Chapter 17 Peggy
Drew moves the boat farther down the canal to a stretch that almost looks like a natural river.
The banks are overgrown and there are no water towers, transmission lines, or signs of life for miles around.
At least before we had Jeff Turner’s boat moored next to ours, and even though it was unoccupied it felt as if there was backup.
His writing is going well; at least we have that.
There were even two days when he acted like he did in the old days.
He told me his writing felt different: more powerful and less self-conscious.
He asked Sammy about his science classes, and he told me he had been thinking about a family trip to Memphis next summer.
There is hope.
Just enough to cling to.
I step off the bus and thank the driver.
There is a spiral of masking tape twisting and flexing down by the curb.
I walk into the library. Warm and dry, the reassuring scent of institutional bleach.
This is where people come to take stock for a few hours.
I see them. The busker who plays his penny whistle outside the general store in all weather and the old man bent over like a question mark who dresses in his best shirt and tie to come read about colonial history and impressionist paintings.
Mr. Giles, his name is. He always sits under the ecclesiastical window at the end and never uses the computer or checks out a book.
Mr. Giles was once a town planner, so Mrs. Appleby says.
He was a principal of the elementary school near the duck pond too.
But now he fastens his tie, bent double, watching his boots, and he walks here to be with us for a while and to read up about the siege of Yorktown or the first great battleships of the industrial age.
I have no rings on my fingers, besides my wedding ring.
I have no studs in my ears. I am not sure if I am misplacing them or if I have pawned more than I dare to remember.
I would have recalled giving them Mom’s earrings, the ones with the tiny pearls?
The thing about living with no birth certificate or bankbook is that those physical items of silver and gold become your only security.
I suppose, before, I had Mom’s bungalow, but now that has morphed into a boat I neither drive nor control.
I do not even have keys most of the time.
The jewelry was my insurance, my escape in case of emergency, and now I have forgotten where I placed it.
I update the database and empty the returns box.
At lunch I save a new story outline, complete with main character details, to a floppy disk. It doesn’t have much capacity left. Mrs. Appleby and Pauline come and sit with me for five minutes on account of the library being empty.
“There’s a letter here for you, Peggy.”
“Thank you.”
They look at each other.
“Open it,” says Mrs. Appleby. “If you want to, of course. It’s from New York City.”
“New York,” repeats Pauline.
I place my sandwich down and look at the envelope.
“It’ll be a no,” I say. “It’s all right. The odds are…”
“The odds are the same for everybody, honey,” says Pauline. “Someone wins the lotto every week, my Kevin always says. Every single week.”
I slide my finger along the paper.
They watch.
“I’ll open it later. I’m too nervous.”
We go back to work and my hair is out of place on account of me losing my last grip last night. I used to have a whole jar full of them in the bungalow and now my hair is falling loose and I look disheveled. I can’t even find the glass jar.
At the end of the day I ride the bus and everything has changed.
The people around me are the same. The young Hispanic couple with their beautiful newborn.
The smoky lady with blue hair and yellow fingertips.
The man with broad shoulders and gray, patchy stubble clutching his leather bag like people might want to take it from him.
His eyes are sunken, and he looks like he’s clinging on.
But I have fundamentally changed. I know things will never be the same from this point forward thanks to the letter I opened in the ladies’ room after lunch.
The people on the bus are oblivious.
The bus pulls over and I step off and start walking along the side of the road.
No sidewalks here. The world is split, I think, into those who have sidewalks and those who do not.
When the grass disappears I have to cut down into the woods and make my way down to the water.
It is about twenty minutes farther from town than it used to be.
I do not think it even enters his head. The extra walk for me through dark woodland, or for Sammy with his heavy schoolbag full of textbooks.
Drew is cleaning the roof of the boat with a bucket, swilling canal water over the length of it and then wiping down the windows.
“Come inside,” he says.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Inside.”
I take off my jacket and step in, careful not to mess up the rug. The boat is warm and the ash box needs emptying.
“Keep finding your belongings in strange places.”
I scratch my upper lip and he moves closer, staring at me, not blinking.
“You can’t do it, Peg.”
“OK?”
He leans in.
“It’s not OK, not even close.”
This is of no consequence, not now I have good news. I can make it all right again. Reduce the stress levels. Turn back the clock.
“Drew, I need to tell you something.”
He ignores me. “You need to stop leaving your things in odd places.”
The faint scent of Juicy Fruit gum on his breath.
He walks away.
Two hours later we’ve eaten mac and cheese and I bring out a Sara Lee cherry pie.
I’ve been saving it for a special occasion like this.
Part of me thinks it’d be better to keep the news to myself, to hide the money, but he’d find us, quietly hunt us down, it’d only make things ten times worse. This is my chance to fix us.
I hand them their bowls and watch them eat. The silence is beautiful. Then I say, “Drew, Sam, I’ve got something to tell you.”
I can’t help but smile.
Sam looks up, eyes bright, and says, “Beaver Island? My field trip?”
Drew says, “If you mention that one more time.”
“Not that, Sammy, sorry. But maybe you can go on the next one.”
He looks crestfallen.
Drew says, “You look mighty pleased with yourself.”
“It’s nothing important, really.” It is important. Very important. I can’t not tell them. “It’s for us all. Some good news.”
“Good news, is it?” says Drew.
“I opened a letter today.”
His breathing quickens. He is holding his fork firm in his fist.
“Nothing life-changing, well, I don’t think so, not yet, but listen, there’s a small publisher in New York, in Manhattan, and they want to…”
Drew puts his fork down gently in his bowl.
He twists his bowl a quarter turn counterclockwise.
“You know I loved lit class in school, Drew. Stories. Well, I wrote a book, and they want to print it and pay me something for it. It’ll be in bookstores and everything.”
“Oh, Mom, well done,” says Sammy, beaming, patting me on the wrist. “That’s amazing.”
Drew’s eyes start moving, his focus all over the boat. Everywhere but me.
“We can maybe afford a mooring in the marina again, love. Maybe get you that computer you wanted.”
He smiles with clenched teeth. Rotates his bowl back to its original position.
“It’s not a lot, nothing like you’d earn, but I’m quite pleased.”
“You look pleased,” he says, still not looking at me.
“When will they publish it, Mom?”
“I don’t know. Next year, I expect. They’re sending over the contract. After that we’ll get a piece of the money. It should make things easier. Maybe buy you some new clothes from the thrift store?”
“Rolling in dough now, are we?” says Drew, his voice deeper than before.
“No need for discipline. For caution. You’re dealing with it all, I see.
Well, let’s wait, eh. Before we lace up our spending boots.
Let’s just see.” He snorts. “And you come out with all this just as I’m heading into act two.
You know how to throw a man off course, I’ll give you that, Peggy. Act two and you go and drop this.”
“It’s nothing really,” I say. “I should never have announced it like that. It’s just a small thing, not like your book, not like your award. I should never…”
“I have to work on the motor,” he says, standing up abruptly.
“Make sure we have a home that goes where we need it to. When I’m out there, see if you can stop yourself from moving things about, will you?
Hate to think of you with your book deal and losing your manuscript.
Take the shine right off it, that would. ”