The Shipping News Part 11

14.

Wavey In Wyoming they name girls Skye. In Newfoundland it's Wavey.

A SAt.u.r.dAY afternoon. Quoyle was spattered with turquoise drops from painting the children's room. Sat at the table with cup and saucer, a plate of jelly doughnuts. afternoon. Quoyle was spattered with turquoise drops from painting the children's room. Sat at the table with cup and saucer, a plate of jelly doughnuts.

"Well, Aunt," he said, "you are in the yacht upholstery business." Sucking at the tea. "I thought all along it was sofas."

"Did you see my sign?" The aunt sanded a bureau, rubbed the wood with hissing paper, sling of flesh under her upper arm trembling.

Bunny and Suns.h.i.+ne, under the table with cars and a cardboard road that unfolded in racetrack curves. Bunny put a block on the road. "That's the moose," she said. "Here comes Daddy. Rrrr Rrrr. Bee bee-beep Bee bee-beep. The moose don't care." She crashed the car into the block of wood.

[123] "I want to do that!" said Suns.h.i.+ne, reaching for the block and the car.

"Get your own. This is mine. "There was scrabbling, the knock of skull on table leg and Suns.h.i.+ne's howl.

"Crybaby!" Bunny scrambled out from under the table and threw the block and car at Suns.h.i.+ne.

"Here, now!" said the aunt.

"Calm down, Bunny." Quoyle lifted Suns.h.i.+ne into his lap, inspected the red mark on her forehead, kissed it, swayed back and forth. Across the room Bunny d.a.m.ned all three with killing eyes. Quoyle's smile signaled his disinterest in glares. But it seemed to him the sounds of his children were screaming and sc.r.a.ping. When would they start to be gentle?

"The shop is sixes and sevens at the moment, but at least the sewing machines are set. Getting experienced help is the big problem, but I'm training two women, Mrs. Mavis Bangs and Dawn Budgel. Mavis is an older woman, widow, you know, but Dawn's only twenty-six. Went to university, scholars.h.i.+ps and all. Absolutely no work in her field. She's been doing lumpfish processing at the fish plant to fill in-when there's work-and then sc.r.a.ping along on unemployment insurance. That's the lumpfish caviar." Didn't care for it herself.

"No, I didn't see the shop. I interviewed two of your customers, I'm writing about their boat. The Melvilles. It was a surprise. No idea you were a yacht upholsterer."

"Oh yes. I've been waiting for my equipment to come. Opened the shop about ten days ago. I started the yacht upholstery, you see, after my friend died. In 1979. What these days they'd call a 'significant other.' Warren. That's who I named the dog after. In the postal service. Warren was, not the dog." She laughed. Her face flashed elusive expressions. Didn't tell Quoyle that Warren had been Irene Warren. Dearest woman in the world. How could he understand that? He couldn't.

"I swear until today I never knew such a thing existed. I would have been less surprised if you'd been a nuclear physicist." It came to him he knew nearly nothing of the aunt's life. And hadn't missed the knowledge.

[124] "You know, you're very easily surprised for a newsman. It's all simple and logical. I grew up beside the sea, saw more boats than cars, though sure, none of them were yachts. My first job in the States was in a coat factory, sewing coats. The years Warren and I were together we lived on a houseboat, moored it at different marinas on the Long Island sh.o.r.e.

"We got a special rate at Lonelybrook, the marina we were at longest. And if we got tired of seeing the same familiar boats, on Sundays we could drive away to some other harbor, look at their boats, have a dinner. It was like a hobby, like bird-watching. Warren would say 'What do you think about going for a ride, look at some boats?' We dreamed we'd have a nice little ketch someday, cruise around, but it never happened. Always intended to come back here, back to the old house, with Warren, but we put it off, you know. So for me, coming back is a little bit in Warren's memory." More than that.

"I reupholstered an old chair we had on the houseboat, nice lines to it but a sort of mustard brown with the piping all frayed and thready. Got a good upholstery fabric, a dark blue with a red figure in it, took off the old upholstery and used it for a pattern. Just took my time st.i.tching and fitting and pressing. It came out perfect. And I enjoyed doing it. Always liked sewing, working with my hands. Warren thought it was nice. So I did one in leather. That was something, working up leather. This real dark red, burgundy I guess you'd say. The only thing was I didn't get the welting as perfect as I should have. It pooched out a little here and there. And I had a lot of trouble with the tufting. Made me sick to look at how that beautiful leather was spoiled. Because to me it was spoiled. So Warren says-knew I enjoyed it-says 'Why don't you take a workshop in leather upholstery? Some kind of a course?'

"And Warren was the one that noticed the ad in Upholstery Review Upholstery Review. Got me the subscription for Christmas. A reader. Read anything came into the house, the toothpaste boxes and wine labels. Used to buy a bottle of wine for Friday night supper. Books! My dear, that houseboat was filled with books. So this ad was for a summer course-Advanced Upholstery Techniques-at a school down in North Carolina. Warren wrote off for the brochure. I was [125] just horrified at the cost, and I didn't want to go off alone for a whole summer. It was an eight-week course. But Warren said 'You can't tell, Agnis, you might never get the chance to do this again.' Upshot was, I decided I would."

Suns.h.i.+ne squirmed out of Quoyle's arms and got the blocks. She put one on the road under the table, glanced triumphantly at Bunny. Who swung her legs. Shutting first one eye and then the other, making Suns.h.i.+ne and Quoyle and the aunt hop back and forth. Until it seemed something appeared on the edge of her vision, something out in the tuckamore, a gliding shadow. Something white! That disappeared.

The aunt was rolling, telling Her Story. The romantic version. "It was at college in a little town on Pamlico Sound. There was about fifty people there from all over. A woman from Iowa City who wanted to specialize in museum restoration using antique brocades and rare fabrics. A man who did doll furniture. A furniture designer who kept saying he wanted the experience. I wrote to Warren, glad I came. Told them I didn't have a specialty, just liked working with leather and wanted to improve at it."

She put the sandpaper aside and wiped the tabletop with a waxy rag, long swipes that picked up the dust. Bunny sidled along the wall, came to Quoyle, needing his proximity. Squeezed his arm with both hands.

"About halfway through the course this instructor, he works with the Italian furniture designers, said 'Agnis, I've got a tough one for you.' It was a little twenty-foot fibergla.s.s cruiser that be longed to the school's janitor. He'd just bought a used boat. My job to fit and upholster the odd-shaped cus.h.i.+ons that were settees in the daytime and berths at night. There was a triangular bar that he wanted upholstered in tufted black leather, the tufting spelling out the boat's name which was, as I remember, Torquemada Torquemada. I persuaded him that wouldn't look as well as a cla.s.sic diamond pattern of pleated tufting with a smart padded b.u.mper at the upper rim. I said he could have the boat's name etched on a bra.s.s plate to hang behind the bar, or a nice wood sign. He said go for it. It worked.

"I put in some curves, scrolled and rolled edges, gathers and [126] pleats-a very sumptuous style that suited the fellow's dream. Really, there's quite an art to it, and I was upholstering beyond myself. Pure luck." She pried open a tin. Yellow wax. The smell of housekeeping and industry.

"Instructor said I had a touch for boat work, that yacht upholstery paid. Said you got to see some great boats and met a lot of interesting people." Clear enough the aunt let a stranger's praise change her life.

Quoyle was on the floor with his daughters, building a bridge over the road, a town, a city crowded with block cars and roaring engines. Patiently rebuilding bridges that fell as trucks caromed.

"Dad, make a castle. Make a castle in the road." He would do anything they told him.

"On the bus on the way back to Long Island I worked it all out, how I could start up my own little business. I sketched out the sign-Hamm's Yacht Upholstery-with a full-rigged sailing s.h.i.+p under the letters. I intended to rent a storefront down by the wharf at Mussle Harbor. I made a list of the equipment I needed-an industrial-grade sewing machine, b.u.t.ton press, pair of padded trestles, taking-down tools-tack lifters and ripping chisels, rebuilding tools-hide strainers, webbing stretchers. I told myself to start small, just get the leather I needed for each job so's I wouldn't tie up a lot of money in leathers."

The castle rose, towers and flying b.u.t.tresses, one of the aunt's bobby pins with a bit of yarn for a pennant. Now the cars metamorphosed to galloping horses with destructive urges. Bunny and Suns.h.i.+ne clicked their tongues for hoofbeats.

"So home I get, all excited, just pour this out fast as I could talk, Warren sitting there at the kitchen table nodding. I noticed the weight loss, looked sort of grey like how you get with a bad headache or when you're really sick. So I said 'Don't you feel good?' Warren, poor soul! All knotted up. Then just burst out with it. 'Cancer. All through me. Four to six months. Didn't want to worry you while you were taking your course.' "

The aunt got up, sc.r.a.ping her chair, went to the door to get a breath free from the moral stench of wax.

"Turned out, it was over in three months. First thing I did [127] when I pulled myself together was get that puppy and name her." Didn't explain the need to say part of Irene Warren's name fifty times a day, to invoke the happiness that had been. "She didn't get bad tempered until after she was grown. And then it was only strangers. And after a while I rented the storefront s.p.a.ce and started in on yacht upholstery. Warren-my Warren-never saw the shop."

Quoyle lay on his back on the floor, blocks piled on his chest, rising and falling as he breathed.

"That's boats," said Suns.h.i.+ne. "Dad is the water and these are my ferryboats. Dad, you are the water."

"I feel like it," said Quoyle. Bunny back to the window, put two blocks on the sill. Looked into tuckamore.

"Anyway, I've been working at it for the past thirteen years. And when your father and mother went, though I never knew your mother, I thought it was a good time to come back to the old place. Or risk never seeing it again. I suppose I'm getting old now, though I don't feel it. You shouldn't get down on their level, you know." Meaning Quoyle on the floor, covered with blocks. "They'll never respect you."

"Aunt," said Quoyle, his mind floating somewhere between the boats under his chin and the yacht upholstery business. "The woman in your shop. What did you say she studied at university?" He had always played with his children. The first embarra.s.sed pleasure of stacking blocks with Bunny. He took an interest in sand pies.

"Dawn, you mean? Mrs. Bangs never set foot in a grade school, much less university. Pharology. Science of lighthouses and signal lights. Dawn knows elevations and candlepower, stuff about flashes and blinks and buoys. Bore you silly with it. And you know, she talks about it all day long because it's slipping out of her head. Use it or lose it. And she's losing it. Says so herself. But there's no jobs for her, although the s.h.i.+pping traffic is so heavy you can almost lie awake at night and hear it tearing over the ocean. Why, are you interested in Dawn?" The aunt slid her fingers, feeling the waxy surface.

"No," said Quoyle. "I don't even know her. Wondered, that's all."

[128] A fly crawled on the table, stopped to wipe its mouth with its front legs, then limped on, the hind legs more like skids than moving limbs. The aunt snapped her rag.

"Why don't you come by the shop some day next week? Meet Dawn and Mavis. We can have a bite at Skipper Willie's."

"That's a good idea," said Quoyle. Glanced at Bunny staring out into tuckamore.

"What are you looking at, Bunny?" Her scowling gaze.

"When I grow up," said Bunny, "I am going to live in a red log cabin and have some pigs. And I will never kill them for their bacon. Because bacon comes from pigs, Dad. Beety told us. And Dennis killed a pig to get its bacon."

"Is that right?" said Quoyle, feigning amazement.

Tuesday, and Quoyle couldn't get started on the piece. He shoved the page of rain-smeared notes on the Botterjacht under his pile of papers. He was used to reporting resolutions, votes, minutes, bylaws, agendas, statements embroidered with political ornament. Couldn't describe the varnished wood of Tough Baby Tough Baby. How put down on paper the Melvilles' savageness? Bunny much on his mind. The door-scratching business in the old kitchen. He shuffled his papers, looked at his watch again and again. Would go into town and take a look at the aunt's shop. Wanted to ask her about Bunny. Was there a problem or wasn't there. And insatiable Quoyle was starving anyway.

Before he started the station wagon the tall woman, Wavey, came to mind. He looked down the road both ways to see if she was walking. Sometimes she went to the school at noon. He thought, maybe, to help in the lunchroom. Didn't see her. But as he came up over the rise and in sight of Jack's house, there she was, striding along and swinging a canvas bag. He pulled up, glad she was alone, that he was, too.

It was books: she worked in the school library twice a week, she said. Her voice somewhat hoa.r.s.e. She sat straight, feet neatly side by side. They looked at each other's hands, proving the eye's [129] affinity for the ring finger; both saw gold. Knew at least one thing about each other.

Silence, the sea unfolding in pieces. A skiff and bobbing dory, men leaning to reset a cod trap. Quoyle glanced, saw her pale mouth, neck, eyes somewhere between green gla.s.s and earth color. Rough hands. Not so young; heading for forty. But that sense of harmony with something, what, the time or place. He didn't know but felt it. She turned her head, caught him looking. Eyes flicked away again. But both were pleased.

"I have a daughter starting first grade this fall. Bunny. Her name is Bunny. My youngest daughter is Suns.h.i.+ne, goes to Beety Buggit's house while I'm at work." He thought he had to say something. Cleared his throat.

"I heard that." Her voice so quiet. As if she was talking to herself.

At the school driveway she got halfway out the door, murmured something Quoyle did not catch, then strode away. Maybe it was thank-you. Maybe it was stop by and have a cup of tea some day. Her hands swung. She stopped for a moment, took a white, crumpled tissue from her coat pocket, blew her nose. Still Quoyle sat there. Watched her run up the school steps and in through the door. What was wrong with him?

Just to see the way she walked, a tall woman who walked miles. And Petal had never walked if she could ride. Or lie down.

15.

The Upholstery Shop The knots of the upholsterer are the half-hitch, the slip-knot, the double half-hitch, and the tuft knot.

THE AUNT'S shop was in the lane behind Wharf Road. An ochre frame building with wooden flourishes and black shutters. Quoyle liked the row of shops, snug from the wind, yet almost on the wharf. The windows wavery with old gla.s.s. A bell jingled as he opened the door. The aunt, working a finger-roll edge on a stuffed pad, looked up. Curved needle halted in midmuslin. shop was in the lane behind Wharf Road. An ochre frame building with wooden flourishes and black shutters. Quoyle liked the row of shops, snug from the wind, yet almost on the wharf. The windows wavery with old gla.s.s. A bell jingled as he opened the door. The aunt, working a finger-roll edge on a stuffed pad, looked up. Curved needle halted in midmuslin.

"Here you are," she said. Looked around as though seeing the shop herself for the first time.

A woman with Emily d.i.c.kinson hair looped over her ears and symmetrically divided by a wide part sat at a sewing machine. The chattering needle slowed, the muslin slid over the table. The woman smiled at Quoyle, showing perfect teeth between violet lips, then [131] her smile faded, a sadness flowed down her face from brow to mouth. A jabot foamed at her throat.

"Mrs. Mavis Bangs," said the aunt like a master of ceremonies.

At another table, a young woman with a helmet of tight brown curls, scissoring expensively into leather.

"And Dawn Budgel," said the aunt. The woman tense with concentration, did not look up or stop cutting. There was a smell of leather, dye, size and perfume. The perfume came from Mrs. Bangs whose hands were folded now into each other, who stared at Quoyle. His hand went up to his chin.

"Well, this is it," said the aunt. "There's only the two sewing stations and one cutting table set up now, but as I build up business I hope to have six sewing and two cutting. That's what I had back in Long Island. I've got a sailing fis.h.i.+ng boat that's like a yacht below decks coming up next week-she was built in the States on the West Coast as a salmon-trolling ketch, but now she belongs to a fellow in St. John's. I've seen a few commercial fis.h.i.+ng sailboats in the last year or two. Cheap to run, they say. Working sail might be coming back. Don't I wish."

"Dawn here cutting out the chair backs for the dining salon on the Melvilles' yacht. That color blue matches Mrs. Melville's eyes. She had it specially dyed down in New York. And Mavis is sewing up the liners that go over the foam rubber. Dawn, this is my nephew I told you about. Works for the paper. We're just going to run over across the way to Skipper Will's and get some dinner. Dawn, when you get done cutting you might thread up the other machine with that blue. She had the thread dyed, too."

The aunt clicked out the door on her black heels, and Quoyle, slow in closing it behind her, heard Mrs. Bangs say to Dawn, "Not what you thought, is he?"

A blast of hot oil and scorch came from Skipper Will's exhaust fan. Inside the fug was worse, fishermen still in b.l.o.o.d.y oilskins and boots hunched over fries and cod, swigged from cups with dangling strings. Cigarette smoke dissolved in the cloud from the fryer. The [132] waitress bawled to the kitchen. Quoyle could see Skipper Will's filthy ap.r.o.n surging back and forth like ice in the landwash.

"Well, Agnis girl, what'll you 'ave today?" The waitress beamed at the aunt.

"I'll have the stewed cod, Pearl. Cuppa tea, of course. This here is my nephew, works for the paper."

"Oh yis, I sees him afore. In 'ere the odder day wit' Billy. 'Ad the squidburger."

"That I did," said Quoyle. "Delicious."

"Skipper Will, y'know, 'e invented the squidburger. Y'll 'ave it today, m'dear?"

"Yes," said Quoyle. "Why not? And tea. With cream." He had learned about the Skipper's coffee, a weak but acrid brew with undertones of cod.

Quoyle folded his napkin into a fan, unfolded it and made triangles of decreasing size. He looked at the aunt.

"Want to ask you something, Aunt. About Bunny." Steeled for this conversation. Petal had said a hundred times that Bunny was a "weird kid." He had denied it. But she was, in fact, different. Something was out of kilter. She was like a kettle of water, simmering and simmering, or in noisy boil before the pot goes dry and cracks, or sometimes cold, with a skim of mineral flowers on the surface.

"Do you think she's normal, Aunt?"

The aunt blew on her tea, looked at Quoyle. Cautious expression. Looked hard at Quoyle as though he were a new kind of leather she might buy.

"Those bad dreams. And her temper. And-" He stopped. Was sayings things badly.

"Well," said the aunt. "Just think of what's happened. She's lost members of her family. Moved to a strange place. The old house. New people. Her grandparents, her mother. I'm not sure she understands what's happened. She says sometimes that they are still in New York. Things are upside down for her. I suppose they are for all of us."

"All of that," said Quoyle drinking his tea savagely, "but there's something"-and his gut rumbled like a train-"something [133] else. I don't know how to say it, but that's what I'm talking about." The words "personality disorder"-the Mockingburg kindergarten teacher's words when Bunny pushed other children and hogged the crayons.

"Give me an example of what you mean."

A dreary cloud settled on Quoyle. "Well, Bunny doesn't like the color of the house. That dark green." That sounded idiotic. It was what had happened in the kitchen. He could overlook the rest. The stewed cod and the squidburger came. Quoyle bit at the squidburger as though at wrist ropes.

"The nightmares, for one thing. And the way she cries and yells over nothing. At six, six and a half, a kid shouldn't behave like that. You remember how she thought she saw a dog the first day we came to the house? Scared stiff of a white dog with red eyes? How we looked and looked and never saw a track nor trace?" Quoyle's voice roughened. He'd give anything to be away. Yet plowed on.

"Yes, of course I remember." The fork sc.r.a.ping away on the aunt's dish, kitchen heat, the din of knives, swelling laughter. "There was another white dog adventure couple weeks ago. You know that little white stone I had on my garden rock? If you squinted at it it looked like a dog's head? She come pounding on the door, yelling her head off. I thought something terrible'd happened. Couldn't get her to stop yelling and tell me what was the matter. At last she holds out her hand. There's a tiny cut on one finger, tiny, about a quarter of an inch long. One drop of blood. I put a bandage on it and she calmed down. Wouldn't say how she got the cut. But a couple days later she says to me that she threw away 'the dog-face stone' and it bit her. She says it was a dog bite on her finger."

The aunt laughed to show it wasn't anything to have a fit about.

"That's what I mean mean. She imagines these things." Quoyle had swallowed the squidburger. He was stifled. The aunt was making nothing out of something, sliding away from things that needed to be said. The people behind him were listening. He could feel their attention. Whispered. "Look, I'm concerned. I really am. Worried [134] sick, in fact. Sat.u.r.day morning when you went to pick up your package? We just came in to make lunch. I was going to heat up some soup. Suns.h.i.+ne was struggling with her boots-you know she wants to take her own boots off. Bunny was getting out the box of crackers for the soup, she was opening the box and the waxed paper inside was crackling when all of a sudden she stops. She stares at the door. She starts to cry. Aunt, I swear she was scared to death. She says, 'Daddy, the dog is scratching on the door. Lock the door!' Then she starts to scream. Suns.h.i.+ne sitting there with one boot in her hands, holding her breath. I should have opened the door to show her there was nothing there, but instead I locked it. You know why? Because I was afraid there might might be something there. The force of her fear was that strong." be something there. The force of her fear was that strong."

"Tch," said the aunt.

"Yes," said Quoyle. "And the minute I locked it she stopped screaming and picked up the cracker box and took out two crackers. Cool as a cuc.u.mber. Now tell me that's normal. I'd like to hear it. As it is I'm wondering if she shouldn't go to a child psychologist. Or somebody."

"You know, Nephew, I wouldn't rush to do that. I'd give it some time. There's other possibilities. What I'm getting at is maybe she is sensitive in a way the rest of us aren't. Tuned in to things we don't get. There's people here like that." Looked sidewise at Quoyle to see how he took that. That his daughter might glimpse things beyond static reality.

But Quoyle didn't believe in strange genius. Feared that loss, the wretchedness of childhood, his own failure to love her enough had damaged Bunny.

"Why don't you just wait, Nephew. See how it goes. She starts school in September. Three months is a long time for a child. I agree with you that she's different, you might say she is a bit strange sometimes, but you know, we're all different though we may pretend otherwise. We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differentness as we grow up. Bunny doesn't do that yet."