Shipwreck and the Sea

 I remember floating on my back in the waveless ocean, staring into the sun until my retinas ached, until the rest of my insides started to feel okay. I thought of mermaids, and I thought of sirens singing sailors to their demise. I wasn’t sure which I favored more--the sea, oblivious death, or an effortless life purpose. I stayed in the water until I started thinking that maybe I wouldn’t leave the water for a long, long time and rolled my body from my back to my stomach and made myself slowly drift back to shore. 

I knew everyone at the beach bar, some more intimately than others. It was a small island; I possessed information about people that clung to me, stuck to my skin like sweat and humidity, lacking any humility. It was shift change at the bar and Scarlett was leaving. Her husband died from pneumonia three years ago in the same hospital their daughter was born in three days earlier. She made a drink with elderflower and cranberry juice that she called the Scarlet Begonia. 

Red was coming onto shift. Her boyfriend hung himself a few months ago and people were crudely saying it was her fault. Her hands shook as she distributed shots around the bar like a factory worker, but everyone’s hands shook around here, at least in the mornings or late into the night. I almost laughed out loud, watching Scarlett and Red closing out checks and exchanging money, with my knees propped up on the bar and my face tipped toward the sun; they were both different shades of the same color.  

*

Something always happens to me when it’s dusk and the alcohol is finally impairing me in the ways I think I need, and everyone’s faces become a little softer around the edges. My body is suddenly a howling pink, framed against the sky swallowing the last of the setting sun. I finally feel emancipated from the loneliness of the day, where you’re supposed to have a purpose, more of a plan. The night is freedom.  

I recognized the shape of him, coming up to the bar from the beach, knowing that he eventually would. He still looked like a boxer, head slightly lowered, his last name tattooed across his squared, tan shoulders. Red gave him a Budweiser and shot of Fireball without saying anything to him and he grabbed the beer and took a swig before sitting down. He was friends with her boyfriend and he and Red used to work on a boat together, but they didn’t speak now. We made eye contact as he picked up his shot. I waved without changing my blank facial expression, tilting my head slightly to the side. He gestured with the shot toward me and tossed it into the back of his throat. He drank another round, ordered by leaving his empty beer and glass at the top of the counter with Red wordlessly replacing them, before he circled around the bar and sat next to me. We always needed that thin, palliative veil of alcohol between us. “By yourself?” I was always by myself, until I wasn’t. I would have sighed, but by this time I was drunk enough to admit to myself that I was waiting around for him all day.  

*

He often had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth like it was his last chance at dying, his squinted eyes overlooking turquoise surf with sea salt lining his skin, the clouds moored in the sky like the charter boats in the harbor below. He had this idea that the sea would save his soul; I was afraid it would wash away his tired body.

Over the nights in his bedroom, windows open, wind whipping the doors against the walls, my earrings placed on his headboard, I pieced together his story. He would fight other kids with his brothers on the train tracks in Kansas City. He went from Ponyboy to a short-lived Golden boy, boxing and then moving to the island and still fighting, over women and bar stools, boat assignments and pool cues. Now, sixteen years later, he was weary, beat.

He maneuvered his jeep sharply around the never-ending potholes in the road. I had my arm hanging out the window and my feet propped up on the dashboard, my usual stance while in his passenger seat, perpetuating an air of being carefree, unbothered. Sometimes I was close to that feeling. Tonight I was thinking about moving from the island back to an anonymous city. I was thinking about the two daughters he left in the states, who he wasn’t allowed to visit, who he never told me about and I never asked him about. I thought about fate and the endless parallels of this place, how we were all caricatures of each other. For every sad girl there was another sad girl, probably wearing the same bathing suit. For every angry man there was another angry man, drinking the same beer and convincing himself that the ocean was saving the good parts of himself that his actions were trying to expel. 

For the first time, I wondered about the things he knew about me that I never told him, passed on from people I barely knew--the drawer in my kitchen halfway filled with empty drug bags, the catalog of men I’ve made for myself here, a sudden trip back to the states with a speculation of an abortion, my dead father. We all knew these shameful and tragic things about each other and carried them with us alongside of our own burdens. I just couldn’t decide if it was better to be quiet about it, swallow all of it down to make room for the next person’s story, or just unload all of it onto the dashboard between us and maybe the day would be a little sturdier for us to stand on. 

I turned my head from the stars whipping past the windows and looked at him, without any emotion behind my glance, just simply regarding him. This time I did sigh out loud, when maybe the sigh should have been something more purposeful. Was I the siren, the sailor, or the entire sea? I’d start over again tomorrow.