Once I’ve checked out Izzy’s books and we’re outside, I’m edgy with thinking of things to say and it’s hard to breathe enough to say anything. I scrape the sand off the back of one leg with my other foot and shift the books from one hip to the other. We’re both standing very tall on the sidewalk, watching the parked cars. Everett clears his throat.
“Hungry?” He nods across the street to Pauline’s.
“I should be getting home,” I say, and suddenly all the sun and worry and water and wind of early morning wash over me and I feel thick-headed and wrung out.
“I’ll get my bike and give you a ride,” Everett says.
“No, it’s okay. The road’s really sandy and I—”
“To the end of the street, then. You gotta give me that at least.” He tilts his chin down so he’s aiming his eyes straight at me. My stomach flutters and I swallow.
“Okay.” I’m dizzy watching his long frame dash across the street to the meter where his bike is leaning. He wheels across to me and takes the books from my arms, smiling and nodding to himself as he reads the titles, then slots them in one of the messenger bags over his back tire. “How do I...” I say.
“I don’t think the seat’s big enough for both of us.” He gets on and straightens the front wheel, then pats the handlebars. “Try here.”
Shakily I boost myself up and try to balance. I can feel the bones in his chest beneath the thin t-shirt as I lean back and his arms make a basket around me. He’s very still, his breath hot and shallow in my hair. “Hold on,” he says into my ear, then stands up and pushes hard on the pedals as I shut my eyes against the light.
The day my father borrowed a twenty-foot sailboat, Izzy and I stood by the front window in Grand’s bedroom, watching how the pelicans floated on the ocean air before tilting and dropping like darts to the water. They came up shaking fish into their beaks, choking them down in thick gulps. Grand and mother were in the kitchen, their hips wrapped in aprons, their voices clipped and polite, walking quickly past the kitchen door when I turned back to look: Grand carrying a plate of cookies from the laundry closet where she kept them out of reach, mother selecting the serrated knife from the rack in the back pantry.
Izzy had her face pressed against the glass, so she was first to see the big green “C” of the hotel insignia on the sail as father’s boat drifted into view. “He’s here! I see him! He’s here!” she shrieked, running into the kitchen and leaping at mother as she wiped her hands, quick to catch Izzy. She propped her on one hip and stood next to me at the window, laughing as father wrestled all the sails and ropes and pulleys. “My mariner.” She turned and called over her shoulder, “Ailene, come see.”
Grand came to the window and peered over our shoulders, saying, “Well, he is half Calvert. There’s nothing a Calvert can’t do.” Then mother’s hands tightened on my shoulders, and when I turned to look her lips had flattened to a thin line.
When we got to the beach mother was still quiet, holding each of us loosely on a hip and staring out at father. He must have liked the idea of riding up to the house like a knight on his steed, but now mother was standing in her nice shorts and tennis shoes helplessly waving and calling to him.
“What about the dinghy?” he called back to her.
“Oh, Adam, we’ll get wet,” she said, setting us down to shield her eyes from the sun. He smiled, stood on the edge of the boat and tugged the collar of his t-shirt over his head, then dropped head-first into the water.
Izzy and I shrieked. I ran to the tide line screaming, Daddy! and mother laughed, caught me before I ran into the waves.
“Annie, baby, he’s coming. He’s swimming in, see?” Father’s head suddenly emerged where she pointed, his sandy hair horribly matted, his obvious struggle against the waves doing little to calm the frantic fluttering of my caught-bird heart. Izzy was sitting on the sand crying, her face slick and red as a beach ball when he dragged himself out of the water, slogging through the tide and wet sand towards us. He scooped mother and me into a big hug and mother screeched and wriggled as father buried his face in her neck and whispered, “You’ll dry.” When he kissed her, she stopped struggling and loosened her hold on me so I slid to the sand. Izzy was still sniffling, so I patted her head and said, “There, there,” like Grand always did when she babysat and we cried.
Once father had the dinghy from the garage, he blew into it a few more breaths to make sure it was nice and tight, then floated it on the shallow shifting water and carried first mother, then Izzy, in. Izzy was big-eyed and pale, clinging like a dying starfish as mother talked into her ear and father swam, pushing the dinghy in front of him out to the boat. Mother slid her sunglasses on, and when she tilted her face to the sun she glinted, her sharp laugh caught by gusts of wind. I waited on the beach with the picnic basket, telling myself over and over what he had said. “Right back, Ansel. Sit tight.”
When they got to the boat, mother lifted Izzy in, then flopped awkwardly one leg at a time over the edge. Izzy grabbed onto her again and she stood and waved to me. For the flash of a second I imagined my whole family getting into the boat and sailing away without me. I held on tight to the picnic basket handle until father turned the dinghy and swam back. He lifted me with one arm and the basket with the other, then settled us both inside before wading into the water and kicking towards the boat. Suddenly his head went under, and I screamed, reaching for him. He came up laughing, spitting an arc of water like a statue in a fountain.
And then Izzy and I were fussed into Hotel life preservers, picnic things were shuffled and stowed, father pulled up the anchor as the wind caught us with a sudden jerk and we were all sailing away together, the wind in my hair and in Izzy’s, tendrils flapping like tattered flags.
I learned adding and subtracting before counting. Later, when she tried to teach me the rightful names of numbers, it took two months to set them straight in my head. One bead on my needle was a little girl, eyes closed, sitting in sunlight. Two were streamside under a low-branched blossoming, tearing petals and tossing into water gossamer canoes. Three beads were watching the baby, taking turns. Four were each on a blanket corner playing tea and crawling towards petit fours. Five, the baby in the middle, the color of cakes. I added girls and stories up to ten, then took away. Ten, the day cresting into fading, torn dress turns towards home. Nine catches a glint of her father’s boat coming in. Eight drifts farther into dusk, grass where she sat bent and singed.
Eight
When I wake up the light is bright and loose, and the porch steps come slowly into focus. I startle and tip forward as a hand grabs my shoulder to steady me. Then I realize: Everett, his breath in my hair, letting me sleep, standing here straddling the stopped bike. I don’t want to move and for a second can’t find my voice. “How long was I asleep?” I finally ask.
“A while.” His voice is so tender I hold my breath. “I rode all around town, but then my legs got tired and I rode back here. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t wake me.”
“Good.”
As I glance back at the house, I can almost swear the curtain of the front window swishes. I pitch forward and scramble up the stairs, suddenly sure that Grand has been watching us all this time.
“Ansel.” His voice is low and quiet and makes me shiver. He cranes back for my books and holds them out to me, and when I reach for them he stretches out his pointer
