Sea Over Bow

by Linda Kenyon

This line of thinking does nothing to cheer me. I pick up the binoculars, scan halfheartedly for ships. Would I see a ship before it was on us, or would it be hidden by the waves? After a certain point, it’s hard to gauge how big they are. All I know is that when we’re in a trough, I can’t see the horizon at all, which is never a good thing. I switch the radar on. There’s no one out here — just us, bounding towards Africa, a place neither of us really wants to go.

  Chris doesn’t nap for long, and when he comes above deck, he doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. He checks the sails, adjusts our heading slightly.

  “The wind is still clocking,” he says. “At this rate, we’ll either be pounding into it or heading back where we came from by morning. I’m going to phone Chris Parker.”

  We haven’t used our satellite phone yet. Maybe it’s time. He manages to get through on the first try. He listens, nodding his head, looking serious.

  “Let’s heave to for the night,” he says, switching the phone off. “This isn’t going to end anytime soon.”

  We’ve practised heaving to in heavy weather in the Great Lakes, but this is the first time we’ve attempted it in seas like these. It’s simple, in theory. The goal is to create a balance between the sails and the rudder that stalls the boat at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the waves. With the bow absorbing the brunt of the waves and the boat in a relatively stable position, you can wait out a storm quite comfortably, in theory. It’s getting there that’s the challenge.

  “This could be tricky,” Chris says. “Let’s tie another reef in the main and bring the genoa in a little more.”

  This is not as easy as it sounds. Chris centres the traveller, no simple task with so much force on the mainsail. Then we winch the mainsail down, tie in another reef, and crank in the genoa another couple of feet. When we’re done, we have three reefs in the main and just a slip of genoa out — and our handkerchief-sized stormsail.

  “Harden up the sheets as much as you can and release the preventers,” Chris says. With the preventers released, the mainsail will tack on its own when we bring the boat across the wind. Chris waits until we’re on top of a wave and turns us hard into the wind.

  “Hold on!”

  The boat picks up speed and heels over — way over. I’m sitting on the bench on the high side, my feet braced against the lower bench. The rail is buried and water is rushing through the scupper just beneath my feet. It would be easy to lose my footing and slip into the sea. There’s no way Chris could turn the boat around and get back to me. I squeeze my eyes shut, clutching the side of the companionway with all my might.

  Suddenly the mainsail tacks and the foresails backwind, stalling the boat. Chris adjusts the rudder so we’re taking the waves at a comfortable angle on the bow. It’s much quieter, no waves pounding against the hull. And we have straightened up (mostly). We’re bobbing like a cork as each new wave passes under us. Now we were drifting slowly south rather than racing towards Africa.

  Once I’m sure we’re settled, I go down and make us tea.

  “So Chris Parker can’t say how long this will last?” I ask, handing him his cup.

  “Not really. A day maybe?”

  We sip our tea in silence.

  “I’m going to write to Brenda,” I say. “You don’t mind?”

  “Nope,” he says, draining his cup. “I’ll just have another little lie-down before my watch.”

  Dear Brenda,

  You asked in your last letter how long until we made landfall in the Azores. I can’t really answer that. Since we made the turn, the sailing has been pretty miserable — cold, rough. I can’t remember the last time we saw the sun.

  A few days ago I would have said ten days. But this afternoon it got so rough we had to alter course away from the Azores. After galloping towards Africa for a few hours, we finally decided to heave to and ride these winds out. We’ve essentially stalled the boat, nose to the wind and the waves, and it’s comfortable enough, bobbing like a cork, but we’re not getting any closer to the Azores. We’re drifting farther away, in fact. Our distance made good today is exactly zero. We’ve added at least a day to our journey. Who knows how much distance we’ll have to make up by the time we can sail in the right direction again.

  It’s been too rough to read, Beek, too rough to open my computer, and until now, too rough, even, to make a decent cup of tea. Sadly for you, I have both tea and time to write to you now, before Chris comes up for his evening watch. It’s not going to be pretty.

  There’s just too much time to think out here, Beek. I’ve been brooding about the farm. I wonder, sometimes, if part of my attraction to Brad was the longing to settle in one place, the family farm, with its generations of continuity.

  When we were building sheep pens, I found a wooden box in the old stone shed beside the driveway. In it was a mouldering leather-bound ledger and a bunch of shoemaker’s tools — a small hammer, a rusted knife, some wooden-handled awls. Someone must have repaired shoes to supplement the meagre living the farm provided.

  There was also a little notebook in the box, with recipes and remedies written out in a spidery scrawl. How to treat a goitre. A cure for cholera. How to make elderberry wine, if all else fails. I could feel the generations that had gone before, was comforted by their presence, somehow.

  Did I ever tell you about the night I thought I saw someone in the barn? It was way too late, I was in the old barn, sweeping the aisles. I was bone tired, eyes bleary from lack of sleep. I stopped to straighten my back for a minute, adjusted my dust mask and was leaning on the broom when suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wasn’t alone, I could feel it.

  Cautiously, I looked around, and there, in the doorway to the new barn, was a figure in dusty coveralls, hands in his pocket. I knew right away who it was, recognized him from family photos. It was Uncle Tom, a bachelor who had run the farm with the help of the elderly aunt we had inherited, until one afternoon, between loads of hay, he lay down in the mow and died. They found him stretched out peacefully, hands folded over his stomach.

  I wasn’t frightened. It felt like he just wanted to help. I think he would have taken the broom from me if he could have. I glanced away for a moment, and when I looked back, he was gone. I could hear Brad at the other end of the new barn, running the pressure washer.

  Did I really see that, or did I imagine it? I don’t know. The longing to belong somewhere was so powerful. I think you felt it too, didn’t you? How could we not? I counted once — by the time I was nineteen, we had moved seventeen times.

  But I wonder if that’s just how it is, if we all long for a home that never really existed. People remember all the good things about their childhoods, forget the bad. Though in our case there’s not that much to feel nostalgic about.

  Something else is happening that surprises me, Beek. I’m playing through Brad’s slow decline in my mind, remembering every stage of his illness, each more frightening than the one before. I haven’t let myself think about it until now. I have to wonder if this is a good time to be reliving it. We both know how it ends. But I don’t seem to have a choice. I feel like I’m wandering in a very dark place right now.

  So…aren’t you glad I can write to you from the middle of the ocean? You always tell me to write about both the good things and the bad. This letter should make up for all the ridiculously happy ones.

  I know what to do. I’m going to try to make myself another cup of tea. Chris will be up from his nap soon, and I’m sure a thermos of hot tea will help him get through his watch. He’ll have trouble staying awake tonight — we’re both so tired. I think it’s time for the package of chocolate-covered cookies I have hidden away. That should perk him up.

  And I will get my broodiness in hand before I write again, I promise.

  Love you.

  Linda

  I close the lid of the computer, wait for my eyes to a
djust to the darkness, scan the horizon carefully. I can’t see any lights, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing out there. I switch on the radar, let it do a few sweeps. Nothing.

  I sleep fitfully while Chris stands the first night watch. I’m groggy and grumpy when I come up at midnight.

  “Hey!” I say. Chris is stretched out on the bench. How long has he been asleep?

  “I’ve got an alarm set,” he says, sitting up hastily. No sleeping on watch is one of our strict rules. “There’s nothing to watch, really.”

  He’s right. And he’s set the radar alarm to alert us if anything comes within five miles. No sails to tend — the boat’s just drifting with the wind. No point checking our heading. There’s nothing we can do about it.

  But I can’t — won’t — sleep when I’m on watch. I curl up in the corner of the cockpit and stare out over the water. There’s no moon at all now, but the sky has cleared a little and by the light of the stars, I can make out whitecaps in every direction.

  They were ready for us when we arrived at the hospital in London. A nurse showed us to his room — his theatre, is more like it. The wall facing the nursing station was all glass, though there were curtains that could be drawn. Inside there was more medical equipment than our entire local emergency department had — an entire wall of it, placed discreetly behind the bed so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

  The nurse told him to undress and wait for the doctors, who were just making their rounds, but he didn’t. He wanted to keep his clothes on for a little while longer. When he finally did take them off, I wondered, as I hung them neatly in his little locker, when he’d put them on again. If he’d put them on again.

  The next morning came too quickly. I was in his room by seven, sat beside him waiting for the gurney to come. When the nurse came and unplugged the machine that regulated the fluid dripping into his arm, he pretended to die. Aren’t you supposed to consult the family before you do that? I asked, frowning. We all laughed, but inside I wasn’t laughing.

  They let me come down to the operating wing with him, let me wait with him in the corridor. He was cold, and I got him a warm blanket. Then they came for him. I kissed him goodbye, and he patted my hand in a distracted kind of way. He was so drugged he could hardly keep his eyes open.

  The waiting was the hardest part. I don’t know what I would have done if Brenda and Chuck hadn’t been there. They took me down to the cafeteria, tried to get me to eat some lunch, but I just couldn’t. I can’t quite explain what I felt like. Part of me, most of me, was there with him in the operating room. Finally Brenda found a small room for me to wait in, made me lie down on the couch, and stroked my hair while I lay there with my eyes closed.

  It was four hours and fifteen minutes before the surgeon came to find me. He was still in his scrubs, or maybe he had put on clean scrubs — there wasn’t any blood on them. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands as he talked to me, big, square clumsy looking things. They had been inside Brad. They had held his new kidney.

  “It didn’t work right away,” he said.

  What?

  “It took about fifteen minutes before the blood started to flow through it.”

  What?

  “But don’t worry, in our experience, a slow start has no effect on the final outcome. The new kidney is working fine now.”

  That’s all I wanted to hear. It would be a couple of hours, he told me, before he’d be back in his room.

  “Come on,” my sister said. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  Across the road from the hospital is a convent, where the nuns provide rooms for the families of patients. We didn’t think they’d mind if we walked around the grounds. We came to a stone grotto carved into the side of a hill, with a statue of a woman in it. The Virgin Mary? Some saint? There were candles tucked in the rocks all around her. I wished that I had one. I wished I knew how to pray.

  We found a bench overlooking the river, and sat there, me tucked in tightly between the two of them, feeling their warmth, their strength. Then it was time to go back. I noticed a bush along the path. The leaves were all gone, but little red berries were still hanging on. Hang on, I thought to myself. Hang on. I broke off a tiny branch and put it in my pocket.

  How long until dawn now? I check the time. Too long. And nothing to do. I pull my iPod out of my pocket. The earbuds don’t work.

  I scan for blips on the screen — unnecessarily. The alarm would go off if there was anything out there. I check our position. Pretty much exactly where we were before, maybe just a little farther south.

  I go back to staring gloomily at the waves.

  He wasn’t back yet when I got to his room, so I sat there, in the fading light, watching the late-afternoon sun slant through the blinds onto the bed they’d prepared for him. There were machines all around it, sterile trays on the shelf behind the head of the bed, an oxygen mask ready at hand, other medical equipment I couldn’t make sense of — and didn’t want to.

  I heard the elevator door open, and next thing I knew they were wheeling him in. He was weak and drugged, of course, but he was awake. He didn’t see me sitting there. He was surrounded by nurses and orderlies. They transferred him carefully to the bed. He had blood all over him, or maybe it was just iodine.

  “Could you step out into the hall for a minute while we clean him up?” a nurse asked me gently.

  I stopped and squeezed his hand on the way by.

  “Hey there,” I said.

  He opened his eyes, smiled blearily, tried to squeeze my hand, but fell asleep again before he could.

  The next twenty-four hours were critical. I sat quietly in my chair by the window, out of the way of the nurses and doctors, watched the machines blink and beep, watched him sleep.

  “Don’t be surprised at the colour of his urine,” the nurse warned me. “Just a little bit of blood turns it completely red.”

  And sure enough, the beakers they set beside the sink for the doctors to inspect contained fluid that was more red than yellow. At first, just a few teaspoons each time they emptied the catheter bag, then more, and more. And it became clearer and clearer. The next afternoon, the nurse placed a large beaker of yellow urine on the counter. I think it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  The morning of the third day, I knew something was very wrong as soon as I walked into the room. He was awake and angry, sweating. There was a cool washcloth on his forehead. I looked over at the counter. No beakers. Just then the doctors came in looking calm but serious.

  This is very common, they assured him. You’re having a rejection episode. Your body has recognized that the new kidney isn’t your own and is trying to isolate it, trying to shut it down. What we have to do is knock out your immune system completely to give it a chance. This isn’t going to be fun.

  And it wasn’t. They gave him a powerful drug that made him throw up until he was so weak he couldn’t lift himself up from the bed. He started to run a temperature, started to hallucinate.

  “Can you hear that?” he said to me. “Those voices in that vent in the ceiling. I can’t make out what they’re saying.”

  The nurse took me aside, asked me if I would stay in his room for the night.

  “Sometimes they think we’re trying to kill them,” she said.

  I could understand why.

  By morning, he was sleeping quietly. By the afternoon, there were beakers beside the sink again. The worst was over. Or so I thought.

  It must be almost morning — the sky is brightening, if you can call it that. When we’re at the top of a wave, I think I can make out a faint line on the horizon between the water and the sky. I scan for ships, sort of, check the radar, nothing. Is it too early to make coffee? Maybe I’ll make us a hot breakfast before we start sailing again.

  We’re both much better after a couple of bowls of steaming oatmeal.

  “Ready?�
�� Chris says.

  “Just let me stow this stuff.” I take the empty bowls and spoons below, stash them in the sink, cushion them with a rolled-up tea towel. I’m not looking forward to getting beaten up again, but the wind is dropping and the seas are starting to calm. And the longer we stay hove to, the farther we drift from the Azores. I put what’s left of the coffee in a thermos, double check that I’ve re-latched all of the cupboards in the galley.

  “Okay.”

  How do you un-heave-to, I wonder. Is it as rough as heaving to?

  It isn’t. Chris just turns the wheel and the foresails fill with wind. He adjusts the mainsail a little, tightens the sheets, and slowly we pick up speed. We’re sailing again. And more or less in the right direction.

  By noon, we’ve made up almost all the ground we lost. Reluctantly, I enter a big fat zero under “distance made good” in the log book. Still 734 miles to go to the Azores.

  June 9

  Day 19

  After several more gloomy days the sun comes out, just in time for my first birthday.

  I have celebrated two birthdays every year since I was in high school. In order to register for Grade 13, I had to send away for my birth certificate. When I opened the envelope, I was puzzled.

  “Mom, why does my birth certificate say I was born June 9th?” I had always celebrated my birthday on June 10th.

  “See, George?” my mother said. “I told you she was born on the 9th!”

  She mumbled some excuse about having company that weekend. Dad’s mother was visiting, I think she said, which always threw my mother into a bit of a state.

  I don’t remember that particular visit, but I do remember my grandmother, just vaguely. She seemed to me like someone from another century, which I suppose she must have been. She was a plump woman, always wore a dark, flowered dress, tied a white apron over it when she was working in the kitchen. But it’s her shoes I remember most, heavy black lace-up things, always polished. She would clomp around the house — Mom’s house — with great authority. We were all a little scared of her. And awestruck. Grandma rolled her own cigarettes using a machine. She’d get out her tin of Player’s tobacco and her Vogue cigarette papers, which I was allowed to hand her, one by one.