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"To be out in a boat on the harbor today. If you didn't sink."

"We could take the Staten Island ferry," Mary says.

"Huh?" I hadn't even thought there was really any boat we could get on.

"Really? Where do you get it?"

"Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. It's quite a ways. I've always gone there in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if we don't freeze."

"We won't freeze. But what about bikes?"

"You can use my brother's. He's away at college. Maybe I can find a windbreaker of his, too."

She finds the things and we get ready and go into the living room, where Nina is sitting reading and sipping a glass of wine.

"We're going on our bikes to the ferry and over to Staten Island," Mary says.

She doesn't even ask.

"Oh-h-h." It's a long, low note, faintly questioning.

"We thought with the wind blowing and all, it'd be exciting," Mary explains, and I think, Uh-o, that's going to cook it.

My mother would have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry in a storm.

But Nina just says, "I see," and goes back to reading her book.

I say good-bye and she looks up again and smiles, and that's all.

It's another funny thing—Nina doesn't seem to pay any attention to who Mary brings home, like most mothers are always snooping if their daughter brings home a guy.

Without stopping to think, I say, "Do you bring home a lot of guys?"

Mary laughs.

"Not a lot. Sometimes one of the boys at school comes home when we're studying for a science test."

I laugh, too, but what I'm thinking of is how Pop would look if I brought a girl home and said we were studying for a test!

As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us around from both sides and right in the teeth.

But the sun's beginning to break through, and it's easy riding, no hills.

This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses joined together, or low apartment buildings, with little patches of lawn in front of them.

Ch14. Expedition by Ferry

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