And All the Phases of the Moon Page 7

  I wrapped the leash around my hand, then grabbed Sam’s arm. It also felt like a cement wall. “Let’s go,” I said quietly. “We need to get out of here. We need to protect you.” He looked at me and looked at the salesman. He stood for a long moment like that, just staring at his opponent, before he took a breath. I knew he was calculating risks.

  “Sam,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, slowly unclenching his fists and letting me lead him to the door. The dog followed, spinning at my side and barking.

  “Yeah! You better get that dog out of here!” the salesman called after us, suddenly overcome with bravery. He bent over to pick up the phone and replace it on his desk but kept his eyes on the dog. “Threaten me with a fucking pit bull!”

  “Don’t worry; he doesn’t eat garbage!” I called over my shoulder.

  * * *

  Sam was standing in the parking lot, shaking. His face was white, and he was coughing hard, fighting to pull air into his constricted lungs.

  “Are you okay?” I asked while the dog whirled circles around the two of us, now barking at his reflection in the shiny glass showroom doors.

  Sam nodded, still coughing. “I could kill him,” he choked out. “I could kill him.”

  “I know,” I said, putting my hand on his arm again. I knew he could. “But you have to get a lawyer. Or contact some kind of civil liberties group. You have to fight this.”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath and stood for a moment, gathering himself, commanding his chest to rise and fall properly, trying to process what had happened. I recognized the look, the confusion, the turmoil swirling through his mind while he was trying to sort things out into their proper order. I know the struggle to make sense of an improbable event, in its entirety, grasping how it started and how it was playing out right now, so you can command it, draw a conclusion, get your emotional ducks in a row. I had done it when Dan and my father died. I stood then, on my back deck, enveloped by confusion, struggling to see through it, to hear through it, to understand their sudden deaths and find the reality of right now. I remember the Harbor Master standing at my back door and talking to me. “Do you hear me?” he kept saying. “Do you hear me?” But hearing and understanding are not the same. It was a huge wave, the Harbor Master said, a wave driven by a sudden strong squall. The full moon had pulled behind the clouds, betraying Dan and my father, abandoning them to the sudden black sea and the sudden black skies and maybe ten orcas, a pod working together, hungry and curious and opportunistic, thrusting about in the water until the boat was tipped and Dan and my father were gone. Just like that.

  Sam’s eyes were focused off in the distance. Maybe he had found his past; maybe he was at the explosion where his lungs were burned to shreds and he lost his leg. Maybe he was caught in the pain and the fire and the tearing of his limb from his body. Maybe he was hearing the arrogance of the salesman who felt he was protecting his country by turning its values on their head.

  “Sam?” I tapped him on the arm. “Sam?”

  “You know,” he said softly. “I could have killed him. I wanted . . . I could have . . . killed . . . him.”

  “I know,” I said.

  His breath whistled from his broken lungs as he pulled open the door to the pink Eldorado, then eased himself in and started it up. The dog, now calm, jumped onto the backseat.

  “We can fight this,” I said to Sam after I sat down.

  “No! I already fought. I fought fucking hard,” Sam said bitterly. “I’m done. I lost too much. I’m not fighting anymore.”

  Chapter 11

  I convinced Sam to drive us to the beach. We could sit by the water and catch our breath, I said. There is nothing like the sound of moving water to calm you, to claim away your thoughts, to empty your head of everything but its own rhythm and force. We could have lunch and talk and figure out what to do next. He grunted his assent, but his mood was somber.

  * * *

  The beach was almost vacant, except for a couple of teenagers running into the water while shrieking at it and then running out, still shrieking, pursued by the tide. We made our way to the pier with the dog and the cooler. We sat on a bench at the far end after Sam scanned the area and was satisfied. It was where the boats were tied up. Sam laid his cane against the rail. I opened the cooler and gave him a Sandwich and the dog his afternoon medicine wrapped in bologna. His skin was starting to heal; his shoulders had patches of handsome deep red fur and it seemed to me, he had fewer sharp crevices between his ribs. I pointed this out to Sam, who nodded while taking grim bites of his sandwich. The dog lay at our feet, watching us eat, his eyes rolling hopefully from one to the other until we were forced into giving him little pieces of our food. The boats rocked gently in the water; the sun sparkled and glanced off their cleats like laser shots. Right in the middle of them was a pink and white 1970 twenty-foot Chris-Craft cabin cruiser with the word Follicles painted in gold script on the side. I had to smile. Fluffy, if a boat could be called fluffy, it belonged, of course, to Miss Phyllis. She always liked having the best and her boat, despite its age, stood like a queen among the runabouts. An old queen.

  “Your aunt’s boat,” I remarked to Sam, “matches her car.”

  He gave it a half smile. “Did you ever see the inside of her house?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Well, she sure loves pink.”

  * * *

  If you had walked past us, you would have thought it a tender scene. In truth, we were each locked into our own thoughts. The dog’s ears perked with each shriek coming from the beach, Sam watched everything with vigilance, his eyes flickering from the boats, to the teens, then to the horizon and back again. I stared at the bay, watching sea foam caress the sand, leaving odd shells and stones and tendrils of seaweed like gifts from a lover. When I was a child, I spent my free days combing the beach for shells. The perfect ones were brought into the Galley and laid out on a piece of black velvet, so the tourists could buy them. That was my pocket money.

  * * *

  The gulls stood on the rail and mewed at us, begging for food. I tossed pieces of bread into the air and watched them catch it before it fell to the ground. The terns hovered and dove into the water, too proud to beg. The teenagers left, chattering and laughing and pushing one another along the water’s edge, pretending they had spotted a great white. There had been local reports of an increase in great whites coming close to the beaches. The kids were joking, but it made me shudder.

  “You ever go swimming?” Sam asked. He looked longingly at the water.

  “I used to swim all the time,” I said. I grew up swimming and had always considered myself pretty good at it, but now I resented the very water that I had once trusted to carry me on its shoulders.

  “I lived to swim,” Sam mused. “I’d give anything to do it again.”

  I looked at him, surprised. “Does the leg mean you can’t?”

  He shrugged. “It gets complicated.”

  “How?”

  “Well, this leg isn’t rated for swimming. It won’t propel me if I swim; it just pulls me down. It has to be buoyant and let me push through the water.” He tapped on the metal. “Plus it’ll pit from the salt in the water.” He sighed. “If I want to swim, first I have to drop this somewhere, and it’s hard to take off. And then I have to hop over to the water and I could slip. I have to be helped in. And then after I’m done, I got to really dry my stump off so the sock doesn’t get wet. It’s a project.”

  “Is it your whole leg that’s missing?” I asked.

  “I have an above-knee amputation,” he said. “It’s—” He stopped abruptly. “Never mind. I don’t like talking about it.”

  “I don’t know anything about amputations,” I said. “But I wouldn’t mind learning.”

  He seemed reassured by this. “Maybe I’ll show you . . . someday.” He looked away, as though suddenly aware of how much his words left him vulnerable.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  W
e fell into a silence. “There must be a way,” I started, “for you to swim.”

  “I don’t know.” His voice became vague and he drifted back into silence. “Plus,” he suddenly added, “I don’t breathe so well, so I don’t have the endurance anymore.” The terns had flown out to sea and even the seagulls had lost their interest in us, leaving us alone. His mood was deep as the water.

  “Can you operate a boat?” Sam suddenly asked, a tinge of anticipation lifting his words.

  I didn’t want to answer him. Of course I know how to operate a boat. I got my Boater Education Card before I was thirteen. Everyone on the Cape goes boating or kayaking or fishing. It may even be in our collective genes. Miss Phyllis’s boat was a cabin cruiser and I had only driven runabouts, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

  “Hey. How about this?” he asked, his face brightening. “How about if I ask my aunt if we can take her boat out? I can leave the leg on the boat and just dive over the side. Would you mind?”

  My heart sank. I couldn’t answer him.

  “Would you?” he pressed.

  I hadn’t stepped foot on a boat since the accident. I would not give the bay the satisfaction of welcoming me back. I did not want to coast along its water while it was offering me its false hospitality while I wondered where Dan and my father died. I did not want to think of a certain pod of orcas, wolves of the sea, they are called, cruising the Chatham shoreline looking for seals, dressed to kill in their formal black and white, eager to make an easy meal of anything that fell into their path. Yet how could I say no after he had been so kind to me?

  “Oh.” I jumped to my feet. “Please. I can’t do it,” I blurted. “The bay—I haven’t been in a boat since Dan and my father—I couldn’t possibly.”

  I felt bad for Sam, sorry for what he had to undergo every day. We were becoming friends, but this was more than I could bear. He didn’t know, how could he know, what he was asking of me?

  “I need to go,” I gasped, grabbing my crutches and swinging down from the pier, away from the beckoning, playful boats, away from the murmuring seagulls and the coy, luring whispers of the water, and, with Sam calling me to stop, calling wait, he was sorry, sorry, and the dog following me, barking, I sobbed and hobbled home as fast as I could.

  * * *

  I watched through the kitchen window as Sam got into that damn pink car and drove away. Frustrated, I pulled off my soft cast and walked carefully around the room for a few minutes, to test my ankle. It felt weak and stiff, but the pain was almost gone. I rewrapped it in an ACE bandage and pulled on my sneaker, grabbed the dog and my car keys, and got into my little red manual-shift Toyota and drove straight to the Galley.

  “Hi!” Shay was surprised to see me. “I didn’t think you were going to make it back anymore today,” she said, turning off the flattop and grabbing the metal scraper to clean it. “Did you get everything done?”

  “The dog got his license,” I said, taking the scraper from her. She took it back from me.

  “Just rest your foot,” she said, “I can finish this. So, what kind of car did Sam pick out?”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee, the last bit that was in the pot, added cream until it was pale beige, and gulped it. It was still bitter from sitting. “No car at all!” I exclaimed, starting to wash the pot out. “Nothing. They wouldn’t sell him the truck he wanted.”

  She furrowed her brows and stopped working to look at me. “I thought he had the money on him.”

  “It was awful,” I went on. “Because of his name. He’s Muslim and the salesman is waiting for all the Muslims to get registered and deported or something. Sam was furious. Then the dog got upset. Can you believe this? Sam not allowed to buy a truck? Can you believe it? That people can think like this?”

  Shay’s eyes widened and her lips parted before she caught herself. Something flickered across her face—a micro-expression—that altered her features for only a moment, before it was shut down. Something she remembered and pushed away, something that had flooded her memory, had taken her back to a place where she had once struggled to understand what had just happened, a place where she had to learn to push her ducks back in their row. I recognized it.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “It’s just that I’m not surprised.” She paused and I could see her retreating deeper into her thoughts, and for the first time a charge of bitterness ran through her voice. “That people can think like this?” she repeated, in a tone that I had never heard from her before. “Not surprised at all.”

  And then I thought, Oh God, how could I have forgotten?

  Chapter 12

  I had forgotten that Shay was black, although, of course, I knew she was. But I had forgotten, or maybe never gave it much thought, that we weren’t really twins, not in color or experience. She had never spoken to me of her challenges; her always-present bright smile and joyful outlook were such a part of her that I guess I took them for granted. When she spoke those words, I was instantly ashamed.

  I had forgotten an incident that had stayed with me a long time and then, somehow, got pushed from my mind while we were getting on with our lives.

  * * *

  We had been friends since kindergarten, maybe even before. We had each found something in the other that made us good and deep allies. Sisters, even then, when we had barely started kindergarten. She hadn’t made a lot of friends yet, though she was outgoing and friendly, such a lovely little girl, and neither had I. I didn’t know why she hadn’t, but I had the crazy grandmother. Shay and I loved each other right away. We were together in every grade since, spending hours after school together, every summer together.

  * * *

  We were twelve years old and, as usual, walking home from school. One day, a boy named Tommy started following us. I remembered Tommy from second grade, when he had started taunting me about my crazy grandmother. How could I deny it, with her standing in the bay like a tourist attraction, singing her lungs out? I had run home in shame and he continued for the whole school year, until he got bored. I finally told my father, who whispered a secret to me about Tommy, which I was told to never use, but just so that I would know his life wasn’t so perfect, either. But I thought of it as my secret weapon, just in case.

  And now he was back. He had no reason to hate Shay; she was purely a good person, and her grandmother was normal as far as I could see. I didn’t understand why he had chosen her. Yet he bedeviled her every day after school for weeks. Shay’s mother gave us the usual advice: don’t reply to him, don’t razz him back, don’t even look at him, but she was a busy dentist, Shay’s father was a biology professor in Boston, and they couldn’t do much more to help us. We tried it all and it wasn’t working. One day, Tommy came with reinforcements. Maybe five other boys, known bullies, who apparently thought this was great entertainment and trailed us en masse. At first I didn’t really understand what was happening. Shay was a good friend from a normal family; what could she possibly offer as bait? We kept walking until Tommy rushed past us and banged into Shay so hard, her books flew out of her hands; she fell to the ground and skinned her knee. There was a round of applause and encouraging shouts. I helped her up and we bent down to pick up her books, but Tommy stood on her notebook and spit on her. There was more approval from the ranks. They urged him on. I was terrified, while Shay stood next to me, shaking with fear. He used every ugly word he could think of, and finally even that word. And that’s when I realized, so that’s what it was all about. It sickened me.

  “You’re no better than she is, hanging around with her!” he yelled in my face, then spit on me, too.

  Something stirred in my mind. Fortunately, I had by then built up a bit of muscle from years of helping my father carry in boxes and crates of Galley stock and then spending my afternoons loading all those items onto shelves. That day, as I listened to Tommy, a switch had been turned on. He had spent a whole school year torturing me and now he was hurting my friend. I’d had enough. He
leaned toward her to unleash another barrage of words. I pulled my arm back and gave him the strongest roundhouse punch I could muster. It connected properly with his nose and he fell to the sidewalk. It nearly knocked him out. Being the ladies that we were, Shay and I pulled him to his feet, propped him, dizzy and bloodied, against a fence.

  “Anyone else?” I asked, rage being the better part of my bravery. I held up my fist and then, my brain frying with fury, unleashed Tommy’s secret. “You ought to treat me better,” I shouted at him, holding on to that fence like he was on a boat in choppy waters, “since your family owes my father’s store a ton of money for food!”

  His retinue grew quiet, then looked at him with disdain. Cape Codders are a thrifty lot, penurious even, and keep their books in order, almost as a religion, right from childhood. They left him leaning against the fence and melted away in disgust.

  The look on Tommy’s face made me feel awful. He was mortified. And I was ashamed of myself for being no better than he. I had become cruel, too, and it horrified me.

  He slunk into the school the next day with a royal shiner, a nose that was still trickling blood, and a big lump on the back of his head that showed through his buzz cut. He never bothered either one of us again.

  It hadn’t been her first experience, Shay confided to me later. It hadn’t been the first time she had those words flung at her, nor the first senseless exchange that was meant to wound her. Apparently, that’s where Tommy had disappeared to when he finally left me alone back in second grade. He had made his way to Shay’s house and had started a career of taunting her before she left for school in the morning and had finished his day by continuing outside her house after she got home, with only her elderly grandmother to watch over things.