22. Willow
— ? —
Willow
I rang Alicia Harvey at ten past nine in the morning like a coward, before I could lose my nerve, and she picked up on the second ring the way she does, as though she had been sitting there with the phone in her hand waiting for exactly this.
“Mrs. Sutton.”
“I want you to hold it.”
There was a pause with no typing in it.
“Hold it, or stop it?”
“Hold it.”
“Those are different instructions and you will get a different bill for each.”
“Hold it.”
“Right.” Typing, now. “For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good,” said Alicia Harvey. “If you had given me a date I would have been worried about you.”
I was on that kitchen floor again, against the same cupboard, which is apparently now the place I take bad news and good news alike.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“Am I being an idiot?”
“Mrs. Sutton, I am a divorce lawyer. I am the last person in this Commonwealth qualified to answer that and the only one you are going to ask.” The typing stopped.
“It’s held. If you want it moving again you ring me and it moves that day.
Nothing is lost. That is what holding means and it is why I charge for it. ”
“Can I ask you one more?”
“You are on the clock and I am enjoying myself, so yes.”
“Does it happen? People holding it and then not going through with it?”
“Frequently.”
“And?”
“And about half of those are women who go back to exactly what they left, and about half are women who go back to something that has actually changed, and I cannot tell you from here which one you are and neither can you.” Typing.
“What I can tell you is that the ones who do well are the ones who stopped asking me whether they were allowed.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It was not intended to be comforting. It was intended to be accurate, and I charge for accurate.” A pause. “Go and have a look at that phone of yours.”
And she hung up before I could ask her what she meant, which I have decided was deliberate.
So I unblocked him and sent a message, Unblocking for Archie purposes.
I did it standing at the sink with a cold cup of tea beside me and Archie in the next room negotiating with the boat, and I should say plainly what I was expecting, because I had it fully assembled in advance.
I expected a wall.
I expected a whole season of messages arriving at once, in a heap, with the timestamps on. Every hour since the dock. I had my face ready and I had my feeling ready.
The screen did nothing.
I got down on the boards with the phone in both hands and scrolled up, and there was nothing there. Nothing since the morning of the dock.
I rang him.
He picked up so fast I knew he had been looking at the phone when it lit.
“Willow.”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m not making it a thing.”
“You’ve got a voice on.”
“I have got a voice on and I would like a minute to get rid of it, so talk about the weather at me.”
So I talked about the weather at him.
Levi came up the lane while I was still on the phone, in the truck, with the horn going before he was at the gate.
“That’s my brother,” Michael said.
“That’s your brother.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s taking your son out on that boat.”
There was a pause.
“Willow-”
“He asked me and I said yes, and if you have got an opinion about the state of that vessel you can take it up with him, because I have had BOAT shouted at me every day since the spring and somebody is going to do something about it.”
“I’d have taken him.”
“I know you would.”
“I’d have taken him properly. I’d have taken him on something with a-”
“Michael,” I said, “you are going to say a word about your brother’s boat and then you are going to have to live with having said it, and I would like to save you.”
He laughed, and I got out of the car with the phone still going.
It was a beautiful afternoon. It was flat and bright and there was nothing coming, and the harbormaster’s board said what it always says, and Levi has been on that water his entire life.
Archie went aboard like a man boarding a liner. He had the life jacket and the rabbit and an expression of such total ceremonial gravity that Levi had to look away.
“Right,” Levi said. “Out past the jetty and back. That’s it. That’s the whole voyage.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ve meant it before and it has not once been my fault.” He got the engine going and it made the noise, the one that has made grown men set their drinks down and look at each other. “She always makes that noise.”
“Levi.”
“She always makes that noise, Willow, we’ve had this conversation on this exact vessel.”
“When did you last have her looked at?”
“She had a filter in the spring and she has been faultless since,” said Levi, “and I would appreciate it if you did not start on my boat in front of my nephew, who loves her.”
“BOAT,” said Archie, to the island, to the harbor, to the whole eastern seaboard.
I put the phone on the seat beside me with the call still running because I could not be bothered to end it and neither could he.
“Are you still there?”
“I’m still here.”
“You’ll get nothing. He’ll go around the point and you’ll lose me.”
“Then I’ll lose you,” Michael said. “Leave it on anyway. I like the noise.”
“That’s a strange thing to say to a woman.”
“It’s the truest thing I’ve said all week and I’d like it to count.”
We went out past the jetty and Archie was so happy he could not sit down.
Levi let him hold the wheel with both hands underneath, doing the thing men in that family do, and I sat on the bench with my face in the sun and thought, for about the length of a minute, that I could not remember the last time I had felt like this.
Then the engine stopped, and the whole world went quiet in a way that water never is.
“Levi.”
“Yeah.”
“Levi, what’s-”
“Give me a second.” He was already up and back with the cover off. “It’s fine. It does this. It did it in the spring and it was a filter.”
“Was it a filter?”
“It was a filter and I fixed the filter and I would appreciate a bit of faith.”
I looked at the sky.
That is the thing about that island and I have lived on it my whole life and it still gets me. There had been nothing. And then there was a gray line sitting on the water off to the west, and it was not coming fast, and it did not have to.
“Levi.”
“I see it.”
“How long?”
“Not long enough for you to ask me that twice.”
“Levi, I’ve lived here my whole life, don’t do the voice at me. How long?”
“It’s on us in ten minutes and it’ll sit for hours,” he said, “and I’d rather have told you something else.”
“Levi, is there a-”
“There’s a radio.”
“Does it work?”
There was a silence out of that engine cover that I have thought about since more than I would like to.
“No,” said Levi.
I got Archie. I got him off that wheel and into my arms and got the second strap on the jacket done, which is the one that goes under, which he fought, and I had one hand on the rail and the boat did what boats do without an engine under them and I put my other hand out to stop us both going into the coaming.
Something in my wrist went. I heard it more than felt it.
“Mama.”
“It’s all right, baby.”
“Mama, boat.”
“The boat’s having a rest. Levi’s cross with it.”
“I’m not cross with it,” said Levi, from inside the engine cover, in a voice that was extremely cross with it.
The radio did not work.
“Willow, the phone. Is he still on it?”
“He’s still on it.”
“Then that’s the best thing on this boat,” said Levi, “and I want you to hold it like it’s the boy.”
I got it off the bench.
Two bars, then one, then that thing where it says it has something and does nothing.
“Michael.”
“I’m here.” His voice had already changed. He had heard the engine stop through a phone from a mile of water away and he had not said a word about it, because he was listening. “Say where you are.”
“Off the point. Past the jetty and around, we didn’t go far-”
“Which side of the point?”
“East. East side.”
“Is Levi on it?”
“He’s in the engine.”
“Put me on to-”
And the fog came over the top of us like somebody had shut a door, and the island went, and Levi went from the shoulders up, and the phone in my hand said nothing at all.
I looked at the screen.
The call had ended.