A Solitary Blue

  “You mean they came down here without knowing anything?”

  “That’s it.”

  It would be like jumping off a cliff and hoping the water was deep enough, Jeff thought. Only Dicey had to jump with the three little children holding onto her. And travelling all that way, too. It would be like whistling in the dark and following the sound of your own melody. He couldn’t have done that, he knew; he hadn’t had to, but he could see the kind of courage it took, and the kind of hopelessness. He just shook his head. “I guess they’re not exactly pitiful,” he told Mina.

  “Not exactly,” she agreed.

  “And they really feel like a family, all of them,” he said.

  “More than mine, and mine hasn’t ever been disrupted,” she said. He looked across at her and began to see why she liked Dicey.

  “I’m an only child,” he said.

  “And you’re not stupid, are you, friend,” she said, her eyes still laughing, but friendly.

  “Not a bit of it, friend.” He was sure of that.

  What he liked about the Tillermans, he decided — after knowing them for winter and spring, after taking care of the little kids when Mrs. Tillerman took Dicey out sailing, after working with the stubbornly energetic Sammy on the spring planting, after arguing ideas with James, after learning how to play the Martin behind Maybeth’s voice and how to sing harmony with all of them. . . . What he liked was the person he became around them. He liked the complicated interactions, trying to keep aware of what each person was feeling. He liked being able to move comfortably among them.

  With Mrs. Tillerman, you had to stand up to her and not let her bully you and also let her just be herself, let her wander around in bare feet, let her say what she thought even though half the time Jeff couldn’t tell how she made the connections between one idea and the next. With Sammy you had to wrestle and play catch and be ready to tease him into laughter or let him clown at you until you laughed. With Maybeth you had to go slowly, gently, let her open up like a flower. With James you had to be smart like the Professor and Brother Thomas, carry on the argument, but not tell James what to think. You had to understand that some of his wrong thinking was right for a smart kid in fifth grade and trust him to grow out of it at the proper time. Jeff could do all these things, he discovered, and do them pretty well.

  With Dicey — he didn’t know, he could never be sure. Sometimes she wanted to be left alone, and sometimes she wanted to chase down crabs with everybody running around in circles. Always she liked music, of any kind, and she was smarter than she’d figured out yet, he thought. He’d watched her turn quiet and inward after her mother died. That had happened just before Christmas — the mother had never gotten well — and Dicey was as private as the Professor in her sorrow, as solitary. He had known she needed to be left alone, just as he had known that Sammy needed to be wrestled with, hard, during that long time of grieving, that James’s absorbed interest in entomology came from the same source, and that Maybeth was all right, stronger, somehow, for this than any of the others. Stronger even than Mrs. Tillerman, whose temper flared, whose eyes watched Jeff warily.

  If he stayed too long she would come into the room. “Go home, boy, we can’t feed an extra mouth.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He would leave quickly, knowing that her greeting when he returned would be as direct.

  “It’s a good thing you came by, James keeps talking about bugs at me.”

  Jeff kept up with his friends, with Phil and Andy, partly because they were his friends and partly because he couldn’t crowd the Tillermans. Phil asked him, that spring, what was going on with Dicey. “What is it, you have a thing for that Tillerman kid?”

  “She’s not a kid. She’s a girl.”

  “Yeah, but Greene OK — OK, OK, none of my business, right? Don’t bother telling me to stuff it, I know what that kind of stiff-faced look means. We’ll drop it. I mean, for all I know, she’s as sweet as honey and a real hot number, for all I know.”

  Seeing Dicey as Phil saw her, Jeff just laughed. Phil joined in, and Jeff didn’t say what he might have because Phil wouldn’t have understood. Honey, Dicey wasn’t. She was tart, bitter — alive; and she made him feel alive too, awake. They all did. And he thought she liked him too, anyway more than she liked most people — and that was pretty good.

  Jeff kept up his own friendships, pestering Andy with the questions James asked about insects, until he finally introduced the two of them and left them to their discussions. He kept up with his schoolwork. He kept up with his guitar and his hours appreciating the water, marshes, sky, birds, trees — sometimes just the whole world. He kept up with the Professor, too, especially; listening and talking, living together.

  That summer, because Andy was going up to Baltimore for some advanced classes at Johns Hopkins and Phil worked at the business of farming, Jeff set up in a crabbing business with the Tillermans. They had to learn how to lay and run a trotline, but between Mrs. Tillennan’s experience and James’s research, it didn’t take them long. Dicey had a couple of regular baby-sitting jobs as well as her grocery store job, so it was Sammy or James who waited at the dock for Jeff, a shadowy figure in predawn light. Sammy had more endurance for the work. He had the energy to pick up a badly set line and reset it, never complaining about the sheer hard work. James had the kind of mind that never rested quiet. Either way, Jeff enjoyed the long hours.

  It was James, sitting in the back of the little boat while Jeff did the job of hauling in the trotline, who asked him about his parents. “Is your father really the one who wrote that book?”

  Jeff stood up straight, relaxing tired back muscles. He looked back to where the younger boy leaned against the silent motor. “Yeah, why?”

  “I read it, it was good,” James said. He rested his feet on top of one of the bushels of crabs they’d deliver downtown.

  “He told me, asked me anyway, not to read it until I was fifteen,” Jeff said He had to wipe sweat from his forehead and the smell of ripe salted eel assaulted his nostrils. “Ugh,” he said.

  “What about your mother?” James asked. But then he changed the subject. “So I shouldn’t have read it? I could reread it later; it was a good book, I don’t mind. It was dedicated to you.

  “I know,” Jeff said, making himself bend to the task again.

  “Why not your mother?”

  “She walked out on us, when I was in second grade.”

  “I didn’t know that. So did my father, but I wasn’t that old. I guess it’s not so uncommon. So did my mother, but that was different. I used to think it was me, or us.”

  Jeff didn’t turn around, but he thought hard. “I guess everybody thinks that. Kids. Maybe adults too.”

  “I don’t know why people have kids if they’re just going to walk out. Did you ever ask your mother? Did you ever see her after?”

  “A couple of times,” Jeff said. “I asked her, but she lied.”

  James didn’t answer right away, then he spoke quickly, the way he did when a new idea had just occurred to him. “Maybe it’s women; maybe women are liars, maybe that’s one of the differences. Dicey knows how to lie, you should have heard her. When we came down here, and it was just us? She would spin stories — sometimes I thought I’d bust out laughing. Every time different, every time perfect. Cripes — now I think of it — she was really something.”

  “Dicey doesn’t lie,” Jeff said. His stomach felt cold, even with the heat and sweat out on the water.

  “Sure she does.”

  Jeff heaved the cinderblock that anchored down the line’s end, heaved it up and into the boat.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t she? Cripes, Jeff, you don’t know what we were up against, even I didn’t and I’m glad I didn’t. Sometimes when I think about it. . . .” He stared at Jeff. “Never mind,” he said, closing Jeff out. “I shouldn’t have told you. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong.” Jeff just shook his head. He couldn’t answer, he di
dn’t trust himself to speak.

  The whole day had gone black and cold around him. James couldn’t know what he was thinking, and Jeff didn’t want to be thinking what he was thinking, about Melody. He knew James was closing him out, but he didn’t care.

  He felt as if he’d just learned that Dicey was dying of some incurable disease. He felt the fragile inside part of himself cracking. He could hide it, he felt pretty sure about that; he knew he was strong enough to hide it. From everybody but himself.

  So that when Dicey finally did what he’d been wanting her to do for a long time and asked him if he’d like to go for a sail, he almost said no. It wasn’t that he liked her any less or expected her to be perfect. He knew she wasn’t perfect — she was often bossy, and she always knew what she wanted, so she was impatient with anyone less decisive. She was harsh, sometimes; too quick to judge, especially people who didn’t work the same way she did. He knew that. But he didn’t want her to be imperfect in that one particular way. And if she was (and James would know) Jeff didn’t feel necessarily safe with her alone. He looked over her shoulder, thinking up excuses.

  “Hey. You don’t have to,” she said, puzzled, irritated. Well, he’d certainly hinted, so he could see why she was puzzled. Her eyes studied his face, trying to figure out what he was thinking; but he kept his face expressionless. “I mean, if you’re scared because I’m not very good yet, that’s OK.”

  How did she know he was scared, Jeff wondered. The same way he knew she was more puzzled than angry, however she sounded. “It’s just that I promised the Professor,” he said, seizing the half-truth.

  “You don’t need to make excuses,” she told him.

  Jeff didn’t know what to say. He had let himself get tied up in his feelings with Dicey and through her with them all; and this was what happened, it was probably bound to happen.

  “I’ve got life preservers. Gram made me plunk three weeks’ earnings into them,” she told him impatiently, “and I don’t care if you don’t want to.”

  That was true, Jeff knew, she didn’t care if he didn’t want to, even though it meant a lot to her. He was confused and kept looking at her. She waited impatiently for a couple of minutes, chewing on her lower lip, then turned her back on him and started walking down the path to the dock. He watched her walk, her long legs and bare feet, the cutoffs and T-shirt, and he followed her. He hadn’t made up his mind, either to go or not to go. He felt that he’d disappointed her and he should apologize; he didn’t want her to be angry at him. He got into the boat.

  She hoisted the sails and cast off from the dock without saying anything. They moved out onto the bay, and still she didn’t say anything. When Jeff finally turned to look at her, he realized that she didn’t even know he was there. She paid attention only to the boat, to the tiller and to the wind in the sails. She looked the way she sometimes did when they were all singing. She caught Jeff’s eyes and grinned at him.

  “You really like this.” He was surprised at the intensity of her happiness.

  “Yeah.”

  “But you said you only sailed once before you came here,” he reminded her, checking up on the truth.

  She brought the boat about, heading to the southwest on a reach, and instructed him to sit on the gunwales so that it would ride level. Waves slapped up against the side. Dicey sat back, her legs stretched out, her hand brown on the tiller.

  “Across the bay, on a yacht. Boy, that was a time. Because we had to get across, to see what Crisfield was like, if we could live here. And Gram. We got to Annapolis, and we were sleeping out on this lawn — that was pretty easy because they were renovating the house so there was nobody there to know about us. We had to convince these two guys to sail us across. They wouldn’t have done it to help out, they weren’t that kind. So I told them we were going to visit relatives, an aunt who worked full time, in Easton, whose children were in day camp so it didn’t matter what time we got there, and I told them we were staying with an old lady who knew our parents, but was too old to keep close tabs on us.” She stopped speaking, thought. “The hardest thing, all the time, was trying to remember all the different ends you had to cover and let it slip out in conversation, not as if you were making it up. And trying to look casual, too, because if these guys had figured out that we really needed help they wouldn’t have offered it. James kept asking them if the boat could sail all the way across the bay — and I kept thinking to myself what a dumb question. Until I figured out what he was up to. Then it had to be some kind of a dare, because — it was a funny kind of friendship, no friendship at all. I couldn’t have pulled it off without James that time.”

  “That time?”

  “Other times — I just kind of knew what to tell people so they’d leave us alone.”

  “How come you wanted them to leave you alone?”

  She ignored the question.

  Jeff remembered that they had come down alone from Connecticut, and he saw a picture of the four of them, and those sneakers. He didn’t feel sorry for them at all, any more, just impressed. “But you could have gotten help from someone, the police, or welfare. Couldn’t you?”

  “Once we tried. Once. They wanted to put Maybeth into retarded classes, or something, and Sammy kept getting into trouble. My cousin dressed Maybeth up, and they all fluttered around her, because she was pretty, and talked about her marrying a rich man. My cousin didn’t want to keep Sammy, she wanted him to go live somewhere else. There was this priest, he meant well but. . . .” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  Listening to her, imagining it, knowing them all, Jeff knew he couldn’t understand; but he understood the important thing. James had tried to tell him, saying, “what we were up against.” Jeff hadn’t understood before he heard Dicey’s voice, telling it. He saw now what they had had to fight through to get to Crisfield. He felt his insides ease up, relax — and he felt tears behind his eyes. And he understood himself a little more, too. He changed the subject. “I know a priest, he’s OK. Actually, he’s a monk, a brother, but a priest too. He’s — a really good man. Where’d you live, before?”

  “In Provincetown, out on Cape Cod. Right on the ocean. Not right on, but back behind the dunes, but it really was right on it.”

  “I was at the ocean once. Not Ocean City, that doesn’t count, but — ” Because he felt suddenly like talking, Jeff told her about the island, about the beach there. Then, when she asked him, he told her about how he’d bought a boat and gradually worked up the courage to explore because of being frightened.

  “What were you doing there anyway?” she asked him, not interested in his fears.

  “Visiting my mother. But she took off with her boyfriend. There was just my great-grandmother and a couple of elderly cousins we called aunts; they weren’t interested in what I did. So I did what I liked.” He could hear in his voice some of the feelings of that time, and he made a business out of adjusting the jib. Because he didn’t want Dicey thinking he wanted her to feel sorry for him, because he knew he’d been lucky after all. In the long run. And the long run counted more than the short run.

  “Where’s the boat?” Dicey asked.

  He told her about the last night in Charleston, on the island, and how he’d sunk the boat. That made her smile. Then he told her something he had only just remembered, wondering why the memory had sunk so far back into his mind that he hadn’t ever recalled it. “The man who sold me the boat and rented me docking space, he was waiting when I swam back to the dock. I’d thought that nobody knew or cared where I was, what happened to me, as long as I was out of the way. Well, I was right. But he came out onto the dock with a towel. He’d known where I was, it turned out. When I hadn’t come back by sunset, the way I usually did, he’d gone out looking and seen the boat tied up. Listen, Dicey, I can’t say it the way he did, but he said he figured if she gator gotchuh you’s already a goner. He called me suh. He said — I wish I could imitate it the way it was — Suh, you come down here looking
like she hounds of hell be chewing at your heart and no gator bites so bad. So I be watching this morning. I guess, if I hadn’t turned up, he’d have found my bones. Or something. I guess.”

  Dicey didn’t say anything. He thought she might ask about his mother and was glad she didn’t. Then she said, “I wouldn’t have sunk the boat. I wouldn’t ever.”

  “I wasn’t in your kind of trouble,” Jeff pointed out.

  “I guess you were in your own kind,” she said. “It’s time to bring her about. Will you please get your weight back into the boat so I can do it?” she asked impatiently.

  Brother Thomas came down for a week at the end of July, and the week stretched out to two, then three. He seemed tired, Jeff thought, subdued, and he didn’t get rested up. He talked late with the Professor, night after night. Jeff fell asleep to the sound of their voices. Jeff went to bed early because he got up so early, before dawn. One dark morning, Brother Thomas sat drinking a mug of tea and watching the silky gray sky when Jeff came into the kitchen. He didn’t greet Jeff, didn’t even seem to know he was there.

  Jeff went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and was awake by the time he came back. Brother Thomas sat in the same position, his hands in his lap, not leaning back against the chair. The level of tea in his mug hadn’t changed. “Good morning,” Jeff said. “It’s early.”

  Brother Thomas greeted him then, his face pale above the black suit and white collar he had never, on that visit, gone without. “Couldn’t you sleep?” Jeff asked. “Can I get you a bowl of cereal?”

  “No, thank you; I’m not hungry.”

  Jeff sat down to eat. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”

  “I guess I didn’t. Do you always go off at this hour?”

  “I have to pick up whoever is coming with me, then get the line set. Sunrise is about six,” Jeff explained. Then he had an idea. “Do you want to come?”

  But Brother Thomas wasn’t interested.