Emily smiled. “I'm the mother, remember?”
“You know, it seems like what's between us doesn't have that much to do with that,” Eddie said. “I'll tell you something. Starting this fall, starting now, you've got to take better care of yourself.”
Two birds rose from the swamp grass, their wings a smudge against the black sky.
She didn't answer, but she did glance at him, and he noticed how her eyebrows rose slightly and her features had an alert look as if she was seeing something new.
He knew that John Berry and she had come to an understanding of sorts. Eddie set his eyes on the small blue lights at the end of the approaching ferry dock and began worrying about what he'd actually say when they got there.
“How'd it go with Lila?”
“Okay,” Eddie said. It seemed as if they shouldn't talk about Lila. He had been unable to say the right thing, and then she had to be in so early. On her porch, she'd said good night without even kissing him and ran into the house. He half thought she'd come back, and he'd stood there a minute or two waiting.
At the docks, his mother stopped the car but left the heater on to warm their feet. It was scrappy down here. A toilet shack, a pavilion with picnic tables underneath, a snack machine that sold moonpies and kettle chips, a Coke machine and a telephone booth, the old-fashioned kind, spots of sandburs mixed with rough yellow grass and a scattering of fishy metalworks. They watched the ferry weave awkwardly forward.
“When you were a baby,” Emily said suddenly, “every night after dinner you'd cry and the only thing that made you stop was a drive in the car. Even at the red lights you'd cry. Your father drove and you'd lie between us on a blanket, looking up through the windshield at the sky.”
Eddie watched an old scrap envelope topple across the ramp in front of them.
“But it's not a bad thing,” she said, turning toward him. “I want you to understand that.”
Eddie nodded. “I want you to like your life,” he said evenly.
Eddie took her hand lightly. He saw the slightly worried set of her lips, the pupils of her eyes milky and anxious in the dark.
“You mean everything to me,” she said, running her fingers over his inner wrist.
The ferry backed into the dock. A battered pickup truck pulled onto the nearby shoulder. It was butter-colored and tingled the way shades of white do in the dark.
“That's Lila,” Eddie said. The truck was her father's; he'd seen it a million times, but he never thought he'd see her driving it. He couldn't believe it. He let go of his mother's hand and opened the door.
“You came,” he shouted over to her. He realized how his voice had risen and he blushed.
“Of course I came,” she said, leaning her head back on the rest.
He heard the ferry bump shore. Emily leaned over the passenger seat and shouted out the window, “You want to take him to the bus station?”
“Wait a minute now,” he said. His mother's face was shadowed and unreadable in the dark, and he leaned closer.
“I could,” Lila called.
Emily said, “Why don't you then?”
“You wouldn't mind?” Lila sounded surprised and she looked at Eddie. He shrugged his shoulders.
“No,” Emily said, “I really wouldn't.”
Eddie stretched farther through the open window and kissed his mother's cheek. “I'll call you in a few days,” she said.
She smiled at him as she started the engine, then she pulled out and followed the tourist cars up the beach road. The sight of her car getting smaller and smaller pulled at him.
“You kill me,” he said to Lila. He got in and the truck began to climb the ramp. He felt relieved and happy that Lila had come for him, and he watched her thin fingers curled around the wheel.
“I could take the wheel on the road to Kitty Hawk.”
“No, I want to drive you all the way.” She looked over at him. “Last night was weird.”
Eddie pried one of her hands loose and pressed each fingertip to his tongue.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your fingerprints in case I lose you.”
This was the period to the long rambling sentence of the summer. The dawn. His mother. The starbook. Lila and the truck. All these were packed in behind his eyes. He knew the last thing would be he and Lila soaring down the early morning road. They pulled on and the ferryman secured the big chain at the back. Eddie felt the quick tug off the island and then the first few moments of floating between shores.
His mother had told him a few nights ago that she wouldn't be going anywhere with Birdflower. She'd said she was going to rest for a while. And though he still felt anchored to her, the weight was not half what it had been.
Lila got out of the car. Her hood blew back from her jacket and she held her hands up to the gulls. He watched the many wing tips brush her, knowing they must feel like breath. In this way she was like his mother. They were more alive than most people, and this gave them power to draw things to them. For a moment it seemed the birds would lift her above the ferry. He rested his eyes. And when he opened them, the birds were gone and she was making her way through the pressing wind back to him.
From her car, heading back along the beach road, Emily could see the truck's rear lights as they inched over the ramp onto the ferry. It seemed right that her car and Lila's were bookends to the wide mile of beach and lavender sky.
After he left, her mood always varied; sometimes she was light-headed, other times more somber, even teary. Every year she swam. Last summer there'd been a host of Medusa jellyfish sending off green light. The year before she'd stroked straight out, so far that when she turned, the shore looked like a mirage. Once she tried to stand on a sandbank. Barnacles, like white teeth, cut the fleshy part of her foot and blood dribbled into the sand.
The car passed the campground. Tents and trailers looked emberish and exotic in the dawn. The pony pen clattered by. She pulled over, got out, and walked the path that led to the water. The sea smelled of living things, and it reminded her always of her own scent.
Just above the horizon was a thick purple, and above that, a halo of lemon. She slid out of her loose jeans and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. Her toes made twirling ropes in the water behind her, and when the sea was to her breasts, she dived in. Emily saw dark shapes in the water and thought of the weird fish, sea grubs, and mole crabs that lived underneath. She rolled onto her back. The moon was fragile as a paper nickel and the rising sun sent a snake of light across the water toward her. Nobody swims much past autumn, she thought, but I do.