“The rest of this week doesn’t look good, but we’ve got to install these poles anyway. And I was thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have Chelone checked out by a professional rigger. By the time we get that done, we should be due for a good high pressure system.”
We’d reached Chelone, and as Rex tied up the dinghy, I marveled at all the work he’d done during the weeks I’d been gone. Her hull was freshly waxed, her sails neatly flaked, even her lines exactingly coiled. She looked as new, as energized, as Rex appeared himself, and as I turned toward him, his mouth met mine, and we half stumbled, half crawled down the companionway into the salon. There I lay back on the spotless settee, let him tug off my jeans. Closed my eyes to better feel the good weight of his body. The fit of his hip against my own. The curve of his neck. His firm, freckled shoulders. “Too many clothes,” he said, sitting back to strip away his shorts and T-shirt. Both of us naked in the afternoon light, new lovers, suddenly shy. My upper chest still bore plum-colored markings from places where the poisonwood rash had burned deepest: a painted necklace, a faded tattoo.
“Souvenirs,” Rex murmured, tracing them with his fingers. Then he bent down to kiss me again, his warm breath melting away the weeks of dark, Wisconsin cold.
Afterward, we let the fading sunlight lap the heat from our skins, and when Rex got up to pour us each a glass of wine, I noted it, but did not object. A glass of wine at five in the afternoon was not a double shot of scotch. Besides, it was red wine. Good for the heart. Certainly, it was good for the disposition. Rex did not ask about Toby’s wedding. He did not ask about the settlement. The hard knot of caution in my stomach uncoiled. Once again, we were floating, disconnected, from the dream that had been our lives onshore.
“You ought to see Nantucket’s wine cellar,” Rex said, sitting back down beside me. “Another good reason to buddy-boat.”
“They have a wine cellar?”
“They have everything. World phone. E-mail. Bread maker. I’m serious! They’ve even got a washing machine. Okay, so it barely holds three pairs of jeans. But, still.” He balanced his cool, plastic cup on my bare thigh. “They don’t own a single thing anywhere else in the world. Nothing to worry about except what’s in front of them. Nothing to tie them down, hold them back.”
“No tenants,” I said. “Did you get my e-mail about Chester?”
“I did.”
“You were right about the house,” I said. “I think we should go ahead and sell it.”
“You serious?” He jumped to his feet, began to pace the narrow salon. “God, what a relief it will be, getting out from under that thing! And with the money we can—” He paused, and both of us listened. A dinghy had been approaching; now it idled off our stern. “Probably Jack and Nancy. I’d already invited them for dinner. Are you up for it?”
“Sure,” I said, and I ducked into our stateroom to change into shorts and a fresh T-shirt. Overhead, I could hear the exchange of voices; after a moment, Chelone rocked with the weight of additional bodies coming aboard. There’d be plenty of time to catch up, I figured, when Rex and I were on our way to Tobago. There’d be more than enough opportunities, then, to answer all the questions he still hadn’t asked.
Rex was laughing as I stepped up into the cockpit to shake hands, first with Nancy, then with Jack, who stood with his foot propped on a large, thumping cooler.
“Show Meg,” Rex said.
“Sure,” Jack said, and he lifted his foot. “Can’t hurt to have a second opinion. We caught this little sweetie off Scotland Point. I was just asking Rex if he thinks we ought to eat it.”
“Dare you,” Rex said.
“I can’t even look at that thing,” Nancy said.
All of them were watching me now. Jack cracked the lid; I peeked inside. “Good god. What is it?”
“Beats me,” Jack said.
It looked like a snake, only thicker. With fins. Fierce bristles jutted from its gills. It smelled unpleasantly of its own oily skin, and I watched for a moment as it writhed and snapped. Beneath it, under a layer of ice, three wide-eyed grouper lay gulping, astonished.
Nancy said, “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
We hadn’t. It wasn’t even pictured in our field guide. Perhaps it was something old and undiscovered. Perhaps it was something mutant and new. We flipped it back over the side, where it lay, briefly, on the surface. Then it dove with a furious splash and disappeared.
For dinner, we grilled the grouper, along with plantains and zucchini Rex had bought from a local garden, fresh coconut he’d picked up along the trails. Jack opened the special bottle of wine he’d been saving, he said, for my return, and we ate in the cockpit, plates balanced on our knees, talking as if we’d all known one another for years. I had to keep reminding myself, in fact, that we’d just met.
“How long have you been cruising?” I asked.
“Five years,” Nancy said. “Our kids think we’ve lost our minds.”
“They’re worse than parents,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Always worrying. Always trying to tell you what you should and should not do.”
After drawing a bucket of salt water, Nancy and I put the dishes to soak and climbed up onto the cabin top, leaving Rex and Jack exchanging war stories: rough crossings, knockdowns, lightning storms. For a while, she and I talked about places we’d lived, jobs we’d held, people we’d known. I was tired from the travel, from the unaccustomed wine. I was finding it difficult to concentrate. Everything shimmered with an odd déjà vu: the easy intimacy, the sounds of the cove, the men opening another bottle of red wine. Every now and then, we’d be treated to the voices of the Men’s Historical, Cultural and Sociological Expedition Society, still going strong at the dockside bar, bellowing rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
“At first, we went back to Rhode Island twice a year,” Nancy said, “but now it’s been—what? Three years, at least.”
“You must miss your children.”
“Actually, Jack’s daughter was just here. She stayed with us a week.” Nancy laughed. “She says she couldn’t live anywhere that doesn’t have a Starbucks.”
“She wouldn’t like Fox Harbor either,” I said. “Though I suppose they’re going to have one, too, eventually.”
“Did you have a good visit? Rex said your brother got married outside. It must have been absolutely freezing.”
“On a boat, no less. Did he tell you that part?”
“So it runs in the family, I see.”
“Actually,” I said, “if you’d told me, even two years ago, that I’d be living on a boat someday—” I shook my head.
“Your husband’s idea? It was the same with Jack and me.”
“We’d talked about it now and then, but more in a daydreaming kind of way. But then, after our son was killed, we decided we wanted a change.”
Was it my imagination, or did the twilight murmurings of the cove suddenly sharpen into dozens of harsh, individual sounds? Idling engines, slapping waves. The chime of loose sheets blown against Chelone’s rigging. The quarrel of parrots, roosting in the palm trees along the shoreline. I glanced at Rex. He and Jack had switched to rum, and the sweet smell hung in the air. For a moment, I was confused, thinking it was Eli Hale who’d been calling, Mayday! Mayday!—the punch line of some joke—but then I remembered Nancy, saw the look on her face, distressed, uncertain, and I realized what I’d done. Of course, Rex would not have said anything about Evan. I’d forgotten myself, forgotten who I was, who I was supposed to be.
“I’m so sorry,” Nancy said. “I didn’t know. Rex never said anything about it.”
“It’s hard to talk about,” I said.
“How did he die?”
The question surprised me. In Fox Harbor, of course, everybody knew. “In a car accident. I was driving him to school.”
“And you don’t have any more children?”
By now, I would have done anything to take my own words back. “We had him late in life.”
“You could adopt, you know. I have this friend, she’s forty-eight? She just got a beautiful little girl from China.”
I must have stared at her. I simply couldn’t speak.
“Well, you should think about it, that’s all I’m saying,” Nancy said, and now she was talking too rapidly, too eagerly. “I could give you her e-mail address, if you wanted it. What?” Abruptly, she turned her face, her entire body, toward the men, and I saw that they were looking at us, waiting for an answer to their question.
“The beach,” Rex said, and Jack said, “How about it? Great night for a swim.”
Nancy was already on her feet. “Sounds good to me,” she said. “Meg?” But she didn’t look at me, never looked at me again, tripping lightly down from the cabin top.
“I’m beat,” I said. “I think I’ll stay in. But you all go ahead.”
“You sure?” Rex studied me curiously. “Okay, then. Get some sleep.”
His good-bye kiss was brief, bitter with rum.
After everyone had gone, I unpacked my backpack, took a bucket bath, fixed myself a cup of tea in the thick, clear plastic glass that Rex had liked to use for scotch. By now, the sun was setting, so I lit the kerosene lamps, fitted the screens across the hatches to keep out the mosquitoes and night-flying beetles. Then I found the swollen paperback I’d started back in December, but after a few minutes, I put it down again, carried my tea up onto the cabin top, and sat there in the darkness, swatting bugs. Wavering bursts of torchlight carried from the dock, where the Men’s Historical, Cultural and Sociological Expedition Society had started in on military cadences: I know-a-girl named Bet-ty Sue! My body felt sticky with salt residue. Wisps of hair clung to my temples. Making love had left me sore, and I wished that I could take a proper bath, soak for a while beneath a thick quilt of bubbles, before climbing into a wide, clean bed.
I couldn’t be friends with Nancy now, any more than she could be friends with me. Buddy-boating was out of the question. Already, I could feel Rex’s disappointment.
The cloud cover pulled into soft, cotton pieces. A half-moon filled the air with its milky light.
That fish was weird, Evan said.
I should have taken a picture, I said.
That lady’s kind of weird, too.
I nodded. Foot-in-mouth disease.
What’s that?
It’s when you just keep going on with something, making things worse and worse. It’s when you can’t just admit that you were wrong.
It was midnight by the time Rex returned to Chelone, cutting the dinghy motor and rowing in, out of courtesy, assuming I was asleep. Climbing into the cockpit, he literally jumped when he saw me, then staggered back, laughing at himself. “I didn’t think you’d be up,” he said.
“Me neither.”
Rex sat down beside me, picked up my empty cup. “Found the scotch, I see,” he said.
“It was peppermint tea,” I said. “I thought you got rid of the scotch.”
“Just a little social lubrication,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that, Meg. Looks like you could have used some yourself tonight.” He was studying my face. “You and Nancy got awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
Somewhere in the cove, a heron croaked.
“I told her about Evan.”
He sighed. “I figured it was something like that.”
“I’ve spent the past month with people who know. I’m not used to keeping secrets.”
“That’s not exactly true, now, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“When, exactly, were you planning to tell me you didn’t sign the settlement?”
I glanced at him sharply, then looked away. Of course, Rex would have spoken to Arnie at least once, courtesy of Jack’s world phone.
“She’s already declared bankruptcy,” I said. “She’s lost the house. Lost pretty much everything, in fact. I just don’t see the point—”
“People like that,” Rex said, “always want you to believe they are on the brink of ruin. She’s got cash squirreled away, you can bet on it.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I talked with her about it.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
Again, the heron croaked, coughed. Something splashed in the water, and I thought of that terrible unnamed fish, circling beneath us.
“Everything seemed different, once I was actually there,” I said. “Once I was interacting with people. It’s hard to see someone the way that you do when you’re staring at a piece of paper. Or looking at a photograph. Or even just imagining things inside your head.”
To my surprise, Rex took my hand. “I know,” he said. His voice was unexpectedly gentle, and, for a moment, I thought he understood. But then he said, “Let’s just put the question aside again, okay? Nothing has to be decided now. The statute of limitations gives us plenty of time—”
“Listen to me.” I spoke slowly, deliberately, each word a step that could not be retraced. “I saw Cindy Ann repeatedly. I’ve talked with her on the phone. She’s apologized, Rex, she’s sorry, and she really has stopped drinking—”
“Don’t fall for it,” he said, and now there was nothing of gentleness left, as if somewhere inside him a plug had been pulled, allowing everything soft, yielding, beloved, to drain away. “Her attorney’s been coaching her, that’s all. You’re losing sight of the facts, Meg, and the facts are that she killed our child, and there is nothing on this earth that she or anybody else can do or say—”
“I know,” I said. “I know. That’s why I had to forgive her.”
He leapt to his feet with surprising grace, stood towering over me like an animal. By the light of that half-shadowed moon, I could see how much he wanted to hit me, hurt me, a look I recognized instantly, though I’d never seen it before. In the slow eternity of that moment, I listened to the last, stubborn survivors of the Men’s Historical, Cultural and Sociological Expedition Society fighting their way through a school bus round of “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Then, without warning, he spun away, stepped down onto the port side deck, dove overboard into the cove. I watched the sleek, dark shine of his head, moving toward the dock, until I couldn’t see anything more. My face, when I touched it, burned as if he’d struck me.
That night, sleeping in the cockpit—I could not bring myself to lie down in our berth—I dreamed that Cindy Ann and I were stepping, once again, through the doors at Twin Lakes. Only this time, we were forced to plunge, headfirst, through solid glass. I woke up. It was just past dawn; Rex had not returned. I wanted to tell him about the dream, but then I remembered that, of course, I could not. I sat up, my entire body slick with morning damp, and I thought about all the secrets I’d have to keep. Even if Rex did let the suit go, I could never reveal what I’d begun to feel for Cindy Ann, a connection as irrevocable, as inexplicable, as kinship. I would have to sacrifice the very thing that would enable me, finally, fully, to survive.
Looking back, I see I could not have stayed married to my anger any longer than I did. And yet, for the next three days, I tried. Rex, in his way, tried as well. He returned to Chelone the following afternoon as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Together, we worked on the whisker poles. We checked through-hulls, plotted a course to Tobago, reviewed lists of provisions, supplies. Twice, we even made love, without speaking; afterward, we held each other as if we might physically find a way to reconnect our lives. But each night, after supper, when he dinghied over to Nantucket for a drink, we both pretended it wasn’t a relief to everyone that I chose to stay behind. And when, at last, a weather window opened, and Chelone followed Nantucket out of the cove, Rex pulled up alongside the ferry dock—never quite stopping—so that I could step ashore.
I suppose I still believed, watching the two boats raise their sails, that, eventually, Rex would grow tired of it. I suppose I still was telling myself that, sooner or later, he’d be ready to come home. Even now, there is a part of me that still waits for him, expects him to r
eturn, in the same way I keep expecting Evan.
Last fall, shortly after the divorce was finalized, I sold the house and moved to Florida, where I bought a condo in Coral Gables, found work at a local accounting firm, set about starting life over again at the age of fifty-two. Just before the move, I spoke to Rex for the last time. He’d called—as he still did once in awhile—to let me know where he was, how he was doing. This time, he’d made it as far as Panama. He was on a lengthy wait-list to pass through the canal. I told him about my plans, and he said, “I just can’t picture you in Florida,” and I said, “I can’t really picture you in Panama either,” and then neither one of us knew what to say. Our attempts at conversation usually ended just this way. I didn’t really want details about his life and who else might be sharing it. Nor did he want to hear about my life and its inevitable intersections: Toby and Mallory, Cindy Ann and her girls.
It isn’t that I don’t get angry anymore, sad anymore, because I do. I work at forgiveness every day, in the same way that Cindy Ann works at her sobriety. Stretches of time pass, and it’s effortless, easy, until—without warning—it isn’t.
The only person who truly understands this, I think, is Cindy Ann.
The night after Toby phoned to tell me about Mal’s pregnancy, I woke up from a dream in which I’d climbed into their baby’s crib and disassembled her as cleanly, as neatly, as Evan once took apart his Mr. Potato Head. One by one, I fed each piece to the snake fish writhing beneath my feet. For days, the dream stayed with me, clung like sour air. And yet, when Sadie was finally born—dark-haired and violet-eyed—I was on a plane within twenty-four hours, my mother sitting beside me, her grip nearly breaking my fingers as the plane touched down in Milwaukee.
We found Cindy Ann at the hospital with Mallory; Toby, exhausted, had gone home to sleep. Mal had labored twenty hours before agreeing to the C-section. She tried to turn the baby for us to see, then grimaced, shook her head. It was Cindy Ann who finally lifted Sadie from her sister’s bed, extended her toward my mother and me, trembling, not knowing which one of us was going to step forward first.
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