The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  “They have jojos,” said Cheyenne. “Give me money for jojos.”

  Livy handed her $5. “I’m going to hold you to our deal.”

  But Cheyenne had lost interest and was watching the TV behind the bar.

  “I hate it when you do that,” said Livy.

  “I think I’m getting my period,” Cheyenne said. “Do you have tampons?”

  “Roll your own,” said Livy.

  “I plan to but I just think it would be good to have some in case we’re somewhere without toilet paper.”

  The bartender came with the bread bowl.

  “Do you sell tampons? Like in a vending machine or something?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Only condoms,” he said and put her jojos in a white paper bag.

  Back in the car Cheyenne put her feet on the dashboard and reclined the seat. She undid the top buttons of her pants and drummed her fingers on her belly so it quivered like Jell-O. “I’m glad we’re doing this together.”

  Livy ate her share of the clam chowder, carefully cutting away the top inch of the bread bowl with her Leatherman until it was a detachable bread rind. She handed the rest to Cheyenne. Cheyenne drained her chowder in a few sips then bit into the bread bowl as if it were an apple.

  “You know Jackson’s school isn’t far off our route,” she said, chewing.

  Livy gaped. Cheyenne swallowed and laughed.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I just wish you could see it, that’s all.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have slept with all his students.” Livy reclined her seat. “Wake me when it’s my turn to drive.”

  Cheyenne finished the jojos and the bread bowl. Turning on the radio as she drove, she began to sing along to the pop songs she could recognize. Three hours later when Livy opened her eyes they were on a rural highway.

  “Where are we?” asked Livy.

  “New York State. Don’t worry, all the people I slept with have graduated by now.”

  12 Ribcage

  THE COLLEGE where Jackson taught was on the perimeter of a town with brick houses that had been built on foundations that sloped following the drop of a creek. Snowy hillsides in winter, canopies of green, the foliage of fall, it cut down through mineral-rich black earth and struck the bone undercarriage of an enormous bleached ribcage. That’s where the whale was. You could track the spine straight back up the hill to where the town fathers had planned their homes; they were well safe from floods but not from erosion, as far above the creek sings to the slope its cradlesong. If you cannot reach the hill, the hill must come to you…And now there are no right angles to the town’s rooftops, only tendencies toward them; there are no surrounding mountains, only the roots of mountains worn away. Carved in salt and light, a white schematic on a white page, invisible as Wonder Woman’s plane, the town was reminiscent of its source though it no longer reflected it.

  For Cheyenne it was the site of a personal explosion of assumptions and aesthetics. It had gone off inside her like a nail bomb. Constructed of James Taylor, maple syrup, Celestial Seasonings tea boxes, Little House in the Big Woods, and Cat Stevens before he was an asshole, it was a supernova of subterranean longings. It had blown with incredible force. Enough for the blast to send her backward through a wall into a room with a wood floor and a woodstove surrounded by ceramic cookware and trays of whole wheat spinach lasagna. At first it had sated a deep hunger for something she was convinced was unnameable, but in the end, it did have a name. The students she met called it whiteness. According to them, it was everywhere on her and in her. A new unspeakable shame to lay over the other shames she knew. But it was her reaction that did the damage. Moving from one body to another, one dorm room to another—she already felt so out of place—and when the dust from that nail bomb settled, the town was still serene, the college was still sacrosanct, Jackson was still willing, but she had stepped into a wasteland.

  She hadn’t been back since.

  “I can’t tell if it’s creepier to be here and not tell Jackson or to tell him and not see him,” said Livy when they got out of the car.

  Cheyenne stopped in front of a shopwindow filled with colonial antiques.

  “Jackson’s parents’ house is full of this stuff.”

  Next door was a sandwich shop where they got morning glory sunflower seed muffins and ate under a mural of Frodo smoking a pipe.

  “I can’t imagine you living here,” said Livy.

  Cheyenne waved at the room. “These people run the world.”

  “Not my world,” said Livy.

  “Don’t kid yourself.”

  There was a crack of thunder and a heavy East Coast rain began. By the time they got to the car they were soaked. But the rain wasn’t cold, and the wet earth smelled like life.

  “You drive,” said Cheyenne. “I want to be able to hide if I need to.”

  Cheyenne directed Livy up the hill toward the college. As they got closer, Cheyenne sank lower until her knees were on the car floor and her back arched up over the seat.

  “Stop at the convenience store and get beer,” said Cheyenne. “It’ll be on the left. They’ll have something cheap.”

  “You’re a sinkhole of cash,” said Livy, but she stopped.

  Livy ran in and came back with a six-pack. She pulled a beer from the plastic noose and handed it to Cheyenne, who was still on the floor but had repositioned herself so that her stomach and elbows were on the seat.

  “It’s out of your share,” Livy said.

  “Fine. Go to the top of the hill, make a left, and it’s about a mile down.”

  The rain, which had paused for a few seconds, came down harder, beating the windows and hood. Livy slowed to ten miles per hour.

  “Do you see a spire?” asked Cheyenne.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Cheyenne opened a beer and held it out to Livy.

  “I don’t want open beers if we get pulled over.”

  “Down it. I downed mine.”

  “What’s in your hand?”

  “Your beer,” said Cheyenne.

  “In the other hand.”

  “My second beer. These things are mostly water.”

  Now slowing to a stop in the downpour, Livy took the beer and chugged it without taking her eyes off the windshield. She handed the can back to Cheyenne who crushed it into a disk and stashed it under the seat.

  “I see the spire,” said Livy.

  Cheyenne opened a third beer. “It’s made of elephant tusk and England.”

  “Would you stop with the beer?” said Livy. “It’s your turn to drive.”

  Coming over the rise Livy saw the cathedral library and its surrounding orchards blown pink with cherry blossoms.

  “Wow,” she said, “it’s like pictures of places like this.”

  “That’s deep.”

  Students ran between buildings in the rain. Women played lacrosse in a spray of mud on a field by a glade. Pulling back out onto the road, Livy drove a mile, then rolled onto the shoulder, took a beer, and drank it.

  “Your turn.” She got out and Cheyenne came around.

  “Man. I think I’m drunk on two beers. I feel like such a lightweight,” said Livy.

  Cheyenne put both hands on the steering wheel but didn’t move. “I’m drunk too.”

  “You said you were fine!”

  “It hadn’t hit me,” said Cheyenne.

  “I would never have had another beer if you weren’t going to be able to drive.”

  “It’s your fault for starving us.”

  Cheyenne watched the rain splatter. She put the car in drive and lurched onto the road.

  “I have to go apologize,” she said.

  “Oh god fuck no. Please just leave it.”

  “He deserves an honest apology,” said Cheyenne, making a h
ard right at the next corner.

  * * *

  —

  Jackson’s house was back up in the woods. Cheyenne turned by a mailbox and drove a quarter mile up a driveway, then stopped within sight of the house and turned off the car.

  “I’m sure he heard us,” said Livy.

  “No he didn’t. I can’t even tell when this car is on.”

  Cheyenne looked at the porch through the woods.

  A light in the house came on. Cheyenne froze. Jackson stepped onto the porch. In the shade of the forest, she could see him. Light pierced the clouds, painting him white and black, sharp and beautiful like an old woodcut. Cheyenne put her hand over Livy’s mouth. Jackson looked around then went back inside.

  “This is stupid,” said Livy. “I’m driving.”

  Cheyenne crawled over the gear shift into the warm wet seat where her sister had been. Livy backed down the driveway, pulled out, and drove toward town.

  “Future Chinese minister of agriculture,” said Cheyenne. “Saudi overlord.”

  “How do we get back to the highway?”

  “Turn left. Shark tank, think tank, President Whatever. Lobsters. Alan Watts.”

  “Are you all right?” asked Livy.

  “I hate this part of the country.”

  Livy, though, had never been to New England. She’d never been east of Idaho. When the rain cleared she rolled down her window and let in the honeysuckled breeze. Green hillocks and ponds cut out against a robin’s-egg blue sky, a color so saturated and unnervingly homogenous and vivid that the whole landscape seemed shot on a green screen, an absolute chromatic shunting parallel. They drove through mill towns named after sunken frigates. Lowell, Massachusetts, the City of Spindles where women wove slave-picked cotton to scratchy cloth, struck for wages, were crushed, and went back to weaving again.

  Oh! isn’t it a pity, such a pretty girl as I—

  Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?

  Oh! I cannot be a slave,

  I will not be a slave…

  For I’m so fond of liberty

  That I cannot be a slave…

  Coming into the capital, Livy and Cheyenne hit rush hour. The effects of alcohol wore off and they arrived at the temple itchy and dirty.

  They got out of the car.

  They stood before the door.

  Burnished streets of Boston, flooded with gold-orange late-afternoon light. Moving through honey, every hesitation crystallizing them, they stepped into the entranceway.

  13 The Essex

  ESSEX WENT WITH JARED to meet the recruiter. He was half hoping something would stop him from doing what he was about to do. Nothing did. With only a few words, he had propelled himself forward; with no one in his way, no circumstances to consider, inertia had taken over. Frictionless, he passed through Kirsten’s neighborhood and then Livy’s on the bus. He didn’t regret giving Cheyenne the money.

  The recruiter showed him a video and gave him coffee, doughnuts, and brochures. He was somewhat cheered by the pay and benefits. The idea that he could get financially stable stirred something in him he hadn’t known was there. He owed them, all of them. He knew that he could never pay them back, but also that it would be a freedom to be out of their debt.

  * * *

  —

  The first time Essex saw Cheyenne she was in line at the takeout window of an all-night falafel place on University Way. He was eleven. He was in a recess by the post office where he and his friends went to avoid cops. It was raining and he was alone, trying to stay awake.

  He noticed her for two reasons. First, because she was an older teenage girl and he’d been noticing them a lot in the past month. Second, she was telling a dramatic story. He could tell because her gestures were big and people were smiling. They gave her space, stepping back into the rain themselves. He tried to hear but couldn’t, only the single words, which sailed like shots over the street noise—Why? Stupid. Saltpeter. Curry of course. Witch! Dumb ass—then she stamped her foot and, looking skyward, yelled, “I mean who would ever do that?” Everyone laughed. The falafel man handed her a falafel. Someone paid for her. Cheyenne made the appropriate expressions of shock and gratitude, but Essex doubted she was surprised.

  Taking a bite, she stepped into the street looking both ways for traffic and walked toward him as if he were a mailbox or a bus stop bench. As she got closer he felt the urge to step out of her way, but two feet away she thrust her falafel in his face.

  “It’s gross. Take it.”

  He did and she walked off. After he ate, he fell asleep and slept the sleep of the dead. Someone kicked his leg. She was standing over him.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked. “Go away. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  She laughed.

  “Twelve. Mostly.”

  Her shoulders sagged.

  “Oh fuck you,” she said, yanking him up. “Come on. It’s a long walk.”

  He didn’t know where she was taking him but he went. She walked fast and seemed to have nothing to say to him. Crossing the bridge over the interstate he asked her name but couldn’t hear what she said and was too embarrassed to ask again.

  It was 3:00 a.m. when he met Kirsten. She opened the door fully dressed, as if it were the afternoon.

  “He needs somewhere to go,” said Cheyenne, and ushered him in.

  “What’s your name?” Kirsten asked.

  “Christian.”

  Cheyenne pointed to the couch. “Sit.” She said it like she’d just about had it up to here with him, which made no sense.

  Kirsten brought him a plate of spaghetti.

  Cheyenne left without a glance in his direction.

  He pointed at the door. “Does she live here?”

  “Sometimes,” said the woman. “Do I need to call anyone for you?”

  “Not really,” he said.

  He met Livy the next morning. She definitely did live there because she told him if he touched her shit she’d kill him. According to her, there were already two people too many living in the house. He wasn’t sure which two she meant but knew he was one of them. Periodically over the next few months, Cheyenne would swing by but she ignored him. Livy usually did too, but one afternoon, after a particularly bad set of decisions on his part, Livy ordered him into her room. She waved a paperback with a painting of a ship on the cover.

  “I’ve been reading a book about people like you. They’re called whalers. They sign on for anything. Assholes on a ship called the Essex. Every disaster they should have seen coming, they ignored. You’re like that right now.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “The hell you didn’t. Look around yourself. You’re fucked. You’re three thousand miles out to sea with no way to get back and it’s all your fault. Now you have to get on a raft and eat your friends. It’s the only way out of the problems you’ve created.”

  Every time after that when she passed him in the hall, she whispered, “Essex.”

  Then Cheyenne started calling him Essex and he decided he didn’t really mind. He was the Essex. To survive he was going to have to cut loose almost everyone he ever knew up until then and head for land. All these years later, it wasn’t very different. The raft, the sea. He was twenty-seven with nothing. Lost.

  The recruiter handed him information on where to go for medical screenings. The process was going to be much slower than he had hoped but was at least a direction and a destination. Some ships navigate by charts and landmarks, piloting through understanding the larger picture and their place within it. Other vessels have to rely on dead reckoning. They know only where they came from and how long it took to arrive at this moment in time. From this they can try to make the thousands of minute calculations and course corrections necessary to reach the shore.


  14 The Fire Blossom Temple

  THE FOYER of the Fire Blossom Temple had a rack for shoes and a table with cups and an electric teapot. Against one wall was a long church pew, its bench no longer level, worn by generations; it saved seats for families long gone. The walls behind it were ablaze with light from a window in an adjacent room. Cheyenne and Livy took off their shoes and sat on the hard wood bench across from a giant ensō that hung from the ceiling, weighted by bamboo rods. Brushed into a banner of silk, a black circle not quite closed, a shackle, a handcuff on a field of white.

  The roshi, once JoAnn, and possibly Ann, was expecting them. The abbot had called ahead. Cheyenne’s feet itched. Her socks were still damp from the rain. Livy’s braids had become unpinned and she chewed on the paintbrush tip of one, something Cheyenne hadn’t seen her do since childhood.

  A woman appeared. A black shadow with the sun behind her from a west-facing window. They stood. Ann Radar had been a foil or a myth, something to which one sister would be intimately connected and the other, not. All the conversations they’d had, about what she might look like or if she’d have an East Coast accent—Do you think she wants to see us? I’m sick of caring what she wants—yet all of a sudden, they did. The idea that they might be, for the first time since birth, in the presence of their real mother, broke each sister open in private ways. Are there still cracked bits of shell in my hair? Can you see the new skin? Will you shade me with your body? A searing and unbearable sensitivity spoken in a language of pinpricks and nerve signals marking a soft spot that had never quite closed.

  “Let’s talk in my room,” the roshi said.

  They followed her past the zendo and a kitchen into a small apartment that looked out on an alley. There was a window, open a few inches. The roshi shut it.

  The room was spare and dustless. There was a single bed, its top sheet folded in hospital corners, a tatami mat, a meditation bench, a small desk and two chairs; she asked them to sit. They took the chairs and she sat on the floor. Cheyenne got up but the roshi waved her back down.