Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  And then, one morning, she couldn’t button her jeans. She couldn’t even see the fly around the fleshy swell of her. She turned sideways in the mirror and scrutinized herself. She took a deep breath. She knew what she had to do.

  She spent the rest of the week making her plan. She dug the newspaper out of a recycling bin on the way to school one day and paged through the classifieds in a corner behind the cafeteria, running her finger over the column of people seeking roommates before she found a place she could afford a few towns over. It was perfect: no one would recognize her there, but it wasn’t so far away she’d have to spend half her savings on a bus ticket. She would lie low for a while, have the baby, give it to the right family, and then. And then? Well, then, she supposed she’d come back home.

  She wrote a letter to her parents. It took her three nights to get it right. She tore up all her drafts and threw them out in the trash can at the theater before her shift, scattering the bits of paper over popcorn buckets and ticket stubs. Ultimately, she decided to tell them the truth. She knew it was cowardly to tell them in a letter like that, but she still couldn’t bear to tell them to their faces. She didn’t want them thinking she’d been kidnapped or she’d run away because she didn’t love them or some stupid reason like that. She needed them to be embarrassed so they would leave her alone. She promised she would call them once a week, though in all honesty, she wasn’t sure if she could afford to contribute to her roommates’ phone bill.

  On the night she left, she watched her parents more closely than usual, noticing the hairs on the back of her father’s hands and the way her mother wiped at the corners of her mouth after every third bite of dinner. “What is it?” her mom said when she saw Annie staring. “Do I have a new wrinkle or something?” Her hand flew to her forehead, and Annie almost cried. It must’ve been the hormones.

  She set an alarm for very early the following morning, though she didn’t need it. She stayed awake all night, lying on her back, one hand to her abdomen. We’re getting out of here today, she thought to herself and was surprised to note that she thought of herself as two now, her and the baby.

  At four in the morning, she turned off her alarm clock and pulled her suitcase out from under her bed. It was heavier than she expected, and it took a lot of effort not to bang it against the walls as she carried it down the stairs. She circled the kitchen for a moment. She wanted to find the right place to leave the letter, somewhere mundane enough that it might not break their hearts quite as much, like taped to the milk jug in the fridge. In the end, she just put it in the middle of the table. And she called a taxi, murmuring her address into the phone, and left.

  Her new roommates were surprised to see her there so early. She had to ring the doorbell three times before one of them let her in. The apartment was above a bakery, and the scent of muffins and cinnamon rolls made her stomach rumble. When the door opened, her gut growled so loudly, it sounded like an earthquake.

  Her roommates were two girls who went to the nearby college. One of them stood before her now in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of long johns that sagged at the knees.

  “I’m Annie,” she apologized.

  “Oh, hey,” the girl said, rubbing at the side of her forehead. “Sophia. We weren’t expecting you till later.”

  “Yeah,” Annie said and could think of nothing more to add. My parents don’t know I’m gone, and I had to leave before they woke up seemed a bit much for an introduction.

  Sophia shrugged and opened the door. “Nobody’s up yet, but you can hang out in your room, I guess.” She led Annie through a queasy-green-colored kitchen and a cluttered living room to a small, square bedroom with a scuffed wood floor and a mattress on top of a metal bed frame. “Our old roommate left her bed behind. You can use it if you want,” Sophia explained before stretching her arms overhead. “I’m going back to sleep. See you in a couple hours.”

  She closed the door behind her, and Annie was alone again. She opened her suitcase and organized her clothes into stacks on the floor. She thought about making pancakes for the others—maybe they’d like her if they woke up to the smell of maple syrup. But she wasn’t sure if they had any Bisquick or even where they kept the pans. So she curled up on the mattress and tried to fall asleep. This is our home now, she told herself as her face grew damp with tears.

  After what felt like an entire day had passed, she heard high-pitched laughter and the groan of a coffee grinder coming from the kitchen. She shuffled in to see Sophia and the other roommate sitting at the table with mugs.

  “Hey, I’m Eve,” the roommate said. “You want a cup of coffee?”

  She very much wanted to have one so she could seem older than she was. She pulled at the hem of her shirt. “Actually, well, I can’t. I’m pregnant?” Annie had read about the restriction in a pregnancy book she’d found in the back corner of the library at home. She shoved the book back onto the shelf as soon as she heard someone else approaching but not before she realized that most fun and delicious things were off-limits for her now.

  Sophia’s eyes widened. Eve froze midsip.

  “It’s okay, though,” Annie rushed to explain. “I’m giving it up for adoption, so it’s not like the baby will be staying here or anything.”

  Sophia nodded. “You’ve got first and last month’s rent, though, right?”

  Eve put down her mug. “Oh, you poor thing. Did you run away from home? Here, come sit down.”

  * * *

  At noon, she went to the movie theater down the block to get a job application. Sophia worked there and told Annie she’d vouch for her. Annie filled out the form in the lobby, using one of the big glass doors as a writing surface. When she handed the form back to the manager, he glanced at it and slipped it into a drawer. “Can you start tomorrow?” he said. No vouching necessary.

  Triumphant, she marched back out into the day. Eve had let her use her computer to look up nearby adoption agencies, and she’d written the addresses down on a Post-it that she kept in her pocket. She needed to figure out what she was doing with this baby. Today.

  She walked to the bus stop on the corner. She sat there for ten minutes, the cold from the metal bench seeping up into her hips, but when the bus trundled to a stop in front of her, she stood up and walked away.

  She used the phone in the apartment’s kitchen to call her mom.

  “Annie! Oh, thank goodness. We’ve been worried sick. How could you do such a thing to us?” She continued on for a minute, maybe two, variations on the theme. Not once did she tell Annie to come home.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I had to. Should I call back tonight so I can talk to Dad, too?”

  The silence hissed. “I think you’d better not,” her mother said. “Your father is… Well, he’s still getting used to it all. You understand.”

  Annie said she did.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday, November 10, 2017

  Jess was making lunch. It was scallops from the freezer that John had sent her home with on their last trip together, and she wanted to be extra careful not to burn this batch. “Your tip,” he’d said, tossing the bag into the bed of her truck. “For services rendered.”

  She’d reached into the truck and snatched it up, then thrown it onto the passenger’s seat. “Don’t think for a minute you’re taking this outta my share of the revenues.” She flexed her fingers, out and in. They still ached. It’d been a good trip, and she’d shucked all the way home while John handled the boat.

  John laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He vaulted gracefully into his own truck and slammed the door. Leaning out the window, arm dangling down, he said, “Looks like it’s gonna blow pretty hard next couple days. Plan on Thursday?”

  “You got it,” Jess said. She scrambled into her truck. It still wasn’t really second nature. She knew her ass poked out awkwardly while she tried to arrange her arms in the right spots. John smile
d a little and touched the brim of his baseball cap before driving away.

  Hot oil leapt up from the pan, spattering her collarbone, and she flinched. She grabbed a spatula and turned the scallops with a flick of her wrist. The cooked sides were golden brown and crusty. Perfect. She sighed.

  She didn’t know what she was going to do now that John was gone. All the other captains bitched and moaned night after night in the Break about how tough it was to find clean crewmembers, about the relapses at sea that turned the boat around, the day wasted. And still, they didn’t trust her enough to hire her.

  The way she saw it, she had two things working against her.

  One was that though she was born and raised in Devil’s Purse, she didn’t come from a fishing family. Her father worked at a bank two towns over, and her mother was a second-grade teacher. She’d only started fishing when she was eighteen—her parents barely tolerant of the idea—and in this town, that was late. No matter how many years she’d been working (seventeen), the guys would always be a little worried that fishing was a whim she’d give up on midway through the season.

  Two, of course, was that she was a woman. Not that women weren’t involved in the fishing business; behind almost every fishing boat was a wife or a mother crunching the numbers and meeting with the tax accountant. Hell, they earned the right to have those boats named after them, Donna and Cheryl and Elaine painted in white, always in white, on the blue or red or green hulls. But it was rare for a grown woman’s body and not just her name to be on a boat—and rarer still for her to be working for someone else. All the fisherwomen around these parts were captains and vessel owners running the businesses they’d inherited or bought with the income from other jobs.

  Oh, the men were nice enough to her at the docks; it wasn’t like that. That was the problem, though. Whenever they saw her hauling an unruly mass of net or bags of scallops to or from John’s boat, they hurried over to her, jamming their arms and hands under her own no matter how much she protested.

  Jess liked working for John. Always had. When she graduated high school, he’d just gotten back from Alaska. He was flush with crabbing cash, but he’d lost his brother out there, and no one really knew what to say to him about it. That summer, she went down to the docks every morning when the air was still cool and misty, the scent of seaweed suspended in it. She went to see if anyone needed an extra man. The answer was always no, with a polite smile and a glance at her still-squeaky Xtratuf boots.

  So she watched. She watched as they smiled at John and shouted boisterous greetings while he worked on his new boat, then muttered among themselves and stared at his back. They were worse than the moms at the school playground. There were rumors that John had been steering the boat and that he’d had too much to drink when his brother went over. That he’d rigged the gear wrong or that he’d ignored the captain’s orders. Every one of the rumors was born on those docks, and he didn’t say a word to refute them.

  One morning, he brought a step stool and a small can of paint and began to put the finishing touches on the name. Diane. A risky move, naming your boat after a girlfriend who wasn’t yet a wife—and one whom Devil’s Purse hadn’t seen hide nor hair of yet. The old men were having a field day that morning. None of them made a move as John struggled to balance the can in one hand, the brush in another, and steady himself against the hull at the same time.

  Finally, Jess sighed and heaved herself up off the park bench she’d been sitting on. She walked down through the parking lot and onto the dock. By now, her knees no longer swayed when a strong wave pushed up on the underside of the pier. “Need a hand?” she said, nearly the same exact words she’d asked every other man there that morning. She held one out to him.

  “Oh. Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” John handed the can to her and dipped his brush in it. They worked like that for at least thirty minutes, her holding the can out and him leaning down periodically to refill his brush. Though the can was a little heavy, her arms did not shake. She hoped the others were watching.

  He jumped down from the ladder and pulled a rag from his back pocket, started wiping his fingers without meeting her eye.

  “Real sorry to hear about your brother, by the way,” she said, watching the greasy fabric smear the paint further into his skin.

  He looked up at her then. “Thank you.” He squinted. “You’re Jess, right?”

  “That’s me.” Her stomach fluttered. Even in high school, he’d been a bit of a legend. Fishing since he was ten, running his dad’s boat in the summer since he was fifteen. It was sort of like getting recognized by the star quarterback, only she didn’t give a shit about football.

  He looked her up and down. “You killing time watching us old farts work or something?”

  She raised an eyebrow. Yeah, killing time in rubber overalls and an old bait shop T-shirt. “Or something. Looking for work, actually. Crew.”

  He stared her straight in the face as if waiting for her to crack. When she didn’t, he said, “That’s interesting. I’m looking for help myself. And having a hard time of it, too, with all the gossip these guys are churning out.” He jerked his thumb over her shoulder where a cluster of men were standing and, sure enough, staring outright at the two of them. “You interested?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Why not.”

  “Cool. We start in a couple weeks, I think. Give me your number, and I’ll call you.”

  “Cool,” she echoed. She read out her digits, pausing after each one as he fumbled to figure out how to program them into his phone. And when she turned to cross the parking lot toward home, she bit her lip, hard, so that she wouldn’t grin.

  * * *

  It took six months for him to talk about his brother. They were out at sea, and he’d just let the gear out to trawl the faraway bottom for scallops. They’d had a bad run of luck, days where the dredge came back full of rocks and starfish with only a scattering of scallops. Jess stood to one side of the boat, staring out at the horizon and sending a quick prayer to Saint Andrew.

  “Should’ve listened to Simon,” he said. Jess turned to him. He pushed his baseball cap up on his head and scratched his forehead with one grubby hand, squinting at the winch. “He always told me these grounds were all dried up and we’d have to get rich elsewhere.”

  “Like in Alaska?” she said.

  “Yeah. Alaska was supposed to be it. But then he had to go and get himself killed.” He stopped and stepped into the wheelhouse to check their bearings. He stayed that way, back to her, one hand on the wheel.

  She edged closer and said, “What happened?” She had to shout over the grinding whirr of the engine.

  “You probably heard he went down in a blaze of glory, doing what he loved on some huge vessel, right?” he called over his shoulder. He shook his head. “Load of bullshit. It was a bar fight, plain and simple.”

  He turned, one arm still resting on the wheel. “We all went out drinking at the only bar in town, like we did most every night. His buddy started hitting on the wrong girl, got a local dude all pissed. You know how it goes.”

  Jess didn’t, not really.

  “Anyway, Simon tried to step in, calm things down. Guy brings a full beer bottle down on his head. Must’ve hit just the right spot, ’cause he went down. I ran over to help him back up, but it was too late. He was gone before he even hit the floor.”

  He stared back out the window. Jess realized she’d never seen him drink. When they went to the Break after a long day of fishing, he always ordered a water with lemon, waving off any teasing from the others. Which was odd, now that Jess thought about it, because there used to be stories about him outdrinking even the most weathered of old dudes at the Break. People used to say he kept Coronas in the pockets of his foul weather gear and would crack one every morning on deck while they steamed out to the fishing grounds, no matter what time it was. They used to say he had the beginnings
of a problem growing there.

  “But you let them believe he died fishing, making some huge mistake.”

  “And who’s to say it wasn’t a huge mistake?” he spat. “Besides, it’s what he would’ve wanted. No one in this town thought he’d make a serious fisherman. Three years older than me and he still hadn’t really tried. But now, they all think he died sacrificing himself to this job.”

  “The guy who killed him is still walking around out there in Alaska?”

  He shrugged again. “Probably having a hard go of it. I saw his face when we were trying to bring Simon back. He ran out the door before anyone could call the cops. They’ve got one patrol car covering ten, twelve towns out there, so they probably wouldn’t have caught him anyway. Di thinks I should press charges. She wants to go to law school, and to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, you know?” He laughed, and Jess smiled a little. “She thinks it’d give me closure. It’s as closed as it’s ever gonna get, though. He’s gone, and I’m still here.”

  He nudged past her and threw the switch to haul the gear up. They held their breaths as the chain reeled in and the trawl inched into view until the chain-linked bag finally hung, dripping, over the deck.

  It was heavy with scallops. They shone red-brown in the light, some of them still clapping open and shut like so many hungry mouths. It took Jess’s breath away. Her best haul yet.

  John bounced up and down on his toes. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. Then, “Suck on that, Simon!” he yelled to the sky with affection. He pounded Jess once, twice, between the shoulder blades, and they got to work.