by Deb Caletti
“Hi, Jan.”
“Hey, sorry about your mom.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Tough old broad. She used to scare the crap out of me, to tell you the truth. But I respected her.”
“I hear you.”
Jan tosses the jackets and Isabelle catches them, and then they wave as Henry backs the boat out of the slip and eases away.
“That’s the life, huh?” Henry shouts over the motor. “Live on your boat, have a small rental business. Keep it all simple…”
“I don’t know how simple. Supposedly, he and Dave have been hiding here for years after some drug trouble in the Bahamas.”
Henry shakes his head as if he can’t believe what goes on in the world. The boat putters past the slips. It’s early, but the racers have already left, and only the weekend fishermen are up, settling in to their favorite spots. The rest of the boats are still tucked in tight, their residents sleeping off Friday-night fun. Later, it’ll be a madhouse out here.
Henry picks up speed, heads to open water. Isabelle stands beside him, holds on as the bow smacks the waves.
“You can be my Dirk Peters,” he shouts, grinning.
“Oh, no. If this is Poe, I’m worried.”
“The Pym novel. Pym and Dirk sailed to the South Pole together.” From this elevation, she can see a sprinkling of gray in Henry’s hair as it shines in the sun. It makes her feel tender toward him, and she kisses the top of his head. The wind whips past them.
“I love this,” Isabelle shouts. And, hey, after all the misuse, the Red Pearl is getting a second chance, same as she is. Here’s who they both were meant to be. God, it all fills her with the glory of being alive. She wants to sail to the South Pole. She wants to sail to everywhere.
The island gets farther away, and the marina retreats into the distance. Isabelle can see how magnificent it is, the mighty Northwest, with that rocky shore against the deep green waters, with the nearby islands rising from the sea like a pod of killer whales.
Henry heads east. From there, Isabelle can see a ferry heading to Orcas, and one of their own planes rising northward. The beauty is ridiculously abundant, and yet all of the San Juans feel like a secret, with their tiny harbors and clapboard main streets, hidden arcs of rocky, windswept beaches, everything painted in ancient, watery hues. The scenery sweeps by. Isabelle leans over the side, lets the cold saltwater spray against her arm.
“Look,” Henry calls. It’s a team of sailboats speeding toward a buoy. He heads in their direction, and the tiny triangles grow to full-sized spinnakers shouting colors.
“Spring Series Regatta,” Isabelle says.
He cuts the engine. “I’ve got to get some photos. This is stunning out here.”
They bob and slosh for a while as Henry snaps. “Let me take one of you,” she says. “You can send it to your brothers.”
“No, no. I should tell you, I hate getting my picture taken. Hate.”
“Really? All right. How about one of both of us? Would that help? Do you have a timer on that thing?”
“Nope. Nice try. I’ll take you, how about that? If there has to be some recorded proof that we were here.”
His tone is teasing, but his words are a little sharp. It’s probably not how he means it. Before she can object, he focuses, clicks, and then checks the results.
“Pretty nice, actually.” He shows her. It’s an art shot, the way the sun shines down behind her in streaks, lighting her blowing hair. The spinnakers of the boats fill the back of the frame.
“I could win a prize with that,” he says.
—
“I have missed this.” Henry brought real plates and real white napkins, too, not the Chinet and roll of paper towels of Isabelle’s boating life until now. There’s a fine, chewy loaf of sourdough that Henry tears into artful chunks.
“You did this a lot with Sarah, you said, when you were married?”
“Well, I don’t know about a lot. When I was growing up, my father fancied himself a sailor. He mostly went alone, though. I think he just did it to get away from my mother. She was afraid of water, so it was the one place she’d never follow him to.”
Isabelle notices it, the way he slides the conversation away from Sarah. He always slides the conversation away from Sarah, as if it’s too unbearable to have nearby. She has to piece the woman together from tiny bits of information. Wealthy family. Catholic school. Brilliant but troubled. She wishes Henry would talk about his marriage and what went wrong. There’ve been hints of another man, some flirtation or maybe something more, so this may be why his ego is so tender. Still, she’d like to talk about where her marriage went wrong. She wants to really know him, and have him know her. The angers and disappointments, the loneliness of life with Evan, the loss of all the years with no true partnership and children and family to show for it—she wants to share this. She needs to, so she can move forward.
“You said your dad was an attorney?”
“High-powered attorney and asshole of the highest magnitude.”
“Why is high-powered always used with attorneys? You never hear high-powered dentist or high-powered teacher.”
“Easy answer. Most attorneys are assholes. He was, anyway.”
“Is this why your brothers and you all became, let’s see if I get this right, a potter, a pediatrician, and a poet? Every gentle profession imaginable?”
“Hoping to give him the heart attack he eventually had.”
“That’s awful.” She socks him.
“He deserved worse. All right, this is Roncal, a Spanish cheese. Meaty, lightly nutty. This is a Grayson. Lively, bold…made from the raw milk of Jerseys on a Virginian farm.”
“I’ve never eaten this good in my life.”
“This well?”
“Henry, if you correct my grammar again I may have to stab you with this knife.”
“I stand warned.”
The moment is there and gone, and you could call it a red flag, only it’s not an alarming color, and it does not even wave in warning. It’s small and quiet, easily ignored as a whisper. And why not ignore it? Does what he said matter? No. Does the fact that he said it matter? Not really. It wasn’t very sensitive, but Isabelle has her own faults. Love requires generosity. Love requires giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
Love requires not being an asshole, Maggie says. Tell him where he can stick his “well.”
Maggie needs to shut it. Maggie couldn’t maintain a relationship to save her life. See what good anger brings you? It’s a poison that kills off whatever is nearby. Maggie is clearly trying to toss gasoline onto a little flare of irritation, which Isabelle douses. Henry hands her a plate of food, and Isabelle is otherwise having one of the best days she’s had in a long while. She wants this. Who he is and who she is are complicated variables in this. Love always involves an identity crisis; at least, it involves the small shifts of self that make room for another person.
“And what’s cheese without wine?” Henry says.
His feet are planted, balancing on the rocking boat as he hunts through a cloth shopping bag. He finds the bottle and grabs it around its neck, holds it in the air with a flourish.
“Perfect,” she says. He tucks the bottle between his knees and twists in the corkscrew. “Don’t hurt anyone with that.”
“You’re in good hands, Isabelle Austen. Don’t you forget it.”
With that, any small criticisms are gone. Good hands—such beautiful words. Pretty much the thing anyone really wants.
He pops the cork from the bottle. “Voilà!” he says, like he’s just pulled a rabbit from a hat.
—
He pours the wine into two glasses, and they clink. They feast on the bread and cheese and fruit—thin slices of apple and pear, small boughs heavy with grapes. They sip; they eat. They gaze out. The boat is sloshing and rocking, though. Isabelle’s stomach sloshes and rocks, too.
She is watching his face as he sits beside her on that wooden bench se
at, and so she sees it, all at once, the way his face changes. It goes slack. He suddenly looks his age. He stares at the scarlet wave inside his glass, as if it’s a miniature ocean in a faraway land. The cheese on his plate has lost its magic, and only looks like any cheese, flat and finished.
“Henry? Are you okay? When we’re not moving like this, it gets pretty rocky out here.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“I’m feeling a little seasick myself.”
“I’m fine, I said.”
She doesn’t say anything more, and neither does he. There’s just the slop of waves against the side of the boat and the awkward shouting of silence. She begins the accounting, scrolls through the ledger of what might have gone wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I thought I could do it. All this…” He sweeps his hand out toward the sea. “The boat, the wine, the outing…I wanted to…I don’t know. Erase. Do over! Foolish. Crazy. One of the last times with my wife, Sarah? A boat, a bottle of wine…”
“Jesus.”
“We’d gone out to Rockport, rented a cruiser…”
“Jesus, Henry.”
“Had a big fight. And after that…”
Oh, he’s crushed. Destroyed by Sarah leaving him, that seems clear. Who can resist such heartache? Who can turn away from the chance to make everything right? Not Isabelle. She reaches over, takes his hand. She brings it to her mouth, kisses it softly. His skin smells like wind and sun and boat gasoline, and something that’s just Henry. She wants to smell that and smell that and smell that.
“And then she was gone. It was done.” His voice is hoarse. He looks like he might cry. “It’s impossible to understand, someone just taking off…”
Isabelle can’t, that’s for sure. In a way, she wished Evan had left that way years before, rather than the protracted distancing and returning he did, like the lion coming back to pick at the carcass. God, what is crueler? She has no idea.
“What did she say, Henry? How did she explain herself?”
“She didn’t.”
“She didn’t give any explanation?”
“Well, we’d been fighting. There’d been problems. But, then, after that night, nothing. Not another word.”
Not another word? Maggie says. Not one single one? What the hell, Isabelle. What the hell! “You mean, like after that, you just communicated through lawyers and such?”
“Pretty much. Look, Isabelle. I’m done talking about this. I’m sorry, I…I just wanted to have a great day doing something I love to do with you.”
“Of course, Henry. Of course. And we did. It is a great day. I’m so sorry that happened to you. No one deserves that. Especially not you.”
He gives her a squeeze, but he’s clearly shaking her off, shaking off the demoralizing memory. Rejection, well—it always turns you right back into the nine-year-old no one wanted to eat lunch with, even when it doesn’t turn your whole life upside down.
“How about I drive us to the marina?” Isabelle says. “These waves…”
“Let’s not let her ruin everything. Come here.”
Henry pulls Isabelle to his lap. He takes her face in his hands. He kisses her hard. Her face, that kiss—she doesn’t want to just be a thing that erases another thing, but it’s a good kiss. A great, if complicated, one.
“Let’s start back,” he says.
—
Kiss or no kiss, it seems that Sarah has ruined their day after all. At least, when they return to the harbor, Henry is terse and short-tempered. The marina has filled with weekend boaters coming in and going out, and the sailboats from the regatta are arriving, too, and it’s as crazy there as Isabelle predicted. Henry nearly clips a catamaran, and when Isabelle urges (strenuously urges!) he not use the wheel to dock, just the throttle and shift, he snaps an “I know.” He follows that up with a curt Watch the bow. Docking tiffs or all-out arguments—threats of divorce, even—they’re a common occurrence in boating, she knows, given the stress of the task and the added embarrassment of onlookers. Isabelle’s glad, though, when they’re in and all tied down. They gather up their bags. They drop the keys off with Jan, who’s already half tanked over on Hideaway, his live-aboard.
—
That night, though, in Henry’s bed, in the room where Clyde Belle likely tumbled with the despair of his life, the day’s tensions fall away. They reconnect, with skin on skin and mouths on mouths and bodies that are still new to each other. As much as Isabelle hates tension like that (her childhood made nearly any upset feel cringing and unbearable), something feels more real now. It’s not just tra la la, roses and flower petals and lots of sex between them. He’s a person with a past and she’s a person with a past, and she felt some of his hard memories with him today, navigated a few difficult moments as a couple, literally and figuratively.
“Thank you for the boat ride and everything else,” Isabelle whispers after they’ve made love. Her head is on his chest. Her arm crooks around him like he’s shelter or like she is.
“Look at this tiny wrist,” he says.
“Small but mighty.”
“I’m falling for you, Isabelle Austen,” Henry North says into her hair.
She smiles. She kisses him. “And I’m falling for you, Henry North.”
They’ve gotten through something. Her heart is so full. He’s weathered stuff, and she’s weathered stuff, and this makes her think they can weather stuff together. She forgets that stuff plus stuff plus weather leads to crushed buildings and drowned ships and broken glass everywhere.
“It’s very possible I love you already,” Henry says, and somewhere, maybe somewhere like the South Pacific, a cold, unstable wind gathers. Isabelle’s life, honestly, has been a collection of generic troubles until now. A distant, cheating partner, an unfocused identity, an overbearing mother turned into an overbearing ghost. But all of that can change when a wind circles around a center, when spirals of rain join the party, when gusts pick up, and the newly formed beast travels over the water to the most convenient shore.
Chapter 10
Weary’s fridge is nearly empty, save for a few eggs, a carton of milk, and half a dish of that blasted Kanak casserole, bougna. He eats a few cold, miserable bites straight from the container, slaps the door shut. Checking Henry North’s Visa while hungry is a bad idea. He’s tired of seeing all that food. All those pricey charges at grocery stores that certainly must mean fancy wine and meats and cheeses. He misses cheese, the good kind of cheese. Since he came here, he misses large stores with shining delicacies. Here, it’s mostly fish, rice, coconut, banana, taro, yams. Root vegetables and meat cooked in banana leaves. Sure, Weary indulges in the occasional French meal at Le Saint Hubert or Café de la Paix—it’s not like they live entirely in the boondocks. Still, fruit…even fruit! There isn’t the delightful tropical abundance you’d imagine. Most everything is imported, except a handful of things—mangos, coconut, pawpaw. Those fucking Visa charges can make him get that familiar, unhelpful longing for the States. It’s a great life here, a beautiful life, but a person can’t have everything, and not having everything means always missing something.
Perhaps he’s just in a bad mood. It hasn’t helped that his assistants, Aimée and Yann, French and Melanesian, have begun an affair, fueled by once-warring cultures and long hours doing counts together. Today, Weary spotted them kissing passionately, Aimée’s skirt hiked up against the far outdoor wall of the research facility, Yann’s hips grinding to hers. It made him think of Sarah, and stolen moments, and the fire at her center. Jesus, he misses passion and grinding and fire. It made him ache and then feel sad and then furious at every large and small thing, including cheese.
Oh, yes, he is furious, but he also feels the mountain of his task, casting its shadow. God, patience is tiring.
It’s been a disappointing week, with the Visa bill consistently netting him only the grocery charges and the blip of activity at another clichéd-sounding seaside restaurant. He expects nothing from ShutR, eithe
r. Nothing from life in general. It’s the kind of day where you could just give it all up, sweep away every goal and dream and vision with one tantrum-swoop, like a child losing at a board game.
Still, he must go through the motions. Eventually, something will happen, some small piece will arrive, giving him the information he needs about the woman with the bracelet. All of those grocery bills tell him she’s still around. He just needs her name. One name! One something!
He settles at the computer, which sits on the desk in his bedroom in front of the shuttered windows. The sounds and smells of night falling come in through the screens. He opens the site. Types Mr. Aperture into the search box. If there’s only another fucking picture of a fucking beach, he’ll lose his fucking mind. Yes, that’s a lot of fucks, an overkill of them, but that’s the kind of mood he’s in. Plug your ears if it bothers you, because this is not the time for him to be his best self.
ShutR needs a serious redesign. Maybe he should write a letter of complaint. The oldest photos are posted first, so you must scroll, scroll, scroll to see what’s new. He can’t believe this hasn’t been addressed before. Then again, who even uses ShutR? Probably just the friends and family of the app’s designers, plus one wife killer.
The forest, the desert; sunsets, flowers, the garden, Walter’s chair. The beach, beach, beach.
Sailboats.
Sailboats!
Oh, God. Dear God. When he sees the final new image, he’s not even gleeful. He’s not filled with fresh hope, or with the joy of new leads. His stomach falls like a ruin. Next, his already bubbling fury turns to rage. That fucker, he thinks. A fucking boat! Henry North can just go have a fucking day on a fucking boat with another woman after Sarah! Excuse his mouth. You would understand if you knew everything he does.
Look at that. Look at Mr. Marvelous now. There’s the watery horizon, and the group of racers. There’s a lame close-up of a red-and-white spinnaker, and a heeling vessel with the crew sitting in a row along its portside. And then there she is. There’s the woman with the bracelet. Her face. Her actual self.
Weary doesn’t jump and leap; his heart doesn’t even soar. He feels quite sick, actually. He could vomit. His head begins to throb. He closes the shutters of the windows, as if in protection. Because Henry just can’t resist, can he? Weary sees the ego in the shot—the way Henry is in love with the idea of his own talent. That light on her hair, that captured glow—Henry can’t help himself. He’s got to boast that her beauty in this shot is all due to some skill and special gift of his. Nothing can make you madder than when you guess what a person will do and then they do it, because he’s with a woman, all right. And whoever she is, she is beautiful all on her own, and the way he claims that is criminal.
