It had been the brightest part of Joey’s day when she’d gotten to chitchat with the mail guy Salvador—about his mother, Jasmine, who was going through chemo, about the controversial new sculpture installed in the elevator bank. Then Salvador would reach for the door. Okay, Josephine, he always said to signal his exit, sheepish in his keeping her from her Very Important Work. He pronounced the first part of her name Joss and enunciated each syllable so fully it was like even her name itself was a thing he cared for. She was always sad as he slipped out the door, the click behind him practiced in its softness. She hadn’t thought about Salvador all this time, and somehow his memory made her feel sad.
All this had filtered through the sieve of Joey’s mind by the time the Florida sun again kissed her shoulders. Sometimes she wondered about it—how big were the things that jangled around in her head. Not just big as in numerous, but big as in important. Salvador was important, and she didn’t think she’d ever told a soul about him.
“You know, I once had a friend named Salvador,” she said to Leo, without realizing he was talking to someone on land. “Oh, sorry.”
Leo turned to her with a look of distracted curiosity. He unscrewed a handle of vodka and poured some into the two red Solo cups that had materialized. “That’s Lucas. He’s responsible for the upkeep of this beaut until I officially take over.”
From down below, Lucas lifted a hand from the hose he was spraying on the pavement and waved.
“So how about it, Jonesey?”
“How about what?” She eased herself into the chair across from the captain’s seat.
“A little spin? I’ll have you back for your lunch.”
“Oh. Well, okay. Might as well have some fun on the side of our not-fun.”
Leo handed her a Solo cup, then he pulled a lever, and the boat rumbled to life. “Exactly.”
As Leo maneuvered them out of the harbor, baby waves lapped at the side of the boat and then crashed in pools of white froth.
“So Jonesey?” said Leo as they sped toward open water.
“Yeah?”
“How about you tell me about your friend Salvador?”
* * *
They anchored far out, the waves knocking periodic love taps against the yacht, having opted for a level of intensity to complement Bob Marley crooning aboard.
“I love that you already have a plant on the boat,” said Joey, touching the glossy leaves sprouting from the gray concrete pottery on the floor. “It’s so you.”
Leo was applying sunscreen to his chest in lazy swipes, employing no obvious method at achieving full coverage. “It’s the first thing I did to christen it. Buy a ficus. Plant and sea. All you need in the world. Blue and green are the best colors.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Of course.” Leo turned up the volume on Bob.
For a while, they just cruised to the soothing reggae. “So can I ask you something?” Joey finally said.
“You can ask me a lot of things, Jones. It’s time for talking.”
“We’re talking,” she said, irritated he was framing it otherwise. “We covered Salvador. We covered my family. You told me about yours. Shall we recap? Your parents: divorced. Maisy quit drinking ten years ago and remarried. New husband is our age and a personal-trainer-slash-green-juice entrepreneur. Rand is still trading. Basically living off the grid. But with WiFi. Also now a sheep farmer.”
Leo laughed a small laugh, his lips barely parted. “That about sums it up. Did my dad win Biggest Departure from the Old Days on Corfu?”
“No doubt. Rand turning into a reclusive shepherd, not what I would have voted him up for in any yearbook awards.”
“You know my dad though. Prickly around people.”
“Prickly indeed.”
“Better with sheep,” said Leo, and they both laughed. “Hey, how’s your grandmother?”
“You remember G?” Joey laughed, but she didn’t feel the laugh spread to her whole face like the prior one had. “She hated you, sorry to say it. The not-Jewish boy.”
“Some things are immutable, I guess.” Leo smiled. “But I remember when we went to that reunion of the Corfiot survivors at the synagogue.”
“Wow. I haven’t thought of that in ages.”
“I thought about it a lot, actually, after. I always wondered if you found out how your grandmother escaped the Holocaust.”
Was it possible Joey still didn’t know? “I’m ashamed to say this, but honestly, I still haven’t broached it with her. It’s always felt painful to me, my grandparents’ stories. But that’s not an excuse, is it? I have to ask her.”
“You should. Before it’s too…”
“I know. I will.” Joey winced, before making a mental note to do exactly that. Then she steeled herself and said, “Hey, Leo, who’s Arthur?”
“He’s my son,” said Leo, just as a fish soared from the water. “Hey, a marlin!”
Joey twisted to watch, but she caught only the piddly splash as the fish plunged back into the depths. The water churned with its piercing and then stilled. “Your son?” she said softly.
“I guess that didn’t show up in any Google searches.”
“I guess it didn’t.”
Joey absorbed it, this son of Leo, named Arthur. She pictured a sweet, bucktoothed kid with thick black glasses posing on the edge of a chair for some school picture. What could have been swooshed through her, like a gust through the slats of an abandoned house. “Wow, Leo.”
“He’s such a cool kid, Jones.” Leo smiled a smile she knew well—his lips pressed together, the light oozing out his eyes. “He’s seven. I met his mom when we worked a Med season together. I was the first officer then, and she was a stew. Janna’s her name.”
Janna. Joey cycled that name through her stuffed file of inconsequential factoids accumulated from Facebook-stalking Leo’s profile came up dry. She felt stupid, and a little sad, at how far off Leo’s reality was from the fiction she’d spun, of his cavorting with the supermodel, graduates-of-Ivies girls on his friends list.
“Anyway, it didn’t work out, but we got Arthur, and he’s amazing, the most inquisitive kid. He won’t stop asking questions.”
“Sounds like someone I know.”
“Yeah. Takes after his Old Man. Sometimes you want to be like, Arthur, buddy, give me a breather, but he has to know things. Everything. Why sometimes people cry and say they’re okay when they’re not really okay. How a weed is different from a plant.” Leo shook his head. “God, I love that kid.”
"So when you’re in season, he’s with—”
“His mom. Yeah. We both rent apartments on the same street in Monaco. When I’m gone, I FaceTime with Arthur of course, but the distance is hard on us both. It’s funny, Arthur’s into ballet these days—”
“Ballet? That’s awesome.”
“He’s obsessed. He’s teaching me how to plié.” Leo stood and did a bouncy thing with his toes turned out.
Joey giggled. “Do that again, please.”
“Sorry, Jones, that ends the entertainment portion of this boat ride.”
“Given the evidence, I think Arthur needs to up his teaching game.”
“Yeah.” Leo looked out distantly to sea. “Well, he’s not here to teach me. He had a recital recently, and he was so bummed I wasn’t there. Janna had me on FaceTime, but the connection kept cutting out, and I missed his big solo. Later he was like, Did you see me, Dad?, and I pretended I had, but I wasn’t describing his big leap or whatever, or how elongated he had his arm, and he knew. He knew. And you know what, Jones? I felt just like my father.”
“Come on, Leo, you’re nothing like Rand. I may not have seen you in fifteen years, or with Arthur, but if you ask me what I know for sure, it’s that you’re a good dad.”
“I don’t know, Jones. I really don’t. What if that’s just what I tell myself to be able to live with myself? Because the truth is, I’m not around a lot. I’m out here.”
“You’re working to prov
ide for Arthur. And you’re there when it counts.”
“Maybe. I like to think being out at sea makes me a better dad. You know how I am…”
“You need it.” She gestured around. “You talk to them.”
“The waves?” He sounded surprised that she knew.
“I know you. Or I used to.”
“Yeah. You did. So…what about you, Jones?”
“Me? No playmates for Arthur over here.”
“But you’re getting married.” Leo’s back was to her as he said it, cranking up the anchor. “And about that. Jonesey, I don’t want you to worry. I’m not here to ruin your wedding.”
Over the roar of the anchor ratcheting up, she said, “Well, that’s good to hear.”
“I just mean, we can deal with the fallout after. I want you to have your day. I so want you to be happy, Jones.”
Joey exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding since she saw Leo on the pier. “You can stick around until after?”
“Yeah. They’re still fixing up the boat, and anyway I’m getting real good at shuffleboard.”
“Now, that’s a skill that will come in handy. You’re welcome.”
Leo grinned. “But Jonesey, after the wedding, we need to tell Scott and Lily. You agree, don’t you?”
Joey nodded slowly. “It’s the last thing I want, to break their hearts like that, but I can’t un-know what you told me. My dad deserves the truth. And so does Lily.”
Leo visibly exhaled. “I’m so glad you feel that way too. I can’t live like this anymore. Hiding it.”
Joey kneaded her knuckles into her thighs. “So we’ll do it after the wedding. There are a few days before we go to Bali for our honeymoon.”
“How do you think Lily’s going to react?”
“No idea.” Joey grimaced. “Probably awfully. Hey, Leo.” Something had occurred to her, but she felt guilty saying it. “What if you go to the market or something? Like—”
“What if Scott sees me? I’ll just tell him I’m in town to buy a boat. That should do it, don’t you think?” The motor sounded, and the boat spurted to life. Leo’s hands finessed the wheel, one over another, like art in their fluency in the language of the sea. “Tell me things, Jonesey.”
“I’ve told you lots of things.” She snuck a glance at her phone. Still nothing from Grant. Just a confirmation from Edith’s assistant regarding their meeting later that afternoon. Oh God, Joey wanted the commission. She deeply did. But since Lily’s call, Joey had hardly achieved a single preparatory sketch. She couldn’t conceive of how she was going to pull off some massive piece in the lead-up to her wedding.
“Tell me some real things, Jonesey.” Leo mixed her another vodka lemonade.
“You’re trying to get me drunk so I’ll spill dirt.” Joey wiped her sunglasses on her shirt. She wished the lenses weren’t see-through so her eyes weren’t so on display. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you and Grant meet?”
“Oh. Okay.” It was bizarre to tell this story to Leo, like two worlds meant to orbit apart now colliding. “We met in—”
“Bali. That part I know.”
“How?”
“The Delray Jewish News.”
“Stalker.” They both laughed. A speedboat flew by on Joey’s side. An older couple waved; the wife raised her beer. Joey knew how she and Leo must appear—lovebirds. Rich lovebirds.
In another world maybe. Another life.
“So we met in Bali after I left law because—”
“Tell me how you met, Jonesey. The real story. You know?”
She knew what he meant. “Well, I was…” She had to stop because telling this part of the story brought her back. It felt dangerous, this slice of her life, like it had been tended to and bandaged so beautifully after leaving law but then since Leo’s return the bandages had begun to fray. “Leo, I was totally fucking lost. I surfed into Grant—you know that part from our engagement notice, I guess. I told him I’d buy him a smoothie bowl to make up for it. So we were at this café in the rice paddies. I was telling him about my law days and how I was going to start painting again, but I didn’t know where I wanted to live, or what I wanted to do, or really who I was.”
Joey smiled at the memory of it, the two of them on stools by the window with its shutters perpetually swung open. The sun had sopped up all their wet, leaving two sandy, very tan Americans, stray dogs at their feet, with reams of shirtless Australian men roaring up on motorbikes.
“Grant said, Well, if you don’t know who you are, let’s figure it out.” This was the part that demanded a reaction—a chorus of so cute echoed from friends of her mother to women in supermarket lines alike. Leo just looked ahead, riveted to the sea as if he hadn’t seen tidaling blue in this iteration a billion times before.
“So Grant said, Papaya or watermelon?”
“Papaya or watermelon?” repeated Leo.
“Yeah, like which is your favorite? And I couldn’t figure it out, Leo. That’s how long it had been since I thought about what I liked. And so Grant shouted through the place, Waitress, can we have two of your finest pieces of papaya and watermelon? It was over the top, but that’s him. Or it was. Bali Grant was really…free. So anyhow, she brought over two plates. One had watermelon. One papaya. And I ate fruit upon fruit, and you know what? I liked the watermelon more.” Leo’s eyes didn’t stray from the sea. “Now’s your cue to smile, Winn.”
“So you figured out you’re a person who likes watermelon more?”
“Yeah.” Joey’s cheeks warmed, and it wasn’t the sun. “Why are you knocking my love story?”
“Not knocking anything.”
“Grant brings me watermelon-flavored stuff a lot, actually. It’s sweet. Watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Watermelon gelato. And he asked me bigger stuff too, by the way.”
“Like?”
“Like beach or mountains?” She heard the bitterness suffusing her tone.
“Beach,” said Leo. “A thousand times, beach.”
“It was actually a tough decision,” she shot back. “In my law days, I used to go on hiking vacations too. I did Kilimanjaro, did you know that? And part of the Camino de Santiago.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” The fight deflated from her. “But I did choose beach.” She hated giving Leo that satisfaction. Like she was so simple to deduce. Joey tried to remember Grant’s other questions. At the time it had seemed magical, the way he’d revealed her to herself. This was the first time it felt a little bit stupid.
“City or country?” she eventually said.
“Country. I can’t believe you lived in Manhattan, Jones. Someone’s gotta fire your college career counselor.”
The anger reared in Joey. “Guy on top or girl on top?”
Leo crunched his face. It didn’t feel nice, having said it. “That one I’ll leave to Grant,” he finally said, and she didn’t reply.
For a while, the sea was the only one doing the talking. Joey downed her drink. At last the fuzzy outline of land filled the horizon.
Leo finally said, “And how’s it going with the wedding?”
“Great!” she said, forgetting for a moment where she was, and with whom. The stock answer accustomed to being trotted out echoed against the hull, swept back out to sea. Echoed. Echoed.
“I haven’t been able to sleep the past few nights,” she finally admitted. Don’t ask me why. Don’t ask me if I want to get married because the answer is I do. If ever in my life I am meant to become a wife, it’s now, to this man, and I don’t want to betray Grant by discussing it with you.
Leo said, “Oh.” Casually. Like she’d explained how she operated her dishwasher. “What does it feel like?”
“What does it feel like? It’s a dream I’ve been having, and it feels like I’m the only person in the world.” Leo nodded, and then she realized he was motioning his head to the wave hurtling at them. A curl of ocean slapped Joey’s face.
The boat hopped a f
ew times like a bunny rabbit and then sailed forward on level sea. Leo said, “You have this dream.”
Joey scraped sea-drenched hair from her face. “Just a few times. It’s a weird dream.”
“I can do weird.”
“It’s just, I’ve been dreaming about two deserts. They’re both massive, like the Sahara. That red-orange color and just, sand in every direction. And in between the deserts is a canyon. Sorta like the Grand Canyon, in size.”
“Two deserts, split by the Grand Canyon. Doesn’t sound so weird.”
Joey had been there just the other morning, before the sun had fuzzed through their blinds, the desert filling the empty spaces between her glances at the clock and at Grant. One moment, she’d been marveling at Grant’s capacity to sleep for seven hours under the microscope of the world without so much as a leg budging from its heavy diagonal drape—and then she’d flown back to the deserts again.
But last night there’d been nothing. No deserts. No Grant.
“So the thing is, there are also two of me in the dream. One of me is in one of the deserts, and the other me is in the other.”
“Is there anyone else in this world?”
Joey shook her head. “No one. And the first me has fallen, and she’s dangling on the edge of her desert, over this huge abyss. The other me is on the edge of her desert watching the first me about to basically die. And the other me has superhuman hands or something. She’s reaching out her long hand to help the first me. And the first me is trying so hard to reach the second me’s arm without plunging to her death. But she can’t, and she’s slipping. She’s slipping off her desert.”
Leo slowed the boat; the abrupt deceleration startled Joey. Leo maneuvered toward the boat’s slip. To safe land, but also to what existed upon it. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happens, when the other you tries to save the first you?”
“Nothing happens.” She managed a weak smile. “It’s just me trying to save me. So far there’s never anything more.”
Leo killed the motor. They both waved to Lucas on the land.
“Sorry, I feel a little crazy here,” said Joey, shaking her head, wishing she could shake the deserts right out of her. “I haven’t told anyone about the two deserts, or the two me’s.”
When We Were Young Page 18
