The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  Sarah came up behind her. “It reminds me of those PRAJNA rigs,” she said.

  Livy didn’t take the bait.

  “They have meetings in Panama they don’t want anyone to know about,” said Sarah.

  “Everyone has meetings somewhere.”

  Livy turned away from the rail. But in her mind, she saw Cyril. Standing at an Olympian meeting of the gods in a skylit corporation penthouse spaceship of transnational capital throwing out envelopes like golden apples, setting things in motion. She remembered her father’s face in the lighthouse. Scared at his own wedding.

  “If you ask me a question I’ll answer it,” said Sarah.

  “I don’t have any questions,” said Livy.

  She could feel Sarah tense up.

  “It’s probably for the best,” said Sarah.

  Livy’s watch was called to muster and Sarah went below.

  * * *

  —

  Farther down the coast, Livy snapped a photo of a sandy beach and sage-green hills and sent it to Kirsten. I’ll call when we get to Panama.

  I love you, baby, Kirsten wrote, don’t rush back.

  South of Baja, in the lamplight just before her dogwatch, Livy opened the chest of lines to be spliced or repaired. She couldn’t sleep so she’d come up early. It was quieter than it had been. The watch on deck was silent too, the Milky Way a spray overhead. She opened the tempered-glass panel of a small oil lantern and lit it. Outside of the red headlamps, it was the only light allowed at night because it didn’t blind sailors who need to be able to work in darkness. Reaching down through a nest of lines that needed new whippings, she felt for a small ball of waxed twine. Taking it out, she closed the lid of the chest and set the lamp back on top. She measured a length of twine from the base of her middle finger to her elbow and cut it with her rig knife.

  Moving the lantern closer, she leaned over the waxed twine, made a wall and crown, then pulled the strands apart to begin the sennit. She tested the length around her own neck a few times. When she reached the midpoint, she got out the pendant of Cheyenne’s and set it carefully on the chest. It was a circular dragon carved from a light celadon jade. Livy was sure it was old. Maybe a hundred years or more. At some point, this piece of jade, too, had crossed the ocean. Turning the pendant slightly to catch the lantern light, it occurred to her that it might have been made under a lamp not so different from hers. Lit with whale oil instead of petroleum.

  She wove the thin waxy strands in and out of the dragon until it was fully bound into a sailor’s twine and continued the sennit to the end. She would send it from Puerto de Balboa. She would call Kirsten. She missed her mother’s voice.

  All the way to Panama, Livy tried not to think about her coming separation from Sarah. Sarah’s devotion to the cause, whatever that cause was, was complete. Just like Livy’s devotion to autonomy. Sarah would not stop. And Livy would not follow. Especially not for some kind of stunt, which would change nothing. In an effort to repair the fissure created by her lack of political interest, she asked Sarah what was going to happen in Panama, but Sarah was vague.

  “I know you don’t care about these things,” said Sarah.

  63 Hotel Titanium

  ON THE TAXI RIDE from Bolivia to Camp Lejeune, Cheyenne tried to call Essex but he didn’t answer and hadn’t set up his voice-mail box. She felt a wave of fear. She’d been a bad friend. She’d done it all wrong. Now something had happened and it was her fault because she was lost in a fantasy jungle with a madwoman when she should have been answering her damn phone.

  “Fuck!” she said aloud.

  She met the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview and looked away, embarrassed. She didn’t need to come off as more aggressive than she was, especially if Essex’s debit card didn’t work and she had to play demure.

  Then she remembered that Essex had given her a piece of paper with a list of resources on it for spouses. She tore through her backpack, then emptied her wallet into her lap. Dimes, pennies, her wedding ring—all rolled onto the seat or the floor or into the crevice between her thighs. Jammed in a pocket with a receipt from Alaska, she found the list. At the top, in Essex’s best block letters, was the number for the family readiness officer. She called but no one answered. She hit Redial. She didn’t care. She could hit Redial for the whole seventy-mile taxi ride. Or until her phone died again, whichever came first. Because she had fucked everything up. She hated being wrong just as much as Livy, but she’d always been able to avoid it by retroactively changing her intentions to match the outcome. It worked. Or had. What was she supposed to say now? At some point, you just see yourself coming. She wasn’t all that different from Justine. Ambition. Crocodile tears.

  * * *

  —

  Giving up on the family readiness officer, she began to work down the list of numbers and finally got someone who directed her to the judge advocate’s office, which connected her to the JA assigned to Essex’s case.

  “I’m calling because my,” she started to say brother, “my husband might have shot someone.”

  The cabbie’s eyes met hers in the mirror again.

  “He was involved in an incident of negligent discharge,” said the JA.

  “Who got shot?”

  “Another soldier.”

  “Essex shot another soldier?” She couldn’t believe it.

  “No, the other soldier shot himself.”

  “So why is Essex in trouble?”

  “Negligent discharge is a serious offense. Firearms were also taken off the base. Civilian and military courts are investigating.”

  “Is the other soldier dead?”

  “He’s alive but in the ICU. Theft of arms, that’s the biggest danger to your husband. Or would be.”

  “Why would be?”

  “He keeps talking about how he left the safety off and wondering aloud if he meant to shoot the guy.”

  “Can’t you just tell him to shut up?”

  “That doesn’t seem to be working, ma’am,” said the JA.

  This, Cheyenne could easily imagine.

  * * *

  —

  The debit card did work. She paid the taxi driver and checked into the Inns of the Corps late that afternoon. The lobby was full of marine families between housing. A soldier missing his legs carried a large duffel to the elevator, followed by a teenage boy. Looking around the lobby, the dining area filling with families coming down to dinner, she saw a new truth about herself. She had avoided contact. She had never known anyone in the service. She hadn’t even known anyone who seemed to know anyone in the service. Now that she did, they all looked unique. Less like symbols. More like the people you would see in line at a movie, each different from the other.

  She saw the marine who’d lost his legs emerge from the elevator. Had he really signed on for what he got? She thought of Essex. They either had all the choice in the world or none. She couldn’t tell.

  Unlocking her room with the plastic key card, she looked at the white bulbous lamps, the hospital corners on the sheets, and the mini fridge.

  She called Kirsten to tell her about the conversation with the judge advocate but didn’t get into anything else. They hadn’t talked since she got back to North Carolina. Everything that happened in the swamp, the horrifying reflections of self, Justine’s cavalier words, their revelations and what it all might mean—she couldn’t say what she needed to say into a piece of plastic.

  “I keep trying to text Livy,” said Cheyenne.

  “I don’t think she has a phone.”

  “She really left you no way to reach her?”

  “None at all. She wouldn’t have good reception at sea even if she did,” said Kirsten.

  “She doesn’t have good reception in general.”

  Kirsten laughed, then the line was silent.

  “Did you fin
d out what you wanted to know from Justine?” Kirsten said after a moment.

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

  “It can wait.”

  “They say I can talk to Essex tomorrow.”

  “It’s good you got married.”

  Shame burned Cheyenne’s throat. “There should be a better way to get dental work,” she said.

  “Why did you say yes?”

  Cheyenne was no longer sure she knew.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a few seconds. “He was so proud to have something to give us. Livy wouldn’t take him up on it.”

  “He never asked Livy,” said Kirsten.

  “He did. She told him it would ruin her gay card.”

  “No, they hadn’t talked in months. I asked. You know your sister. She would marry him for a better interest rate on a toaster.”

  Cheyenne’s throat tightened. It was just another thing she’d been wrong about.

  “Well that’s a goddamned shame,” she said, clearing her throat.

  * * *

  —

  Taking off her clothes in the middle of the room, Cheyenne examined her body. She hadn’t had a shower for days, which didn’t matter alone in a yurt but did here. Her feet were filthy. She walked into the bathroom. There was a layer of dirt on her neck that she must have routinely missed with her washcloth. Rough, salty streaks ran over her cheeks. Her face had changed. She saw her sister. She saw Justine. She saw her own sharp green, brown, gold eyes—not far from the desert camouflage soldiers wore. She went to the mini fridge and got out a can of beer and some mixed nuts. She turned on the TV and scrolled through the pay-per-view options. They were not in the desert. She was not in the jungle of Bolivia. Everyone in this hotel was stranded on white sheets in the sterile florescence unable to hide from anything. She drank the can of beer. She ate the nuts. She chose a movie.

  Her job was to wait.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning she was told she would be allowed to see Essex. She wore the denim halter dress from their wedding, a private joke to remind him of their friendship. Putting it on, she felt closer to him.

  She met the judge advocate and he took her to a room with an MP in the corner. Essex sat at a table inside. Seeing her, he jumped up. She thought he was going to salute.

  He turned to the MP. “Can I touch her?”

  The strangeness of permission cast a spell over everything.

  The JA left and the MP stepped into the hallway. Cheyenne sat down. She waited for him to say something. Airless and dense inside a vacuum, she scratched her head and it seemed the sound filled the room; a small creak from a shift in his weight on the chair, a limb cracking from a tree, she started to say something but he reached over the table and grabbed her hand, pressed it between his and let it go. His face was changed. He looked at her like an astronaut returned to earth. Only half back.

  She looked at the MP through the wire-mesh window.

  “How bad is it?” she said.

  Essex shifted and looked away, pale.

  She closed her eyes. “I wish you never enlisted.”

  “I don’t. I like being a marine. In the regular world, there’s a veil between choices and consequences. A chain of events shaped like people, and you tell yourself it’s okay because you meant well. Come on. Tell me you haven’t said that about me a million times.”

  “You do mean well.”

  “I want to be someone people can count on, not like my mom or dad.” He grabbed her hand again. “You can count on me, can’t you? Say you can count on me.”

  “In your way.”

  She thought of him lashing Jackson’s bed to the Supervan and burning his cab-driving job so she could go to the monastery.

  “I might go to jail. They might kick me out.”

  “Why? I don’t understand. You didn’t shoot him. He did it to himself. So you took guns off the base. So what?”

  The JA entered. Their time was up.

  * * *

  —

  Returning to her hotel room, she slipped off her shoes and sat on the bed with her back against the headboard and knees pulled up to her chest. She began digging her heels into the mattress and pushing her back against the plywood headboard. Tensing every muscle, she strained like she was trying to move a cart out of the mud. But the headboard was flush to the wall so it didn’t matter how hard she pressed because it wasn’t going anywhere and neither was she. Giving up, she let the tension flow out of her body.

  She was finally a blank. She was sure she would never sleep with Essex. She was sure she would never speak to him again if he became a marine. She’d known for sure she would be with Jackson forever and that Justine would be a great teacher. She thought Kirsten always knew exactly which girl came out of her body and lied about it out of a desire for control.

  That one, at least, was a mystery she could solve.

  She knew the name of Margaret’s practice and called. She told the receptionist it was an emergency and had her forward the call to Margaret’s cell.

  Margaret was on a walk with a friend when she picked up the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Is it true Justine had twins? Are Livy and I real sisters? Just tell me the truth because everything is a mess.”

  Margaret excused herself from her friend, stepping back for privacy.

  “Kirsten wanted—”

  “Does Kirsten know? Just tell me,” said Cheyenne.

  “Not at first.”

  Cheyenne felt light-headed. She didn’t realize until that moment how much she wanted Justine to be a liar.

  “When did she know? When we were kids? How could she not have known?”

  “Honey,” said Margaret. “Honey, I need you to listen to me. Kirsten has stomach cancer. It is moving very fast. Get on the first plane you can.”

  Cheyenne couldn’t feel her arms. Her heart pulsed in her ears.

  “Did you hear what I said? You need to come now.”

  “Yes, yes, I will. Yes.”

  Cheyenne hung up on the nurse and tried Livy’s number again even though she knew it didn’t work. She called the JA. Essex has to come home. The woman who raised him is dying. But the JA said it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Who are you to say no?” she yelled. “If he was some senator’s son I bet he’d be on a plane now.”

  She hung up on the JA, too, and grabbed every piece of paperwork anyone had handed her in the last two days. She threw the pages on the bed and started to hunt through them. Everything with a name or a phone number on it, she pulled. She called the family readiness officer, who had no idea what to say to her. She called the department responsible for sending out casualty assistance officers, who said it wasn’t their issue. She spoke with a secretary to a liaison in an office a few links up the chain from wherever they were. She tried to explain that Essex was not going to run: He’s got this fucked-up sense of honor and I do mean fucked up, and he wants to be with you guys even though I have no idea why but he’s like that, he shows up, whether you want him to or not. The man on the phone told her he was sorry and had nothing to offer her. She called more phone numbers. One was in Europe and had no relationship to anything because Essex had not deployed. When she got down the list, she started over. She left messages, shouting more than talking, pleading, starting in the middle of the story. Please, please, please. His biological mom never did anything for him. She’s useless, worthless. She shouldn’t even be allowed to have her name on his paperwork. She shouldn’t get to say she has a son at all. It’s my mom! My mom. It was my mom who raised him.

  64 The Bridge of the Americas

  ENTERING PANAMA BAY, Livy could feel the clock ticking down. A port authority vessel came alongside to pilot the tall ship toward the mouth of
the Great Canal. Though the canal was already wide, the time-based economy of international shipping required ever more access so new construction was under way. An episiotomy to maximize efficiency, broader means of entry to satisfy growing demand. Soon, no one would ever have to wait at the mouth of the canal. Whole fleets could pass unhindered. Cruise ships, uncountable.

  The Bridge of the Americas was ahead. As they passed beneath it, Livy looked up. Who cuts continents apart? Yes, this was the Realm of the Sky God. The Great Father spanned the Canal Zone, that awesome and liberal specter, that friend to Tibetans (as Teddy Roosevelt was to bears), governor of the colonies—Hey, Sky Dad, tell me again. Which Indians forgot to be grateful? Cyril had been in her dreams.

  Not as much a man as a symbol of so much else, and Livy hated symbols. She hated the way they pacified, not bears but teddy bears, not Tibetans but Tibet, not daughters but a man’s wild youth. Cyril and the child bride, Singapore, Panama—the scope of the imagination that cuts continents in half? She was nothing, nothing in their eyes. Gutted veins of copper. Shrimp strained from the sandy floor. A bravura of birds, a gossip of flames. The ditchdiggers unlading ships by the wharves—only a story to tell your kids when they’re born, the little Manchurians.

  Past the Bridge of the Americas she saw docks and the cranes of the port. Ordered and geometric, right angles and triangles of steel like a hangman’s scaffold over the rectangular containers stacked on the ships and on the shore. The Neva sailed past, through water the color of Spanish olives, between mountains, emerald and eroded, until they reached a less populated part of the port where they could dock.