The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

guiding hand. But given Wilson’s reprehensible conduct, he’s the last person to supply that.

We’re living from hand to mouth down here. But I refuse to subject my daughter to abject poverty on top of emotional anguish. So, I’m working on several projects at once. And I must do so with little help from Barbara, though if I could get her interested in writing again, I believe it’d be good for her.

I wish I could count on Wilson to send money, but he’s altogether undependable. How he can press me for divorce and say he’ll provide for the family when he shows no inclination to do so at present is beyond me. The fact is he needs my skills managing money and day-to-day affairs as much as I need his brilliance and savoir-faire. And the girls need him, too. I still hold out hope that he’ll come to his senses or circumstances will force him to do so. Is that foolish of me?

I long to see my sweet Sabra, and I’m sorry you can’t journey here with her. I do understand, but it’s hard to think of Sabra growing up without me. How I long to brush her hair and smother her in hugs. Thank you so much for offering to take her to Sunapee this summer. It’ll furnish her world with a sense of continuity, for she loves splashing in the lake waters there and marauding around the woods with your boys.

In a few weeks, we’ll depart for Honolulu and begin the homeward trek, which I face with a mix of regret and resignation. I can’t say as I’m ready to be back in the States, but I worry more about Barbara than myself. Now she’s insisting we find a square-rigger for at least part of the journey. It’s such a struggle keeping her head out of the clouds.

I have no idea what to expect when we return to New Haven. Will I be forced to move to New York and find work so I can support not just Barbara and Sabra, but Wilson as well? He’s hiding out in Maine writing a novel when he ought to take up his responsibility as a man and find a real job. I wonder how long he can keep up this pipe dream of his and how long that girl will play along with a man who shows no penchant to pursue a stable income. Honestly, has she no mother or father to knock some reason into her? At least you and Oxford have kept up communications with him. That tells me he hasn’t completely severed connections with our friends and his past.

I won’t be able to post again until we arrive in Honolulu, so I send you, Oxford, and the boys

All my love,

Helen

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

BARBARA AT FIFTEEN

Honolulu to the Pacific Seas, May 1929

Nine months ago, when they’d first conceived this voyage, Barbara had envisioned travel by tall ship. Instead, they’d traversed all 20,000 miles—from New Haven to the Caribbean to the South Pacific—by plodding steamer. But now, in the Honolulu harbor, like an apparition from her dreams, stood the Vigilant, a gallant five-masted schooner.

The ship’s tall masts lilted in the afternoon breeze, casting quivering shadows over the dock. Watery troughs sparkled and lapped at her hull. Was it possible she’d found the ship she longed for, the cure for her heartache? She squinted at the crisscrossing masts and booms backlit by the afternoon sun. “Is it real, Mother?”

Her mother stood beside her on the wooden dock. “Yes. And I know what you’re thinking.”

“Can’t we just ask?”

“I suppose, but I don’t see what good it’ll do.”

“Ahoy, up there,” Barbara called, waving to a crewman striding the deck.

He turned and waved back.

Barbara cupped her hands into a megaphone. “Is your captain aboard?”

“No. What is it you want?”

The ship’s stays and shrouds fluttered in the warm breeze, putting Barbara in mind of the magnificent galleons of bygone days. What bliss it would be to sit atop the main mast’s crosstree. “We’d like to inquire about sailing on the Vigilant.”

“You must speak to Captain Jamieson about that. He’ll be back this evening.”

Barbara turned to her mother. “I’ll die if we can’t gain passage aboard her. She’s a real beauty.”

“Please don’t get your hopes up,” her mother said. “And we’ve already found a steamer that won’t cost us much.”

To kill time, they wandered Honolulu’s bustling Fort Street, as packed with vehicles as any modern American city, dined in a cubbyhole eatery, and returned to the harbor early evening. Settling on the pier beside the Vigilant, they dangled their feet over the lapping waters and admired the schooner. Or, more accurately, Barbara admired it. Her mother just fidgeted and repeated various versions of “There’s probably little chance of gaining passage on her.”

Come dusk, a towering man with a silver-gray mustache strolled down the dock and turned toward the ship’s plank.

Barbara sprang up to intercept him. “Captain Jamieson?”

“The very one,” said he.

“Barbara Follett at your service.” She shook his hand. What a fine specimen of a sailor he was. She could picture him standing wide-legged on deck, majestic as the captains of old, his white shirt billowing in the wind while he boomed out commands.

Her mother introduced herself and said, “We’re New Englanders, just landed here.”

“Always nice to meet a couple of Yankees,” he said.

“May we come aboard, Captain?” Barbara asked.

“Certainly.” He motioned them up the plank.

“We’ve been at sea nearly a year,” Barbara said, “visiting the West Indies, the Panama Canal, and Tahiti and Tonga, too.”

“All on steamer ships,” her mother added.

“But I love a square-rigger,” said Barbara. “I sailed on one two years ago and can’t get over the fever to do it again.”

“Would you like to see the chart room?” asked the captain.

Barbara clapped her hands together. “Oh, yes, please.”

Single file, they stepped down the stairs to the chart room, which smelled of pipe tobacco, tar, and timber. He motioned them to scoot onto the narrow bench beside a built-out table and pulled