The Stowaway

"Has Peter seen her?" Nana Louise said. "She's covered."

"Ssssh," Mom said. "She'll hear you."

But Allie didn't turn her head. Didn't let Nana Louise know, didn't want to see her grandmother make a face and talk to her like she was a drippy nose little baby when she was almost eight.

Allie continued to look through the stuff in the boxes while Mom and Nana Louise packed the duffle bag with the fresh laundry they had laid out on the counter.

"Don't touch anything, honey," Mom said.

Allie didn't look at her either. She knew Mom would fade off if she didn't talk back.

The last three boxes. Fresh fruit. The radio that had just been repaired. Another box with two life jackets and some rope. Allie's life jacket was in the closet.

Mom said to Nana Louise, "Keep after her on the scratching. The last thing she needs are scars."

"You heard your mom," Nana Louise said.

Allie looked away. What she felt on her skin was nothing compared to the way she felt inside.

Chicken pox. Dripping little balls, like dew drops, the doctor had said. She was covered with sores. Around her mouth, all across her cheeks, behind her ears. Her body was a horror, an Itching Twitching Horror, she called it. ITH. Her mom had clipped her nails, rubbed her with a smelly brown lotion.

Allie looked over at her mom. So beautiful, she could be in a movie.

Dark blond hair, tanned skin, green eyes. Wearing shorts and one of Peter's shirts. Sunglasses on a loop around her neck. She looked tired, but happy.

Happy to be leaving.

"So has he seen her?" Nana Louise said again.

"No," Mom said. "Soon as I realized Allie had been exposed, I let him know and he moved onto the boat. Had to move all this damn stuff myself, but at least having him aboard The Petrel for the past few weeks meant he's gotten things pretty well organized. So we're shooting for midnight."

"Oh, Lisa. I wish you'd wait until morning."

"You know Peter--he makes a deadline, he sticks to it. He says that since we'll be sailing day and night for the duration, I might as well get used to it. Besides, he's promised me dinner at The Charthouse tonight."

"The things you do for love," Nana Louise said. "Hope it pays off."

"Cut it out." Mom sounded angry.

"What's so wrong with a mother being happy her daughter's fallen for someone with money this time around?"

Mom shook her head and Nana was quiet for a bit.

After a while, Mom said, "I'm just going to take a cab with these last boxes. You'll stay here tonight? Peter's arranged to sublet the apartment, but they won't be in until next week."

"Fine. We'll go back to my place in the morning.

Allie turned her back on them and blinked away the tears. Nana Louise's place was a gray condo complex in Warwick called Brentwood Estates. Everyone was old, there were no other kids. There was no place to play, or walk around. You couldn't even open the windows.

Mom came and knelt beside her. "This is it, Pumpkin."

Allie's lower lip start to tremble and she clamped her jaw tight. "Don't," she said, softly. Tears slipped down her cheeks, streaking the brown goop.

"Honey, we've been through this," Mom said. "Peter's never had the chicken pox, so he's got to keep his distance. Otherwise, we would take you."

Nana Louise stood over them. "Chicken pox is no treat for adults, Allie. Pneumonia, hepatitis, shingles. Some people even die."

Allie looked around wildly.

"Ssssh," Mom rolled her eyes. "That just for adults. Not kids. You'll be fine in a week or two."

"So why can't you wait?" Allie said.

"I've told you. We've got to beat the weather. It'll be safer if we go now."

Nana Louise made a sound. "Hurricanes, for God's sake. Peter better do the right thing and propose."

Mom ignored her.

Allie looked her mother in the eye. "So I'll go on a plane to England? You promise you'll take me the whole year after that?"

There.

She saw it. Her mother looked away a little bit, and then said in this quick voice, "That's the plan."

Allie stared at her mom.

"That's the plan" wasn't as bad as "We'll see," but it was close. "That's the plan" once meant that she would be sailing away with them today.

#

She had done fine on a bunch of short sailing trips. Six trips in all that Peter told them were their "shakeout" cruises. Allie sat where they told her, at least most of the time. Sometimes she worked herself between them so she had her mother to herself. And she usually pulled any lines that they told her, unless she was feeling too tired.

Then they had gone out for a week long trip to Maine. Her mother had told her it was very important that she behave herself, and Allie did, the whole time. Six days in a row, Allie wasn't too loud, did what they told her when they told her, at least most of the time. Peter got really bossy sometimes. He'd yell at her mom to "trim the jenny," or "ease the boom vang." But Peter mostly he seemed happy with them. He started calling Allie his "deck monkey" which she didn't really like, but it made her mother smile when he called her that.

It was the last day that things went wrong. They were coming back through the Cape Cod Canal and the waves seemed to just bounce the boat straight up and down. Peter started teasing Allie when she said she was feeling sick.

"Deck monkey want green bananas," he'd say. "Deck monkey want fried eggs?"

Her own dad never would have done that. But then, he never would have been on a boat, never did anything much besides stay in his studio in Boston and paint. Curly black hair, brown skin, and a big nose like her. But he was funny, and smart, and everyone liked him if he wanted them to. His paintings didn't always make sense to Allie, but she couldn't stop looking at them.

That's how he met Mom. She posed for him.

So did Belinda, and then he wanted to marry her.

Her own dad's face and Peter's had suddenly seemed the same, and she was so mad that she stopped looking at the horizon the way her mom told her, she stopped keeping what she'd been thinking the whole trip to herself.

"I hate sailing!" she'd cried. "I hate you!"

And then she threw up. Some of it went in the wooden crisscross thing Peter was standing on in the cockpit. He yelled, "Oh for Christ sakes, " while Mom tried to help her.

Mom brought Allie over to the rail and held her shoulders. To Peter she said, "Maybe we can anchor in Red Hook or someplace else close?"

Peter said he had too much to do the next day, that they were going on to Newport.

"She'll be all right," he said. "We're out of the channel, let's get the sails up."

Then the stupid boat that had been so pretty on the earlier trips was a wind-screeching, hateful thing the way it was turned on its side like it was trying to slide her into the water. Allie yelled, "I hate you!"

"That's just great," Peter said. "You hear this, Lisa?"

"Please, Peter." Her mom's voice was low. "And please, Allie. Stop saying that."

But Allie said it again.

"Honey, I don't see how this is going to work out," Peter said. "This is nothing compared to what we might run into."

Mom put her mouth right up against Allie's ear, spoke through her hair. "Please."

Allie did.

She had still been mad at her Mom, but it felt better to having her hold her shoulders while she puked into the rushing green water. "I hate sailing," she thought to herself between gasps. And to the man at the wheel: "I hate you."

#

"You promised," Allie said, stonily.

"Honey, we don't have time to talk about this now." Her mom's face got impatient, the way it could. "Give me a BGH."

Their code for a "Big Girl Hug."

Mom said, "I'll see you in a month."

Allie hugged her, burying her face in her mother's shirt, taking in her scent. All too soon, her mother peeled Allie's arms away. "That's it, now."

Allie looked at Nana Louise and back to her mom. "Why can't I stay with Daddy?"

"He's busy with the new baby," Mom said. She slipped on her sunglasses and picked up the duffle bag. "Wish me bon voyage."

#

Nana Louise watched television until the sun went down. The shows were things that Allie didn't want to watch: people sitting up on chairs telling things, with other people screaming at them from the audience. Just the sound of it, and the smell of Nana Louise's cigarettes made Allie feel sick to her stomach.

Allie tried to do some coloring, and then to read her books, but it all seemed like too much work.

The day was so long, it made Allie want to cry.

A month!

"Can I call my dad?" Allie asked. She stood over the phone.

It was the first thing she'd said to Nana Louise all day, and her grandmother turned on the couch, looking at her as if surprised. "What?"

"Can I call my dad? I know the phone number."

"What's he going to do?" Nana Louise moved her hand lazily, as if she were painting the air. "The artiste. He's made his decision, and I've seen it. Black tights and purple lipstick, nowhere near as pretty as my girl. Hope it doesn't take her ten wasted years before she smells the coffee."

"Please?"

"Fine. But he won't answer the phone if he's working. Says it distracts him."

"I know." Just hearing his voice on the answering machine would make Allie feel better. And he usually called back.

But Allie didn't even get to hear his voice. There was a new message from his wife, Belinda. Their baby was cooing and Belinda talked as if she were the baby. "Leave a message and Dada or Mama will call you back."

Allie slammed the phone down.

#

Nana Louise said, "Sit here, I want to have a little talk before I cook us some dinner." She patted the couch beside her, and Allie reluctantly climbed up. Nana Louise smelled of perfume that was too sweet. "Your mom is taking care of you by going alone on this trip. She and Peter are trying to figure out if they're going to get married. If they do, it'll be easier for you. I know he's not perfect, but who is?"

Nana Louise shook her head. "Sailing around the world, for God's sake. Why men need to do things like that is beyond me, but some of them do. And your mother can make the best of that for six months or a year before she gets him to settle down. What she doesn't need is you underfoot."

Allie's lower lip began to tremble again. "But they said I was going."

"And you said you were going to behave. She told me what you yelled at him on that last trip. What if you acted like that when they were halfway across the ocean? Who's going to marry your mother if he has to deal with that? You don't want to grow up on a secretary's salary, believe me. This trip is too important for you to mess up."

"That's not why I'm not going," Allie said. Her breathing began to rush. "Mom said it's because I'm sick."

"Uh-huh," Nana Louise said. She smiled to herself and suddenly Allie remembered her mom smiling the same sad sort of way. Allie remembered it, but she couldn't quite look at it directly. Believe what it really meant.

When Mom dropped her off at Bonnie Tuttle's house two weeks ago, Bonnie had those spots on her face. Bonnie's mom had said, "You're sure, Lisa?"

And Mom had been smiling that sad smile when she said, "It'll be for the best."

#

After Nana Louise fell asleep in Mom's room, Allie pulled her duffle bag from underneath her bed. It was light green and had "The Petrel" stitched under the handles. A gift from Peter when he and Mom first talked about sailing across the ocean, a million years ago.

Allie stuffed inside it her life preserver, a pair of jeans, underwear, shorts, tee shirts, her raincoat, and her boat shoes. She put on her favorite sweat suit and a baseball cap and tiptoed through the living room. She quietly let herself out.

#

The boat looked different. It was lower in the water, like it was squatting down. The vane thing was on the stern; there was a big box for the life raft on the deck.

Allie walked quietly along the finger pier beside the boat and listened.

She didn't hear them.

Maybe they were still at dinner.

She climbed on board. "Mom?" she called, softly.

The padlock to the cabin wasn't locked.

Allie made her way down the short set of stairs, and felt her way in the dark to the little cabin off to the side. This was the one that would have been hers. She'd slept there all the other times. Now the berth was stacked full of things, bags of sails, boxes, and tools. She climbed on top of the pile, and stuck her legs down near what would have been the foot of the bed and found there was a little clear space. Not much, and it was very tight, because she knew this part of the boat was right under the seat outside. Only her legs were expected to go here.

But she scrunched herself down, and pulled the sail bag in front of her, so it blocked her from the view of the main cabin. She hugged her duffel bag and hoped they came down soon and opened a hatch so she could breathe easier.

She told herself once again not to scratch. She couldn't scratch if she hoped to ever be as pretty as her mother.

And then she fell asleep.

#

She awoke to roaring.

She screamed, but no one heard her.

The engine was only a foot or two away, separated by thick fiberglass, but close anyhow. Quickly the space grew hot, but the boat was moving, she could feel it rising and falling on the water.

She felt good, at least for a few minutes.

They're taking me.

Then the heat and the motion got to her, and it was all she could do not to throw up.

But she didn't.

Look what that got her last time.

#

After what seemed hours later, the engine went suddenly quiet.

Allie's ears were ringing.

She could hear them walking around above her, Peter saying, "That's it, that's it," and there was the snap of sails above them, and the boat began to tip over and then surged forward, the motion lighter and better than when the engine was on.

Allie sat up, licking her lips. Wishing she had brought something to drink. But she told herself she had to wait. That they would need to go to sleep soon.

But they didn't for a long time. She could hear them outside, but not well. She made a decision, and very carefully crawled up on top of the sail bag and carefully unscrewed the knobs that held the porthole closed. She'd done this plenty of times before, opening portholes was one of the jobs they'd given her back when she was supposed to have gone with them.

"The sails are pulling well," she heard Peter say. "And damn, that steering vane is dead on. What a night." He laughed.

"You happy?" Mom said.

"Oh, baby, I'm not happy, I'm ecstatic. You, me, and these stars shining out here like this?"

"It is beautiful." Her voice was quiet.

"But?"

"I'm just missing my little Pumpkin."

"You'll be all right," Peter said. "We'll be there before you know it. And the time together is just what we need."

"I guess."

"You guess?" His voice sounded a little mean to Allie.

"I just hope we're doing the right thing with her."

"We are," Peter said. "We're getting some time on our own. And she's learning about consequences."

"Oh, come on, Peter. She thinks it's because she's sick. That's all I ever want her to know."

"It'll be different later," Peter said. "When we have kids of our own."

"Ah, we're already at kids."

Allie could tell her mother was smiling.

That made Allie want to cry.

"Sure am," Peter said. "I want at least a couple. And I don't expect any of them to tell me they hate me. Or whine and get in our way."

"Can tell you've never had one before," Mom said.

"No, but I've had enough employees to learn a few things about people. Clear expectations and genuine consequences, Lisa. That's the key. Allie's going to learn she's welcome only if she behaves. If not, we can look into schools for her. I certainly don't want her ruining this trip--I've been looking forward to this all my life."

"I understand," Mom said.

But Peter kept talking. "Being beached for this leg should've been her first lesson. I'm disappointed you didn't tell her point blank why she's not coming, instead of getting her infected with chicken pox, for God's sake. What if I'd caught it?"

Allie listened carefully.

Her mother's voice was quiet. "I didn't think it through. I'm sorry."

Allie thought she would cry. She put her hands to her face, and her shoulders shook for just a moment.

But then she sat straighter in the little cabin.

"It's settled then. I'll--we'll--make a decision once she arrives in England. If she behaves, we take her. If not, we'll look into a school for the year we're away. She might be happier, she really might. With friends her own age. Either way, she'll get a fair shake."

"All right, Peter."

Allie felt cold in the hot cabin. But not scared. She scratched at the sores behind her ear, at her chest. She scratched at her face.

Then she kept quiet.

Quiet all through the hours as her mother slept and as Peter took the first watch.

Quiet as she waited until they had switched, and he went to the forward cabin to sleep.

Quiet as she crept forward an hour later to poise herself above him as he slept with his mouth open, his handsome face already stubbled with a growing beard. Her own face was flushed with the virus that had stowed away inside her.

And then Allie kissed him on the lips.

###