Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  Maureen’s spine straightened. “What do you mean? Is she sick?”

  John took the longest breath she’d ever heard. It echoed down the tunnel of the phone line. “I don’t know. She was passed out in someone’s car. I don’t want to accuse her or anything, but it really looked like she was high.”

  She almost laughed. Impossible. She’d just seen Lacey that morning. Her eyes had twinkled the way they always did over the rim of her coffee mug. She’d joked with Maureen about one of the regulars at Dunkin’ Donuts, the man who sat at the counter every morning and read just the obituaries in the Boston Globe. Hadn’t she?

  John cleared his throat. “I would stay put and wait for the ambulance, but”—he lowered his voice to a dull rumble—“I’ve got Ella here with me. She’s the one who spotted Lacey on our way out the door from the store. I had to tell her she was just sleeping, you know?”

  “Yes,” Maureen said, or thought she said.

  She stared at the water still gushing into the tub. Droplets flew off the surface and clung to the walls. Lacey had helped her paint them. “Let’s do a more muted shade in here, Mom,” she’d said. “You want it to be nice and calming, right?”

  John was still talking, something about recognizing the signs from one of his former crew. Also an addict. Maureen could only nod. Her hand dropped into her lap with the phone in it. His voice was manageable from a distance. Eventually, it was replaced with the tinny whine of the dial tone and the whoosh of the faucet. She sat until the water lapped up over the lip of the tub. Until it crept across the floor and reached, tentatively, for her bare toes.

  * * *

  They didn’t speak until Maureen had pulled into their driveway. “We have to go see them,” Lacey said as Maureen tugged the keys out of the ignition.

  Maureen was tempted to ask who, but she knew who. To ask might snap this thin thread of conversation in two. “I’m sure they’ve got plenty of friends to help them,” she said into the ticking of the engine.

  “I need to make sure Ella’s okay.”

  Maureen sighed and pressed the edge of her forehead. “Fine. We can head over tomorrow. Just for a few minutes, okay?”

  Lacey nodded, her ponytail a dark furl against the streetlight outside. She opened the door and dropped out into the night.

  Maureen watched her walk up the front path. “Dammit,” she said under her breath.

  Chapter Seven

  The door of the Breakwater opened at 5:00 p.m. All the guys called it “the Break,” as in, “I need a Break from all this shit.” The owner shoved a wooden wedge under the door and nodded at the men gathered there.

  “Jimmy.”

  “How’s it going tonight, fellas?”

  “That depends. You know what to tell my wife when she calls, right?”

  “That I’m about to send you on your way back home.” He winked, and the men roared with laughter that echoed across the damp parking lot.

  “Rough day today?” he said as they filed past him.

  “Winds at 35 knots and fog you can’t see shit through? Nah, never better. Makes you stronger,” Will Feeney said.

  Gus March coughed up a laugh behind him and ground his cigarette under his work boot before following Will into the bar.

  Soon enough, the place caught its nightly rhythm, Jimmy pulling pints of Bud while neon lights flickered above his head. Occasionally, a tourist would wander in, having heard that the Breakwater served the best cup of clam chowder in town. Their eyes would widen, taking in the tiny, dark room filled to the brim with fishermen, leaning up against the bar and standing by the windows in clusters, their paint-swabbed jeans and old sweatshirts, their faces beaten to a certain kind of red-tanned sameness by the sun and the salt, swearing and laughing and wiping at their watery eyes. The tourists tended to turn tail at the sight, ushering their children back out the door with hands on their shoulders.

  At around ten, somebody got a phone call, and the news began to eddy through the room.

  “Staybrook? Fuck. You sure?”

  “I told that son of a bitch Diane & Ella wasn’t seaworthy, least not in weather like this.”

  “Was he even on Diane & Ella? You notice that new tuna boat was gone today, too?”

  “Shit. No way he’d’ve taken that job. Not today. Jess say if he went out separate or fell off his own boat?”

  “Don’t think she has. All she told Rick was he’s missing, then she went off to the harbor master.”

  “Jesus. John always had balls. Remember Alaska?”

  “Think he’s still out there?”

  “Could be, could be.”

  “We gonna pay our respects tomorrow?”

  “I better tell my wife.”

  Jimmy poured a round on the house. Glasses passed from hand to quiet hand. Beer sloshed out of them along the way so the guys in the back only got half-full pints. They drank together, glancing up at the ceiling as they swallowed. A small miracle, they knew, that it wasn’t them this time.

  “I saw Jess,” Ben O’Malley said from his spot near the doorway. He’d just gotten there, but his glass was already empty. His shoulders were wet, the fabric of his T-shirt glued to his skin. None of them had noticed it started raining. “When she came back on the Diane & Ella. By herself. Looked like she’d seen a ghost or something.”

  “Maybe she did,” Sammy Mitchell said and barked with laughter. The guys around him chuckled warily. Sammy was a little crazy. One of them would have to drive him back to his daughter’s at the end of the night.

  “Shit, I don’t blame her. Wonder what she knows?”

  “Even if he wasn’t on the boat with her. Taking the boss’s boat out without him? She’s up to something.”

  “Aw, come on, Ralphie. She’s a good kid. Knows what she’s doing.”

  “Something weird about it, though. Johnny hardly trusted that boat to anyone. Recommended ten welders to him before he finally picked one.”

  “Yeah, and one from all the way down the Cape, too.”

  “Sorry. Tried to get him to hire your brother. You know how he is. Was.”

  “A real idiot, apparently. Who the hell goes tuna fishing in weather like this?”

  “You’d have gone, too, if you’d had the chance. I’ve heard you talking about buying a tuna rig for years.”

  The screen door slapped sharply against its frame. Jess stood in the entrance, eyes haggard. She needed a drink and some other faces. Still, she’d hoped against hope it wouldn’t be a packed night.

  “Evening, Jess.”

  “Boys.”

  “See anything spooky tonight?”

  “Shut up, Sammy. Leave her be.”

  “Here, have a seat. Butt’s fallen asleep.”

  “Thanks, Frank.”

  “You doing okay? We heard some fu—Sorry. Some screwed-up shi…stories.”

  Jess shrugged and took the glass Jimmy held out. “I don’t even know what happened. He was talking to me on the radio, backseat driving the damn boat from clear across the bay, and then—” She shook her head slowly and coughed back tears. She should’ve gone straight home and blasted Jeopardy reruns until the corduroy surface of her couch imprinted itself on her arms.

  Whispers moved through the crowd. “You mean he wasn’t with you on his boat?”

  She shook her head. “He was running that tuna boat. Didn’t want anyone to know before he left in case Diane found out and tried to stop him.”

  “What was he even thinking, going out tuna fishing on a day like this?”

  “Yeah, even I didn’t bother making a trip when I saw the forecast this morning,” Danny Colbert said.

  A few exchanged sidelong glances. “Danny, you look for any excuse you can get not to go out! I’ve seen your boat tied up at the pier damn near every day this month,” Sammy shouted. Some real laughter this time. D
anny glowered at his beer.

  “Seriously, though. You know why he went out today?” Why it was him and not us. “Seems like a downright dumb decision.”

  Jess felt her shoulders tense up. Johnny was always teasing her about that, the habit she had of hunching up into herself. She took a long sip of beer and closed her eyes against the expectant silence. “He wasn’t dumb. He was one of the best fishermen in this town, and you know it.” She looked around and pressed the tip of her forefinger into the table as if its grimy surface contained the whole of Devil’s Purse and she was catching it by the tail. “If anyone could’ve pulled it off, it was Johnny. But he couldn’t.”

  Everyone nodded solemnly at that, even Sammy. If there were any doubts remaining, they wouldn’t be spoken tonight. Not in front of her.

  “Hi, honey.” Abby, a waitress at the Break, slipped up behind her husband, Frank, and kissed him on the cheek while she tied an apron around her waist. “Oh, Jess,” she said, “I’m real sorry to hear about poor Johnny.” She put one hand on Jess’s shoulder. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do, all right? Anything at all.”

  Jess nodded and shifted out from under her touch.

  Abby turned to the rest of the room. “Now, I know you boys aren’t done for the night yet. Who’s ready for another round?” Hands raised in all directions, and she grinned, plunging into the crowd with her order pad ready. Every male eye in the house watched her blue-jeaned hips swish back and forth, and Jess watched them watch her.

  She’d never figured out how women like that managed to command a room and shape the mood and desires of everyone in it. She’d missed that day in school, apparently. She drained the rest of her beer and slipped, unnoticed, back into the damp and unforgiving night.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday, November 10, 2017

  Diane was watching when Ella woke up. She sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed, mussing the duvet and studying the flush of Ella’s cheeks. Diane’s vision blurred from lack of sleep, but she knew exactly how Ella’s eyelashes fringed her cheekbones and her forehead wrinkled when she dreamed.

  “Morning, Mom.” Ella rubbed one fist across her face. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Hi, Ella-Bella.” She slid her hand over Ella’s shin, a mountain range under the covers. She held the bones of her ankle. She wanted to tell her there was a stack of steaming pancakes waiting for her on the kitchen counter.

  Ella flinched and tugged her leg away, out of the grip that’d suddenly become viselike.

  “I have some bad news. Your dad, he’s—” Diane looked away to hide what was collecting in her face. She needed to be stronger than this.

  Ella’s eyes widened as she sat up straight, pulling farther away. She hugged her knees to her chest like an anchor. It was almost as if she knew already. How quickly we all learn in this damn town, Diane thought.

  She tried again. “Jess came by last night. Your dad is missing, baby.”

  Ella always hated when she called her that, but this time, she didn’t notice. She shook her head hard, her skull knocking against the wall. “That doesn’t make any sense. Jess wouldn’t have come home without him. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know.” Diane sighed, shaky. “I know. But he wasn’t on the boat with Jess. I guess he took a tuna boat out by himself.” She pulled the threads of doubt out of her voice. Her daughter needed certainty.

  Ella’s face turned red. Tears crept from her eyes. “He wouldn’t do that,” she whimpered. “He would never.”

  Diane shifted closer on the bed and pulled Ella in. At first, Ella resisted, her muscles stiff, but finally, she collapsed into her mom’s lap. Diane drew her fingers through Ella’s hair. She could remember, in that moment, every time she’d done it before, soothing every fear and pain, every nightmare and canceled playdate. It all seemed so manageable in retrospect. John would stand in the doorway and offer to beat up the offending friend, or he’d crouch on the floor and shine a flashlight under the bed and into closets until Ella giggled. Diane realized with a start that she was waiting for him to appear now, to make everything better. Easier.

  With a great sniff, something in Ella hardened. She sat up and stared at her mother. “You’re lying,” she said.

  Diane froze. “What?”

  “I heard you guys fighting the other night. Dad probably left you, and you want me to think he’s dead. But you’re lying, I know it.” She was screaming now, her mouth bleeding hate.

  Diane paused, bewildered. “Oh, baby, no.” How could she possibly imagine this? She reached again for Ella’s shoulder.

  Her daughter scuttled to the far corner of the bed. “Get out. Get out!” she screeched.

  And Diane, not knowing what else to do, stood on shaky knees and tottered to the door. She glanced back at Ella, who was already lying on her side, her trembling back facing Diane. Diane eased the door shut behind her, thinking it might help to let Ella process her grief in private. Last night, after she stared at the wedding portrait gone dusty on the mantle, she turned to her computer. She needed something to do and a place to put her anguish. She started reading the message boards. Terrible, inconceivable posts about how to help your child through the loss of your spouse, their parent. They all said new widows should first let their child “process their grief,” as if the loss were a fruit that could be whirred into an easily digestible puree. She wished she could still call up Maureen and describe the image to her. She would’ve laughed at that.

  Not ten seconds after she’d closed Ella’s door, Diane heard her bare feet patter across the floor. Diane allowed her heart to lift a little, imagining Ella would throw herself back into Diane’s arms, processing be damned. Instead, there was the angry tick of the button lock in the doorknob. Diane had asked John a thousand times to remove that lock, imagining their daughter trapped in there. She made an irritated mental note to ask him once again when he got home before she remembered with a sucking swoosh that she wouldn’t be able to. She slid to the floor, her back against the door, and hid her face in her hands.

  * * *

  All her life, Ella had been around boats. Her dad used to let her run around the deck of the Diane & Ella while he cleaned and made repairs. He would grin and tell her to watch out for the puddles she’d obviously already seen. Sometimes, he even took her on short trips around the bay. He let her steer the heavy wheel and showed her how to cast for striped bass with the rod he’d given her for Christmas. His arms smelled like low tide when they closed around her, but she didn’t mind. She would crane her neck back and stare at the frame of the boat arching high above her, all steel and rust and winches and chains. It was like a skeleton, like armor, and she wasn’t afraid.

  Then, one and a half years ago, Bobby Cunningham’s dad got hit by the dredge frame as it was lifted out of the water, and he was knocked overboard and never seen again. Ella and her classmates signed cards for Bobby, whispering about him before the bell every morning when he missed yet another day of school. When he finally came back a few weeks later, he hardly said anything, and he never smiled, even when the teacher complimented him for getting a question right. By the next fall, he was gone. Everyone said he and his mom had moved away to a dry, dusty state far away from any coastline.

  After that, Ella started to pay more attention to her dad’s boat. She stared at the dredge, noticing how it hung so high, swinging a little as her dad moved under it. He caught her picking up a piece of chain and testing its cold, wet weight in her hand and dropping it to the deck with a deadly clang. He knelt next to her, his knees right in a blotch of tar. It was going to stain his favorite lucky Carhartts. Before she could say anything, he put one hand on her shoulder. It felt even heavier than the chain.

  “It’s scary what happened to Bobby’s dad, huh?”

  Ella nodded, picking at a chip of paint on the boat railing.

  “Yeah, it’s got us all
pretty freaked out,” he said.

  Ella looked at him, surprised. She couldn’t imagine her dad being afraid. He laughed too hard, and he knew everything. But he scratched his stubble and sighed. “There’s a lot to be scared of in this world, whether you’re fishing or not. I promise you this, though”—and his voice dropped so low, she knew it was serious—“I will always play it safe out there, and I’ll always come back to you and Mom.”

  “Pinky swear?” she whispered.

  He held up his hand, pinky extended, and she linked it with hers, and they shook on it, the calluses on his finger a little scratchy against her skin.

  From that day on, for every trip he took, he leaned over her in the wee hours before leaving and whispered, “See you tonight, First Mate.” And she poked her pinky sleepily out from under the covers so he could wrap it in his own before she rolled her face back into her pillow.

  Not yesterday morning. Yesterday morning, through the pea soup fog of a dream, she heard her door creak open and his feet shuffle across the floor. She didn’t hear his whisper, and she didn’t make him pinky swear.

  As she stared out the window at the street below, she told herself that was not why he’d disappeared. Probably, it had more to do with the fight he’d had with her mom the night before he left.

  A month or two ago, they’d started arguing after sending her up to bed in hissing whispers that carried up the stairs and made her back stiffen against the headboard where she sat. She mostly couldn’t make out any words, but a couple of nights ago, they’d forgotten themselves and were practically yelling.

  “It’s not like I wear it anyway. It’s too dangerous with all the gear. I could lose a finger. You know that, Di.”

  “So now you want to sell it.” It was her lawyer voice, the one she used on the phone with work when she was talking to the other side.

  “So what? Everyone knows I’m married. They know I’m spoken for.” His voice softened. “You want me to get a tattoo? Get something more permanent on my finger to show ’em all?”