The weight of water - Anita Shreve [90]
“It’s the bilge,” Thomas says to me. “Rich says the electric is gone.”
Thomas works intensely, silently, as if he wishes to exhaust himself.
I hear another sound then, or rather it is the cessation of sound.
“Shit,” I hear Rich say loudly.
He comes down the ladder. He lifts a diving mask off his face, and I can see the crazy 8 the rubber has made. The skin around the 8 looks red and raw. “We’ve lost the engine,” he says quickly. He looks at Billie. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“She’s seasick,” I say.
He sighs heavily and rubs his left eye with his finger. “Can you take the wheel for a minute?” he asks me. “I have to go into the engine compartment.”
I look at Billie, who is lost in the isolation of her misery. She has her hands neatly folded at her stomach. “I could put her in with Adaline,” I say. I know that Rich would not ask for help unless he really needed it.
“Get her settled,” he says, “and come on up, and I’ll show you what to do. The sooner the better.”
I take Billie to the forward cabin and open the door. The berths make an upside-down V that joins in the middle, so that they form a partial double bed. Below this arrangement, there are large drawers, and to the end of each leg of the V, a hanging locker. Adaline is lying on her side in the berth to my left. She has a hand to her forehead. She glances up as I enter and raises her head an inch.
I hold Billie on my hip. I do not want to give my daughter up. I do not want her to be with Adaline. Billie retches again.
“She hasn’t thrown up yet,” I say, “but she feels awful. Rich needs me to take the wheel for a minute. Thomas is right here if you need him.”
“I’m sorry, Jean,” she says.
I turn to Billie. “I have to help Uncle Rich for a minute,” I say. “Adaline is going to take care of you. You’re going to be all right.” Billie has stopped crying, as if she were too sick to expend even the effort to weep.
“Seasickness is awful,” I say to Adaline. “Rich and Thomas pride themselves on never getting sick. It’s supposed to be in the genes. I guess Billie didn’t get them.”
“It’s one of the first things he told me about himself when I met him,” says Adaline.
“Rich,” I say, wiping the sweat off Billie’s brow.
“No, Thomas.”
I feel it then. A billowing in of the available air.
“When did you meet Thomas?” I ask as casually as I can.
There are moments in your life when you know that the sentence that will come next will change your life forever, although you realize, even as you are anticipating this sentence, that your life has already changed. Changed some time ago, and you simply didn’t know it.
I can see a momentary confusion in Adaline’s face.
“Five months ago?” she says, trying for an off hand manner. “Actually, it was Thomas who introduced me to Rich.”
A shout makes its way from the cockpit to the forward cabin.
“Jean!” Rich yells. “I need you!”
“Put Billie down here with me,” Adaline says quickly. “She’ll be fine.”
I think about Thomas’s suggestion that we use Rich’s boat.
I set Billie beside Adaline, between Adaline and the bulkhead, and as I do, the boat slides again. Billie whacks her head against the wall. “Ow,” she says.
I am thinking I just want it to be all over.
I could not have anticipated what it is like above deck, how sheltered we have been below. I did not know that a storm could be so dark, that water could appear to be so black.
There is almost no visibility. Rich takes my arm and turns me around to face the stern and yells into the side of my hood. “This is simple,” he shouts. “Keep the seas behind you just like they are now. Whatever you have to do. I’m running with a piece of sail, but don’t bother about that right now. The main thing is that we don’t want the boat to put its side to the waves. OK?”
“Rich, when did you meet Adaline?”
“What?” He leans closer to me to hear.
“When did you meet Adaline?” I shout.
He shakes