part0010

A cool evening breeze blew through the screen of the open sliding glass door that led from the third-floor master bedroom to the large widow’s walk. The wind opened Levana’s robe exposing a cream-colored silk nightie as she pulled the screen door handle. Robin was seated on a built-in bench with an adjustable reclining back, facing the lake and reading a handwritten list with a flashlight. It was 11 p.m., and the moon’s light formed a glimmering sliver of white on the otherwise ebony surface of the lake.

Levana closed the screen door behind her and stepped onto the walk with two glasses of cabernet.

“List complete yet?” She said, handing him a glass.

It was as ready as it was going to be. Even as he studied it again, uneasiness crept into his stomach. He was sure that he had missed something.

Every chart of Lake Superior was rolled, corrected, and stowed below the navigation table in the cabin of the boat. He had a handheld GPS for back-up, and the motor had been overhauled during the winter. The water capacity was fifty gallons, but he had an extra thirty gallons in the two beer kegs strapped against the bulkhead in the v-berth, which he had transformed into a supply depot and sail locker. On the opposite bulkhead, he had mounted two Coleman steel-belted coolers which kept ice frozen in one-hundred-degree weather for three days. He had an emergency handheld VHF radio, first aid kit, and an inflatable life raft. Levana had packed Trist’s passport along with his. He had made sure that his watch had a new battery and had brought extra batteries for every item that required them on the boat. Each piece of equipment’s technical manual had been stowed on a shelf made of mahogany, hand-rubbed alive through multiple coats of varnish in the boat’s salon.

Levana had worried about them getting lost and starving to death so she had Tyee rent a refrigerated truck to transport the food and drinks to the Upper Peninsula where they were putting the boat in. She had ordered steaks, fresh cartons of eggs, meatballs, spaghetti, bacon, sausages, crescent rolls, cans of beef stew, cans of tomato soup, a case of beer, three 24-packs of coke, five gallons of fruit juice, half-a-dozen boxes of breakfast cereal, cheese blocks, Bisquick, Saltines, granola bars, cold-cuts, and canned fruit. The longest they would go without making a port call would be four or five days. Then, they could re-supply as necessary.

After a night shift last week, he had borrowed a duffel bag full of supplies from the hospital. First, he had replenished his “home supply” of 2 liters and a line. The first—and possibly only—thing he had learned from his mentor years ago was that doctors and nurses always kept their own supply of saline bags suffused with electrolytes, B-12, and B-complex at home to cure a hangover.

Next, he had packed the narcotics. Morphine as the primary—the gold standard in pain management; his back-up was Demerol. Both were injected with a syringe—he preferred using carpujects—so he had packed a dozen. Both Morphine and Demerol made a person drowsy and constipated; he had thrown in a box of suppositories. He had loaded a bottle of Dramamine for motion sickness if they faced heavy seas, and a bottle of Phenergan for nausea to be taken three to four times a day. Even though his “home supply” was replenished, he was taking no chances of either he or Trist becoming dehydrated at sea. Therefore, he had filled the rest of the bag with materials for an IV: alcohol swabs, a rubber band for a tourniquet, tubing, bags of saline, and a variety of needles—the bigger the needle, the smaller the gauge. The bags would have to be kept at room temperature. If it got too hot, he could place them in the boat’s refrigerator, but he would need to warm them up so that they wouldn’t hurt either he or Trist. He had read that in World War II, medics tucked bags inside their shirts to keep them warm.

Tomorrow, he would stow the new compressor and two complete sets of dive gear—fins, mask, snorkel, wetsuit, weight belt, BCD, regulator, and dive knife—in the dive equipment cabinet he had built with Tyee in the v-berth. When he dropped Trist off for work, he would go behind the hardware store and use his brother-in-law’s compressor to fill up the four scuba tanks. He had also ordered brand new West Marine oilskins and rubber boots for them in case of foul weather. They had arrived at the store yesterday, and Tyee had the box waiting for them.

Robin aimed his flashlight at the bottom of the page and ran his finger down the last items on his list. Tennis racquets and balls, basketball, camera, binoculars, air pump, tent, sleeping bags, hiking boots, stove, two propane bottles, backpack, six bottles of Deep Woods Off, three tubes of sunscreen, two fishing poles, tackle box, bait, a dozen bars of soap, lantern, and—he looked at the flashlight in his hand—the rest of the page was blank. He switched the flashlight to his left hand and wrote FLASHLIGHT and BATTERIES underneath LANTERN. He switched off the light and took the glass of wine from Levana. He had been advised not to drink—the hell with that.

“I think we’re ready,” he said.

She sat between his legs and leaned her back against his chest. They each took a drink of wine—the only sound in the night air was of waves hitting their beach .

“I scheduled the truck to be at the hardware store at seven a.m. the day after tomorrow to load up the food and supplies.”

“Thank you, darling,” Robin said. “I’ll have the boat out of the water and on the trailer by eight. After that, we’ll wait for you and Tyee to show up in the truck. Then, it’s on to the U.P.”

“So,” she said, and took another sip. “How did it go?”

“We’ll be all right,” Robin said. He took a sip now. “In fact, sometimes, I think he knows more about sailing than I do.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

He knew it too. She wanted to know how he and Trist were getting along. “We had our moments,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

Here goes. “He still doesn’t respect the fact that I know what’s best for him, even if it means telling him something that he doesn’t want to hear.”

“With that line of thinking starting last summer, right?” Levana said.

“Yes. Ever since I came home from my shift because I got sick that night and found his bare ass moving up and down on our couch over his girlfriend, he thinks that every talk we have is a lecture.” Robin swirled the wine in his glass and tipped it back. “He wasn’t even wearing a rubber for Christ’s sake. I know he thinks I embarrassed him when I asked them to get dressed and then made Rachel leave, but he’s gonna mess up his life if he gets some girl pregnant right now.” He could feel his temper rising. “I don’t want him to corner himself as a teenager. Do you realize how hard it would be to make it now being eighteen with a baby?”

“Are you lecturing me now?” Levana said.

Robin exhaled—damn it—another trait Trist had picked up from him. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed her left shoulder with his free hand. They listened to the waves once again.

“You can’t control every move he makes, Robin. ”

“I know. It’s just that I keep thinking back to my old man. I told myself time and time again I would never be that kind of father to Trist and Jon—.” He still couldn’t say his name. He stared at the water, gathered himself, then continued. “Do you know the only thing I remember from my college psychology class is the day my professor walked in and said, ‘For those of you wanting to treat your kids differently than you were treated, I’ve got some news for you: unless you make a conscious effort to treat them differently, you will end up treating them how you were treated whether you like it or not.’”

“You’ve never told me that before,” she said.

“Do you want to know where I’m really at?”

She lifted her head off his chest and nodded.

“I know that I don’t have much time left with him,” he paused, trying to stay calm. “I’m in a tough spot. At some point during every day the past few months I’ve thought of something that I should pass on to Trist. Some pearl of wisdom,” he paused, “no, that’s a stupid saying. Some lesson learned where I messed up and don’t want him to. And I feel the need to tell him, because soon I won’t be able to.”

Levana raised her hand to her face and began wiping her cheeks.

“For sixteen years, I have been a different father than my own and been proud of that. But now I’m frustrated because for the past year I’m sure that I have been like a monkey that won’t get off his back. He’s confused because I’m not like that. And now I’ve got him thinking that he has to prove his manhood to me. And that’s not what I want at all. I already respect him, but I’m struggling with knowing that I have less time than I ever imagined to pass on what I’ve learned. Not only am I getting cheated out of getting to see my son become a man, I feel he’s getting cheated by not having me there to lean on after he graduates from this hormonal overload.”

Robin’s eyes filled. “I wanted to help him buy his first car,” he said while raising his wineglass and his other hand at the same time in protest. “I wanted to be there when he bought his first house and help him fix it up. I wanted to be there when he brought home the woman he was going to marry, and have the right to say something stupid and inappropriate like, ‘When do you guys think you’ll start trying to have kids?’.”

Levana kept wiping her eyes.

“I wanted all of that,” he said and wrapped his arms around her.

She hugged him back and then turned around and faced him. “I don’t know how much longer I can go not telling him what you have.”

“It’s not the right time yet,” Robin said.

Levana cried, “When will it be?”

Robin stood up and walked to the railing overlooking the water. “I plan on telling him on the sail,” he said.

“I don’t know yet. But I promise I will.”

She joined him. “I have a suggestion to help you with your lectures.”

He turned to her. “Anything. My method is ripping me apart.”

“I want you to buy a journal tomorrow after you drop Trist off at the hardware store. You can pick one up at Lily’s. It will be behind the art pencils before you get to the books.”

“I’m not a writer, Levana.”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to sound writerly and call it a journal; call it a notebook.”

“What’s it for?”

“Whenever a lesson or piece of advice comes to mind, I want you to write it down,” she said. She gathered herself. “I will make sure he gets it.”

He considered her suggestion while watching the wind blow her hair away from her face, exposing her high cheekbones and dark complexion. “I have to ask this. Do you still want us to go?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. And now I have to ask you something. ”

“Anything,” he said.

“Are you so hard on him about his future because at one time you thought he was a mistake?”

“We did what we had to do.”

He pulled her against his chest and looked over her head at the water. The moon had slid behind a group of clouds, and the entire lake looked like a black bedsheet with someone moving their hands underneath it. “No. He was never a mistake,” he said. “And neither were you.”