Chapter 5 Peggy
I step carefully on the timber plank, and onto the boat.
He shows himself. “You found it then.”
I move forward and offer him a cheek, but he pulls back.
“What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” I say. “That bend in the canal. Good spot.”
“Canal’s like a railroad. You’re either going forward or back. There’s no surprise to it. Unlike the river, you know where you stand with a canal.”
I hang up my jacket and wash my hands and step into my slippers. It is important I do not tread dirt onto Mom’s rug. I try to keep it as clean as she did.
“Who’d you talk to at the library?”
“Mrs. Appleby and the others.”
He stops moving. The sound of his clock ticking loudly on his desk. “Others?”
“The other staff. The other volunteers.”
“Who’s that then?”
“Deborah.”
“And on your walk back. Who did you see?”
“Nobody.”
He sticks his tongue into the side of his mouth.
I point. “What’s that, Drew?”
He looks back at his old bureau desk. Seven weathered Hemingway novels, a copy of Writer’s Market, multiple locked drawers, one Hugh Higgins Memorial Prize dated the year Sammy was born, and a large cardboard box.
“That might be your ticket.”
“Ticket?”
His smile turns from small and stiff to broad and fixed in place.
“Ticket for you and the boy. I’m not spoiling him, though, if this new book takes off. Still needs to know his place even when things turn around. I’m not bending over on that, Peggy.”
“Is it a computer?”
“A computer? You think I’m made of money?
It’s a word processor. Battery-powered on account of our rural circumstances.
Girl in the yard will keep them charged up for me.
Means I’ll be able to write faster. Put the words down like greased lightning, I will.
No more longhand for Andrew Jenkins, not from today. ”
When I met Drew at a creative writing evening class run by the community college in Carterville, he sat with a different posture from the rest of us.
We were casual and self-conscious, whereas Drew sat at the front of the class with a straight back and an eager expression on his face.
He took it so seriously I think he intimidated the teacher.
Sammy arrives back home. He slips off his shoes and drops his bag and runs to me.
I hold him tight and the back of his winter coat feels damp. I want to warm him. Rub his bony shoulders and support his head in the crook of my neck. He smells like my boy still and his cheeks are red and the light fur on his chin is standing on end.
“Stop smothering him, woman. Treat him like a baby and he’ll always be one.”
I squeeze him harder still and kiss the top of his beautiful head.
“I said stop.”
Sammy pulls away.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Good of you to acknowledge your old man.”
“What’s for supper? I’m starving.”
I start to say, “Ravio—”
“What’s for supper, you’re starving? After I’ve moved the boat out here all on my own, done a half day at the yard, and paid for a new word processor. What’s for supper? Get back there and bring in a sack of coal, that’s what.”
An hour later we are sat at the dinette eating Chef Boyardee ravioli with a plate of bread and butter in the middle of the table. Drew and Sammy are lit by a flickering candle and their skulls are the exact same shape.
During snapshot moments like this one, when all around us is quiet and still, and my boy is eating until his belly is full, I am satisfied with my lot.
Drew finishes first and pushes his plate away.
“Propane in the tanks for a day or two but that’s about it. Electric from the batteries is limited; I’m not running engines all day to charge them up, not wasting diesel on it. Toilet habits will have to change.”
“Marina was better,” mutters Sammy.
“Marina’s built for deadbeats. Out here it’s real life.
Surviving on your wits and being surrounded by nature.
Birdsong and endless skies. You think Ernest Miller Hemingway would have moored up in Robertson’s with all those conveniences, do you?
Not a chance. This place will be the making of you, boy. You’ll see.”
“How will your new computer work out here, Dad?”
“Not a computer, it’s a word processor, and it runs on a battery. I save my work and your mother will print it off in the library, won’t you?”
I squirm in my seat. “I can do some, perhaps, but I have to be careful.”
“Careful? They don’t pay you a wage. Careful? You work for free, why do you need to be careful? Not like they’ll fire you.”
“Does this mean we can afford a new fridge?” I ask.
He stiffens up.
He does not speak.
“Or have the old one fixed?” I say.
“You want to keep on like that? Seven o’clock and I’ll be writing dead on nine.
You want me to go in with your nags fogging up my head, what do you think will happen?
No words of any merit, that’s what. No original use of language.
Why do you think I wrote an award-winning story before I married you?
Coincidence? I don’t want to hear about any icebox.
We’ll finish supper and then you two get yourselves ready by nine so I can sit down and concentrate. ”
“How did we buy this boat, Dad?”
“How did we what?”
“I saw it cost eleven thousand dollars.”
“Oh, you did, did you? We bought it because I’ve been toiling all these years, that’s how. One day, when you’re a grown man, you’ll provide for your own family, learn the value of a dollar.”
I try to hold in the thought but I fail.
“Something to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Go on. I saw it in your eyes; you’re itching to have your say on it. Tell the kid what you’re thinking.”
“Just that we’re grateful to you for working hard to buy us the boat, that’s all.
” I see his lip twitch at the corner. “It’s a nice little boat, we’re settling in.
And, at the same time, I’m also grateful to Nanna Ruth, because she worked hard like you, not as hard as you, but all her life.
Moved here from England—fled, really—with no money or friends, and worked hard for the bungalow despite her nerves.
And that helped us buy this, didn’t it. So I’m thankful to Mom, that’s all I was thinking, Drew. ”
He looks at Sammy and smiles, but his thin, chapped lips are clamped tight.
“Her mother.” He spits out the words like he’s allergic to them, like they hurt his teeth.
“Nanna Ruth,” says Sammy.
“Your nanna,” he says. “Was nothing but trouble, Samson. Typical Brit. Thought she knew best. Picture of the queen above the mantel, all that. I wish you’d have met her, boy, you’d have seen straight through her.
Could have henpecked in the Olympics, she could, the mouth on her. Would have won gold for the Brits.”
“Drew.”
“You don’t remember her clearly, Peggy. Not your fault. The things she used to tell me about you. Awful things. All the moaning about your studies and your idleness, honestly, I wish you’d heard. You wouldn’t have these rosy memories.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I say.
“Well, you will hear it, and so will Samson, because it’s the truth. Someone around here needs to talk sense. It’s the family history on your side whether we like it or not. Best thing your nanna ever did was give birth to your mother. Second-best thing was when she swallowed those pills.”