had never been a single scratch on Jill’s car, ever. Helen had always been impatient with her mother’s driving, so careful and needlessly slow. Now look what I’ve done, she thought. It was an awful scrape and there was big dent and the taillight was busted. The car was wedged at an odd angle in the drive. Helen looked at the rest of the driveway and saw how terribly far it was to the street. She would have to pass through the porte cochere where Jill always parked when it was raining, but now it loomed like a guardhouse gate she would have to squeeze through.
“Let me drive,” Teddy said.
“Are you kidding? You can’t even see over the steering wheel. And I need you to navigate, remember?”
Helen got back in the car. The tires squealed as she turned the steering wheel, and then she put the car into drive. She put her foot ever so slightly on the gas and almost immediately braked again. She repeated that action several times, lurching and stopping, lurching and stopping, and for the first time she thought maybe it wasn’t so hard. Finally she got the car straight and back in the garage.
Now she had to try reversing again.
She must have watched Jill do this a zillion times, but she couldn’t remember how her mother did it. Did she turn around? Look in one of the mirrors? “Teddy, you get out and direct me,” she said.
“Okay, but don’t run over me.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Teddy stood between the Toyota and Henry’s workbench. There was no room for error. Teddy looked directly in Helen’s eyes, then held up his hands as if he were holding a steering wheel.
There had never been such an intimate moment between them as this.
Helen put the Toyota in reverse. It started moving as soon as she let up on the brake. She looked down at the pedals to make sure her feet were in the right place and somehow the car got a little crooked again. When she looked up, Teddy was shaking his head and turning his hands, and Helen turned the wheel in response. Then he turned his hands back and she did the same, braking and releasing and moving ever so slowly and never taking her eyes off Teddy. A shadow came over the car and she realized that she was all the way under the porte cochere, but she couldn’t allow herself to think about that. Teddy was guiding her. And then he suddenly held his hands up and she stopped because she was at the end of the driveway.
Teddy got back in the Toyota. They stared for a long while at the house they had grown up in, which once had contained such wonderful memories. Now it was full of death and they would never, never return to it. “Okay,” said Helen, and she backed into the street, then headed toward Nashville.
46
Schubert
Henry awakened to the sound of a saxophone. Murphy was standing over him. “Well, hello,” she said. “Sir.”
Henry responded, but his voice was cracked and dry. He felt woozy, not sure if he was dizzy or the sub was swaying. Murphy held out a spoon with something that smelled wonderful. “Chicken soup,” she said. “Still number one.”
“I’m a vegetarian,” he said.
“I know, but at the moment you’re also my patient, so eat.”
There was no bargaining. Henry quietly thanked the chicken for its sacrifice. He felt like a child as he let Murphy feed him.
“I didn’t bleed, did I?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
Henry let this sink in. “We should begin infecting the crew,” he said.
“I’ve already done that, sir. I hope that’s okay.”
“Thank goodness for you, Murphy.”
“We lost two more men, and we came real close with you, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. There are some pretty sick folks and your name has been invoked more than once, and not so favorably. But we’ve only got seven sick enough to be in the canteen, and I’ll bet they’re mostly out in a few days.”
“Where are we?” Henry asked.
“Thirty-four degrees seventeen minutes north, forty-five degrees fourteen minutes west,” she said. “Dead center Atlantic Ocean, sir.”
“How deep are we?”
“We’re on the surface. You feel strong enough to get some air?”
The idea of actually going outside was so tantalizing it seemed like a fantasy. “If I could just take a shower first?”
“You’d have to be able to stand on your own.”
Murphy helped Henry sit up and then gave him a boost to standing. He wobbled. “Are you sure?”