“I wouldn’t think local coastal fishermen would like to cross the ocean,” I say.
“It is asking a great deal of them,” Dr. James admits. And then his gaze fixes on me. “To go west once more, to be alive, to have your name? It is a second chance you have been given, Christian. It is a gift. Do not waste it.”
I swallow hard. “I—I won’t,” I say.
And so, the next day, after I bid goodbye to the nurses, Dr. James drives me to the local port. I embrace him, knowing this man saved my life once, and now he is saving it again.
Dr. James claps my biceps in his hands. “I have done everything I can for you, Christian. You have a chance to regain your life. Or perhaps not to regain it, for it will not be as it was—I think you know this. It is a chance to build it into something new. What you make of your life, now, it is up to you. I say to you yesterday, this is a gift you have been given, and that you must not waste it. I say it again—do not waste this.”
My eyes burn, and my throat is tight. “You—you’ve saved me, Dr. James. I can’t—I can’t thank you enough. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve done.”
“One does not repay a gift, Christian.”
“I just—” I scrub my face with both hands, and then embrace him once more, fiercely. “Thank you, Dr. James. Thank you.”
When I let go, Dr. James backs away, clearing his throat gruffly. “You are welcome.” He shoves a hand into his trouser pocket. “Maybe you send us a postcard here, when you find yourself settled, yes?”
“I will.”
And then, with a wave, Dr. James turns and strides away across the docks back to his car. I have no possessions except a tattered old carpetbag with a few changes of clothing, donated to me by the hospital, my notebooks filled with my writing, some pens, and a card made by the nurses for me, with their signatures and phrases of goodbye and well-wishes in various languages. I carry this bag with me across the gangway from dock to the gently rolling deck of an aging but well-kept fishing vessel. I am greeted in French by the captain, an older man with a gold front tooth and what appears to be ritual scarring on his cheeks. The other crewmen all stand clustered together, staring at me with something like awe and perhaps a little superstitious dread. One man whispers something to the man beside him, and another man makes some sort of gesture with his hands, to ward off evil or to call down good fortune; they rescued me from the sea, and now I’m going back out into it. My rescue was miraculous, so I am either fool, a madman, or cursed.
I can’t say they’re wrong.
But yet, I must go.
I stand at the railing as we cast off and leave port, watching the sea churn, watching the coastline disappear, listening to the familiar clink and grind of a fishing vessel.
I’m coming, Ava.
13
[From Christian’s handwritten journal; November 23, 2016]
There is nothing but the Sea,
The scudding of the wind,
And the twisting melt of Time against my skin.
Nothing but the knowledge of our sin,
And my guilt, oozing under my flesh like sludge.
Nothing but your dark truth,
coating the fine hairs on my arm like a mist.
Fever dreams in the darkness, as I lay in the belly of a beast:
You, love, with your lips sewn shut,
each stitch written in ink-black threads,
The wounds where needle threaded flesh raw and red and bleeding;
Me, staggering through venomous shadows,
alcohol seeping from my skin like leaking poison;
A grave, the marble headstone gleaming wet in a driving rain,
the mound of grass jeweled with raindrops—
Old, rotten flowers going gray, forgotten ‘neath the stone—
five letters, scribed deep in the marble,
old pain and fresh agony howling and screaming from the name:
* * *
H E N R Y
* * *
I speak softly,
Whisper to the winds;
The Sea answers.
She shouts in storm syllables,
Howls in hurricane stanzas,
Writes truth in tempest,
Sings of half-remembered sorrows in shrieking gales.
* * *
You, love, with your lips sewn shut.
Me, lost in the wilderness, skin leaking poison.
* * *
The Sea spans the space between us.
The waves know you, and speak of you.
They sing of you, whisper of you.
But I don’t understand all the words,
And I know I’m missing something,
Half-understood truths slipping past me,
And if only I could comprehend,
I would find you.
* * *
I smell your perfume on the wind.
I hear the soft sigh of your voice,
That dulcet sound you make as you come apart with me.
I can almost taste your skin in the soak of the brine on my lips.
If I stand at the prow and close my eyes, I can almost feel you.
* * *
Darkness gathers around me;
I wear it like a cloak.
I wrap the shreds of shadows around my shoulders like a tattered coat,
Because the light, the sun, the warmth,
They are too real, too bright, too unforgiving…
And I prefer to hide.
I am king of shadows, wading the shoals at full moon,
storm clouds as my crown;
I play in the deeps,
cavort with the weird, translucent, eyeless creatures that lurk there beside me.
If I emerge into the light, you will see my ugliness.
The Sea will go glassy,
It will become a mirror,
reflecting my flaws back to me.
I don’t want to see them;
I don’t want you to see them.
* * *
Must I give up my crown?
Must I shed my cloak?
Must I show you all my sins,
worn on my flesh like warts and boils and scabs?
Must I see them, myself?
* * *
You are beautiful,
You are perfect.
You are a carving of ivory,
a thing of unmarred porcelain—flawless and elegant.
I know this is a fiction,
but such are the games played by Memory,
Such are the vagaries of Time,
Those mischievous sisters of the trickster, The Sea.
* * *
You, love, with your lips sewn shut,
Me, lost in shadows, skin leaking alcohol, leaking poison, leaking truth.
* * *
You, love, sighing in the silence.
You, love, reaching for me with a sleepy smile.
You, love, collapsed against a headstone, weeping.
You, love, your spine presented to me,
You, love, wasting away, silence wrapped around you like ice.
You, love, shrouded by the miles and the months.
* * *
Where are you, my love?
14
[From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 23, 2016]
I feel him.
Christian.
It feels as if there’s a magnet sewn into my skin, pulling me toward him. I dream of him. I see him on a ship, a storm raging. He gazes into the maelstrom, and I would swear he sees me.
But this is not what devours all my waking moments, now.
It’s not Christian, but my child, my Henry.
I see it all happening again in a flick-frame montage:
Giving birth, holding the messy bundle that is my newborn son—
Changing diapers, breast-feeding him, swaddling him, rocking him back to sleep at 3am—
Being exhausted and exhilarated by motherhood.
Then, suddenly, Hen
ry howling in obvious and heart-wrenching agony I can do nothing to stop—
A doctor in a white lab coat, balding with a terrible comb-over, stethoscope over his shoulders, pens in his pocket, an earnest and compassionate expression expertly pasted onto his pudgy face, his mouth moving in slow motion, words distorted, only a few syllables clear: brain cancer…inoperable…palliative care—
A darkened room in the pediatric oncology wing, Henry in a crib, tangled cords and tubes and wires making him look more like a science experiment than a human baby, a monitor beeping slowly, an oxygen machine pumping even more slowly, the green accordion bag inflating and deflating in decreasing intervals, until the moment of flatline—
A tangled mess of blurry days and moments, signing papers, events swirling around me rather than to me, Christian always beside me, but like a thing of iron and marble, an automaton—
A bright sunny day, brilliant and cloudless and hot; a group of black-clad individuals with somber expressions, standing around a tiny casket, a miniature thing of polished black wood with bright silver accents; a minister speaking words, Christian tossing a handful of brown soil onto the casket landing with a loud clatter, Christian trying to get me to do the same. But I can’t. I said goodbye when he entered the arms of the angels, and I cannot bear another goodbye to my son.
The montage ends there—
With my inability to say goodbye at the grave.
I see it again and again and again—Christian with that handful of rich dark loam, letting it trickle over the edge of his palm onto the casket, a ticking rumble as dirt hits wood, a hollow sound, and then he upends his palm suddenly and abruptly, opening his fist so the handful of dirt vanishes into the hole of the grave. I see Christian doing that, again and again.
I’m standing behind him. I have a thick wad of tissues in my hand, sodden with my tears. He turns, stretching out a hand to me.
“Come on, Ava,” I hear him say. “One last goodbye.”
“I can’t.” I hear myself say the words. “I can’t. I already said goodbye to him. I can’t do it again.”
I see myself turning away, my heels digging into the grass. I see myself walking away from my son’s grave.
I see this on repeat, a series of moments stitched together and looped.
And then there’s AFTER.
After the burial, once we arrived home.
I left one of my shoes in the living room, on its side, just behind the couch. The other I left in the hallway our just outside our bedroom, upright, but the toe facing back toward the living room; I can still hear the shoe wobbling on the hardwood as I trudge listlessly to the bed, the shoe tipping side to side before going still. I remember lying there, under the blankets, in my funeral dress, staring at the photo of Henry and me. He’s so happy in that photo. Grinning ear to ear, a gummy, happy grin, eager and innocent, a bit of drool on his chin. His hands are in the air, blurred, mid-wave.
I stared at that photograph for so long that it is burned into my brain. I can see each individual detail: I am wearing a red tank top, the strap just barely visible, and I have my favorite tiny diamond studs in my ears—the same earrings I’m wearing now, actually, which are the first gift Chris ever gave me, for my birthday a month and a half after we met. My fingernails are painted a pale purple, and my hair is pushed back over my ears, held in place by the silver arms of a pair of sunglasses—an old pair of Christian’s aviators. Henry is wearing a tank top/shorts romper, gray with red and white pinstripes down the sides and a koala embroidered on the chest. Henry has a red pacifier in his left hand, blurred into a pinkish smear.
I remember taking the selfie, and I also I remember that within seconds of snapping that selfie, he started fussing and crying, and shoved the binky into his mouth, his forehead wrinkled in pain. But in the moment of the photograph, he was so full of joy, so happy just to be taking a picture with Mommy. And I, in turn, was just as happy and joyful, in that moment.
After, as the fussiness took him, worry replaced joy. Panic replaced happiness.
But for that moment, I was blissfully joyful.
I remember lying there in bed for days—for weeks—staring at that photo, trying to remember what it was like to be that happy.
I wish I knew, even now.
I climbed into bed, and I stayed there. Christian would come in and sit on the bed, and murmur to me. Tell me he loved me. Try to get me to sit up. To eat something. To say something.
I couldn’t.
I remember it all. I remember being utterly unable to so much as form a sound—my grief was just so HEAVY, an elephant sitting on my chest, crushing me, pinning me. I couldn’t breathe. I’d lie there, and I’d be barely able to draw a breath. Because, if I drew too deep a breath, I’d start sobbing and I’d never stop. I’d drown in sorrow. So I just remained still. Wishing I could die, wanting to just fade away.
I felt each individual moment and sensation with crystal clarity. I felt the hunger pangs, the thirst. Headaches. Withdrawal from caffeine. Stiffness, soreness. Pressure on my bladder or bowels. I felt it all; I just felt the sorrow and the grief more acutely, and those utterly buried and dwarfed the rest. Nothing mattered except that Henry was dead.
It crushed me.
It shattered me.
I’d buried myself in that little box. Christian, with that handful of Florida dirt, had interred me in the ground along with Henry.
I remember too the desperation in Christian’s voice. The way he would plead with me. Beg me. Bring tray after tray of food.
I remember the anger, so vividly. It was an inferno inside me, consuming me.
I stared at the photograph and thought back over each moment when I’d KNOWN deep down something was wrong with Henry and had chalked it up to fussiness or colic or something else. I blamed myself for not realizing. For not bringing him to the doctor sooner. If I’d found out sooner that he had a tumor, maybe they could have done something to save him. I felt anger at Christian for not insisting we get him checked, for thinking I was paranoid. Anger at Christian for not protecting our son. In the twisted snarl of grief and sorrow and anger inside me, I managed to blame Christian.
I lay in bed and I stared at the photo and I slept and I fought tears and I fed on the anger, and ignored the hollow hunger in my stomach. All I had within me was anger. I heard his words and felt nothing, only anger. Only rage. Only sorrow. Only grief. But it was all mixed up and twisted and wrong.
Who was I really angry at? Myself? Him? The world? God? Everything?
Rage was such a wildfire inside me, so full of fury and hate and sorrow, that I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. There’s no way to put what I was feeling into such a paltry, mortal, intangible thing as mere words. Things like SORROW, and RAGE, and ANGER, and GRIEF…they’re just words. They don’t—can’t—encompass what it feels like to watch your helpless infant son suffer such awful torture, watch him sicken and die and know there’s not a single goddamn thing you can do to even ease the pain. You can give him drugs, but only so much, because those’ll kill him too.
You can only watch as he suffers. You can’t suffer with him, you can’t take it from him, and you can’t die in his place—you would, in a heartbeat.
You would suffer all the evils this world has to offer if only he could be spared this hell.
But it doesn’t work like that. And so, he dies.
Yeah, that’ll make you angry. But how do you put that into words? How do you describe what you feel in the moment the monitor goes flatline and you know he’s gone, your son, your baby is fucking GONE?
You don’t.
You just…die inside.
I’d been scooped hollow—I remember reading that phrase somewhere, used to describe the grief at losing a loved one, and it is absolutely accurate. Everything that was me had been ripped away and scraped away, leaving nothing in its place.
That creature lying in that bed, staring at that photograph? It wasn’t me, that wasn’t Ava St. Pierre. It was…a THING. A
void.
There was nothing inside me. That’s why I was so unresponsive—I wasn’t me anymore. I’d been tortured into madness.
But now?
Now I hear Christian’s voice.
I hear the pain, the agony.
I hear the grief.
He’d suffered through everything I had.
Not only that, but he’d had to watch me starve myself. He’d lost his son and his wife at the same time. And he had suffered this alone.
I did that to him.
I’d twisted the knife in his heart, and then sprinkled salt on the wound.
I’d abandoned him when he needed me most.
No wonder he left me.
15
[On board Le Coureur D’onde; off the coast of Africa; November 26, 2016]
Being on board a ship feels like coming home. The bucking and tilting and rocking of the deck, the spray on my face, the sight of the sea everywhere around me…it is home. Brings me back to myself. The men crewing this vessel probably think I’m a little crazy, because I never want to leave the deck. I do the work of three men, hauling and coiling lines and mending nets and the million other jobs there are to do aboard a fishing vessel. I sleep little—I’m too excited about being in motion, finally, about being on a ship, and feeling memory return.
I’m finally beginning, in some small ways, to feel like myself.
I have a name.
I know I am a writer.
There is a woman, Ava, who loves me.
But yet, there’s still a dark undercurrent roiling inside me. Some knowledge I dread to unearth, a memory I’m not sure I want to regain.
So I work, and I sit in the galley with the crew learning new words and phrases in half a dozen languages, laughing at jokes told through gesture and facial expression and messy mixtures of languages. We drink pots of coffee and relieve each other on deck and eat huge piles of food, and work side by side through night and day.
There's No Place Like Home Page 14
