Joren’s eyes were closed. His lips moved and it worried me that he was also wishing, maybe even praying. But Nathan was calm and Luc was smiling and it was raining but not hard and the open ocean stretched out in front of us in grays and frothy creamy lace and I could see how sailors thought it beautiful.
The wind and rain in my face were cold. I turned back to look at Newport. And I gasped. Newport was gone. The shore had disappeared. There was nothing but water in every direction. No land, no other boats. No place to get off. The sea was not beautiful, only endless, eternal, and alien. I gulped, sucked at the air. I could not breathe. I opened my mouth wide, pushed against my chest with both hands. I was drowning in the open air. The boat was very small and very full. There was nowhere I could go, no place to be alone, no room to walk without stepping on someone. I wanted off, right away. I turned to Luc, but he was talking to Nathan. I looked at Doug, but his face was tucked into his enormous coat. Stop, I wanted to say. Turn around and take me back. Nathan was doing something with a rope. He pulled the sail tighter. The boat heeled more sharply. I crouched in the cockpit, holding on with both hands. Luc hollered in joy. Then, over the sound of the waves and wind, I heard a crash. Thirty minutes into our voyage and the fruit bowl with the mermaids—my favorite purchase—was the first thing to break.
From: [email protected]
Sent: October 27, 2009
Dear Luc:
Well. It’s raining here—very unusual for southern California. The only rain boots I own are hand me downs from my twenty-year-old son. Yes, I have an almost grown up son. He is older than I was when we went to sea on the Bleiz A Mor.
Thirty years since we were in Newport. I wonder what it’s like now. I wish I could stand on that dock and look out at the Atlantic Ocean.
Do you remember the boat? The trip? Nathan Carmichael? Do you ever think about it?
Io
I had driven home in the rain, and sat in my driveway watching the rivulets and puddles forming in my front yard. Eventually I got out of the car. Looking up at the spitting sky, my wet face reminded me of being on that boat. Of sitting next to Luc on deck as we went out to sea, his arm around me, huddled into his chest, trying to be brave and happy before everything went so horribly wrong. Twenty-six years had passed since I had seen Luc or even heard about him. Last time, half a lifetime ago, he was strung out, an incoherent junkie. Right after that, Lola told me never to call or contact either of them again. I wasn’t helping and he was on his own path, she said. I could see only one direction that path was going, only one place it would end. That’s why I had never looked him up before. Twenty-six years and the Internet, I could have done a search for him on my phone for chrissakes, and I never did. The last time I saw him he was fading away, more ephemeral and more beautiful and more fucked up than ever before. Maybe I thought by not knowing I could keep him alive.
On the front porch, watching the rain drip from the eaves, I took out my phone and listened again to the message from Dr. Carolyn. It hadn’t changed. I went inside the house where I’d lived for more than fifteen years. It didn’t look the same. I didn’t recognize the furnishings. Was that chair always so green? When did I buy a throw pillow with a bird on it. A bird? Really? And everything was so dirty. The gray drizzly light through the dining room window revealed dust bunnies in the corners, dog hair on the rug, crumbs on the table, and a layer of grime over everything. I sat down on the couch and Lulu, our old black and white mutt, trotted over to me. She was antsy, anxious to go out, but I held her sides and buried my face in her ruff. She wagged her tail and whined, confused by me and the unfamiliar weather.
I wanted a puppy. Harry would get a job soon, Jack was across town at school, and a little cuddly pup would be just what the doctor ordered. I went to the door and picked up my car keys. I thought I’d go to the pound that minute. I couldn’t wait another second. I opened the front door and then I put my keys down. I was going to die. Who would take care of a puppy?
I went to the kitchen. Harry had left a dirty mug on the counter, dregs of milky tea in the bottom. A banana peel splayed next to it—empty, abandoned. I turned away and opened my computer. I intended to look up cancer information. I found myself thinking of Luc instead. My fingers trembled as I typed “Luc Kazaros” into Google. I tried to push away the memories of his hands on my body and his tongue on my skin, his grin, his quick steps and light touch, the boy he had been and the girl I was.
“Dance with me,” he said the day we met. He grabbed me around the waist before I could answer and pulled me into a polka. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” I didn’t know then it would become his constant refrain with me.
A long list came up, filling my computer screen. I held my breath, preparing for an obituary or a news article ending with him going to jail. But he’d gone to graduate school. He was a psychologist with his own Kazaros Wellness Clinic in Orlando, Florida. Body therapy. Dream work. Reiki. Same old non-traditional guy, but with a PhD after his name. Hard to believe he wasn’t choreographing or at least teaching dance. And Orlando was where his parents lived. He had loved New York. All those years ago when I left the city and wanted him to come with me, he was adamant he would never live anywhere else.
I wrote my email to him—upbeat, noncommittal—and hit “send” before I lost my nerve.
The dog ran to the front door. Harry was coming up the walk. I put the computer to sleep. I didn’t know where Harry had been. He was dressed up in khaki pants and a button down. The pants were a little tight after all his time on the couch. His strong, stocky body had always pleased me, made me feel lighter and more graceful. In our early days he often picked me up and carried me. His face was kind and intelligent. He was such a nice guy, a good guy, a sweetheart. It didn’t seem fair to tell him I had just emailed my old boyfriend. Or to tell him I had cancer.
“Where’ve you been?” I said.
“I had an interview.” He smiled a little. He was standing straighter, his chest forward, chin up.
“Where?”
“A trade journal. The Hemp Growers Association.”
“Seriously? You never even got high.”
His smile disappeared. His eyes went small. “Aren’t you happy for me?”
I felt like a jerk. “Sorry. I know hemp isn’t just pot. It’s fantastic. Really.”
He gave a small, tired sigh. So many interviews, so many rejections. Harry had a graduate degree in International Studies from Yale. He’d written stories on the President, members of Congress, the environmental impact of plastics in Mumbai. He had spent three months embedded with the Marines in Iraq. Boys, he said, no older than our son, Jack. There’d been some awful fight, an explosion, and most of the boys had died. Harry had pulled two of them from the burning Humvee. President Bush sent him a letter of commendation, but he threw it away. And here he was, excited about hemp.
“You know,” he was saying, “these smaller, targeted journals are really the way of the future. Pretty soon no one will read a general newspaper, only articles—online probably—about their specific interests.”
“Is it full time?”
“You’re not even listening to me.”
“I am. I am.”
“All
