By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (14 page)

"No kidding?" Quinta was interested. "Did
you feel, you know, guilty about it?"

He shrugged without lifting his hands from
the wheel. "Of course, although God knows why. Nowadays when she
does it—my mother is sixty-one—I just wink and say, 'Mother—maybe
adopt."'

That brought a giggle, which stirred the
dog, who started squirming. Alan said, "It's time to show Leggy his
new digs, I think. I'll get the food. Are you sure you don't want
me to run you back to your car?"

"My neighbor can take me later; I want to
get Leggy settled in."

Alan carried the case of cans to her front
door, and although Quinta asked whether he'd like to see how Leggy
fared inside, he declined vigorously.

"Oh, well, you must have zillions of things
to do yet," she said quickly, embarrassed that she'd taken up his
time.

"Yeah," he said vaguely. He was rubbing
Leggy's ears, reluctant to end the happy, carefree interlude.
"Remember, if there's anything I can do," he said softly, and then
delivered a comical, courtly bow, "I'm at your service,
mademoiselle." And then seriously again: "Goodbye, Quinta."

"Goodbye, Alan," she said through beautiful,
unblinking eyes. "Thank you."

On the middle step he turned. Quinta was
standing there, watching him pensively, Joan of Arc in blue jeans,
clutching her squirmy puppy. Alan had been through a series of
devastating shocks, of cruel blows. His mind was still scrambled—so
much so that he wondered whether he was entirely rational. He
wanted to take away the memory of the not-so-still-life picture
before him so that he could console himself later, remind himself
that "life, you know, goes on."

A small, sad smile rippled over the features
of his face. "Hey, lady. I'm going to miss ... that dog. Take
care," he said softly. And he was gone.

On September 26, 1983, Dennis Conner and his
out-designed 12-meter yacht
Liberty
lost the America's Cup
to a bunch of upstarts on
Australia II.
Within an hour of
the seventh and final cliffhanging race, Australia declared a
national holiday. The United States went into mourning: a
one-hundred-and-thirty-two-year winning streak was dead. And
Newport, the grand, elegant hostess to the America's Cup races for
the past fifty years, tore off all of her clothes and did the limbo
on Thames Street. There was more than mere good sportsmanship in
her frenzied celebration; on the night of September 26, Newport
went a little mad with grief. It was possibly, she feared, her last
dance, and she would dance it with abandon.

By the time
Liberty
and
Australia
II
returned from the fateful race to Newport Harbor, it was
nearly dark. The harbor itself was absolute bedlam, a churning,
teeming, exhaust-filled maelstrom of anything that could float:
power yachts and motor boats, twin-screw and single-screw;
schooners, ketches, cutters and sloops of wood, fiberglass, and
steel; rowing dinghies and sailing dinghies; kayaks and canoes and
shells; launches and tour ships and even a cruise liner; and a man
in a tuxedo on a windsurfer. No one knew where the moored boats
ended and the moving boats began because hardly anything could
move. It was a great, glorious bottleneck until the Coast Guard
cutters, their blue lights flashing and their sirens wailing,
hacked through the armada like machetes through sugar cane.

And in their wake, lit by a backdrop of
flares and fireworks, lit by countless searchlights and the
stage-front sweep of television network spotlights, came
Liberty
and the Americans, a huge U.S. flag flying high,
high up from their headstay, and the Australians, also in the
rockets' red glare, the victors. From the U.S. tender blared "Stars
and Stripes Forever"; from the Australians' came their battle song,
"Down Under," the driving rock hit by an Australian group. The din
was inconceivable: churning engines, constant screams, hoarse
shouting, sirens wailing, cherry bombs exploding, flares hissing,
and air horns, air horns everywhere. And if you listened carefully
you could hear, above the din, the pop of countless champagne
bottles (the harbor was awash with bobbing corks the next
morning).

If you listened even harder, you could hear
sobbing. The deepest, most heart-wracking sobs came from the
Liberty
dock. No syndicate had trained harder, or longer, or
at greater personal expense; but they had been outsmarted. There
was mourning, too, at the old Yacht Club in New York where the Cup
had spent most of its one hundred and thirty-two years securely
bolted in a glass display case: yachting's holy grail. Even the
Brinks guard who loaded the cherished trophy into his armored truck
for the short, sad journey to Newport was said to have blinked back
a tear.

But it was Newport, crazy lady, who cried
loudest of all—wailed and laughed and cried some more. She whose
hand had been kissed by kings, princes, generals, ambassadors, and
titled wealth—she would be sought after no more. Her exquisite
gilded salons, which every few years were filled with a crush of
international society, would be filled with—day trippers. It would
be like taking in boarders. Old Newport, crazy lady, shuddered and
tossed off another glass of champagne. And so the night wore on,
and Newport got drunker, and drunker, and drunker, until in the
morning she had the look of a bag lady dragging down the street,
picking her way through empty green beer bottles and broken
wineglasses and strange, unassociated bits of clothing.

On an impulse Quinta swung her father's van
onto Memorial Boulevard and headed down the hill toward the harbor.
It was early morning yet; traffic would be light and she wanted to
see the aftermath firsthand. She and her father had stayed glued to
the television for the last race the day before. It was the first
time in her life that she had seen an actual race close up. From a
blimp's-eye view she had been able to see the lead change back and
forth between
Liberty
and
Australia II,
to watch as
Dennis Conner tried desperate tactics before at last crossing the
finish line to historic defeat. She knew that most of Australia was
staying up all through their night to watch the race via satellite,
and it amazed her, simply amazed her, to think that people liked to
dismiss watching Cup races as like watching grass grow.

She had hardly dared to glance at her father
during that fateful race, but she knew that on the sixth leg of the
seventh race, what little was left of his heart had broken. He'd
said scarcely a word after that except to Leggy, and she didn't
want to leave him to sneak down to the harbor for a peek at the
wild party that was being broadcast on television. Through half the
night she listened to the car horns and whoops of triumph,
convinced that most of Western Australia had come over for the last
race.

And yet this morning Thames Street looked
fairly normal. True, there were extra street cleaners sweeping up,
and the few trades people and yachties that she did see looked
bleary-eyed and sullen. But maybe, she thought, yawning, she was
projecting. She rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes and forced herself
to concentrate on finding a parking space. Incredible luck: there
was one in front of the deli. Climbing down from the van, Quinta
scanned up and down Thames Street. No, really: hardly any
difference at all. She'd expected broken store windows, rolled-over
cars, people tearing out their hair. She'd expected people to
be—protesting. Instead they were delivering provisions, driving
bakery trucks, rolling down storefront awnings on the sunny side of
Thames. The world was going on, whether or not America had held on
to its Cup.

Inside the delicatessen Quinta peeled off a
Boston Globe,
a
New York Times,
and the
Journal
and waited in line. Ahead of her two very bronzed
sailors, one blond and short, the other blond, bearded and tall,
talked in desultory tones.

"Where's it gonna be?"

"The Terrace of the Marble House. One
o'clock," the bearded one said with a sigh.

"Funny nobody's mentioned it."

"It's not as though losing was on the
calendar of events," the tall one answered caustically.

"You goin'?"

"Nope. Who needs it? Coffee, regular," he
said to the pretty girl behind the counter. Quinta knew her from
school; her name was Debby, a normal, American name.

Batting her eyelashes, Debby asked
hopefully, "Is there going to be one last party or something?"

"More like one last funeral. We're handing
off the Cup this afternoon. The Aussies stole it from us, and now
we're supposed to smile and say, 'Jolly good show.' Well, screw
it," said the tall one. "I'm not going."

The short sailor frowned and said, "Hey man,
this is history. I'm gonna go."

Debby batted her long lashes. "Can I come
too?"

The short one exchanged a look with his
friend and shrugged. "Anyone can, I guess. How about I pick you
up?"

One o'clock! The ride back to Howard Street
took an eternity; there was so much to do before one o'clock. Call
the therapy center, reschedule her father's session, check out the
Marble House grounds, get him there early for a good spot—was his
blazer pressed? There wasn't time.

Leggy attacked her in the front hall. He was
bigger and heavier now, a force to be reckoned with. He stood up
against Quinta, pulling on one corner of the paper with his
jaws.

"Oh Legs, come on, cut it out. I'm in a
hurry."

Not so fast.
He growled a kind of
adolescent growl, putting a little more oomph in his voice than was
strictly necessary, and gave an enthusiastic jerk on the paper.

"All right, all
right
already! Here.
Take him this one." Quinta folded the
Journal
twice on
itself and held it out.

He took it gingerly in his jaws—he was so
proud of not slobbering much—and pranced into the living room.

"Hey-y, good boy, Legs. Over here. Thatsa
boy." Neil Powers leaned forward in his wheelchair and took the
paper from his dog. "Did you see that, Quinta? How smart? Blood
will tell. Your mother always said, blood will tell, and it will.
Good
boy,
Leggy."

Quinta's idea of presenting her father with
a puppy had been a smashing success. Something about the dog had
touched him from the start. He'd embraced it as he would a little
lost child. By the time her father had returned from his therapy
residency, Quinta had trained the dog to be housebroken and to come
when he was called. That was about all she'd had time tor. It was
her father who had become obsessed with the training and
development of Legs. For every hour that Neil Powers spent as an
outpatient now at the therapy center, he spent one with his dog,
brushing, petting, feeding, playing, teaching. Legs was the reason
Neil Powers took his first tentative foray out onto Howard Street
in his wheelchair: he wanted to walk his dog. Legs was the real
reason the doorway to the kitchen was enlarged and a lower sink
installed: Neil Powers had not been able to bathe his new
companion.

Everything they said about a man and his dog
was true, Quinta realized as she watched her father scan the papers
quickly, sizing up the coverage of the Cup loss. With one hand he
was idly stroking the black Lab's throat. Legs was as near to
purring as a dog could get. It was an extraordinary relationship,
and it spoke wonders for the way her father had changed since his
accident. From being a disorganized, rather dependent member of the
family, her father had become, almost overnight, a caring but
systematic authoritarian—at least to Legs.

Far from demanding that Quinta or her sister
Jackie remain nearby, her father now preferred to be alone, with
just his dog for company. And he talked to Legs, a lot. Once or
twice when she had returned home early from school, Quinta actually
assumed that there was a visitor in the living room. Definitely, he
talked to Legs more than to her nowadays.

It worried Quinta enough that she had gone
to Dr. Greene in late August, asking rather shyly whether it was
natural for someone in her father's situation to reject all comfort
and help. And Dr. Greene had said, yes, after a trauma such as her
father had suffered, it was possible for a personality change to
occur, but to give it time. Quinta was far too embarrassed to admit
that she was jealous of a puppy, but she was far too good a judge
of human nature not to arrive at her own theory: by asserting his
mastery over Legs, her father was symbolically denying his
dependence on Quinta; on everyone.

"Dad; how are you feeling today?" Quinta
interrupted at last. She kept her tone light.

"The usual," her father answered without
looking up.

"I mean, are you up for an adventure?"

At that he looked up from his paper. "I
don't like the sound of that. What kind of 'adventure'?"

"I overheard some guys say the Cup is going
to be presented to the Australians in a public ceremony at the
Marble House today. It's a last-minute thing. The real, actual
America's Cup is finally in Newport. Let's go see it."

Her father had filled his pipe and was
patting his shirt pockets in a search, she knew, for matches.

"I'll get them, Dad," she volunteered.

"Stay right where you are, please, young
lady," he answered quickly, and she watched him wheel himself over
to a long table that held a mundane collection of daily needs:
tissues, tobacco, pills, bottles of water, writing material. A
second table held his computer, a keyboard, a printer, a phone. All
the unnecessary bits and pieces of furniture that clutter the
average living room had been removed: the coffee table, the pretty
little accent rugs, the huge floor pillows that Quinta and her
girlfriends had lounged on during pajama parties—all gone. Even the
thick gray wall-to-wall carpet that lay over the oak floors had
been taken up, to make things easier for a wheelchair.