“It’s good to have some reserves on hand for when we head back to Boston,” Regina told him. “I just want to be sure I don’t run out.”
She turned her cheek in his direction for the kiss she knew he’d deliver. “On your way home, why don’t you pick us up some fried clams?” she said. Not that she’d be eating any herself.
Forrest would fulfill any request from Regina now. I could tell from the look on his face. He was ready to spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
75
An Unstable Canoe
For me it was all about tennis now. If I could have pitched a tent at the tennis court I would have done it. As things were, I kept hitting against the backboard and spending time with Jonathan whenever his coaching schedule allowed. Though I had been paying him for the extra time out of my summer earnings, Jonathan taught me for free now. As always, nobody seemed to notice my trips to the court or the beautiful new racquet I brought with me when I went there.
Back at Wonderland, excitement was building for the big Labor Day blowout. Forrest had purchased a new pair of running shoes for the running portion of the triathlon and tuned up his bike. Prudence had taken the punch bowl out, ready for the party the Emersons would be hosting as the boats circled the cove, and the fireworks that would follow. Jilly and Hayward were making decorations for the Emersons’ entry into the Lake Catherine Regatta. All around the lake, families were preparing their boats, stringing garlands of flowers around the masts, making signs. Everybody wanted to have the most elaborately decorated boat.
Forrest would be launching the Chris-Craft, of course. He had rented a pirate costume for the event—a tricornered hat with a featherplume, a velvet vest, and a white shirt with big puffy sleeves. Knowing Forrest, he’d keep the shirt unbuttoned.
He’d rented a dress for Regina at the same shop. “You’ll be my saucy wench,” he told her, flashing his customary grin. Getting Regina to join in the festivities seemed unlikely. But I could tell how hard he was trying.
Forrest’s plans for this year’s regatta didn’t stop with the pirate outfits and decorations. More than any of that, the big news was that in addition to the Chris-Craft, he was planning to launch the birchbark canoe into the lake for the first time in years, rather than the Old Town I’d used when I paddled out to the island.
Forrest’s plan called for Jilly and Hayward to dress up as Native Americans. They’d paddle the birchbark canoe behind the Chris-Craft—Hayward in a headdress and loincloth over his swim trunks, with a tomahawk strapped to his chest; Jilly in braids and a fringed faux-leather skirt and the pair of moccasins he’d bought for her that day we drove up from New Jersey.
Regina was dubious about the idea. Then again, Regina was dubious about most ideas. In this case, she had a point. For as long as the family had owned it, everyone knew the birchbark canoe was prone to tipping. This was why it stayed in the boathouse. Only an experienced canoeist had any business taking that canoe out, and even then, the odds were strong that the boat and whoever was paddling it would end up flipped over in the water. That was a birchbark canoe for you. Beautiful but unstable—words that also applied to a certain member of the Emerson family, it occurred to me. Liable to capsize at any moment.
Typical of Forrest, he researched a solution. As hopeless as he’d been as a student, he had a knack for the kind of skills other kids probably learned from their father or their Boy Scout troop, though in Forrest’s case he learned them from books he picked out at the Lake Catherine Library’s do-it-yourself section.
Forrest had acquired the ability, early on, to figure things out for himself, and when there was something that mattered deeply tohim—like making it possible for his children to paddle the birchbark canoe in the regatta—he’d do what was necessary to bring it about. This was one of the things I had always admired about him. One of the many. He didn’t always finish what he’d started, was all. Sometimes he lost interest partway in.
With the aid of a library book on canoeing, Forrest had hit on the idea of installing a couple of outriggers on either side of the canoe to make it safe for his children to paddle in the regatta. With three days to go before the Labor Day weekend regatta, he got to work.
Forrest spent hours down at the boathouse during those final days, constructing the outrigger and then attaching it. Knowing Forrest—particularly Forrest as he was, post-Brenda, redoubling his efforts as a family man—I guessed he’d want to turn this into a father-and-son project, or father-and-daughter, or both, but Hayward and Jilly didn’t seem all that interested. I was, of course. I was interested in everything Forrest did. That never changed. But I hung back now.
It was late afternoon—the children’s sailing lessons had finished for the season. The two of them were up at the house, watching a video, as usual, and Regina was taking a nap. Forrest had set the canoe on a couple of sawhorses, with the outriggers he’d built (his third attempt) attached on either side with a vise. Seeing me on a lawn chair with my book a little ways off, he called out to me to give him a hand.
“You mind?” he asked. “It looks like you’re really into that book you’ve been reading. God forbid I get between you and Stephen King.”
As disillusioned as I’d become, and as angry as I’d been with him, I couldn’t help it that I still loved spending time with Forrest. Now that he’d sent Brenda packing, I didn’t have to pretend otherwise anymore. He would never again be the god he once was to me, but of course I wanted to help him fix the canoe.
I put my book down and headed over to the sawhorses where the canoe sat. “At your service,” I told him.
From his research, Forrest had discovered an elaborate technique for sealing birchbark that involved digging up the roots of cedar trees,soaking them in water, cooking them, then scraping the bark, for the purpose of creating a gummy substance to brush over the places where water might get in. He handed me a brush.
For a few minutes we just stood there over the boat, applying the cedar gum. Neither of us spoke. It wasn’t like the old days, but close enough.
“You’re a very smart person, Frances,” he said. “And you’re the kind of girl who notices things other people might not.”
He was right. I didn’t know where he was going. So I just listened, brushing cedar gum onto the bark.
“You’ve probably noticed that for a while there I was ...” He paused. “Distracted.”
I dipped my brush back in the gum concoction and drew it over another patch of bark. I liked the smell. I liked everything about this moment.
“I haven’t always been the greatest husband and father to my family,” he said. “I try, but I slip up sometimes.”
I wanted to tell him that I got it. I understood more than he might imagine about how the presence or absence of sex can make people do crazy things. Over the summer, I’d witnessed many of these.
“It’s a little like a canoe,” he said. “You can lose your balance. For a while there, that’s what happened to me. But I’m OK now. Steady as they come.”
He made no mention of Brenda Barnett, or the tryst on the island, or any of those other trysts that had no doubt taken place over the course of the summer now drawing to a close—and all the summers before this one. I made no mention to Forrest of having known about them. Or that I’d kept notes and reported the details of the most recent of these to Regina.
