The Last True Poets of the Sea

by Julia Drake

  “Snorkel?”

  “I made an awful joke, and you were like, That’s enough, Violet, and I’m so sorry….”

  “Honey, honey, stop. Breathe for a second. Listen to me. First of all, I can’t even remember half of what happened that day, or that week, or the week before, and if I spoke to you sharply that day, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know you were upset. I was, too. We all were.”

  I nodded and realized she couldn’t see me.

  “Second of all, you know your going to Lyric had nothing to do with Sam. Well, that’s not true. But it wasn’t because of Sam. We talked about this.”

  “What do you mean? Are you talking about the romance channel?”

  “The romance channel? No. That was such a dumb thing to say, I regret saying that. No, when we talked—” And she sucked in her breath. “We never talked about it.”

  “Talked about what?”

  “Oh my God, I’m a terrible mother. I guess—shit. Goddammit. Shit.”

  “Mom? What’s wrong? Did I do something?”

  “No, no. You didn’t do anything. I screwed up. Oh, Violet. Oh, honey. Listen.”

  She explained as I held the stuffed animal to my face: how she and Toby had been talking more, in the spring, right after Spain. How he offered to have me come stay, just for a few weeks. In July, maybe. How the plan had been to involve me in the conversation, to ask me how that sounded, but with Sam, they’d made the decision for me.

  “Toby wanted me here?” I said, wiping my face on the cat.

  “Yes. Yes. You’re so wanted. We want you here, too,” she said. “Violet, do you want to come home?”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight in June. Obviously. You must have felt so abandoned. Do you want to come home? You can. You’re not missing anything, just me and Dad grilling, but maybe…”

  I could go home?

  I could go home.

  I could pick up where I left off. Text my friends. Go to summer concerts. Wear glitter on my cheeks and run through the city at night, tipsy and giggling and warm. Just yesterday, I’d missed New York. Or maybe I wouldn’t even fall into old patterns. Maybe I could just crawl into my mom’s lap and stay there.

  I’d never have to see Orion again. Or Liv. I could forget about finding the wreck, and truthing. How likely was it, really, that we’d find anything?

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “It’s just—I’ve been doing a lot of family research on Fidelia. Trying to flesh out holes. Understand the family a little more.”

  “Oh?” she said. She was trying to sound positive, but she just sounded hurt. She wanted me to come home. She missed me. She actually missed me.

  “Have you found anything good?” she asked.

  Responses ballooned in my chest. I learned that you basically raised Toby, and I didn’t do anything to make your life easier. That you’re so much stronger than I thought you were. That your life was so much more complicated than I thought.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Hey, Vi?”

  Another balloon joined the responses. I love you, Mom. It wasn’t hard to tell her.

  “Can I go through your old jewelry box?”

  The balloon sputtered and deflated. My mom sighed.

  “Sure. It’s junk jewelry, anyway. Stuff I wore when I was your age.” She waited another beat. “Anything else going on?”

  Just missing Sam so much I can’t breathe.

  “Not really.”

  “Us, either.”

  We were terrible liars.

  When we hung up, I laid her jewelry across the bed: the gold horse pendant, the crystal necklace, the fake diamond bracelet. My favorite piece was a silver pocket watch on a chain: broken, of course, and badly tarnished, but in the palm of my hand it was heavy and satisfying as a good skipping stone. A lone earring was tangled in its chain—the size of a clove of garlic and made of cut green glass—but I liked the way they looked together, like a makeshift charm necklace. In the mirror, wearing that necklace and the Ink lipstick, I looked a little bit, I thought, like my mom.

  “Playing dress-up?” Toby asked, appearing in the doorway. “Oooh, you found the best thing. Your mom and I used to fight over that watch as kids. Our mom told us it was lucky.”

  “Sounds like a thing I should never take off, then.”

  “I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in anything our mother said.”

  I tugged at the charm on the necklace. “My mom said I could come home.”

  “And you’re staying?”

  I nodded. I must’ve looked like I’d been crying, but Toby didn’t mention it.

  “Good. You’re doing good here. Keeping me in line. Frankly, I don’t know how your mother manages in New York. I left that place after a year.”

  “You were in New York, too?”

  “Years ago. I did a stint in art school but had to leave. It made me too anxious.”

  “Art school? What? And you’re not anxious.”

  “Past life. And if I’m not anxious that’s because the meds are working. And because I like what I do. Why do you think I chose to live here, and not in New York?”

  I’d never really considered anything in Toby’s life a choice—I’d always thought of him as vaguely black-sheep-ish. But Maine, the house, the slow puzzling, the man bun—these were things that he’d chosen. Toby was leading the life he wanted. In spite of all his genetics.

  I was descended from a survivor of a shipwreck, sure—but I also could make my own choices. I’d already chosen to stay in Lyric, hadn’t I?

  “I’m glad you’re staying,” Toby said. He pulled a letter from his breast pocket and passed it toward me. “Especially because your research assistant just made a big discovery. I take cash or check.”

  November 1919

  My darling boy,

  Your father and I have received your most recent letter. We both ache for you and send you boundless love. Remember that your periods of sadness have come before and they have passed. Sadness moves like the tide, and this wave, like the others, will retreat. You say your brothers are stronger than you because they fought, but they hurt, my love, and they talk of you often, of your bravery. Remember to take care of yourself. See a doctor, take a tonic, eat a full meal. Sleep, darling. Sleep is important. Know that I think of you every moment of every day. I wish, darling, that this could be enough.

  Do you remember the stories we told you when you were small? I think, in particular, of the story of the whale that delivered me from the wreck. How you loved this story! How you begged for me to tell it! Your brave mother rode on a whale’s back to escape the sea. I delight, even now, in the wonder on your face.

  Of course, my darling, you understand that this story is a story, nothing more. It has roots in truth, I suppose. It is true that I saw a whale. Through the peculiar haze that descended over the water, against a blinding wall of white, I watched his tail rise from the water. But he did not carry me to safety. I did not even want him to. When I saw him, I wished he would swallow me whole. Clinging to a shred of lifeboat, the screams around me, the bodies in the water, I did not want to live.

  I thought living would be too difficult.

  I washed ashore in a strange land. I was not brave. I despaired. I wished myself dead many, many times.

  I tell you this because I am glad now that I lived. I am glad because of your father, and because of you and your brothers.

  I would send a whale to you if I could, a great blue one that would whisk you away to safety. But you know that life is not so kind. These whales that save us are few and far between, if they come at all. And if they do, they do not change us in the way that we think they will. Magic whales are just that: magic whales, gone in an instant, and your life stretches before you still.

  So, I offer you something far less spectacular than a magic whale, but more durable. I have begun to think of them as pebbles, small moments from each day that I collect and store in the corners of my mi
nd. These are moments I hold fast to when I am in a period of sadness: a lump of sugar dissolving into morning coffee. Watching ink dry on the page. The smile on your father’s face when we come across deer tracks in the woods; the way he knows the names of trees. Your handwriting on an envelope addressed to me.

  These pebbles are there in your day, if you hunt. Find your own pebbles, my darling. Pebbles can make a beach, and a beach can save you. More so, even, than a magic whale.

  All my love to you,

  Your mother

  My mind was racing. My great-great-great-grandmother was a person.

  She wasn’t just a story. She had handwriting. Words. Thoughts and feelings, advice for her kids. She wasn’t all perseverance and luck. She’d been in a real wreck—the wall of white, that was the blizzard, and there’d been a whale and a lifeboat—and part of me was already thinking like Liv, wondering how I could use these facts as a springboard toward theory, but the other part of me just hurt. Fidelia had been sad and scared and lost.

  I sat there on my mother’s bed and the pain worked its way through me. She knew what to say to her son, and she knew what to say to Sam, and to me.

  I wanted that to be my inheritance.

  Dear Sam,

  Happy 4th of July! You haven’t even gotten my first letter, but I wanted to say hi. There is already progress in the wreck search. Whales are involved. Here’s a drawing of you and me:

  All my love to you,

  Your sister

  REPRISE REJECTED

  Three days after our nonkiss, letters winging their way to Sam, I marched into the aquarium with a question guaranteed to make things between Orion and me as not-weird as possible. I had on my Marine Mingle sweatshirt, and my mom’s pocket watch, too, and grains of salt, or whatever, but I kind of liked the idea that it was lucky.

  “Orion, if you were a whale in March of 1885, where in the ocean would you be?”

  I frog-marched him over to the animated wreck map. The red line stretched, exploded, and the stick survivor swam for shore, again and again.

  “Fidelia saw a whale the night the ship sank. If we knew where whales usually were, I thought we could narrow down the location of the wreck. Track them.”

  “Man. I know Liv got in your head, but she really got in your head, huh?”

  I said her name into his mouth.

  I said her name into his mouth.

  I said her name into his mouth.

  “Sorry,” Orion said, “trying to not be weird. Um, lemme think. Whales are generally migrating by March. They calve in the spring in warmer waters. It’s possible there were some here in the late spring…but…I mean, there is a feeding ground up here.” He pointed so far north I imagined ice caps and polar bears. “Maybe the boat veered off course?”

  “Maybe.” Fidelia’s blinding wall of white said differently.

  “Violet, I’ve got a question for you, too.”

  Oh, Jesus. Couldn’t we just pretend nothing had happened?

  “Would you want to put together an educational concert series here? For kids? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the aquarium’s kinda struggling. Joan thinks the answer’s in education. She thought your song workshop went so well the other day, she wants it to be like a daily thing. She mentioned that you wanted to get more involved.”

  I gaped like a bottom feeder.

  “We already have a bunch of lyrics. We can just make them more school-y. It’s not exactly penguins, but we could even do a show at the end of the summer to raise money.”

  I pictured the two of us singing “Cod Only Knows,” getting lost in each other’s googly fish eyes. I hadn’t been on a real stage, in front of a real audience, since Broadway.

  “We’d have to do a lot of work, but it’d be pretty fun….”

  “No.”

  His face fell. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I don’t sing anymore.”

  “You sang for all those kids. You sang for me.”

  “The first time, I was desperate, and the second time, you bullied me into it,” I said. I breathed in, trying to think of a way to explain this to him. “Look, you know I was in the Broadway revival of Peter Pan?”

  “See? That’s perfect. I knew you were good! You’re a star!”

  “No. I’m not. That’s the point. Peter Pan ruined lives, okay?”

  “What’d you do? Kill Tinker Bell?”

  “Never mind.” I retreated to the gift shop, but Orion just followed me, and then I’d accidentally cornered myself behind the Scrooge McDuck.

  “Look. I don’t believe that a Broadway musical ruined lives. And this—it’s not going to be Broadway, just fish songs. I don’t think you realize how good you are onstage. You come alive when you do it. You make me want to sing, and I haven’t in forever. I wasn’t going to bring this up, but”—he lowered his voice—“that’s why I kissed you. Your singing.”

  As if I needed another reason to say no.

  “Orion, just trust me about this, okay? Forget I sang. It’s not a good idea. When I perform, it only ends in disaster.”

  ALL CHILDREN, EXCEPT ONE, GROW UP

  If I had to put a date on it—the moment that Sam and I splintered—it was the night of my Broadway debut. My big break was our big break.

  I was twelve; Sam was eleven. By then, I’d been Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Annie in Annie Get Your Gun, and the spring before I’d brought the house down with “Moonshine Lullaby.” My theater director had a friend casting for a revival on Broadway, and he recommended me for an audition. Not to blame my director, but he made a critical mistake: he told me about the audition before he told my parents. And I told Sam.

  That afternoon, my mom came home to find the babysitter exhausted and me and Sam leaping from couch to coffee table, shrieking, I’m flying, flying, flying! In Maine, he and I were deep-sea divers, but here in New York, we were magic. We flew! We’d cover the whole world, him and me, sea to stars.

  “Violet’s going to be in Peter Pan!” Sam screamed.

  Like my mom even had a chance to say no. Especially not after I nailed the audition.

  “I don’t like this,” I overheard my mom say to my dad that night. “I’m worried about her missing school. And her taking the subway by herself?”

  “You grew up in Maine, honey. This is what kids do in the city. She’s happy,” my dad said. “And did you see how happy he was, too?”

  My dad had a point: Sam had been having a tough time recently. His tantrums were rarer, but more often teachers called home, noting that he’d seemed withdrawn and quiet. He was too thin and the doctor had prescribed a breakfast of waffles made with heavy cream to help him gain weight. There was talk of growth hormones, too, but there was still a chance Sam’s body would catch up. “Hard to say what’s physical and what’s emotional” had been the doctor’s line.

  Through the wall between our rooms, there was the sound of fabric on fabric, then the noise of something wet. It took me a second to understand: my parents were kissing.

  “This is professional theater,” my dad said. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  Hence: propriety. On Broadway, things were wholesome, scandal-free—at least they had to be in my parents’ understanding. When they asked how rehearsal was, I babbled about the tutor who taught us French irregular verbs, or the soy milk pudding we’d had for snack: nutritious and delicious. Or I talked about my friend Isla, eye-lah, fifteen and part Latvian, part Filipina, part Dominican, which meant, she said, she could play “almost any ethnicity.” She had an agent, I told them, and—get this—her mom played Maria in the national tour of West Side Story.

  The seedy bits I kept to myself. How the older Lost Boys compared blow-job tips with some of the pirates until they realized I was listening, at which point they switched to fisting. That the contents of Mrs. Darling’s travel mug smelled more like nail-polish remover than coffee. The rumor that Wendy—poor, poor nineteen-year-old Wendy—was having an affair with the technical
director, a man my dad’s age with a ponytail longer than mine. Through her dressing room door, Isla and I listened for sex noises with an overturned glass like they did in Nancy Drew, giggling, and I had this petrifying thought that I wanted to hear sex noises, was hoping to hear them. With Isla, specifically.

  I knew better than to mention this scene to my parents. Besides, Sam had pitched a fit in art class that day. He’d torn apart the painting he’d been making, and he’d hidden under the table for all of class. At least that’s what I gathered from eavesdropping on my parents as we played Peter Pan in socks. They washed the dishes and I half listened, half taught him the lines I was learning, because it helped me remember.

  “Isn’t he a little young for medication?” my dad said. “Middle school’s hard on everyone. What if we both just cut back on hours? Spend more time at home.”

  “College tuition doesn’t grow on trees,” my mom snapped. “I’m sorry. I just think—everything is so crazy right now. I’m at the end of my rope. Everything will be easier when Peter Pan’s over.”

  I let Sam sing the line about climbing trees and dignity because it was his favorite and he beamed through the lyrics.

  The musical director—not the technical director—liked me. I remembered blocking. I could hit the harmonies. I sang when I was told and knew when to shut up.

  “Thank God someone’s listening,” the director said. “Now that’s a skill.”

  One afternoon, the director says he has a surprise for me. He sends me to the stage, and there, I find one of the flight techs, holding the harness. Flying by Foy, we all know the name of the company now, and how they’re the “industry standard,” they won’t stop saying it. We’ve learned the word aerography, and I’ve nearly memorized Peter’s aerial steps in “I’m Flying,” watched her longingly from the downstairs screens, wished her part were mine.

  “Ready to fly?” the tech says.