KIRSTEN WAS READING when Livy came in just before 3:00 a.m., made a grilled cheese sandwich, and joined her on the couch.
“What are those tall ships like to work on?” Kirsten asked.
“Hard.”
“Harder than fishing boats?”
“Different hard.”
Livy ate half her sandwich. “They’re going to Panama,” said Livy.
“I know. Sarah told me.”
Kirsten watched her daughter.
“I should tell her I love her,” said Livy, “but I don’t really see the point.”
Livy put the plate on the coffee table and leaned back. Kirsten waited to see if she would say more but she didn’t. Three twenty-five a.m. filled the room. Livy laid her head on Kirsten’s shoulder, something she hadn’t done since she was twelve or thirteen. Kirsten sat still as if a hummingbird had landed on her.
That night the Universe sent Kirsten a dream.
There were two bags of gold coins. One with five coins and one with eight. She was only allowed to pick one bag. There were only three prizes she could buy. One costs less than five but more than three, one costs five, and one costs nine…
She could pick the bag with eight and try to haggle with the Man behind the counter, but she knows he will refuse. She could grab all the coins and run, but the Man said there weren’t any prizes outside of the room. She could bribe the Man with sex, but she could tell he couldn’t see her anymore.
Livy found Kirsten humming in the kitchen that morning.
“I think you should go,” said Kirsten. “Get on that boat and see where it takes you.”
“You’re still sick and I’m broke. Maybe another time.”
In the evening when Livy got back from looking for work, Kirsten was humming the same song. Livy recognized it this time. It was a track off some ’70s record Kirsten always played when they had to do chores. At fourteen, Cheyenne gave it a name, Coke Damage Radio Hour.
Cheyenne would be on that boat. Cheyenne would go after what she wanted.
Livy went to bed. Kirsten’s humming entered her sleep. It wasn’t a song but a strategy.
At breakfast, Livy was patching the elbow of her foul-weather jacket when Kirsten stopped humming and started singing.
“Would you go if she promised you heaven…”
“Just say it,” said Livy, putting her work down.
“What?”
Livy returned to the patch.
“Would you go if she promised you heaven…”
“It’s ‘Would you stay if she promised you heaven,’ ” said Livy.
“I can sing it however I want.”
Livy packed up her needles and duct tape and got into the shower. As the water came down, she relaxed. At least her mother was better. She had eaten a real breakfast and done some laundry. She was singing, if only to torture Livy. She had even opened the curtains to let the day in.
When Livy got out of the shower, Kirsten was gone. She’d left a note on the counter. She was out of soy milk. Livy looked at the note and poured the last of the coffee into a cup. Her eyes flicked to where her foul-weather gear hung, patched, in the hallway, along with her marlinspike and knife. Livy looked out the window. At that same moment, in the harbor, the Neva’s crew was preparing to get under way. Stowing and lashing trunks of dishes, doing boat checks. Soon they’d go to stations and take up the lines. Between them was the kind of fog that wouldn’t burn off. It would stay with them all the way through the sound. Floating on the lowlands and deltas, pooling in inlets, passing spectral through suspension bridges.
Kirsten would be back soon. Maybe they could order pizza and try to find a movie where the earth almost gets blown up and saved at the last minute.
Livy looked again at her foul-weather gear.
The gangway was already stowed when Livy got to the boat and she had to jump from shore to ship while teenagers heckled her, chanting, “Fall! Fall!” Once on, she scrambled down the ladder into the poorly lit captain’s quarters. Three of the four mates’ bunks were empty. The captain, with his thick gold rings and bad haircut, the epaulette with an N for Napoleon tattooed on his shoulder, stared at a chart table with no maps on it.
“Do you still need sailors for Panama?” she asked.
“I need a bosun.”
“I can probably figure it out.”
“Someone should,” he said.
From Sarah’s phone she texted Kirsten: I’m aboard. Use this number to reach me. I love you. I’ll see you in a month.
Kirsten was on the bus when she got the text. She had just finished a box of strawberry-banana-flavored edibles when it came in and read it twice. It was a strange feeling. All the joy she could imagine, a rush of euphoria, then nothing.