Time After Time (48 page)

As for Susy, she was in
love. Jack could do no wrong. Once he found out that Susy liked
riddles, he kept them coming one after another — surprising Liz yet
again — and seemed genuinely eager to add Susy's own repertoire to
his collection.

Eventually Caroline sat
back down, and Susy offered her half of the peanut butter sandwich,
making Liz absurdly proud of her. Caroline actually accepted it,
making Liz absurdly proud of her, too.

In the meantime the
Déjà Vu
had passed
through most of the fleet of boats and yachts that were returning
to their home port. Cornelius put the boat on autopilot, and he and
Deirdre joined the others in what was turning out to be, after all,
a very nice boat ride.

The problem was the wine.
It was flowing too freely. The fairly innocent gaiety between
Cornelius and Deirdre was escalating into something else. They were
taking over the show, and nobody much wanted to watch the
performance. Not Liz: she began to wish they'd go back into the
wheelhouse.

And not Jack. He was
becoming quieter and angrier by the minute. When Deirdre, laughing
hysterically at something unfunny, spilled wine over herself and
Cornelius rushed to her bosom with a napkin, it was the last straw
for Jack.

"Dad, I need to talk to
you in private," he said through gritted teeth. "Can we go below
for a minute?"

"Heck, no," said his dad
jovially. "We're all friends. Say it on deck."

"Oblige me this once,
please."

"Oh, all
right."

Jack scanned the horizon
for boats, then turned to Liz and said, "Keep an eye out, would
you'?"

Cornelius stood up
unsteadily — though the sea was flat as a mirror — and followed his
son into the wheelhouse and then down the ladder steps to the
cabin. That left four nonsailing females alone in deepening
twilight on the afterdeck of a sixty-foot boat that no one was
steering.

To Liz it seemed downright
surreal. Torn between Susy and the assignment, she said to her
daughter, "Sit right here, and don't you dare move from this place.
You, too, Caroline."

Deirdre, not so drunk that
she couldn't feel repentant, said, "I'll watch them, don't
worry."

Liz took up a position
just inside the wheelhouse where she could see both the horizon and
her daughter, and yet stay out of earshot of the conversation
below.

That, it turned out, was
hard to do. Jack was angry and his father was high. Every loud word
funneled up the cabin stairs into the wheelhouse.

"Goddammit, Dad, the older
you get, the bigger the fool! What's wrong, the last one wasn't
young enough? Deirdre's a
kid,
for chrissake!"

"You bet. And a damned
good-looking one."

"You're embarrassing
everyone! You're embarrassing yourself!"

"No-o-o, not me, son. I
feel just fine."

"Don't push it,
Dad!"

"Well, well, this is new.
Since when do you give a damn what I do and who I do it
with?"

"Knock it off, I
said!"

"Or else what? You're
going to tell your mother? You think she cares?"

"Yeah, I think she
cares!
You're
the
only one who can't see that!"

"Where've you been all
your life? She hasn't cared since you were born."

"What the hell are you
talking about? She's always loved you, God only knows
why."

"Get with it, Jack. Why do
you think you're an only child? She's ignored me for
years."

"That's a goddamned
lie!"

"Maybe an exaggeration.
Not a lie. I bore her."

"Your running around bores
her. And
hurts
her. Don't you see that? You're rationalizing your idiotic
behavior!"

"You see it your way. I
see it mine."

"Divorce her, then! Why
make a mockery of your marriage with kids like Deirdre?"

"Oh-h, come on ...
Deirdre's nothing ... we're just horsing around."

"I'm warning you, Dad: If
you go up there and pick up where you left off—"

"—you'll what? Lock me
below? Keelhaul me? Come on, son. We're both adults."

"One
of us, maybe!"

"Don't pull that bullshit!
You're the one who's made it to the halfway point of his
life
alone.
At
least I gave marriage a shot. I had you. I had Caroline. It may not
be a perfect family, but at least I was willing to step up to the
plate. Now let me pass. I'm your
father.
I deserve more respect than
you're giving me."

Whether Jack was going to
let his father pass or not, nobody ever found out, because at that
moment an alarm went off on the instrument panel, and Jack came
flying up the companionway steps.

"Now what?" he muttered,
scanning the gauges. "Damn! Overheating! Dad! Get up
here!"

No need to tell Cornelius;
he was right behind his son.

"Let me look over the
engine quick," Jack said to him. "You shut it off when I tell
you."

Jack dropped down the
steps in one leap and disappeared into the cabin below. Over the
dramatic pulsing of the alarm, Cornelius said sheepishly, "I never
went in for that engine stuff. That's why God invented
mechanics."

They waited an agonizing
number of seconds and then heard Jack's voice from the belly of the
boat: "Okay! Shut it off!"

Cornelius did. The boat
fell strangely, perilously silent. There they were, well offshore,
floating as aimlessly as a sixty-foot piece of driftwood. It was
confirmation of Liz's deepest dread.

Susy and Caroline were
standing on the semicircle of cushioned seats, noses pressed
against the aft windows of the wheelhouse, as curious as two bear
cubs eyeing a cherry pie. Deirdre was standing behind them, looking
oddly tentative. Liz motioned the girls to sit back down — they
ignored her — and then she waited, with all the others, for Jack to
reappear with a diagnosis of the problem.

Liz knew little about
engines, even less about boats, but she had absolutely no doubt
that Jack could fix whatever it was that needed fixing. It was an
act of pure blind faith, an homage to her regard for him — and it
surprised the heck out of her. Here she was, despite a lifetime of
warnings by her mother — allowing herself to get her hopes
up.

At last Jack emerged,
holding what even Liz knew was a broken fan belt in his
hand.

"It's been cut," he said
without preamble. "Three-quarters of the belt's diameter is
razor-smooth," he said, showing it to his father. "Only the last
quarter shows signs of fatigue. Obviously the uncut portion
couldn't carry the load, and it broke apart. As it was meant to
do."

Cornelius looked as guilty
as if he'd cut the belt himself. "Jesus. This time they've gone too
far. What're they trying to do? Get someone killed?"

"Think about it," his son
said tersely.

"Well, put on a spare and
let's get out of here," Cornelius said, casting a wary eye to the
west. "Who knows what other booby traps they've set? What
if—?"

Jack looked quickly at
Liz. "No need for hysteria," he said, cutting his father's
speculations short. "If the pattern holds true, then this is all
the wake-up call we'll be getting tonight."

If. Liz didn't like
that
if.
She
waited with Cornelius in the wheelhouse, saying little, reluctant
to move an inch farther away from news of a repair than she had to.
The yacht sat uneasily on the calm water, rising and falling
gradually with the swell. In the meantime Susy and Caroline, tired
of waiting for something to happen, decided to try on each other's
shoes.

Deirdre began repacking
the wicker basket with unsteady hands and then, halfway through her
task, suddenly dropped everything and made a sprint for the stern
rail. The wrenching, wracking sounds of her seasickness sent a
surge of queasiness through Liz. But she couldn't get sick; she
didn't
dare
get
sick.

Caroline, watching Deirdre
furtively, looked a little green around the gills as well. Susy
seemed to be holding up fine, which hardly surprised Liz. The child
was so clearly in her element out here.

Half of us are
sailors,
thought Liz with an edgy
sigh.
But half of us are not.

At last Jack came back up
the companionway, but the black look on his face told Liz that once
again she had placed her trust where it didn't belong.

"There are no fan belts —
not a one — in the spare-parts locker or anywhere else," he said
with unnerving calm. He looked at his father and said, "So it looks
as if I was wrong: this one's a two-parter."

"What do we do
now?"

It was Liz, trying to keep
the fear out of her voice but not succeeding. Maybe no one else was
watching out to the west, but she sure was. And what she saw was
hardly reassuring: a black line of clouds, with some depressingly
vertical buildup among them.

Jack said, "One of the
pulleys has a double fan belt on it. I'm going to try refitting the
second one as a replacement; I may have enough adjustability — but
enough with the gory details," he said to Liz with a flash of
humor. "The short answer is, I'm going to try a jury
rig."

He glanced out at the sky
impassively, which made Liz feel better, and then said to his
father, "Flip on the running lights, Dad. It's getting dark," which
made her feel worse.

"Won't we run down our
charge?" asked Cornelius. "We don't have much choice," Jack said,
and went back below.

A couple of minutes later,
he was back in the wheelhouse.

"The nuts on the pulley
are frozen; it's going to take a little while." For some reason, he
looked to the east, not to the west, this time. "We're going to
have to anchor."

He went up to the bow of
the boat and undid the lashings of a big Popeye-style anchor that
was secured to the rail. He worked some mechanism that released the
anchor, which fell into the sea with a thunk, and what seemed like
miles of chain went roaring out behind it. So now they were no
longer a piece of floating driftwood. They were a sitting
duck.

Jack went back below, and
Liz, tired herself of waiting, brought Susy and Caroline inside the
wheelhouse where it was warm. She sat on the settee with Susy in
her lap and an arm around Caroline, who was propped up sleepily
against her side. Deirdre collapsed on the cushioned semicircle of
the afterdeck, and Cornelius joined his son below, to hold a
flashlight for Jack to work by.

So this is
yachting,
Liz mused, watching the spooky
red sky with its dull red glow and distant, pulsating flashes of
lightning.
All in all, I guess I can live
without it.

She had a moment of hope.
About twenty minutes later, Jack's father came up and started the
engine again. It rumbled to life and she thought,
Finally. We're on our way again.

And then Jack's voice, up
from the cabin: "No good! Shut it down, Dad!"

He came back up, looking
disheartened now, and said, "The belt's too big; it keeps slipping.
We can wait to flag down someone for a tow, but with the kids on
board — I'm going to call the Coast Guard."

It was obvious to Liz that
he hated to have to do it. "Don't worry about us," she said
quickly. "Everyone's fine."

"Baloney," he said, and
picked up the transmitter to his marine radio. "This is the
Déjà Vu, Déjà Vu, Déjà Vu,
whiskey-yankee-sierra-one-zero-zero calling the Point Judith
Coast Guard, Point Judith Coast Guard."

"Déjà Vu,
this is the Point Judith Coast Guard; switch and
answer twenty-two."

"Switching
two-two."

Jack punched in the digits
on his radio and then calmly, but with some embarrassment,
explained the plight they were in.

"I roger that," said a
young voice at the other end. "Cap'n, are you in any danger right
now?"

"No, sir," said Jack. "We
have an anchor down."

"Roger that. We have all
boats out on an emergency call, so if you could just sit tight and
monitor this station, we'll get back to you as quick as we
can."

Jack acknowledged the
response and signed off. He came back to where Liz sat with the
sleeping kids and took a seat beside her.

"Look, I'm really sorry
about this."

"It's not your fault,
Jack," Liz said wearily. "It's the fault of — of whoever these
monster
saboteurs are," she said, trying
to suppress her outrage. Still, the word
monster
made Susy stir in her
sleep.

"Let's put these two to
bed," Jack said softly. He lifted Caroline up in his arms, and Liz,
carrying Susy, followed him carefully down the bronze cabin steps
to a guest stateroom below. Jack tucked Caroline, life jacket and
all, into a narrow berth that was secured by a beautifully carved
bunk- board; Liz tucked Susy into the berth opposite.