Gift of the Golden Mountain (72 page)

     "I have a radio," Paul said, "I'll alert my office, and if you want they can call. . ."

     "No," she said quickly, then more softly, "it won't be necessary. Thea will be fine and we'll be back . . . when?"

     "By noon if we leave at first light . . . I really am sorry, Karin."

     She could not remember if he had ever said her name before.

They sailed in silence for an hour or more, as the sun began to finish its wide arc, turning the boat, the sea, the world into a burnished brightness. "There it is," he finally said, pointing to the cliffs that rose steep and green, from the ocean. Finally she could make out a small cove with an arc of white beach tucked into the base of the cliffs.

     "It looks deserted," she said.

     "It is," he told her. "There aren't any roads on this side of the island, no way to get into this beach except by boat—and we're the only boat in sight."

     "Have you been here before?" she asked.

     "I guess I've put into most of these coves, one time or another. My dad liked to sail, my mother too." He grinned. "She was a better sailor than he was, at least that's what he always used to say."

     "Have you been here with Alex?"

     She wished she could take the question back.

     He busied himself with the lines. "Alex isn't big on sailing," he answered evenly, managing to keep any trace of disappointment out of his voice. "Would you mind taking the wheel again when we come in? Just hold it here, into the wind, so I can get the anchor ready."

     She laughed and took the wheel, surprised that she really didn't mind.

When the anchor was set and the sails were down she helped him fold and bag the mainsail so he could work on the boom. He went below decks and came back with a cordless drill, some epoxy, and some brass screws, all of which he lay out neatly in a tray. She watched, fascinated with the precise way he set about repairing the split in the wood, with his concentration.

     She finally broke the silence by asking, "How long will it take—and is there anything I can do?"

     He looked up, as if he had forgotten something. "No," he answered slowly, thinking. "I've got to set the screws and glue it—it'll take about an hour. This would probably be a good time to take a swim, if you want."

     The water was glowing gold and turquoise. She could see small schools of bright fish gliding under the surface, and suddenly it seemed like exactly the right thing to do. She sat on the edge, dangling her feet and legs in the water and waited for the chill to wear off, for the temperature to be perfect. When that happened, she slipped out of her blouse and shorts, and over the side, gasping as the water grasped her bare breasts.

     She swam in careful little circles, not wanting to venture far from the boat. She was not a strong swimmer, and not entirely easy in the full swell of the sea. She turned on her back, looking up into the billowing clouds; she closed her eyes and lay there, arms out and back arched . . . when she opened them again he was looking at her. Quickly, she flipped over. The next time she looked, his back was to her and he was working.

     He did not turn back again until she had dressed and spoke to him.

     "I didn't mean to embarrass you," she said, "it just seemed so isolated and perfect, like it was meant for skinny-dipping. Sometimes I forget myself. . ."

     "I'm afraid I'm not . . ." he began, giving the last twists to a brass screw in the boom.

     She interrupted, "After today, I don't really think you could
be afraid of anything. I'm the one who is afraid. Of everything, lately. I spend most of my days in dread. Except for this afternoon," she laughed, "when I was genuinely terrified for what seemed like a lifetime but was probably what . . . five minutes? Ten? How long did it take you to thread that rope through the grommet on the sail?"

     He grinned. "Line. On board, a rope is always a line."

     She went on, "What I am trying to say is that I've been feeling a kind of dread and it's just . . . deadening. Until now, with just the ocean and the boat and all this . . . emptiness. Here, now, it all seems so simple."

     "That's my problem, I think," he said, caressing the varnished surface of the boom, "I spend so much time out here, I've kind of lost touch . . ."

     "Lost touch," she repeated, as if it were the title of some mysterious game she had played once, "Yes, I know that."

"I keep a stock of food on board, some packaged soups and freezedried vegetables . . ."

     "Do you have a fishing pole?" she asked.

     "Two," was his answer.

It had been building, the magnetic field, the charged atmosphere. She thought that if she could listen hard enough, she would be able to hear a crackling, an electric awareness. Each moved carefully, not to come too close. He cleaned the fish. As she reached for it, their fingers brushed and both of them pulled back, as if burned. They ate at a tiny table in the galley. If she moved even half an inch, her knees would touch his. She made an effort not to move.

     It was deep twilight when they finished. She watched as he cleaned each pan and utensil and returned it to its proper place.
Here, in this small world, he could keep everything in meticulous order.

     "Let's have coffee on deck," he said, his back to her. "You can bring up the foam pad from one of the bunks to sit on—I'll sleep topside tonight anyway, you can have the cabin."

     She tilted her head back to watch the stars appear in the vast sky. "I'd forgotten how bright they are out here in the middle of the Pacific."

     "Your husband's an astronomer," he said, handing her a cup. It was a statement of fact, a reminder—to himself? for her?

     "He was, yes. Oh God, Thea's been using the past tense and now I'm doing it too. Yes, he is an astronomer, though I can't imagine he will ever be able to teach again. I can't imagine anything, to be honest with you."

     To be honest with you. It was just a phrase, a cliche, words to fill in when you could think of nothing else to say. She could not see him clearly, but she heard the change in his voice and she knew it was because she had said, "to be honest with you."

"When my wife died last year," he began in a voice she had not heard before, low and earnest, "there was no warning. None. It just happened, she left home one morning that was just like every other morning, and she never came back."

     "I believe Thea told me it was a boating accident?" Karin asked.

     "That's the hell of it," he answered bitterly. "It was an accident I could have prevented."

     Surprised, she looked up and he explained, "I guess that was why I was so mad at myself today, that I had put you at risk."

     "We were really in trouble today?"

     "We came pretty close," he said, looking out over the water.

     "Your wife's accident, how . . ."

     She could hear him breathing. She waited. Soon, in a halting
voice that allowed long pauses between clusters of words, he began in a way that made Karin think he had never tried to explain it before. "She was taking a bunch of first-grade kids on a whale watching outing. She belonged to a lot of charitable groups. It was the kind of thing they did, working with kids in some of the poor neighborhoods. She didn't tell me she was going, or if she did I have no memory of it. But I think she didn't because I would have asked what boat they had chartered and I sure as hell wouldn't have let them go on the one they took. The guy was trouble, everybody knew that. Everybody but Helen."

     Karin let the silence gather. Finally he went on, "It should never have happened, the guy running the boat just didn't know what he was doing. They ran into some big swells, and he panicked. A wave washed over them, and two of the kids were swept overboard. They had on lifejackets, but Helen didn't—she was a strong swimmer. She was trying to reach one of the kids and the boat shifted. She went in and was pulled under the boat. By the time they fished the kids out, Helen was gone. They found her body later that day, there was a bad cut on her head."

     He paused, a long four-count, and picked up again. "The thing is, we didn't talk to each other. It seemed like we did, but I can't remember now what we said, all that time. All I know is that we got to the place where she didn't bother to tell me that she'd be on the water that day. And I didn't always tell her, either, when I was going out. She didn't like to sail all that much, and I didn't like the functions she . . ."

     He stopped, let the words trail off and for a moment Karin thought he was through. He picked up again: "I can't remember what we talked about. I'd known her all my life, we went to school together, we got married when I got out of the Marines and all that time we were talking, we had to be, and now I can't remember any of it. What was said. I lay awake at night and try to pull out a whole conversation, but I can't. Not one. Not in all those years together."

     The air was warm but she felt a chill. She took a sip of the hot
coffee and held it in her mouth.

     "Sometimes I think if I could remember," he went on, "then I would feel something else . . . because . . . when I go home at night, Sadame lets me in, just like she always has, and I sit down and eat dinner. Alex isn't there much, and that's not different either. I thought Alex and Helen talked, it seemed like they must have, but when I asked him he said no, only about school, what was happening, what he wanted for dinner, things like that. I thought maybe he knew something I didn't, something we should have been saying, but he doesn't want to talk to me . . . It seems like something should have changed, that it's wrong for everything to seem . . . the same. I don't know what we talked about at dinner, but it doesn't seem to matter, I mean, it doesn't seem any different. Except she isn't there."