“You like this, you fucker!” I yelled when I had a moment longer to study his face. “You’re happy right this minute!”
“What are you talking about, Kate?”
“You like this! You want to tempt fate. You do! Holy fucker, you put us in this spot deliberately!”
“You’re crazy, Kate.”
“Am I? I don’t think so. You stupid bastard!”
“Quit talking like a mad woman, Kate. You are off your nut.”
But I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t. He was fully alive. I had seen glimpses of that expression before, but never the full bloom of it. It was a carnal, avid face, one that revealed a side to him that I hardly recognized. He didn’t want to kill me, but he also didn’t want to take steps to protect me, either. He had heard the weather report and he decided to ignore it. Maybe it wasn’t as conscious as that, but the possibility that he had simply absorbed the information, had put it away so that he might ignore it, and had gone on about his day—that knowledge disturbed me. He was willing to risk both our lives in some inchoate desire for sensation. I couldn’t help linking that to his drinking, to his push to feel more and more without end. He was a stranger, suddenly standing beside me.
We continued for nearly two hours without knowing whether the next wave might kill us. I felt nauseated from the motion, but also from the understanding I had gained. Carefully, after a grueling hour and a half, he took the center passage into the Dublin port. Incredibly, the sea calmed and became tame as it had ever been as soon as we rounded the outmost jetty. Ozzie looked at me and smiled. I dropped my hands. They had grown tired of holding the handles near the cockpit.
“We made it, Kate!” he said, smiling and reaching for me. He took me in his arms but I pushed away.
“Jesus Christ, Ozzie.”
“What?”
“You could have killed us!”
“It was a storm, Kate. When you go to sea, sometimes storms come up.”
“But you knew! You heard the weather report!”
“What are you talking about? No one called for that kind of sea.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I went belowdecks, wondering if I needed to vomit. What had just happened? Did I simply panic and blame it all on him? I couldn’t say. I didn’t want to be a timid jerk, a whiny scaredy-cat who came unglued at the first rough weather. But it had been more than rough. We had been lucky to escape. And when we finally pulled into a berth in Dublin harbor, I came up from our mess and jumped out and walked away, not sure what I felt, not sure where I needed to be. Fuck him, I thought. The stupid, stupid motherfucker nearly killed us. I wondered if he wouldn’t always be half drowning and pulling me down as he went.
22
To be on land, to be safe, felt almost better than I could believe. My knee hurt horribly from hitting it against the gunwale in the wash of sea water that had almost taken me overboard, but otherwise—except for a continuing wave of nausea—I felt fine. In the pit of my stomach, something churned and blistered me. It had something to do with Ozzie, something I had always known but failed to address. I saw him. I saw him now. It felt as if some final understanding about him had descended on me without my acquiescence. It lodged in my guts and I kept walking, limping, really, to get it out of me.
It was evening. Lights had already flicked on all over Dublin. I had difficulty reconciling that on the sea just beyond the jetty you could lose your life. That I could lose my life. How did one resume one’s life after an afternoon like that? I had never had my life so clearly in the balance for such a prolonged period. I didn’t like it. I found no pleasure in it, although I remained convinced that Ozzie did.
I walked, limping, my knee hurting more than I had realized. I had no idea where I was going, or what I hoped to accomplish by being apart from Ozzie, but I knew I needed to breathe different air. I was halfway down the first pier when I remembered that my phone and money were back on the Ferriter. I stopped and put my face in my hands. That was how I was standing when Donald O’Leary called to me to see if I was all right.
I looked up. It was just dark enough to make his presence obscure on the pier. He had been doing something on a boat, a boat much like the Ferriter, and he seemed to be calling it a day. The trunk of his car stood open. He smiled. He had a comfortable, easy smile.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You look a little the worse for wear. Sorry to say so.”
“I’m okay.”
“A Yank?”
I nodded. He came around the tail end of his car. He was not tall. He carried too much weight around his belly and he reminded me, in that dim light, of a groundhog or squirrel who had magically learned to walk on its hind legs. His eyes squinted. His right hand was missing. In its place was a bright silver pincher prosthetic, a mechanism that obviously he used to grab and pull when he needed to. He wore a Munster jersey over a pair of stained jeans. I knew Munster was not the Dublin team in rugby, but I didn’t know whether it mattered. The Irish were mad for rugby.
“Can I help? You don’t need to be scared of me. I’m local here.”
“Feeling a little seasick.”
“You were on that boat, I saw.”
“Yes. We came up from Wicklow.”
“That’s a good sea running.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well, you made it to port. That’s what counts.”
“Yes, I guess so.”
That was it. He smiled and then went back to loading something from his boat to his trunk. I looked around for Ozzie. Wherever he was, he wasn’t coming after me. I suspected he might need a drink. Several drinks. I recalled that I had a clump of bills, not too much but enough for dinner, maybe, stuck into the pocket of my jeans. I limped over to where Donald—I didn’t know his name at that point—stood beside his car.
“Are you going anywhere in town where I could get a bite to eat?”
“You need a ride?”
“I don’t know Dublin at all, I’m afraid.”
He looked past me at the dock where the Ferriter remained bobbing on the still water of the port. I knew he was trying to assess the situation. Why would a lone woman step off a boat and ask for a ride to town? I didn’t know the answer myself.
“I’m headed home now, but I could drop you somewhere,” he said. “If that would be a help.”
“It would, actually.”
“Just give me a minute and then we’ll be off.”
I considered running back to the Ferriter for my phone, but I did not want to engage with Ozzie. Not for a time. It was better to let it settle. All of it. I still felt keyed up from surviving the run up the coast, but I also felt exhausted and empty and close to tears. I realized, when Donald came back from the boat one last time and held out his hand that he must have thought I had a fight with whoever remained on the Ferriter.
“Donald O’Leary,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Kate Moreton.”
“Do you know where you want to go?”
“Not really. I only have a few bills in my pocket.”
He appraised me.
“Fight?” he asked.
There was no point in hiding it from him.
“Something like that,” I said.
“Well, we’ll fix you up. Come along. My wife likes Yanks. Her uncle lives in Rhode Island. Do you know Rhode Island?”
“Only a little.”
“She wants to go to Rhode Island in the worst way. It’s her El Dorado. I can’t shake her out of it.”
“We all have funny notions.”
“Isn’t that the Sunday truth?”
I climbed in the car. It was small and not particularly tidy. It smelled like fish. As soon as Donald turned the ignition, the radio blared out. It was too loud. He quickly reached over and decreased the volume.
“Sorry,” he said. “My daughter had the car last.”
“No problem.”
“Why don’t you come home for dinner with
us? It’s my daughter’s birthday and my wife is cooking shepherd’s pie. She makes a wonderful shepherd’s pie.”
“That’s kind of you, but I couldn’t impose.”
“No imposition at all. Honestly. Then I could bring you back when things cool down. We’ve all been in these situations. It’s good to give them time.”
I thought for a moment, then nodded. It wasn’t fair to Ozzie to disappear as I had, but it wasn’t fair for him to put us in such danger. I still felt angry at him, intensely so. To go back to him in that moment would have caused more fighting. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, I couldn’t say for certain, but I didn’t particularly care what Ozzie thought in that moment. He had almost killed us both.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to come to dinner. It might be just what I need. I’ve been on the boat a long time.”
“Good. Glad for the company. My wife will be thrilled.”
Donald O’Leary put the car in gear and drove slowly down the dock. The tires caused the wood planks to thump softly beneath us. As easy as that, I left the Ferriter and its reckless captain.
* * *
I would have called Ozzie if I had my phone. I would have. Or I would have texted him. I wasn’t trying to make a statement and I wasn’t trying to hurt him. Not consciously. I felt more than a little shell-shocked. We had almost died, I realized over and over. That understanding came at me in pulses. One wrong turn, or one rogue wave, and we would have been ducked under like a toy boat in a child’s bathtub. Besides, I did not intend to stay in Dublin for long. I had no clear idea why I had asked Donald for a ride. Maybe to shake the salt off me. I couldn’t say. I felt confused and shaken. His kindness had offered me the only compass point I could see.
Donald O’Leary was a lamb. He was a soft, gentle man who said I could even sleep over, but I said no, not that, and he repeated his willingness to run me back to the dock afterward. It wasn’t far. I let him believe that Ozzie and I had just come through a large fight, which wasn’t entirely untrue. I knew just enough to know that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I felt edgy and still not entirely solid in my stomach.
“Have you been to sea…?” he asked when we left the dock area.
“We ran up from Dingle.”
“That’s a long way.”
“We’re planning to go around the entire country.”
“That’s an even longer way.”
“It’s seven hundred miles.”
“Is it? I never knew. Live and learn.”
“It was good until we came into that weather.”
“Farther north, the seas will get larger. On average.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Before I could answer or say anything else, an enormous weariness settled over me. Fatigue dripped from the crown of my head down through my body. My head snapped forward as I fought sleepiness. Whatever adrenaline had sustained me through the storm had at last given way. I was vaguely aware of Donald looking over at me, and then I fell asleep. I should have been embarrassed, but I was too tired to resist.
The next thing I knew, Donald’s voice called softly for me to wake.
“We’re here,” he said. “Kate, we’re here.”
I woke and sat up. Just on the other edge of sleep, the waves still lifted me and threw me backward. For an instant, it had felt as if we were going over into the gray water.
“Yes, yes,” I said, stumbling awake.
“You’re tired.”
“More worn-out than anything else.”
“Well, we’re here. Please come in.”
I climbed out. We had pulled into the driveway leading to a small house. Lights shown from the windows. It was a modest home, but it was entirely welcoming. Someone had planted a lovely perennial garden beneath the largest window. I saw day lilies and delphiniums, large, bearded irises, and Shasta daisies. The combination of the light emerging from the window, and the tranquility of the garden, pulled at me. It made me realize I had been lazy about planting a garden near the cottage. Maybe, I reasoned, I had been unsure how permanent my living in the cottage had been. Everything I saw in my heightened emotional state seemed to give me something to interpret.
“What a lovely garden,” I said, still standing beside the car.
“My wife is the planter. She has a green thumb.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Seventeen today.”
He opened the trunk of the car, grabbed a few things, then led me to the front door. He pushed inside and held the door back for me and I entered. Whatever misgivings I had about going with a strange man to a strange house disappeared the moment Donald’s wife, Lucy, came out from the kitchen. I looked closely, but I did not see her react for even a moment at a stranger’s appearance in her home. Her husband had brought someone to dinner; the guest was immediately welcome. She possessed a wonderful, cheery smile that broadened across her face the moment she realized I was a Yank. She was short, like Donald, with soft shoulders and auburn hair that she kept long and piled high on her head. She wore jeans and a Munster rugby sweatshirt. She carried a dish towel in her hands with a jar that she held out to Donald the moment he cleared the doorway.
“Would you open this?” she asked him, then held out her hand to me. “I’m Lucy, Donald’s better half.”
“I’m Kate.”
“She just came in on a boat and was headed for the city proper and I gave her a ride,” Donald said, twisting the cap off the jar. Pickles, I saw. “I thought she could do better for dinner here with us.”
Did they exchange a look to explain me? Maybe. But if they did, they did it so masterfully that I couldn’t say for sure where it began or ended. Lucy trusted her husband. If he needed or wanted to bring someone home, they would be hospitable first, then explain later. I felt a tiny stab at seeing their understanding of one another. This is what being truly married means, I thought. Compared to them, in some way difficult to define, Ozzie and I seemed like teenagers in the first flush of passion.
“Well, you’re welcome, Kate. We’re glad to have another person at dinner. Did Donald tell you it’s our daughter’s birthday?”
“He did.”
“She’ll be right back. I sent her to the market for a few last things. Come in, please. We’re informal people. We usually entertain in our kitchen.”
“That’s where I prefer to be.”
“We’re having shepherd’s pie. It’s my daughter’s favorite.”
“It smells delicious.”
I followed her into the kitchen. I liked her more than I could say. She possessed a no-nonsense air, undermined, in a charming way, with that lovely Irish sparkle of amusement at life’s peculiarities. Donald came in to set down the opened jar, then excused himself and went to clean up. Lucy grabbed an open bottle of wine from the kitchen counter and cocked it toward me.
“Would you like a glass of wine, Kate?”
“Love one.”
“Have a seat at the table there. I’ll set another plate in a moment. Our daughter is quite full of herself today. She’s certain that by turning seventeen she is nearly independent and separated from us once and for all. As parents, she’s let us know we are impossible in many peculiar ways.”
“She sounds just right for her age.”
“Oh, she’s that, all right. You’ll get a kick out of her. Now tell me, did Donald say you came in on a boat just now?”
She poured the wine into a jelly jar and brought it to me. I thanked her. I felt sleepy again, but this time it was a comfortable, warm sleepiness. I liked being in their home and I liked the gentle confusion of a family dinnertime. Lucy—or Donald? But I couldn’t imagine Donald decorating—had hung white, cheery curtains over the windows. A two-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary stood on a corner shelf by the back door. Her kitchen was functional and tidy. I liked that she gave me wine in a jelly jar, not a fussy wineglass with a stem and base.
“We came up the coast from Dingle,” I said, tipping the wine toward her in tha
nks. “We’re planning to go around the country.”
“By sea?” she asked, her eyebrows going up.
“That’s what we thought. The storm today might make us think better of it.”
“Well,” she said, going to the sink and running a large ladle under the faucet to clean it. “It’s an ambitious project, I’ll say that.”
“It may be too ambitious. We didn’t have a good day.”
“I’d not imagine that you would. You’re with a fellow?”
“A man named Ozzie Ferriter.”
She nodded, then stuck out her lower lip to indicate she didn’t know him, hadn’t heard of him. At that moment, the back door opened and a beautiful young girl, obviously their daughter, barreled inside. She had her phone held out in front of her. The light from the screen turned her skin slightly blue, but there was no mistaking her beauty. She was stunning. She had rich brown hair and gray eyes. She wore leggings and a baggy shirt, but even that informally dressed, she was model-pretty.
“Say hello to Kate,” Lucy said, taking a paper bag from her daughter’s outstretched hand. “Kate, this is our daughter Helen.”
“Happy birthday, Helen,” I said. “Many happy returns of the day.”
Again, if she wondered at my sudden appearance in her kitchen, on her birthday of all days, she hid it wonderfully well. She put her phone at her waist and held out her hand. I shook it.
“Are you a Yank?” she asked.
“I am.”
“I’d like to go to America. I love your accent.”
“I want to go to Rhode Island,” Lucy said behind her. “Have you ever been, Kate?”
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