The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

The gurney was in the hall.

  “The coroner is here,” said Essex.

  Margaret stepped back to give room for the gurney. The lights came on and they rolled it into the room. When Cheyenne understood what was happening, she jumped off the bed.

  “You can’t. Not now. Not yet. You need to leave.” She blocked the narrow passage between the corner of the bed and the dresser. She put her hands up and the young man who was wheeling the gurney around stopped.

  “We have to take her. There are laws about how long we can wait.”

  “Don’t touch her!”

  Essex talked to the police and because the law is twenty-four hours they agreed to come back in the morning.

  The coven brought more candles. Essex turned out the lights. They left Cheyenne alone with Kirsten, and Cheyenne returned to the body. Her mind cleared. It was as sharp and ventilated as it ever had been. She had the whole truth of it. How death was the most mundane thing of all. The cloying smell of the bergamot in the perfumed candles, the diminished pageant. Standing over the bed, she looked down at the body of her mother and wondered what she had fought for. What was she trying to save?

  Wearing only her underwear, she climbed into the vacant side of the bed. Under the sheets, bare skin against Kirsten’s nightgown, flickering breath, slow and skipping heart, her thoughts flowed back and forth, pouring into something totally normal then back out into the void. Kirsten was changing again. Her wrists and fingers were suppler, if only slightly. Margaret was right. It had no decency. She put her head next to her mother’s and twisted their hair together. One by one, as the women left, the apartment filled with the refrigerator hum of ancestors. Or maybe it was just the idea of ancestors vibrating through her, the subsonic frequency of all the things we come from that we cannot see.

  In the morning when they returned for the body, Cheyenne let the gurney pass. She was calm with the great absence all around her. Then when they slid the pillow out from beneath Kirsten’s head, she dove, wrapping herself around her mother’s legs. It’s a trick! she shrieked. A trick! They just want the body. They think they can do whatever they want to it. They think it’s theirs. They always have. They think they own it. They are insatiable.

  72 The Southern Cross

  AS THEY GOT UNDER WAY, leaving the islands behind, Livy watched the garish skyline of Panama City pass slowly in the distance. Had she been on shore, looking out at the sea, she would not have seen a ship at all; without running lights or lamps, the ship was only a small abyss on the horizon, a space without starlight.

  Marne came up beside her. She pointed. “That’s the Star of Magellan. It’s part of the crux of the Southern Cross. Have you ever seen it?”

  Livy shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything.”

  “It’s how we’ll be guiding soon. Between that star and the one there,” Marne drew a short line with her forefinger, “you can trace down to the south celestial pole.”

  Livy turned instinctively toward the direction they had come from. Polaris was low in the sky behind her. Soon it would sink beneath the horizon entirely. The North Star, gone.

  Everything you navigate by has to change.

  Ahead, the Southern Cross, its blue giants, red giants, hot white stars seen and unseen.

  Name those dear to you, count them as present, they are still here.

  A whale breached nearby. The white of its fluke flashed against the dark sea.

  “Humpback,” said Marne. “They navigate by geomagnetism. They can find a direct path over five thousand miles of open ocean and arrive exactly where they mean to.”

  “We should be so lucky,” said Livy. “Dead reckoning. That’s what we’ll have.”

  Marne smiled. “A sailor’s last recourse.”

  * * *

  —

  The low hum of the engine was only noticeable now that it was gone. Every slap of water against the wooden hull, every snap of a sheet, the slight whir as a properly coiled halyard line ran free was audible, these were sounds that ancient sailors knew. They sailed past lighthouses that stood like giant chess pieces along the shore. Great rooks, they presided, each painted differently, daymarks, they said: You are here! You are here! At night they warned, they worried over the rocks they knew: Look out! Look out! These shoals, these shores. Each, a unique signal not to be confused with any other in the world. This specificity had seemed merely practical to Livy, but now it seemed quite beautiful; the differences between things, between people—she had misjudged it. She had scoffed. With eight billion people, how much do differences matter? She saw her sister and her brother in the light of the Fresnel lens at Cyril’s wedding. Not to be confused with any others in the world. How could she have missed it? All the ways slight angles reveal an unseen facet, sending new light everywhere.

  The Neva turned to catch the trade winds that would take them out to the Great Offshore Grounds. Before leaving, Livy had collected everyone’s cell phones in a pillowcase. They couldn’t chance someone making a call and getting traced. Once fully past Panama City, she grabbed a hammer and went below. Desperation, the kind they needed to survive, couldn’t be faked. She sat on the sole with the pillowcase full of phones between her legs. Fishing out Sarah’s phone, she set it aside. The rest she smashed to dust.

  Picking up Sarah’s phone, she felt a strong urge to turn it on one last time and see if there was a voice mail from Kirsten. She wanted to call Cheyenne even though she knew the number she had was old. She wanted to e-mail Essex. Her mind ran to Sarah’s skin. How it felt on hers when they were stuck together by sweat in the hostel bed. Raising the hammer, there was absolutely no debate in her mind. She brought it down full force sending plastic and metal skittering in all directions. You shouldn’t have to choose. But if you have to, choose love.

  73 The Grief Channel

  CHEYENNE STUDIED the motel-room wall. She didn’t remember checking in. Essex shifted next to her in the bed.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked.

  “I didn’t sleep.”

  “I was hysterical. I made it worse.”

  “You’d been up for thirty-six hours. Everyone understood.”

  She rolled over, putting her head on his chest. She pressed her palm against his heart but his muscles tightened and he slid his thumb under her palm and removed it. He didn’t let it go, but with a forefinger, traced her lifeline down, while her hand closed around his.

  “You’re like one of those plants that curl up when you touch them,” he said.

  He put the butt of his palm against hers. She spread her fingers. Her fingers were shorter, but not by as much as she would have thought. She felt his calluses and didn’t know how he got them. Outside, the rush-hour sound of trucks and cars.

  * * *

  —

  She remembered his touch in the living room of the apartment after they took Kirsten’s body. The cops and coroner gone, she’d yelled at him. What am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do now? She remembered her hips against the kitchen table and his stomach against the small of her back. Crazed and anonymous. Nothing but the body. She remembered feeling so insanely alive. She made him start again when they were done. Afterward, standing in the hallway, she yelled once more. What am I supposed to do? As if he knew. She kissed his legs and put her cheek against them. Where had all that sorrow been before this? Then they were in a car. He was talking. She kept trying to touch him and he wouldn’t let her. He was driving. He kept pressing her back. In the motel room, he had not. When he was very close, the air was rain and sweat, not illness. She could smell it now. Her temple just under his clavicle. She went back to sleep.

  An hour later Essex drew the curtain of brown flame-retardant shades from one side of the large window to the other, letting the day in. She sat up in bed. He stood shirtless by the window looking out. They were on the ground floor. Across a shallow parking
lot was an arterial road.

  Essex bent his head, his shoulders caving slightly. With a flick of a gaze at her, he went back to looking out the window. Two homeless men argued at the bus shelter. Essex’s blue eyes followed them, the brightest thing in frame.

  “How long did I sleep?” she asked.

  “Maybe three hours.”

  “What happened?”

  “Like you said. You were hysterical. Not in a bad way.”

  “Hysterical in a good way.” She drew her knees tighter to her chest. “Was it okay what happened between us?” she said.

  The splash of daylight behind him blinded her and she couldn’t see his face.

  “I’m not totally sure. You were begging me to have sex with you. And it was also the only way you were going to go to sleep,” he said. “But how do you feel about it?”

  “I think it’s probably okay.”

  He sat back down on the bed and put his hand over her ankle. He took a manila package off the nightstand.

  “Move over.” He scooted his back against the headboard, taking up most of the bed. “This was in the mail at Kirsten’s.”

  Cheyenne took the small padded envelope. The postal stamp said Panama.

  Cheyenne just looked at it. Her sister had stranded her on the East Coast. She had not called her in all the months she’d been in Alaska. She had not called her when she came through Seattle. That she could forgive, but the idea that she had seen Kirsten and not warned Cheyenne was a gulf between them.

  “You shouldn’t be mad at her,” said Essex. “I found Kirsten’s phone and it had about a million texts and voice mails from Livy. She doesn’t know.”

  Cheyenne pulled the strip and bits of gray padding rained into her lap. A note fell out, taped on all sides so if you tried to open it with anything other than a knife or scissors, you’d tear it. “She did that on purpose,” said Cheyenne. She shook the envelope and a necklace fell out. The cord was delicately worked twine with a jade pendant knotted into it. “My dragon charm.” She touched the intricate knot work Livy had done. “I didn’t know she could do this.”

  “Let me see,” said Essex.

  She handed it over, picked up the note, and chewed a hole in one corner. She tore into it carefully but there was nothing inside but another note, also taped shut. She finally peeled the tape back enough to open the note, which had been folded into a compact square. It was one line written in her sister’s blocky hand: THANK YOU FOR JUNEAU.

  She showed Essex, who laughed. She could feel the tears rolling down and could taste them in her mouth. How many times a day can you cry?

  “Put it on me,” she said.

  Every time he touched the back of her neck trying to get it clasped, she flinched. She turned around, fingering the charm. She looked like a teenager. Nothing filtering out the world.

  “I leave in twelve hours,” he said. “And things are definitely going to get worse.”

  “Livy should be here.”

  “Are you coming with me? Now, next week, a month from now. I need to know.”

  She wanted to, or her body wanted to, but she couldn’t make herself say it.

  “I can’t help but feel that you and I are a case of jelly holding up jam,” she said, and touched the jade charm. “You should just go to Canada. Walk over the border and live off the grid.”

  He put his hand on her knee rocking it back and forth and gave her a half smile.

  “Want to walk over the border with me?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He took his hand off her knee.

  “There are a lot of ways I love you,” he said. “This isn’t one of them.”

  She got out of bed, put on her jeans, and gathered up the clothes she could find.

  “Your bra is in the corner,” he said.

  She walked to where he pointed. It was on the floor near the electrical socket under the table with the laminated Wi-Fi instructions and unplugged coffeemaker on it. One earring was on the wooden arm of the chair, the other glinted in the carpet. She put them on. Her socks were in her hand. Her shoes were by the door.

  He started to say something, then just shook his head.

  “Whatever you want to say to me, say it,” she said.

  “Margaret was right. Kirsten was okay with herself. It’s true and you know it. And no matter what you think—and you know I care way too much about what you think—I am also okay with myself. And I’m pretty damn sure Livy is okay with herself.”

  She felt heat on her face and neck.

  “I don’t even know what’s happening,” she said. “She just died and you’re asking me to commit to some kind of amorphous future.”

  “Anybody can make a decision between good options. Throw a dart, win a prize.”

  “I can’t be what you want. If I lied about it, I would make it worse.”

  He looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. But maybe it was only fatigue because none of this was new. He opened the door and the smell of diesel wafted in.

  “What happens now?” she said.

  “We go to the apartment to sort out what we can. Then I go back to Jacksonville.”

  The apartment was clean and dark. On the kitchen counter were three paper bags that Cheyenne assumed contained leftover food. Looking again, she saw the bags were each labeled, one for Cheyenne, one for Livy, one for Essex. Next to them under a mug was a page, obviously torn quickly from a spiral notebook. It said: The will is going to be read tonight on The Third Spiral Galaxy. Show starts at 3:00 a.m. Go to the bottom of the dial and wait.

  74 Valley of the Kings

  THE COMMUNITY RADIO STATION had been started by well-meaning white progressives at a time of great unemployment when airtime was worthless. As the city’s youth population swelled, a new generation of more diverse and vocal activists took over and the coven grabbed the Sunday through Thursday 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. slot.

  The coven’s show’s first incarnation was known as The Apology Hour. Divided into three segments, it began with a topical group discussion that resulted in a list of charges against the patriarchy. The list was then debated and refined in the second segment. Once consensus was reached, the list was read aloud in its final form and male listeners were invited to call in and apologize, but complaints soon mounted from other collectives that, since the third segment of The Apology Hour was usually twenty minutes of dead air, the coven didn’t have a right to it.

  The Apology Hour eventually collapsed for other reasons. Unable to maintain a quorum for the opening, they could not generate a list of charges, and how can you apologize for something you don’t understand? Citing manipulation as a resistance strategy, the coven kept the time slot by co-opting dissent, voting in blocks, and stepping back when factions polarized, returning as queenmakers.

  As the only radio show with in-studio childcare, the host was often interrupted by her own howling, disoriented kids. Livy and Cheyenne had been the terrors of the station. One always woke the other with a hard kick, which was followed by retaliation. Tantrum screams bled through the soundproof walls into the booth. Kirsten did her best to ignore them when she was on air, but if it reached a certain pique, she’d have them dragged in and reprimand them live. After which, the call lights lit up and the rest of the night ended in a referendum on her parenting. Having built her daughters into indestructible hellions, they could not be harmed by her words. Kirsten herself had no such defenses. On one very bad night, after being told she was every single argument for family planning rolled into one, she lost it, screaming into the ribbon mic, “I’m fucking twenty-three! I’m fucking twenty-three.”

  But she also saved the show once. Right about the time the language of branding colonized all conversations, a new program director called a meeting. There was talk of listener quotas. All the shows were on the chopping block and a particula
rly virulent fight had broken out between the old guard and the program director over whether democracy involved a responsibility to educate and inform or was just responding to the will of the people. The story went that Kirsten, who had arrived late, listened to the debate for about thirty seconds then looked at the program director and said, “I don’t care about politics. I want a show that a midwife or a woman on a crisis hotline can listen to without being ashamed of who we are.” Argument stopped. Everyone looked down at their free trade coffee and, as the coven liked to tell it, remembered they were a fucking community radio station.

  Following that meeting, culture at the station continued to change but the radical feminist radio hour remained intact. It morphed several more times before settling into its current iteration as The Third Spiral Galaxy. The format was simple. They read news about women. They broke down legislative attacks on the female body. They played music by women and ended each broadcast with mail, a list of local domestic violence shelters, and the names of errant teen girls the police didn’t consider endangered: Her name is this. She looks like that. She’s dating a real asshole, watch out for her please.

  Tonight’s show would be different. Following the invocation would be the reading of Kirsten’s will. The rest of the hour would be devoted to her favorite music, regardless of the artist’s gender, and time would be reserved for guests to call in. Kirsten, as the show’s longtime astrologer, was well-loved and would be missed.

  “I’m not ready for a wake,” said Cheyenne.

  * * *

  —

  Cheyenne and Essex decided to go to Gas Works Park. Take a blanket and a few candles. Listen to the radio show and open the paper bags up there. There wouldn’t be enough time to come back to the apartment before Essex had to leave for his flight, so they would have to take both cars. She grabbed Kirsten’s electric blanket, some candles, and all three bags. Essex looked around before closing the door to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.