“Not that I know of.”
“Sea cows, they’re sometimes called. I saw one once, long ago. We were on our honeymoon, John and I, on a cruise. It was at sunrise and the ship was passing an atoll in the South Pacific. We saw the dugong from our porthole. She was sitting on a rock nursing her child. It was terrible, she was so huge and incredibly ugly, yet oddly like a woman, moving her thick lips as if she were talking to the child, and fondling it with her flippers. The child clung to her, unaware of her ugliness or its own.”
Sometimes in the night she revisited the rock where the dugong sat with its child, but the child had hands on the ends of its flippers, and it wore Billy’s face.
She began to paddle with furious speed, escaping the dugong and its child, the pelican, the arrogant gull, the man in the back of the boat.
Mark didn’t try to keep up with her. Partly irritated, partly amused at her sudden haste, he lifted his paddle out of the water. The boat began circling clockwise.
She made a half-turn toward him. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing some of the work?”
“I wanted to see where you’d get, all by yourself. You were in such a hurry.”
“Now that you’ve seen, shall we go on?”
“All right.”
When they had reached the shore and pulled the boat up on the sand, Mrs. Wakefield said, “Thank you for the ride. It was very pleasant, in some ways.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re really pretty curious about me, aren’t you?”
“People as deliberately vague as you are make other people curious, naturally.”
“I’ll try to be more specific,” Mrs. Wakefield said.
“No, don’t. I like you the way you are.”
Shaking her head, she picked up her fins and face glass from the bottom of the boat and walked away.
“I didn’t take a single peek,” Evelyn said. “I wish now I had. You’re looking quite cross.”
“Blow, will you, darling? I want to take a bath.”
“Don’t I even get a report?”
“Sighted sub, sank same,” he said. “No, really there’s nothing to report.”
“You must have talked.”
“Not being mutes, yes, we talked.”
She was afraid to ask him any more questions, but she couldn’t stop herself. “What about?”
“Dugongs,” he said. “Dugongs.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No.”
“Well,” she said painfully. “Some day you’ll have to tell me about them.”
“Evelyn. For crying in the sink. Listen. You’re not jealous of her, are you?”
“Horribly.”
“Can’t you control yourself?”
“I guess I’ll have to,” she said. “What are dugongs?”
“Sea cows. Amphibious mammals that give birth to living young.”
“She must be pretty fascinating to hold you spellbound for two hours talking about dugongs.”
“What do you want me to say...? That she’s pretty fascinating? All right. I say it.”
“No one could talk about dugongs for two hours except a biologist.”
“Other topics were mentioned,” he said. “The weather. Pelicans. Broken Bow, Nebraska. The watch Jessie found. She admitted it belonged to her husband.”
“Why did she admit it?”
“I told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. Now, is the examination over, and what are my marks?”
“A mere pass.”
He went into the bathroom and closed the door, and a minute later he was singing in his heavy unmusical bass, “Oh my darling, Clementine.”
13
Mrs. Wakefield made no excuses to Mark and Evelyn; she merely sent Luisa with the message that she couldn’t have dinner with them. She ate, later, in the kitchen with the Romas.
They drank red wine and hot strong tea, with plenty of tea leaves in each cup so that everyone would have fortunes for Carmelita to tell.
“Money,” Carmelita said, loud with wine. “See in my cup, all the money. Ho, I am a millionaire!”
She read all the cups, and they all had money and letters coming, and tall dark men, and trips to far places.
The millionaires sat with their elbows on the table poring over their wealth.
“And the news,” Carmelita said. “All good news, too, for everyone.”
Luisa blinked. “What kind?”
“Whatever kind you want. Yes, it’s going to be a good year.”
“Oh, it’s silly to believe in tea leaves, Mama.”
“Your mama is silly,” Carmelita agreed. For the occasion she had taken the bobby pins out of her hair and brushed it. But the hair was unaccustomed to freedom; it tried wildly to escape her scalp and would not lie down in orderly curls. “It’s like a party, except we must do the dishes.”
“Luisa will do the dishes,” Mr. Roma said.
Luisa let out a bleat. “I can’t, I just did my nails. I can’t put my hands in hot water!”
“Then wash them in cold.”
“That wouldn’t be sanitary. I mean really, if you ever looked through a microscope the way we do in chemistry class — everything’s just crawling with germs. Papa, you simply don’t understand about germs.”
“I understand about little girls, though.”
“You talk fresh to your papa,” Carmelita said, “and I will give you a smack on your bottom with the flyswatter.”
“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the germs.”
Luisa did the dishes as she did everything else, with great expression. Fastidiously, she carried them to the sink. Wincing, she rinsed them. Averting her eyes in delicate anguish, she wrapped the garbage. And finally, with an air of sacrifice, she dipped her martyred hands into the hot water.
Now and then her groans penetrated the conversation like the notes of a French horn in a symphony.
“A good year,” Mrs. Wakefield said. The inside of her mouth felt limey from the strong tea, but she held out her cup for more. “I’m greedy. I want more letters and trips and good years.”
“More men, too,” Carmelita said, nudging her tipsily with her elbow. “Eh? More men?”
Mrs. Wakefield tilted the teapot and the liquid flowed out, dark as stout. “No. No men, thank you.”
“Ah, but such a waste, a strong fine-bodied woman like you.”
“Lita,” said Mr. Roma, “you are getting drunk.”
“Then so are you.”
“You will be an old wino.”
“A wino. Hear that, will you?” She rocked back and forth with indignation, and some of the wine in her glass splashed on her wrists. “Me, an old wino,” she said, sucking at her wrists. “All I said was, she will have a good year. All I said...”
“What makes a good year, Carmelita?” Mrs. Wakefield asked.
“Him.” Carmelita pointed with her thumb at her husband. “Roma. When he is not insulting me.”
Mr. Roma grinned self-consciously and reached across the table to pat the back of her hand, still sticky with wine. “That’s no answer.”
“It is for me. You and Luisa, my baby.” She turned to beam at Luisa, who looked back at her with undisguised exasperation. “Isn’t she pretty, my little one? And clever. Clever like her poppa. Me, I’m a lucky one, eh?”
“Very lucky,” Mrs. Wakefield said. The wine had not affected her, and she felt like someone who’d arrived late at a gay party, a little aloof and disapproving.
“You will be lucky, too. Here, drink up. We will see what the leaves say this time. We will make sure.”
Mrs. Wakefield drained her cup and left her fortune stranded on the sides.
“Now turn it around three times and make a wish.”
“I wish...”
“No, you must not tell! Wish only to yourself.”
“I can’t think of a wish anyway.”
“Not any?”