Authors: A. Manette Ansay
How she'd loved that soft serve ice cream, especially the Dairy Castle specialty,
Twist:
half vanilla and half chocolate, the two flavors swirled into one. The night she'd phoned Meggie, she filled two extralarge beverage cups with
Twist
âone for each of themâlayering them both with cherries, nuts, crumbles of brownie, chocolate sprinkles. They'd walked to the beach, the way they always did, only tonight, neither of them spoke. Instead they ate doggedly, deliberately, tongues cupping the cold, smooth surface of their spoons.
“I suppose I should tell somebody,” Cindy Ann said, and Meggie said, without looking at her, “Nobody's going to believe you.”
Even before she'd finished the sentence, the clarity between them, the good understanding, had started to soften, fade. The summer of their friendship like a photograph dropped in water, its decomposition accelerating as each minute passed. So that by the time school started one week later, it wasn't surprising to either of them that Meggie had opted out of study hall, though they'd signed up together only last May. Meggie elected to take a class, instead, to help with her college applications, she'd explained. Cindy Ann started carrying her bag lunch to the home ec. lab, rather than joining Meggie in the cafeteria. And then, the DC night manager quit, and Cindy Ann was offered the position. She left college track for vocational. After that, she rarely saw Meggie at all. When she did, in the halls, they both smiled and waved, as if nothing whatsoever
had happened.
At least, Meggie never told anyone at school, though she'd told her brother, of course. Cindy Ann had seen it in Toby's face, that time he'd asked her out. Probably Meggie had told her parents, too, because Meggie was the sort of girl who told her family everything; who turned in all her homework on time; who believed in things like hard work and good manners. More than once, over the years, it had occurred to Cindy Ann that she herself had wanted to believe in these things, and Dr. Contreau had even suggested her relationship with Meggie had had far more to do with this longing than it did with Meggie herself. But what did it matter? The friendship had been over now forâwhat? Thirty years? It had ended as quickly, as cleanly, as it had begun. There'd been no reason to think about it.
Until Mallory got involved with Toby Hauskindler.
Until the accident.
And, now, this fucking engagement.
“Why wouldn't they believe me?” Cindy Ann had said, her voice sounding thin, young, unreliable, even to her own ears. “
You
believe me, don't you?”
“Maybe he didn't mean it,” Meggie said, and she was speaking rapidly, breathlessly. “Maybe he thought you wanted him to.”
And Cindy Ann had gulped the
Twist
from her spoon, bit at it, swallowed it down so fast that a fist of pain blossomed in her forehead, as if Meggie had struck her there. There were times, like tonight, when it seemed as if her head still throbbed from the force of that blow. All those times she'd come home late from work, undressed, lain down naked in the heat. Reading with the light onâfive minutes, ten. Sounds behind the walls. The click of a door at the top of the stairs. Was it just her imagination? A couple of squirrels in the eaves? And then, the night she'd caught him, how he'd
pleaded with her, begged her, tears streaming down his face. But even as he'd wept, his hand was closing over her own, pulling her back into the ringing of hangers, the crumpling of shoe boxes as they wrestled and fought. Suddenly, he was angry.
Come on, you can do this for me.
Small, tear-shaped Christmas ornaments skittered around their shoulders; a ribbon of tinsel glittered in his hair, catching the distant light from the hall. For a split second, everything seemed normal again. He was, after all, just Dan. She laughed, and he rolled on top of her, trapping her hand between his penis and belly, her body between himself and the floor.
I didn't really do anything,
he said afterward.
And I could have. Remember that
.
She was cursing aloud now, furious, filled with immense self-loathing. Of course, Toby would have told Mallory. Mallory, too, would be wondering what Cindy Ann had done to encourage a guy like Dan, a man so devoted to their mother. There simply would be no putting this behind her: not now, not ever. Easiest simply to avoid them both. The way she'd avoided Meggieâno, it was Megan, Megâyear after year, chattering too brightly when they happened to meet at the Cup and Cruller, on the jogging path. And then, one day at the playground, who should appear but Meg herself, looking flushed and fat and pleased, a two-week-old baby strapped to her chest.
“Our miracle boy,” she said.
That day Cindy Ann happened to have all the kids: her own three girls, plus her sister's boy, Harvey, everybody playing on the swings. At the sight of the baby, they came running over, crowding close to see. Carefully, Meg lowered herself and the baby onto a bench. Still sore, Cindy Ann could see that. Still raw and shocked and tender. Something within her softened, made room, and she lifted her own baby, toddling Monica, into her arms, kissing her
buttery cheeks.
“Congratulations,” she'd said, and she'd meant it.
And Meg had said, “It doesn't feel real. None of it seems real.”
“That's just the way it is for a while.”
“I've wanted this for so long, and now it's like I'm not really here.”
“You won't feel that way, later on,” Cindy Ann said. “It's just that you're tired, that's what does it.”
“I am tired,” Meg said, and she shook her head. “God. How long does it last?”
Cindy Ann said, “I'll let you know.”
And both of them had laughed.
Now Cindy Ann wasn't angry anymore. She was crying, sobbing, choking on the same, swollen lump of grief. She'd plugged the gap with her old math assignments, but this only meant that he came into her room. Each time, he'd be weeping.
Take off your shirt. You don't have to touch me. Just pretend I'm not here
. But after the next time he'd grabbed for her handâthe anger in him visibly rising, a sudden flush, like feverâshe moved downstairs to Ricky's room, slept in Ricky's bed. Mornings, she woke to the feeling of his red, wet lips on her forehead. How delighted he was to find her there! Ricky. The only pure thing, she thought. The only good person on this earth.
“Nightmares,” she told her mother, who accepted the explanation.
Then it was fall. School had just started. One night, Dan began teasing her, lightly, good-naturedly. How would she ever find a boyfriend, sleeping with her own stepbrother? She'd repliedâlooking him straight in the faceâthat if he wanted to talk about why she couldn't sleep in her own room anymore, she'd be happy to call the school guidance counselor, no, the principal, first thing tomor
row. They could all sit down together, have an honest chat. Maybe the police would like to sit in on the conversation, too. Maybe the police would like to hear what Dan had to say.
They were sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating supper. Everybody stared at her: Mum and Mallory, Becca and Dan.
And Mum had said, “Cindy Ann, my heavens!”
And Dan had said, “Lena, it's okay.”
“I'll kill myself, first,” Cindy Ann had said. “I'm telling you right now.”
“Relax,” Dan said. He'd recovered himself. He even managed to smile. “Everyone just relax. Cindy Ann, what I said was in poor taste, and I'm sorry, Okay? Everything's okay.”
But it wasn't okay, and after supper, after the dishesâDan Kolb always helped with the dishesâhe'd done the chores, checked the livestock, then shot himself, twice. Through the chest. Through the head. It was a cold, clear night in September. People three miles away had heard the shot.
The love of my life,
Cindy Ann's mother had called him.
If at first you don't succeed,
kids at school had said.
“No,” Cindy Ann told Amy, who was kneeling behind her. “Don't. Just leave me be.”
Arms locked underneath her breasts.
“No, I'm all right.”
But Amy was pulling her up to her feet.
“You're on the floor, Ma. I'll help you get up the stairs.”
“Don't make me go up there. I won't go up there.”
She couldn't stop crying. She sobbed into her hands. She'd killed Dan Kolb. She'd killed Meggie's child. And now, Mallory was going to marry Toby, binding herself to everything he knew, everything Cindy Ann had done.
“You can't let the little girls see you this way,” Amy said, her hand on Cindy Ann's back, rubbing small steady circles. “Ma,” she said, and now they were in the living room. Now they were on the couch. They were crouching together on the cold tile floor of the downstairs bath.
“No,” Cindy Ann said again, and she was leaning against the sliding door that led to the patio outside, to the hot tub, to the in-ground swimming pool, her forehead pressed to the cool, clear glass.
“How about some coffee?” Amy was saying, “If I make you some coffee, will you drink it?”
“You must hate me,” Cindy Ann said.
“I hate everybody,” Amy said.
t
hree weeks in Bermuda while Chelone
sat on the hard, scorched electronics strewn across her deck. Rex at the pay phone, hour after hour, arguing with the insurance company. Our small, rented cottage with its wide front porch, flowerboxes bursting with jacaranda, honeysuckle. The luxury of clean sheets. The daily paper. Ice. White painted rooftops, pink hotels, towering cruise ships like fat, layered cakes. At the center of the harbor, an ancient shipwreck, its metal hull eaten into lace.
Calling my parents, our first night ashore.
Yes, we're okay. Yes, we miss you, too
.
My father's voice so old, frail, positively shaking with relief.
Make sure you give Mother your address. Toby has something to send you
.
Logging on at the Internet café, sending brief, timed messages to Toby, Lindsey Steinke, Evan's former classmates at Harbor Elementary, giving them the coordinates so they could follow our progress on a classroom chart. Afternoons talking with the other cruisers, people from Sidney, Barcelona, Quebec. From Fernandina Beach, from Fort Lauderdale. From Cedar Falls, Iowa. The inevitable questions:
You guys have kids? How old are your children? Any grand-
children yet?
Evenings at Freddie's, a waterside restaurant, listening to the whispers as we passed through the bar:
That's them. Struck by lightning.
Cold beer. Fish and chips.
Nothing in those whispers about a dead son.
We walked the cobblestone streets holding hands, deliciously anonymous.
And then, the Bahamas, a trouble-free passageâ
We've earned this!
Rex said, jubilantâfrom Saint George to the Abacos. We followed sand paths the color of cream to a shallow beach studded with starfish and conch. A series of leisurely day sails south: to Green Turtle Cay, Great Guana, Marsh Harbor. Million-dollar sport fishing boats, rocking lightly in their manicured slips; Bahamian fishermen out on their skiffs, hand-casting nets, poised as herons. Weathered conch shells, the color of paste, piled into low-lying fences, like stones. Single-room houses, built on stilts. A flock of young girls in their Sunday best: white dresses, white frilly socks, white shoes.
Cracked, careful singing. Old English hymns.
A week hunkered down in Man O'War Cay, waiting out a category two hurricane. Roiling skies, bursts of wind. Everybody drinking, playing cards. The harbor so crowded we hopped between the boats like gulls, blown from deck to deck.
Man O'War birds floating high overhead. Dark crosses. Red throats like fat, broken hearts.
But don't you regret not having children?
“Meg and I are each other's children,” Rex said.
A swift, clean passage southeast to Eleuthera, where local guides led us through the Devil's Back Bone. Taunted by pods of pilot whales, schools of gray dolphin, pale, speckled young. Pink sand beaches. Bonefishing tours. Raw conch salad, pickled in lime. Another passage, this time to Cat Cay. To San Salvador. To Rum Cay, where we plucked spiny lobster from the ocean floor. Nights anchored comfortably in ten feet of water, no other cruiser in sight. Mornings awakening to water so clear it seemed as if
Chelone
's hull were resting on the bottom.
A sea turtle, wide as a tabletop, surfacing off the bow.
Flying fish, sand sharks, leopard rays.
Less than a mile off Houndfish Cay, we saw our first houndfish, thick as my thigh; it tail-walked twenty feet across the surface of the water. An omen, I decided, as we closed on the narrow channelâmarked by a single, half-rotted buoyâinto Ladyslip Cove. And there she sat, anchored just off the marina, in the midst of a cluster of twenty-odd boats. No mistaking those alley cat lines. No mistaking the belly, the tattoos, the dreadlocks of the man in the cockpit who stopped, stared, raised his broad hand, as if they'd been expecting us all along: Eli and Bernadette Hale.
August passed into September. September passed into October. We were invited to cocktail parties, a pig roast. We were shown the best snorkeling spots, the deep holes to jig for grouper. Rex joined the men for their weekly poker game; I dinghied to shore for morning yoga on the beach. Halloween night, we walked down to the tip of the island, where the boat kids took turns reciting
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
.
No children,
we explained.
Just each other. Just us
.
We thought we might stay for the Thanksgiving pageant.
We talked about sticking around until after the New Year's Eve bash.
I still have the charcoal sketch that Bernadette made of us during that time, sitting in a tidal pool, babying cups filled with Junkanoo soda and rum. Beneath the clear green water, our legs are intertwined into a single, stout mermaid's tail. We are smiling. We are deeply tanned, fit, even fierce. We look exactly like the people I'd hoped we might become, back when I first imagined the warm Gulf Stream, open skies, a citrus sun. The sort of people who have never experienced any real disappointment.
The sort of people who always have gotten exactly what they've wanted.
Â
By the time we learned of Toby's engagement, it was the middle of December. Rex carried the wedding invitation back from Echo Island, twenty-five miles from Houndfish Cay, along with fresh provisions, liquor, and a refill on the prescriptions he'd been taking for his shoulder. I'd spent the morning doing laundry: washing it in one bucket, rinsing it in the next. It had rained the night before, and all across the cove, women were pinning wet armloads of T-shirts and shorts to safety lines. Radios were playing. You could hear laughter, an occasional sneeze, the intermittent buzz of a dinghy heading to shore. The odor of detergent drifted through the air, shimmering in a thick, sweet cloud, as if the smell came from the island itself, from the jacaranda trees that surrounded the marina.
In the afternoon, when the tide had turned, I put on my swimming suit and dove overboard, swam the five hundred yards to
Rubicon,
where Bernadette and Leon were fishing from the cockpit.
Kicking around the bow to avoid their line, I nearly plowed into the resident dolphin, Alvie; he gave me a hard-nosed bump, plunged, vanished in a rising rush of bubbles.
“Look what the tide washed in,” Bernadette said as I pulled myself up the swim ladder. She and Leon were nestled together in the oversize hammock. Leon's face was listless, drawn; still, when he saw me, he raised his fist.
Hello
.
“Leo-the-lion,” I said, wringing out my hair. “Catch anything?”
“Not yet.” Bernadette got up to check the pole, which sat in a mount on the combing. Even before she'd reeled the line in, I could tell that the bait was gone. “That's the third time in ten minutes,” she said, with an unhappy glance at the bait bucket.
“I'll fish with Leon for a while,” I said, “if you've got other stuff to do.”
Bernadette's face brightened. As always, the cockpit was cluttered with tubes of watercolor paints, brushes, sketch pads sealed in plastic. A half-finished painting, something new, was taped to the portable easel.
“I'd work a little more while there's light,” she said, turning her face toward Leon. “If you don't mind, Bud. And you know how I feel about using live bait.” She gave a little shudder; the gold in her red braids caught the light. “It's that little crunch when the hook goes through the shellâ”
“So work, then. We'll crunch.” I bent over Leon, tickling his bare arms and chest with my still-dripping hair. A smile passed over his mouth, though it never quite reached his eyes, and I felt something harden at the back of my throat, an ache that I couldn't quite swallow. A few weeks earlier, in the middle of the night, he'd spiked
a fever high enough to send him into convulsions. Since then, he'd been sleeping more and more. He didn't want to swim, or play video games, or push around the marina in his chair. When his friends came by, he closed his eyes, signed
No
and
Go away
. Day after day, he dozed in the hammock or stared idly at the dimpled water, watching Alvie romp among the boats like a friendly dog.
“What do you think keeps grabbing the bait?” I asked him. “Crab? Barracuda?”
I watched his lips closely, the way he'd been watching mine, until I caught the shape of a
B
. Leaning over the safety lines, I spat into the water. A four-foot barracuda shot from beneath
Rubicon
's hull, tilted its round, black eye toward the surface. Half a dozen needlefish appeared as well, clustering around the floating coin of saliva. Each time I swam in the coveâor for that matter, anywhere along the cayâI knew that there were barracudas, nurse sharks, jellyfish. But true to my promise to Rex, I'd stopped imaging the worst thing that could happen. I'd taken off my jewelry, my wedding ring, anything that might beckon to an underwater eye. Beyond that, I simply didn't allow myself to think about it, the way I didn't think about Toby, or my parents, or evenâmost daysâEvan.
This is your life now,
I told myself fiercely, chanting the words like a prayer.
These people are your family. This beautiful place is your home
.
“Guess we won't catch much with him hanging around.”
Leon blinked once, deliberately.
No
.
“We could take the dinghy over to the pier. Try there for a while.”
No
.
“Tired of fishing?”
Two blinks.
Yes
.
“Tired in general?”
Yes
.
“You're not feeling great today, are you?” I said, and I slipped into the hammock beside him. Bernadette had made it out of thin, silky line; she knew how to weave and macramé, sew clothing and canvas, twist rags into rugs. She braided fat ropes out of split palm fronds, which she worked into baskets and bowls. There wasn't an inch of
Rubicon
's interior that didn't shine with her touch, from the earthenware cups and plates she'd thrown, to the paintings that covered the bulkheads. Eli, on the other hand, could make absolutely anything run: pumps, compressors, electronics. He was also a crack fisherman. Mornings, he took off early on the dinghy, returning with flounder, snapper, grouper. Afternoons, Leon at his side, he puttered with
Rubicon
's systems, planned alterations and improvements.
“You romanticize things,” Rex said, whenever I talked about the Hales.
“Between them, they can do just about anything.”
“Most people who've been cruising as long as they have can, too.”
“And look at how they are with Leon,” I said. “The way they accept him for who he is. No bitterness. No disappointment.”
“You don't know that, Meg.”
“Of course I do. I see them every day.”
“They see us every day, too,” Rex said, and he paused to let his words sink in. “Would you say they really know either one of us?”
I bit my lip. “I feel bad about that.”
“Don't. It's a kindness. You don't come all the way out here because you want to wade through other people's baggage.”
“But Bernadette and Eli don't
have
baggage,” I said. “That's what I'm trying to say.”
“Everybody has baggage.”
Still, there was something between them, an open contentment, a satisfied warmth, that spilled over onto the rest of us who knew them, during that time. It was in the way Eli touched Bernadette whenever he passed her on deck. It was in the way she took her time rubbing sunblock into his shoulders. It was in the way they called each other
honey,
as if the endearment were still new to them, sweet. Nights, as Rex and I sat in
Chelone
's salon, reading by the light of our kerosene lamp, we could hear Bernadette's lazy chuckle, Eli's Popeye laugh. And I'd look over at Rex, sipping a scotch, lost in another game of solitaire, and I'd feel as if we were ghosts, shadows, people who'd lived so long in the world we had nothing left to say. I tried to remember what it was that we'd talked about once, Rex and I. Work, of course. Family and friends. Things we'd read in the paper. Things we'd seen on TV. Evenings after supper, we'd go for long walks along the bluff, and though I couldn't remember having said much during those times, I couldn't remember feeling lonely.
“They have a child between them,” Rex said, getting up to pour himself another drink. “They have more to talk about than we do, that's all.”
“The way we used to,” I said.
“Right. When we had Evan.”
“I'm talking about before we had Evan.”
“You romanticize things, Meg.”
The conversation had come full circle. Rex sat back down, took another sip of scotch.
Now the hammock swung to and fro, settled into the gentle motion of the hull.
Hmm,
Leon said.
Hmm,
I said. The vibrations traveling between us like a whisper, like a song, and I remembered Evan
crawling into our bed on Saturday mornings, smelling of pilfered corn chips, snuggling his body against me. The sharpness of his toenails, the boniness of his feet. The fragile birdcage feeling of his ribs as they expanded against my own. The one-year anniversary of his death had come and gone. A year had passed since we'd cuddled up this way. A year since he'd lifted his face to mine, demanding a
kiss-kiss
ânever just a kiss.
“It's because he gets so many,” Rex had liked to say. “He doesn't know it's possible to get only one at a time.”
Bernadette glanced over at us, smiled slightly, returned to her work. She was painting, I realized, the laundry; bright smears of color seemed to ripple off the page. Something about the way she leaned forward, the slope of her strong, young shoulders, reminded me, abruptly, of a dream I'd had: Cindy Ann Kreisler and I, walking together along some nameless road. Other women were walking, too, and there was a feeling ofâ¦heat, was it? Shame? But the air was cold, the distant clusters of trees gone gold to brown to skeleton-bare. Hoarfrost covered the ground. From time to time, Cindy Ann would pause, stoop, poke with a stick. There was something, in the dream, that I wanted to do for Evan. There was an overwhelming desire to put things right.