Unfurled Read online

  Some of her best stories were about the trees and I see her standing by the biggest cedar tree in the back yard. I’m maybe six or seven and so this is when her pronouncements were still mostly silly. “This is the one,” she shouts to me. “See,” she says. “It’s taller than the others. This is the one they used.”

  As the story goes, there were once pirates in Ballard. And buried treasure everywhere on the bluff over the water. “Easier to hide, easier to keep safe,” she would say. Her eyes are sparkling, her hands twitching with an imaginary shovel. “It’s too bad we can’t dig for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d have to kill the tree. The gold coins are twined up in the roots now. But every once in a while a ruby or an emerald grows up the trunk and appears on a branch.”

  I don’t believe her. I’m sure this can’t be true.

  “Ask the woman who lives in Beecher House. How do you think she paid for that place?”

  Beecher House is my favorite of our whole neighborhood, with its big porch and dormer windows facing the sea. It’s old and gabled and I just know there is a telescope on the top floor with its star-gazing deck. I just know it.

  George has crossed his arms over his chest, is trying to stare down the sun. I know this face of his. A stubbornness that will set up and dig deep, that will ruin him for months as he works his way back to his natural cheerfulness.

  When I walk back to the bench, I say, “How’s Lisa?”

  “Guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs. “She wanted to be at the hospital, but …”

  “I’m sure she did. It’s okay. Tell her that it’s okay.”

  George’s girlfriend Lisa must drop everything from time to time to take care of her grandchildren. There is no question that this is what she must do. All of us in George’s life have accepted this and so I do not say any of the things that all of us have been saying to him for years, about how good and patient he is, about how much Lisa loves him, about how we support him, about hoping that Lisa’s daughter will figure things out, leave her violent husband, save the kids. I think these things, I send them to him with a nod and my hand on his sleeve. He lowers his head, and I think how only one thing in our lives has changed in the last twelve hours. Everything else goes on—jobs and spouses and pets and homes and friends. None of this has changed. And so even a very tall man can be just one small thing that will mean something to only a small circle of people. I stuff my hands between my knees, clench and unclench them, because I can’t decide whether this is a relief or a tragedy.

  He pulls something from his pocket with his other hand and the light catches on it between his fingers. It takes me a moment to recognize that it’s a fishing lure. A yellow rooster tail with a dented silver plate. He twirls it between his thumb and first finger, letting it spin, letting the hook catch into the thick skin near his fingernails and then flipping it over. And this is how I know we are sitting where I learned how to cast as a child. Sitting in the spot where George and my dad have always done their fishing.

  George curls into himself and coughs, although he may be covering a sob. “I missed our poker night on Tuesday. Haven’t seen him since last week, damn it.”

  I nod. Yes, I think. Since last week. That is what it will all boil down to. Every day will be a kind of counting game. I saw my dad two weekends ago. I spoke to him this morning. The thin dawn light makes me squint and I must remind myself, no, you spoke to him yesterday morning.

  He said, “Smooth as steel.”

  And he said, “Sadly, only two.”

  And he said, “But maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

  He did not say, not once, not ever, “I am carrying recent photographs of your mother in my wallet.”

  Neil’s face at the hospital rises up before me. His hand stretching for those photos. Such natural curiosity about the things I have not told him. The things I need him to know already, and to know to never mention in my presence. Better yet, to have forgotten. Here is the story and here is why it matters, but here is why we are never going to speak of it. Because this is what I’ve done. The me that Neil knows—the woman he met six years ago, the woman he married two years ago—that woman has worked very hard to forget these things. The me that Neil knows has nothing to do with those photos.

  Except now there are these footprints, and I wonder where the embryo might be attached to the wall of my uterus, whether its microscopic vertebrae might already be visible on an ultrasound. I’ve seen so many ultrasound images of my uterus over the years—the normally smooth gray tissue dotted with those darker plum-shaped rounds. Growths that would prevent the implantation of any fertilized egg. I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant. Thought I would never have to explain anything, that it would all work out without ever having to bring her up.

  “Don’t forget the cabin,” George says at the same moment I turn into his shoulder and whisper, “I’m pregnant, George.”

  But George hasn’t heard me. Maybe I only mouthed the words. I leave his shoulder and lean back into the bench.

  “The cabin,” I repeat. I double check the bench and the street lamp, I check for rising water in the lake, I check for a sudden wind coming toward us from the highway. I check for some sign of the end of the world. This place is no longer familiar. Maybe this isn’t where I learned how to fish. I remember a boat house. Maybe a whole line of benches.

  “You won’t want to sell it, will you?” George asks. And he sounds so worried that I must immediately reply, “No, no,” I say, “I won’t want to sell it.”

  And then I’m already laughing, choking on the absurdity of it. A cabin! Why would I want to sell a cabin!?! Little bites of pain cut at my ribs as the sound makes it way out of my throat. George draws himself up.

  “Ella?”

  I close my eyes, my laughter quieting as I hold my breath.

  “You know I’ve always considered you my niece, considered your dad a kind of brother. He was the closest thing … to a brother for me.”

  Yes, yes, I know, George, I want to say, shocked to hear him working through these words. It should go without saying how much George is already my family. So instead, I say, spitting the words a little, “Well, you know, George, he was the closest thing to a dad for me.”

  His eyes fix on my face. I count four fine lines threading their way to the left of his right eye, up toward his bald temples. A vein twitches. His lip twitches. And then we’re both laughing. Laughing like idiots. Holding our mouths and our bellies. It isn’t even a real joke but it works and we keep laughing. Laughing until our stomachs cramp up. The noise gets the dogs interested in us again and they rub their faces against our knees and wag their tails. The swans glide closer then, softly along the surface of the black water like a fleet of miniature white ferries.

  Which is when I lean into George and admit I don’t know anything about my dad having a cabin.

  9

  AFTER, WE TOOK OUR TURNS AT THE HELM. Like all good sailors, we knew when to keep our mouths closed and when to just drive forward into the waves.

  After, there were good parts and bad parts. One of the best parts was the sharp wind as the ferry veered north past Port Blakely, or catching a bucket of smelt at Agate Point and salt-grilling them on skewers on the beach. Barefoot and sandy in our sailing clothes. Sometimes the best part was staying up late on the ferry, doing my homework in the wheelhouse. Other times it was fried egg breakfasts and coffee before walking the dog.

  Once it was getting lost in a foggy inlet in the old boat, miles from any real harbor. “Light us,” my dad said, and I manned the chest-sized safety lamp and kept us clear from rocks and tree trunks. “Nothing can drown us,” he said when we made it in, shivering but safe.

  The bad parts got fewer and farther between. Having to tell a teacher I didn’t need to make a Mother’s Day card. Watching my dad shake his head when someone said, “And Ella’s mom?” Buying Kotex for the first time, rolls of tissue stu
ffed into my underpants until I could get home.

  The worst part was when she reappeared suddenly. Not for real, but the few times that tangible proof of her entered the house. A letter in the mailbox. Addressed to us, signed by a woman that seemed to be her, that wanted us to remember who she was but couldn’t, for her part, remember why that might be so. My dad would check the post mark and drive if he could get there, or telephone if he couldn’t. But he always returned without her, hung up without news of her. We confirmed with each other that she was gone. Before was an island, After an entire ocean.

  So he taught me about navigating, about the danger bearing, and how to keep the boat from ever running aground. I knew we were fine.

  “The first thing you need to do is find a same-side object,” he said.

  “Like a light?”

  “Can be a lighthouse if you’re lucky, can be a well-marked outcropping or a house on a bluff. But you find one on the same side as the danger spot and lay a line out to your current position, marking your magnetic bearing.”

  “Got it.”

  “But the most important part of a danger bearing is your prefix.”

  “NLT?”

  His proud eyes made me taller.

  “Not Less Than is starboard, Not More Than is port.”

  So we were charted correctly. That’s how it worked. We kept our eyes on the point of danger, and we took bearings as often as we needed—we kept away from it. We continued on. We kept the past in the past.

  10

  EARLY SUMMER. GEORGE BLOWS SMOKE out of his nostrils and leans over the tide pool. “Would you look at that?”

  The pool is narrow but deep, rimmed with barnacles and sea squirters. A dark green anemone waves its spikes as the water slops with a wave below. Then a ripple disturbs the surface. A flash of red and white fins.

  It’s a curious fish, smaller than George’s hand and reddish brown with white patches like clouds. It has wing-like fins and its face is flat, with the thick downturned lips of a bottom feeder. I lean down, waiting for George to tell me what it is and relieved to have this discovery between us. A distraction.

  I watch him finish his cigarette, watch how he kneels and dips the tip in a small scoop of wet rock to extinguish it completely and then he tucks it into his pocket.

  Only then does he say, “Sculpin. It’s a Snubnose Sculpin.” To the fish, he says, “A bit far north, aren’t you, little one?”

  I stare into the dark water, stop myself from reaching out to press the squirters, and wait for the fish to re-surface. I am with George today because my mother is missing. Or she was. I mean, she was missing but now she’s coming back tomorrow. So right now, while I’m with George, she is in between missing and not missing. And this is the third time I’ve had to stay with George since school let out, because my mother has gone missing and come back already two other times.

  The Sculpin’s dorsal fin swishes above the surface then dips again below. I say, “It’s stuck in here. Unless the tide comes in soon.” I want to stay and watch the ocean rush in and carry the fish back into the waves.

  “It’ll die, though, if there’s no outlet and the pool dries up before the next tide comes in.”

  My voice cracks. “But this pool is deep.”

  “It’s not that deep.”

  I duck my head because fishermen are not crybabies. I see the fish’s carcass bleaching white against the gray rocks like a vein of quartz, its gills venting open and closed as it gasps for air.

  “That’s how it goes, Elly,” George says. His voice is gentle. “Life of the ocean.”

  I wipe hastily at my face because I understand what he’s really saying. The fish needs my help, needs someone to take care of it. I stretch out flat on my belly to get a closer look; the fish swims toward me, surges upward so its dorsal fin arches above the water and then slips back under.

  George hoots, maybe with a bit too much force. “I don’t believe it. Now it’s just showing off.”

  We watch the Sculpin slide along the rocks, and then George sighs, “Beautiful thing, isn’t it? Now, watch it change colors as it hits that seaweed.” And it does, slowly from red to brownish orange and then to a kind of green.

  “How does it do that?” I ask.

  “Sculpins’ll change like a chameleon. We used to call them water lizards.”

  But the bigger question is what to do now that I’ve decided to help her. Of course Lizzy is a girl.

  “You think we could try and get her in the catch bucket?”

  George has already lit another cigarette and he takes a long drag, squinting his eyes. He blows the smoke over the top of my head. Then he nods, his lips pressed together. He helps me scoop Lizzy out of the tide pool. She swims into the plastic pail easily.

  “We can let it go off the end of the jetty, so it’s in deep water.”

  But I hold the bucket to the side, try to keep my voice clear. “I’m not going to let her go.” The late afternoon sun hits me full in the face and I can’t see George anymore.

  His voice is worried. “Salt water fish are tricky.”

  “I know,” I say, blinking hard. “I know. I can do the tank right. Anyway, I have a science project this summer.”

  He steps to the side and blocks out the sun. His face appears then, lined and serious. But he doesn’t argue. He only nods toward our fishing rods and we head off the rocks and back to the jetty. We sit down together at the edge of the pier while George reaches into his pocket for his next cigarette. I pick up my fishing pole and he reaches to check the lure. He asks, “What kind of project?”

  I’ve read how the downtown aquarium keeps their salt tanks, and I know I can make one, too. I figure I can re-create Lizzy’s habitat, like I’ve learned.

  “Study project,” I say. “Scientific observations of rock fish.”

  “Sure,” he says, shrugging. “Ok.”

  Maybe I can even find a male Sculpin, set them up as a pair. Surely none of the other kids will try something so difficult, and surely it will win me the science contest in September. But the biggest deal about this moment is that my mother is with me in this decision. Scientific observations of rock fish is something she would say if she were there and acting like herself. I can hear her. But she isn’t there, she’s missing, and although it isn’t the first time and so far each time she’s come back, she’s also come back behaving less and less like my mother. I hold onto my fishing rod and sit with Lizzy in the small cooler beside me, and I feel what it would be like to have my mother right there, too. The feeling is so strong I think I could close my eyes and open them up to see her sitting on the next rock over, hair piled up on top of her head, legs stretched out in the sun.

  “Fish aren’t really animals,” she might say. “They’re more like dinosaurs. Their brains are so much older.”

  George speaks through the closed lips holding his cigarette, “Your mom tell you she was heading out somewhere this time?”

  “Nah,” I say, shaking my head, pretending it isn’t a big deal.

  “Did she call while she was away?”

  “No, well, I don’t know, but she went to Skagway.”

  “Skagway?!”

  “That’s what Dad said. I guess she wanted to try an Alaska boat.” What he said was that she was checking out another ferry service. All the way up through Canada and into Alaska. And when I asked him why she’d want to do that, he said for “research” and then shrugged, like this explained everything. “You know how she is,” he said. “How she gets focused on something. But she’s on her way home.”

  It took her three days to get up there, but she’s coming back tomorrow. I don’t tell George that I have no idea how my dad finally figured this out. I don’t tell George about sitting at the top of the stairs for two nights in a row, my stomach a hard, cold knot, listening to my dad call everyone we know and ask whether they’ve heard from her. Listening to him finally call the police.

  “That mom of yours,” George says. It’s something he
always said when she did something outrageous or funny. It’s something he said all the time. And I knew what it meant.

  Except today he says it in a whisper, and there’s a dark shape behind the words.

  “I know,” I say, whispering back. “I know.” Even if I don’t know anything at all.

  The next day is hot and sticky. George opens all the windows and all the doors of his small house. A family down the street is having a garage sale, and after a pancake breakfast at Denny’s, we buy two wooden chairs and fall deep into the task of sanding and painting them. We are both acting like we aren’t waiting for my parents to come back. Tom Petty blares from a boom box in the kitchen window. I have a paintbrush in my hand and I’m concentrating on not getting any drips on the grass when a horn sounds from the front. We both look up.

  “That’s for you,” George says. His voice is unnaturally soft. “That’ll be your parents.”

  “I just gotta finish this first.”

  “I’ll finish it later, you go ahead.”

  I don’t stop. My hand trembles. I press harder with the bristles, watching the paint slick itself onto the wood and soak in, filling the grain. I didn’t dream about my mother in the night but upon waking that morning, before George bellowed from his own room that he was so hungry he could eat a horse and I better be awake or he’d bring a bucket of cold water to do the job, she was breathing on my face, her soft breath on my cheek like those mornings she used to come in to get me up for school and would start right in with an impossible but fantastic story. It has been a while since she’s done that, but I knew if I opened my eyes just then, her freckled nose would be only inches from my own and she’d be making a silly grimace. I wanted to see her like that but I kept my eyes closed tight and blew air from my lips, blew it hard to push her out of the room. When I finally blinked she was gone.