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“You're telling me everything I need to know,” she said.

“I didn't say a single negative.”

“Thank you, Bonnie,” she said, running her fingers through her dark hair.

“I didn't
say
anything!”

I wished Miss P had gotten the kind of fortune she deserved:
Good news will arrive from an unexpected quarter
.

CHAPTER TEN

By the time I reached berth 101 I could see that the day wasn't going to go the way I had pictured it.

Cindy was leaning against the taffrail, looking at the boats and bare masts all around us through binoculars. Perhaps I had expected a quiet, father/daughter day in the sun, Cindy demurely in the background. I must have been a huge, weird image through the Leitz binoculars, legging my way down the gangway, because she gave a little start and said, “Golly!”

But it was the presence of Jack Stoughton that made me take a moment before I stepped down into the
Queen
, not wanting to see Jack or have him see me. Not that we ever say any more than hi to each other. Jack Stoughton defends people Denise knows, money launderers and basketball players three years behind in their child support payments. He's good at it, always driving a new Jaguar or a bright red two-seater of a make no one else ever heard of. Jack had gone to school with Dad—they played tennis together on the asphalt courts in Strawberry Canyon.

Dad looked out from the cabin door just to one side of the helm, and he gave me one of his waves, one hand up, like someone far away. He looked wonderful, tanned, a little white mark on his nose from wearing sunglasses. He was motioning Jack into the cabin, where a miniature galley and a miniature bathroom and a bedroom/living room were nestled into the hull, neat and homey.

“Bonnie,” Jack boomed, not dressed for boating, which gave me a little hope. He wore a rust-brown suit, matching his red hair and his red eyebrows. He cocked his head and gave me a smile he should have practiced in front of a mirror, showing where some bridgework on the left side of his upper jaw was missing. Then Jack, too, vanished into the cabin, reaching back to pull the door shut.

“Jack's on the clock,” said Cindy, looking around at pointless things with the binoculars Dad kept stowed along with the bird book and the spare batteries. She meant: Dad would be billed for this visit, down to the minute. One of Dad's habitual gestures is a glance at his sport watch, which he wears with the watch face on the pulse of his wrist. I've watched him making notes in a red leather book when he gets done with one phone call and starts another, getting up to shut the den door, protecting client privilege.

“Dad's throwing him some business,” I said, not really interested, just accepting the fact that it would be a while.

Cindy shrugged, but she kept peering at distant cars and people swabbing decks or flaking out rope in tidy Flemish loops.

“You wouldn't want to have a boat like that,” she said, indicating a dazzling white sailing yacht purling out toward the bay under temporary mechanical power, its crew of four leaning against the port rail, flexing their shoulders, getting ready for some white-canvas sailing.

I wanted to respond that I sure would, but Cindy looked worn today, little wrinkles under her eyes, and I pawed through my carryall for some sunblock.

She applied the stuff with two fingers, squinting and gaping like someone smearing on night cream. “It would be hard to park a big yacht like that,” she was saying.

I agreed that it might take practice.

“What happened here?” she said, pointing above her own ear.

I didn't say anything. I touched the bare place on my head, the fine little stitches. Fuzz was already filling in the naked skin.

“Better put some goop on it,” she said.

I appreciated her good sense, but didn't want the coconut oil in my hair. Still, I accepted her attentions, her gentle dab, dab, and when the two men emerged you could see Jack approving, women involved in petty activities, grooming each other.

But this wasn't the way I wanted to introduce the subject of my injury, so I flung the scarf over my head for a moment, peasant fashion.

“Later,” Dad called to Jack, and big as our boat is, she lifted and fell when Jack disembarked and hurried up the gangway, folding papers into an interior pocket of his jacket.

“Champion!” said Dad, and he gave me a hug. I was a little embarrassed. Champion is one of his pet names for me, and here was Cindy looking on. But he was also letting me know that his feelings for me were the same as ever, and he was letting Cindy in on this, too. He didn't comment on the blue-and-white scarf knotted under my chin.

As we rumbled past the Alameda Coast Guard station, Cindy wanted to know why the navy painted its ships red and white. I told her they were rescue cutters, and you'd be glad to see them if you were clinging to a floating mast off the Farrallons. Maybe I misrepresented my grasp of sea lore a little, explaining to her that there were two kinds of cutters, one a variety of sailboat, not at all like one of these powerful small ships. I can read a compass, and a depth chart is no mystery, but I have trouble calling a toilet “the head.”

“I took swimming lessons,” she asserted.

“You didn't!” said Dad, steady at the helm, not looking at either of us.

“The Australian crawl,” said Cindy. She headed back across the boat, and focused the binoculars on another sight too close to be worth looking at through eight by twenty-four glasses, a gray ship taking on a stream of shiny metal, scrap entering her cargo hold with a grinding roar like a garbage disposal. Even with the light wind drifting from the west you could smell the processed metal, a sour stink.

“Australian crawl,” said Dad, with a wink at me. No one calls it that anymore. “Bonnie'll rescue you.”

“In Ames,” she said. “Fulfilling the PE requirement. I was the best in the class.”

She said this in a pertly serious way, and Dad was quick to say that he had no doubt she was the best in every category.

“My Great-Uncle Carl was nearly killed by a torpedo,” she said.

“What did you do with that pill?” Dad asked his bride as we powered north toward the Bay Bridge, the water calm, the air beginning to freshen. This was the way an experienced lawyer asks questions—not Did you swallow the medicine? or Did you lose the tablet?—never leading the witness.

“I took it,” said Cindy sounding resigned, or embarrassed.

“You're going to need it,” said Dad.

By the time the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge fell over us Cindy was leaning back on a cushion in the cabin, swearing that the seasickness pill would kick in any minute.

I got her a plastic pan from the galley, the kind a boat carries for really no other purpose. I sat with her. “He was on a troop ship going to Europe, and they had the wolf packs,” she said. “The submarines?” She said this with a questioning tone, as though offering an answer she thought might be wrong.

I couldn't follow her thread of conversation for a moment. I must have murmured something, because she added, “He heard the torpedo hit with a clang. But it didn't go off.”

When I got a wet hand towel from the bathroom—the head—she said that I was wasting my time, she would die soon. She said it as a joke, but her lips were gray.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I had to grab a rail and hang on. The wind was stiffening, the radio antenna lashing back and forth. I couldn't help feeling a stab of compassion for Cindy, below deck, half out of her bunk.

Dad shook his head happily and shouted something about not being able to get the maximum out of the
Queen
today. Or maybe he was yelling merrily that he was going to plunge us all deep into the Pacific. Dad had always driven the forty-eight-foot Super Sport toward its limit, thirty knots when a swell wasn't running. The boat tore through the moderate seas, and a large ship, a coursing building, loomed down on us.

I was aware of how much I had been looking forward to conversation, chitchat, how snorkeling had been. I had been wondering if Dad might want a kitten in a couple of months—maybe two kittens. He often took in strays, although he had terrible luck with them, always having to drive them to the vet. Myrna's kittens still looked like dirty socks, but they were at the crawling stage, their eyes beginning to open.

I suspected it was against some law to slash through the water in shirtsleeves, none of the passengers equipped with life vests. The tanker made a subtle adjustment, the faceless bulk steering by telepathy, and when the giant vessel was past us, Dad swung the helm to slice across the wake.

The container ship loomed, so breathtakingly close I felt the cool damp of its shadow, but this was pure Dad, grinning as our bow wave plastered the windshield with salt water and drenched my silk scarf so it hung on me chilly and wet. Dad had ordered the
Queen
custom crafted from a boatbuilder in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and in the four years since he had first eased her out of the berth he had always looked forward to pounding his way through choppy water, forgetting all about fuel efficiency.

“How's your tennis?” he shouted over the thrum of the engine, and it sounded like he was calling,
How's your dentist?

Dad eased off on the throttle, gulls capering along the lacy trough in the water. Some of the gulls were gray, drab, a year or two old, and some were older, elegant and pristine in their adult uniforms. I said something about not having much time to practice.

“I'm going to give Cindy lessons,” he said. “We'll make a threesome.”

In his den Dad had a shelf of nothing but Wimbledon on videotape. “The two of us against your forehand smash,” I said, playing along, just to keep him in such a good mood.

“Why not?” There were little flecks of water on his sunglasses. They would dry there, leaving brine spots, so I stooped into the galley for some paper towels. Cindy was a huddled thing, boneless, beyond the bulkhead. I gave the towel a squirt of Windex and wiped his glasses for him. I was stalling, giving myself some time to remember the last time I had picked up a tennis racket, Rowan and I not even bothering to keep score.

“Tell me why not?” he persisted, allowing me to hook the aviator glasses over his ears.

I lifted one shoulder, let it fall, happy but unwilling to commit. My family takes sports like a religion. I was scheduled to see Dr. Breen on Friday before lunch.

“You're chicken,” he said offhandedly.

Dad used a set of old-fashioned epithets when he teased or when he stubbed his toe on one of his own briefcases. You were “chicken” if you insisted on donning a life vest, or “a heel” if you didn't send someone a get-well card, or “a piker” if you bought the cheapest meal on the menu. I don't know where he got these words, and no one else I have ever met used quite this vocabulary. When he stubbed his toe he said
“Judas Priest,”
the closest he ever came to swearing.

But there was a trace of challenge to the sidelong glance he gave me. Dad
owns
tennis, possesses it entirely—he might have invented the sport personally, down to the sweet spot in the rackets and the fuzz on the balls. He has two serves. Serve One is a gunshot, blinding fast. If that attack is long or wide, Serve Two is a lob, gentle and spooky, with a magical backspin. Every time I'd seen him play Jack Stoughton, the big red-haired man ended up reaching for his wallet, another bet lost.

“Friday night,” he called, gunning the engine. Then he hit the side of his head, an exaggerated “I almost forgot.”

He slipped a velvet box from his pants pocket.

The box alone was luxurious, my fingers leaving silvery prints on the lavender plush.

He gave me an
open it
lift of his chin.

“They dive three hundred feet down for those pearls,” he said. “Holding their breath.”

“No they don't.” I laughed.

“You
could.”

We headed toward the Golden Gate, back in toward the harbor. The shadow of the bridge was cool as we surged through it, and the wind from behind whipped the knot ends of my scarf up around my lips.

Mom didn't ask, not in so many words. She did inquire how everything was, that inclusive Everything that means the weather, human life, my father. She didn't take the pearl out of its box. She said it was nice.

But it was only when we were in her shop very early Friday morning that she said, “They won't have kids, will they.” A statement, a definite assertion, as she fastened her green smock, bending to her most recent shipment.

I could have said,
How would I know
. But the question was hard-edged, a consideration I had avoided. The last years of my parents' difficulties had taken place behind the closed door of their bedroom, but I had overheard my dad's whiplash whisper and his upbeat laugh: There, I've made a point. Mom can deal with tax accountants, and she can fire a cashier if the till is fifteen cents short, but in an argument she gets a stubborn, feline expression and just waits for the disagreement to pass.

Tropical plants often arrive wrapped in bright-colored plastic, customs stickers and aphis-control tabs stuck on randomly. Mom stops talking when she unwraps a special order, using a tiny knife blade and a quiet, peering manner as she works, as though if the plant inside is blighted she can catch just a glimpse and stop right there, and not have to expose herself to full disappointment.

“This is supposed to be a white bird-of-paradise,” she said, palpating the plastic wrapper, scarlet
OVERNIGHT
and
RUSH
taped over the seams. A photographer for the Sunday
Examiner
was shooting a spread at Dunsmuir house, a historical mansion on the bank of Lake Merritt.

I stood by with a pair of iron shears, like someone ready to kill the specimen if it proved monstrous. If a bird-of-paradise is anything less than perfectly healthy it turns into black slime. I said something encouraging, and Mom continued to worry the shipping tape, unpeeling plastic.