The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  —

  Guests began to arrive in taxis. They clustered by the lighthouse, wandered as far as the radio tower, then came back to the catering tents where the bartender was stocking the open bar.

  Around one, Livy arrived with Essex. They drove up in a beater AMC Eagle that Essex had borrowed from his landlord. Essex had brought a date, a honey-haired stripper who happened to be his cash fare one night. Livy brought an empty cooler. Kirsten met them at the car window and told them where to park, then directed Essex to take all their things to a small house on the edge of the sound. By now the caterers had set up the tables and were unloading white folding chairs onto the grass, which was freshly cut and verdant, save for a few raised knuckles of brown earth where it had been mown to the mud. Cheyenne stood on one of those like a pitcher on a mound. Livy saw her and walked over.

  “What’s the lowdown?” asked Livy.

  Cheyenne pointed at Cyril, who was chatting with friends near the lighthouse.

  “Have you talked to him?” Livy asked.

  Cheyenne shook her head. “I still think this whole thing is a bad idea.”

  “Any sign of the bride?”

  “No, they keep her stashed away until he signs the paperwork and gets to keep her.”

  Livy smiled, but it was show. Cheyenne’s eyes darted everywhere except in the direction of Cyril. The back of Livy’s hands itched. At the last minute she had gotten nervous about how she was dressed and made Essex stop by Kirsten’s so she could change. But borrowing clothes from Kirsten’s closet had been a terrible mistake. Standing now, planted on the grass in a sleeveless floral print dress that exposed both the worker’s tan she had from the elbows down and the eggshell white of her muscled upper arms, she was miserable. She hadn’t worn socks and her mother’s black cotton Chinese slippers were soaked from the dew. Although she’d done her hair as usual, two braids pinned across her head like a wreath, she’d braided it too tight and it was giving her a headache. She narrowed her eyes at Cheyenne, who was now fidgeting with the leather bracelet on her wrist, with her head hung crown-down, hair shaggy in her face.

  “Let’s get this done,” said Livy. “Then we can fade into the background.”

  As they approached him, Cyril stepped away from his friends and opened his arms.

  “Cheyenne, Livy. I’m so glad you could come.”

  He kissed them each on the cheek and rested his hand on Livy’s shoulder until his friends excused themselves.

  His cell phone rang and he answered it.

  “I don’t go to weddings,” whispered Livy. “What happens now?”

  “People come. Someone reads something by Hafiz or Rumi. There is an original vow contest, then everyone gets drunk.”

  Cyril hung up and turned to them.

  “I was hoping we could spend a few minutes together before the ceremony. I’m really excited for you to meet May. She’s heard all about you.”

  Livy coughed. Cheyenne started to say something but Cyril turned to the panorama behind him. He’d chosen the spot for its view of the mountains across the sound. The lighthouse was an accent. A Dutch windmill in the tulips. A Scottish manor in the background. Something to decorate the moment but not a part of it.

  “Stunning, isn’t it? The Indians believed these mountains were made to divide those who were greedy from those who weren’t because the people had forgotten to be grateful. The gods locked the ungrateful ones on the dry side of the mountains where nothing grows. A lesson.” He turned back to them. “We’re all so lucky. You two most of all. So few concerns.”

  Behind him, a wind-shaped, hundred-year-old apple tree flowered at the brink of land, each petal that fell from it a skiff sailing uncaptained to the underworld.

  “Cheyenne.” He smiled at her. “Kirsten said you were divorced? I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I hope it didn’t go too badly.” He squeezed Livy’s shoulder. “Any young man of yours I need to meet?”

  “She doesn’t like men,” said Cheyenne.

  Cyril dropped his hand.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. Forgive me. Well,” he scanned the sweeping coastal range with the pride of ownership, “we all have our own road. Pardon me. I have to go take care of a few things. I’ll come find you in a bit and we can visit a little more.”

  Kissing each of them again he walked back toward the small parking lot.

  “How can he not know you’re gay?” said Cheyenne. “Half of our first-grade class knew you were gay.”

  * * *

  —

  Essex emerged from one of the houses and shaded his eyes. Livy smiled and waved him over.

  “You know he’s been waiting,” Livy said. “You can’t dodge him anymore.”

  “I’m not dodging him. Some people you have to be in the mood for,” said Cheyenne.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re one of those people,” said Livy.

  Cheyenne smiled a little but kept her eyes on Essex. Abandoning his date, he came toward them. She hadn’t seen him for two years and only sporadically for several years before that. She was struck by how much bigger he was in person than in her memory. This dissonance between the Essex in her mind and the real Essex was familiar but still jarring. Always in his presence she saw a large and broad-shouldered, if clumsy, man, but as soon as he was out of sight, he became the eleven-year-old boy she’d found on the street and dragged home when she was a teenager. She saw him beaming as he got closer and winced. You don’t get out of saving someone from themselves.

  Reaching her, Essex wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her slightly in a hug. She kissed him and stepped back. He’d dyed his hair but the roots had since grown out so that from his scalp to the top of his ears it was light brown and from there to his chin, black. It reminded Cheyenne of a two-tone leather van seat.

  “Where’s your date?” asked Livy.

  Essex pointed to a drink table.

  “Livy said you broke up with her,” said Cheyenne.

  “Different girl,” said Essex.

  He glanced at the ground, then squinted at Cheyenne, tilting his head, causing a short curtain of hair to fall across half his face.

  “Do you think being here is a good idea? He’s never done a thing for you guys,” he said.

  “At least he’s related to us,” said Cheyenne. “You have no excuse.”

  “I’m here to tell him what an asshole he is,” said Essex.

  “Bet you don’t,” said Livy.

  “Watch me.”

  Cheyenne peered into his blue eyes. He flinched. She shook her head. “You won’t. None of us will. We should and we won’t,” she said.

  Livy folded her arms tight against her body. “He’s not worth it,” she said.

  Essex saw Cyril heading toward the lighthouse and he turned and walked toward him. The sisters looked on. From their spot across the lawn they could see Essex’s mouth begin to move until Cyril put his hand on his shoulder and smiled. Essex smiled back.

  “Coward,” said Cheyenne under her breath.

  2 The Keeper’s House

  UNDER A WHITE CANOPY with garlands wrapped around the metal tent poles, guests, about fifty of them, stood scattered on the grass near an arbor with a trestle, wineglasses in hand. No one was wearing anything particularly fancy, but money was everywhere, hidden in the make of a hiking boot and in the confidence with which people asked for things.

  Hors d’oeuvres were coming out and Livy, seeing an opportunity, went into the kitchen tent and embedded herself within the Filipino catering staff, who were sick of being mistaken for Mexicans. She sympathized and ate off the trays as they were plated while they bitched in Tagalog. Outside on the lawn were the Tibetan workers from one of Cyril’s warehouses, invited more as accessories of enlightenment than for their intimacy with Cyril and the bride.

  Inside the kitch
en tent, two pots of jambalaya were being kept warm. One pot was marked “Beef” and the other “Shrimp.” On the beef pot was a piece of masking tape with the words “Save for Tibetans” on it. Livy sidled over and started spooning some into a Tupperware bowl she’d stashed in her bag. The cook caught her and put the lid back on the pot.

  “That’s for later,” said the cook, “and not for you.”

  “Why can’t we have the beef?”

  “It’s for the Tibetans. The shrimp jambalaya costs too many lives.”

  Livy frowned slightly then grinned in a rare, wide smile. “Because it’s only one cow,” she said.

  “One cow,” said the cook.

  It was such a dazzling moral parry. A harm-reduction approach to reincarnation Livy could get behind.

  * * *

  —

  Essex tried to make himself useful. He carried chairs and kegs and drove tent poles deeper into the ground, so he wouldn’t have to look anyone in the eye. Years of promising himself he would tell Cyril off if he ever had the chance, and he’d blown it right away. Say it! You are an awful father (and I should know because I had an awful father), but when the time had come to say it, his courage had abandoned him.

  When there was nothing left to lift or carry, he joined Livy and Cheyenne under the canopy. Trays of cheese and fruit appeared.

  “I like how they do this,” said Essex. “At most weddings they starve you and keep you sober until after the vows.”

  Cheyenne cut a half-moon slice off a wheel of Manchego. Livy filled two plates and went with Essex’s date to stake out a table in the corner of the tent.

  “I watched your showdown with Cyril,” said Cheyenne. “He’ll never recover.”

  “What do you want me to do? It’s his wedding.” Essex put a cluster of grapes on his plate, picked the last of the cheese off one platter and moved to the next.

  Cheyenne’s back muscles tightened. She could never figure out why feeling sorry for Essex turned into feeling sorry for herself.

  Essex took a slab of feta to go with his other goat cheeses. Cheyenne palmed a heel of Bavarian farmer’s bread. Having filled their plates with as much food as they could, they made for the corner where Livy was. They spread out, taking up the whole table, lounging like lions. Servers brought carafes of water and bused empty plates. Essex and his date fell into a side conversation about someone they knew.

  “What’s her name?” whispered Cheyenne.

  “Jennie,” said Livy. “Or Jessica?”

  Livy looked at her watch. A passing server refilled their wineglasses.

  “So Essex said he isn’t your real brother. How did you all meet?” asked Jennie.

  “I was hanging out on the Ave,” Essex said.

  “When Cheyenne was seventeen she dragged him home off the street,” said Livy. “He was the most pathetic kid you ever saw. I’d have left him.”

  “She would have,” said Essex. “She’s not joking.”

  “I just thought we were going to give him a shower and bus money,” said Cheyenne.

  “Kirsten let me stay,” said Essex.

  “I heard someone say the bride is super young,” said Cheyenne.

  “Did they say it like a compliment or a slam?” Livy asked.

  “Look at these people,” said Cheyenne. “Compliment.”

  Cheyenne ate a cracker while staring down the horizon line. Livy stole the last piece of Gouda off Essex’s plate as his date watched with the soft eyes of a seal pup. Servers cleared the bread and lit cans of Sterno beneath the chaffing dishes.

  Cheyenne looked at her sister. “Do you think it’s too late for us?”

  “Too late for what?” Livy said.

  “To be something. Not in some stupid get-married-or-look-at-me-I’m-a-lawyer way but in a real way. Look at us. We’re thirty-three.”

  “Thirty-three and a half,” said Livy.

  Cheyenne tore off a piece of black bread and popped it in her mouth.

  “What do you do, Cheyenne?” asked Jennie.

  Livy laughed.

  “I’m in a transitional time,” said Cheyenne.

  “Permanently,” said Livy.

  “That’s not fair. She just got back,” said Essex. “She’ll figure it out.”

  “No I won’t,” said Cheyenne, and Livy laughed louder.

  It wasn’t a bad moment. Cheyenne tore off another piece of bread.

  “I always try to think about where I want to be at the same time next year,” said Jennie.

  Livy put both hands on the table. “I want to be up north fishing and the rest of you can go to hell.”

  Jennie looked to Cheyenne.

  “I’m playing it by ear,” Cheyenne said. “I’ll probably stay here for a while.”

  Livy’s stomach went a little sour. In the two weeks Cheyenne had been at Livy’s, she hadn’t once talked about paying any rent. Cheyenne was a barnacle. Livy was going to have to scrape her off the hull at some point and it wouldn’t be pretty.

  Livy turned to Jennie. “Essex says you’re in nursing school. When do you graduate?”

  “It was supposed to be next year but I’m taking time off to go to Africa.”

  “Why Africa?” asked Cheyenne.

  “I want to see the world before it’s gone.”

  Jennie laid a slice of baked brie on a hummus crostini. A man in white began to weave through the guests. Livy noticed him before the others.

  “When’s the last time you saw your dad?” Jennie asked.

  Livy looked at Cheyenne. “Eighth grade? But we only saw him once or twice a year before that.”

  “He used to take us to work for show-and-tell,” said Cheyenne. “Two kids from his polyamorous youth to vet him as an unconventional thinker.”

  “They had free Coke machines and candy,” said Livy. She gazed solemnly at her sister and lowered her voice by an octave. “You know, Cheyenne, the Indians say—”

  Cheyenne slapped the table. “Which Indians? Which Indians, Cyril?”

  “They say bad Indians get left with dry land. So be a good Indian. Don’t be greedy. Honor the earth and it will provide.” Livy patted Cheyenne on the head. “Hope that works out well for you people while I frack the hell out of what land we left you.”

  “God it kills me!” said Cheyenne. “Which Indians? Exactly. Which. Indians? Cyril.”

  “I think it’s Cowlitz myth,” said Livy.

  “That can’t be right,” said Cheyenne. “Also I don’t care. It’s a lousy myth.”

  Essex pointed with his cheese knife to warn them that Cyril was within earshot.

  * * *

  —

  The lighthouse keeper’s house, and the assistant lighthouse keeper’s house, opened onto the sea, not the land. It was a fundamental orientation when they were built, but now it was no longer important to the wedding guests who came in and out what was once the back door.

  Cyril had rented both for the night. He and his bride would stay in one and Kirsten and the girls in the other. It was a gracious act of hospitality toward them that cost him nothing. They had not followed his career; when he lost interest in them, they lost interest in him. Still they knew the broad strokes. He had started in software development. Rich in stock, he had branched out into sidelines like the import-export business that employed the Tibetans. From there, it was less concrete. He had, it seemed, transcended goods and services almost entirely, diversifying into multiple shell companies, replicating and mirroring, acquiring and sloughing off; unmoored from states of reality—like warehouses and people—to become an algorithmic superstructure of predatory capital, ever moving, ever present, unfixable in space and time. And yet he had called them all here. What he had to give his daughters must be worth it. At least that was the hope.

  * * *

  —


  After fetching them from their table, Cyril welcomed Livy and Cheyenne in through the back door of the keeper’s house. Built in 1919, the house had undergone a restoration on the heels of a bad 1970s remodel, elevating something claustrophobic about the layout, a Victorian hangover, which exposed a dread of open, common space.

  “May is upstairs,” he said. “Let’s go into the parlor to talk.”

  His voice was pregnant with so many possible futures that Cheyenne’s heart began to race, but she couldn’t tell if it was excitement or apprehension. He brought them into the parlor. She had expected a room with darkly stained walnut furniture, dollhouse chairs upholstered with hard, candy-striped cushions. The room was plain, though. A few heart-shaped chair backs, a standing cabinet. A large picture window from the bad remodel, which had been too expensive to remove, offered a clear view of dark waters. Cyril took a chair. The girls sat on the overstuffed couch, instinctively moving closer together until, inches apart, swapping electrons, they radiated and crackled. Upstairs they heard laughter and voices, giggling and a squeal. Cyril ticked his head toward the ceiling.

  “May and her friends getting ready. I’m told I have to vacate the premises soon.” He nodded to himself. “She’s wonderful. An old soul.”

  Someone started playing Beyoncé above them and the floor began to sink and rise as people danced. Cyril ran his hand along the arm of the chair.

  “The bardo,” he said, “the land between.”

  Cheyenne looked sideways at Livy.

  “A test,” he said. “Do it right and you are reborn into a better world.” He smiled at them. “The Tibetans have it right. We rarely know our journeys.” He clapped. “The carnival of human experience is magnificent! Have you ever been overseas?”

  Livy and Cheyenne both shook their heads.

  “Neither of you? Well don’t put it off. You’ll live a smaller life. Travel made me a citizen of the world.” His eyes wandered to the window and the sound beyond. “The bardo. You can get caught in illusions.” He looked to them for recognition and saw none. “You can take on what isn’t yours.”