So happy, in fact, that he forgot all about the tendency of the wind to fade on summer afternoons and ultimately cease all together—which is what happened that Saturday afternoon of the Labor Day weekend a few hours later, just as they were about to poke into the mouth of the Connecticut River. The sail that had been so taut went almost slack and the boat slowed. Amy didn’t even ask him whether she should come about and head for home; she just did. “We should have headed for New Haven instead,” she said. If they had, they would have tacked upwind while the wind was strong, and come home downwind when it was weak. Now they had to do the opposite. They both hated to use the motor.
Soon the wind died altogether, and Amy’s Delight lost all way, rolling in the swell, the boom swinging back and forth, and it was suddenly hot and misty, the sky turning from blue to white, and even the Sound itself succumbed to lassitude. He started the motor, and Amy put it into gear and steered straight for home, and the exhaust from the motor, with no wind to blow it away, hovered around them, stinking.
Even so, Mitch was still happy. These things happen when you go sailing. But then Amy asked Claire, over the throb of the motor, if, since sailing wasn’t fun anymore, would she like to sunbathe “up there,” pointing to the deck forward of the cabin. Claire didn’t answer right away, glancing at him, catching his eye, asking, without saying, Would you mind? Of course he minded. Who knew how long it would be before he had Amy’s company again? But he said, “I’ll take the tiller.” He could have put the automatic pilot on and gone forward with them, but he wasn’t invited.
He moved over and took the tiller from Amy, and the girls took a step forward. “Wait!” he said, and reached into a cutty built into the bench and pulled out a tube of sunblock. “You better put some more on,” he said, holding the tube out. He knew it was silly to try to postpone Amy’s going up forward and leaving him alone. How long does it take to put sunblock on? Amy took her L.L. Bean shirt off and Claire took the sunblock from him and handed it to her. Amy rubbed the sunblock on her arms and, bending over, the front of her legs. Then she handed the tube to Claire and turned around, and Claire applied the stuff to the back of Amy’s shoulders and legs. It wasn’t so long ago that it was still okay for him to do this for her.
“Now you,” Amy said, and turned around and took the tube from Claire. He could swear that Claire turned her head to make sure he was looking before she peeled his big red hoodie up over her head. Claire bent over, reached her two arms up to her shoulders, and pulled the hoodie up, slowly, slowly, he thought, to tease him, he was sure, while his daughter watched him watch, and there Claire was seconds later, tall, flat bellied in her tiny bikini bottom and thin top that didn’t cover the rounded tops of her breasts, about as naked as you can get and still be in a bathing suit. She didn’t glance at him now; that would have been too obvious. If any other girl her age, even one just as pretty, tried to do this to him, he’d laugh and tell her to put her clothes back on, but there was something knowing about this one, something that made her older than her nineteen years.
Claire took the sunblock tube from Amy. She said, “I’ll put this on up there,” pointing forward where they would sunbathe. He knew she knew perfectly well what she had been doing. Maybe she was beginning to have second thoughts.
“But what about you, Dad?” Amy asked. “Shouldn’t you put some on too?”
He shook his head. “Never use the stuff.” It was true. He didn’t wear a helmet when he rode his bike either. And once when the buzzer in his brand-new BMW told him to put his seatbelt on, he smashed his hand against the dashboard so hard trying to shut it up, he sprained his wrist. He could actually laugh at himself about stuff like that, but he wasn’t laughing now. He’d been played like a fish. The two girls went forward, and he took the sails down and steered for home.
The girls came aft just as he nosed the boat into its berth and shut the motor off. Amy jumped off to tie up. Claire gathered up the remains of the lunch. He handed her the hoodie without saying anything, and she put it on. He wanted to say, Don’t you ever try that again, but he would have needed the upper hand for that.
By the time they got back to the cottage it was almost seven o’clock. His back was beginning to hurt again. It would only get worse. He wanted to go upstairs into the bathroom and take a Vicodin, but the girls went straight there to shower, so he poured himself a vodka on the rocks and went out on the porch where he put charcoal in the grill and lighted it off. They’d have steak. Amy could make the salad.
But the charcoal wouldn’t burn. It just sat there as if it wasn’t supposed to. He blew on it and rearranged it, getting his hands all black and sooty, and it still wouldn’t burn. First the goddamn wind went down, and now the fucking grill didn’t work! He gave the grill a petulant kick, almost knocking it over as the two girls appeared on the porch, looking fresh from their showers, dressed almost alike in cut-off jeans and T-shirts. Amy stayed back. She knew better than to talk to her dad when he was like this.
Claire stepped forward. “Can I help?”
“No! I can do it myself,” he said, picking up the can of lighter fluid and leaning over the grill.
“Dad, don’t!” Amy said. Too late. Her father squirted much more lighter fluid than he was supposed to on the charcoal.
“Watch out!” Claire lunged forward and pulled him back just before the stuff exploded and a jet of flame leaped up. It would have burned him. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m alright. Can’t you see it’s burning?” he said.
Claire laughed as if she thought he was joking.
“Dad, I’ll make the salad,” Amy said.
He went back into the kitchen, poured himself another vodka and took it upstairs into the bathroom to get the Vicodin. It was still steamy from the girls’ showers. Draped over the shower stall door were his daughter’s one-piece bathing suit and the tiny top and thonglike bottom of Claire’s bikini. Did they shower together? He was very careful not to imagine his daughter naked in the shower, but there was Claire, nude, soaping herself, as clear in his imagination as if she had actually been there. Right then and there, he decided to find a way to make her leave that school. No way was he going to let her corrupt his daughter. He put the pill in his mouth and washed it down with the vodka. Then he combed his hair as best he could since he couldn’t see himself clearly in the fogged-up mirror and went downstairs and poured another vodka. He took the steak out of the refrigerator and went outside and put it on the grill while the girls set the table. With the pill and the vodka in him and a decision made, he felt a little better. He guessed that he’d been coming to that decision all along.
He went to bed early that night, almost right after dinner. He wouldn’t have if he’d had Amy to himself, but it was obvious she was a whole lot more interested in this older girl—who actually lived in a foreign country!—than she was in him. Upstairs in his bed, he tried to read but fell asleep with his clothes still on, and dreamed that he wasn’t asleep—that he was wide awake in his bed and the window was open and the two girls were talking on the porch right below the window.
I didn’t do it with any boys, one voice said.
With who then?
A teacher.
Claire!
And then he dreamed he was only dreaming. When he woke up the moon was shining through the window and a breeze had come up fluttering the curtains.