The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  The satellite facility that would be his first home on the complex, Camp Geiger, was ten miles south of the main base, which meant it was also seventy-three miles north of Cheyenne.

  Once Essex settled in and his infantry training began, he forgot about her most days. He practiced patrolling and getting ambushed and sleeping under the stars. He preferred to be in the field than in the barracks.

  During the day he worked hard at excelling in anonymity. When he had a few hours of liberty, he wandered. Sometimes when he was alone, exploring what drainage ditches and creeks he could find nearby, the ghost of John A. Lejeune walked beside him, bending where Essex bent to look for crawdads in the dark pools under the rocks. So accompanied, Essex found he was more himself. On the base the standards were high and hard to meet, but the why was no longer his. Do you miss it? he asked the ghost. Do you miss not having to go where you’re told? But the ghost of John A. Lejeune only shuddered, whispering, The president’s own, the president’s own…

  46 Justine

  CHEYENNE HAD BARELY KNOCKED when Justine opened the door. “Cheyenne,” she said after a beat. Justine thanked the man who’d led Cheyenne through the swamp and dismissed him.

  Cheyenne walked into the room like she’d forgotten what she was looking for. Justine came closer. She smiled but didn’t try to touch Cheyenne, for which Cheyenne was grateful.

  “Do you want some tea?” asked Justine.

  Cheyenne said no but Justine put the kettle on anyway. Watching her move around the yurt, Cheyenne was riveted. Justine’s face was square more than round, with a solid jaw and wide cheekbones and a dusting of freckles—like Livy. As a young woman, her hair might have had the same subtle mahogany undertones as Livy’s, though it was mostly gray now; she wore it in two efficient braids, also, strangely, like Livy.

  “The swamp,” said Justine. “It’s not always this bad.”

  She stopped and took in Cheyenne.

  “I would know you anywhere,” she said, and laughed.

  Cheyenne’s throat got hot. She tried to speak her sister’s name but her mind was full of noise. Justine squeezed Cheyenne’s hands and she flinched.

  “I have a burn.”

  Justine turned her palm over and held it to the light.

  “I opened the hood of my car when it was overheating.”

  “I have aloe.”

  Justine got a bamboo box from the bottom of a dresser.

  “It’s gone,” said Cheyenne.

  “What?”

  “The car.”

  Justine handed her a small plastic bottle of aloe. Cheyenne squeezed some onto her palm and gently spread it over the blistered skin. The lime-green gel, the cinnamon aura of Justine’s hair, the white-noise breeze buzzing against the window screens. Cheyenne was sweating from the swamp and humid air, which she had never before experienced but knew almost from instinctual memory, it was in her body like the terror of tigers had been.

  Justine unraveled a strip of gauze from a roll. “We should wrap your hand too.”

  Cheyenne heard Livy’s voice. When Justine wound the bandage around her hand she saw Livy’s movements. In the sparse interior of the yurt she saw Livy’s personality.

  Justine put the bamboo box back.

  “I wondered how it would feel to see you,” Justine said.

  Cheyenne had looked at the Polaroid so many times. How had she missed it? Their faces were not at all alike. The woman in the photo had a soft moonlike face, not square like Livy’s, and her coloring was paler. But then Cheyenne’s own face hadn’t sharpened into what it would become until her early twenties, and what was Justine in the photo? Nineteen? A teenager who had just given birth, captured in an overexposed shot, head shaved, her face plump from pregnancy weight.

  Justine sat on the bed. “I was worried that I’d feel nothing when we met.”

  Cheyenne wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.

  Justine smiled. “I can’t hide my feelings,” she said.

  “Neither can I.”

  “It’s a way we’re alike then.”

  Cheyenne felt the pit in her stomach get heavier. Justine patted the bed. Cheyenne sat at arm’s length.

  “Tell me about your trip.” said Justine. “Was it good?”

  “It was horrific.”

  Justine looked at the sunburnt part in Cheyenne’s hair, her wet feet. “You must really have wanted to get here,” she said. “I like that. I don’t like half-assed people.” Justine tucked one leg up beneath her. “You don’t seem like the half-assed type.” Her expression changed. “I want you to tell me about your life while you’re here. What it was like until now—I know that’s hard to boil down.”

  “Actually it’s pretty easy. My teenage years were a mess. I married a professor and slept with a bunch of his students. I hate clerical work but nobody hires me for anything else.”

  Justine laughed. “I can imagine that. Well better to fuck up for real than rack up a bunch of misdemeanors. It makes you interesting.”

  In that moment, Cheyenne wanted to be interesting more than anything.

  Justine looked at her. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that bunny shirt you’re wearing yours?”

  “No, a lady gave it to me because mine was covered in blood.”

  Justine cocked her head like a fox. Cheyenne felt the other woman’s eyes run over her body. Then Justine laughed and shook her head.

  “It really must have been one hell of a trip,” she said.

  She began unbraiding her hair, unweaving fast with all fingers, a ritual Cheyenne had seen Livy do many times.

  Cheyenne had been so sure. If she got all the way here, if she showed no hesitation, if her commitment was absolute, that there would be a justice at its end to wash away all the years of poor judgment and make right all false starts. There should be a fucking prize for desire. But there wasn’t.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Justine. “I hope you stay a little while.” She pointed to the windows. “Every morning when the light comes in it’s like waking up in a tree house. You’ll see.”

  Justine showed Cheyenne how to get to the outhouse and handed her a flashlight. When Cheyenne returned there was a cot made up for her against the cold woodstove. Cheyenne, unsure how much to undress, got under the top sheet fully clothed. Her jeans twisted as she turned onto her side but she didn’t want to make noise straightening the sheets or herself. She wanted to be inaudible, invisible, visible. She wanted to be someone else. The lights went out and she watched the moonlight dance on the vines and leaves. She closed her eyes.

  I’m not going to tell Justine that she looks like Livy. I’m not going to tell Livy. I’m not going to tell anyone.

  47 Miss Thailand

  SUN COMING THROUGH THE TREES filled the yurt. Justine started a small fire in the woodstove, threw in some palo santo sticks, latched the door, and watched the flames catch through the window.

  Cheyenne rubbed her eyes and sat up.

  “You’re lucky,” said Justine. “Normally I teach an early meditation class but it’s the weekend.”

  Cheyenne looked around the yurt. With light coming in so many windows it looked bigger than it had the night before. The bed was queen-size, the kitchenette more like a kitchen, the closet where the cot had been folded like a clamshell, large enough for several cots. In the center of the room a circle of sunshine from the hole in the canvas roof played on the floor.

  “There’s a propane shower next to the outhouse if you like. I left a clean towel on the bench.”

  Justine went to the closet and pulled down a box of clothes. She found a pair of jeans and a faded denim shirt with pearly buttons.

  “It may not be your style. But it doesn’t have bunnies or blood on it.”

  The back of Cheye
nne’s hands burned. She couldn’t tell if Justine was stating a fact or making fun of her. She took the clothes and went to find the shower.

  Outside the leaves were just starting to turn. The swamp was a perfect mirror. An insect skimmed the surface, which rippled briefly before reflecting sky and branches again. When she came out of the shower, she dried off on the wood steps and dressed. The smell of Justine was in the shirt, familiar in a primal way. The scent unearthed a bedrock longing older than words.

  Walking back to the yurt she could smell the coffee. The sweet wood was now burning in the stove and the sounds of Justine moving around, the clank of mugs in the sink, brought tears to her eyes. It was strange how raw hospitality made her now.

  “I thought we could spend the morning talking,” said Justine, sitting on the floor by the stove. “I’m sure you have questions.”

  Cheyenne got a cup of coffee and sat down across from her.

  Justine pulled her unbraided hair to one side where it cascaded over her collarbone and down her breast. She looked east toward the sun. The corneas of her brown eyes flashed with amber. Cheyenne saw faded discolorations on her cheeks, old freckles, terrain. Livy was everywhere. In her gestures, her coloring, her voice. Justine turned back to Cheyenne.

  “How is Kirsten?”

  “She’s okay. She got a job as a security guard.”

  Justine nodded imperceptibly, her mouth open slightly, the bottom of her teeth white and even beneath her upper lip. “She could always do so many things I could never do,” she said.

  Cheyenne tensed and Justine laughed.

  “Relax. I’m not saying what you think I’m saying. She’s just never been a restless person. Whereas I’ve always been looking to solve something that can’t be solved, she’s able to be satisfied with things that are more attainable. Our imaginations are just shaped differently. It’s not a slam. I just need more.” Justine blew on her coffee. “And I bet that’s how you are too.”

  Cheyenne’s skin got hot. She felt something cut loose inside her. It wasn’t completely untrue. Kirsten’s life, though untraditional, had an iron framework.

  Justine crossed her legs.

  “I went west because I was bored of college. It was full of little boys taking philosophy. Have you ever noticed that girls take psych and boys take philosophy? You see it everywhere you look, this idea that women should be so interested in what someone else thinks. I’m not. And that, it turns out, is a problem for people. Cyril was the first straight man I knew who wore eyeliner. We met because I made him share his table at a coffee shop.” She grinned. “He likes to be pushed around.”

  “Kirsten doesn’t.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I liked her. You should have seen her back then. Mall jeans and a pentacle choker. She’d say borrow when she meant lend and called soda, pop, which I’d never heard before, and she still had that wall of bangs from back in the eighties—I don’t think she’d ever eaten out anywhere that wasn’t a chain restaurant. But she was a refreshing and natural person in a world of posing little scenesters.” Justine paused. “I envied her quite a bit. Did you go to college?”

  “Sort of. Some.”

  Justine nodded. “It’s not all that worth it. One good year is probably all you need. A semester of philosophy, a decent literature course, something about media and art, and you basically have it.”

  Justine got up to get more coffee. She talked about Seattle, how it was then, how it was different now. Cheyenne watched Justine’s face, which was beautiful and raw and moved through emotions so subtly that they were only discernible in the moment of transition. A long time ago someone, she didn’t remember who, had told Cheyenne that white wasn’t white but all colors at once. Justine’s face was like that, capable of showing all feelings simultaneously. What do you do with that kind of charisma?

  Throughout the morning Justine talked and asked questions. She didn’t press, which Cheyenne was grateful for because she wanted Justine to like her and talking too much felt like a risk. At various points, Cheyenne brought up Livy but Justine didn’t seem that interested so she dropped it.

  After breakfast they sat at the table, finishing slowly. Cheyenne was about to get up and do the dishes when Justine motioned for her to wait.

  “You can ask,” she said. “Did I love him?”

  Cheyenne looked at her blankly. “Who?”

  “Cyril,” said Justine. “Don’t you want to know?”

  Cheyenne’s mouth opened then closed. It wasn’t a question she’d ever asked herself. “I don’t know,” she said. “Did you?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t,” said Justine. “I just wanted to see what he looked like in love.”

  Cheyenne felt a faint revulsion.

  “Did you love him?” asked Justine.

  “You have to know someone to love them,” said Cheyenne.

  “That is obviously not true.”

  Cheyenne flushed with shame. Justine was right. It was not true.

  Because, after all, here she was.

  * * *

  —

  They spent the rest of the first day walking through trails in the woods. Justine had a limited relationship with the temple. She’d taught there for a while but something hadn’t worked out and a new arrangement had been found.

  “Most people aren’t ready for what I have to offer,” she said.

  “Most people aren’t ready for what I have to offer either,” said Cheyenne.

  Justine laughed. Cheyenne felt a glow around them.

  “Are your parents alive?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know about us?”

  “No. Why should they?”

  The flatness startled Cheyenne but it was also a relief. A plain statement of fact, something nearly impossible to get out of Kirsten. As they walked, a new hope emerged, a trickle, a brook; maybe Justine really was her mother.

  They continued to travel deeper into the woods. The trees were different from those Cheyenne knew. They weren’t like the cedar, spruce, or fir at home or the maple, birch, and elm near Jackson’s college. These were overgrown with brush and tangles and often she couldn’t see through the canopy. They walked the edges of a place called Half Hell Swamp then went east to Boiling Spring Lakes where they turned down an old railroad grade.

  Cheyenne stopped and sniffed the air.

  “How close is the sea?” she asked.

  “Maybe fifteen miles?”

  Justine pulled a leaf from a nearby bush and toyed with it, twisting it around its spine.

  “Do you ever regret leaving?” Cheyenne asked.

  “It barely entered my mind until you came,” said Justine.

  Cheyenne felt the wind get knocked out of her. Maybe she had misheard. She asked again. “Do you mean that you never thought about it? Or that you never let yourself think about it?”

  Justine tossed the wrecked leaf aside. “I didn’t think about it,” she said. Her voice was as clean as a sword stroke.

  They continued walking until they reached the beach.

  “Say a mother leaves her children because she thinks she isn’t going to be a good mother. According to most people, that’s somewhat horrifying but understandable. Maybe even noble. Or say a mother leaves because she doesn’t care that much, but she’s torn with regret later and it ruins her life: also, in its way, forgivable. Now, say a woman thinks she’d be a fine mom but leaves her children anyway and never feels any guilt at all. People are terrified of that kind of freedom.”

  Cheyenne watched her mouth, the skin around her eyes.

  Justine pointed toward the ocean. “There is a lighthouse, an old one, not far from here on the coast. Apparently the waters around the Cape Fear River are treacherous. You should see it before you go.”

  Cheyenne felt like a stone statue of h
erself.

  “For more than two hundred years that lighthouse has sent out a signal to fishing boats, slave ships, colonists, tourists—no distinction, no moral judgment; it lights everything. All around it sea turtles are hatched. We rush to protect them because we’re afraid to watch, or afraid of the part of us that can watch. But the real truth is that only some turtles make it to the sea. Many people never get to freedom. They’re just incapable. You’re not. I can see that. So I’m going to say it again: I left you and I wasn’t torn with guilt. I knew what I wanted to do and acted on it. I never thought about it much until you came. Now, how free do you want to be?”

  Cheyenne felt a terrible awe. Justine was fearless. She had no remorse or doubt about anything she’d ever done. She had the will to move ever forward, a quality prized in great men. Maybe this was just what it looked like in a woman.

  “We should go back,” said Justine.

  On their return to the yurt Justine talked about her upcoming trip to India. She went occasionally, she said, on retreats, sometimes for years. Her relationship with the temple needed to change, she said; she’d done what she could with it and now it was time for a change.

  As she talked, Cheyenne saw it again, the unmistakable face of her sister.

  “You should come with me,” said Justine. “Get a little unfixed in who you are.”

  * * *

  —

  At seven the next morning Justine’s students began to arrive, appearing out of the mist, sloshing through the swamp water. They took off their shoes and stepped into the yurt.

  Cheyenne sat up on the cot. Glad she’d slept in her clothes.

  “This is Cheyenne,” said Justine, once everyone was in.