“But the wind,” he said.
She turned and looked out toward the water, as if the wind would be visible there. She looked at him again. “But it’s not a cold wind, Jeremy,” she said. “It’s just a cool breeze. Are you cold?”
“No, no.” He felt beaten. He was sorry he had mentioned it. Mary smiled up at him with her face bright and suntanned and her eyes very certain, her bare arms showing not a single goose bump. When she handed him the mug of coffee she touched his hand with hers, and even her fingertips were warm. She let her hand rest there as if proving the warmth, gloating over it, but Jeremy slipped out of her reach immediately and then she went away.
As soon as the windows were done he went back in the house. He carried his stack of newspapers and roll of tape. “Oh, good, you’re finished,” Mary said. “Won’t you sit down with me and have some more coffee? Children, will you get out from underfoot, please?” But Jeremy said, “No, no, I want to do this properly. I’ll have to seal the insides, too.”
“You mean, right now?”
“I want to get this done the way it ought to be,” Jeremy told her.
“I see,” said Mary. “Well, goodness. You certainly are fixing it so we could stay all winter here.”
“I can manage everything. I don’t want you to have to bother yourself at all.”
“I see,” Mary said again, and then she sat down in a kitchen chair and let him get on with his work.
• • •
“What next?” he said when he was done. Mary was in the kitchen, slicing carrots. There were so many children around her that he had to shout to make himself heard, but as soon as he had spoken they fell silent. He had never known such a silence. He couldn’t understand what they were waiting for. Mary turned and looked at him, but her face was blank and he wondered if he should repeat the question. “What next?” he said. “What else needs doing?”
“Why, nothing I can think of, thank you.”
“Nothing? There must be something.”
“No.”
“You said you were doing things to winterize.”
She turned very suddenly back to the cutting board. She began slicing the carrots with a clipped, definite motion.
In the silence one of the children said, “We were going to air the sails, remember?”
“We can do that later,” Mary said without looking around.
“Do what?” said Jeremy.
“Air the sails,” Abbie told him.
“I don’t understand.”
“We do it for Mr. O’Donnell. After a rainy spell we go out and run up his sails to dry them. Mom hates doing it.”
He looked at Mary. Still only at her back.
“Oh,” he said finally. “Well, then. It seems that’s something I’d better take care of.”
Then she did turn. She said, “Never mind that, Jeremy, I can see to it later.”
“But I — Abbie says you hate it.”
“Jeremy, please. Can’t you stop doing things a minute?”
“I’m not at all overtired,” he said.
“No, I know you’re not.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
He was out the door and six feet away before he realized that he didn’t know which boat was Brian’s. When he turned, he found a whole cluster of children watching him from the steps. They advanced on him, all talking at once. “It’s the blue one, the ketch.” “There it is.” “You have to row out in a dinghy.”
“A dinghy. Oh,” he said.
“There’s the dinghy.”
He followed Hannah’s pointing finger and found a dinghy nearly hidden in a clump of weeds down by the water. An enormous thing. He cleared his throat. “Ah, yes,” he said.
“You run the sails up the masts and let them dry a little while.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Can we come too?”
“Come — surely your mother must need you at home,” he said.
“No, she doesn’t.”
The thought of the children alongside him, rocking the boat and swarming everywhere, falling overboard and requiring him to jump in after them when he couldn’t swim, was even more terrifying than the thought of rowing alone. “Perhaps another time,” he said.
“Why can’t we? Mom always lets us.”
“She does?”
“She takes the bunch of us and the baby too.”
“I see. Well, then,” said Jeremy, “I suppose you may come.”
The children cheered. Jeremy walked toward the water with very small, firm steps, fixing his eyes upon the dinghy and praying for it to turn out to be more manageable than it looked from here. It wasn’t. It seemed gigantic. Its peeling, weathered surface had the same depressing effect on him as gray-painted machinery or factory buildings. There was a pool of scummy water in the bottom. Wasn’t that a danger sign? The oars looked too long to handle. Even the rope that tied it presented a problem; it was fastened to a post with a clever, casual-looking knot. “Here,” said Darcy, when he had taken too long loosening it. “Let me.” She slipped it off easily and handed it to him. While he waited, numbly keeping hold of it, she helped the children pile in. “Not Pippi, Pippi went first last time. It’s Eddie’s turn. Who’s going to sit next to Jeremy?”
“Wait!” they heard. Jeremy turned and saw Mary flying down the slope toward them with the baby bouncing on her hip and her face pale and her eyes dark and wide, almost without whites to them. He thought something terrible must have happened. He had never seen her look so frightened. When she came up beside him she was breathless. “Mary?” he said. “What is it?”
“Jeremy, I — please don’t take the children.”
He felt as if she had hit him in the stomach. While she gasped for breath he did too, clenching his end of the rope. “I’m sorry,” Mary said. “It’s just that I — well, I was just about to feed them. Why don’t you leave them with me? You’ll only be gone a little while.”
Of course he shouldn’t take them. He knew that too. But to have her stand there telling him that, saying she was willing for him to go himself but not to take the children! She thought his silence meant that he was simply being stubborn. “Or, I know what,” she said, trying a new tone. “I’ll come along. How will that be?” She smiled up at him. The children murmured encouragement. She laid a hand gently on his arm. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be better if we all went out together?”
“Get away from me,” he said.
Her hand dropped. Her smile vanished so suddenly it seemed to have broken and shattered.
“Just leave me alone, leave me be,” he said. “And you,” he told the children. “Get out.”
They came awkwardly, stumbling over each other and keeping their eyes on him instead of the ground. “Jeremy?” said Mary. Her voice was thin and choked, but he didn’t look at her. As soon as the last child was on dry land he bent over the boat, gave it a long shove, and then hopped in, as neatly as if he had done it all his life. The only thing that gave him away was the violent trembling of his knees as he bent to sit down. The whole boat trembled. He pretended not to notice. He reached for the oars, fitted them into the oarlocks, and after a few dry swoops hit water and pulled. The dinghy set off with a start. But was he facing in the right direction? He thought of Winslow Homer’s paintings; he tried to remember which way the men in dinghies had been pulling. It would be just like him to perform this entire task sitting backwards. He splashed himself a few times, then plowed too deep, and took a while to realize which oar to lift when he veered to one side. The dinghy kept jerking ahead and then losing half the gain before he could manage another stroke, but when he looked over his shoulder he saw that he was making progress. He knew he would get there eventually. He turned to look at the shore again and found Mary and the children lined up, watching. Their faces were small and white and featureless. The only sound that came from them was the shrill tweet of Edward’s whistle, which he blew in an absent-minded way as he faced out toward the water. Then Hannah’s whistle, copying Edward’s, but hers was softer and the creaking of the oars nearly drowned it out.