“How do you know all this?” I ask, my teeth aching.
“People talk to me.” She shrugs. “I ask questions. They answer.”
Instant-nausea, like out of a packet, fills my gut. “Hey, Mom?” I say.
I saw him in the tie shop.
It had to have been him.
I repeat that like a mantra.
It had to have been.
Had to have been.
“Do you have that Dramamine on you?”
She wipes her nose. “Nat, we’re barely moving.” She grabs my father’s arm. “Do you think they’ve stopped the boat for a search?”
I hold out a shaky hand and say, “Dramamine?” Then smile. “Anyway, Mom, I’m sure it’s just a rumor.”
We go to a cabaret show called “00Songs” in a massive theater with movie screens for walls.
“Ooooooh,” Lexi says after the first act—a woman singing “Skyfall.” “Double-Oh songs! Like double-oh seven. Now I get it. I thought it was oooh-songs and was, like, wait—what?”
Charlotte smiles and pats Lexi on the head. “Not the brightest bulb on the marquee.”
Lexi sticks her tongue out and pants like a happy dog for a second, then swats Charlotte’s hand away. “Oh, like you are?”
The performers are men in tuxes and women in slinky dresses. Lights seem to change the very color of the air of the room. Music surrounds us from hidden speakers.
The screens never show any specific James Bond footage that I can tell, but it’s all very Bond-like. Cobblestoned towns with hidden corners propped against a hill that rises from a turquoise sea. Rooftop views from tall towers. Infinity pools on white islands. Speedboats racing off to some glistening horizon. European cities in panorama. Skyscrapers of glass being scaled by wired spies.
There’s no way it was him who went overboard.
It would mean loss upon loss, and no girl could be that unlucky.
Fantasies come in the form of two-line scripts.
EXT. A SMALL ITALIAN TOWN -- DAY
A young woman, maybe twenty-five years old--this is NATALIE--winds her way down a cobblestoned street lined with pastel-colored buildings. We hear the click of her shoes; we hear passersby speaking Italian. Rounding a corner too quickly she runs right into a young man. This is LUKE.
NATALIE (in Italian)
Mi scusi
The two make eye contact, hold it longer than seems normal. There is something there. But what?
LUKE
Natalie, is it you?
INT. IRISH PUB -- NIGHT
A young woman sits at a small table with a group of friends. This is NATALIE. She is happy, smiling at a story her Irish friend is telling, and yet we sense something is … missing.
She gets up, goes to the bar, nods at the bartender to get his attention. He is pulling a pint; indicates he’ll be right over. When he comes over, she leans in.
NATALIE
Another Guinness, please.
MALE (O.S.)
Make that two.
Natalie turns to the voice. A young man--this is ANDREW--is right there. They recognize each other; share something deep. They kiss.
When I see him for real, relief is adrenaline.
He’s watching a live game show in the Atrium. Three couples onstage are trying to pop a balloon on their spouse’s lap—bouncing, squeaking, laughing. A massive anchor-shaped chandelier hangs ominously over them all and looks heavy enough to drag the whole ship down. Uproarious laughter from the crowd rises up to where I am, on a balcony one level up.
“That’s him,” I say to Lexi; the other girls decided to turn in, but Lexi said she felt restless and wanted to take a walk. “He’s over there.”
“Where?”
“Right there.” Pointing across such a huge room seems futile, but I do it anyway, then get my phone out and show her the picture again so she can recognize him more easily. My hands are shaking. My pulse has quickened just like that.
She says, “Let me see that,” and takes my phone. She deletes the photo.
“Why did you do that?” I snap.
“Because he’s an asshole.”
I grab my phone and turn back to him. He’s laughing and clapping, and I think he’s got some nerve. I snake through the crowd watching from the balcony and head down a long staircase, nearly falling when one of my sandals slips off my foot. From the swell in the applause when I hit the main level, I can tell the show is ending.
“No, no, no,” I say under my breath.
People start to stand and stretch and talk.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Sorry. So sorry.”
No, no, no.
I’ve lost sight of him, but I keep on going anyway—too fast for how crowded it is—and I bump right into someone. “I’m so sorry.”
“Married fifty years, these two. Fifty years. One more round of applause, folks, and thanks for coming …”
I reach where I think I should be just as I’m blinded by a spotlight.
By the time I blink it away, he’s gone.
The room seems to spin; the Dramamine’s not working.
One level up, Lexi is shaking her head like I’m a lost cause.
Life with Paul was easy, predictable. We spent afternoons watching old movies together and sitting on beaches and hanging out at his house listening to music, mostly stuff he loved that I’d never heard of. We liked going to the mall and not buying anything and doing homework together at the big wooden table in his dining room.
We went for drives and made up stories about houses we saw. We liked playing Scrabble with only words that appeared in song lyrics you could sing, which meant me losing a lot of Scrabble.
Above all, we loved going to the aquarium where we met—he’d bought a membership—just to watch sea lions get fed and to touch the backs of cold, hard stingrays. He’d go on and on about everything he knew about each creature while I’d just marvel at the fact that he and I had found each other, had gotten so lucky, and never had to deal with not knowing who in the world was out there for us.
Lexi said we were like an old married couple from day one, but maybe I liked it that way.
We fought sometimes about his phone, but not really. He was an information junkie, so it wasn’t like he was always doing something dumb on it, but still. Whenever we drove I had to hold it or put it in the glove box, because otherwise he’d be checking different apps for best routes or trying to find a place nearby where we could get a root beer float. And wherever we were, if we talked about something and ran into a question, he’d say, “If only there were a way we could look that up …,” and then he’d look it up.
Which was part of how he knew so much about so many things.
He’d have looked up rock-climbing lingo for me so that next time I’d know.
Next time I’d shout out, “Lowering!” and that would be that.
“Well, we saw the mystery man,” Lexi says when we get back to the cabin. “So he didn’t jump.”
I head into the bathroom. The fan is loud but not loud enough.
Nora says, “Does she seriously think that a guy going overboard is more likely than him just blowing her off?”
INT. CRUISE SHIP ATRIUM -- NIGHT
A crowd is watching a live game show, some kind of married couples challenge. A winner is being crowned after they successfully pop a balloon between their bellies.
In the crowd a teenage girl--this is NATALIE-- spies a boy. He is across the room. He is wearing a white linen shirt. She sets out in his direction. The crowd is scattering and blocking her path. She is frantically worming her way through them, keeping her eyes on that white shirt the whole time--it’s like a beacon calling to her.
Finally, she reaches him, grabs his arm. He turns. Her disappointment is apparent.
BOY
Can I help you?
We see disappointment/confusion cross Natalie’s face. It’s not him.
NATALIE
I thought you were someone else.
P
isces Day 3!
Port of Call: Grand Turk
Highlights:
7:00 a.m. — Gentle stretching with Jan
8:00–9:00 a.m. — Pop-Up Pancakes Station—Boardwalk
11:00 a.m. — BINGO in the Saturn Room
2:00 p.m. — Matinee movie: Interstellar
3:00–5:00 p.m. — Live music in the Atrium: Rock the Boat cover band
7:00–9:00 p.m. — On the Boardwalk—Pop-Up Homemade Ice Cream Stand
8:00 p.m. — Ice sculpture contest
8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. — Stars of Broadway through the Ages: Starlite Theater
9:00 p.m. — Retro video game challenge in Supernova
10:00 p.m. — How to Make Towel Animals—Supernova
A slice of new light sneaks past the thick drapes at six a.m.: I peek out and see land, and lights blurred by heavy air. The ship is docked. That’s what’s different. We’re completely still.
I use the bathroom, then crawl back under the X-ray blanket and nod off again.
The next time I wake—one of the girls is up and heading to the bathroom—I have to shake off a dream about Paul.
I get up, stretch, pad back over to the drapes, and look out again. Eight seagulls perched on the balcony railing seem to be studying what little they can see of me and not in a kind way. When I pull back the curtain, they startle and take off, then adjust their flying positions, falling into formation like Jedi fighters called to some distant galaxy.
Who’s Amelia?
The walk to the Grand Turk cruise center is small steps and bumping shoulders on a long pier; we’re a herd. I’m tempted to moo. A tree we pass when we hit actual land is so full of small birds that it shakes with chirps.
Our bus to snorkeling doesn’t leave for twenty minutes. When the crowd thins out some thanks to earlier buses, other destinations—there are pools and beaches right there at the center—my parents get coffees and we get iced teas, then we sit in hammocks near our designated pickup area.
“I dreamed about Paul last night.” I set aside my tea to put sunscreen on.
“Good dream or bad dream?” Charlotte’s ready to analyze.
“He was alive.” I open my sunscreen tube; it pushes coconut into the air. “Wearing a floppy sunhat.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” Lexi echoes. “Like, were you happy to see him?”
Nora seems oddly focused on her own sunscreen—she’s doing the tops of her feet supermethodically.
I’m studying the crowd, looking for him. Not Paul; the other him.
“Of course,” I say, carefully sliding sunscreen under my necklace, then across my breastbone.
But I wasn’t happy in the dream, not exactly. I was confused and hurt, and he wasn’t thrilled to see me either.
A small blue bus bumps and bounces into the nearby parking lot; we put away sunscreen and gather up our backpacks and board. Out the dusty window, the ship looks ridiculously high. No way anyone would survive a fall like that. The impact alone would kill you.
My mother got the call from Paul’s Aunt Betty. I was helping clean up our late dinner when she picked up her phone, then said, “Who?” then said, “Oh yes, hi there,” sounding odd, like she’d been caught in a lie.
She stepped out of the room and I heard, “Oh god. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.”
Then a minute later, whispers, then, “Let us know if there’s anything we can do. Of course. Thanks for calling.”
She appeared in the kitchen like she’d just been to the makeup trailer where she’d been done up for her part as Ghost Woman #3. Pale. Ghoulish. Bloodshot eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
She said my father’s name, with a shaky lilt of agony, and waited for him to turn from the sink, where he was washing a greasy pan. A poof of tiny bubbles lifted into the air.
“What is it?” he said, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“The traffic,” she said. “The accident.”
Bawling. Then turning to me:
“Honey, it was Paul.”
My brain strained. Everything murky.
My words muffled and slowed—“I don’t understand”—like I was talking underwater.
“He’s dead, Natalie.” She charged at me to pull me into a hug.
“No, but.” I backed up to the oven, still warm from dinner; I had to move away; the hug would make it real. “It can’t be.”
“That was his aunt.”
“You’re sure,” my father said like a statement and not a question—maybe because he didn’t want an answer.
She nodded and tears dragged her makeup down from her eyes in black streaks—Sad Clown #1—the whole world warping into a fun-house mirror.
Snorkeling is 10 percent amazing and 90 percent sheer terror. Amazing because of the color of the water; the soft sand on my toes; the light lapping waves. Terror because I prefer my fish behind aquarium glass.
I am herky-jerky and panicky in the water. My lips and gums hurt from the mouthpiece, probably from clenching too hard.
I come up for a break, for air, and Nora resurfaces beside me. “You need to stop flailing around so much.” She fills her mask with water, then dumps it out again. “You’re scaring all the fish away.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Shouldn’t you take that off?” She nods at something on me, but I don’t know what she could mean. “Your necklace.”
My hand goes to it. “I never take it off,” I say, though I do typically take it off to shower only to put it right back on before even getting dressed.
“You’re not afraid you’re going to lose it?” she says.
“I feel like I’m more likely to lose it if I take it off and put it back on a lot.”
For reasons that were probably obvious but were sort of unclear to me, I’d become attached to the necklace in a way I’d never been with any piece of jewelry before. Also, the clasp was sort of tiny and tricky. Like a bunch of times I thought I put it on correctly only to feel it slink down my cleavage five minutes later.
Nora shrugs. I shrug. To change the subject, I simply look away. Charlotte is standing in the surf talking to that guy Shaun from rock climbing. She is smiling, laughing, at ease.
I slip back under the water after adjusting my gear yet again. But of course now, in addition to being freaked out by the fish, I’m paranoid about losing my necklace—it could sink and rust here, and never be found again.
After a handful of shimmering schools flash by, I spy one horrific eel—thick and fast—and decide I’m done. I go sit on my towel on the small beach. I shouldn’t be surprised that snorkeling is not for me, but I am.
“What’s up with Nora?” I ask Lexi, when she comes and sits beside me.
“What do you mean?”
I’ve already scanned the beach and the water; he’s not here. “I mean she’s acting prickly.”
“You’ve met Nora, right?”
“More prickly,” I say, then remember their overheard conversation. “What were you guys talking about the other night? Something she’s having a hard time getting over or something?”
“It’s not worth mentioning,” Lexi says.
This is what I’ve been telling myself about that night at Nora’s house, but I’m starting to question the logic.
Nora comes out of the water. Her bikini top can barely contain her. She adjusts her suit bottom and grabs a towel and sits beside Lexi. She says, “That. Was. Awesome.”
Shaun splashes Charlotte, and her belly laugh ripples off the water like the sun.
“Surprise!”
We all jump at the voice.
“Mom!” I say. “Don’t do that!”
Turns out, my parents booked a glass-bottom boat tour. So we pack up and line up with a bunch of families with small kids, then board this junky-looking boat with a thatch canopy. We slide into bench seats along a rail that overlooks the center bottom of the boat, which is in fact made of glass. So far all you can see is sand and some rocks and shells.
&n
bsp; The motor starts, and the tour guide introduces himself and lays out some rules about not standing and keeping your hands inside the boat and we’re off. It doesn’t take long before we’re coasting over a large school of silver fish and there are delighted gasps from the children on board. Gasps from Florida Nora, too.
Below us, the ocean floor lights up. We’re passing over a coral reef—like rainbows trapped in stone. It makes me think of Magic Rocks that Paul grew in his room, and how they’ve probably been thrown out. I’d sort of loved the way they looked like a miniature Atlantis where tiny mermaids might live.
I’m squeezed between Lexi and my mother. I can’t think of the last time I’ve been this physically close to my mom for any length of time, and that seems weird.
“How’re you doing?” she asks when the boat picks up speed.
“Good,” I say, not sure what’s expected of me.
“You’re having fun? I mean, in spite of everything?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m having fun.” It sounds more obnoxious than I mean it to, which is not at all. “I mean, yes, I am. So thank you.”
She squeezes my knee, and even with her sunglasses on I can tell she is having some kind of fragile moment, so we do what we usually do and look away from each other. It’s not that we’re not close; it’s more like since the accident we’re both always trying to protect each other.
The captain cuts the engine, and the boat bucks and slows. An eel appears under the glass—oohs and aahs—and I try to determine whether it’s the same eel as before, whether it’s stalking me, messing with my head.
“That is so cool,” Nora says, leaning closer to see.
Lexi elbows me and says, “Got ourselves a Jacqueline Cousteau over here.”
“I know,” I say. “Right?”
Nora doesn’t look at us when she says, “Oh just eel with it.”
Lexi and Charlotte laugh and I smile like I don’t care but it’s a joke Paul used to make and just like that I have a theory on why Nora’s so prickly and why she didn’t want to hear about my dream and why she’s so interested in my necklace and what she’s having a hard time getting over and I might throw up.
The Opposite of Here Page 7
