“Why?” Lila said. “It's stupid to act so boring and grown-up. We go up there, lay the money down" — her voice thickened—“and it's over just like that.”
She turned her face away.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“What do you know?” Lila said, turning on the radio and flipping the dial from station to station.
On the ferry Lila asked Eddie about heart attacks. Last night she had had a dream: first her heart beating fast as a bird's, then she felt it swell and nudge out of her ears and mouth, encasing her body like a giant soap bubble. “Then,” Lila said, “like a pin pops a balloon, bang. Little pieces of pinkish skin were all over the beach—”
There was a hard rap on Eddie's door; he flinched and saw John Berry's face beyond the glass. He rolled the window down an inch.
“Up kind of early,” John Berry said. His hair was long, past his ears and blowing.
Eddie was silent.
He pointed at Lila. “Does your father know you're out here?”
“I tell my daddy everything,” she said sweetly.
“Is that right?” John Berry said. “I'd like a word with you alone, Eddie.”
“No way,” Eddie said and started rolling up the window.
John Berry pushed his hand on the moving glass. “Please,” he said. “It's nothing bad.”
This will never stop, Eddie thought as he opened the door. Lila grabbed at his shorts. “Everybody says he's a crazy man now,” she whispered. He pressed the door shut gently and followed John Berry up the stairs. Eddie pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt down against the cold. At the top he saw the island's long rows of telephone lines strung like a lizard's spine down the highway.
He opened the door of the wheelhouse. John Berry, with a hand on the big wheel, was guiding the ferry.
“I wasn't thinking right,” he said quickly.
Eddie didn't answer.
John Berry turned his head from the window and said, “I've got nothing against you. Never did. You stop seeing in front of you when you're like I was. You only see what plays like a movie inside your skull, showing what you were hoping would happen, and spliced between it, I saw the things I'd heard.” He paused to guide the ferry through a pattern of buoys. “I want you to tell her I'm sorry.”
“What makes you think she'll listen to me?” Eddie said.
“You're her flesh,” John Berry said. “She knows that.” He looked at Eddie and then let his eyes fall to his hands. “I need someone.” John Berry blushed. “You have to tell her that I'm sorry and that you want her to come back to me.”
Eddie said, “If that's what you want, why'd you mess up her stuff?”
John Berry said, “Your mother is the only one for me.”
“You know she doesn't have that much,” Eddie said.
John Berry clenched his teeth. “I'm trying to tell you something.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Sure, I'll tell her, if you don't kill her first.”
John Berry said blankly, “I need her with me.”
Though Eddie would never admit it, he was strangely honored that John Berry would talk to him about his mother. It was as if he'd been asked into their bedroom to moderate. Each would tell his or her side and he'd hold up their words, turn them around, examine them like a glass held to light, and decide one way or the other.
“Want to steer?” John Berry said.
“No,” Eddie said, though he could imagine the varnished wood of the captain's wheel under his fingers. “I have to get back to Lila. She's not feeling that great.”
“I've seen a lot of girls go over on this early ferry and I'm not so stupid to think all of them are going to the malls in Norfolk,” John Berry said. “Is that girl pregnant?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said.
John Berry looked over and Eddie averted his eyes to the sea charts on the wall. “Come here and drive this boat a minute,” he said. “I got a cramp in my hand.”
Eddie walked over and took the wheel.
“Turn a little to the left,” John Berry said, pointing over the ocean to the day markers. “Now to the right.”
She pulled the flap to enter the tent and lay down in the cool patch of grass inside.
“Well?” Eddie said.
“I have to go over at four. They need to take another test.”
“How long does it take?”
“How should I know?” Lila said as she spread canvas flat on the grass and arranged the sleeping bags in one corner. “Can you believe we're stuck between two Winnebagoes? We look like a refugee camp compared to those things.” She stared at her stomach. “It's nuts,” she continued, placing both hands on her lower belly, “that something could be alive in there.”
“It looks like a fish now,” Eddie said, flat on his back next to her. Outside, a kid started screaming about dropping his freezer pop.
“What did John Berry say?”
“He wanted me to apologize for him.”
Lila turned to him. “Are you going to?”
“That's all her mess,” Eddie said. “I've had enough to do with it.”
“Your mother sure is something,” Lila said. “My mother says people like her because she doesn't care who she's with or what she's doing. Anyway, that's what I overheard her say on the phone.”
“Gossips,” Eddie snapped.
“Think she'll stay with Birdflower?”
“Maybe. But who knows?” he said. “I've learned there's no telling with her.” Eddie heard a slice of cartoons as the door banged on one of the Winnebagoes.
“You don't like her sleeping around, do you?” Lila said. “And I wouldn't either. But I've heard she's slowed—”
“Hey, come on, she's my mother,” Eddie said, hands held high in the air.
“Fine,” Lila said. “We better get ready.” She grabbed her brown bag and left the tent. Eddie followed. Lila was always trying to imply that he was in love with his mother, but there was nothing he could say to convince her that he wasn't.
She stared at him.
“I'll stand outside and wait for you,” he said. “And hand you quarters for hot water.”
“Okay,” she huffed and turned. They walked along the path to the showers. WOMEN in white letters on a green shack, a silver nozzle hanging above. She got in and quickly threw her clothes item by item over the door to him. “Give me one,” she said. He held a quarter over the side. She pressed it in and turned the knob. Water beat down and began to puddle on the cement floor and drip down the drain. Eddie saw the pink pads of her feet.
“Do you know what the most beautiful word is?” she asked over the push of water.
Eddie lifted the clothes to his face to smell her.
“Negative,” Lila said from behind the door. “Negative.”
Of those scattered throughout the clinic waiting room, Eddie suspected three women were there for abortions. One near Lila's age sat with a big storybook Bible on her lap and a boyfriend pointing to a page. The other two were older. Near the front door a black woman read a magazine while her little boy ran a fire truck up and down the walls in a crazy path. And near him, a woman his mother's age sat with a concerned-looking man watching a late afternoon nature show on the waiting room TV. There were others who Eddie presumed were waiting for friends or were here for checkups. Their bodies did not send off that desperate energy that seemed to billow in the air around Lila and the women he suspected.
When the nurse stepped out, shuffling files, Eddie squeezed Lila's hand. The nurse called her name.
“I have to pee in a cup,” she said quietly to Eddie.
Eddie watched the door close.
When would they ask him to step forward and lay down the money?