by Trish Doller
“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
“Only a little,” I say. “I dislocated my shoulder on the crossing, but I’m okay.”
“Dislocated?” Her voice goes up an octave, alarmed. “What happened?”
“I—we—hit a wave and I got swept overboard and slammed into the boat a couple of times.”
“You could have drowned.”
“I could have, but I didn’t.”
“Anna, I still don’t know how I feel about all of this.”
“I know, Mom, but I’m fine. Better than fine.” And, despite everything, I’m not lying to her. I spent the first part of this trip thinking about what Ben would want. Now I know I have to start thinking about what I want—both here at sea and when I return to my regularly scheduled life. The only thing I know for sure is that making it this far is an accomplishment—my accomplishment—and I’m not ready to go home yet. “I’m happy.”
“Will you be back in time for Christmas?”
“I’m afraid not.” A nurse in pink scrubs calls my name. “Mom, I have to go, but I’ll call you back after they fix my shoulder, okay? I love you.”
The nurse checks my vitals and unwraps the bandage to have a look at the damage. Pain shoots through me as she helps me remove my T-shirt, raising the hair at the back of my neck and bringing me to tears. My shoulder is twice its normal size and the skin is every shade of a bruise-colored rainbow.
“How long has it gone untreated?” I am relieved she speaks English, because my high school Spanish is so rusty that I could do little more than ask her permission to use the bathroom.
“About three days.” I explain how I fell overboard. “We were afraid to set it ourselves.”
“I will try to get the doctor in to see you as soon as possible.”
I shut my eyes as the examination room door closes behind her, and don’t open them again until I hear a man with a Puerto Rican accent greet me. There is a trail of dried drool on my cheek, and the clock above the door indicates I was asleep for about thirty minutes.
The doctor’s accent is thick as he examines my cheek, asking about the pain and the accident. While I recount what happened, he slides on a pair of latex gloves and swabs a bit of alcohol on my upper arm. My shoulder hurts so much that I barely notice the pinch of the needle as he injects a localized painkiller. After the medicine takes hold, the nurse moves over to one side of the exam table and gently restrains me while the doctor takes my arm and pivots outward. I cry out as the muscles in my shoulder twist, but I feel the ball drop back into the socket and the pain lessens, immediately and dramatically.
“You will continue to experience some pain until the swelling goes down, but probably not as severe,” he says, scribbling on a prescription pad. The nurse cradles my arm in a proper sling. “I recommend X-rays and a program of physical therapy, but at the very least do not overwork your shoulder. Let it rest for as long as possible.”
The doctor hands me a prescription for Vicodin and sends me on my way. As a taxi shuttles me back to the marina, I’m relieved my mother’s health insurance will cover most of the expenses, relieved to be mostly back to normal.
Keane is asleep in the V-berth, stripped down to shorts and a T-shirt, his prosthesis removed and Queenie’s chin on his foot. I climb into bed and he lifts his arm for me to spoon up in front of him. We’ve never slept together like this, but it feels good to have his warm chest pressed against my back.
“You smell terrible, Anna.” His words come out in the middle of a yawn. “Truly awful.”
“So do you.”
Keane laughs and wraps his arm tighter around me. “We’re a big stinky mess,” he says. “All three of us.”
“When we wake up, we can all have baths, but for now I just need to sleep for about six days.”
“Yeah,” he says, yawning again. “Me too.”
all I have is now (19)
After the sleeping, the showering, the laundry, the grocery shopping, and the clearing away of the detritus from four days at sea, we celebrate our arrival in San Juan with cold beer and a bowl of homemade guacamole. We have Bob Marley singing about three little birds. Queenie’s lifeline netting is installed so she can roam the deck at will. And my shoulder feels a million times better.
Keane and I sit across from each other in the cockpit, his feet propped beside me and mine beside him. Queenie sits next to him, pinning him with a stare meant to intimidate him into giving her a tortilla chip. He strokes her freshly washed head but ignores her relentless gaze.
“What made you decide to stay?” he says.
“I don’t know.” I scoop a huge portion of guacamole onto a chip. “I guess I figured if I made it this far, there’s no sense in turning back.”
“The hardest part is behind you.”
He means the sailing, but the same could be applied to Ben. I’ve lived so many hard days since his suicide. Waking up to emptiness. Holding on to pain. Having a future without him still feels scary—and a little unfair to his memory—but it’s time to move forward. “So, what are you going to do now?”
“Well, about that…” Keane scratches the back of his head. “When I told you I had to get to Puerto Rico, it was … not entirely true.”
“Not entirely?”
“It’s a convenient enough place to land,” he says. “But there’s no real reason I need to be here.”
“No guy who knows a guy?”
Keane shakes his head.
“So you helped me just … because?”
“You were a mess, Anna.”
I laugh. “Well, I’m still a mess, so maybe you should stay.”
Keane’s eyes meet mine. “Only if you’re asking.”
I could laugh it off as a joke and release him from his service, but these past weeks have knocked the rust off my life. Keane has helped me become a sailor. He’s also pulled me out of the emotional black hole I’ve been living in since Ben died. If I ask Keane to stay now, it’s not because I need him. “I’m asking.”
The corner of his mouth tilts up and he nods. “Then I’m staying.”
“What do people do for fun around here?”
“We could walk around Old San Juan and look at the Christmas lights, if you’re up for it,” he suggests. “Maybe get some dinner. I’ve only been here once, briefly, on a delivery job.”
“That’s different.”
“What?”
“You not being the expert.”
“San Juan is a bit too developed for my tastes,” he says. “Give me a surf shack on a rough-and-tumble coastline and I’m a happy man. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the Christmas lights. Down here in the tropics, it’s easy to forget about the holidays.”
I reach into the cooler for a couple of fresh bottles of beer and notice a man walking toward us on the dock carrying a red duffel with an airline baggage tag on the handle. There’s a familiarity to his stride, but before I can connect the dots, he waves and calls out, “They told me I might find my brother down here, but all I see is a bog warrior from County Kerry.”
Keane’s laugh is loud and joyful. “It would take one to know one, wouldn’t it?”
He practically leaps off the boat into a grinning, backslapping hug. This man looks like an older version of Keane, a few inches shorter and slightly thicker around the middle. Definitely a Sullivan.
“Anna,” Keane says as I step onto the dock, Queenie at my heels. “This bastard would be my brother Eamon. Eamon, meet Anna Beck.”
Eamon Sullivan pulls me into a hug as if we’re old friends. “Now I understand why my little brother didn’t want to come home for Christmas this year. He wrote that you were a fine bit of stuff, but that doesn’t do you justice.”
Color creeps up the back of Keane’s neck. “I did not call her a fine bit of stuff.”
“No, you didn’t,” Eamon says. “You said she was beautiful.”
“Jesus, you’ve got a big mouth.”
Eamon laughs like an older brother whose teasing hit the mark—an
d he sounds so much like Keane that it’s kind of surreal. Eamon winks at me. “He wasn’t wrong.”
“I apologize for my brother,” Keane says. “He doesn’t often stray from the bog, so he doesn’t know how to behave in polite society.”
They dissolve into laughter again and hug each other once more.
“Permission to come aboard?” Eamon says.
“Granted.” I gesture toward the cockpit and scoop up Queenie. She’s better at getting out of the boat than getting back in. “Come sit. Have a beer.”
“If you continue saying such things, Anna, I’ll have to propose.”
Keane opens a round of beers and we sit in the cockpit, listening to Eamon talk about the family back home in Ireland. His accent is bolder, and he talks faster than Keane, so I can’t always keep up, but I work out that everyone is meeting at the pub for Christmas dinner and they all miss Keane, even Claire.
“Mom would have packed a goose and black puddings if she could,” Eamon says, opening his duffel. “But she did send along fruit scones for your birthday and I’ve brought something even better.”
He pulls out a bottle of Irish whiskey and Keane inhales with reverence. “I take back every evil thought I’ve ever had about you, Eamon. You’re the best brother in the world.”
“And although it’s not Christmas yet, I’ve also brought something for Anna.”
Eamon reaches back into his duffel like a sailboat Santa and pulls out a device that resembles an oversized TV remote.
“Is that … an autopilot?”
“It is,” he says.
“You bought an autopilot for a stranger?”
“Not exactly. I know a guy.”
“Keane said the same thing when he showed up in Nassau with an outboard motor. Am I sailing the Caribbean with stolen goods?”
“Oh no,” Eamon says. “Nothing so nefarious as all that. There was a man at the sailing club who was selling it and I had something he wanted, so we made a trade.”
“Does it work?”
Keane snorts a laugh and we share a smile.
“Aye, it does.” Eamon hands me the device. “But my brother thought since you still have many a mile between here and Trinidad, it might come in useful.”
I sit, not knowing what to say, until finally: “Are all of you Sullivans this nice? I thought Keane was some sort of weird anomaly, but this—God. I can’t accept this.”
“Of course you can.”
“Take it,” Keane says. “Otherwise you’ll never hear the end of it. Truly. He’ll be a terrier on the leg of your trousers about it.” He glances at the dog. “No offense, Queenie.”
“Okay, then,” I say. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, I’ve spent too many hours sitting on planes,” Eamon says. “I’m ready for some fun.”
I wear my sequined skirt with a white T-shirt and a pair of ankle boots because tonight feels festive. A night for making new memories. Some of the more permanent boats in the marina have colored lights strung through the rigging and Christmas trees lit on deck.
Keane holds Queenie’s leash as we walk down the narrow cobbled Calle San Francisco, where the buildings look like colorful layer cakes—red beside yellow beside lime green beside purple—and the balconies are bedecked with red ribbons and swags of pine garland. Music spills from the doorway of every shop. The plazas—de Armas at the west end of the street and de Colón at the east—are decorated with huge Christmas trees. The gazebo in the Plaza de Armas serves as a manger for almost life-size Nativity figures, and the statue of Christopher Columbus in the Plaza de Colón is surrounded by lights in the shape of poinsettias and bells and stars. Old San Juan is covered in lights.
“I’ve never seen so much Christmas.”
Eamon laughs. “It’s a bit like old Saint Nick shite himself.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and I’m struck by the idea that I could stay here. Get a job at Starbucks and live in a colorful apartment overlooking a cobbled alley in a town that looks like it was transplanted from Europe. But every place I’ve visited has offered something new and unexpected. And there are so many islands I have yet to see.
“How does tapas sound?” Keane brings me back to the moment, outside a restaurant with sidewalk seating. “There are other people with dogs here, so I reckon they don’t mind.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Eamon orders a pitcher of red sangria and our first round of small plates—ham croquettes with a guava rum glaze, seafood flatbread, and seared octopus salad—and it takes a second for my brain to catch up with my body. I am more than a thousand miles from home, sampling new foods with two men I wouldn’t have met if I’d stayed in Fort Lauderdale. It’s wild and exciting. If Ben were here, none of this would be happening. I can’t even speculate anymore on what my life would be like with Ben because all I have is now.
“Everything okay?” Keane gives my hand a gentle squeeze beneath the table, and when Queenie notices the movement, her wet nose reminds me that tonight is about new memories.
“Yeah.” When I smile, I mean it. “Everything’s great.”
We share the food, kill the pitcher of sangria, and Eamon orders more. The night grows softer until the world twinkles around me, and the ring of my cell phone startles me. It’s been silent for so long. The screen says MOM and I realize I forgot to call her back.
“Hi, Mom. Check this out.” I press the FaceTime button and pan my phone along Calle San Francisco so she can see Old San Juan. I introduce her to Keane and Eamon, who lift their glasses in a toast, and lower the phone so she can meet Queenie. Then I turn off FaceTime so she can’t worry about my bruised cheek. “I know I forgot to call you back, but—”
“You’re not coming home, are you?”
“Not until after I get to Trinidad.”
“And you’re really happy?”
“More than I’ve been in a long time,” I say. “How are you?”
“I’m watching Maisie tonight,” she says. “Your sister is on a date. He seems like a real nice guy.”
Rachel and Brian—Maisie’s father—have been fighting and reuniting for years. Maybe my sister deserves some new memories too. “I hope he is.”
“I’m still going to worry about you.”
“I know.” The waiter returns with beef-and-chorizo sliders, garlic shrimp taquitos, and another pitcher of sangria. “There are worse things in the world than having a mom who loves me enough to worry. We’ll talk soon, okay? Ich liebe dich.”
While we eat, Eamon tells me about his job, working for a geospatial information firm that provides data for GPS and satellite navigation systems.
“Does that mean you drive the Google Earth car?” I ask, and Keane nearly chokes on his sangria and says, “I’ve asked him the same thing.”
The brothers tell stories about growing up, trying to out-embarrass each other. I laugh a lot and wish I had more to offer in the way of stories, but all my best stories involve Ben. Until now.
It’s after midnight when the taxi drops us off at the marina. I’m loose-limbed and sleepy, and when Eamon suggests we crack open the whiskey, I decline. “I’m going to bed.”
As they settle into the cockpit with plastic tumblers of Green Spot, I change into my pajamas and crawl into bed. Their quiet laughter mixes with the soft lap of the water against the hull and the musical chime of the halyard clanking against the mast, composing a lullaby that sings me to sleep.
headfirst into life (20)
The sun is wide-awake when I get up the next morning, but the Sullivan brothers are not. The cabin reeks of whiskey breath. Eamon is passed out in Keane’s bed while Keane sleeps scrunched up on the side berth like a little boy. I carry Queenie up the companionway ladder, clip on her leash, and we hustle across the busy highway that runs in front of the marina. On the other side, we stop-sniff-and-pee our way to the pedestrian fishing pier sandwiched between the spans of the Two Brothers Bridge. From the pier, I call Carla.
“It’s abo
ut time you called,” she says, but I hear the smile in her voice.
“Sorry it wasn’t sooner. I had zero bars in the middle of the ocean.”
“Where are you?”
“San Juan.” Now that I have a strong signal and time to sit, I tell her everything. She offers best friend outrage over Bimini Chris and demands to see Queenie. I put her on FaceTime, and she calls me a badass when she sees the bruises on my cheek.
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” she says. “When you left, I thought you were running away, but here you are, running headfirst into life.”
“Trust me, I’m just as surprised.”
She laughs. “And this guy, Keane. Are you…?”
“Two weeks ago I was so angry at Ben that I was screaming my lungs out on a deserted beach, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be over him,” I say. “Keane is … a friend.”
“A hot friend who wants to kiss you.”
I laugh. “Shut up.”
“Keep running, Anna,” Carla says. “Kiss the man if you want to kiss him. Or don’t. Just remember that what Ben would want doesn’t count anymore.”
After we hang up, I sit in the sunshine for a while, watching a man fish. His reel zings out as cars whoosh across the bridges around us, but the pier is still a strangely peaceful spot. When I’m ready—or at least as ready as I’ll ever be—I dial Barbara Braithwaite. “It’s Anna Beck.”
“Hello, Anna.” Ben’s mother has a way of sounding cool and warm at the same time. At first it left me wondering how she felt about me, but dozens of voicemails demanding that I return the boat before she has me arrested make it much less ambiguous. “Where are you?”
I ignore the question. “I’m not giving you the boat. You can waste your money contesting Ben’s will and trying to chase me down, but he left it to me. This boat is mine.”
This is the first time I’ve ever raised my voice to Ben’s mother and the first time I’ve called this boat my own. But the Alberg is filled with my things, arranged to meet my needs. It belongs to me.
“Regardless of what you think of me, I loved Ben more than you’ll ever know,” I say. “Call off the dogs. For once please respect his decision.”