Don't Worry About the Kids (28 page)

In the morning, at breakfast, he felt very happy, very shy. She talked about the errands she had to run, and he talked about the call home he had never made. They talked about the weather, about lobster traps, about his racing shell, about answering machines, about his children. He wanted to ask her how she felt, if it had been as wonderful for her as it had been for him, but when he alluded to their love-making she stopped him by remarking, sharply, that such comparisons were always invidious.

After breakfast they lay down on her bed again, and later, when they woke, she sighed, nestled close, rubbed the muscles of his back, marveled at his shoulders, asked him how old he was. Forty-three, he replied. Keep rowing, she said. She moved away from him, sat up and then, her cheeks radiant, said that she had one other question for him: Was he absolutely certain this was his first time out?

Toward dusk, walking from his house to hers—a mile and a half along the rocky beach—he kept seeing her face, the light in her eyes as he had begun to answer her question, to tell her that of course he had been telling the truth. The smile that burst from her then—playful, teasing, affectionate—gave his heart the ease it had been yearning for.

He had spent the afternoon going over notes for films, sketching ideas, blocking out sequences, making lists of people to call. He decided that the idea of making a film for his children in which they appeared was as sweet as it was wrong-headed. Instead, he thought that the next film he would make, the one that might
begin
to show his children what the love of parent and child was about, would be the film about Yoshiko Fukuda and her daughter. Yoshiko was a concert violinist, born and raised in Japan—a single parent—who, when she was forty years old, adopted a six-year-old black girl from Savannah named Jean. Jean was now twelve, and she toured the country with her mother, as her mother's accompanist.

Martin was eager to tell Nancy about the film—about the excitement he had felt when it occurred to him that he could do it, that he could make it—but when he arrived at her house, her car was gone and a blue Ford pick-up was parked in the driveway. An elderly man in khaki workclothes was on the porch, repairing the screen door. Martin said hello. The man turned, nodded, went back to his work. Martin asked if Nancy Medeiros was home and the man said that she had left early in the afternoon. Martin's heart lurched. Did he know if she would be returning later?

Without expression the man told Martin that Nancy was gone for the season, that she would not be coming back for another year. Martin walked up onto the porch, tried to remain calm, hoped that the man would not sense his confusion, his panic. He felt betrayed, abandoned. The man worked methodically, steadily, and seemed unaffected by Martin's presence. Martin began talking. He told the man where he was living and how long he had been there. He told the man that he and Nancy had spent a few evenings together, had had dinner together the night before.

The man responded with the standard Maine “ayuh” to most of what Martin said, but after a while he did offer some information about himself. His name was Frank Cahill and he took care of Nancy's house for her when she was away. He had worked for the Medeiros family since he himself was a boy—before Nancy was born. The house needed a lot of work—a new roof, a paint job, some rewiring, new flooring for the porch—but he was gaining on it, he said. Martin liked the figure of speech, one he had heard others in the town use occasionally.

Martin took his time, told himself that time was the one thing he had plenty of. With or without a camera, he had always been a good interviewer. He had always been able to get people to talk to him. People liked him, trusted him. He had always, with others, had a talent for mixing patience and curiosity in the right proportions.

When the sun set, Frank put away his tools and sat with Martin on the porch. They watched the lights come on in the harbor. Martin talked about the rowing he had done that morning, about how the fog never seemed to come into the coves. Frank nodded, said that it was so. He said that most of the local fishermen knew the coastline so well that they could tell where they were in the harbor from the sound of the water against the shore. Frank went to his truck, came back with a six-pack of beer, offered one to Martin. They sat and drank beers, looked out to sea, talked, and after a while Frank allowed as to how he remembered Nancy saying something about a friend named Martin—he was the film-maker, wasn't he?—and as to how he might be stopping by.

Martin said that he didn't know Nancy well, but that he had enjoyed her company, that he had rarely met a woman who had seemed so calm, so sensible, so forthright. Oh yes, Frank said. Nancy was a fine woman. Quite a story there, though, he added, and gradually Martin's patient ways won for him what they had often won before. Frank told him the tale: Nancy Medeiros had always been the smartest girl around, the kind of young woman you knew would leave Tenants Harbor one day to make something of herself. Her mother had been a schoolteacher who died when Nancy was eight and her younger brother, Nick, was five. Nancy had been the apple of her father's eye. But when she was sixteen, out with her father on his fishing boat one afternoon, the weather went sour suddenly. The wind—a fall northwester—came tearing through in a bad blow. While they were trying to batten things down, Nancy's brother had tripped, skidded, fallen overboard. Without hesitating Nancy's father had leapt into the sea after him, rubber boots and all. Nancy watched them go under, then had gone below deck, waited out the storm, brought the boat in by herself. The father and son were found two days later, washed up in the mouth of a cove about three miles north of Nancy's house.

Nancy came back every year at this time—the anniversary of their drowning—and stayed for about two weeks. Nobody knew much more about her than that. She had gone to college, and then to medical school for a while, but she hadn't finished. She had married briefly and badly, and nobody had ever met the man. She had had a series of breakdowns, had spent a good portion of her adult life in and out of hospitals and rest homes. Her father had provided for her pretty well, so that when she felt the world going out from under her, at least she was able to be taken in by places whose surroundings were reasonably pleasant.

Frank said that he thought Nancy seemed in better shape on this visit than she had in many years. Maybe what she had seen and felt a quarter of a century ago was finally wearing off a bit. She was a smart and good woman. He figured she deserved better in this life than she had received, so far. But she was gaining, Frank said, as he stood to go. She was definitely gaining.