AT THE AIRPORT she stood at a payphone, and with two stacks of dimes and quarters in front of her dialled the number of the trailer camp in British Columbia. Someone picked up and she asked for Jack Bradley, and moments later there was his voice.
“Can you talk for a minute, Jack?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She told him about the parents. That they had just left and she missed them both already. Their closeness, she said. The way they stood together as one. It had helped her in ways she had yet to understand completely. She described the funeral service, the people lining up in the aisle to meet them.
She kept feeding coins into the machine and went on to describe how she’d sat with them up in Andrew’s room. How after a while the silence had become peace.
She said, “I’d like to stay here until Thanksgiving. I haven’t told Hugh yet, but I think he’ll let me. Do you think you could come out for that? Can I ask you that? Please? I don’t know your work situation right now, but could we have a few quiet days together, Jack?”
There was a silence on the line. And a change of mood, she felt. She brought the receiver closer to her ear. “Jack?”
“I’m here. When is Thanksgiving?”
“Not this Monday, but the next.”
“I can find out, Maggie. I’ll let you know.”
In the car driving back to Sweetbarry, she thought how some nights in dreams she still put a hand to his face and kissed him on the lips. They were always so much younger in the dreams. So light and with so much unlived life before them, and viewed in this way, it was true that experience was not a gain, but a loss. A long time ago Manssourian had written that line on the blackboard as a topic for discussion.
She drove with the ocean blue and vast to her left. St. Margaret’s Bay, Hubbards, East River, the detour through Gold River. The Martin’s River bridge. The soft-sprung Buick leaning into the turns. Hold on, Maggie, her father had liked to say to her. And grinned proudly. It’s like racing a couch. But so much power when you need it. Want to see?
In places, fog had rolled in, then a mile later the view was clear again and the afternoon sun turned the ocean a dark blue with a band of turquoise on the horizon.
That night there was another storm. Not very bad, but bad enough to remind her it was time to board up the seaside window. There were fitted plywood sections in the boathouse, four of them for this purpose, and in the morning she dragged them out and hoisted them up by the handles and set them into the rests and spun the wing nuts. She could do only three boards before the wind picked up and the fourth board nearly carried her away like a sail. She dropped it and went in search of Franklin.
Already it was blowing so hard she had to hold on to trees and bushes as she walked. Then it began to rain.
An hour later the three of them in foul-weather gear had fixed the remaining window board, and now they were at work on the fall trusses. Franklin was in the house, up in the attic crawl space, and he reached out through the special hatches in the gable peaks and snapped the hooks into the eyes of the spine bolt that doubled the ridge beam from end to end. He dropped the steel cables to the ground, and she and Aileen shackled them and fed them out and hooked them into the four anchors cemented into rock a distance from the house.
Franklin came back down and then they set the levers into the turnbuckle frames and then watched Aileen, who stood leaning into the wind and rain, giving hand signals as they took turns putting tension into the opposing cables until they were tight enough to hum at the same frequency in the storm.
Over at Aileen’s house they did the same, window boards and cables and turnbuckles, and before very long their little houses stood firm and square, snugged down with the wires humming. It was darker inside, but they were ready for the real weather that would be coming any day now.
Overnight it calmed and the rain stopped, but the next day brought more heavy clouds and high winds. Aileen was in her Vauxhall, in the pick-up lane at the Save-Easy, when she saw Danny’s truck. Danny was behind the wheel, and a man in the passenger seat was busy wiping the mist off the window with his hands. She was about to get out and wave when she recognized the man. It was John Patrick Croft. They drove past as she waited for her groceries, and then the truck swung toward the exit and the brake lights flashed once and they were gone.
All the way home she drove gripping the steering wheel hard while the car was being battered by gusts of wind. In places where the wind came straight onshore, waves leapt so high she could see daylight through water thin and green like glass. Bits of seaweed rained down on the car.
She was upset about Danny still having anything to do with John Patrick, after all that had passed with the police and the boat. That night she lay listening for him to come home, and she could not sleep. At one time when she heard the screen door over at Margaret’s, she got out of bed and put on a slicker and boots and a wool hat, and gripped the flashlight.
She called out to Margaret and then followed the yellow beam of her light among rocks and bushes.
“Is everything all right?” Margaret shouted.
“No, it’s not!” she shouted back, and when she was near she said, “I saw Danny today, and guess who was in the truck with him.”
“Who?”
“John Patrick Croft.”
“Was he. Is that so bad?”
They stood holding on to trees, Margaret with the safety glasses on and the old baseball cap.
“Well, yes, it is bad,” said Aileen. “After all that’s happened with those criminals asking for him and the police cautions and all? Would you please talk to Danny once more? I don’t want to go on harping at him, and he won’t listen to me anyway. He’ll listen to you before anyone else. Just one more time, Margaret.”
“Talk to him and say what?”
“Something about finding someone other than John Patrick to help him. About the police. About not losing our boat. Common sense.”
“I can try, Aileen. I’ll think about it.”