Scout. romper.com
As they left all of us followed them upstairs. At the front door, Mr. Tanaki turned to us and said, “put your house in order and pack up your belongings, all of you. If everything goes as planned, we should be leaving in two days. I still have arrangements to make, but I’ll get in touch with you through the mayor’s office in San Francisco by tomorrow afternoon.”
At this moment Naomi grabbed his arm and said, rather loudly, “we’ve talked about this and some of us are not leaving the bay. I know the Abbott’s might be resettled in Alameda and my mother’s not leaving them, and I’m not leaving my mother, at least not far. Jason and Charlie have also opted out of sailing away. We can man the radios and do important work here. If this neighborhood is evacuated, can we transfer to the nearest military post, or wherever? Charlie’s not giving up his radio. It’s his life, and I’m not giving up my mother nor Jason me. It’s that simple.”
The governor overheard this plea on his way out and turned to Naomi and said: “Look, for all of your good services to the state we’ll gladly accommodate you. We can certainly use your talents on the radios. I think the military is planning to set up a communications post on Angel Island and I can send you there as my liaisons and don’t worry, I’ll make sure your mother and her friends are taken care of.”
He gave her and Charlie a firm handshake as he left in the dwindling light, a true professional.
As the caravan departed, I turned to the others and asked that we sit down together and talk about what each of us wanted to do. I’d had some doubts about asking Naomi to leave her mother, but now that issue was settled. Yet I had no idea what the others wanted to do and now was the time to find out.
I turned to Jaime.
“So what do you think of this plan of getting on a boat and sailing away for a while.”
‘I’m undecided so far,” he replied, “I need to stay busy, but I don’t see me doing anything at the lab until the power’s back. I’m going to leave my fate in Samantha’s hands. Whatever course she chooses, I’ll follow.”
Samantha turned to Mary and Jane.
“Mary” she began, “do you want to leave on Mr. Tanaki’s boat, with Scout and Jane and sail for the island?”
“I’d like to” she replied, “to keep Scout safe. But I still consider myself Roland’s guest and under his protection. I’ll let him choose for me.”
“Well this is getting nowhere” I thought to myself.
“Claire” I said bluntly, “do you want to go or not?”
“Yes, on condition that we return to this house as soon as it’s safe.”
“So Mary, Jane, there’s your answer. We’re going and so are you.”
Samantha spoke next. “I made this little girl a promise that I’d someday take her around the world. I suppose this is a good start. We’re in.”
“So, the rest of you” I said, “are you comfortable with us leaving you in the bay area? We have no clue as to what might happen here or how long we’ll be gone.”
“For my part” Jason said, “I can’t go. I’m deathly scared of the ocean. I almost drowned in the surf when I was ten and the fear never left me.”
“I don’t much like boats either” Charlie added. “I get seasick.”
Naomi spoke up. “The governor said he would take care of us and I trust him on that, so unless there’s a complete meltdown here I think we’ll be okay. And I’ll be relieved just to know that you’re safe. But you must take one of the radios with you so we can stay in touch. That’s the only way we’ll let you go. I’m going to miss you, Scout.”
She stood up and went to where Scout was sitting by her mother, knelt and held her face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.
“Wait a minute” she said, “nobody asked Scout what she’d like to do.”
“I’d like to go” Scout said, “because I love the water and the beach, but I’ll miss you. Will I see Akika when we get there? She told me she was going to teach me Japanese.?”
“Yes you will, Scout” I said, “and she’ll be so happy to see you.”
Naomi gave Scout another kiss.
At this point our conference broke up, everything settled. As we all went our different ways, Claire pulled me by the hand to the library where she turned to me and said, “That was an excellent idea Naomi had for us to bring one of the radios. We can stay in touch, and if things do turn ugly here, we might be able to mount a rescue mission. A sailboat can go back and forth. One other thing Roland, do you think Samantha is reconciled with me? She’s so strong-willed. To spend perhaps two weeks on a sailboat, cooped up together, I hope we can get along.”
“I hope so too. But remember this, Jaime is my closest friend. She knows it. The only thing that’s going to be making waves is the prow of the ship. Take some time after we set out and sit with her and lay your mind open to her and make friends. You’re both alike in many ways, at least as far as ‘strong-willed’ goes.”
Claire took to my suggestion but not wanting to put it off, she did so right away. When we wandered down to the basement, where Jaime and Samantha were playing one last game of billiards, she waited patiently, and when the game ended asked Samantha to sit with her on the back deck. Jaime and I played a game and then another two, sometimes wondering what those two heads might be up to. It’s all a factor of time. Whenever two women converse privately, intimately, as the minutes pass the men at a distance believe something is up. Conspiracy theories abound. But we forget the hours we’ve spent together in some coffee shop, heads together, just as engaged in deep conversation. In our case, it was over some minor political shift or some upset in a football game. They could have been exchanging recipes the whole time.
I told Jaime I’d get to the bottom of it when I held Claire in my arms later that night, and he could do the same with Samantha. My Machiavellian days were over. We were going on vacation together, the four of us. Sea breezes and salt spray and sunscreen were going to be my only concern, along with a daily educational session with Scout. When I thought of that, I excused myself from the company in the basement and headed to the library. On the way I saw Jane in the kitchen, inside the open pantry, next to the cases of wine.
As I glanced at her and she saw me, she stopped me with a question.
“Roland, do you think we’ll be able to take all this with us?”
“Yes, sure, if the boat is big enough. What are you worried about? Look, we’re heading to a tropical island: no wine there, or not much. You might have opted for the Napa Valley just north of here. I’m sure the grapes are doing just fine. In fact, as I think about it, this year’s vintage might be the best in a long time with so many people to hand-pick the grapes. It’s such a low tech industry that it’ll hardly be affected by the blasts. It’s all a matter of fermentation and vats. Jane, why are you here, why are you sad?”
She stepped out the pantry and stood before me, crying.
“I just think we’re so worthless, Mary and me. We contribute nothing, while you and the others do everything. Why should we deserve to make it through this crisis?”
“For Scout, Jane, for Scout. She loves you so much, and she needs you. You have to endure for her. She’s the future of all of us, the next generation. We screw up royally, and the only way we can fix that is to minimize the damage we’ve done to the children. Our goals are always greedy and short-sighted and disastrous. The only altruistic aims we ever have is when our children come to mind, and we think, “leave something good for them.”
“Do you know, Jane, that from the beginning of this whole storm, I’ve turned to that little girl, Scout, for the only clear answers I’ve received, the only direction, with all my heightened intellect. She’s the gold, the nugget, and you’re her surrogate mother guarding her. You have the second most important post in the world and if Mary waivers, the first.”
Jane was still sobbing. I pulled her off my shoulder, looked her squarely in the face and said, as she’d said to me a week earlier, ‘bully up’.
We parted. I’m sure she headed straight to Mary and Scout, for emotional reassurance. I went to the library, a little dizzy. How did I become this paterfamilias, this godfather to all these people when I didn’t want it and never expected it?
I was a hermit two weeks ago, a misanthrope. But I still couldn’t get Scout out of my mind. I had a unique collection of small volumes, cheap student editions, paperbacks, what they called ‘pocket editions’ of all the classics in Latin and Greek and English and French. I did have a few Kindles with whole collections of classics on them. I packed them too, but I much preferred reading works in the old format. I retrieved a small suitcase from a bedroom closet and was able to cram more than sixty of these volumes into it, a complete Shakespeare, only four inches by four inches by four inches deep, the Oxford miniature, yet with such crisp typography, the six volumes were easily readable. I knew such treasures were designed for students in the old days to be able to carry around in their vest pockets on some stagecoach ride. But now they were uniquely adapted to my situation. What comes around goes around, as my mother used to say. Scout and I would have a library to read and learn and memorize. I was happy.
I returned to my bedroom. It was late. Claire was lying there in the dim light, a single candle glowing by our bed, waiting for me. I asked her if she’d had a good conversation with Samantha. She turned her face to me and smiled, saying nothing. That was all she needed to say. She answered my question with a kiss and I felt like this little plot of a bed was a boat and that we were already drifting across the Pacific Ocean. We made love.
