Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [115]
“Okay,” Alice begins, and finds she needs to stop for a moment to collect herself. “Okay, so I thought we’d each launch a boat with a wish for Dad. Wherever he is, whatever you believe. If there’s something you want to put on the boat, I think it’ll work. Ellie has a book that she made.”
“A dictionary,” Ellie pipes up.
“We tested Ellie’s boat in the bathtub to make sure it won’t capsize. So the boats should all be able to carry a little something. After you make your wish, we’ll light each one on fire, and set it afloat in the water.”
Alice opens the box and Alice and Ellie unwrap the boats and set them out on the flat rock. Ellie’s Bibliobibuli with its pink hull and white sail almost glows in the dark. Henry’s bright red tugboat Fernticle lies alongside Alice’s blue skiff, Jillick. Ellie hands the yellow barge named Penny to Gram, the orange tug named Tupelo Honey to Uncle Eddie, and a graceful little green skiff with a pink and yellow striped sail named Bliss to Angie.
“Did you make these?” Gram wants to know.
“They’re beautiful,” Angie says.
“What the heck does fernticle mean?” Uncle Eddie asks.
“Freckle!” Ellie shouts.
“Jillick?”
“To skip a stone across water!”
“Bibliobibuli?”
“One who reads too much!”
“Really beautiful,” Angie says again, picking up Bliss and turning the boat over and over in her hands. “I had no idea.”
“Do you like the names, Gram?” Ellie asks.
“I love the names, sweetheart.”
Alice pulls a photograph from her pocket.
“Ellie,” Alice asks, “should we launch them one by one or all together?”
“All together. We make our wishes and then light them all at once so no boat will be lonely.”
“Okay. I’ll start with Henry. This is a photo of Henry and Dad and me having a catch in the backyard when we’re about six. Henry’s wish is that there’s baseball in Dad’s heaven.”
She puts the photo on Henry’s boat.
“I made Daddy a dictionary of my favorite long words. It’s illustrated. My wish . . . Do I have to say it out loud?”
“Only if you want to.”
Ellie considers, then: “My wish is that Daddy will get to see me when I’m almost grown up like Alice and I’m wearing a beautiful dress and going to my first dance.”
Ellie ties the dictionary to Bibliobibuli with a piece of twine.
Uncle Eddie pulls a feather from his shirt pocket. As he starts to speak, he finds he can’t trust his voice. He coughs and clears his throat and pulls out a handkerchief. He looks at the boats and the rocks and the water and the night sky, at his mother and his sister and his nieces and he feels, as he has perhaps not allowed himself to feel before now, the enormity of Matt’s absence. Finally he says:
“My wish is that if you’re worried about Angie and the girls up there in your baseball playing heaven, Matt Bliss, I’m gonna do my best to be there for them right here on earth. Not like I could ever fill your shoes. But I’ll do whatever I can.”
He weaves the feather into the rigging of Tupelo Honey.
Gram has made a miniature cherry pie that she has carried carefully in its own little handmade paper box.
“I know cherry pie is your favorite, Matt. I wish you all the cherry pie you want every single day. But mostly, I wish you were right here with us. Somehow maybe you are.”
The tiny pie sits like a crown in the middle of the yellow barge.
“Mom . . . ?”
Angie had no idea that this is what Alice has been up to. The request for this trip on this day was, frankly, one big headache. Alice was secretive about almost all of the details and would not compromise on one single element, except for staying in the B&B instead of camping, and even that was a fight. And the more stubborn Alice got, point by point, the more irritated Angie got. But here they are, and Angie can see the plan, she can see the care and design and love in the plan, and now that it’s her turn she finds she can’t even begin to speak. She looks at her daughter and she looks at the boats, the boats made, she now realizes, in Matt’s workshop, on Matt’s workbench, with Matt’s tools.