Chapter Eight #2
I had learned all of these things about you. And, well, you knew things about me now, too.
“If this is about the boat and the water, you don’t have to be afraid,” you said.
Saying You don’t have to be afraid to someone who’s afraid is about as pointless as saying You don’t have to bark to your dog when the delivery guy is on the porch.
“I’m not afraid,” I lied.
“It’s okay to be afraid. But you don’t have to get stuck there.”
See? You’d already found out so much about me, but you still thought I was golden, too.
“Okay, okay,” I said.
I met you after work that day. The little boats had all been brought in—the Whitehall, the Knockabout, the Peapod. Lots of others. I didn’t want to get in one. The water was choppy, and they looked about as sturdy as Curious George’s newspaper boat.
“Hey, Margaret!” Chester called.
“Hey!”
“Your guy’s inside.”
I smiled. My guy. And there you were, inside the shingled shack that was the rental booth. “Can I help you?” you said when I leaned over the counter.
I kissed you.
“This is going to be a blast. And you get to pick our boat!”
“How about that one?” I pointed at one of the giant yachts moored nearby. We wouldn’t fall out of one of those and drown.
“Perfect. I’ll ask Chester for a raise.”
You buckled me in the life jacket like I was a little kid, snapping the buckles under my chin and across my chest. “Life jackets make me feel like a seal.”
“Like, all snug in a skin?”
“Or a sausage.” We walked down the dock.
“A sausage about to be dropped in a soup.” The lake was so busy.
It always looked charming from a distance, ringed with houseboats, sailboats gliding around picturesquely, party boats bobbing with their music blasting, seaplanes landing.
But up close, the waves were large and rough, and the boats seemed to miss each other by inches as they tacked or turned or whatever it’s called.
That’s when I remembered that the lake was an actual airport runway.
The tiny boats seemed like leaves on rapids.
You showed me my options. Admittedly, all the little wooden boats were adorable. I chose Pelican, a small sailboat with a super-colorful sail. Might as well fall out of the most stylish one.
You held out a hand and I got in, sort of. “Oh, shit!” One foot in, and the thing started rocking. I sat down immediately, on the floor of it, not even on the bench.
“Totally fine, if you feel safer down there.”
“I know it’s totally fine.”
Oh, jeez. It was maybe the first time I’d snapped at you. Fear isn’t friendly, you know. I felt instantly horrible. Your eyebrows folded down in concern. “I shouldn’t have forced this,” you said. “Want to just get out and get a burger or something?”
“No!” I suddenly wanted to cry. You were seeing why I went to Winnifred Evans, and I didn’t want you to.
I was scared to ride this little boat that hundreds of people got into all the time, no problem.
I’d told you about my anxiety, lots of times, but it felt different, you witnessing my sucky self with your own eyes. “Let’s just go.”
You looked totally baffled as to what to do.
Mixed messages have that impact on people.
“Okay. I’m going to push off, all right?
See this little—” I don’t remember what it was called.
The steering thing. “And then we’re going to—” Blah, blah, blah.
You were treating me like a baby, but then again, I was acting like one.
We were rocking and slopping around, and I gripped the sides of the boat as I sat on the bottom, as you sat high up on the opposite bench.
It was pretty embarrassing down there. Super sloshy, too.
“Uh-huh,” I managed.
“See? We’re doing it!”
Shit. The dock was getting farther and farther away.
“Look at you!” you said. “See, when I—” Something-something about the sail and turning it and whatever.
“Stop mansplaining,” I said. I was wrecking this.
“I’m…uh, boat-splaining?”
I smiled.
“I’m a boat-splainer.” You grinned. You saw your opening and tried to widen it.
I snort-laughed. A guy driving a boat taxi honked his horn at us, friendly, and waved, and you waved back.
“That’s Yves, from the water taxi place. He used to run a surf shop in Maui.”
I realized we weren’t going to die after all.
We probably wouldn’t. I mean, you already had friends out there, too.
It was a sunny evening, and when I really looked around, I realized it was gorgeous on the lake.
The light was turning that magical yellow.
I slipped off my shoes. You smiled, gazed up at our rainbow sail billowing out.
We started really zipping along. The wind felt good on my face, and wisps of my hair escaped my ponytail. Okay, okay. It was glorious.
I inched up until I was on the bench. I was still fine. I was great.
“You love it?” you asked.
“I love it. Don’t rub it in.”
You didn’t. You didn’t say I told you so, or even try to tell me that I’d conquered something. You left it alone. You let it just be happy.
I could practically eat the way that air smelled.
A seaplane was—oh my God—right above our heads, close enough that the pilot waved, too.
But hey, that pilot knew what he was doing, and so did you.
I could forget that people were competent and that I could maybe relax.
And, wow. I’d lived in the city all my life, and I’d never done this. I was having the best time.
And then your phone rang.
I thought you were going to ignore it. I mean, that would be the sensible thing, just safety-wise.
You were in charge of that whole little boat, zooming along on the busy lake.
But instead, you reached toward your pocket.
You had to stretch your leg out to even get your fingers inside, rocking our little boat unnervingly. “I’d better—”
“Mars!” It was like someone using their phone while they were driving, if it also made your car rock violently back and forth. There, just like that, my trust in anyone being competent enough to relax was gone.
You groaned when you saw the screen. “I’ve got to get this.” And then, “Hey, what’s up?”
I gestured to the steering thing, mouthed, “Should I do something?” with wide eyes. We sat there sloshing, the small sail going from full to flapping.
You shook your head vigorously. “Is it still like that when you lie down?” you asked. “Uh-huh. Oh, man. Uh-huh. Okay.”
Now I made a concerned face. I was concerned.
I knew it was your mom. She called a lot when we were out together—a sickness, an emergency.
I kept seeing that particular maroon flag in the distance.
You probably shouldn’t allow that, you know, the distance.
You should walk right up to it if you see one out there.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” you said, and hung up. “I’ve got to get back. I’m really sorry. My mom…”
“Is she okay?” I thought she was maybe actually sick.
It was hard to tell already. These things were tricky.
Needy people who do a lot of dramatic things to get attention were.
What if they really were sick and you ignored it?
What if they truly needed help and you were just being a selfish bitch about it because you wanted to keep sailing in Pelican on a glorious summer night?
I saw this with my mom sometimes. With her, dramatic wasn’t even necessarily dramatic—it was as quiet as a stomachache, a grimace, a silent limp that appeared out of nowhere.
There wasn’t usually anything wrong, and after she saw the doctor, the mystery issue would vanish.
The thing is, you can’t see someone else’s pain, but sometimes they need you to.
They need you to see it really badly, even if it leaves you, especially if it leaves you, helpless and guilty.
“She’s been feeling weird? Ever since she hit her head…Did I tell you she hit her head?” You were steering the boat. Concentrating on turning it to fill that sail again, to get us in the right direction. It looked like a lot of work. You looked tired.
You didn’t wait for an answer, either.
“She doesn’t want to be alone, you know, in case…”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, but I was suddenly feeling all kinds of things at once.
Disappointed, for sure. The air had left my own sail, and the fun new confidence of conquering this fear was gone.
We were heading back with hurried determination.
I felt some ugly, hard thing at the center of me, as well, like the gross, poisonous pit at the center of a beautiful nectarine.
I didn’t know what it was then, only that it felt bad.
I couldn’t understand why I felt competitive with her, why I was in a competition at all.
I didn’t have these words for it there, in the boat, but that ugly feeling included anger, too.
I was part of something not of my own choosing, inside a dark issue that was yours and hers, where I didn’t even belong.
I had a role to play, but it wasn’t the essential one.
I just got to hold up a corner of a triangle so it could be a triangle. I wanted to go home.
I also felt like a brat. Maybe something was really wrong with her, I kept telling myself.
But I rode back to the dock silently. You weren’t talking anyway—you had a look of concentration and preoccupation, like you were alone in the boat, like I wasn’t even there.
This sounds horrible, and I’m sorry, but I could tell right then that if me and your mom were both drowning, it wouldn’t be me you saved.
I guess we were having our first fight, whether you were aware of it or not.
You docked the boat. That knot you made to tie it up didn’t even look very secure. You flung off your life jacket. Held your hand out for mine.
“Hey, sorry,” you said.
“No, I understand.” My voice betrayed me. It said that maybe I didn’t.
You made a face. “Are you mad?” Like it was incomprehensible. What a monster, to be mad under such circumstances. But you looked guilty, too. You did. Yeah, you’d been there before. I thought about Ella from your old school and wondered if we’d have a lot to talk about.
“No!” I lied. “Go! You better get going.”
You dashed off. Headed to your car in the parking lot.
Before you reached it, you turned back to me.
You made two circles with your index fingers and thumbs and linked them, the infinity sign.
It had become our thing. We hadn’t said I love you to each other.
I’d been wanting to tell you that forever, but I didn’t know if it was too soon or too much or if it was real.
But this seemed even bigger. It said, You are a forever person to me.
It said, Maybe we existed in the past, and will exist in the future, if you believe in that kind of thing.
I didn’t necessarily believe in that kind of thing before, but maybe I did now.
But when you held up your hands right then, infinity, I wondered.
I doubted. I smiled a not-really-a-smile face.
It was unkind, but we were arguing without arguing.
It was putting you in the middle, but honestly, you and your mom put me there first. That evening on the lake, you’d witnessed why I went to Winnifred Evans, but maybe I witnessed why you went to Dr. Quentin Baleaf.
As I left the parking lot in my old car with the smiling, waving pizza on top, I hit the accelerator hard.
The poor pizza was probably like, What the hell?
But as I drove home with my windows down, the sky was pink and yellow, and I began to feel a bit generous again.
How could I not, with the smell of blackberries ripening and night coming.
As I approached our house, I thought of the Golden Record.
On it, there were the dolphins and the snow-covered sequoias, and waves crashing on a shore, showing that on our planet there was water and ice and rock, and there was wind.
Showing that there were objects of beauty and joy.
But there were also the images of the wasp, and the hunters, and the rush-hour traffic.
And there was a fertilized ovum, too, a baby being born, and the silhouette of a family.
You weren’t one thing, just some perfect image I was falling for.
You were real. I was. What it meant to be human, a human in the world—it was all of it: wasps and sequoias, a woman walking in leaves, a face visible in a train window.
Rock and wind, birth and survival, pink sky and a ride home.
What it meant to love—it was all of it, too.