“Imara, a boat’s just a hole in the water.
What you’re standing on is the yard.”
I wore my whites.
Not to make a point about the military, though everybody read it that way.
I wore them because it was the only thing I owned that my mother could not call “dramatic,” and because I was on crutches and needed the one outfit in my closet that made a woman on crutches look like a woman on duty.
A hundred and forty people on a stone quay in the sun.
Champagne.
A banner with my sister’s name on it.
And me, coming up the ramp at eleven-fifteen, on two crutches, with a brace under a dress uniform skirt and an envelope in my jacket.
My father saw me from thirty feet away.
He came straight at me — not angry, that’s the thing people always get wrong — he came at me pleading, and he dropped down at my side and took hold of the crutch and said, in front of everybody:
“Imara.
Don’t.
Baby, whatever you want.
Whatever you want, we’ll — just not here.”
My mother was on my other side within seconds, on her knees on stone in a navy gown, holding the other crutch.
“Please.
Imara.
Please.”
A hundred and forty people watching a retired marine-yard owner and his wife kneeling on a dock, and I understood, standing there, something that I have never been able to explain to anyone who has not had a family like mine.
They were not sorry.
They were kneeling.
Those are completely different activities and my parents have never in their lives confused them.
“Get up,” I said.
“Imara — ”
“Dad.
Get up.
You’re sixty-eight and there are a hundred people here and I’m not going to be the reason you’re on your knees in front of them.”
He got up.
Then I said the four things I had written on the back of the envelope in the car, because I knew my voice would go if I tried to improvise.
“One.
This boat is company property.
It was bought with a shareholder distribution.
Every person here has been told it’s a gift to Danica.
It isn’t.
She paid for a fifth of it herself and didn’t know.”
