by Mary South
Our run toward Virginia was uneventful until mid afternoon. Ten miles south of Virginia Beach, we watched a wall of dark purple clouds turning black. It stretched from the gunmetal gray of the ocean's surface endlessly into the sky. And it was coming for us.
We'd been monitoring Channel 16 as well as the marine weather channels and there had been absolutely no warning of a change in the weather. This looked much, much worse than the storm we'd encountered just past Jacksonville.
With exquisite comic timing, a young and nearly unintelligible Coast Guard voice called out from the VHF: John and I had already observed that these young Coasties tended to read their bulletins as fast as they could, usually in a heavy regional accent and with as little modulation or enunciation as possible. Kind of amazing, given the importance of the information they conveyed.
'Tention all stations, tention all stations. This is U.S. Custard, Ginia Beach Station. U.S. Custard, Ginia Beach Station. A seveah storm warning has been sued for the area between noath thitysixdegreesfittyzerominutesandzerothreahseconds and we-ehst sentyfivedegreesfittysenminutesandzeroayuhtseconds and will be mvving into this ayah in the next teun to fifteun minutes. There will be heavy rains and lightnin. Windsill be from thirty to fohty miles per hour with gustsupto fitty five miles per hour. All mahriners are advised to seek safe harbor immedletly.
We had to laugh. Nervously, of course. Yeah, sure, the storm is coming in ten to fifteen minutes and we're supposed to find a safe harbor when we're 5 nautical miles offshore and our cruising speed is under 8 knots. We were clearly not going to outrun this storm, but maybe we could outsmart it.
John and I agreed that the first thing we should try to do is get out of the way. Since the storm was coming at us head-on, we turned and ran south and east, away from it and off its leading edge.
We both gazed with real awe at the massive thunderheads behind us, and I kicked myself for not buying a video camera.
Our marine weather teacher at Chapman had been an enthusiastic young guy, new to teaching, who loved his subject and delighted in bringing in great weather photos and satellite images to enliven the class. We had seen some amazing pictures of storms in action. But this looked as bad as any cloud he'd ever shown us, if not worse. Maybe it just had a lot more immediacy while stalking us at sea than it had when projected onto a slide screen in Johnson Hall, but this was very, very ugly. Huge, gunmetal gray and violet, it rolled toward us, doubling over on itself like some kind of diseased cell, spreading its contagion.
The rain started in slow, fat drops that turned to a downpour within seconds. It tattooed the surface of the sea, changing it from green to gray and drawing a blurry curtain across our visibility.
Our escape strategy was at least partially working, however. We had managed to skirt a good chunk of the early part of the storm, but it was blossoming now, billowing eastward across the dark seas and definitely gaining on us.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked John. "I have this crazy idea."
"Wait," said John. "Are you thinking that we should turn and run into the storm now? I was just wondering about that, too."
It really wasn't as foolhardy as it sounds. It was clear that as the storm spread out, we were not going to outrun it. The mouth of this monster-led by a solid black pillar of rain was now nipping at our heels. And it was going to catch us soon. If it continued at its current pace, but we ran directly into it at our current pace, we'd effectively halve the duration of our suffering-and that seemed about all we could hope for.
We turned and headed Bossanova back toward Virginia Beach and into the belly of the beast. Samba, already in trauma mode, had gone below to hide in my stateroom, shaking uncontrollably. Heck was wedged into the corner of the pilothouse settee, curled in a tight ball and visibly nauseated. The wind was fierce now and we were heeled over about 15 degrees and being pushed off-course by about 15 degrees, too. Waves were between 6 and 8 feet, but we were taking them head-on with no problems at all. Thank God we'd taught ourselves the good habit of entering our destination coordinates on the GPS, because it continued to feed us course correction data while our visibility deteriorated to almost nothing. The radar also continued to flash a reassuring outline of the coast, but nothing else in the vicinity. We could see nothing at all-we were running blind except for our electronics.
The worst of the storm must have lasted about two hours, though time seemed to stand still while we were in the thick of it. I suppose we were completely focused on the here and now, utterly absorbed in surviving the moment. When you think about it, there are very few occasions in life when the mind isn't free to roam forward or backward at least a little bit, while the present is briefly put on autopilot. Pitching around in roaring winds and high seas, the future and the past no longer exist.
Being trapped in a storm at sea is somewhat like being involved in a very prolonged accident. If you're good in that sort of situation, your senses are sharp and you feel calm and focused. If you're not good in crises and tend to panic or become hysterical, avoid a storm at sea. It's essentially a sustained emergency that will make you (and therefore your shipmates) miserable.
Amazingly, John and I were unafraid-maybe even a little excited. We felt very safe in the Bossanova. It seemed as though this was the weather she was built for, and though we were eager for the storm to end-no one wants to push his luck at sea-we felt a kind of cozy thrill when we had enough visibility to see the patches of fine white spray blowing off the surface of the ocean. It looked like snow being whipped across a wide field by a bitter wind.
Especially in periods of zero visibility, I was very conscious of how alone we were, trapped in our own world of weather. The air had become white with sea foam, whipped by a wind so loud it had overpowered every other sound and become its own eerie kind of quiet.
And just as suddenly as we had entered the storm, we exited. It was dusk and we were only minutes away from our destination. The waves died down, the wind petered out, the sky was streaked with a deep sherbet orange by the fading sun. As we passed through Rudee Inlet, the water was glassy, reflecting the beautiful sky like a mirror. Their very last slip waited for us, and as we pulled up to the dock, it was hard to believe what we'd just been through. The dockhand who greeted us shook his head in disbelief that we'd been out in that and made it back unscathed.
John found the bar while I took the dogs for a very long walk around the suburbs of Virginia Beach. I was relieved to be safe and felt the tension draining from my muscles. I noticed something different in the air, too-in the way the twilight played across the grass, the bushes, the ditches of wet weeds. I had skipped spring that year; I'd gone directly from snowy Pennsylvania to hot Florida. It was the only time I could remember that I hadn't been around to rejoice when the first brave crocus peeked out from beneath a hat of snow. Now, I could suddenly smell summer and it reminded me of my childhood. In the northeast, summer is much more than another season-it is the sweet, soft answer to your frigid winter prayers.
On my way to the nearby restaurant, the skies opened up with another torrential downpour. I didn't mind a bit. John and I sat at the bar with good vodka and oysters Rockefeller and toasted the end of North Carolina, the beginning of the mid-Atlantic and, most of all, the mercy of Poseidon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea.
-E. E. CUMMINGS
We left Rudee Inlet at 0730 hours the next morning. Looking back, it's clear that this day, Thursday, July 8, was a subtle turning point.
Although our first week had included three of our toughest days, our spirits had been up. We were excited to be out of the classroom and underway. We were resilient in the face of adversity. We were salty dogs, damn it.
But during the second week, a horrible malaise had descended upon the crew of the Bossanova. There was just no joie in our joie de vivre. We were tired. We felt hassled. John, Samba and Heck all got sick. Th
e trip seemed endless. Of course, in the period between June 28 and July 5, we took three days off. It's no wonder that North Carolina seemed the size of Texas. This middle week was the worst part of our journey and very difficult for both of us, in different ways. I knew John had moments of regret for committing himself all the way to Sag Harbor, and I, in turn, felt guilty that I couldn't release him from his servitude.
But as we left Rudee Inlet bound for Chincoteague, the pall lifted. Just like that. There's nothing like escaping a huge storm unscathed to make you feel grateful for a dull day underway. And the whiff of summer I'd caught filled my nose like a bloodhound on the trail. We were getting closer-I could feel it now. Optimism returned to the Bossanova and perched on her bow like a seagull portending the first shout of "Land-ho!"
The Bossanova had an easy day with a familiar rhythm to it. I brought us out, then John took the helm while I made coffee and stepped outside to look at the passing sea. I still couldn't get enough of it-watching the ocean in all its thousand gradations of blue as the sturdy-looking bow of my little ship plowed it aside. It was my dream come true. When I had imagined a different life for myself, this is what I had pictured. And for once, it was every bit as satisfying as the fantasy had been. No, it was even better. I had never experienced such a sense of contentment, pure pleasure in the here and now, the deep desire to be nowhere other than exactly where I was. This was happiness.
FO R A T I M E , HA P P I N E S S , too, had been Leslie. Tall, slender, blonde hair, great legs, big heart, blue blood, sexy and more fun than a barrel of chimps.
It wasn't love at first sight. We met at a party one night during my brief breakup with Laura. I ran into her again about a week later at a way-off-Broadway play. She called me the next day and left a message, asking me if I wanted to have dinner. I was already getting embroiled with Laura again and politely declined.
Several years later, my brother-who had never played matchmaker before-said, "I know somebody who might be perfect for you." By then, her name didn't even ring a bell.
But when she called me this time, I said yes. We had a great dinner at Clementine, where we seemed to do nothing but laugh. The next day, she hitched a ride to Connecticut with me-she was coincidentally spending the weekend with friends in my neck of the woods and she broke away at some point and came over to my house for a short visit. Leslie had left New York City to work in Los Angeles a few years before, and when she asked if I'd fly out and visit her the following weekend, I said yes.
I remember standing in front of the passenger terminal at LAX and seeing her pull up in her little Mercedes convertible (known among her friends as the Morgan Fairchild). As she got out of the car, dressed in a navy windowpane suit, her face lit up at the sight of me, and I thought, Wow. Lucky me. This is the girl of my dreams. "You are a sight for sore eyes," she remembers me saying, and that her heart fluttered at the words.
One of us flew cross-country every weekend but one that summer. We were giddily in love, head over heels. We wrote each other little notes, sent each other flowers and presents.
When we were together, we always seemed to be laughing. This was definitely the woman I'd been waiting my whole life to meet. She felt like home, and I felt completely married for the first time in my life.
In the fall, Leslie moved back to New York and into my apartment on Christopher Street-it was perhaps the first time she'd ever been below 14th Street and I'd check her Upper East Side skin for signs of hives each day, but she grew to love downtown very quickly. My apartment was charming but rundown, so Leslie insisted on renovating, even though it was a rental. We shared a deep appreciation for home design and we seemed to spend every waking moment poring over shelter magazines together, visiting showrooms and antique shops.
We both had new jobs. I was a content director for an Internet website that wasn't online yet. It was infuriatingly dull. Leslie had started a new job, too, and she was in a somewhat similar position, but making oodles of money.
So, there we were, living in a one-bedroom apartment that was a worksite, going off to jobs we didn't like-in retrospect, we should have had separate apartments for a while or perhaps moved into something that was new to both of us and ready to live in. Our life together was good but fraught with constant low-grade stressors.
In the spring we started house hunting. We looked at places in Connecticut, where I spent weekends, and places in the Hamptons, where she used to spend weekends. Though Connecticut was less expensive, it was quiet. That suited me fine, but Leslie was a very social person. In the end, I figured I could stay home if I wanted quiet, but if Leslie wanted more to do, she could find it in the Hamptons.
I remember when we found the plain Victorian farmhouse with two sweet guest cottages and a gorgeous pool in Bridgehampton. We both loved it, though the house had a very dowdy interior: cheap brass lighting fixtures, heavily shellacked woodwork, ugly floral wallpaper. The previous owner was returning it to an authentic dismal-period look. But we could easily see our way past these cosmetic problems. We worked hard every weekend stripping wallpaper and painting, and by the time summer came, we had an enchanting little compound.
But that's when the trouble started. We'd been under a lot of stress for the last nine months, between working at our bad jobs and living in a construction site, but we very rarely fought. We were kind to each other, gentle and forgiving when we did clash. Now, though, Leslie seemed to get further and further away from me. She was anxious much of the time, compiling lists of things we needed to get done. Our social calendar seemed constantly booked, and I was often bored by these obligations. Too many of these gatherings seemed to have an air of desperation about them: people wanting to see and be seen. It wasn't that these events were always fancy, but in this circle of the Hamptons, I never felt as if I could go to a summer barbecue in casual attire-"casual fabulous" was the de rigueur look. People competed, stealthily, to be the best dressed, the funniest, the richest, the sexiest. It was exhausting and not very interesting to me. I should have just stayed home but I didn't.
Here is where a side of Leslie emerged that I didn't like much: she had always been the life of the party, but now I saw how much the need to be liked and popular fueled that need for fun. She could easily get caught up in this frantic social performance because it played to her insecurities. And yet, I knew that deep down Leslie felt the same way I did about these scenes. She didn't really have a snobby bone in her body, despite her upper-crust background and acquaintance with everyone who was anyone in New York. She liked nothing better than having a great conversation with an interesting person. She was deeply compassionate toward the less fortunate, and she went out of her way to help anyone she met, in any way she could. Sure, maybe a small part of that was fueled by the need to be liked, but not very much.
Later, we agreed that if I had moved to Los Angeles, we might have made it. I liked her friends there and they liked me. Surprisingly, her LA cohorts were all smart, funny, accomplished people, enduring the colossal superficiality of Hollywood so they could get ahead, without letting it transform them into "players." The New York circle seemed so much more interested in money, power and fashion than any of the other wonders that the Big Apple nurtures-they would have been better off in Los Angeles.
It was a wretched summer. My Internet company started collapsing and I lost my job. Leslie's situation at work had never resolved itself either, and she finally left with a hefty severance package. We fought daily and grew further and further apart. I couldn't find a way to get Leslie's attention anymore, to remind her of the bargain we had made to love each other forever. And I was petrified as I watched things unravel. She seemed anxious all the time, unwilling to draw boundaries between her friends and our relationship. I had sold my house, bought one with her, shared an apartment in the city-my life was gone. It was our life now, yet I felt increasingly excluded from it in any meaningful way.
In September I moved out for a month, declaring as I went that I wanted to work th
ings out, but that I didn't see us getting anywhere in our current situation when all we did was fight. Maybe some space would help us put things in perspective. Maybe we could decompress-have dinner twice a week and see if we could get back to solid ground again.
But Leslie wasn't interested and I never did go back. I spent most of October in my brother Hamilton's Bridgehampton summer rental (which he had taken through Thanksgiving), in bed, fully clothed, staring at a small black-and-white television. I don't know what was on because I couldn't see a thing. It was the darkest time of my life.
I was crushed by the failure of my relationship with Laura- I lost weight, I was very depressed-but it had been a long time coming and I knew it was right. Now, though, I felt like the most precious thing in my life had been jerked away from me. I felt stunned, traumatized, utterly disbelieving. Our breakup was a cruel mistake. I rationalized that it was messed up for Laura to give up so easily, but that didn't make me care any less about her or feel any better about my heartbreak.
And, stubborn as I am, some small but vital part of me kept pining for her, through every kind of ugly up and down.
After we broke up, we spent a year hanging around together, toying with reconciliation but never making it happen. When I finally started to date, Leslie had a complete meltdown and convinced me to try again with her for a week. It was a week that I spent, literally, a thousand miles away on a business trip, feeling suspicious and resentful of her timing, because it had taken me so much will power to start to move on. I still loved her, but I didn't trust her motivations and I continued my new romance. A few months later, Leslie started to see someone, and then it was my turn for a complete collapse.