Blue Water

by A. Manette Ansay

  She saw me, then. Stood up. Surprised me by taking me into her arms, holding me tighter, tight.

  “Hey,” I said, smelling that scarf, a season’s worth of residual shampoo, moisturizing lotions, perfume. Suddenly, sharply, I thought of Bernadette, the smell of her sunblock, her warm, freckled skin. Certainly Rubicon would have made Miami by now. Perhaps Leon was already scheduled for tests, sitting in a room somewhere, waiting to be seen. Or perhaps he’d already been admitted. Perhaps they’d found something fixable, concrete: an infection, a chemical imbalance, a small, harmless blip of the brain.

  “I wanted you to hear it from me,” Lindsey was saying, and I thought that, perhaps, I’d misheard her, though her lips had been pressed to my ear.

  “What?”

  “Barton and I have separated.”

  She’d already seated herself without looking at me, spreading a thin, paper napkin over her knees. Shame kept me silent; I’d never even considered the possibility that something in Lindsey’s life might go wrong. A waitress arrived to fill our coffee cups. She was young, heavyset, unsuspectingly pretty. “How are you ladies today?” she asked, as if she really meant it.

  “He’s in love with someone else,” Lindsey said, after the girl had gone. “Apparently it’s been going on for years. Everybody knew.”

  I opened a laminated menu. “I didn’t.”

  “I’d walk right out of here if I thought you did.”

  I met her gaze. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  The waitress was standing over us again.

  “Fish fry,” I said. “With coleslaw.”

  “The same,” Lindsey said, and then, to me: “Sorry.” In a swift, nervous gesture, she plucked my menu out of my hand, tucked it back into place behind the condiment stand. “We’re putting the house on the market. We’re selling everything, dividing what we get. No lawyers. We’re trying to keep things civilized. Because it was, you know, a mostly good marriage. I know that sounds strange, considering—”

  “It doesn’t sound strange,” I said. “Lindsey. It’s me. You don’t have to explain.”

  She had opened another napkin, smoothed over the first. “I’m moving to Arizona. Tucson. My sister loves it out there. Fred Pringle’s going to be taking over your account until you can make other arrangements.”

  “God, Fred. I haven’t thought of him in ages.”

  “He’s an ass, I know. I’m leaving you in the lurch.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, but Lindsey was rooting around in that bottomless purse, lifting flaps, unzipping pockets.

  “Speaking of asses,” she said, removing a fat, manila file. “I suppose you’ve already spoken with Chester?”

  “He wants to break the lease,” I said.

  “He’s broken it.” Lindsey handed me a letter. “He’ll be gone, as of New Year’s Day. You’ll need to find someone to watch the place, especially during this kind of weather. It could be awhile before you find another tenant.”

  “My brother can do it,” I began, then stopped. Toby didn’t have time to look after his own life, much less mine. “Look, I’ll figure something out. I’m sorry, Linds; I’m still in shock. What will you do in Tucson?”

  She shrugged. “Work. Maybe put out my own shingle.”

  “Or retire?”

  Her laugh was short and swift as a slap. “With what? I’ve got to think about the future.”

  “You’ve got savings,” I said. “Equity. It’s not like you’ll be starting from scratch.”

  “I’ve got to find a place to live. Buy furniture. A car. Pots and pans, all the rest of that crap. And what if, tomorrow, there’s a lump in my breast? What if I break my back?”

  “You have your sister. And friends. And—”

  “It isn’t the same. Think about it, Meg. Think about how it would be if you couldn’t depend on Rex.”

  For a moment, I was silent. “I know,” I said.

  The food came, along with fresh coffee. We moved things around on our plates.

  “I think you should talk to a lawyer,” I said. “Not to make things adversarial. But why should you have to worry about money when Bart’s the one who—”

  “I told you, no lawyers,” she said, interrupting. “I remember how those lawsuits changed you. That’s not going to happen to me.”

  “What changed me,” I said, deliberately, “was losing a child.”

  She bit into a piece of fish. “Losing a child,” she said, “wasn’t what you talked about. It was litigation. Getting even. Justice. And, believe me, I understand because I’m so upset right now, I’m so angry—” She paused, swallowed, took a deep, visible breath. “I know that if I sat down with an attorney, I’d walk away hell-bent on punishing Barton for every wrong thing he’s done since the moment he was born.”

  “You have to admit,” I said, “that this particular wrong thing is a bad one.”

  “It is.” Her voice was small, and I felt ashamed. She dropped her face into her hands. “What if I can’t forgive him for this? Thirty-two years. All that history between us. What if I end up hating him? And I do hate him, sometimes. I really, truly do.”

  The waitress appeared again. “Everything okay?” she asked, then froze, her mouth a plump, pink O, when Lindsey lifted her tear-streaked face.

  After we’d paid, we walked down to the beach, following the path behind the water treatment plant, the same path that Cindy Ann and I had taken so many years ago. By now, the clouds had passed out over the water. The lake was vibrant with ice and sun. Lindsey unwound her piano scarf, let it hang over her shoulders like a priest’s fat stole.

  “I’ve always hated this thing,” she said.

  “Why wear it, then?”

  She shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a perfectly good scarf.”

  I peeled it away from her, balled it up, chucked it out onto the ice. “You’re starting over with everything else. You might as well buy a scarf.”

  The scarf skittered for a yard or two, then snagged on a rough spot, unfurled like a monochromatic flag. “Barton gave me that scarf.”

  “Screw him,” I said. “Look, I admire you for not wanting to be mad at him, but I can be mad, all right?”

  Lindsey sighed. She said, “You know, I don’t even play the piano. What the hell was he thinking?”

  We had come to the end of the beach. At the edge of the bluff, the water had frozen into abstract sculptures, some of them nearly as high as the junipers wedged between ridges of granite, pink quartz. I remembered the green smell of those junipers, their dusty blue berries, hard as pearls. How Cindy Ann pointed them out to me as we’d scaled our way down from the upper bluff park, following trails cut by erosion, until we arrived at the moon-washed beach. Sitting on our slab of sandstone, humming with residual warmth from the sun. Cindy Ann talking about becoming a botanist, a plant geneticist—we’d just finished studying Mendel, his blue-eyed alleles, his wrinkly peas—and I’d envied her, then, because there were so many things she wanted to do, while I myself, imagining the future, saw nothing but white space, a terrible blank page. So I lay down on my back, not speaking, just looking up at the sky. Cindy Ann stretched out beside me. Her shoulder just touched mine. She said, “Have you ever walked on the moon?”

  Now I asked Lindsey, “Did I really change so much?”

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I’d like to know what you think.”

  She kicked at a beach pebble trapped beneath a cracked, shining circle of ice. “I think you made the right decision, buying that boat,” she said. “Leaving town.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “Yes and no. I guess, at the time, I really didn’t understand. I thought you should see a therapist, remember?”

  “I got mad at you for saying so.”

  “It was bad advice. I saw a therapist myself, right after Barton left me.”

  “What did
he say?”

  “She.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She told me to get an attorney.”

  I laughed, and so did Lindsey. It was the first time I felt like I knew her again, and perhaps she felt the same way about me. On the way back to the car, she suddenly took my hand, swung it as if we were sweethearts. “How was the wedding, by the way? I meant to ask.”

  “Sincere.”

  “At least Cindy Ann wasn’t there. I hear she’s in some kind of mental hospital.”

  “Actually, she was released.”

  “She didn’t come to the wedding, though.”

  “No, she was there.”

  Lindsey stopped walking. “You’re taking this awfully well.”

  “It’s—an acquired state of mind.”

  “That’s the one thing I can’t imagine,” she said. “Finding myself face-to-face with Stanley. Or, worse, running into the two of them somewhere. Not that I’m equating—”

  “Stanley?” I said. “Who’s Stanley?”

  “Bart’s golf partner.” She looked at me. “Didn’t I tell you that part?”

  I shook my head.

  “He said he tried for years. To bury that part of himself. He says he still loves me in the best way he can.”

  We were walking again, approaching the parking lot. I’d just been thinking I would make it through the day without crying; I reminded myself it wasn’t the first time I’d been wrong. Helplessly, hopelessly, I swiped at the cold tears stiffening my cheeks, but Lindsey didn’t notice. She’d dropped my hand to dig in her purse, rattling handfuls of change.

  “I suppose,” she said as we stepped up onto the asphalt, “I should do the right thing and tell them about your house. They’re looking for something together.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Besides, I’ve got someone else in mind.”

  “Ha.” She’d found her keys. It was a small triumph, but enough to make both of us smile. “I like to think of you out on that sailboat,” she said.

  “I like to think of you in the desert.”

  She nodded, dreamily. “Dry heat. All that sky.”

  “With a big canteen.”

  “With a life jacket.”

  We laughed, but this time, it was more to please each other than ourselves. As she drove away, I realized that I hadn’t asked for her sister’s address, for an e-mail address outside of Lakeview, for any contact information whatsoever. But there’d be no point, really, in trying to keep in touch. A year from now, she’d be living in the desert; Rex and I might be anywhere in the world. He’d been right about selling the house, I decided as I got into my mother’s car. It was simply too difficult, finding a steady tenant, managing things long-distance. And this would be another concession I could offer when he learned that I hadn’t signed the settlement, that I’d actually taken steps toward a relationship—for what else could I call it?—with Cindy Ann Kreisler.

  Don’t worry, I told Evan. Everything’s going to work out. Since arriving in Wisconsin, I’d been catching myself talking to him, explaining things, listening for his answers. Whenever this happened, I felt quieted, as if a dull, steady hunger had been appeased. And yet I understood myself. It wasn’t as if I truly believed that he was there.

  That night, back at the Pfister, I phoned Cindy Ann at the mill. She didn’t seem surprised to hear from me. In fact, she sounded happy I’d called. Amy had taken the girls to a movie. Toby and Mal were off for their honeymoon night in Eau Claire. Cindy Ann herself had just gotten in from a meeting.

  “Me and the other town drunks,” she said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Right now, okay. That’s as far ahead as I’m allowed to think.”

  “One day at a time.”

  “More like ten minutes. God, it’s freezing in here.” I heard water running in the sink, then the splash of liquid in a glass. “That’s the one advantage about this place. You don’t need to wait for the water to get cold.”

  “What if I said I’d found a better place for you all to stay?”

  At that moment, it seemed easy, even effortless. My backpack stood, packed and waiting, by the door. In the morning, my mother and I would drive back to Miami. Rex had sent an e-mail with the address of the rigger; as soon as I picked up the whisker poles, I’d return to the Bahamas, weigh anchor, set sail.

  “It would make a lot of sense, if you think about it,” I said. “I’d get someone to look after our house. You’d get heat and hot water. But you’d have to do some serious cleaning. The tenant hasn’t taken good care of the place.”

  “I just worry,” Cindy Ann said, “that he wouldn’t want us living there.”

  I thought, at first, that she meant Chester. Then Rex. Then I understood.

  “Evan wasn’t like that,” I said.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked. “Since the accident, I mean? Like, in a dream, or—”

  I felt myself tense. “No.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “Why would you?” I said, trying to keep the irritation from my voice.

  “Because I was the one who did this to him,” she said. “I’m the one took his life.”

  I was suddenly, wildly angry. You took all of our lives, I wanted to say. I had to hold the words in, literally, my own hand pressed against my mouth.

  “I guess you’re right,” I finally said. “It would be too hard on everyone.”

  “I’ll find you somebody else,” she said, quickly. “I’ll ask around at tomorrow’s meeting. You’ve done so much for me, for us—”

  “I’ve done nothing,” I said, and when I hung up the phone, I felt happy to think we’d spoken for the last time. But, in fact, I called her three times more before leaving Florida: from the lanai at the back of my parents’ town house; after picking up the whisker poles at the rigger’s; after spending the day at Miami Children’s, talking with receptionists, chattering groups of technicians, anyone who might recall a brain-injured boy, in a handmade wheelchair, who’d been living aboard a sailboat. Scanning directory after directory, I couldn’t find a single pediatric neurologist—or pediatric anything—whose name remotely matched the one that Audrey had remembered. The Coast Guard had no record of Rubicon clearing back into the States.

  Over the next few months, the letters I’d send to the New Bern PO Box would be returned to my parents’ address, each of them red-stamped.

  Thirteen

  the whisker poles were not long and straight, as I’d imagined. They were two heavy coils of stainless steel, roughly the size of Hula Hoops. For three solid days of travel, throughout one random delay after the next, I’d worn them around my neck like a yoke: slogging between airports, waiting for ferries, checking in at damp-sheeted hotels. By the time I boarded the ferry to Hunter’s Cove, it felt as if a permanent groove had been worn into the tops of my shoulders. No matter. Approaching the dock, I saw Chelone, anchored across the bay. Even at a distance, her rub rails and hatch covers shone like polished gold. Stretched across the cabin top—where in the world had he found it?—Rex had hung a glittery banner that spelled out the words WELCOME HOME.

  The moment he caught sight of me, waving from the stern, he was over the safety lines and into the dinghy, jerking at the starter cord: once, twice. And even before I’d wrestled the poles to the edge of the pier, he was buzzing across the quiet harbor, rocking the other boats with his wake. “I’ve had that banner up for the last two weeks,” he called, cutting the engine, gliding up against the pier. “People around here are calling you my imaginary wife.”

  When he tossed me the line, I missed it. Handing the poles down into the dinghy, I nearly toppled us both. “Got to get your sea legs back, I see,” he said, helping me onto the bench seat. “You’re so pale!”

  “You’re so tan!”

  “And your poisonwood’s gone!”

  “At least where it shows.”

  “Let’s see.” He was tugging, tickling at my T-shirt.

  “Come here,”
I said, and kissed him.

  He was clean-shaven, clear-eyed, fit. His hair, close-cropped, felt like velvet beneath my hand. The taste of him, the smell of his skin—familiar, yet unexpected—made me immune to the whistles and cheers from the half-dozen men standing around the dockside bar. They wore identical yellow T-shirts, dark blue shorts, and baseball caps. I glanced back at them as we pulled away. “A baseball team?” I asked.

  Rex laughed. “The Men’s Historical, Cultural and Sociological Expedition Society.”

  “Are they from some university?”

  “Nope. They just meet here to party once a year. They offered me and Jack an honorary membership, but Nancy wouldn’t let us join. Said she would speak on your behalf until you could defend your own territory.” He grinned, then nodded at the streamlined Beneteau anchored fifty yards from Chelone. “There’s Nantucket.” On the forward deck, a handsome, swimsuited couple were hard at work on the stainless steel. “We’ve been talking about buddy-boating to Tobago—I mean, if we all agree. It would be good to have some company, in case anything goes wrong. And then, when we get there, they could show us around.”

  It wasn’t what I’d imagined—traveling within sight and sound of another boat—but it was certainly safer, more practical. And blue water was blue water. One little speck on the horizon wouldn’t make us feel any less independent of land. “When’s the next weather window?”