Come sail away.

Come sail away.

Once again, I watch as the late-afternoon light creeps over the threadbare Persian rug and caresses the leather club chairs. It glints off the pewter vase holding the past-their-prime red roses and passes over the pale-blue teacup with half a chocolate biscuit on the saucer. On the once-maroon velvet chesterfield with the tired cushions and tarnished nail heads sits an old woman. In her arthritic hands is a silver frame that holds my picture. In a corner of the room a gramophone plays Winter by Vivaldi.

She gazes out the French doors at the garden, though she doesn’t see the lawn that needs mowing, or the less than crisp edges of the flower beds, nor the weeds that have sprouted among the roses. She doesn’t see the rattan wingback chairs in the shade or the old lopsided jetty and the overturned, slowly rotting small sailboat.

She sees the chestnut tree and the boy instead.

<^>*<^>

Hands stuffed into the pockets of my Sunday pants, my dark curly head bent, shoulders hunched and pulled up to my ears I stepped off the back veranda. The screen door slammed behind me, startling birds into flight. I scuffed my polished shoes through the dusty, dry grass and when I reached the tree, I grabbed one of the sturdy branches, swinging up, and hiding among the leaves.

“Get out of my tree!” The high-pitched voice came from above me.

Startled I looked up. “It’s not your tree.” I shrugged and ignored her.

“Ith too! Now shoo.” She waved me away.

“Who are you anyway?” I asked, though I wasn’t all that interested in her answer.

“Lithbeth. Who are you?”

“Jason.”

“Where did you come from? Why are you thad?”

“Who says I’m sad?”

You look thad.” The girl gingerly climbed down a branch and sat a little closer. She twirled one braid between her fingers and brushed the ends over her cheek.

I shrugged, watched my legs swing back and forth. “Grampa is gone and there all these strange people in the house. They all have their church faces on and tell me they are sorry. What are they sorry for? Did they make him go away?

“Grown-ups are strange.” She declared sagely.

We sat in silence for a while

“Where did your grampa go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will he be back thoon?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

Another long pause.

“He taught me to climb the tree.” She whispered

I tried to swallow a strange lump and nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

I had to go back to the city to live with my father and his new wife, while my mother moved into grampa’s home. I saw Lizbet now and then when I visited Mom, but I was only here a weekend or a holiday, now and then. When I was here, we'd sometimes sit in the tree, usually lost in our own thoughts.

“You know ...” she said one Saturday afternoon.

“What?” I remember being bored, tossing a ragged baseball from hand to hand.

“I found something.”

Oh? What?”

“You want to see it?”

"Yeah, sure.” I shrugged, but secretly I was excited to have something else to do.

“Come.” Lizbet shimmied down and dropped the last few feet to the ground. She ran toward the little shed. The one at the side of the small pier.

“I don’t have the key, so we have to swim in from the other side.”

She kicked off her shoes, ran to the end of the pier and dove into the water. “Come on!” She shouted when she surfaced again. I couldn’t let her show me up, so I jumped into the cold water. She showed me where a board was loose and how she could dive under to get inside. She had pulled herself up on the broad beam, just above the waterline by the time I surfaced.

“See?” Her voice echoed over the water and bounced off the walls of the little boathouse.

“The boat.” I was treading water, amazed that the little wooden vessel was still here. It was hoisted up above the waterline, slightly worse the wear, but it looked like all the pieces were there.

Lizbet bopped her head enthusiastically. “I think it’s a sailboat.” She declared with authority. “It has a mast. So, it should have sails.”

“It does.” I had pulled myself out of the water and was carefully stepping into the small hull. “Oh, boy. I watched grandpa make this. I wonder where the key to the boat house is.”

I only had a few weekends each summer to visit Mom. But each time I did we worked on the boat. We read what we could find on sailing and boats. I could tell that when I was not around, Lizbet worked hard sanding and scouring.

The next summer I graduated. I spent the whole summer at the lake house with Mom. Dad and I had an argument, but I had shrugged and didn’t say what it had been about. I didn’t want to spend the summer rehashing it. The two of us spent hours, days sanding, caulking, and varnishing the boat. Then we held our breath when we finally lowered into the water. It took a couple of days, but the wood swelled enough to become watertight again.

“Let’s go!” Lizbet was fifteen now. Her braids were gone, her body held the promise of what might be, her front teeth had been straightened. But underneath she was still the girl I knew, I told myself. That summer we spent hours on the water. Pretending we were pirates and were winning all sorts of battles and bounty.

I didn’t spend as much time at the lake the next four years. I was Joe Cool, Big Man on Campus. But the few weekends when I did come to see Mom, I would see Lizbet, sailing by herself. She had become a beauty, but still more than ready to be my first mate and fight off all other pirates.

Then the notice came, the one I had been dreading. I had six weeks. I was scared, so I ran to the lake. Tried not to think about what would come next.

It was a warm day in late spring when I arrived. I saw her stretched out on the small dock, soaking up the sun. I couldn’t resist sprinkling ice water over her back. She had lowered the straps of the swimsuit. And remembered too late when she reared up with a yelp at the shock. Then, blushing, flattened herself against the pier again. “Jason!” She scolded.

I laughed and sat next to her. That’s when I told her I’d be here for a month or so, before I had to report for boot camp and then hopefully go into officer’s training.

“And then?” I heard the hesitation and fear in her voice, but she wanted to know. You had to be deaf and blind not to have read and heard that there was no glory to be found. That war was not romantic or glamorous, but ugly and painful.

I shrugged. “They don’t tell you till you’re on your way.”

We grew close those few weeks. Spent all our time together. Sailing, swimming, and kissing. Lots of kissing and fondling. Neither of us would admit to being scared.

“Wait for me?” I asked before I left.

“Of course.”

Like so many others, I came home in a box. Lizbet and Mom were the only two at the grave. Burying me next to grampa was the only battle Mom ever won with Dad.

I’ve been hanging around here. I watched Lizbet spend much time with Mom. I watched her work to get our little pirate ship seaworthy each spring. Maybe Mom’s cancer could have been treated, I don’t know, but she never made a fuss. It was Lizbet, who moved into the little house and cared for her till the end.

Many decades have passed. I have watched Lizbet here in the little house on the lake. She took over the small bookstore in the village, made a few good friends. She seems to have been content living alone here. I have enjoyed listening to her long, one-sided chats with me.

<^>*<^>

The sun has set. Somewhere in the dark room the gramophone clicks steadily, indicating that the record has ended.

The young woman gets up from the worn chesterfield, walks out of the dark room into the sunlit garden. She blinks at the sudden brightness. Then she is startled, surprised, and delighted. With a squeal and a laugh, she runs toward me. I’m waiting for her, have been waiting for so many years to sail away with her.