The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  “It’s not her fault,” Kirsten said, once Margaret was out of earshot. “When it comes to my body, it’s my choice. She taught me that. Remember it. She only does what I ask. Even against her own opinions and wishes. Always has. Always will.”

  With no sound in the room, they could hear Margaret on the phone. The tone of her words as firm as concrete, the meaning, firing, wiring together, plastic.

  Kirsten pointed to the shadow through the blinds. “I was fifteen when I met her. The eighties. A terrible time. Shoulder pads and nuclear war, wall of bangs—I was so alone. Margaret showed me how my mind had been shaped. She was the very first person to say the word cunt to my face. Not like a slam, like a calling. All liberation begins and ends with the body, she said. She could trace any political issue, no matter how abstract, right back to the body.”

  “I know she means well, I just think that we need better advice,” said Cheyenne.

  Kirsten ignored her. She brushed at something invisible on the arm of her chair. “There were all these other women she knew back East,” she said, “living in funky houses and abandoned churches. She told me about this farm in the South that had the best midwives in the world. Totally radical. They didn’t listen to what anyone said if it wasn’t smart and those were the women who taught her. I didn’t see it. I really didn’t. How young she was then.” She turned to Essex, who instinctively sat up straighter. “I didn’t see it. I believed what she said about the world. I was like some little kid listening to her grandmother. I really thought that I was going to run off to all these places, meet all these women, and it was going to be some mystical experience. I didn’t know.” She turned to Cheyenne. “I didn’t know it was already gone. All those collectives, all those little colonies, gone. Most anyway. It was awful, awful, when I realized it.”

  Kirsten turned back to Margaret’s silhouette on the landing.

  “It was like being told there’s something great and important and beautiful but, hey, you missed it. Sorry. It was such a sucker punch. I stopped going to see her. We had it out one night about a year before you two were born. I told her she’d made my life worse. You know what she said? Sorry you didn’t get a torch, honey. You got a candle just like I did. I thought she was telling me to suck it up and be grateful so I told her to fuck off and walked out.”

  Cheyenne laughed.

  “I didn’t get it for years,” said Kirsten. “You got a candle just like I did. Her words, exactly.”

  Outside Margaret finished her call and came back in.

  “Do you want some fresh tea?” Essex asked.

  “No,” said Kirsten.

  “Are you warm?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything that you can eat?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  Margaret studied Kirsten. “You need rest,” she said. “Can you two give her a couple of hours?”

  “Of course,” said Cheyenne.

  She bent over her mother’s head and touched her dull hair. It was breaking off and thinning at the crown. Cheyenne kissed the line of gray skin where the hair parted, then went outside. Essex stayed only a moment then joined her, pulling the door shut carefully behind him.

  Cheyenne started to say something but he took her hand, leading her off. They were near the stairwell when she pulled away and ran back to put her arms around her mother, encircling her, to hold her like a glass flower, hold her like a fragile painted Ukrainian egg—“I love you,” she said. Releasing her, Cheyenne started to step back but Kirsten clutched her upper arms, digging into her muscles, pulling her back in. She reached for her daughter’s head and brought it down to her lips. She kissed her daughter’s temple. Holding her head in both hands, she turned her head and whispered into her ear, “I wanted to give you torches.”

  68 The Hostel

  IN THE MORNING, Livy felt Sarah’s body against her. They were on the bottom bunk of a hostel bed, their skin stuck together in the heat. Sarah’s strong heartbeat, pulsing her body, lightly rocking Livy. When Livy moved, the world spun so she stayed still.

  A few minutes later, Sarah woke up.

  “I don’t remember how we got here,” Livy said.

  “You were singing in the bar so we had to leave.”

  “I don’t remember singing.”

  “It was some Cajun song about a guy who has three days to live and offers to trade two to spend one with the girl he loves. It was very romantic.”

  “I don’t know any song like that.”

  “You were also yelling.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “I know how to echolocate patriarchy.”

  Livy laughed. “I wasn’t that drunk.”

  Although she did sort of remember shouting in the business district about Sir Walter Raleigh and an invisible fortress made of code and electronic fund transfers.

  “Did the cops come?” Livy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m usually good when the cops come.”

  “You pushed one,” said Sarah.

  “I pushed a cop?”

  Sarah gave a short laugh. “You told him you sprang in full battle gear from the brow of your mother.”

  “I’ve been missing my mom,” said Livy. “I can’t explain it.”

  “She’s fine. If anything happens, Cheyenne will call. Kirsten has the number so Cheyenne has it too. She would let you know if something was wrong.”

  Livy raised herself onto one elbow and looked around. They were in a blue room with two other bunk beds, empty and stripped. Light came from a long window.

  “All that stuff we talked about last night,” said Sarah, “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “I need to get up,” said Livy.

  Sarah moved aside. Livy sat on the edge of the bed. Her stomach turned over but she didn’t throw up so she stood slowly, steadying herself on the upper bunk. Sarah got up behind her and came around.

  “I want to try to do it, what we were talking about last night. Don’t you want to change any of this?” Sarah gestured at the world in general.

  Livy watched the sun find strands of gold in Sarah’s red hair. She smelled coffee from the next room and heard children shouting in Spanish.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t want to change any of it. I love this.”

  Sarah put her forehead on Livy’s and her arms over her shoulders. Livy felt the room spinning slightly. She looked at Sarah’s cracked hands, her cracked lips, the fine peach hair on her arms. She felt her warm breath on her skin.

  “I won’t do it for politics,” said Livy. “I’ll do it for you.”

  69 The Eighteenth Century

  COMING BACK UP THE STEPS to Kirsten’s apartment with a new blender under one arm, the other wrapped tightly around the waist of a paper grocery bag full of cruciferous greens, Cheyenne felt better about the future. No matter how bad it got, no matter how fast or slow it went, she was here. Essex followed, less assured.

  An early-afternoon break in the clouds dappled the landing. They passed through streams of white sun, into the spotlight, out of it and offstage in the bright gray over and over until they reached the door. Stepping into the apartment, they were plunged into total darkness. Spheres of brown and amber appeared around candles, blue-lit faces, pale yellow tables, counters, mail, and a vase of flowers. They had walked into an eighteenth-century painting.

  The woman coming toward her in the haze was Alice, a co-founder of the coven.

  “Let your eyes adjust,” she said.

  Cheyenne blinked and saw several other coven members. The room wasn’t dark. It was only the contrast. The women had pulled the shades for some sort of hippie ritual. She felt a flash of annoyance. They meant well. She lowered the blender to the floor just as Alice enfolded her in her arms.

  “Look at you,” she said. She kiss
ed her forehead. “I’m sorry this is happening, baby.”

  “I need to put the groceries down,” said Cheyenne. Crossing to the counter she gave the other women a nod. “Is she lying down?”

  Two of the women exchanged glances.

  Cheyenne took the kale and dandelion greens out of the bag and set them on the counter.

  “Can someone please turn on the lights?” said Cheyenne.

  No one moved.

  Cheyenne, frustrated, came around the counter island and stalked down the hall to the bedroom door, but Essex got there first.

  “Let’s just go slow,” he said.

  She could see Kirsten behind him. The lights were out but a thick aromatherapy candle burned next to the bed. She was lying down. Margaret stood in the corner. The air smelled like oranges but also something sour and metallic Cheyenne couldn’t place. Essex moved aside so she could see. She could feel others gathering behind her.

  Kirsten still lay under an electric blanket she’d had for years. Her hair was braided into thin black twine, ending in the finest of paintbrush tips at her breast. Her eyes were closed. Cheyenne had never seen her mother’s face that color. Not ashen like nausea, not flushed like when she had the flu, but an entirely new color made of other colors, unmixed, unnameable. Violet hues, tinted complex grays, a wash of indigo tempered with gunmetal and slate. A trace of white like the weathered, dingy fur of an old wolf, barely visible in the purpling skin, highlighting the brow bones, the crest of the cheek, the chin: This is what she saw.

  Cheyenne stepped into the room.

  Cheyenne reached over to a switch on the wall and flipped on the overheads. Sallow light from the compact fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling fixture spared nothing. The dresser was not an altar with tea lights and flowers, it was a particleboard box with two drawers and a scarf thrown over it. Her mother’s skin was not all the rainbow colors of titanium but a flat purple-gray. Stains on the carpet from previous tenants covered the floor. Lampshades pilled with dust.

  Essex turned off the lights.

  “I think this may be how she wanted it,” he said.

  The candle, senseless, danced.

  “But I’m back,” said Cheyenne. “I said I’d be here and I am.”

  She heard one of the women behind her start to cry. A wave of fear then a quick shock of rage went through her. Cheyenne took a few steps into the room. She stopped. There was a noise. She listened. Soft crashing waves looped quietly nearby. She looked around for the source and saw a phone facedown on the floor by the dresser. Margaret motioned for her to come closer. Still in the corner, half in shadow, her face was unreadable. Cheyenne walked around to where Kirsten was. The bed had no frame. Even with a box spring it barely came up to the lower part of Cheyenne’s thighs. She looked down at the body of her mother.

  “But I’m here.”

  She sounded like a child even to herself.

  Raising her gaze, she saw Essex on the other side of the bed with his eyes full of tears. Dreamlike. So unlike any dream. She got on her knees and examined her mother’s face. All those features she had mistaken for Livy’s, or for hers, they belonged to Kirsten alone. Sovereign all along.

  Cheyenne ran her fingers lightly across the pads of her thumbs to feel herself and could not. She reached out to the body slowly, moving through space, a little girl waking her mother from a nap, she touched Kirsten’s neck and recoiled.

  “My god she’s still warm. Call 911.”

  “It’s the blanket,” said Margaret.

  Cheyenne got up quickly and Margaret put out her hand.

  “Honey,” she said, “it’s the blanket. It’s still on.”

  Essex found the cord and switched it off.

  “Did you do this?” Cheyenne asked.

  Margaret’s hand was now on her forearm.

  “Did you do this?”

  “This is what she asked me to do,” she said.

  “She wouldn’t do that.” Cheyenne’s voice was sharp and raised. “Did you do this?” she demanded.

  Essex looked at Margaret. “Was she in a lot of pain?”

  Margaret nodded.

  “Get out,” Cheyenne said.

  Margaret gave a short sob and caught her breath.

  “Get out!” Cheyenne screamed.

  The candle by the bed flickered.

  I came back. I came back. I said I would and I did. I’m here.

  When Essex returned, the candle beside the bed was guttering. He asked one of the members of the coven to bring another from the living room and she came back with two. One, she put on the altar, the second she handed to Essex. Essex came around beside Cheyenne. She had entwined her fingers in her mother’s hair and laid her face on the bed by her hip.

  He set the candle down and went to blow the other out.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Cheyenne. She raised her head. One cheek, pink from the draining heat of the blanket. “Don’t you dare.”

  Kirsten had lit the candle with her own hands. It still burned. She was still here.

  70 The Letter

  I HAVE MADE A DECISION you probably won’t understand. I try and explain it but every way I think to say it only says something else. In all honesty, I’m not sure the place I’m going even exists. If it does, I have no idea what happens when I get there.

  Know that I truly believe I will see you again.

  These past few days I’ve felt like a stranger in my own body. I want to control what I can’t control. I wake up and recognize nothing. Have you ever been so in love that everything you ever said about yourself before sounded like a lie? The best part of me decided to do this.

  * * *

  —

  Livy sealed the letter to her mom belowdecks under the red light of her head lamp. They were within hours of sailing for the PRAJNA well. Livy thought of Raleigh and El Dorado, Cyril and Singapore. Maybe the ocean is the bardo and everywhere you land is karma. The one thing her mother and Cyril shared was a belief in the ultimate morality of cause and effect. Livy had no such conviction. She addressed the envelope and went above.

  Marne had dealt with the captain. Livy had called for a pilot boat, and now they were escorted back under the Bridge of the Americas and into the bay.

  In the shade of an island they performed the queen of all shoddy jobs. They brought down the cro’jack and rigged some blocks on one of the mizzen yardarms, which took some serious lashing and carpentry. It was the beginning of a job in which every corner was cut.

  As they finished over the next two days and looked around, they tried not to think too much about what they saw. It probably wouldn’t hold in anything more than a five-foot chop, but it might get them out of the bay. As long as no one got too close. If they did, they would see the paint over the stripe dripping down the side of the ship like tears through mascara and the Frankenstein-stitched sails. But distance was not their only protection; if no one sued or filed an insurance claim, it mattered to no one what happened to them. Drown. Break to pieces on the rocks. Wash ashore on whatever beach the tide sends you to. Their greatest invisibility lay in their own insignificance.

  71 Vigil

  THE POLICE HAD BEEN CALLED. They spoke to Essex and Margaret in the living room. Cheyenne heard voices but no words. They wanted to see the body. They needed more light. Cheyenne stood. Margaret didn’t have the right paperwork to prove she had acted on Kirsten’s behalf. The coroner was coming. The police would wait. They turned out the lights. Everyone left the room but Margaret.

  Cheyenne was on the floor with her back up against the bed. Her knees drawn in, arms folded on top, she rested her forehead so all she could see was the dark well of her own body. The blanket was cold. Kirsten was cold. Margaret sat down on the corner of the bed.

  Margaret took a breath. “I’m going to say this to you now and you can hear it later
. Your mother had all sorts of ideas I didn’t agree with. She made a million decisions I’ll never understand but I have never known anyone who knew herself so completely.” Margaret cleared her throat.

  Cheyenne raised her head. She craned her neck back and ran her fingers through her hair but kept her eyes closed.

  “Your mother was her crazy sense of entitlement. She never let the world off the hook but she also understood that life owes us nothing. She was entirely without self-pity.”

  Margaret waited but Cheyenne had no reaction.

  “What I’m trying to say is that she wasn’t happy about the cancer but she didn’t feel wronged by it. She was okay with how she was. She was okay with how her life went.”

  Swallowing, Margaret took a breath. “Which one of you has the big freckle on your foot?” asked Margaret.

  Cheyenne opened her eyes and took in the room anew. “Livy.” Her larynx was so tight it ached.

  “You were born first. That makes you the older sister.”

  Cheyenne got off the floor and found a half-moon spot on the edge of the bed, the weight of her mother’s body still anchoring the sheets. She placed her hand on her mother’s abdomen.

  Someone knocked on the front door. Voices in the living room got louder. Something hit the doorframe on its way in. She moved her hand to her mother’s collarbone. In the periphery, Cheyenne saw Essex in the doorway. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there.

  “She was okay with how she was,” said Margaret.

  “You said that already,” said Cheyenne.

  “It matters.”

  Margaret heard the noise of the gurney coming.

  “I’m going to say something else and you can save it for after all this. I’ve seen a lot of death. That’s not where people struggle. They struggle with how fast life comes back. Even when you don’t want it to. Life doesn’t have the decency to quit.”