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The Navigator
In the summer they ate early, everyone drifting home like particles in a tide. By evening most of the people had disappeared from the wharf and the North Eden harbor was quiet, the thorofare running by as flat as a slab of granite. Tonight there was a fog coming in. It was the end of August and all seven of the Vincent children were up there in Maine.
Gus came in off the dock. The screen door ticked out its long yawn, and when he reached the kitchen at the end of the short hall it clapped shut.
The girls were making dinner. Delilah shook salt into the pots on the stove; Sophie peeled a cucumber.
Gus propped his foot against the icebox and bumped against the doorframe.
“Work hard?” Sophie said.
Gus nodded. He had been house painting all summer; his dark skin was specked with white.
Sophie ran a fork down the side of the cucumber while she held it up next to Gus’s face. “For your skin,” she said. He closed his eyes to feel the spray.
Delilah folded her arms. “It’s just us tonight,” she said. “Mum and Dad are going to the Irvings’.”
“Dad is?” Gus said. “What is it, skit night?”
“Practically,” Sophie said. She picked up a cigarette from the ashtray, took a drag, and gave it to Gus. “They’re playing find-the-button.”
Gus smiled. “Which one’s that?”
“You know. They hide the things—a thimble on the lampshade or a golf tee in the peanuts—the button camouflaged in some flowers. When you spot it, you write it down.”
“How’d Mum get him to go?” Gus rubbed the ash into his pants. The bottoms were rolled up in doughnuts.
“God knows,” said Sophie.
“It was a choice between that and the Kittredges’ clambake on Sunday,” Delilah said.
They all laughed.
Delilah was crumbling hamburger. “Poor guy,” she said to the frying pan.
“He can handle it,” Sophie said.
Gus left them and went into the living room. Chicky, the youngest of the boys, was sitting on the creaking wicker sofa. Going by, Gus swatted the back of his head. On the record player, Bob Dylan was singing “Tangled Up in Blue” for the millionth time. Certain records stayed in North Eden all year long—they were the rejects, hopelessly warped. Still, they got put on again and again. Hearing those songs straight through somewhere else was always a surprise.
Gus took his book off the pile of National Geographic and Harvard magazines. He stretched out on the window seat, opened the book, and set it facedown on his stomach.
“Went to the quarry,” Chicky said. He was whittling at a stick with his Swiss Army knife. “The bottomless one.”
“Right,” Gus said. He smiled out the window at the floats. The Jewel girls were down there climbing out of their stinkpot. A light mist drifted by in thin trails.
“It was,” Chicky said. Shavings littered the floor by his bare feet.
“Chicky, it’s impossible,” his older brother said. “Quarries’re man-made.”
Chicky worked over a little knot. “You can think what you want,” he said.
From the kitchen, Sophie called, “Where’s Minna?” The boys didn’t answer. The screen door slammed. “I’m right here,” came the six-year-old voice from the hall. Sophie and little Miranda came into the living room at the same time from separate doors.
Sophie said, “Will someone go tell Ma?”
“Is it supper?” Gus asked.
“Five minutes.”
“Good,” Chicky said.
“Who’s going to tell Ma?” Sophie said, holding a stack of napkins at her throat.
Minnie climbed onto Gus’s lap and perched on her shins. Gus said, “Minnie will, won’t she, Minniana?”
“Do I have to?”
“I would but we’re getting supper,” Sophie said. She stepped into the dining room but stayed within earshot.
“I always do,” said Minnie, collapsing on her brother.
Caitlin walked in. “You always do what?” she asked. Her hair was wet and she hit at it from underneath to dry.
“Well, somebody better go,” Sophie said from the dining room. Her head appeared. “Gus, will you?”
Gus winced.
“What?” Caitlin said.
“Why don’t you ask Sherman?” Chicky said. He pointed out the window. “He never goes.”
Sherman, the middle brother, was standing outside at the dock railing. He was spitting over the edge and watching it land in the water. Someone must have tapped on the window above him—Mum and Dad were upstairs getting dressed—because Sherman turned and looked up. His eyes revealed nothing, like Indian eyes.
“Sure,” Sophie said. “Good luck.”
Minnie kept her head against Gus’s chest. “He’s not about to get Ma,” she said.
“Why not?” Caitlin said. She huffed over to the window and lifted it. A damp mist came rolling over the sill. “Sherman,” she said, her voice sounding cottony outside. “Go tell Ma it’s supper.”
Sherman turned his head. “Why don’t you?” he said.
“Because I’m asking you to.”
Sherman glanced past her. “Why doesn’t Chicky go?” he said.
“I don’t believe this,” Sophie said.
Chicky’s knife peeled a long curl. “She’ll come over anyway,” he said.
Caitlin turned around to him with her mouth set.
Delilah stood in the doorway with a potholder mitten on. “Has someone gone to get Ma?”
“Gee, Delilah,” Gus said. “We thought you’d gone.”
“This is ridiculous,” Caitlin said. “Come on, Minnie. Go.”
Minnie’s little back went stiff. “I always do.” She shifted off Gus.
“It’s not going to kill you,” Caitlin said.
Minnie trudged out of the room. They heard the screen door swing, then slam. From where he sat, Gus could see her padding over on the dock to Ma’s house. He made a moping face and rocked from side to side, imitating her.
The girls laughed.
The dining room had cream-colored walls and two windows that faced the harbor. At high tide, the water rose right up to the shingles and the light made crisscrossing patterns on the low ceiling. It was a small room, just fitting the long table.
Ma, Dad’s mother, lived by herself in the far house. Her cook, Livia, had gone back to Ireland, so then kitchen was no longer used. Before supper, Ma read in her living room and had glasses of sherry. By the time she got to the other house for dinner with her grandchildren, her face was flushed.
She sat down, wobbling, at her usual place.
Delilah had a plate at the side table. “Sherman, can you wait? I’m getting this for Ma.”
Ma had on a smile. She smiled at the children, smiled at the candle flame, smiled at the blue bowl of grated cheese. “Isn’t this nice,” she said, smiling. Four small vases of nasturtiums from the garden were on the table.
Gus stood at the window, holding his plate over his chest. “Foggy,” he said.
“Is it?” Sophie said. She was busy with wooden spoons in the salad. Everyone bustled around. Caitlin poured milk for Minnie.
Gus nodded and touched his forehead to the pane. “Everything’s disappearing,” he said.
They’d been eating for a while when Dad came in. He rubbed his hands together. “Evening, evening,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other.
“You look pretty snappy,” Sophie said. He was wearing a yellow blazer and a tie with green anchors on it. His face looked freshly slapped.
“Mum assures me I won’t be allowed in Lally Irving’s house without the proper attire,” he said, bent slightly at the waist.
“You look great,” Caitlin said.
Dad smiled dismissively.
Mum came in smelling of perfume, wearing a long skirt. “See you later, monkeys,” she said. She plucked a carrot stick from the salad.
Ma beamed at Mum. “Rosie,” she said.
Mum’s real name was Rose Marie—it was Irish—but she’d changed it, thanks to Dad. He called her Rosie after the schoolteacher in The African Queen who dumps out all of Humphrey Bogart’s gin in order to get them down the river. Mum never drank at all.
She looked at her family in the candlelight. “Okey-dokey,” she said.
“Good luck finding the button,” Gus said.
“Who needs luck?” Mum said, kicking out her foot. “You’re looking at last year’s champ. Come on, Uncs, off we go.”
Dad bowed, putting his palms together, and followed after her. Everyone at the table chuckled. Ma was smiling. She held her fork over her plate but still had not touched her food.
Early the next morning Gus woke up the boys to explain what had happened.
“They got home from the Irvings’,” Gus said, “and Mum couldn’t get him down the steps.”
There were five flights of granite that led down from the street. Gus and the girls had heard Mum call “Yoo hoo.” Gus went up the steps to help Dad down. The girls stood in the floodlight of the underpass, watching in the fog. Gus and Mum brought him into the light. Collapsed between them, Dad had been smiling grandly. He caught sight of his daughters in a semicircle and beamed toward them. Receiving no response, he had made a whoops expression and covered his mouth, giggling.
Gus sat on Sherman’s bed but faced Chicky. “We’re going to talk to him this morning,” he said.
“What for?” Sherman said. “Let the guy do what he wants.”
The girls were downstairs with Mum, except for Minnie, who was at sailing class.
“He didn’t want to go in the first place,” Mum said, washing dishes at the sink. “I shouldn’t have made him.”
Caitlin waited by the toaster. “What happened?” she asked.
“He was okay till dinner,” Mum said. She gazed through the window in front of her; the shingles of the house next door were a foot away. “Then halfway through the roast beef he decided he was finished and plopped his plate down on top of Mrs. Aberdeen’s.”
They all smiled in spite of themselves.
“What did Mrs. Aberdeen do?” Delilah said.
Mum shook her head.
Caitlin was serious. “Then what?”
“He collapsed on his place mat with his hands over his head.” Mum turned to her daughters. “He said, ‘This is so boring. ’”
Caitlin was still. “You’re kidding.”
“Then—” Mum took a breath. “Everyone pretended it was time to go and they put their jackets back on and we all said good-bye and they helped Dad find his way to the car. After we drove off, I imagine they went back in and finished dinner.”
Sophie said, “You mean they faked going home?”
Mum shrugged: that was nothing.
The boys were shuffling in. Mum said, “He won’t listen to me. I’m like a buzz in his ear.”
They waited at the table, the girls at the near end, the boys next to the windows.
Sophie heard Dad and set down her knife. Delilah straightened her spine. Dad came in with his plate and put it down. Caitlin bit delicately into her muffin, stealing glances in Dad’s direction. Dad went back into the kitchen and returned with a carton of orange juice. He poured a glass and drank it standing up.
Mum was beside him, holding the back of her chair. Her scarf was rolled into a hair band above her wide forehead. She had on a lavender turtleneck.
“The kids want to talk to you, Uncs,” she said and slipped into her seat.
Dad pulled out his chair noisily. He buttere...
