Part 6 (1/2)

Mr. Cairn pushed his chicken around on his plate.

”I could drive you,” he said.

”Daddy, you have to get a life.” Frances smiled when she said it.

Mr. Cairn put his fork and knife on his plate and he took Frances's hand.

”There's someone special I'd like you to meet,” he said.

When Frances's mother died, her father staggered from room to room, crying. Frances and Sherri would walk into the garage for their bikes and find their father sprawled on the hood of the car, face buried in his chamois cloths. One Sunday morning, Sherri dumped a basket of wet clothes in the middle of the living room. ”I can't do it,” she said. ”I mean, I actually cannot do laundry. Daddy's crying in front of the dryer.”

The first day of first grade, Frances had to walk next door and ask Mrs. Cohen to fix her hair because her father was crying so hard, he couldn't do her braids. Mrs. Cohen did them and did them again the next day, and on the third day Mr. Cairn took Frances to the barber and said, Please give her a haircut. Something short. And pretty.

If he had married Mrs. Cohen he would not now be sitting in front of her with a crumb of fried chicken on his face, telling her to get ready to meet someone special.

”Sure,” Frances said.

”Maybe she'll take me off your hands,” Mr. Cairn said.

S.S. ENDEAVOR.

A short, wide woman with Mrs. Shenker's sharp chin and thick eyebrows opened the door.

”I am-” Frances said, trying to hold on to her m.u.f.fler and her purse and the bag of doughnuts and the jug of cider and the brochure about a camp for teenagers with physical limitations, and Mr. Shenker came into the front hall and opened the door wider.

”Hey. This is Miss ... Frances,” he said. ”Sylvia, this is Frances. Frances, my mother-in-law, Sylvia Winik. Frances spent time with Beth at the hospital. Jesus, Frances, you look like Shackleton on his way to the North Pole.”

”I doubt it,” Frances said. Frances was raised on Ernest Shackleton and brave Robert Edwin Peary and that moron Robert Scott and the tragedy of his ponies, eaten by the explorers, because Captain Scott was too stupid to use a dog team. (”Too much an admirer of dogs, the way Englishmen sometimes are,” her father had said, as if they both knew people like that, people who loved their dogs so much they would try to go to the South Pole with horses, to spare the dogs discomfort.) Frances knew the beginnings and ends of every polar expedition and nothing she ever did was going to be like Ernest Shackleton, who was a hero in her household, like Kennedy or King, and Mr. Shenker could just keep his big, fat, condescending, adulterous mouth closed.

”You might be thinking of Lawrence Oates,” Frances said, and Mr. Shenker looked at his mother-in-law and smiled. Lawrence Oates was one of the youngest men to accompany Scott and also the smartest, and when he understood he was dying of starvation and frostbite, he stopped eating entirely, gave away his compa.s.s, and lifted the flap of his tent to walk into the snow. ”I am going outside now,” he said, ”and I may be some time.” In their game of Great Expedition, this had been Frances's favorite part, and she would say those lines and run onto the porch, in her pajamas, and her father would wait just the right amount of time and then carry her back in, as if there were icicles hanging all over her and she had just hours to live.

”Lorraine,” Mr. Shenker called out. ”Frances is here. From the hospital.”

Mrs. Shenker came down the hall in sweatpants and a T-s.h.i.+rt, her hair in a ponytail.

”Frances, aren't you sweet,” she said. ”I didn't know you were ... Well, how nice. I was just doing some laundry. I thought it was going to rain, so we gave up on golf.” She put her hand on Mr. Shenker's chest and he put an arm around her waist. ”You were right, I was wrong,” she said.

”We'll golf tomorrow,” he said. ”Sylvia can spoil Beth and we'll steal away.” The Shenkers and Mrs. Shenker's mother all smiled at one another and finally Mrs. Shenker said, ”Well, thank you for bringing a treat for Beth. Although, my G.o.d, we all ate enough doughnuts at that hospital ...”

Mr. Shenker said, ”Always room for a few more.”

Mrs. Shenker said, ”Let's just take a peek at Miss Beth and see how she's doing.”

”Hey, Frances,” Beth said. Beth was smiling and she wore a silky green T-s.h.i.+rt over her bandages and a green headband. There was a pull-up bar above her head and her bedroom was decorated like a tropical paradise. She sat in the middle of her big green-and-blue bed, surrounded by her laptop, her iPhone, and her remote control. A flat-screen TV was mounted on the opposite wall, with white-capped waves painted to unfurl around it. The doorway was as wide as a hospital room's. Pale-green mermaids raised their arms on either side of it, and there was an old-fas.h.i.+oned map of the world's oceans painted on the wood floor, and a wheelchair was folded up in one corner.

Mrs. Shenker saw Frances looking. ”I know-we went all out. We had an architect in here and Beth drove him crazy until everything was just the way she wanted.”

Beth grinned and looked down to text someone.

”Pretty cool, right? I might become an architect. The disabled Americans thing, plus I love design. Did you see my dresser?” Her dresser was painted to look like a treasure chest, with gold coins and jewels glued all the way down the front, as if the treasure were spilling out. ”That was my idea.”

Frances sat in the small, comfortable armchair and Beth chatted a little, and answered e-mail. (Oh, my G.o.d, she said. No way. No way.) She texted friends and smiled at Frances to show that she didn't mean to be rude and went back to her laptop. Mrs. Shenker's mother came in with a plate of peanut-b.u.t.ter-and-fluff sandwiches, each half topped with a strawberry slice and two gla.s.ses of milk.

”Nana, thank you,” Beth said, and her grandmother kissed her and said, ”Physical therapy in an hour, young lady,” and Beth struck a strongman pose and then offered Frances a sandwich and a napkin. Beth played some music on her computer and Frances and Beth ate their sandwiches, as if they were two girls in seventh grade, taking a homework break.

Frances ate her sandwich halves and thanked Mrs. Shenker's mother, who handed her a couple of warm cookies for the road. The Shenkers emerged arm in arm to thank Frances for coming. They told her that Beth was starting school in three weeks, and Mr. Shenker said, She's nervous about it, but you know Beth-she always gets back on the horse.

Frances got in her car and drove around the corner and pulled over, to just sit for a while.

S.S. DISCOVERY.

Dear Beth, I saw your picture today. Everyone in America must have seen it, plastered on the cover of People magazine. You look wonderful. Everything that was just on the cusp in you, when I knew you ten years ago, has absolutely flowered. I was sorry to read that your grandmother had pa.s.sed but your parents look very well and, of course, very proud. I'm sure you are an inspiration to everyone around you, just as they said in the magazine. To have done what you've done-the Paralympics and now the triathlon and your work with teenagers-is very impressive.

Things have been quieter, here. I'm actually still at the hospital. I'm the a.s.sistant Director of Social Work, which sounds like more than it is. I handle the scheduling and the outpatient programs but I don't do any hiring or firing.

My father-I think you met him the time my car broke down at your house-pa.s.sed away about five years ago. I miss him. It's weird, at least it's weird to me, but I now spend most Friday nights with his widow, Carol Skolnick. I don't know if I ever mentioned it (probably not-we didn't really talk about me, which was appropriate, since my home visits were for you and to help with your post-traumatic recovery), but my father remarried during the time you and I were in contact. Anyway, Carol and I weren't exactly close when my father was alive but since he died, she's reached out to me, and now on Friday nights she lights a Yarsight candle (I don't know if I've spelled this correctly) for my father and for all of the other people we know who have died (I don't include patients; we just mourn the people we've known in our personal lives) and then we have dinner, which is usually Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's sort of a tradition.

The other big change is that I am in touch with my sister, Sherri, who was not part of my life when you and I knew each other. Sherri lives in Indianapolis and she and her husband run a cleaning service. They clean up after storms and other natural disasters in people's offices and homes and also just regular cleaning. They have two girls, who are almost as old as you were when I met you, and they are wonderful girls. I only wish I had known them sooner. Sherri called me after our father died and she said to me, Your only family is me, and I remember saying that it didn't seem like she wanted me in her life and she said that that wasn't true, that our father had just abandoned her after her religious experience (my sister is, I guess, a born-again Christian and my father and I were the kind of Congregationalists who didn't bother anyone, and I guess that was an insurmountable difference between them, plus my father and I thought Sherri was gay, which bothered her more than us but she stopped being gay, apparently, when she became born again and married Paul and had the girls). It's a little odd being in their house sometimes, with Jesus on every wall and pillow and Sherri censors the girls' reading, like no Harry Potter because of the magic. (I have to say this doesn't make any sense to me. What makes magic particularly anti-Christian? I understand that calling up Satan is definitely not good but I can't see how Tinkerbell or flying carpets threaten anyone.) But it is their house and their rules, and my nieces are happy and loving girls, and Paul has been very welcoming in his quiet way, and I am really grateful to spend their birthdays and Christmas with Sherri and her family.

I've continued my interest in polar exploration and the great expeditions, although I think it's safe to say this is not a subject of general interest. They were just so phenomenally brave. They lived on dog meat and willow tea. They boiled old boots and ate them. They ate the deerskin ties off their tents and then they cut up their tents to make footgear, so they could go out and look for the rescue s.h.i.+ps. Lieutenant George DeLong of the U.S. Navy spent two winters frozen in place 750 miles from the North Pole, which is not that far-others had traveled farther-and then his s.h.i.+p sank on June 12, 1881. There were fourteen of them left, and still he wrote in his journal, ”All hands weak and feeble, but cheerful.”

All my life, those men were my heroes. I think I would have been better off with the astronauts or even the Argonauts or with the saints, if we had been that kind of family, or with the people who marched on Selma for their rights. But my father loved these men and he didn't seem to notice that they were all, really, pretty crazy and most of them failures (Roald Amundsen was often the villain of these stories and I think now it was because he knew what he was doing; he accomplished his goal and he went on to other successes, and all of that was despicable to my father). These people made terrible mistakes and the best and worst of them just shrugged and said that it was no one's fault at all, just the nature of life, just the inevitable outcome of what they had undertaken, but it wasn't true. They had something missing. They left things behind that other, more reasonable men would have known to bring. They brought the wrong food, and the wrong transportation. They held the f.u.c.king maps upside down half the time and one boat fell to pieces in the Arctic Ocean because, when the s.h.i.+p had sailed in sunnier climes, the crew had pulled nails out of it to trade for s.e.x with the Polynesian women, since iron was so valuable. They could have been saved by vitamins, which were easy to buy and carry. They could have been saved by a wireless transmitter, which was not uncommon.

On one of Peary's expeditions, their boat was struck by moving ice, pressed between two icebergs by the current, and as the s.h.i.+p was sinking, water coming in through the port side, the crew and the scientists gathered a few things and scrambled onto the icy bluff. Finn Hamilton went below three times, because he couldn't decide what to take. He brought a compa.s.s and threw it to a crewmate already on land. He went down for his pipe, and halfway up the stairs, he went back down again for his Bible and he slipped and drowned, tangled up with a footstool.

Some of us are Finn Hamilton and some of us are Beth Shenker, I guess. I have somehow not had the right things for this journey and I have packed and repacked a hundred times as if somehow the right thing will be found in some small pocket, put in by someone with more sense or gift than me, but I'm always scrambling for the last-minute thing and I am always, always watching the boat pull away without me.

Your family was one of my early boats and you were the bright and amazing sail, and I am, as I said at the beginning, very, very proud of you.

SLEEPWALKING.

I was born smart and had been lucky my whole life, so I didn't even know that what I thought was careful planning was nothing more than being in the right place at the right time, missing an avalanche I didn't even hear.

After the funeral was over and the cold turkey and the glazed ham were demolished and some very good jazz was played and some very good musicians went home drunk on bourbon poured in my husband's honor, it was just me, my mother-in-law, Ruth, and our two boys, Lionel junior from Lionel's second marriage, and our little boy, Buster.

Ruth pushed herself up out of the couch, her black taffeta dress rustling reproachfully. I couldn't stand for her to start the dishes, sighing, praising the Lord, clucking her tongue over the state of my kitchen, in which the windows are not washed regularly and I do not scrub behind the refrigerator.

”Ruth, let them sit. I'll do them later tonight.”

”No need to put off 'til tomorrow what we can do today. I'll do them right now, and then Lionel junior can run me home.” Ruth does not believe that the good Lord intended ladies to drive; she'd drive, eyes closed, with her drunk son or her accident-p.r.o.ne grandson before she'd set foot in my car.

”Ruth, please,” I said. ”I'd just as soon have something to do later. Please. Let me make us a cup of tea, and then we'll take you home.”

Tea, her grandson Buster, and her son's relative sobriety were the three major contributions I'd made to Ruth's life; the tea and Buster accounted for all of our truces and the few good times we'd had together.

”I ought to be going along now, let you get on with things.”