still before them, and who now surged forward. Rachel and her family hung back, risking their favorite seats topside along the rail. She put up her hands and pushed them forward and her father, resisting, frowned. He was about to ask, “Shouldn’t you wait for him?” But Marian put her hand on his elbow, sent him a warning look, and tugged him toward the gangplank.
Martha’s Vineyard was special to Bob and Rachel also because it was where they had first met, seven years before, at a five-kilometer race to raise funds for a cause neither of them could remember. The woman Bob was dating then had invited him to spend the weekend with her and her family at their summer place—a sign that the romance had progressed to a critical point—and she had talked him into running with her in the race. Though the only thing Bob claimed to hate more than running was dieting, he agreed—another sign the romance was at a critical point. Bob played good tennis when he had the time, which was hardly ever, and he admitted to having been a fullback in high school, but a runner he was definitely not. He and his date showed up at the starting point at the same time as Rachel did. Bob’s date was as tall as Rachel, and blond like him. Though also as tall as Rachel, Bob would be willing to describe himself as a little tubby in the middle and with thick legs. Even his face was round.
They started out together, running side by side, his date in the middle between them. Rachel was still sleepy that morning from staying up late, so she ran at their easy pace. Besides, Bob kept glancing at her. Clearly he liked her looks, and she didn’t think his were too bad either. They chatted as they ran along for a while, and then Rachel quickened the pace. After all, they were warmed up by then, and when your legs were as long as Rachel’s it was uncomfortable to run as slowly as Bob and his date. Pretty soon the date wasn’t quite keeping up, and Rachel was telling Bob about the places they were passing through, like a tour guide, including her family’s cottage as they passed by it, and with his date no longer between them, they ran closer to each other. About halfway through she said, “By the way, my name’s Rachel Bickham.”
He was sufficiently winded now to have difficulty saying, “Mine’s Bob Perrine.”
“That’s a nice name,” she said, and for the next mile or so, she did all the talking. She tried to fool herself that she was just being nice, but she knew she was really showing off, and by practically killing himself to keep up with her, so was he. In Edgartown, they crossed the finish line at last and she turned to give him a high five, but he was bent way over, his hands on his hips, gasping. His date wasn’t even in sight. “Oh dear!” she said, managing not to laugh. “Did I run too fast?” He shook his head, still bent over. She wanted to say something funny about white guys being just as bad at running as jumping, but she decided she didn’t know him well enough yet. So instead, she said, “I don’t think I should be here when your date shows up.” He nodded his head up and down this time, but she didn’t budge.
Finally, he was able to stand up straight. He looked down the road. His date was staggering around the corner. “Yes, you better go,” he said. “But I know where you live.”
She giggled and said, “I know, I made sure,” then she turned away and ran up a side street toward home at a much faster pace than they’d run together. The next day, he called her from the public phone at the ferry dock.
Their first date was the next weekend in Boston where she was finishing her doctorate, and where he was raising the funds to start Best Sports. In the restaurant, which was all brown walls and red carpets and smelled like the ocean, his blue eyes never left her face, and he kept his hands very still when he talked, while she, as, usual, waved hers through the air. The next night they went to the movies. They started to hold hands the minute the lights went down.
Now, seven years later, Rachel’s father and brother and sister got their favorite seats on the ferry after all, overlooking the stern where she could keep watching the dock and the parking lot. Bob still wasn’t there. A minute later the long whistle blew, the thrum of the propellers increased, the boat vibrated, the water boiled at the stern, and then she saw him sprint out of the building where they sold the tickets. He ran awkwardly, leaning to one side carrying his suitcase. The boat started to move. A deckhand put up his hand to tell him stop, but he threw his suitcase onto the boat over the gap that was getting bigger and bigger, and leaped after it, landing clumsily on his feet like third-string basketball player surprised to have come down with a rebound. The crowd cheered. Not Rachel. At that moment she wished he was still in New York. She had left her work on time to make sure she didn’t miss the boat. What made him think his job was bigger than hers?
By the time they sat down to dinner that evening, Rachel had forgiven Bob. The atmosphere was too loaded with anticipation of the long weekend, and of memories of all the days here they’d never have again, to hold on to tiresome resentments. The menu was what it always was for the first dinner: spaghetti, the sauce straight out of a can, bolstered with hamburger and mushrooms, and a salad. That’s what Rachel’s mother had always prepared for the first meal because they always arrived too late for anything fancier. And, for this dinner, like for every first dinner since she died, they left her chair at one end of the long table empty. There’d been no decision to do so; no one in the family had ever said one word about it. They just did.
Rachel and her brother and sister never sat down at that table for the first meal of the stay without reliving, however subliminally, their mother getting up suddenly from her chair and running down the hall, getting to the bathroom just in time. They remembered it as if it had happened every night during their mother’s siege of chemo. Their father would freeze in his chair and then he’d get up and follow her into the bathroom so he could hold her head and the three kids would be the frozen ones now, while they looked in each other’s eyes across the table and heard the sounds of their mother throwing up on the other side of the bathroom door. There must have been something in the shape of that hall that amplified sound, a kind of horn—or maybe the sound no one wanted to hear was the one that was always the loudest.
A few minutes later, their parents would return and take their places as if nothing had happened, and her father would urge his children to eat, trying to keep a sense of normalcy, they understood, even Rachel, the youngest of the three. Her breasts had budded years before, but now where her mother’s soft bosom had been there was only flatness. Soon she’d lie on her back in the dark of her coffin deep under the ground, and so Rachel slept with every light in her room on, and didn’t stop until her freshman year at Smith where her roommate said she could only sleep in the dark.
Rachel’s mother would pretend she’d never left the table and resume the conversation right where it had been interrupted and Rachel still wondered how in the world she could remember. Her father would interrupt her and urge his children to eat again, but he couldn’t eat either. It was a wonder that the whole family didn’t waste away as fast as Rachel’s mother did—while the family dog got fatter and fatter.
Maybe that’s why, all those years later when her ardent husband kissed her breasts in bed that night, Rachel felt a wave of a feeling she couldn’t name—a surprising mixture of fear and disgust. He sensed it right away. He didn’t speak. He turned the light out and she lay down and he pulled the covers up over her and when she started to cry, he put his arms around her. They both sensed she wasn’t crying only for her mother. It was just time for her to cry, that’s all, and so she did. They both knew that people who don’t cry every once in a while haven’t the foggiest idea what’s going on. He held her tight until he fell asleep.
In the morning they awoke to perfect weather, so clear they could see individual people in a sailboat at least a mile out from shore, the color of each person’s hair and what they were wearing. Rachel’s mother had believed such gifts from the god of vacations heralded storms. She’d look up at the sky, observe there were no clouds, and advise her family to have fun on the beach while the sun is still shining “because this one is a weather breeder.” Rachel couldn’t remember her ever being right. And if she was, it didn’t make any difference: rainy days in
