Page 80 of The Captain
35
CAMILLE
Isat on the low stool by the quiet room, still counting breaths. What else could I do?
“One,” I said into the soft air, and the calf’s ribs lifted obediently under my palm as if we were working this problem together. “Two.” The pump thrummed like a tired heart with good intentions. “Three.”
Behind me, Papa leaned his shoulder to the doorjamb.
“Ma fille,” he said again, and the sound of it put water in my eyes faster than any siren could.
“I’m fine,” I lied … again.
He nodded like we were discussing weather. “You will be,” he said. “Even if he does not come back.”
I turned then. The words hit something raw and shining in me and I didn’t want to be noble about it. “Don’t say that,” I said. It came out quieter than I felt. “Please.”
He didn’t apologize.
“Camille,” he said, almost gently, “you are made of other things than loss. I have watched you breathe life into animalsthat were already halfway to the other side. You can survive this. You will survive this.”
I shook my head and felt my braid thump my back like a stubborn metronome. “I don’t want to survive it,” I said. “I want him.”
Papa’s mouth softened at the edges. I could see him weighing the impulse to tell me not to go fast against the part of him that had been twenty-two with a chest full of certainty about a dark-eyed girl at a party.
“It’s fast,” he said.
“It is,” I agreed, and the relief of saying it let my breath come easier. “And I don’t care. I know what I know. It’s fast, Papa, but it’s true.”
I felt my mouth tilt into a smile that wasn’t pretty. “If he walks through that door,” I said, and the door was the whole world all of a sudden, “I’m done leaving Charleston. I’m not a contract anymore. I’m not a fill-the-gap-and-go. I want a life, ici. Near you and Mama. I want dinners where you pretend not to cry when little feet run down your hallway. I want a porch that remembers our coffee cups. I want a dog that sheds on your truck seat and you don’t complain. I want kids who know your whistle and my tide charts and the difference between a good wave and a bad one.”
I swallowed. The calf breathed. “I want him in that picture,” I said. “All the way in.”
Papa’s eyes did that glassy thing that only happens to him when he listens to Louis Armstrong or when Mama walks into a room. He cleared his throat and tried for gruffness and missed. “Bon,” he said. “Alors. We will buy another chair.”
I huffed a laugh that would have broken if the calf hadn’t taken a perfect little breath right then like she was keeping time for me. “You’ll need more than a chair,” I said. “You’ll need fencing.”
“Fencing?” He pretended scandal. “My fence is perfect.”
“Your fence is a suggestion,” I said. “Our children will not be.”
“Nos petits-enfants,” he corrected softly, and the words came into the room like a flock of bright birds I did not dare reach for. “We will teach them to pull a net and to listen to a story and to hold a wrench the way my father taught me. We will show them the river. We will tell them their mother is braver than most men I have met.”
I pressed my mouth to the calf’s flank because I could not survive looking at him and hearing that at the same time. “Stop,” I said into warm skin. “I will break.”
He came in then—one step, two. “If he does not return,” he began again, because he is a man who closes circles, “you will still have the chair, the fence, the river. And?—”
“And I will have you,” I said, because I’m not cruel. “And Mama. And my work.” I let the list stand in the air like scaffolding. It wobbled. “But I don’t want to practice surviving. I am tired of being good at it.”
Papa’s face turned toward the floor for a heartbeat as if he were letting the room admire the top of his head. When he looked up, there was a memory on his mouth. “When your mother was carrying you,” he said, “she would stand at the sink and make a small sound when you kicked. Not pain. Wonder. Every time. Like the world had surprised her again by doing the right thing.”
I swallowed. “Papa.”
“That is the sound you made three days ago when this man said your name. Même chose.” He shrugged, small. “It is not fast. It is simply the correct thing.”
I laughed, ugly and grateful. “You would have hated him if he had been wrong for me.”
“I would have,” he said. “And I do not.”
