Michael and Kelly turn to Samantha, standing in the doorway in her Little Mermaid pajamas, as she finishes the phrase “… someone to watch over me.”
Kelly lets go of Michael and pulls away and puts on a large, public voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the famous jazz singer Samantha Hays!” She crosses to her daughter and swoops her up in her arms, saying “That was wonderful, my darling.”
Michael does not move, happy to watch the two girls in his life from this place apart. He does not examine his comfort with this distance, but it is strong in him. This is his proper place. From here he can provide, protect. Nearer to them, in the sweet smell of them, in the fragile, needy physicality of them, he would only become clumsy, would only feel the demand for words and gestures he could never adequately give.
He is impressed with his daughter, proud of her. He says, “Hey, Sam. You should be sleeping.”
Kelly, her back to her husband, holding her daughter close, compensating for him as always, says, “We are both so proud of our baby.”
Samantha presses her face against the side of her mother’s but focuses on her father. Michael nods at her, nods from this vast, sweet feeling inside him. Kelly cannot see the gesture, and Sam simply understands it to mean it’s time for her to sleep.
And Michael stops beneath the trees at Oak Alley and his hand goes to his phone once more and he and Sam are at the aft gunwale of his boat, his 33-foot Bertram Sport Fisherman, pristinely new and his at last and just in time, for she is eleven, his daughter, eleven is the perfect age, and this he can do for her, this much he can do, to set her in the fighting chair and crouch beside her and show her how to use the light tackle.
“Will they be heavy?” she says, and he can hear the faint quaver still in her voice.
“You’re after bait fish,” he says. “You can do it.”
“Then you’ll catch the bigger ones?”
He palms her hand on the reel. She’s going to be okay. “That’s right,” he says. “With the ones you catch. We’re a team.”
“I’m catching the babies?” The quaver has come back.
“No,” Michael says firmly. “They’ll be adults, but smaller species.”
Samantha nods her head once, sharply, and he squeezes her hand in appreciation at her determination, though he does not understand that it is simply to please him.
She carefully readjusts her hands on the tackle.
“You okay now?” Michael says.
“Sure,” Sam says.
He rises. And Samantha casts her line as he’s taught her.
He will step away now. She needs to do this on her own. But as he turns, he hears her begin to hum. She quickly finds the tune and then sings, very softly, “Anticipation, anticipation is makin’ me late, is keepin’ me waitin.’”
He crouches beside his daughter again. This, too, he can do for her. “Don’t spoil it,” he says, firmly. “Be quiet and look around you. You’re alone in the middle of a great sea.”
Samantha turns her face to him. “You’re here. And mom.”
Michael says, “Inside your head. You’re alone in there. Take it all in just for yourself. No words now.”
Samantha shrugs and looks out at the Gulf.
He knows she can’t truly see what’s before her. She doesn’t get it. He does not think of himself sitting next to his father beside the Blackwater River, looking into the vastness of the sky, but that night animates this present disappointment in his daughter.
He rises, he turns away from her, he steps to the center of the deck of his new boat, and he takes it all in: the vast, calm Gulf; the vault of the bright sky; Kelly lying on a plank of sunlight beside the cabin door, reading a book, very near but unaware of him; and his daughter, her back to him, quiet at last, her narrow shoulders hunched toward the Gulf in concentration.
He steps to the port gunwale and leans outward, and all there is now in the world is the water and the sky and him, as if he is alone in the world. This is a good thing. This is why he has bought this boat. He does understand the dark undertow of this kind of solitude. But he is freed from that simply by knowing they are nearby, his wife and his daughter. Nearby but unseen. He will come out here alone, and they will, in their distant existence, make it all be good. And he will at times come out with men, and the unsentimental familiarity of them, their detached maleness, will serve the same function, will let him swim free of the dark depths beneath him, will let him float here in solitude, as he is doing now, and any longing for someone else to be next to him can vanish.
And Kelly appears beside him at the gunwale, smelling of coconut, her oiled arm touching his. He keeps his face out to the Gulf.
“Which way’s Florida?” she says.
“Starboard,” he says.
She falls silent a few moments and then she says, “Are you thinking of him?”
Michael made the terrible mistake a few years ago, before he and Kelly were married, of speaking of his father to her, of revealing that his father had an odd fear of the open water. She has referred to this a couple of times since, and Michael has always simply ignored it.
He should do that now, or he should confront his mistake openly, but he does a silly other thing, trying to act as if he never made the mistake to begin with. “Who?” he says.
“Your dad.”
“No,” Michael says.
He waits for it to pass. But he wants it to pass once and for all. So he says, making his voice go soft, trying not to cause trouble, “You go too far. I should never say a thing.”
It came out badly. He feels the flinch in her, but she does not reply. She simply moves away.
He’s glad there won’t be an argument. But he’s not seeing what’s before him now. His wife is stewing, and it’s his fault. His father has slipped onto the boat and is trying to still the trembling in his hand on the reel. And Samantha has begun to sing to herself again.
Perhaps she is singing tonight, Michael thinks, as he stands beneath the oaks of Oak Alley. Somewhere. He shallows his mind now. He needs to know one thing and he cannot deal with the rest. Sam has understood not to press the subject, and he is grateful to her for that. And it’s why he can turn to her now. He dials his daughter’s cell phone. She answers after the first ring.
“Daddy? Daddy, I’m about to go on.”
“Sorry,” Michael says. “It can wait.”
“No,” she says. “It’s okay. I’ve got a minute.”
And Michael finds himself without words. He would never understand the irony of this, but his abrupt word-blankness unsettles him. When he has a purpose and the will for speaking, he trusts himself always to know what to say. It’s his job.
“It’s been a while,” Sam says.
“Where are you singing?” It’s the best he can do for the moment. He has lost his will to speak of his wife to his daughter.
“Chicago,” Sam says. “A little club in Chicago.”
“That’s good,” Michael says. “Chicago’s good.”
Michael can find no more small talk, and Samantha is still trying to grasp her father suddenly calling.
They stay silent for what feels to both of them like a long time. Samantha realizes she has to take charge.
“How are you?” she says.
“I’m okay,” Michael says.
“Good.”
And now he finds his focused, courtroom voice. “Have you heard from your mother lately?”
“Yesterday,” Sam says.
“Was she okay?”
“This is all hard on her.”
Michael feels a tight twist of something at this, but he does not let it deflect him from his line of questioning. “Did she say anything about a change of plans?”
“Plans?”
“She didn’t show up today to finalize the divorce.”
“She didn’t say anything about that.”
“Do you know where she is?”