by K B Jensen
But I know Tracy will never understand this. It’s lost on her. Tracy likes to hide in the cabin below reading a book, painting her nails, trying to hold herself steady against the sway.
“It’s better if you don’t fight it,” I had told her the day before. “It helps if you get up and look at the horizon.”
She lowered her head and looked up again, her blond hair dangling down and gave me a green look.
“Here, let me show you some pressure points to push that help with seasickness,” I told her. I grabbed her wrist with its soft, silky white skin and pressed my thumb between two veins in vain. This was the first time I had touched her skin.
“Push here, and it’ll make you less queasy.”
“Thanks,” she said sheepishly. “You know, I really don’t like sailing, no offense.”
“None taken,” I said.
But I had gone upstairs and noticed Richard was in trouble, not the kind of trouble you’d expect, the kind that comes from loving a woman who doesn’t love to sail.
There he was at the helm, with his brown hair flowing behind him. There he was trimming the sail, pulling in the line, wrapping it around the metal winch and winding it in tighter. There he was at the mast, hoisting the white fluttering cloud of a sail, each fold of fabric unfurling in a white whoosh.
He had a shit-eating grin on his face and you know he meant it when he sat down in the cockpit next to Kim and said with seriousness in his eyes, “How much for the Virginia?”
“She’s not for sale,” Kim said. “But thanks.”
Was it the first time anyone had asked to buy the boat? Yes, Kim told me later, and he didn’t like it. “It’s kind of like someone asking you if they can fuck your wife for the right amount of money,” he said. “You get tempted and pissed off at the same time.”
So Tracy and I are walking down the beach and she asks me. “Don’t you ever get lonely, with all this sailing?”
“I meet people all the time,” I say. “New people in every harbor, hail my friends on the radio. It’s its own little world.”
“I’m so bored,” she says. “I get bored. I need civilization. Humanity.”
She picks up a stone from the sand and fingers it before throwing it into the water. It skips two times.
“That’s not how it’s done,” I say. “You have to pick the right stone to throw.” I pick up a black one. It’s smooth and flat on each side. I rub the sand off it, hook my finger around it and fling it back and forward. With eight little skips, it dances and hops across the small waves.
“I want to swim,” she says simply, and she pulls off her white shorts and takes off her yellow sweater. She’s left in her purple lace bra and mismatched cotton underwear as she runs into the water, a spray flying up behind her. I stare at the crumpled white denim and yellow cotton lodged in the sand with my mouth slightly open. She’s shrieking from the cold and the delight and then laughing. Her blond hair has darkened into wet, winding ropes that hang across her shoulders, and now she’s pulling me in. She has her fingers around my wrists, tight as handcuffs, and I can feel her pulling me in. Her thumbs are pressing on that same pressure point between the veins. Her fingers are icy and so are the icy cold fingers of Lake Superior touching my skin, the water shooting into my pores like needles as I wade in after her. My skin goes pale and slightly blue tinged under the water as it gets colder and starts to numb. That’s the thing about swimming in Lake Superior. It’s not so bad once your legs go numb.
There’s Tracy with her lace bra soaked through, wearing cotton underwear on bottom. And she’s laughing and splashing me and calling me, “Wuss.”
And she’s still got a wet grip on me and we do kiss, you know. I kiss her because she’s beautiful, and I am lonely, and she kisses me because well, I guess I’m beautiful and lonely, and here we are two lonely, beautiful people freezing on the beach.
Her lips are cold and fish-like and I wonder if she is a mermaid for a moment, a silly, little, delirious, wet thought. My fingers get caught in the wet tangle of lavender lace. I’m like a fish caught in a net.
And the warmth spreads from my lips across my neck and chest and down my stomach but stops at the line where the icy cold water laps against my hips.
So I step back and turn to look at the Virginia, and I start to swear. I see two stick figures in the cockpit. Are they watching? Fuck. The icy cold is dripping across my shoulders, across my face, and I wipe my face with my fingers, and I wonder.
You see on a boat, there are no exits. Kim and I have talked about this a few times in the dark under the northern lights, watching out for tankers. Each passenger we bring on is a stranger. We have to do our best for smooth sailing. They come on like cardboard figures and with time we know more about them than their families in some cases. Boats are tight quarters. You learn a lot about people when you live with them on a boat. You learn what shape their hair comes out in in the morning, the names they call out during sex, the names they call each other in general, the good ones and the bad ones, you learn what they like to eat, what makes them sick, how they handle their alcohol, and how they puke.
I watched Tracy puke a few days ago. The long blond waves swaying back and forth as she hurled into a white, plastic bucket. Richard did not hold her hair back. And so I stepped in and did it. Her chest heaved. I tried not to look at the orange and red and yellow mess. I tried not to smell the scent of stomach acid drifting up. The hair was soft and slippery in my hands, thin and golden. But I couldn’t wait to let it go.
And here she is now, a wet mess, staggering back onto the red, brown sand.
“Fuck,” I say. “It was only a kiss.”
We are back in the dinghy and I’m rowing and rowing. The engine wouldn’t start. It sputtered and choked and coughed out a diesel cloud but it would not start. And she’s there, sitting behind me, next to the dead engine. I can feel her eyes watching my movements, her eyes watching my arms, my back, burning into the muscles. Or maybe I’m just imagining it because I look back and one of her long fingers is trailing in the water, creating a little stream.
We are quiet and all I can hear is the sound of the plastic oars dipping and dripping into the water, and the waves crashing and whooshing onto the beach.
Things aren’t that great between you two, are they? I want to ask the question but I don’t dare. I don’t dare. It’s just like the engine that won’t start. I kill the words when they reach my lips, swallow them and just keep rowing.
I notice I’m edging away from the Virginia, and so I pick a point on the horizon and guide myself back. There’s a pine tree, tall and green behind a boulder. That’s the one that will get me to the Virginia. Just got to keep my eyes off Tracy.
When we get on board, the yelling starts and Richard is trashing the place. He’s banging the table with his fists. He rips out a lamp from the wall. The gas lantern is thrown to the wooden floor and its glass globe shatters. He keeps calling her a bitch over and over again.
Tracy is oddly quiet, like she’s been through this before and it no longer scares or shocks her, but Kim is screaming and red faced. The man is hurting his Virginia.
“Stop it,” Kim yells. “Stop it!”
Richard scratches the wooden paneling with his rigging knife. He stabs a cushion and white stuffing flies out of it, like snow cascading around us.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kim asks. “Sadistic bastard.”
“You sure you want to talk to me like that?” Richard says.
He’s got the rigging knife in his hand, and he’s flipping it open and shut. “It’s only a two-inch blade, but it’s sharp enough,” he says, looking down at it.
“I didn’t have you pegged as a homicidal maniac,” I say. “Look, we were just playing around in the water.”
“Like hell,” he says, lunging toward me.
I’m not normally a fast thinker, but this time I am. I step backward and grab the flare gun out of the navigation station. I point the orange barrel at his
head. He doesn’t know it, but it’s a bluff. The last thing I’m gonna do in the world is shoot off a flare inside the boat. It would just start the Virginia on fire. So I tack in another direction.
“Look, I have no interest in your wife. I’m not even straight,” I yell, “I’m gay, for Christ’s sake.”
“Like hell you are,” he says. But he backs down.
“Kim, for the love of god, if you know what’s good for you, kiss me!”
With that, I pull Kim close to me and kiss him as passionately as I can muster. All five senses are on fire. His protests catch in my mouth. I cup his prickly round face. I pull his face close to mine.
And Richard busts out laughing and bends at the waist, letting out a rush of breath in relief.
Kim wipes his mouth after our kiss but plays along the best he can.
“Why don’t you sleep in the same cabin then?” Richard asks.
“Because it would be unprofessional. It makes some of our clients uncomfortable,” Kim says.
“Well, it doesn’t make us uncomfortable,” Richard says. “Does it, honey?”
Tracy shakes her head.
Sadistic bastard, I think.
And for the rest of the fucking trip I spend the night in Kim’s cabin, with my back to him and his back to me. The body heat radiates off his body. His breath is loud and gaspy in the night. Occasionally I can feel him kick me. But I’m happy because I’m home safe. The Virginia is my home. The Virginia is safe.
Tracy and Richard, they have their door open to their little cabin. They are murmuring and cuddling, and the boat is rocking them to sleep, too. Tracy has stopped hiding below deck during the day. She has taken off the Dramamine patches and started hoisting the sails. Maybe there’s some hope for them yet.
As for me and Kim?
“Maybe we should actually give this thing a try. Wink wink,” I say to him first thing in the morning as we wake up peering into each other’s eyes.
“Fuck you,” he says. “I have only one love.”
“I know. I know. The Virginia.”
“I’m going to send that asshole a bill for all the damage after we get back in port,” he murmurs.
I roll over and go back to sleep. The flare gun is tucked under my pillow, in its case of course.
* * *
“What do you think?” Peter said. “How’s that for a sailing story?”
Julie crawled off him. “Be quiet,” she said, putting a gloved finger to her lips. “I think I hear something.” There was a distant whoosh and she got out of the car as fast as she could. The car door hung open behind her, letting the cold and snow drift in. She waved her arms in the dark and the car drove right on past, a flash of yellow and red lights mingled with white snow
“Mother fucker!” Julie yelled after it. “You saw me!”
“Come on!” Peter murmured. “We’re dying out here.”
She got back in the car and slammed the door behind her.
“I know they saw me,” Julie said. “They fucking saw me, and they still didn’t stop.” “I tell ya, it’s a cold, cold world out there,” Peter said. “Nobody was stopping for me when I was out there walking along this road.”
“What the hell were you doing out here all alone, anyway?” she asked. “God, it’s cold.”
She climbed right back into his lap under the sleeping bag, shivering.
“I am a lost, wandering soul,” Peter said quietly.
“Were you really a sailor?” she asked. She couldn’t stop shaking. She had let too much cold air into the car when she had flung open the door.
“Yes,” Peter said, “But the story is mostly made up. I did work with an Australian guy named Kim, but I never got around to sleeping with him.”
“Did you love him?” she asked.
“God, you get personal,” Peter said. “Nosy, nosy… not in that way, but I did have a thing for a girl named Tracy once.”
“Hmm,” Julie said. “I thought she was just a sex object.”
“Maybe she started out that way,” he said. “It has to start somehow.”
He wrapped his arms tighter around Julie just then. She almost didn’t wish she could escape.
“Do you miss Elizabeth?” Julie asked. “Did she start out as a sex object? You can tell me more about her, if you want.”
“Not a lot to tell,” he said, loosening his grasp. “We were together for five years.”
“What happened?”
“She left me.” He grimaced in the dark.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Why?”
“You’re like a little bit of barbed wire, aren’t you?” he murmured. “Can’t you see I’m in pain?” He took a sharp intake of breath.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“No,” he said. “You can keep talking, talk about anything, anyone. Just keep talking. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts anymore.”
Was he crying? She could see a tear forming at the edge of his eye, but maybe it was just the cold. His tears made her shudder. He wasn’t going to rescue her. No one was going to rescue her. It was going to be up to her to find a way out of that car, if there was a way out. She wanted to jump, to leap out into the snow and just run away as far as she could. But they were trapped. They were in it together.
The snow was piling higher and higher around the car. It had blown up on the windows in curved white arcs.
“I’ve got another story I could tell you,” she said, shivering. “I wrote it a long time ago. It’s in first person. I hate writing in first person, because everyone always thinks it’s me.”
“Is it?” he said.
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
Chuck and Irene
Did you know a house from the 1950s could be built on a wooden foundation in Jackson County? It was actually up to code at the time. That’s what happens when you let people build their own houses. They get inventive. They get creative. And what do you get when you buy one? You get rot and a whole lot of cuss words when the inspector comes.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the inspector said. “What were they thinking?” The man literally scratched his head.
Irene and Charles Taylor built this house and lived here fifty years. It’s not ugly. It’s not a house you would think was on the verge of collapse. It’s a ranch style with a triangular overhang. It’s got white vinyl siding and burgundy trim.
Outside, the children’s tricycles and a plastic grocery cart are scattered on the lawn. There isn’t a single creeping Charlie among the blades of grass. I’m proud of the lawn.
The porch stairs are covered in green vinyl carpeting. I admit that’s ugly. Monte and I know we should take it off, but we haven’t figured out what kind of adhesive Chuck and Irene used to keep it together. I’m afraid it would look even uglier if we peeled it off, so we leave it on.
But inside the house is nice and cozy. Inside, there’s layer after layer of white carpeting. I like the feel of it under my bare feet. Except for the kitchen. In the kitchen, there’s a wooden floor and you can roll marble after marble across it in the same sloping arc. The children were the ones who first noticed our house was sinking. Children notice everything, you know.
I like making the kids’ lunches on the linoleum counter. Peanut butter and jelly. I lick the knife and put it in the dishwasher even though I know it’s never going to get clean. I don’t care. I’ll run it again and again with each new load of dishes. Because eventually it will come clean, right? Or someone else will clean it for me. That’s the ultimate denial: peanut butter residue.
“Can we prop up the south end of the house?” I asked the inspector.
Monte wasn’t even there when he came this morning.
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid not,” he said. “You’re gonna have to move. You’re going to have to let the county condemn this place.”
“Please don’t tell the county,” I pleaded. “We need time.”
“I wo
n’t tell them for a while,” he said, “ But ma’am, it’s not safe for your children.”
The conversation from this morning flits in and out of my head, a memory stuck there like a song. The kids are playing outside right now. It’s safer for them outside.
Monte likes to sit in the brown leather recliner in the living room. He likes to watch football for hours. I hate football. But I love Monte. We’ve been very happy in this house. I had hoped we’d live here fifty years together, just like Chuck and Irene. Oh Chuck and Irene, how could you be so stupid?
I can still taste the peanut butter residue on my tongue.
I walk through each room like I’m saying goodbye with each closing door. There’s the baby blue bathroom with the porcelain claw foot tub. Maybe we could take that with us. We had some good times in that bathtub, me and Monte, when we first moved in.
The children’s rooms explode with innocence and stuffed animals and plastic bits and pieces that once were toys. Don’t ask me how we are going to pack all that up.
I thought we were happy here. I thought everything was perfect, stable. We were safe and secure. Now I find out it’s all on a downward slope. It was an illusion.
I pound down the steps to the basement. I pound down each one with heavy footsteps, like I’m angry at the house because I am angry at the house. I’m angry at Chuck and Irene and their fifty years of bliss.
And where is Monte? Why couldn’t he take the day off and listen to the inspector with me? We have a lot to talk about.
I go to the washer and dryer and instinctively change the wet clothes. There’s a pile of laundry on the floor and a dead mouse next to it. I swear out loud. I hate this basement. I’ve always hated this basement. Cobwebs and flooding. Cracks in the floor. When it storms, it pours in through the holes in the walls, like a faucet. Monte and me would go down and try to stop it. The children would run up and down the steps with buckets and throw the rainwater out on the driveway.