Our hands are closed and we keep our attention on George and Lisa’s clean silver Toyota. But then Neil says, “You’re going today.”
I nod, even if it wasn’t a real question.
He doesn’t turn to me but the air settles between us, gathers and grows dense. “To this clinic.”
I shake my head now because I know it’s my fault. “You know this, Neil. You know there’s no other way,” I say, shaking my head because I know it’s my fault that our perfectly ordinary relationship has ended up in such disarray.
“You make no sense, Ella.”
George and Lisa’s car is stopped. The engine off. Their heads are turned to us. But we don’t yet move.
“What if I say no?” Neil asks.
“We don’t have a choice.” And I’m ready to take a step down, to head toward the car that’s waiting for us, but Neil stops me with a hand on my arm. Tight. His fingers close around my elbow and this is nothing like an embrace.
“You’re kidding me. What do you mean by ‘we’?”
I try to pull my arm from him. “I mean it.”
“You are a free being and we are bound to each other and to ourselves and our ideas of right and wrong and whatever fucking else.” Only now do I still hear the echo of slurring. He’s still a little drunk.
By now George has opened his door and stepped out. Lisa rolls down her window, says, “Are you ready, my loves?”
I whisper to Neil then; my whisper is so fierce it surprises me. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
His eyes narrow, he drops my arm. “Suppose we accept that it has.”
“I accept it, Neil. You’re the one asking me to change things,” I say, but he’s already walking toward the car, and he’s the one carrying the bag with my dad’s ashes inside, so I have nothing to do but follow.
In the car we exchange greetings. George is small again today, but there’s a lightness to him. His shoulders have relaxed, his hands on the steering wheel are not holding anything but the car. He pulls out and we’re on our way. We drive in silence.
Halfway to the pier, Lisa turns in her seat and gives us a smile that is both sad and radiant. But her forehead creases at the sight of us.
And she’s right because Neil has had enough of our silence, “Tell me you’ve imagined it.”
I stare at him.
“Just think about it. Imagine it. Him or her.”
“Don’t.”
Neil’s tongue stumbles over the words. “I figure the odds are stacked for red hair. And brown eyes. Long toes. Surely the kid would have long toes.”
“I won’t do this,” I say.
“No, that’s the problem. You will. You’re telling me that you will.”
Lisa’s eyes widen. George glances at us in the rearview as Lisa tries to cut in, but the words are lost behind Neil’s voice, rising in anger, “I’ve got a pretty deep voice. You think that sort of thing gets passed along?” He swipes at his eyes. His nostrils flare, the tips turning red.
“It’s irresponsible,” I say, closing my eyes against the little hands and smooth shoulders, the dip where the baby’s spine curves into a neck.
“What is? Entertaining the possibility?”
“This whole thing is irresponsible. It’s the genetics of it. I won’t discuss this.”
“Like hell you won’t.”
Lisa says, “My loves, you’re scaring me. You’re scaring both of us.”
Neil says, “You will discuss it, you will talk to me about it.”
“I won’t.”
Lisa tries again, “Neil, Ella … please. We can stop. We can talk.”
“A child, Ella. This is not some small thing you can imagine away.”
“I’m not imagining anything!”
George says, “Ella, honey?”
Lisa says, “Oh, lovies!”
But Neil talks over both of them, “Yes, you are. You’re making everything up and you’re getting it all wrong. You’re completely deluded.”
“Stop it!” I shout, putting my hands over my ears.
The car is silent. I’ve silenced everyone.
“Just stop it,” I say, trying to move as far away from him as possible in the small car. The only sound is the rain on the roof and Neil’s furious breathing.
George says, then, stiff and quiet, “Do we need to stop for a second?”
“We don’t need anything,” I say.
“We need everything,” Neil says.
“Wait,” Lisa says, “wait now, we’re here,” and the two of us look up to see the Sealth looming off the end of the pier, its gaping underside still empty.
“We need, shit, I don’t know what we need.” He’s zipping and unzipping his jacket. Over and over. “We need a time-out, we need to draw a line and …” But I close my ears to him. I fill myself with the view of this ferry, with the flat horizon of the water and the mountains in the distance. The water. The ocean. The ferries.
The line of cars is short and it only takes a few minutes for it to be our turn to drive up the ramp and follow the Loader’s pointed arm toward the aisle he’s assigning us. George parks the car and turns off the engine. Each of us opens a door. Each of us steps out and zips up a jacket, puts on a hood. This is the 10:15, my dad’s morning run to Southworth, with a stop on Vashon. Neil is carrying my dad’s ashes, and we climb the stairs single file to the third outside deck.
The ferry is not busy, and the people who are riding have mostly stayed inside. A handful of smokers, wrapped up in windbreakers and scarves, line the railing, watching the water as we get underway. We find a bench in a wind shelter just below the navigation deck but it doesn’t keep the rain off. We tuck ourselves back as far as we can, seated in a row. George, then me, then Lisa, then Neil. We keep our faces to the water. We keep our shoulders squared. The rain is so thick it doesn’t even seem like rain, it feels more like the ocean is heaving itself up and throwing itself back down. Like the water below us and the water falling from above are part of the same massive water system in the midst of a tantrum. In a few short moments my jeans are soaked. Everyone else is just as wet, but no one moves. We sit hunkered down on our bench like hardy seabirds. We draw sideways glances from passengers who have remained inside. Safe behind the thick glass.
The boat heaves itself forward, and I look south at those impossibly red, impossibly large shipyard cranes, how they appear to be holding their heads in mourning. George turns to me, “He didn’t leave instructions about this? I wanted to be sure. I mean … yes, the water, of course. But here?”
I look away. “No, he didn’t leave any instructions at all.” Two seagulls land on the railing, their feathers ruffle in the wind. One starts screeching, a high-pitched repetitive scream.
This is when Neil starts laughing. Not a real laugh at all. A kind of humph that he draws out again and again. “No instructions. No way. That John sure didn’t leave instructions.”
“Please,” I say.
“Please what?”
“We just wondered about going out with the Ginz as well,” Lisa says, her eyes jumping from me to Neil. “Maybe we should save some ashes for somewhere else, too. Up near the islands, maybe.”
“I mean it,” I say to Neil. “You’ve missed the point.”
Neil stops laughing and holds himself very still. “This isn’t about a point.”
“You have to understand …”
“No,” he shouts, and I realize he’s still holding my dad’s ashes as his arm goes up into the air in his angry gesture. But he keeps his grip, his arm comes down. “No, Ella. You have to understand. You cannot make this decision alone.”
“God, Neil, she forgot who we were!”
He waves a hand across my statement while Lisa and George step away. “I could injure myself tomorrow. You could get cancer next year. A child can get lost. Or hurt. Or whatever.”
Lisa is gathering herself to intervene. I can see it. She’s reaching a hand out, but Neil is backing away. Into the rain, toward t
he railing of the ferry.
“All you’ve been talking about is fear. And I’m tired of your fear. You are not your mother. You are not sick.”
George cuts in, “Ella? How can we help?”
“It isn’t anyone’s business,” I say. The rain is pelting down my face.
“It’s my business!” Neil yells. “Can’t you get that into your head? It’s my business!”
People inside the ferry are staring at us now. We are almost at the Vashon pier. The boat will slow down and dock.
“Neil,” George says. “Ella.”
Lisa opens her arms to us, says, “We can talk about this.”
Neil throws his arms up again. He’s forgotten about the ashes. All I can do is watch his arms. Little plumes of soot are starting to escape from the box.
“Neil!”
“And what?” he yells. “Do you want my permission? Oh yes, Ella. Go ahead. Of course I’ll give you my permission.”
He tries to cross his arms, but cannot complete the movement. The box stops him. Ashes spill down the front of his coat.
Behind him is the tip of Blake Island. The rain is still so heavy. It’s washing the ashes from him almost immediately. A thin trail of soot streaks its way down his coat, puddles at his feet.
“Look what you’re doing!” I shout at him, reach for the box.
But he steps away. “Don’t touch me, I don’t want you to touch me.”
“The ashes,” Lisa says. “Darling!”
He raises the box high and shakes his head. “Anyway, you’ve made it clear I am not to be a part of this decision.”
“Just give me those,” I say, crying now. My entire body taut with the force of my crying.
But he doesn’t, he’s still holding them. The box is half-open now, and the wind is picking up more ashes, spilling them out. The water catches them right away. My dad is washing out onto the deck of the ferry.
George is yelling now, trying to get the box from Neil. But Neil can’t seem to come back to us, he’s still shouting. I reach for him too but it’s no use, he’s all tight limbs and hard energy. I lose sight of the box in his movements, slip on the wet deck and nearly fall. I catch myself and when I look up, I see Lisa place a hand over her eyes. She yells, “Oh my God!”
For a moment I think Neil must have jumped. That he’s gone over the side of the boat and this is why Lisa has averted her face. But it isn’t that.
George’s face is all black, streaked with water. That’s when I feel it, the sooty grit on my cheek. And a plume hits Lisa, a thin one, mixes with the rain and slides down like a black tear toward her chin. I touch my own face, my fingers come back to me black and gritty.
Neil is holding the ripped box in his hands and the ashes are everywhere. I see his face, I see it flash—he’s shocked, he’s ashamed. But he wipes his hands against his windbreaker and the line of his jaw tightens in this movement. “There,” he says. “That’s done, then. Goodbye, John. Now we can go.”
George is watching him, stunned, white lipped.
But then Neil shakes his head and says, “No, actually, it’s fine, Ella. You do what you have to do. But that is it for me.” He tosses the ripped box into the water—gently at least, he tosses it with a certain carefulness. He shakes his hands, he backs away. He slips on the rain though and grips the door handle back into the inside deck to right himself. His hand on the handle is still covered in ashes. His shoes, too. He’s gone gray.
Lisa is holding a hand to her mouth. George is shaking his head, eyes wide. The water below the ferry glistens black. George and Lisa and I stand at the railing. She holds onto me and I don’t know who’s shaking the hardest. But I blink back the rain and my tears and wipe at my wet face. The rain has taken most of the ashes by now. I’m left with red wind-chapped hands that I must rub and rub in the pouring rain, to clean the remaining ashes from my fingernails and knuckles, while the ocean froths and churns against the side of the boat.
29
IT TAKES ME JUST UNDER FIVE HOURS to spot the first sign. Friends’ Farm, 3 miles. I’ve left the highway some time ago and have been winding along smaller farm roads. Driving slowly. This sign means I put my foot on the brakes and pull over. A tractor lumbers its way around me, the farmer looking with vague irritation down into my car. Which is a mess: Daisie and Trapp in the back, coffee cups and granola bar wrappers on the floor. A print out of the directions. My purse, my phone, a packet of chewing gum on the seat beside me.
I don’t know why I’ve stopped. Just to think. Or not to think. Where I’ve left, where I’m going. I close my eyes against all of it—Neil’s soot-covered shoes backing away, the box in the water, Lisa asking me again and again about the argument. I’ve pushed the brake pedal so hard my leg is trembling where the muscle seizes; I lift it and get going again. The car creeps along for another mile and a half. George and Lisa drove me home after the ferry, refusing to let me stay alone. Lisa sat beside me and stared hard at my face when I insisted I would go to my appointment, then she insisted she come with me. “You will not do this alone. I want to be with you no matter what you decide.” I let her come, and she put a hand on my shoulder when I signed the forms and made my real appointment for two days time. Neil didn’t call or come back to my dad’s. I keep telling myself that this is what had to happen.
I also keep telling myself that I’ve driven to Oregon for purely legal reasons. Her name on the deed, the fact of her not knowing about my dad’s accident. It’s my responsibility, I remind myself, biting back the anger, the confusion. Just a task I need to accomplish and get over.
I pass several farms and country houses and this time a turn is indicated. Friends’ Farm: a cooperative collective. I pull over just past this sign. The dogs are fidgeting. Their noses have covered the back window with snot and fogged up the glass.
“Settle,” I tell them.
I wedge the car alongside a wooden fence and I let the dogs out into a nearby field. Watch them race and circle. Their heads lowered, their noses busy reading the land—the mouse tunnels, the mole hills, the rocks and clumps of weeds. I love seeing Daisie so focused, her entire body taut with a task. Her bird-dog instincts. Trapp is more concerned with me, always racing forward and racing back to check if I’ve moved. I breathe and breathe and watch them. It’s really cold this afternoon but here in Oregon, farther from the sea, there is always less fog, less rain. The winter sun is already waning, but it holds off to the west above us like a ball of bright cold fire. I pull my wool hat down over my ears, wrap my scarf more tightly. There are other things in the car—the boxes and gifts and cards. Her signature. The paperwork for the cabin. I am here and I will have to keep going.
Before I left this morning I tried to send a text to Neil anyway: I’ve found her. In Oregon. Going today.
But I deleted it before sending and I’ve turned off my phone. The last image flickered as the phone went off, my home screen—a snowy owl in flight, arms spread wide. Silent. Hunting.
I whistle for the dogs, hustle them back into the car, and continue on. Just a short distance from this field the road narrows, turns into more of a gravel track. The trees are taller here, casting a shadow, and then I find myself stopped before a kind of gate. Friends’ Farm is handwritten on a wooden sign. Drive straight for General Store, on another sign beside it. Alongside the gate is a security camera and I don’t look into the lens. I cannot tell if it is even on. I get out and open the gate and then scurry back into the car.
I am barely pressing on the accelerator, just letting the car roll forward of its own momentum. These are the gates to my mother’s country and I am expecting a stronger boundary than simple wood and trees. A checkpoint would be nicer. With border guards and bomb sniffing dogs. Someone who will listen to the excuses for my intrusion, who will understand that I’m not really here because I want to be. This humble little road makes me uneasy.
I pass a farm stand, but it’s all boarded up. Next to the stand is a sign with an arrow pointing towar
d a small road and the spray painted words, winter preserve market. I pass this and then before I can stop and reverse, before I back myself out and off this road, I find I have arrived in front of an A-frame cabin and there is a group of people standing outside of it. Men and women, dressed in flannel shirts and wool sweaters, dark knitted hats and gloves, in jeans and work boots.
I stop the car, lean across the seat and roll down the passenger side window. I am looking, but keeping my head tucked. My lips grow cold, my mouth is dry. Wind hits my face. She isn’t one of them. She isn’t one of them.
“You here for the preserves?” a woman asks, leaning down. Her hair is long and blonde, like a teenager would wear, but by her face I put her in her early fifties. She’s holding a steaming mug of hot liquid in a hand covered in fingerless gloves. “We still have a few. Some good ones.”
“I’m not here for preserves,” I say, still searching their faces. She isn’t here.
“The General Store opens again at two,” a man with round spectacles offers. “If you go up another half-mile you’ll see it.”
“I’m looking for someone,” I say, my voice catching. “I’m trying to find someone.”
The blonde woman steps closer to the car, leans all the way into the open window. She checks the car, not me. “You’ve lost someone?”
I am silenced by this. She is still looking around the car. At the animals and the mess. “Are you on vacation? Did you lose someone at the rest area?” Her brow is furrowed now, her eyes dancing from seat to seat.
A man in a bright purple sweater and a full beard repeats her question but with greater distress. “She lost one of her kids at the Whittaker Creek rest area?”
A buzz rises from this small group and they move together into a knot. A woman with thick glasses and a moon face peers into the car.
“No, no,” I say, opening the door and half-standing. Looking at them all. “I haven’t lost … I said … I’m looking for someone.” The dogs are restless, pushing at each other to get out.
I cross around the hood of the car to meet the blonde woman, remove my hat and hold out my hand to say, “I’m … I’m looking for Maggie Tomlinson. Do you know where I might find her?”
Unfurled Page 17
