Sally Ryder Brady - A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage

For Upton

AUTHORS NOTE

This is a true story, though some names have been changed.

THIS PAPER BOAT

Carefully placed upon the future,

it tips from the breeze and skims away,

frail thing of words, this valentine,

so far to sail. And if you find it

caught in the reeds, its message blurred,

the thought that you are holding it

a moment is enough for me.

TED KOOSER, Valentines

Contents

PRELUDE

Parsque est meminisse doloris.
It is part of grief to remember.

OVID

WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS, MARCH 30, 2008

The Sunday after Easter dawns bitter cold, but at least Cape Cod is sunny and there is no wind. Yesterday my son Nathaniel removed the winter plastic from his nineteen-foot open boat, scrubbed the hull, and polished the fittings. This morning he hitched up the trailer and towed the boat from his house outside Boston to Woods Hole, where the other three childrenSarah, Andrew, and Alexanderand I have assembled on the town dock. We are bundled in down, fleece, and Gor-Tex, knowing it will be even colder on the open water.

Sarah has brought a hundred daffodils and tulips from Connecticut, nestled in a large carton; Natty has a thermos of hot tea. Andrew casts off and the boat slips away, the bow turning toward Vineyard Sound. Marthas Vineyard lies on our left, Naushon Island on our right. We are heading to Tarpaulin Cove off Naushon, five miles down the Sound.

We are just passing the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution when I look for the square, gray box, deceptively heavy, that holds Uptons ashes. I dont see it in the cockpit, or in the small cabin.

Wheres Upton? I ask.

Four pairs of blue eyes meet mine.

On the front hall table at Aunt Joanies?

We all start to laugh, a quiet, guilty laugh at first that soon gets raucous. Natty turns the boat around and we head back to the dock. How could we have forgotten Upton? Easy. We forgot him because he wasnt here to remind us. Sarah drives back to the house and we try again.

This time, we make it to Tarpaulin Cove. Natty heads close in to the curve of the northeast shore and cuts the engine. Suddenly the air is still and almost warm. The empty, weathered house, the barn, and the outhouse stand stark vigil on a windswept rise behind the beach. The nearest house is four miles away, and today, in March, ours is the only boat in view. For over thirty years we have been lucky guests on this privately owned island.

Upton always said that being at the Cove was like living in the eighteenth centuryno electricity, indoor plumbing, telephone, or cars. Time slowed down, and we paid attention to the smallest details of daily life: washing ourselves and our clothes with water pumped by hand from the well, taking care of trash and garbage, trimming the Aladdin lamps, preparing food using as little gas as possible. Even planning meals took extra care because at the Cove, we used what was there and what was about to spoil, harvested what was in the garden or in the sea. Running to the store meant leaving the island, an all-day event. We lived by the sun, pinching each other to stay awake until nine every night so we wouldnt wake up before five.

Nattys boat drifts lazily across the clear water, held in the crescent of white beach, while memories from past summers lap like the waves on the hull. We havent planned a ceremony, but one evolves.

Theres Pas wind vane on the fence post.

And the screen door he built from scraps.

Remember when he discovered all the wood at the French Watering Place, and towed it back behind the whaler?

That was the summer Upton decided to rebuild the deck by the back door, a complicated project in a house with no electricity, on an island without cars or shops.

Remember when he got the toilet to work again? That project took two years.

No, three.

The plumbing at the Cove is far from modern, with an outhouse, a sun-shower, and a well. There was indoor plumbing, once; the airy bathroom and generous claw-foot bathtub attest to this. But there was no hot water, and the toilet hadnt worked for years. Because we relied on a small Briggs & Stratton gas engine in the cellar to pump well water into the house once or twice a week, we used water sparingly to save on fuel. Even if the toilet didnt leak, insufficient pressure would have made normal flushing out of the question. But, said Upton, if the leaky pipes to and from the toilet were replaced, we could at least use the john at night and have a single flush in the morning. The older we got, the less we enjoyed going downstairs and across the grass to the outhouse in the middle of the night, especially in the teeth of a noreaster. Upton steadfastly set to work on the pipes, and three summers later, we celebrated Flush Day. Upton chilled a bottle of champagne in the gas refrigerator and made a hazelnut torte, grinding the nuts by hand in the Mouli. I put on my pearls, and we waltzed up and down the sandy hall on bare feet to Strauss, played on the out-of-tune piano by a visiting concert pianist.

The boat is almost in front of the house now, and I spot the old pier piling on the beach and remember the long-ago night I spent wrapped in a soggy towel, my back against the rotting wood. The house had been full of visitors and children, and after dinner in our bedroom, Upton, mean from too much whiskey, turned on me.

Youre a big phony. A social climber! He came close and raised his hand.

Id seen Upton drunkalmost every night he had too much to drinkbut this was the first time I was ever afraid of him. I took off for the beach in my nightgown, figuring that without an audience he would stop ranting and soon pass out. I could have crept back later and slipped into bed beside him, but I needed the night alone to sort things out. Upton had crossed a line. Alone on the beach, I realized that I could no longer ignore his anger. An ounce too much of bourbon was all it took for him to erupt. Sarah had just turned thirteen; Alex was seven, and Andrew and Natty were eleven and nine. I would have to figure out a way to keep us all safe.

Now, as the wind and tide take Nattys boat toward the lighthouse bluffs, I also remember sweet afternoons when the children were off fishing or sailing and Upton and I would spread our towels behind the boulders, make salty love and lie together in the sun, the southwest wind caressing our skin. I think of the nights when the lighthouse beam would flash at one-minute intervals on the wall above our bed while we came together as quietly as possible, inevitably betrayed by the rhythmic screech of rusty bedsprings.

Closer to shore now, we see two cows grazing on the tawny grasses up beside the lighthouse. On the beach below, a large coyote appears, sees the boat, and stops to sniff the air. He decides we are nothing to him, and trots off, king of the Cove. Natty looks at his watch, at the buoy beyond the rocks, and finally out at the cold, blue Sound, as if fixing his position with the land and tide.

Mom, I think we should do it right here.

Thats when we spot a colony of harbor seals on the rocks ahead. They watch us and we watch them. Finally, one slithers off his rock and swims up to the boat, gazing at us with round, dark eyes. He waits while I open the box. When I let go of the first handful of ashes, the wind catches them and blows them back at us. Some land, sweet and salty, on my tongue; my last taste of Upton. The next handful lands in the water. Caught by the sun, the ashes begin to sparkle as they slowly drift away from the boat. Then it is the childrens turn, everyone tossing Upton into the sea while the seal looks gravely on. We toss the flowers in next. Suddenly, without a ripple, the seal dives, a fleeting shadow beneath the milky cloud. We are done, but still stand, transfixed by the nebula of winking ashes that continues to drift just inches below the surface of the water, surrounded now by a fleet of bobbing tulips and daffodils.