Amber House (11 page)

“Fine by me,” I said. He did the sweaty stuff and I got to navigate.

My dad had started me sailing when I was just a kid. The waters in the Puget Sound were rough and cold, so it was important to learn some skills
fast
. I used to crew for Dad. Lately, Sammy crewed for me. Begin young like that, and it gets in your blood.

The current carried us to mid-channel, where the breeze filled the sail. It was all magic from there.

Sailing is a dance between the boat and the wind. You have to keep the sail set to trap the wind as you tack your way in the general direction you want to go. If you can get a full sail with the breeze at your back and your bow pointed toward your destination, then you’re “running before the wind.” Which is more or less like flying.

Moving down the Severn, the wind wasn’t at our back; it was blowing in a northerly direction off the Chesapeake. So the game was me steering and Richard adjusting the sheets to snag what little wind we could. We’d build up speed tacking northeasterly, then swing about to the southeast using our momentum and the flow of the river.

I say river, because that’s what the maps called it, but the Severn from Amber House east was more an estuary of the bay. The Chesapeake spread fat fingers of water up the beds of every stream that fed it, so the water was fresh, but the current was buried and sluggish. It was hard work fighting our way downwind.

Since I was at the helm, I had some time to watch the scenery: some modest homes, but mostly a series of huge houses sitting above velvet lawns. Docks sprouted before a lot of them. About halfway down to the bay, the river belled out around an island. The channel widened and turned north there. We picked up speed as we rounded the bend. The houses along the south bank grew closer together until they congealed into the city of Annapolis. A harbor filled with ships and boats of all sizes spread out before a campus of pale gray granite buildings — the United States Naval Academy. Tacking south into the mouth of a smaller river, I saw the colonial heart of the town, all charming, steep-roofed buildings shouldering side by side. Then we came about northeast, heading away from shore.

The bay opened wide before us, the waters pushed into small, choppy waves by the wind. A huge steel ship cut through the
deepest channel, heading north, slowing in its approach to the harbor in Baltimore.

Richard smiled at me, mischief in his eyes, and called for me to tack. I eased the rudder over. The sail billowed as the
Swallow
lumbered northwest into full flight.

We skimmed the waves, just barely rocking. My hair flapped wildly around me, collecting moisture from the air. I was laughing and didn’t remember having started. We came even with the steel giant, and I waved at the seamen at the rails, who were watching our run. We passed them, still flying.

When we got ahead a little, Richard called for another tack.

He wanted us to cut in front of the tanker. A maneuver that was not only illegal, but just short of insane. I opened my mouth to scream, “Don’t do it,” but Richard had already blown the sheets, letting our sails luff wildly, skewing our path to port. If I hesitated, I might slow our flight — fatally. So, I pushed the tiller with all my strength, turning the
Swallow
across the wind. Instantly, we started to lose speed. The ship at our backs plowed on indifferently, still distant, but looking more and more like a skyscraper bearing down on us.

“Keep turning her,” Richard yelled. He trimmed the jib to port to catch a little more wind.

This is not good
, I thought. We had passed the halfway point, but now the tanker’s bow wake was pushing us sideways as we crept toward clearing its path. I couldn’t see anyone at the rails anymore. The steel sides just rose up and up into the sky itself. The ship sounded its horn, and the blare smacked me like something physical.

But then the
Swallow
started to cruise along the ship’s spreading wake like a surfer down a wave. We were clear and stealing speed from the huge amount of water the tanker displaced.

Richard was roaring with laughter.
“Yeee-haw,”
he yelled, then, “Amidships,” as he hauled the mainsail in the last few inches,
trimming the sheets flat. “Keep her heading southeast till we clear the stern, then bring her about.”

When the ship passed, we were a good ways east, well clear of the propeller wash. I turned her ninety degrees once more, back toward the mouth of the Severn. Richard let the sail swing starboard, where it again filled with wind. We ran along at a good clip past the marsh tip on the south side of the river mouth. As we neared Annapolis again, both the
Swallow
and my heart finally slowed.

We tacked back upriver as far as the island. When we got close, Richard furled the sails and dropped anchor. He was still grinning widely and wickedly. “How’d you like the ride?” he asked.

“Some ride,” I said, managing a smile. “Adrenaline junkie.”

He laughed, enjoying himself. Then he dove into the picnic basket. “Ham or tuna?”

I wondered if I still had an appetite in me. “Ham,” I said. I unwrapped the sandwich and found I did. Apparently something about fear left me absolutely famished. We worked through two sandwiches each, a slab of pie, and a brownie, all washed down with Coke.

“You sail like a guy and eat like a guy,” Richard observed. “More points, Parsons.”

He was still keeping score. And, I realized, I wanted to do well.

The trip back to Amber House was more leisurely. Richard set the sail and took the tiller, so I could sit back and relax. And sneak peeks at the pilot. He did more of his tour-guide shtick, telling me how the Catholic settlers brought over from Europe by Lord Baltimore displaced the Piscataway tribe from the territory on both sides of the Severn. “They were related to
Pocahontas’s tribe, but they were a separate people. A smallpox epidemic got most of them.”

He pointed to a large, rectangular brick mansion that he and the senator called home. It was not as old as Amber House, he said, “but then, nothing else around here is.”

As the channel narrowed, its sides rose. The trees climbing the bluffs to either side added to the late afternoon shadows as we approached Amber House. Richard skillfully slowed the boat as we entered the estuary, coming about just in time to run parallel to the dock. He tied the
Swallow
up. All very neatly done.

He held out his hand. I took it and jumped down beside him, failing to land with his same catlike grace, but coming close. I was looking for more points. He grinned, as if he could read my mind.

“A group of us are having a party tomorrow night,” he said. “Wanna join us?”

“Wanna join us” was not a date, I noted unhappily. An invitation, but not another date. “Sure,” I said. “How do I get there?”

“I’ll pick you up. It’s on the south side of the river, near Herald Island. I’m going right past your house. If you give me your number, I can text you.”

“Yeah, can’t. Sorry. Forgot my charger at home.”

He laughed. “Okay. Then how ’bout we say … nine o’clock?”

“Sounds great. Thanks.” Rose’s words about low-class people rang in my ears. “Can I bring something, you think?”

He nodded soberly. “You are not stepping foot in my car unless you’ve got another big bag of brownies on you.”

When I got back, Sammy was sitting in the kitchen, sucking on a frozen juice bar, his mouth the color of smashed strawberries.

“What you been up to, squirt?”

“Been playing hide-and-seek.”

“Oh, yeah? Who with?”

“No one.”

I smiled tolerantly. “Kind of hard to play hide-and-seek with no one, isn’t it?”

“Nope. I just gotta be the finder. But I’m a good finder. Like you, Sarah.”

“Where did you get the juice bar?”

“Rose made ’em for me. You can have one, if you want.”

I fished one out of the freezer and thawed it from its plastic mold under running water in the sink. I took a lick. “Yum.”

“You’re welcome,” Sammy said.

I sighed. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“I know something you don’t know. But you gotta say please.”

I nodded. “Please, Sam.
Please
tell me what you know.”

He smiled a strawberry smile. “Daddy’s coming.”

“For dinner?”

“For a sleepover.”

“You’re kidding. He’s staying till tomorrow?”

“Till tomorrow after tomorrow. Mommy said he could.”

Wow
, I thought. And then,
No
. With Dad in the house, it’d make my planned nocturnal investigations that much harder to
pull off.
Perhaps I ought to bag it
, I thought.
Perhaps I should call Jackson.

“He knows already.”

“What? Who?”

But Sam had already disappeared through the door.

I spotted Rose on her way out.

“Richard Hathaway invited me to join his friends for a party tomorrow night and said I should bring some more brownies. I was hoping you’d give me the recipe.”

She looked at me skeptically, but turned and fished a little card out of a cookbook on a shelf. She handed it to me. “It’s your gramma’s recipe. You know how to do this?”

“Sure. I can follow directions. What could be so hard?” I started to look it over.

“I’ll be gone Sunday and Monday, so —”

“Um, Rose?” I noticed my rudeness. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“What?”

“Where can I find the double boiler thingy?”

“It’s in this cupboard.” She turned and fished out a pair of stacking pots. I stared at them. “You put the water in the bottom one,” she said suspiciously.

“Right,” I said.
Maybe Gramma had a box of brownie mix around here somewhere.

“I expect you’re gonna need some help making these.” Clearly she recognized I had inherited my mother’s cooking skills.

“I can figure it out.”

“I don’t want you burning the pots or setting the house on fire. You be in here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, we’ll give you some help.”

“Thanks, Rose. Sorry to be such a bother.”

“No bother to me,” she said, snatching the card back to return it to the cookbook. “You just promise you’ll make sure Sam gets a decent breakfast while I’m gone.”

“I promise,” I said. “Where’re you going?”

“Down to Alexandria to visit my mama.”

“Your mama?” I repeated, confused. “But I thought Nanga was your mother —”

She rolled her eyes a little. “Nanga? My mother’s name is Sylvia.”

Mom walked through the door then. “Sarah,” she said, “can you make the bed in the Chinese room for your father? The linen cupboard is next to Gramma’s room.”

“Sure, Mom,” I said.

Dad came, lugging more carry-out — Italian, this time. We four sat down to a reasonably cheerful meal together. It might have helped that I didn’t mention Richard or the party once. Not that I had much of a chance to. Mom launched into this long, boring story about one of her client’s paintings. Only, Dad didn’t seem to find it boring. He kept prompting her with questions and chuckling in the right places. My mother laughed and gestured with her hands, elaborating, looking more beautiful and graceful than usual. She seemed young. Not hard. Vulnerable. It made me realize, a little bit, what my parents must have been like back in the beginning, when they were still in love.

After dinner, Mom headed off to her TV, but not before she asked me how my sailing date went. I told her “fine” in the most noncommittal voice I had. She frowned a little bit, itching to ask more, but knowing better than to do it. I got a perverse pleasure out of that.

I asked if I could go with Richard to the party the next evening.

“Yes, of course,” she said, and added in that unthinking way of hers, “The senator wanted you to meet some of the local kids. That’s probably why Richard invited you.”

And just like that, I realized that Richard probably wasn’t interested in me at all, that he was just doing his old man a favor by taking me around. It hurt. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

I was sitting there wishing violently that my mother would enroll in an introductory course on tact, when she looked at me oddly and asked, “Did you say something?”

“I said, ‘Thanks.’”

“After that.”

“No.”

I hadn’t, had I? I hadn’t cursed her out loud? I looked at Dad to check, but he was busy with Sammy.

“Okay,” Mom said. “Good night, then.”

Dad and Sammy and I talked for a while, just about nothing stuff. Dad asked me what I thought of the senator’s son, and I shrugged. He seemed comforted by that. He asked Sam if he’d met anybody, and Sammy said, “No one.” Short and sweet and summed it up — classic Sammy talk. Dad and I laughed.

Then Dad announced he was “turning into a pumpkin.” I told him I could put Sam to bed, so he headed off to his room. Sam, Heavy Bear, and I went upstairs.

It was nearly ten, and I was anxious for Sam to get to sleep before Jackson arrived for our explorations. I was also hoping for a few minutes to call Jecie. I wanted some sympathy from her for my latest Richard Hathaway disappointment.

Sam, unfortunately, was not anxious to cooperate. “Did you see, Sarah?” He was standing in front of the dollhouse on the shelves in my room.

“Yeah, bud, you showed me — it lights up.”

“No, Sarah.” He undid the clasp in the front of the house and opened it. The front half of the house split in two and swung to either side, forming a U of displayed rooms. “Lookit,” he said. “It’s Amber House.”

It was. Once you started looking for it, it was obvious. The desk in the front hall, the trestle table, the main stair, the nautical bedroom — all the way the house had been before they’d added the two wings and a few miscellaneous architectural details. It even had tiny oil portraits hanging on the walls. Were these people obsessed with their house, or what?

Every room was a perfect replica of the rooms as they had looked back — I guessed — when the dollhouse was made, probably in the 1700s. Which meant it had no bathrooms and there was a pump in the kitchen sink. No updating at all, except for the tiny glass bulbs in every chandelier and lamp.

Even the Amber House family was there — four-inch-tall china dolls of a black-haired mama and three children dressed in satin, plus an African-American doll in plain linen clothes. I was fascinated. I wandered the rooms — opened cupboards, took books from the shelves in the library, set the table with quarter-sized rose-painted plates. It was amazing.

“Lookit, Sarah.” Sam was pointing at the fireplace in the living room. I bent down to see what he saw.

A pair of tiny boots were dangling from the chimney. I grabbed one and pulled, and a daddy doll dressed in a military uniform tumbled out. “Huh,” I said.

Sammy looked at him solemnly. “Maybe you should put him back, Sarah.”

“I have a better idea,” I said, gathering up the doll family. “It’s time to sleep. Let’s put them to bed.” Swiftly, I tucked them into what I assumed were their places: the boy in the nautical room, the two girls in a white bedroom on the southwest corner, the mommy in Deirdre’s room, and the man in the sword-strewn suite. “And now for you too. Off to bed. I’m tired.”

“You don’t seem tired to me.”

“Well, I am,” I snapped. “You’ve got to go to bed.”

My desperation must have been apparent, because Sam sized me up as someone ready to sweeten the deal. “Read me a story,” he demanded.

I may have been an easy target for some arm-twisting, but I wasn’t stupid — I had been down this road with him before. “I will read you a story,
if
” — I ticked off the conditions on my fingers — “you brush your teeth, get a drink of water, put on your pajamas,
and
get under the covers,” I told him.

“Okay,” he agreed a little too quickly. I had missed something important.

“
And
,” I added, “if you promise to stay in bed till morning.”

His face fell — that was the loophole he had been counting on.

“Okay,” he agreed, more reluctantly. I thought I was safe.

He got ready for bed while I went to his backpack for a book of fairy tales we were reading. On the floor next to it, I saw a heavy frame, its face to the wall. I thought it must be a portrait, because Sammy didn’t like pictures “watching him” and was always turning them around in any room he stayed in alone. I tipped it to see, but it turned out to be a mirror.

When he came back from the bathroom, I asked him, “Sam, how did this get here?”

“I did it.”

“You shouldn’t be taking things off the wall, bud. Why’d you take this down?”

“Don’t want no one watching me.”

“You don’t want
any
one watching you,” I corrected.

Sam gave me a questioning look, a mix of confusion and impatience. “No one’s in the mirror,” he said.

I picked up the mirror, turned it around. “That’s right. No one’s there.” Sam didn’t look satisfied. I was getting a little exasperated. “Want me to put it back where it was?”

He nodded again, and I leaned it back facing the wall.

Sam climbed into his berth, and I squeezed in beside him, so he could see the pictures and follow along as I read. Through the portholes to our little room-in-a-room, I saw clouds drifting over the half-f moon outside. Drops of rain started to spatter the glass.

I read Sam a tale about someone named Jack, and it struck me as I read that they are all Jack — the guys who are simple and despised by their smarter brothers, but who always figure out how to follow the princess into her enchanted realm and bring her and all her sisters back. Then Jack marries the princess and gets half the kingdom and everyone lives happily ever after.

Sammy, nearly out by the time I finished, murmured to me, “Jack finded her. Like you find me, Sarah. You’re my Jack.”

I smiled. “You mean I’m not the beautiful princess in our story?” But he was already asleep.