Letters

Her parentage: Could I tell her what her mother’s and my affair had been like, back in the ’30’s? Had it been a ménage à trois, or what? She couldn’t imagine Mom letting her hair down so — though there

had been that later fling of hers, with that English Lord. The month when she herself had been conceived, for example, was her mother putting out pretty regularly for both Harrison and me? How much truth was there in that novel that people used to tease her with, that was supposedly based on my life?

Some, I acknowledged. That part of it was a reasonable approximation, except that for purposes of plot it made Harrison Mack into a weaker and simpler fellow than her father had ever been. But her mother and I had indeed been lovers, with her father’s knowledge and complaisance, for two separate periods, totaling more than three years and including the date of Jeannine’s conception, when the odds on her biological siring were, by my best guess, about 50–50. I did not mention 10 R, our evening sail on Osborn Jones

in mid-May of this year.

Our own copulation: It still didn’t bother her, either in principle or in fact. In Jeannine’s mind, Harrison Mack was 100 % her father, and I was 100 % her oldest friend (in both respects) and the only man she’d ever been the least close to who hadn’t wanted something from her. No doubt that that, along with simple gratitude and a touch of the old Kinky, was what had turned her on last night (she’d’ve laid me in the cottage, she confessed now with a grin, if she hadn’t feared I’d think she was a pervert, or ulteriorly motivated, and refuse to take her sailing). It still turned her on, she didn’t mind telling me; anytime Old John got his act together again, she was ready. As Kinky went, this struck her as pretty harmless; she wouldn’t be bearing me any two-headed children, or grandchildren. Could she have a beer with lunch?

Why not. The day grew fairer by the hour. As the tide slackened and the temperature rose, the wind freshened to twelve knots and veered to west-northwest, putting us on a dandy beam reach that both felt and was faster; cooler too. O.J.’s favorite point of sail. I was growing absentminded, though I’ll plead exhilaration: not till Jeannine came up from the galley with two cans of National Premium and an ad-lib antipasto of sardines, fresh cherry tomatoes, red onion slices, peperoncini, and wedges of caraway Bond-Ost (hungry, Dad?) did I remember to ask her, apropos of Friday evening, whether our crank or inadvertent phone-caller had in fact not uttered a sound.

Aha, she teased: so I did

have something going. Nope, sorry, not a sound or syllable. She put a hand on my knee: Had she screwed something up for me, answering my phone in the middle of the night?

No, no, no. I had nothing “going,” more’s the pity. And now I did dismiss the matter from my mind. No question of stopping for a swim or letting O.J. self-steer: we spanked across the wind, taking the seas just forward of our port beam with a satisfying smash of white water. The old hull seemed happy as I was; we sprinted (for us) up the Bay like an elder porpoise bestrode by a fresh sea-nymph, Jeannine and I spelling each other hourly at the wheel. Faster and flashier boats sailed over to have a look, their crews waving and grinning appreciation of O.J.’s traditional lines, its Old Rake of a Skipper’s white hair, and His Chick’s terrific tits. Bloody Point light, off the southern tip of Kent Island, slid by to starboard at noon; Thomas Point light, off the mouth of South River, to port before 1300; the Bay Bridge overhead as we changed tricks at 1400—a steady five knots under beautiful cumulus clouds in perfect midsummer weather, with Handel’s Water Music piping in from Baltimore!

Off the mouth of the Magothy, sailboat traffic thickened to the point where Jeannine put her T-shirt on, lest among the whistling sailors be clients of mine or old friends of the Macks’ from Gibson Island. We left Pavilion Point to starboard about three o’clock, tacking into the river between bright spinnakers running out; by four we had close-reached up between Dobbins Island and the high wooded banks of Gibson, through Sillery Bay and Gibson Island’s perfect harbor, and dropped our hook in Red House Cove: the only boat there.