by Trish Doller
“How dare you—”
I end the call with shaking fingers, not giving her the chance to finish. It doesn’t feel good to deny Barbara something she wants, but it doesn’t feel bad, either. She can’t have everything.
As we walk back to the marina, Queenie stops to poke her nose into the fisherman’s empty bucket. I notice some of the larger fishing boats are gone for the day, and when I get back to the sailboat—my boat—there is a note tucked into the shackle of the lock.
Gone to mass at the cathedral.
“Of course, you have,” I say aloud, and while Keane and Eamon are gone, I clean up the cabin. The boat feels even smaller with Eamon’s things aboard. With the boat in order, I cook up a big batch of banana pancakes, keeping them warm in the oven, and feeding bits of banana to Queenie while we wait for the Sullivans to return.
“You can be my little pancake hound,” I tell her, and she gives me a dog smile like she understands. I’m glad she’s here with me instead of wandering a lonely beach in Providenciales.
“Drop all your plans for the day, Anna,” Keane announces when he and Eamon step aboard the boat. They’re dressed in church clothes and I pretend not to notice how good they look. Especially Keane. “We’ve got a surprise for you.”
“But I was going to scrub the bilge today,” I say, and Eamon chuckles as he peeks in the oven at the pancakes. “Whatever you’ve got planned better be pretty damn exciting.”
Keane hands me a trio of tickets to see the Tiburones de Aguadilla play the Cangrejeros de Santurce. Sharks versus Crabbers.
“Baseball?”
“One of the locals told us after mass that the games are like parties,” he says.
“And,” Eamon adds, “they sell piña coladas at the stadium.”
* * *
Our seats are in the four-dollar bleacher section of the stadium, behind left field, where we’re trapped in the glare of the afternoon sun. But what the church local said about Puerto Rican baseball is absolutely true. The game hasn’t even begun, and fans are tooting vuvuzelas and rattling thundersticks. People are singing and dancing at their seats, as if they’re at the World Series or the Super Bowl.
Cangrejeros are the home team—and their little crab logo is cute—so I buy one of their baseball caps to keep the sun out of my face. The commentators announce the starting lineups in both English and Spanish, and I blink back tears while singing the national anthem with the people sitting around me. I’ve sailed more than a thousand miles, but this one song on this faraway island makes me feel homesick.
“I must confess.” Eamon hands me a piña colada that he bought from the roving stadium vendor. “I have no fucking clue what’s going on.”
“I don’t know a lot about baseball either, but I figure if we cheer when everyone else does, we’ll be okay.”
There is nothing magical about the game. Except that after four straight days of water, this is exactly what I needed. At the bottom of the ninth inning, when the Crabbers have a healthy lead and I have a healthy buzz, I lean into Keane. “How do you always know?”
“Know what?”
“Everything,” I say. “What I need. What I don’t.”
He shrugs. “I … I just do.”
I wonder what he was really going to say, but before I can ask, a home run ball rockets toward our corner of the ballpark, and the question is forgotten in a flurry of excitement as the crowd around us scrambles to catch it.
In the cab on the way back to the marina, the three of us are still a little high on tropical drinks when Keane raises the question of Christmas. “Would you like to stay here? Or we could sail to Jost Van Dyke in the BVIs.”
“What’s happening on Jost Van Dyke?”
“There’s a bar that hosts a Christmas party for sailors who are away from home.”
“Oh God. I’m keeping you from your family.”
“That’s not the takeaway here, Anna,” Keane says as Eamon pays the cabdriver. “My brother is my family, so I’m sorted. The goal is for you to have a happy Christmas, so whatever you want to do, we’ll do.”
It’s too soon for my body to head back out to sea. My arm is still cradled in a sling and I’ve only just stopped swaying when standing on dry land. But the longer we stay, the harder it will be to leave. San Juan lulls me, makes me feel at home. “We should go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Eamon walks with Queenie and me to the marina office to settle the bill. At the counter, he opens his wallet and plunks down a credit card. He has paid for nearly everything in San Juan and I don’t feel comfortable with that.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” I say.
“It’s nearly Christmas,” he says. “And I’d have spent far more on a hotel room.”
“You brought me an autopilot.”
He waves me off. “It’s been a very good year for me, Anna, and you have a long way to go. Please let me do this.”
“I don’t understand how you and your brother can be so kind.”
“It’s uncomplicated, really,” Eamon says. “Our mother expected us to be good and our father put the fear of the Lord in us if we failed to meet her expectations. That doesn’t mean we don’t act the maggot sometimes, but kind is one of the easiest things to be.”
“Thank you.”
He slides his credit card back into his wallet, signs the receipt, and kisses my forehead the same way Keane does, making me think it’s another Sullivan family habit. “Let’s call ourselves square.”
* * *
The sail from Puerto Rico to Jost Van Dyke is long, but nothing like the big crossing. The air is the perfect mix of warm and cool, the sea is calm, and with the autopilot doing most of the work, we have little to do but trim the sails. Keane estimates it will take around twelve hours, but having a crew of three means we don’t have to break the time into shifts. We can sleep whenever we like, but mostly we sit on deck, pass around a bottle of wine, and talk.
Around midnight I walk up to the foredeck to sit with my back against the cabin. Queenie follows and climbs into my lap. The sea and sky are deep velvet blue, melting together at the horizon, and I lose count of the shooting stars. The distance is dotted by the red and green running lights of boats heading toward the Virgin Islands.
Keane comes up, leaving Eamon alone in the cockpit. “Mind if I join you?”
I shift, making space for him to lean. “Doing okay?”
“I was about to ask you the same.”
“How are your knees?”
“Fit,” he says. “I’ve had a chance to rest, so I’m set to rights. How’s the shoulder?”
“The swelling has gone down and regular pain reliever seems to be doing the trick, but it’s stiff and I have this irrational fear that if I move too much, it will pop back out of the socket.”
“Highly unlikely,” Keane says. “But it’s not a bad idea to ginger it until it heals.”
“True. So, tell me about Christmas on Jost Van Dyke.”
“Foxy’s Bar serves a special holiday menu. Fancy stuff like tenderloin, swordfish, and even lobster. If you consider lobster fancy.”
I laugh, remembering the conversation about the fanciness of lobster. It seems like a lifetime ago.
“They’ll have a musician to play Christmas music, both traditional carols and Caribbean songs,” he continues. “Most folks cruising the islands during the holidays don’t have a place to go, so Foxy provides.”
“I miss my family more than I expected,” I say. “My mom was hurt when I left, but now that we’ve had a chance to talk … Well, I won’t get to see my niece open her presents this year.”
“Maybe you could pick out some gifts for your family along the way and have a second Christmas when you get home.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Every now and again I have one,” he says. “The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I have friends on Jost Van Dyke who have opened their home to us, so we won’t have to sleep
on the boat. Unless, of course, you’d rather.”
“If you think I’m going to turn down a real bed, you are so wrong.”
We sit in companionable silence, and Queenie steals from my lap into his, nuzzling his hand for attention. Once in a while the boat cuts through a wave that sends a fine mist over us, but it dries almost as quickly as it lands.
“The foredeck was once my domain,” Keane says finally. “Calling the start, sails up and down, setting the spinnaker. I was fast, Anna. I was so fucking fast, but now…” When he trails off, I don’t have the right words to snap him out of his melancholy.
“What boat owner wants a has-been with a prosthetic leg when he can have an able up-and-comer?” The bitterness in his voice makes me want to cry, especially when I’ve seen what he can do. “They’re all very kind about it, but the writing’s on the wall in huge fucking letters. You’re done, Sullivan. But I can’t stop wanting it.”
“Maybe—”
“After the accident I set a deadline for myself,” he continues. “If I wasn’t working as a professional sailor again by the time I turned thirty, I’d give up the pursuit. For what? I have no idea, but my birthday is in one week and here we are.”
I’m grateful he interrupted me, because offering unhelpful suggestions isn’t what he needs any more than I needed them after Ben died. I know how it feels to want something you can no longer have.
“The thing is,” Keane says, “if I am completely truthful, the last three weeks have been the happiest I’ve had in a good long while—your brush with death notwithstanding—but this is not how I imagined my life.”
“Me either.”
“Perhaps our paths were meant to cross.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
He laces his fingers through mine and I let him. Keane doesn’t ask for anything more and we fall into a silence that lasts until pale light gathers along the horizon. In the night we sailed above Isla Culebra—one of the Spanish Virgins. To the south is St. Thomas in the US Virgins. Ahead, the hills of Jost Van Dyke rise black out of the water.
“I should probably go spell my brother.” Keane releases my hand and puts Queenie back in my lap.
“I’ll come with.”
Eamon is wide-awake and wired, an insulated mug of coffee in his hand and a broad grin across his face. “I haven’t sailed like this since we were kids. This is fucking fantastic.”
“You ready for a nap?”
“Not yet,” he says. “But I wouldn’t say no to breakfast.”
I offer to cook, but Keane goes below and soon I hear him whistling his breakfast-making tune. I bring out Queenie’s carpet so she can do her morning business, then feed her a bowl of kibble. After having scrounged for leftovers, she still devours the food as though it’s her last meal. She’s tearing the fuzz off one of her tennis balls when Keane hands up plates heaping with eggs, fried salami, toast, potatoes, and beans.
“Nearest I could come to a proper Irish fry without rashers, sausage, and puddings,” he says, but Eamon devours his food nearly as fast as Queenie.
The sun rises behind the island, turning the sky gold behind the hills. I wash up the dishes, while Keane takes over the tiller and Eamon naps in the cockpit. We sail until we reach the mouth of Great Harbour, then motor into the anchorage. Keane and Eamon go below to nap while I take the dinghy ashore with our passports and Queenie’s health certificate to clear customs. After I’ve paid the fees, I return to the boat, raise the British Virgin Islands courtesy flag, and crash-land in my bed.
a patchwork house (21)
Jost Van Dyke is a small, sparsely populated island that slopes from beach to hills without stopping, yet the harbor is filled with boats and the beachfront bars are busy with people as we lock the dinghy and carry our bags up the road to wait for our ride.
“Felix and Agda live right up on Man O’ War Hill,” Keane says, pointing to a house on the ridge. “Wait until you see it up close. You’ll never want to leave.”
Two minutes later an old blue Toyota Land Cruiser comes to a stop in front of us, its driver a shirtless man about Eamon’s age with a shock of white-blond hair and a raccoon mask of untanned skin around his eyes. The door flings open and he bounds out, his feet bare, to hug Keane.
“Welcome! Welcome to Jost Van Dyke.” Felix has yet another new accent for me to figure out. It’s not Caribbean, but it’s also not Irish or American. He opens the back of the Land Cruiser for us to throw in our gear. “Sullivan, Agda said to come straight back to the house instead of stopping for a drink because she is eager to see you.”
Once we’re all inside, the Land Cruiser bumps up the unfinished road and Felix gives us a rundown on the island since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the British Virgin Islands. “Great Harbour lost a lot of vegetation and the Methodist church was ruined. But most of the bars and shops have been rebuilt, and new palm trees have been planted. We lost some of our roof, but life goes on, you know?”
Felix explains that he and his wife run a dive charter business. Unlike the crew on Chemineau, they have a waiting list of clients. “We just returned from Belize, so your timing is very good.” He laughs. “Our home is still clean.”
The house at the top of Man O’ War Hill looks as if it was built in sections, tacked on over time and painted whatever color they happened to favor at the moment, which Felix explains is exactly what happened. “It’s a strange house, I know,” he says. “When we first moved here from Sweden, we could not afford to build more than a one-room shack.”
As goofy as the place looks on the outside, the inside is beyond inviting. The floors are planked with dark, soft wood, and every single room has a balcony overlooking Great Harbour and the surrounding forested hills. “This is amazing.”
“See what I mean?” Keane says.
The furniture looks like it was acquired piecemeal, and from different places around the world. The threadbare gold velvet couch is draped with a multicolored Peruvian blanket, similar to the cushions on my boat. Diving magazines are piled on an African drum. And a huge aboriginal artwork takes up most of one wall. Another wall is covered with photos of Felix and Agda—usually wearing scuba gear—in various oceans.
“Agda!” Felix calls out. “Sullivan has arrived.”
The sound of bare feet slapping on the wood floor greets us, then a flash of red dress and white-blond hair as she flings herself into Keane’s arms. “It is so wonderful to see you,” she squeals as he spins her around. She is bony and wholesome and has the same Scandinavian features as Felix. I’m in awe of the whiteness of their hair, until I catch my own reflection in a mirror. The color has been leached from my braids by the sun while my skin is darker than it’s ever been.
“Agda, this is Anna,” Keane says. “We are traveling together to Trinidad.”
“It’s good to meet you, Anna.”
“Likewise.”
“Come with me.” She calls the words over her shoulder, already in motion. “I will show you to your room.”
The balcony serves as the hallway for the house, and I follow Agda to the end, where French doors stand open, inviting the sun and air into the bedroom. The bed seems enormous after weeks at sea and the blanket on top is a patchwork of old wool sweaters. A patchwork quilt for a patchwork house. My grubby bag on the floor is like a sliver of thumb across the corner of an otherwise perfect photo.
“This room is best because it has its own water closet.” She pulls back a white shower curtain in the corner to reveal a toilet and tiny wall sink. “And it is closest to the shower.”
She leads me back outside. Beside my room is an outdoor shower built of wood with a yellow canvas curtain. “My favorite time is when you are showering and it begins to rain.”
“This house is bizarre.”
Agda laughs. “It is bizarre, but we love it.”
“Me too.”
“I will leave you to shower or sleep or whatever you would like to do,” she says. “We have Wi-Fi if you need
to write emails, and later we will go to Foxy’s for Christmas dinner, yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Agda smiles in reply and suddenly I’m alone. Keane finds me leaning against the balcony railing, trying to pick out the Alberg in the fleet of cruising boats moored in the harbor.
“Now that I’m finally thinking of it as my boat, it needs a name.”
“Don’t think too hard about it,” he says. “Boats reveal their names to you in good time.”
“Did you make that up?”
He nods. “It’s a solid theory, though, right?”
“I’m going to go try out that shower.”
“I wanted to warn you,” he says. “Agda typically walks naked to and from the bath.”
“Good to know, thanks.”
“You could do the same, if you like. When in Rome and such.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs as he bumps his shoulder against mine. “Don’t use all the hot water.”
Not nearly as brave as Agda, I draw the yellow curtain across the shower, but above me the sky is midmorning blue and the air is cool on my skin. Even though I can hear everyone’s indistinct chatter at the other end of the balcony, I can’t help feeling alone. This is my first Christmas without Ben. I turn off the faucet, but my thoughts keep flowing. I put on his old How the Grinch Stole Christmas! T-shirt, faded green and worn soft, and a red polka-dot skirt more festive than I feel.
“Anna, you are so cute! You are the Grinch.” Agda pours a glass of pink rum punch and slides it across the table to me as I sit. “Eamon has been trying to explain his job to me and I can’t get my brain around it. So, you tell me what you do.”
“Well, right now, I just … sail.” I look past her at the harbor and take a deep breath. “My fiancé died by suicide almost a year ago, and I was having a hard time dealing with it, so I quit my job, took his sailboat, and left.”
“About your fiancé, I am very sorry,” she says, touching the back of my hand with light fingers. “But it is a very brave thing you are doing.”