. When I was a kid the ducks would flock so thick on the pond the sky would get dark when they took flight. I could have walked on water across the backs of the salmon in the bay. Now the whole place is shot.”

“Quinn's like that,” Susannah said. “He loves plants and animals. I think he relates to them better than he does to people.”

A sudden swell caught the boat, started to lift it, and in a panic Susannah swung the wheel to the side, so the boat was broadside to the wave. The port side of the boat rose up and up and the floor tilted at an alarming angle. Barefoot slid over, bumping into her, and grabbed the wheel with both hands, fighting to bring it back around. It only took a few seconds, and he had the boat turned right again, bow headed into the wind.

“Governor's Channel,” Barefoot said. “The winds and currents can shift fast here. Just have to be ready for it.”

Susannah shook her head. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She kept seeing that other boat, that other day—the bright blue sky, the fluffy white clouds, the sudden, heart-stopping impact.

“I'm sorry,” she said to Barefoot. “I'm done.”

He looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite read—pity? disgust?—and
tsk-tsk
ed with his tongue. “If you say so.” He stepped over and took the wheel from her and didn't speak again until they reached Friday Harbor.

She huddled on the seat across from Barefoot, hating her own fears. The trip back that afternoon, through rough seas, did nothing to reassure her. When she stood on the Sounder dock again at last, she drew in a deep breath and decided she would never pilot a boat again.

So much for facing her fears.

Chapter 11

Betty 1955

One sunny Saturday in early November, seven or eight months after they'd moved to Sounder, Betty was walking up the gravel drive to the post office when Annette Fahlstrom stepped out onto the front porch. Annette's husband, Corky, ran the mail boat to and from Sounder. They had two young sons, and Annette helped out often at school. Betty had talked to Annette dozens of times at beach picnics and dances at the post office, and Corky had stopped by to help Bill with this or that on the farm. Betty was still much more comfortable around men than women, and wasn't quite sure how to lay the foundations for one of those intimate, girly friendships that Bobbie always had with all her friends. And Annette was the kind of petite, feminine woman who always made Betty feel tall and ungainly, all big feet and elbows and knees. But she and Annette had had some pleasant conversations, shared a joke or two.

Betty remembered vividly the cool air, the sunlight hitting the tall grass in the field next to the post office, turning it gold. She remembered the flowered cotton dress Annette wore, lavender, with a dark green coat. She remembered feeling Annette's eyes on her as she walked up the steps and feeling a sudden sense of shame, although she had no idea why. And then she saw it—a fleeting, possessive smile that passed across Annette's face, a smug smile—and Betty knew: Annette had slept with Bill. She didn't know
how
she knew it, she just knew it deep in her gut, and she knew, too, in that instant, that she had married the wrong man.

She didn't say anything to Bill, not that night or the next or the next. She watched him, and thought hard about what to do. She was twenty-three years old and hadn't held down a “real” job in five years, since before she'd gotten married. Bobbie was married with a baby of her own, and Mel, who suffered from panic attacks, was living back home with Mother and Grammy, who was a little crazy herself. Jimmy had moved to New York. Where would she go if she left Bill?

Every day that week—as she boiled endless vats of apples for apple ketchup and applesauce, and kneaded dough for the bread, and chopped wood, and dealt with the goddamned chickens—she thought about what to do. Every time Bill left the farm to go pick up the mail, or borrow a tool from a neighbor, or take eggs to sell over to the post office, Betty wondered:
Is that really where he's going? Is he meeting Annette someplace? Where?

She started to feel sick thinking about it, about Bill running his hands over Annette's tiny waist, her perfect little breasts, kissing her rosebud mouth. One morning she woke up and vomited into the kitchen sink after thinking about it all night long.

“You eat something bad?” Bill said, coming in to the kitchen from outside, where he'd been milking the goats.

“No,” Betty said. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned to face him.

“I know about you and Annette,” she said.

She saw the truth in his face right away—shock, guilt, then the quick calculation, his eyes darting back and forth, as he tried to figure out what she knew and how she knew it and whether or not he could lie his way out of it.

“It was one time, Betty,” he said, his voice low. “It was a mistake.”

“You bet it was a mistake, you goddamned son of a bitch,” she said. “Because I won't stay here, and you're going to lose your cook, cleaning lady, laundress, egg picker, and goat herder, all at once. The girl in Seattle was one time, too.”

He turned full eyes to her. “I'm sorry. You were so angry about moving here—”

“Don't you dare make this my fault,” she said. The rage that had simmered in her during all those early months on the island boiled up, threatened to choke her. She fought the urge to vomit again. “I'll leave on the mail boat tomorrow.”

And she did. She packed her clothes and wrote out instructions for the hand washing machine and the recalcitrant pump and the other things that had been her domain. Bill drove her to the dock in silence. She didn't look back when the mail boat pulled away, but threw up over the rail as soon as they had rounded Crane's Point.

Bobbie met her at the ferry dock in Anacortes, and brought her home to the little house she shared with Dick and their baby girl. She never once said, “I told you so.” Over the next two months, Betty got up every morning and circled ads in the Help Wanted section and then put on Bobbie's smart tweed suit and her black pumps and took the bus downtown to interview. But time and again she was told, “No thanks.”

“Not many jobs for women anymore,” one man told her. He glanced at her left hand, where she still wore the small gold band Bill had given her. The man didn't say anything, but Betty knew what he was thinking: Why would a woman look for a job if she had a husband? What was wrong with her husband, or with her?

For the first time in her life, food lost all appeal. Bobbie was a terrific cook and made things she knew Betty loved—lasagna and garlic bread and seven-layer chocolate cake. But the smell of the garlic bread turned her stomach, and the cake tasted sour in her mouth. She lost weight, and had to pin the waistband of Bobbie's skirt before she went on interviews.

Bill showed up the third week after she'd left, braving Bobbie's wrath to stand on the front doorstep with his hat in his hands. Bobbie wouldn't even open the door because she couldn't trust herself not to lose all control and pummel him. Betty heard his voice, pleading through the door. He wasn't asking for forgiveness, he said, or even for Betty to come back home to Sounder. He just wanted to say he was sorry, that he'd wait for as long as she needed for her to come back, even if it took years, and that he wanted to do what he could to provide for her in the meantime.

He left two dozen eggs on the porch.

 

Betty could have cursed herself for being a damn fool, but didn't. Her love for Bill had had very little to do with reason from the beginning, and she saw no point in berating herself for falling in love and then trying to make it work. But the future did worry her now, because she couldn't live with Bobbie forever and knew Bill didn't have two nickels to his name, other than what money he had tied up in the farm. He could bring her two dozen eggs every day and it wouldn't be enough to pay for clothes or shoes or food or rent.

She also felt awful. The strength and vitality she'd developed on Sounder faded with her weight, and she dragged herself out of bed every morning and tried to make it through the day without lying down on the floor to nap. She went on her job interviews; she helped Bobbie with the baby and the shopping and cooking. Finally one day Bobbie looked at her and said, “I'm taking the baby in to see Dr. Kositch tomorrow, and I'm bringing you, too.”

Sure enough, Bobbie's doctor confirmed what Betty had never even suspected because she had assumed her weariness, the constant taste of bile in her mouth, and her lack of appetite were due to the trauma of leaving Bill.

She was pregnant.

 

She decided right away that she wouldn't tell Bill. She assumed this pregnancy would end as her others had, with a miscarriage or a premature birth. The doctor put her on full bed rest, so she stayed on at Bobbie's house. Her mother had sold the Queen Anne boarding house and moved into a small apartment with Grammy and Mel, whose panic attacks had turned into a kind of crippling anxiety. Mel was afraid of thunder, afraid of heights, afraid of cats and sirens and rain. And Jimmy was across the country in law school. Bobbie's house was the only place she could go.

After four months, Bobbie wrote Bill a matter-of-fact letter, explaining that Betty was expecting a baby in July. They knew he would send money to support his child, she wrote, but Betty would not be returning to Sounder. Bobbie did not call him any of the choice names she used when discussing him in front of Betty, nor did she threaten to chop off his member with a kitchen knife, something she had also discussed with Betty.

Bill sent a letter back to Bobbie with a check for fifty dollars and a sealed envelope for Betty. Betty knew he had to have sold something—his fishing gear and tackle box, maybe—to come up with that much money. Bobbie came in and put the envelope on the walnut table next to Betty's bed and said, “I thought about throwing this away, but you can decide for yourself.” Betty didn't throw it away, but she didn't open it, either.

What she did do was think. She had nothing else to do, given that she was in bed every day except for little forays to the bathroom. Bobbie moved the television into her room, but Betty had so little interest that she moved it back out again. Her mother or Grammy stopped by every day to visit or bring food. She talked to them and pretended to read the books they left, and leafed through the glossy magazines Bobbie brought home for her to read. But her brain wouldn't take in the words.

What am I going to do?
she thought every day. If the baby died, as she expected, given her past history, she could get back out and find a job, any job, and maybe get a room in a boardinghouse. But if the baby lived—she didn't let her mind go there. She didn't want to hope for what she might never have.

She felt the baby's first kick in February; by June she was farther along in her pregnancy than she'd been with the twins, and the baby kicked and squirmed inside her all the time. She started to think that this baby might live.
And then what?
She didn't want to live off her sister's charity forever. Bill had put the farm up for sale, but it seemed clear it wasn't going to sell, so she couldn't get even the little bit of money she might have received from her share.

One day Bobbie brought in a bouquet of early roses from Grammy's garden, in an exquisite shade of pale pink. She filled a blue glass vase with water, put the roses in it, placed it on the dresser across from Betty's bed, and stood back to admire them.

“They're lovely,” Betty said.

“Aren't they? Roses are my favorite. Mel loves dahlias, of all things, which should have been our first clue that she wasn't quite right.”

Betty smiled. Bobbie always managed to make her smile.

“How are you feeling?” Bobbie said.

“Fine. Bored.”

Bobbie sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on Betty's and looked at her earnestly.

“Oh, no,” Betty said. “I can see we're about to have
a serious talk
.” She sat up a little, pulled her hand from underneath Bobbie's, and adjusted her bed jacket around her shoulders. She took a deep breath. “All right. I'm ready.”

“You're not a bit funny,” Bobbie said. She turned and opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. She tapped a cigarette out of the pack, put it between her lips, and flicked the lighter. She took a deep drag.

“The baby is due in less than a month,” she said. She blew out a long stream of smoke, her head turned to the side, away from Betty. “You know you're welcome to stay here. You and the baby.”

Betty shook her head. “I can't do that,” she said. “I already feel guilty about being here all this time, in bed, with you taking care of me and taking care of Dick and Macy, too. It's not right.”

“You'd do it for me.”

Betty picked at the pink chenille circles on the bedspread. “I know. But I'm not. You're doing it for me.” She looked up at her sister. “If I can stay for eight weeks or so after the baby is born, I should be able to look for a job then, and find a room in a boardinghouse, one that will take me and the baby.”

Bobbie leveled a long look at her. “Really? You think that's going to be easy to do?”

“What, find a room, or find a job?”

“Either one. You're twenty-three years old. You've haven't worked in four or five years. You're separated, and your husband doesn't have two cents to rub together to support you or the baby.”

“He sent that fifty dollars.” Why did she feel compelled to defend Bill?

Bobbie looked at her again, with pity this time, which was even worse than the “be realistic” look she'd given her a few minutes ago. “Listen, I'm on your side, Betsy. I'd do anything for you; you know that. But you need to think hard about what your life is going to look like in six months.”

“What do you think I do all day, every day? I do nothing
but
think about it.”

Now it was Bobbie who dropped her head, who began to trace a finger around the circles on the bedspread. “Dick mentioned something I hadn't even though of, but that might be worth considering.”

“What?”

Bobbie lifted her head. “One of the guys he works with is married to a social worker. She works in adoption placement.”

“Adoption?”

Of course. The thought of giving up the baby hadn't even occurred to her, but of course it would have occurred to everyone else. Bill was a cad; she had no money and Bill had none to give her; she was still young and might marry again—but not if she was tied down with a baby. Another couple could give the baby things she couldn't—two parents who loved each other and were loyal to each other, financial security, a future.

But she
knew
this baby. She knew the baby was a morning person, kicking and wriggling most days before six. She knew the baby didn't like tomatoes, because it hiccuped and wriggled for hours after she ate them. She knew the baby startled easily, especially when the dog barked. The baby was so real to Betty already that some mornings she awoke and was surprised to find herself still pregnant, surprised the little person she knew wasn't already lying beside her.