“One time I was too young and too poor for you to pay me any mind.”
“I was a foolish young man, but that’s a long time ago, now, Miss Louise.”
“You had no cause to leave, you know. There was ones who would have had you, coward or no.”
“Grandma? How about some more chicken?”
She was not to be distracted. “There’s others who’s not favored lightning, you know.”
“Lightning?”
“’Course, chopping down your daddy’s mast—” She tittered.
“That’s just an old story, Grandma. The Captain never—”
“But I did,” he said. “Took me twenty minutes to chop it down and fifty years to set it back.” He smiled at me, taking another roll from the tray I was offering. “It’s so good to be old,” he said. “Youth is a mortal wound.”
“What’s he talking about, Wheeze? I don’t know what he’s saying.”
He put down his roll and reached over and took her gnarled hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. “I’m trying to tell the child something only you and I can understand. How good it is to be old.”
I watched her face go from being startled by his gesture to being pleased that he had somehow joined her side against me. Then she seemed to remember. She drew back her hand. “We’ll die,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “But we’ll be ready. The young ones never are.”
She would not leave us that day, even for her nap, but rocking in her chair after dinner, she fell asleep, her mouth slightly open, her head rolled awkwardly against her right shoulder.
I came in from washing the dishes to find the two of them in silence, she asleep and he watching her. “I thank you,” I said. He looked up at me. “This would have been a lonesome day without you.”
“I thank you,” he said. And then, “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?”
I sat down on the couch near his chair. There was no need to pretend, I knew. “I had hoped when Call came home—”
He shook his head. “Sara Louise. You were never meant to be a woman on this island. A man, perhaps. Never a woman.”
“I don’t even know if I wanted to marry him,” I said. “But I wanted something.” I looked down at my hands. “I know I have no place here. But there’s no escape.”
“Pish.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly.
“Pish. Rubbish. You can do anything you want to. I’ve known that from the first day I met you—at the other end of my periscope.”
“But—”
“What is it you really want to do?”
I was totally blank. What was it I really wanted to do?
“Don’t know?” It was almost a taunt. I was fidgeting under his gaze. “Your sister knew what she wanted, so when the chance came, she could take it.”
I opened my mouth, but he waved me quiet. “You, Sara Louise. Don’t tell me no one ever gave you a chance. You don’t need anything given to you. You can make your own chances. But first you have to know what you’re after, my dear.” His tone was softening.
“When I was younger I wanted to go to boarding school in Crisfield—”
“Too late for that now.”
“I—this sounds silly—but I would like to see the mountains.”