Family Honor

Chapter 45

I was going to find something that Millicent liked to do if I had to invent a new pastime. Which was why we were sitting on two Alden fiberglass rowing shells, side by side on the river, twenty yards from shore, with a cold wind blowing at us.

“Have you ever rowed a boat?” I said.

“No.”

Millicent was trying so desperately to balance that she could barely speak.

“Good,” I said. “This is nothing like that, and if you had you’d just have to unlearn it.”

Millicent said “yes” as minimally as possible. She looked entirely miserable in her yellow life vest.

“Okay, first, just let the oars rest on the water... That’s right... Now rock the boat. Go ahead. See how long the oars are? You can’t tip over with the oars spread like that.”

Millicent shifted her weight a millimeter. The shell didn’t tip.

“Good, now we’ll just sit here a bit until you get used to it. We have as much time as we need. There’s no reason to hurry.”

We sat. It was early October and everything along the river near the boat club was still green. Cars moved steadily along the parkways on both sides of the river. People ran along the sidewalks next to the river, running the loop around the upper Charles where it bent toward Watertown, using the Larz Anderson Bridge to cross the river in one direction and the Eliot Bridge to cross in the other. We stayed in close to shore, out of the current, just far enough from land to keep the oars from hitting.

“Okay,” I said, “see, you’re not going to tip over.”

“Yet,” Millicent said between her teeth.

“Now, when you row, you want the blades to dip in, but not too deep, and of course to come out of the water entirely, but not too high. Watch me.”

I rowed across the river and back staying where she could see me without turning. I remembered when I had first learned to row these boats. It was like sitting on a needle. I knew she wouldn’t turn.

“Okay, now look at my hands, see how they are? It’s all in the way you roll your wrist. See? Again. See?”

Millicent nodded very carefully, her head barely moving.

“Now you do it,” I said.

“Where shall I row?”

“Just roll your wrists first, see how the blades turn?”

She tried it, rolling her wrists maybe a half an inch.

“Let’s practice rolling the wrists so that the oar blades are vertical, then horizontal, vertical, horizontal, that’s right. If you feel like you’re losing your balance just let the oars drop onto the water, there, yes, like that.”

We practiced that for a while. I wasn’t having a nice time. I had housebroken Rosie faster than I was teaching Millicent to row. But it was the first thing she’d shown any interest in. She’d seen the college teams rowing on the river and said that it looked like it might be nice. I had pounced on it like an ocelot. I used to row, I said, in college. She said, Really? I said, Yes. She said, Could you teach me. And here we were.

“It’s the legs,” I said, “that do the real work in rowing. You get the push off the big quadriceps. It’s why the seat is like that. See, you lay out over the oars like this and then pull them toward you while you drive with your legs.”

I demonstrated and my rental shell shot halfway across the river. I returned to her, backstroking, stern first.

“You can try that now. Look around and make sure it’s clear because the first stroke will send you a pretty good distance.”

She did as I told her and caught a crab with her right oar and almost fell out of the boat.

“Oars in the water,” I said. “Oars in the water.”

She did what I told her. The boat steadied. I looked at her. Her face was gray with fear and concentration.

“Everybody almost falls in,” I said. “Try it again. Remember about rolling the wrists.”

The gun at the small of my back was not appropriate to single-shell rowing, and I felt like we were two ducks sitting out there on the river in plain view. But I was goddamned if I was going to let Cathal Kragan bury us alive. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be looking for us out on the river.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll be right beside you, go ahead, don’t press, let the oars into the water pull, extend your legs, good, roll the wrists, good.”

We slid out across the dark water.

“Again,” I said, “pull, push with the quads, roll wrists, relax. Try it with your eyes closed so that you get the full feel.”

I felt like a single mother. It was too much to try and bring Millicent up and protect her and find the guys who wanted to kill her and figure out what was going on with her parents. I needed help and much of the help I needed was the kind that men usually were better at than women. The kind that Julie couldn’t really give. The kind that Spike was good at, but how fair was it to ask him? The kind that Brian Kelly could give me, but he was a cop. He had his own agenda. My father? Daddy, I’m grown up and on my own but could you help me do my job? Richie? No, I won’t sleep with you, but could you risk your life for me? Did getting help mean selling out? I didn’t mind getting help from Julie. Why was I having the vapors about getting a different kind of help from men? I was getting really sick of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar. Maybe if you’re really integrated, you asked for the help you needed and got it on your own terms.

“Sunny,” Millicent said as we sat side by side in the middle of the river and let the shells drift, “I’m sick of this. I want to go home.”

Like that.