Leo hadn’t done any of this, nor had he asked permission. The trees along the canal were dotted with the first yellow leaves. There wouldn’t even be much time left with the boat before fall. Gia dragged a hand through the water, cooling her blisters. She’d tried to do things the right way, but her father didn’t leave her much choice. Gia hardened around the idea like mud on bones, cementing it into place. She would just take the boat.
A bigger boat passed by ahead, white and yacht-like with a fancy sun shield and captains’ seats. A dock flipped down in the back with a swimming ladder, full of men in bathing suits and slicked-back hair. One sat at the back, leg dangling under the lifeline, his toe lost in the split of the water parting for the boat. He raised a hand to his forehead in a mock salute. Gia ducked slightly behind her father. It was the same man from the canal. She was sure of it. Even the bay was changing. She wouldn’t let him stop her from coming out here alone either.
“You know,” her father said after the marsh grass ended, “I don’t like the way your brother looked last night. You know anything I don’t? Like what he’s doing over there with Ray and Tommy?”
The houses rose around them on either side of the canal, Howard Beach on one, Hamilton Beach on the other. Boats rocked against weathered docks, tethered on Monday while everyone worked. A feather floated past, gray white like the rock, but the canal was still, quiet, listening. Her voice would carry. The rowing still burned. Why should she make this easier for her father, the investigator, especially when he was using her like bait again? She focused on the dock ahead, thankful when he didn’t turn around.
“No.” Gia cut the motor and drifted slowly into place. Her blisters stung as she tied off the boat at the bow and stern.
“Nothing you’ve seen him take or do that seemed different?”
Gia thought of the powder again but shook her head, maybe too quickly, focusing on the knots. Her father nodded. Gia was playing dead, but he’d circle back later like an eagle or a hawk, because little animals scurrying in the undergrowth were hard to catch on the first pass as the world rushed past.
Another plane lifted into the sky. Gia imagined an anonymous someone watching from a tiny window as they covered the boat with a tarp and made their way back to the weathered white-shingled house in silence.
Chapter Four
As soon as the screen door slammed, Gia kicked the ground until her shoe turned green and her toe throbbed beneath the nail, wishing she, like Lorraine, had no father to teach her lessons only he thought were important. She hated him for it. He wasn’t even actually stopping her from taking the boat. The key still hung by the door with the others. But he split Gia’s thoughts, making her doubt herself. His voice always won, in her head. The pain in her toe dulled the ache of rowing and the blisters and the confidence she’d lost this morning.
Across the canal, workers in sweat-stained T-shirts swarmed the hollow houses. Tools pounded on beams, reminding her of microorganisms in the grass, thousands, stamped dead in her fit. And she didn’t hate her father. Her eyes welled with angry, tired tears. She just didn’t want to be weak. Her own body had proved him right.
The parakeets bounced on the telephone wire. Get up, they said. There’s a whole day of summer. Cicadas revved their hummers. The heat was heavy. They were right. It was too early to be tired and sad. The rabbits stirred behind her. They were hungry.
Gia forced herself inside, tore lettuce leaves from the fridge, and took a box of Life cereal for herself, ignoring the measuring cups Agnes left out for Gia’s “figure,” which required lots of tools now—bras, slips, nylons, exercise belts, Tab—and food could no longer just be eaten. It had to be planned and measured, boiled or steamed.
Metal clanged behind the house. The cereal box stuck to her skin.
“Aren’t you supposed to be looking for a stupid job?” Why did she have to do everything just right, but Leo could do whatever he wanted?
Leo was under the tarp, parts scattered on a towel, his bike propped up between bricks, the dent already hammered out. He was all arms and limbs, like a metal wire twisted to pick a lock, piecing the bike back together again, the money he owed for the Salernos’ fence and their father’s warning already forgotten.
“This is my job.” He wiped sweat from his eyes.
“But Dad said—”
“I know what he said. I have ears. I’m selling it. I have a guy.”
“How do you find these people?” She tore open the cereal so fast it spilled, shoved her unwashed hand inside.
“Same way people buy your stupid killies.” Gia stopped crunching. Only little kids filled up milk-bottle traps with stale bread and sold silver killies for bait. She sat under the tarp, not because she wanted to sit with Leo but because her father was still inside.
Tools dropped. Leo tightened a bolt until it wouldn’t budge any farther. The disjointed sound of it was soothing, even if there wasn’t anything like this she could do as well.
“Want a ride?”
“It’s done?”
He kicked the bricks away and steadied the handlebars before throwing his legs over the top and revving the engine.
“You’re not gonna take the fence down again?”
“There is no fence anymore.”
The bike rolled forward, picking up speed as he made lopsided figure eights, wind blowing the hair off his forehead, drying sweat. It was hard to tell where the bike started and Leo ended, his back blending into the curve of it, legs parallel to pipes, only he wasn’t metal. Yes, she wanted a ride. As far away as she could get.
She wondered if her father was watching, but the window was dark. Gia climbed on. Holding Leo’s waist was weird even if he was part of the bike. Skinny Joseph Salerno was on the front lawn in his swimming shorts. Go ahead, Gia thought, make jokes. She wouldn’t hear him anyway over the wind rushing in her ears, spiraling her hair around her face, billowing her shirt.
The bike moved before she’d settled on. There was never any warning with Leo. Houses whizzed past, the cicadas lost under the engine hum. Wind fuzzed her ears as her legs gripped metal, almost uncomfortably warm. The motion, the heat, the wind, her brother bouncing in place while everything rushed past—it was disorienting. So fast compared to the slow boat, stroke by painful stroke.
The bike stopped at a red light next to New Park Pizza, lights on, ovens warming inside.
“Turn us,” he shouted.
Gia pressed her hip lower on the left, turning them onto Cross Bay Boulevard. There were just enough cars to remind them they weren’t supposed to ride here. She didn’t care. The bakery where Lorraine worked had a line outside the door and smelled like semolina bread. They turned toward the bait shop, where kids sold killies and hermit crabs, away from the supermarket, the bowling alley.
It was a straight shot to Rockaway. After the kiddie rides, only a few of which moved in lazy circles, the stores fell away and the scrub brush opened up, just before Broad Channel, where houses waited on stilts for the bay to wash in. The trees and low brush had been sand pelted until they lost their lushness. Trash was scattered throughout, and a stray cat slithered between the bushes with a mouse in its mouth. She hoped the mouse hadn’t eaten poison that would kill the cat. The rushing of the bike made everything feel less real.