The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  “I need to get something to wear,” she said.

  In a thrift store they found a denim halter dress and rope-colored wedge sandals. At a pharmacy she bought lipstick and a floral scarf for her hair. Essex was in uniform.

  Jared waited outside the courthouse. As soon as he saw her, he started laughing. Another marine was there too, from the South by his accent, a second witness.

  Cheyenne began to feel it. In every administrative action, in the stamping of papers, the signing of documents, and transfer of fees, there was a quality of tenderness. Even the justice of the peace seemed to perform his duty with more gentleness than the state required. When it was time to kiss, the Southern marine had tears in his eyes.

  “Make it look real,” Essex whispered in her ear.

  Outside the magistrate’s office everyone congratulated Cheyenne so sweetly that she nearly died of guilt. A car waited on the street, a loaner with “Just Married” soaped on the back and a few cans tied to the bumper. Everyone was trying. Everyone wanted them to have something to hang on to. It was too much. Cheyenne ended up crying too.

  The marine held the car door for them before sliding into the driver’s seat next to Jared.

  “Where are we going?” she asked Essex.

  “They got us a motel.”

  She pinched him. He refused to look at her.

  “Well they better not want proof of anything,” she said.

  The motel was not far from Camp Lejeune. When they unlocked their room there was a vase of flowers on the particleboard dresser next to a bottle of champagne and fifty bucks. Essex picked up the note. It was from his commanding officer.

  “He likes me. I don’t know why.” He put the note down. “He’s a dad who didn’t have a dad. I think he has a soft spot that way. I thought they’d all be assholes but they’re not.”

  Essex hung the jacket of his dress uniform carefully in the closet.

  “You make it sound like a quilting circle,” said Cheyenne.

  “It’s definitely not that.”

  “The Marines. One Big Quilting Circle. The Few, the Crafty—the Marines.”

  He laughed.

  She looked around. “How long do we have to stay here?” she asked.

  “You have to sign some things in the morning. I need to report back by lunch tomorrow.”

  * * *

  —

  They got a bucket of ice. They reconned the blue kidney-shaped swimming pool and decided it wasn’t worth buying bathing suits. They peeked into the exercise room and saw a pink man drenched in sweat running on a moving belt. They drank champagne then made a beer run and played hands of casino and rummy.

  “Are you as bored as I am?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Let’s rearrange the furniture.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s bolted down.”

  The motel carpet was oppressive. The TV kept staring back. Occasionally there was action in the parking lot but it never amounted to anything.

  The idea slipped into her head that there was one thing they could do. It’s not like she hadn’t considered it before. She had. But it didn’t seem fair. Still, Essex had charm. A rare kind of confidence that came from nowhere and was based on nothing. None of the guys or ex-students she’d slept with in the past two years had that. The little colonials, the little Livingstons, what seemed to be confidence with them turned out to be only entitlement. Essex wasn’t like that. Other things weighted it down. And he was an adult. She didn’t need to make his decisions for him.

  “Your bet,” he said.

  She tossed her cards on the table. “I fold.” Getting up she went and hovered over him. “Exactly how bored are you?” she asked.

  “I’m not bored at all.”

  Cheyenne knocked his arm off the chair with her knee. He put his arm back on the armrest keeping his eyes on her the whole time. She knocked it off again.

  “You’re a bully,” he said.

  “If we do this, can you promise me you won’t make it a thing?”

  It wasn’t a fair thing to ask and she knew it.

  “I promise,” he said. “Not a word about it.”

  Thirty seconds later, pressed up against the wall, feeling him hard against her hips, she wondered why she had ever made such a big deal about having sex with him. But then again she knew, because he was in love with her and she was not in love with him and she was usually a decent person.

  “Back up,” she said, “I don’t have any room.”

  He stepped back and she got down on her knees and started to unzip his pants but he stopped her.

  “I’ll come too fast. I’ve got another idea.”

  He grabbed a pillow off the bed and had her lie down on the floor with it under her hips. Pushing up the denim dress with two fingers, he pulled aside the crotch of her panties. She took a few breaths and closed her eyes then she sat up.

  “Not here.”

  “Okay.” He helped her up.

  He took off his shirt and undid the halter tie of her dress, which fell to the ground. They stood close, her skin on his. He didn’t want it to stop but she was already moving.

  “Maybe the dresser?” she asked.

  “The height is wrong.”

  “Yeah, probably. The handles would dig into my thighs too. Okay, the bed.”

  They went to the edge and she turned around and he bent her over the bed and she shimmied out of her panties while he undid his pants. He put his hand on her ass and she felt a rush of heat and wetness, then realized that he wasn’t hard anymore.

  He paused then shifted to the left, reached for the pillow and put it on the floor by the bed, then got on his knees to go down on her, but she slipped aside twisting herself up onto the mattress. They were suspended. He sat back.

  “You don’t want me to?” he asked.

  “It feels a little personal.”

  He laughed. She glared.

  “Okay then, what isn’t too personal?”

  “What we were doing,” she said.

  “Let’s do that then.”

  But she didn’t move. She chewed the edge of her lip.

  He lay back. She crawled on top but didn’t do anything.

  Someone pulled into the motel parking lot blasting the Steve Miller Band. A jangle of guitar, a lazy abuse of the hammer-on, the reverb, a hallowing of the midrange. Cheyenne looked down at him.

  “ ‘Take the Money and Run.’ Texas. Facts Is. Taxes. They’re geniuses,” he said.

  She began moving back and forth across his body, brushing over him, leaning close enough to feel the hairs on his skin but not touching his skin. She could hear his breath in her ear and the places it caught. When she finally did touch his skin and slid onto him everything was fine. The song ended but no DJ came on.

  “I thought it was the radio,” she said.

  “He’s a true fan.”

  “If it’s Greatest Hits, ‘Rock’n Me’ is next and he’s a poser.”

  “No,” said Essex, “because ‘Take the Money and Run’ and ‘Rock’n Me’ appear back to back on both Fly Like an Eagle and Greatest Hits.”

  She sat up, drawing her knees in to press against his ribs.

  “Damn. I had no idea you were such a fan.”

  It was a little too cool, a little cutting. Essex cocked his head and looked at her in a way she wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

  “I’ve had a lot of experiences, thoughts, ideas you don’t know a thing about,” he said. “Try asking.”

  He said it plain. She didn’t think it was a jab but wasn’t sure. There had been several points over the past few days where what he said made her wonder how much he might have changed. He gave her a half smile and she relaxed, but that smile, too, was an unfamiliar expression. It occurred to her that wh
at he said was true. She didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

  He began to sing: “I ain’t superstitious and I don’t get suspicious ’cause my woman is a friend of mine…”

  “If you keep singing I’m going to stop fucking you.”

  When “Rock’n Me” ended, she was getting really close to coming and not thinking about the music at all. Her body was shivering in waves but then Essex stopped.

  “Okay. You’re right,” he said. “It is Greatest Hits. He’s a total poser fan.”

  She sat bolt upright and slapped him. “You’re such an asshole! Oh fuck, I’m so sorry,” she put her hands over her mouth, “I hit you. I’m really sorry.”

  Red spread across the inflamed left side of his face.

  “It’s all right. Just don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t. I’m so sorry.”

  She could feel him soften a little inside her.

  “Do you want to keep going?” she asked.

  “Hell yeah.”

  “People don’t say hell yeah.”

  “Don’t tell me what people say.”

  They were moving again and he was getting harder. He started to sing again: “Don’t get suspicious, now baby don’t be suspicious, ’cause you know you are a friend of mine.”

  “Stop!” she said. “If I start laughing you are definitely not hanging out inside of me.”

  It was a side of her he didn’t know. She leaned down and kissed him. It was the first long kiss they’d had since he was a teenager and his whole body came alive. Hers too.

  “You get on top,” she said.

  “Okay, but I want you to touch yourself.”

  “No problem.”

  A few minutes later he came and then she came, laughing so hard that everything around them shattered into little pieces. The rest of the evening was a world inside a world. Their tenuousness was replaced by a new language with stretches of silence almost like labor, stretches of intensity. Going all the way there, not going all the way there, singing because he couldn’t seem to help himself, and a softer less rage-filled slap, because she couldn’t either.

  What a fucking show is chemistry.

  * * *

  —

  After dozing for a few minutes, Essex rolled over in the bed. Cheyenne stood up and turned on the overhead light. His eyes followed her around the room.

  “Stop looking at me,” she said.

  “Can’t I look at my wife?”

  She froze.

  “It’s a joke. I know it’s not a real marriage.”

  “But it’s not really a joke, is it?”

  The anger passed and she just looked tired.

  “I don’t expect anything from you.”

  She laughed.

  “I don’t. I’m not a kid. I know we have a complex relationship.”

  “Yeah, we got married and spent the whole afternoon having sex. I can’t imagine how you got confused.”

  Essex’s phone rang and he answered it while she got dressed.

  It was Kirsten. As she talked he felt like his organs were turning to lead.

  “Put Cheyenne on,” Kirsten said and he handed the phone over.

  While Cheyenne listened, he made sure to stay a few feet away. He wanted to be close enough for her to know he was there for her, but he was no longer clear what he was to her so he didn’t know how close or where to stand. Unable to locate who he was to her now—brother, friend, lover—he hovered between all points, hulking, awkward, in the way. When she crossed the room to the bed, he moved quickly aside to give her space. When she sat down by the end table, he sat on the corner of the bed. Cheyenne hung up and threw the phone with full force at the dresser beneath the TV, where it exploded into parts on the carpet.

  “I fucking hate men. I fucking hate them!” She looked at Essex. “I’m sorry but I do,” she said.

  “It’s okay, it’s understandable. Tell me what you need.”

  “I need this not to have fucking happened!” she yelled.

  She snatched up her denim wedding dress and put it on.

  Cheyenne picked phone parts off the carpet by the TV and handed him the pieces. The part of her that could cry about this felt dead. She wanted to kill something she couldn’t reach.

  * * *

  —

  They drove to the monastery to tell Justine she was leaving. Essex waited in the car while she walked through the swamp so out of her body it seemed like she was playing a part in a movie; the brush and the trees, the patches of streaming sunlight, a cinematographer gone mad, and she, a small thing moving through. She saw Justine on the dock and the sense of distance broke. Her similarity to Livy overwhelmed Cheyenne and she lost it. Crying and breathless she heaved out the words. Justine put her arm around her. She tucked Cheyenne’s hair behind her ear.

  “It’s not a crisis,” she said, “it happens.”

  “I have to go.”

  “You’ll do more for your sister by staying and doing your silent retreat.”

  Cheyenne drew back.

  “Ask yourself,” Justine said, “who does it really comfort to show up unasked?”

  Cheyenne’s mind went blank for a second. She looked at the older woman then she shook her head and went to get her things. There was no way she was going to sit in a swamp until she knew what was happening with her sister.

  When she got back to the car Essex had finished taping his phone back together and Cheyenne called the airlines about tickets to Alaska while he drove. In Jacksonville they stopped at the bank and Essex put her name on his account. They got her a phone, added her to his plan. More documents for the military. Signatures. Outside official conversations, he made sure not to say the words marriage or wife.

  At the airport he gave her sixty dollars. “Sorry it isn’t more. They’ll deposit my paycheck Friday. Once that goes through, you’ll have enough for the return ticket.”

  Cheyenne looked past Essex. “I should have told her Livy was her daughter.”

  * * *

  —

  Kirsten had given Cheyenne Sarah’s name and phone number. Outside of showing up, there was no plan. Justine was right. Livy would see this as an invasion. She shouldn’t have come.

  At the Juneau airport, she called Sarah and that’s when she found out Livy was gone.

  “She left this morning. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anyone to show up in person.”

  “How did she leave?”

  “She got a job on a tall ship.”

  “Like one of those Disney pirate rides?”

  “They’re not really like that,” said Sarah.

  “I don’t care what they’re like. Where was it going?”

  “Seattle by the end of the month then farther south. I assume Livy’s getting off there but I don’t really know.”

  “Does she have a phone?” Cheyenne asked.

  “She left the one I got her on the counter.”

  Cheyenne looked at the grim channel and its fogbanks.

  “You’re going to have to put me up for a couple of days,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Cheyenne was standing on the curb when a radically freckled woman with a feral spray of orange hair arrived at the Juneau airport in a white mid-’90s Subaru. On the ride, Cheyenne tried to find out more but couldn’t.

  “Some women aren’t forthcoming,” said Sarah.

  “How did she look?”

  “She didn’t have any bruises. She was mostly worried about getting pregnant. That’s why she came. If she’d been able to get the pill herself, I don’t think she would have come.”

  Sarah pointed at a road that turned off into the woods.

  “Have you ever seen a glacier? We have one.”

  Cheyenne noticed the chain
around Sarah’s neck with the beads at the collarbone.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Your sister gave it to me.”

  Sarah fingered the captain’s wheel pendant.

  “Livy doesn’t give women jewelry.”

  “I think she may have stolen it.”

  “She doesn’t steal.”

  * * *

  —

  Sarah made tuna fish sandwiches for dinner and talked about Livy. Everything she said seemed to circle back to that point of reference, Livy. She was infatuated. Through the course of conversation, Cheyenne saw something else. Livy told Sarah things she didn’t tell people. Little things, things no one else would have considered private. Each story, a shiny object tucked into a nest. The more she heard from Sarah, the more certain she was. It was also clear to her that Sarah had no idea.

  Speaking to Kirsten that night Cheyenne told her, Livy’s in love.

  “In love?”

  “She’s stealing jewelry to give it to her.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Kirsten.

  Cheyenne paused. “What should I do? Should I come home and wait for her?”

  Kirsten looked at the cans of Ensure on her counter and the stack of printed-out Internet research on heavy metal toxins.

  “No. Don’t. Take care of yourself. It’s probably best you do what you’re doing. I’ll let you know if you need to come back.”

  * * *

  —

  It took two days for the money to appear in Essex’s account—the account that they now shared. Once Cheyenne bought her ticket back to North Carolina, Sarah became agitated. She kept shuffling things around the apartment.

  “I was going to San Francisco. To meet up with the ship.”

  Cheyenne felt like she was missing something.

  “The ship that Livy is on,” said Sarah, “I was supposed to meet them in San Francisco.”

  Sarah picked up a cheap lamp off a bookshelf and wiped away the dust that had gathered around its base so that there was no longer a circle but a swipe where her palm had been.

  “Now they’re not stopping in San Francisco, so I have to meet them in Seattle.”