Eight

The thermometer said sixty-nine, and Tilly read it lying down, as she always did.

“That’s nine more than the rule,” she said. She sat up and brushed grass off the front of the yellow jacket. “You don’t have to measure any more. It’s been over since June.”

“I’ll measure until the boat comes out in the fall,” Gideon said. “It goes down again, and I’d like to see it going.”

She thought that was reasonable. She did not say so, but she left the thermometer where he could reach it.

It was a hot, still morning with a light wind out of the south. He had been on the grass since half past seven. The inn was full behind him, twenty-two keys off the board, and the line at the window ran past the lilacs to the road. Lucille Bouchard sat on her folding stool with the thermos. Biscuit lay at the second post with her sail up.

The jar stood on the grass between Tilly’s boots. It had seven greens in it. He had heard the sixth go in on the third of July and the seventh on the tenth, both on the stroke of eight, and both times she had sailed out to the raft and back with the skiff ten feet off her quarter.

Lucille looked at her watch. “Eight,” she said.

Tilly did not unscrew the lid. She had the eighth piece in her right hand. He could see the green edge of it between her fingers.

“I’m not putting it in yet,” she said.

His stomach went cold. “Why not?”

“Because it’s the last one. I put the others in at eight, when you were here. But a Saturday isn’t finished at eight. It’s finished at nine.” She frowned at the jar. “I thought about it all week. The last one should go in when it’s all the way done. Then nobody can say it wasn’t.”

“That’s fair.”

“I know it’s fair.” She picked the jar up and carried it onto the dock, and set it down on the planks at the second post, well back from the edge. She put the glass in the pocket of her jacket and buttoned the flap. “Today I’m going round the raft. I go to it and round the back of it and home. And you’re not coming in the skiff.”

He looked at the skiff, nosed up on the shale with its oars shipped.

“You’ve been to the raft four times,” he said. “You’ve never been round it. On the far side the wind will be behind you, and the boom comes across. That’s the hard part.”

“You showed me. I duck, and I change hands after.”

“I showed you on the grass.”

“I did it on the water last week. You said it was right.”

She had done it, twice, with him near enough to catch the gunwale. He had set his own rule in April. Sixty degrees was for sailing off alone with nobody near. He had not understood, when he made it, that the day would come when she held him to it.

“The skiff stays on the beach with the oars in it,” he said. “I stand at the end of the dock, where I can see you the whole way. If I shout ‘let go,’ you let the sheet go, at once, and you don’t argue until afterward.”

“I can argue afterward?”

“For as long as you like.”

“All right.” She looked down the dock toward the end. She was still at the seventh board on foot. “You have to go to the end by yourself, then. I’ll be going past it.”

He walked out to the end and stood on the new timber. Behind him he heard her untie her knot and step down into the boat.

“When,” she called, though there was nobody holding anything.

Biscuit came along the row of posts and passed him. Tilly did not look at the end of the dock this time. She was looking at the raft. Her left hand held the red sheet and her right the tiller, and her curls blew forward round the yellow collar.

He put his hands in his pockets and kept them there.

It was forty yards to the raft. He had rowed beside her across it and knew how long it took, a little over two minutes in that wind. It seemed longer. The sail got small. Halfway out a puff darkened the water, and he saw the sheet run and come in again before the boat had leaned at all. She had seen the puff coming.

She reached the raft and did not touch it. She went wide of the corner, as he had told her, leaving a boat’s length. For a moment the raft was between them and he could see only the top of the sail above the grey planks. He counted. At six the sail swung across, quick and clean, and a moment after that the white bow came out from behind the barrels, pointing home.

He let his breath go. Up on the shale, Lucille had risen from her stool.

The way back was slower, against the wind. She made two tacks. On the second she came about too soon and the boat stalled, head to wind, with the sail shaking. He opened his mouth and shut it. She sat for a moment looking up at the sail. Then she pushed the tiller hard over and waited, and Biscuit fell off and began to move.

He walked down the dock as she came in, keeping pace, and stopped a yard short of the second post.

“Don’t help,” Tilly said, without looking at him.

“I’m not.”

She came in at an angle, a little fast. Six feet out she let the sheet go altogether and turned up into the wind. The boat lost her way and slid sideways. The gunwale met the post with a knock that he felt through his boots. She had the bow line round it before the hull could bounce. She tied it. She pulled on the knot twice, then reached for the stern line and tied that.

She climbed out onto the planks by herself and stood up. Her face was red and her mouth was pressed tight to keep it from doing anything undignified.

“I hit it,” she said.

“You landed her. Everybody hits it the first time. The post is still there and so is the boat.”

“I went round the back. Could you see me round the back?”

“I could see the top of your sail. You gybed on six.”

“I counted five.”

“Then it was five. You were nearer.”

She unbuttoned her pocket and took out the glass. She knelt by the jar and unscrewed the blue lid, and held the piece over the mouth for a moment. Then she let it fall. It rang on the other seven.

“That’s eight,” Tilly said. “In a row. It’s finished.”

She screwed the lid down. He found that he could not say anything, and so he sat down on the planks beside the jar, because his legs wanted him to.

There were steps on the dock behind him. He knew them. Camille came out along the boards in her whites, with flour on her wrists. She had the old orange jacket over her head and tied. She must have been on the beach for some time.

“Maman, you’re on the dock,” Tilly said. “You’ve got the ugly one.”

“It counts,” Camille said.

She sat down on the planks on the other side of the jar, cross-legged, so that the three of them made a triangle with eight pieces of green glass in the middle. She looked at the jar and at her daughter. Then she looked across at Gideon, and nodded once.

He had waited for that since a Friday in April, at a bare table. They had talked over the words on Thursday night in her kitchen. She had told him she would not promise the day, because she would only know it when she saw it. He had carried the words about with him anyway, and now he could not find the first of them.

“Tilly,” Camille said. “Sit down, my heart. Gideon and I have something true to tell you. It’s a big thing, and we’re going to tell it together.”

Tilly sat. She folded her hands in her lap, as she did at the bench when she was waiting for the heel.

“You asked me once who gave me my eye,” Gideon said. His voice came out lower than he had meant. “I said my father. You said you didn’t know who gave you yours.”

“Maman doesn’t have it. I asked.”

“I gave it to you. I’m your father, Tilly.”

She did not move. Her eyes went to his left eye and stayed there. A small wave slapped under the boards.

“My father lives far away,” she said slowly. “He doesn’t know how to find us.”

“That’s what I told you when you were three,” Camille said. “I thought it was a kind way to say it. It turned out to be true. He lived in New York. He didn’t know how to find us, because he didn’t know there was anybody to find.”

“I didn’t know about you,” Gideon said. “I didn’t know you’d been born. I found out on this dock, the day you told me I needed a life jacket. You looked up and I saw your eye.”

“You asked me how old I was.”

“I did.”

“And my birthday. You were counting.” She said it with a certain respect. Then she turned to her mother. “Why didn’t he know? You know where New York is.”

Camille had her hands on her knees. He saw them tighten.

“I wrote to him,” she said. “Before you were born, I wrote him three letters. I told him you were coming. I had an address and I put the right stamps on. But there was a man at his house who took the letters out of the mail before he saw them. He wrote on the front that nobody wanted them, and he sent them back to me. That wasn’t true. He didn’t ask Gideon. He decided by himself.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Pike.”

Tilly’s eyebrows came down. “The tall one. He said he was one of the ones who count.”

“That’s the one.”

“Then he counted wrong.” She thought. “Is he in trouble?”

“He doesn’t work for the company any more,” Gideon said. “My mother and my sister and I voted on it, the day we voted about the inn.”

“Good.” She dismissed him. Her eyes came back to Gideon, and they were harder to meet than the board had been. “So it was his fault.”

He could have left it there. Camille would not have corrected him. She was looking at the jar.

“The letters were his fault,” he said. “But there’s another part, and it’s mine. Before you were born I lived here for a summer. I taught sailing off this dock, and I knew your mother, and I loved her. Then my father got very sick and I left in one night. I knew where this inn was. I knew its telephone number. I should have come back and looked. I should have called. I didn’t, for almost six years. Nobody stopped me doing that. I stopped myself, and it was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was ashamed of how I’d left. The longer I stayed away, the harder it got to come.”

Tilly considered that for some time. She looked at the end of the dock, sixty feet away, and he wondered whether she was thinking of boards.

“Did you get lost?” she asked.

“Yes. For a long time.”

“But you know the road now. Maman said you know the road and the drive and which board is the sixth.”

“I do.”

“Are you going to keep coming on Saturdays?”

“Every one,” he said. “And the other days.”

She nodded, slowly, and then she turned on her mother.

“You said eight Saturdays for the lessons. It wasn’t for the lessons.”

“It was for this,” Camille said. “I needed to know that he would come every time, before I told you who he was. I didn’t want you to have a father for two weeks and then stand on a dock waiting. So I made him earn it, and I let you keep the count without telling you what it was for. I decided that for you. You can be cross at me about it.”

“I was counting and I didn’t know what.” Tilly’s voice wobbled for the first time. “Does Arlo know? Does Winnie?”

“Winnie always knew. Arlo found out in June. They’ve kept quiet because I asked them to.”

“Everybody knew before me.”

“The grown-ups did. You’re the first person we’ve sat down and told, and you’re the only one we told together.”

Tilly looked from one of them to the other. Her chin was unsteady. Then she drew a long breath through her nose, exactly as her mother did before a hard service, and it steadied.

“I would have counted anyway,” she said. “I’d have counted better if I knew. But he did eight. One of them I wasn’t even there for, and he sat at the end.” She put her hand on the lid. “So it’s allowed. I’m a little cross. I’ll tell you when I’ve stopped.”

“Thank you,” said Camille. Her eyes were wet.

“Is Bea my aunt?”

“She is,” Gideon said.

“And the lady on the bench who held the blue too tight? The one who voted?”

“That’s my mother. She’s your grandmother.”

“I’ve got a Mémé.”

“You can have two. Mémé stays Mémé. The other one will need a name, and she’ll take whatever you give her. She told me so.”

“I’ll think about it.” Tilly got up on her knees. “Hold still.”

She shuffled across the planks until she was directly in front of him and took hold of his jaw with one small damp hand. She turned his face to the light off the water. She brought her own face so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek, and she examined his left eye for a long time. He looked into hers, grey, with the brown wedge low down, an inch away. He did not blink. He thought his heart would come through the life jacket.

“It’s the same,” she said at last. “Mine’s a little bit smaller, because I’m smaller.” She let go of his jaw and sat back on her heels. “I’m not going to call you anything different yet. You’re Gideon. I’ll decide.”

“Take as long as you want.”

“I will. You can’t ask me.”

“I won’t ask.”

She pulled the jar toward her and unscrewed the lid. She tipped the glass a little and looked in, and stirred with one finger, and brought out a piece. It was green, about the size of a nickel, and to him it looked like the other seven.

“This is the best one,” she said. “It’s the one I held when you didn’t come. I held it the whole hour, and my hand was sore, and I told Maman it wasn’t. Then I put it on the windowsill by itself. The next Saturday you came, so it got to be one.” She held it out on her flat palm. “It was nearly not in the count at all. You can have it.”

He put out his hand and she set the glass in it. It was warm from the jar, which had stood in the sun.

“Don’t lose that too,” Tilly said.

“I won’t.”

He took out his wallet. It was the same plain black one, and his fingers were clumsy with it. On the left side was the slot with the plastic window, where the folded yellow page had been since April. He could read a few words of Camille’s writing through it, back to front. He worked the piece of glass in behind the plastic, against the paper. It only just fitted. When he closed the wallet there was a lump in it, and he could feel it through the leather.

Camille had watched him do it. She said nothing. She reached across the place where the jar had been and laid her hand on his knee, in front of their daughter and her mother and anyone on the porch who cared to look.

Tilly noted the hand and made no comment. She screwed the lid on the jar and stood up with it in her arms.

“There’s seven in it now,” she said. “That’s all right. The count’s done, so it doesn’t have to be eight. It’s just my jar.” She looked up the lawn. “I’m going to tell Arlo I went round the raft. Then I’m going to tell him the other thing, even though he knows. I want to be the one who says it.”

“Stay on the flagstones,” Camille said.

“I know.”

She went up the dock in her red boots and stepped off onto the grass. Lucille folded the stool and fell in beside her. Ten yards up the lawn Tilly stopped and turned round.

“Gideon!”

“Yes?”

“Next Saturday isn’t a number. It’s just Saturday. You still have to be on time.”

“Eight o’clock,” he said.

She gave one firm nod and went on up to the kitchen porch. He sat on the planks beside her mother, with his hand pressed flat against his back pocket.
***