The Last True Poets of the Sea

by Julia Drake

  “We didn’t,” I lied. “Trying not to be too obvious, you know? Have to win the lady’s trust.”

  “I wouldn’t say subtle is your usual style, but that’s fair.”

  “Can you put me in touch with her, actually? I found all these papers on Ransome and Fidelia she’d be interested in.”

  “You need me to set you up with Liv?”

  “In a way. I’ll do more relationship recon for you, too.”

  “’Cause you’re so good at it.”

  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds, Orion.”

  “Oh, wow,” Orion said, pointing. “Check out that moon.”

  I dipped a little to catch a glimpse through the windshield. The moon was the color of strawberry jelly spread thin, and so close, slung low over the peaks of pines, their rise and fall like a serrated knife.

  “It’s pink!” I cried. “Can we pull over?”

  “Forget pulling over,” he said, hitting the gas, “we’re getting up high before the fog rolls in.”

  He drove fast, but not fast enough. Up high, on the rock where we’d been the other night, there was only mist. Without the sky, the rock felt smaller, but without the others, it was empty, too. I was ready to turn around—we’d probably get a better view on the ground—but Orion said we should give it a minute.

  “Sometimes it clears up.”

  I pulled Toby’s windbreaker tight around me. The last time we’d been here, I’d had a panic attack. I tried not to think about that. I tried to be here, with Orion, platonically.

  “Sometimes I think how crazy it is that the moon’s gravitational pull actually controls the tides,” Orion said.

  “Seems too poetic to be real,” I acknowledged.

  “That’s the ocean for you,” he said. He bumped my shoulder with his. The temperature had dropped and his body was warm, radiating heat. When we touched, I shuddered.

  “You cold?” he asked, and I shook my head. I hoped he wasn’t about to, like, offer me his jacket. I wondered if he brought girls here all the time. Or maybe this spot was just his and Liv’s. And at this moment, his and mine.

  “Orion, as your official go-between, may I ask you a question?”

  “You may.”

  “Have you ever been out with anyone besides Liv? You’re a good-looking, smart guy. I imagine you could have a whole lot of success in that department, if you were so inclined.”

  He cupped his hand around his ear and grinned. “Say again? What was that, about good-looking, smart?”

  I placed two hands on his chest and shoved. He fell back, stumbling.

  “I mean,” Orion said, “been out might be a little strong.”

  A grin played around his lips, and he shot me a sheepish I’ve been laid once or twice look that zipped through me. If we’d still been in the car, the empty bottles at my feet would have popped like popcorn.

  “No one stuck, though,” he said. “Now, I’m sort of like, why would I go out with someone I’m not really excited about?”

  “Shall I give you a lecture in the pleasures of the flesh, Orion?”

  “The lady speaks from experience.”

  “Experience is putting it mildly.”

  “You must have left behind some heartbroken dudes in New York,” Orion said, and for a moment, a correction hovered on the tip of my tongue. There was a girl that’d really liked me in winter—a drummer from another school, whose texts I’d ignored for weeks—but I didn’t feel like reliving my cruelty, or explaining myself to him. Not when he so clearly thought of me one way.

  “Well, I lead a life of celibacy now. Interested only in my matchmaking service.”

  “And does the matchmaker miss the pleasures of the flesh?” Orion asked.

  “Nope,” I sang, which was a lie. His shoulder brushing mine, waiting for this strawberry moon, was sending shock waves through my body. I could reach out and wrap my hands in his shirt and pull him toward me, put his mouth to mine….

  What I didn’t miss was seeing people I’d hooked up with over the weekend giving badly accented, halting presentations on the forests of Guatemala, and I’d just sit there, squirming with the too-intimate memory of them reclasping their bra or fishing in the sheets for their underwear. Sex wasn’t the problem; it was everything around sex.

  “Just don’t tell me that you don’t buy into love. We’ve already got one Liv in this town.”

  “I thought you were, like, a truthing disciple.”

  “I think her ideas are super interesting. But I don’t one hundred percent agree with her.”

  This was news to me. I thought Orion bought everything that Liv was selling.

  “Let me see if I can explain,” he said. He brought one hand to his chin and rubbed the space beneath his lower lip. I could see his wheels turning, his sweet desire to say what he wanted to say correctly. He probably stuck his tongue out when he worked on homework. There wasn’t anyone this earnest in New York—or, if there was, I hadn’t been looking.

  “I think she’s right that there’s some weirdness in your ancestors’ story,” he said at last. “No offense.”

  “None taken, for the millionth time.”

  “Liv thinks something dark and twisted was going on. But there’s weirdness in everyone’s story. Maybe Ransome and Fidelia were both just weird people who fell in weird love, but for them, it was normal. I don’t know. Don’t you think your great-great-great-grandparents loved each other?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re long gone.”

  “What are you talking about? Love always matters.” He’d fired back so quickly that I knew he’d spoken from his reptilian brain, from the most Orion part of Orion. Put him in a pot to boil and when the rest of him had cooked off, he’d leave behind this jammy-sweet truth. Orion cared in a way that made my chest ache: For music, for fish, for friends. For the moon and the ocean, for these forces that knit us together.

  For me? I wondered, then wished, my thoughts circling like his beloved rays: for me, please, for me. There it was again: the romance channel static. He was so close to me, I could touch the gap between his teeth. He could put his mouth to my breast, a finger inside me, one, two…

  “I mean, isn’t that why you’re searching with her now?” he asked. “To understand their relationship? What was really going on between them?”

  “Her being Liv.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he repeated her name, “Liv,” like someone who was afraid they’d forget.

  The clouds thinned over the moon and grew backlit, hazy pink and smoky, rippling like creek water. I felt Orion’s gaze on my face, and I knew, if I turned to him, I could have what I wanted.

  “Race you back to the car,” I called, but I was already whipping through the woods, back to the road, to a van that was old and safe and not romantic, not in any way, shape, or form.

  I beat him, but not by much.

  At home, I found cell service on the dock down the hill, and while looking at the sky—now cloudless, pink moon on prominent display—I sent my mom a two-word text: the moon.

  She sent me back a yellow crescent, six hearts, and inexplicably, perfectly, a single fuzzy bumblebee.

  LIGHTHOUSE

  June turned to July, and Orion, true to his word, sent me to meet Liv on Saturday to show her the newly unearthed Lyric papers. She had to work, so I met her at the Lighthouse Museum way out on Bat Wing Point, past the center of town, and up a short, notoriously steep hill to get to the stubby lighthouse. During our family summers here, we’d always meant to go but we’d never quite made it, deterred by the walk and the lure of the beach.

  The second I stepped inside, I wished we’d put in the effort, for Sam’s sake. The place was brimming over with nautical plenty: lenses of every shape, size, and color, plus glass buoys and maps and ropes, charts for tides and celestial navigation. It was packed with people, too, though I thought it’d be deserted. Through the throng, I spotted Liv by a collection of mounted foghorns. She’d ditched the black for a slate-blue s
hirtdress and upgraded her sneakers to a pair of sharp-looking oxfords. All that remained from her uniform was her Portland Sea Dogs cap.

  “You look so fancy,” I said.

  “Work drag. I’m the youngest person here, so I try to dress up. Sartorial respect is still respect, unfortunately. Is this the Joan stuff?” she said.

  I handed her the folder and made a mental note to look up sartorial.

  “How’s your foot?” I asked.

  “Healing nicely, thank you.”

  “Neosporin works wonders. Plus, you know, my magic hands.”

  Someone bumped me from behind—an older man, a grandfather, probably, gray-haired and rectangular.

  “Sorry, there, fella,” he said, and clapped me on the back.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  On hearing my voice, he took a second look at me, standing six feet tall and almost bald in my dad’s jeans and Toby’s windbreaker. I’d thrown on lipstick, too, that morning—some tube from my mom’s room so old that I’d probably poisoned myself just by wearing it. The color’s name had rubbed away, so all that remained was INK. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but then again, I hadn’t taken it off.

  “Not a fella!” the rectangle said. “Sorry, there, hon. What’s a pretty girl like you doing with no hair?”

  “Oh, you know. Just trying to make you, personally, confused,” I said.

  He said ah—and then went to find his family again.

  “Guess it worked,” I said to Liv, and she chuckled. “Is it always a zoo in here?”

  “Sorry, yes, I thought it’d be slower by now. Mariah’s mom—Anjali, she’s the director—had us featured on a travel website that profiles off-the-beaten-path tourist sites, and we’ve definitely been busier this summer. She’s on the social media thing. We try to send people to the aquarium, but that other one, well…”

  “I never thought I’d hate a penguin so much,” I said.

  A woman with Mariah’s nose and mouth and perfect lipstick came toward us. Anjali. I wondered if she’d taught her daughter how to do makeup, side by side in the mirror, or if Mariah had just learned by watching. If they had the sort of relationship where Mariah could tell her anything, or if there were secrets between them.

  “Liv,” Anjali said, “I know you’re meant to be off at two, but would you mind doing the tour? I’m drowning in e-mail and still have to post about Summer Saturdays.”

  Liv looked at me. “We were supposed to…”

  “I can wait,” I said. I didn’t normally like tours, but I wanted to see Liv’s.

  Anjali looked my way excitedly. “Are you the New Yorker? What’s your name? Vi? Mariah said you were funny. Strong youth outreach, Liv. Let me get a picture of you two for social. We have a really excellent feed, no thanks to Liv. Look engaged with these foghorns, now, but candid, candid.”

  Liv gestured vaguely at a foghorn, and I pulled my hand to my chin, miming learning while making eyes at Liv over how ridiculous this was.

  “Beautiful,” said Anjali, showing us. Seeing us captured, I didn’t mind having the photo taken anymore.

  “Miss,” someone called. “Are we going to get this tour started?”

  “I’m distracting you. Bad boss,” Anjali said, tucking her phone away.

  Liv handed the folder to me, then turned to the crowd.

  “Folks,” she called. “We’ll begin the tour in a few moments with the history of the lighthouse. If you’d like to gather round…”

  I blended into the crowd, and my palms itched with the memory of my near-disastrous aquarium talk. But it actually had gone…okay. Maybe it was possible to grow out of the shipwreck gene, to shed it like a skin.

  The tour was starting.

  “The lighthouse was erected in 1910,” Liv began. She found my face in the crowd and looked straight at me. I wasn’t used to being in the audience and felt uneasy, unsure of whether to hold her gaze. It was too weird, I decided, so eventually I settled on memorizing the floppy fall of a loose button on the collar of her dress.

  “The keepers lived upstairs until the fifties, when operations ceased.”

  I peeked at her face, and Liv was smiling. She was an ace public speaker, and she knew it. A slightly more professional version of herself: elegant and warm, clear-spoken, knowledgeable and articulate. “Isn’t she darling?” the woman in front of me whispered to her husband, but that wasn’t it at all. Liv was geometric, precise. She held her shoulders back and enunciated so crisply, a theater director would have thrown her a parade. What was more: she fucking knew some stuff.

  She named six different types of foghorns, plus the names of the men who’d used them. She told a ghost story about the original lighthouse keeper and paused in all the right places. From there she talked about celestial navigation, sextants and the angle of the horizon, and then knots: cleat hitch, bowline, cat’s paw.

  She stopped in front of a massive lens that resembled a spaceship, glass and bronze, nearly as tall as Liv herself. She laid her hand atop the glass, rainbowed in the light.

  “The Fresnel lens,” she explained, “is a landmark in lighthouse achievements. Glass was assembled in concentric sections, allowing light to radiate farther than ever before. The hyperradiant Fresnel was the largest lens invented. One of the most famous, the Makapuu Point Light in Hawaii, is over forty-six feet tall, and has over a thousand prisms.”

  She met my gaze again and my heart stuttered. A thousand prisms. I imagined sunlight piercing a glass chest full of cut crystals, the light turning to Technicolor fractals as it passed through jewels.

  Our last stop on the tour was a map of coastal Maine marked with pins. Liv took a breath. The crowd shuffled, waiting for her to speak. She paused a moment longer. The woman in front of me futzed with her hearing aid. My heart stopped. I recognized what Liv was doing. She was gathering.

  “Our town is, of course, famously founded by the survivor of the wreck of the Lyric, Fidelia Rudolph, and her husband, Ransome. While that ship remains undiscovered, there are many opportunities to see other wrecks along the coast.”

  I understood: each pin was a different shipwreck, a whole underwater disaster network. I’d thought—such a silly thought, once I had it—that our wreck had been the only one.

  “If you’re looking to see some that don’t require submersibles, I’d recommend Aguecheek Bay, to the north, if you have time. Last year, a Revolutionary War–era ship became visible again on the beach up there. The ship’s been coming and going for decades depending on tides and erosion. Lucky you, this year, the stars have aligned and the ship can be seen for the first time since the 1950s.” She turned back to the map. “If you’d like, we can end the tour with a little game. Stump me, and you’ll win a prize.” Her eyes sparkled beneath her cap. “Violet,” she called. “Pick a pin, any pin.”

  I approached her. According to the map, the coast was riddled with wreck sites. She couldn’t possibly know them all. I pointed to a yellow pushpin south of Lyric.

  “The Bohemian,” Liv said. “1864. Passenger ship. Struck Alden’s Rock in the fog and sank.”

  A wrinkled hand pointed.

  “The Gypsum King. 1906. Tugboat. Stranded on a ledge. No fatalities there—the crew rowed to shore in a lifeboat.”

  “Ulysses. 1878. Broke loose from its mooring.”

  I thought a wreck was a wreck was a wreck, but I was wrong. Liv rattled off a million different reasons and just as many types of ships: fogs, brigs, ledges, gales, freighters, failed engines, schooners and steamers and mechanical breakdowns. I followed her voice through an underwater tour that till now had only been traveled by whales and sharks and anglerfish.

  “That blue pin,” said the rectangle.

  “Lady of the Lake,” Liv said. “1895. Filled with rocks and scuttled. That one, supposedly, is haunted.”

  It was amazing, all these wrecks.

  But where was the Lyric? Where was my ship? My family’s?

  Nothing held us to the map. The Lyric was a great g
aping hole in our family history, a terrible blank.

  The staircase up to the offices was cramped, woven tightly into the stone like a nautilus. The soles of Liv’s oxfords echoed in the chamber with the pleasing click of a good tap shoe. I imagined the lighthouse keeper eating tinned ham and drinking nips of whiskey to warm himself, taking salt-spray-soaked walks in a yellow rain slicker. If he’d been here just a few years earlier, the wreck wouldn’t’ve happened. All those people wouldn’t’ve died; but I wouldn’t be here either.

  I was so dizzy when we arrived at the top, I leaned my head against the stone wall.

  “You okay?” Liv asked, putting her hand on my shoulder.

  “The thing with wrecks,” I said, talking into the wall, “is that all these people didn’t make it. I’m not sure I really realized that before. Fidelia lived, but no one else did. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a downer.”

  I peeled my head from the wall. Liv reached out and very lightly, with her fingertips, touched my forehead where the stone had left pockmarks. Light spilled through the office windows, and the gaps in Liv’s braids seemed to glow.

  “Ouch,” she said quietly. A strand of her hair had come loose; I resisted the urge to weave it back into place.

  She pulled her hand away and spoke with a small voice: “Should we look?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  One sheet at a time, she arranged the folder’s contents in a grid across the floor. We were up high, and out the window, I watched sailboats glide across the ocean, the water calm and lovely. These boats could’ve been cruising over the wreck of the Lyric, and the tourists on board would have no idea. I shivered as I imagined them in their perfectly nautical outfits, sipping local craft beers and posing for sunset pictures, all while passing over skeletons of lost passengers.

  Sam hated losing things. I did, too.

  “Liv,” I said, “has anyone ever tried to really find the Lyric? Conducted like a true search?”

  “Not really. As I said, no one really cares past Their Love Was Our Beginning. Besides, you need Funding, capital F, and Equipment, capital E. Beyond the blizzard, we don’t really have a sense of where the boat might be. Oh, these are lovely.”