Chapter 13

PENNY

Hello?” I say into the phone, trying my best to mask my sadness.

“Penny?” It’s Mama, and she sounds concerned.

“Hi, Mama,” I say as cheerfully as I can.

“You’ve been crying, haven’t you?”

I dab a handkerchief to my eyes and shake my head. “Of course not; I’m just a little stuffed up today,” I lie. “I must be coming down with a cold.”

“Well,” she continues, “I do hope you’re taking care of yourself. You know, Caroline’s daughter Mary took sick in her first trimester and lost the baby.”

“Mama, I’m not pregnant,” I say.

“But you may be, soon.”

Her words reverberate in my ear. They taunt me like the schoolchildren who used to make fun of my pigtails on the playground. “Mama, I’ve been married for three years—don’t you think it would happen by now, if it was going to happen?”

“Honey, we can plan and wish and hope all we like, but sometimes these things just take paths all their own,” she says. “Remember how I got you?”

Mama had me when she was seventeen. I never knew my father, just that he was a navy sailor who was deployed shortly after they met, and he died at sea not long after. She’s never said if they were married, and I’ve never asked. And yet, it doesn’t matter. Mama loved him so much that no other man can replace him. I imagine I would have loved him too. I’ve concocted quite a picture of the father I never knew—his warm smile, broad shoulders, and strong hands. And I can never look out at open water without wondering about him.

You’d think I would hate the sea because its waters took my father from me, but I don’t. It intrigues me, even calls to me, somehow. Every day after school, I’d take the long way home just so I could look out from the top of the hillside to the Puget Sound. I’d watch the seagulls fly overhead, swooping down and calling to me, as if daring me to follow them. Sometimes I’d find a spot on the hill a mile from my house and gaze at the frothy waves crashing onto the shore and imagine what it might feel like to sail away, beyond the horizon. Mama said I was her water baby, though she never uttered those words in the presence of others. She didn’t trust the water, for either of us. She refused to teach me to swim, and yet she accepted my love of the shore, as long as I kept it at an arm’s length.

“You’re right,” I say as a passing boat sounds its horn outside.

“You’re not still going out in the canoe alone, are you?” Mama asks.

Although she loves Dex down to the very last fiber of his being, she doesn’t like that he lives on a houseboat. She would never admit that her fear of water is the sole reason that I can’t swim. When we were married, she pleaded with Dex to move back to his house on Queen Anne Hill. But he’d rented it out, and besides, when Dex makes up his mind, there’s no changing it.

“I wear a life vest whenever I go out in the boat, Mama,” I say. “You don’t need to worry about me, you know.”

“It’s a mother’s job to worry about her child.”

I pull back the curtain beside the living room window and see Jimmy outside, sitting on the back deck reading a comic book, his chin propped in his hand. I wonder if Naomi worries about him. I wonder if her love for her child is just as strong as Mama’s. I close the curtain quickly, before Jimmy can see me.

I wrap four cinnamon rolls in waxed paper and tuck them in a sack before walking out to the canoe. I paddle across the little channel between Collin’s dock and mine. He’s working on the boat, and his back is turned to me, but he looks up when he hears the canoe slide against the dock.

“Oh, hi,” he says, grinning. He wipes a bead of sweat from his brow.

“Hello,” I reply, holding up the sack of cinnamon rolls. “Just making good on my promise.”

He walks toward me and takes the bag in his hands, then unwraps one. “Cinnamon rolls?”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling as I reach for an oar. “Well, I’d better be getting back. I hope you enjoy them.”

“Wait,” he says. “You won’t stay? Just for a bit?”

I look over my shoulder self-consciously. I don’t know why. Dex isn’t there. And what do I care what Naomi thinks, or anyone else on the dock, for that matter? “Yes,” I finally say. “I guess I could stay for a moment.”

I tie the canoe to a cleat, and Collin takes my hand to help me out. He points to the sailboat. “Come sit on the boat with me.”

My eyes widen. “Really?”

He nods. “I’d love to show it to you.”

I climb into the boat after Collin and sit beside him on a wooden bench seat. “She has a long way to go,” he says. “But I think she’s coming along quite well.”

“You’ve done a beautiful job,” I say, running my hand along the smoothly sanded railing.

He takes a bite of the cinnamon roll in his hand, and I wonder how long it takes to complete a boat. Another month? Another year?

“She should be all ready by the end of summer,” he says as if reading my mind.

I realize how lonely the dock will feel without Collin there, without the sailboat bobbing on the water. “I suppose you’ll be leaving then,” I say, without looking at him.

“Yes,” he says. “I’ll sail her to San Francisco. My client will take her from there.”

“Does it make you sad?” I ask, admiring the woodworking on the bow, where planks are forged together so they look almost seamless. “It must be like giving a baby up for adoption.”

He looks at me for a long moment, and I see a familiar glint in his eyes. Sadness? Regret? I’m not sure. “It is,” he finally says. “But I try not to get too attached. It’s always hard, but it’s better that way, knowing that there’s an end.”

I nod and look away.

“Hey,” he says. “I was thinking of taking her out today. “Would you like to join me?”

I shake my head. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” I say, “I—”

“See? You have no excuses.” He stands up and begins to untie the sails. “We’re going sailing.”

He adjusts the rigging and then motors the boat toward the lake. At their full height, the sails look majestic, and I watch in awe as he maneuvers the boat with such precision.

When we’re at the center of the lake, he turns to me and says, “Want to take the reins?”

I shake my head quickly. “No. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I’ll teach you,” he says, grinning. “It’s really easy.”

“OK,” I say, stepping toward him timidly.

He takes my hand and places it on a long wooden shaft. “This is the tiller,” he says, keeping his hand firmly over mine. “It steers the boat.”

He steps back and smiles at me. “It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say. The wind is having its way with my hair, but I don’t care. I don’t have a care in the world right now. I feel exhilarated and unhinged.

“Where should we go?” Collin asks me. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, and I think there’s a sparkle in my eyes too. I feel it. I feel alive.

“Let’s sail to the Caribbean,” I say suddenly.

Collin nods playfully. “The lady wants to sail to the Caribbean, so to the Caribbean we shall sail.”

“What if we get shipwrecked?” I ask.

“And wash up on a deserted island?” Collin adds.

I nod. “I can’t swim.”

“I can,” he says, taking the tiller in his hand again. “We’ll be fine. Besides, we have these cinnamon rolls to sustain us.”

I sit down on the bench beside him.

“What does your husband do for a living?” he asks suddenly.

“He’s an artist,” I say, feeling tense at the mention of Dex. “A painter.”

“Oh,” he replies.

“Does that surprise you?”

“Well,” he says, rubbing his chin, “I just assumed he was in business. Seemed like the only reason to explain why he’s gone so often.”

“Dex is an important artist,” I say, a little more defensively than I intended. “He has a studio downtown. He works very hard.”

“Listen,” he says, smiling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound critical, it’s just—”

I cross my arms. “It’s just what?” Mentally, I run through my list of deepest fears: That we’re not well suited? That he’s so much more sophisticated than I?

Collin shrugs. “What I mean . . .” His voice trails off. “How can I say this best?” He pauses for a moment. “OK, I’ll just say it.” He takes a deep breath. “If I had a wife like you, I wouldn’t ever want to leave.”

I feel my cheeks redden. “Oh. Well, thank you, I guess.” I retie my scarf, then turn back to him. “You know what this boat needs?” I ask, changing the subject.

“What?”

“Cushions.”

“It does,” he agrees. “Next time we go out, I’ll bring some pillows from the sofa.”

“No,” I say. “I was thinking that I could make them. There are some foam blocks in the closet, some fabric, too. I’m not sure what the materials are for, but they’ve been there forever. If the stash is not completely moth-eaten, I can sew some cushions.”

Collin shakes his head. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

I want to tell him that I fear I may go crazy in that little houseboat all by myself day after day without a purpose, without a project. “I want to,” I say.

“Well, if you can sew as well as you can bake,” he replies, “then I can’t refuse.”

I smile, and walk toward the front of the boat. I feel Collin’s eyes on me as I duck under the sails to the starboard side, but I misjudge the distance between the deck and the sail, and my head hits the heavy wooden section at the bottom of the sail. At first my vision blurs. All I feel is a dull ache, and then I lose my balance and everything goes dark.