That evening the ocean was a texture like mercury, which I half expected to fragment on the sides of the yacht. As if to emphasize our stagnation, Joan and I still hadn’t spoken to each other. Partly as a peace offering, partly because Joan hadn’t moved to, I started the meatloaf.
Our stillness amplified the volume of every movement on deck, as well as their bickering. On the first day, voices were licked into the wind and the creak of the masts. Now I could hear every word she and Kenneth said. I considered shutting the companionway hatch—paused for a moment, knife hovered over the onion. But her feet appeared on the steps. She leapt the rest of the distance, thudding onto the sole, and charged past me to her cabin. A moment later, Kenneth followed, looking wearily calm.
Fumes from the onion bit into my eyes. I set the knife down, leaned against the counter, waited for the blindness to pass.
I only asked if you were changing for dinner, said Kenneth. His voice sounded strained, as if he had repeated his point more than once.
You said I looked coarse.
I didn’t mean it like that.
Their voices silenced for a moment. Then Joan said, Do you have a request?
Don’t be severe.
What sounded like my sister’s foot slammed into the built-in closet. Hooks of metal hangers scraped across the rail.
Choose, she said. Do you like this one?
Joan.
No? Too much skin? How about this? You’ve said it features my breasts nicely.
I tried to shut them out. I lifted the knife again to slice onion. Their argument reminded me oddly of a photograph we had seen years ago in our mother’s Cosmopolitan. An American girl marches down a sidewalk in Florence. Behind her, a man grinds into his scooter, one foot on the sidewalk, mouth open in laughter; another leans in his chair, elbow folded over the seatback; another bends and coos to her, hand pressed to his trousers; another watches her from the shadow of a pillar; another stands flat-footed, pelvis thrust out, jacket over his shoulders, mouth stilled mid-speech; fifteen men in total, eyes lurching after her. Even as girls we recognized that scene, though we’d never been to Italy.
A sound of thrashing emerged from their cabin. —How’s this?
I couldn’t bear it any longer. I wiped my hands on my apron and left the counter. But Kenneth had not shut the door, or the door had rebounded when he slammed it. I saw my sister on all fours, a chiffon negligee wedged over her shoulders, her back arched, buttocks combing the air. For a moment, I feared he might charge the berth and ram her against the hull. But he did not. He stepped past me over the pile of clothes.
Joan’s eyes landed on me in the doorway. Her chest expanded and contracted. I guided her to sit. She pulled her knees to her chest, then let them spill open cross-legged.
You okay? I said, slotting a blue housedress back into the cupboard.
She stared at the wall. Her arms stretched to drape each knee. I could see her underwear, which I recognized from home—a cotton set Mom had bought in a six-pack. At the sight of her underwear, which I also owned, the last shreds of anger from that afternoon softened.
Why don’t we dress for dinner, I said. I’ve started the meatloaf. Which pants were you wearing?
I lifted her white capris from the floor and snapped them in the air to flatten the creases. Underneath, a silk blouse lay crumpled. —That’s a nice top. Where’d you find it?
Her eyes focused and unfocused at the wall, as if she were trying not to blink.
It’s very European. Is it from Paris?
She sat like an Eastern monk, the solemnity of her posture undermined by the sunny chiffon nightie that barely covered the crease of her thighs.
Do you think I’m indecent? she said.
Of course not. The roots of her hair were damp with sweat. I guided her forehead toward my stomach. —You’re the most decent person I know, I said.
He thinks I am.
Shh.
I pinched the blouse off the floor without removing my hand from her ear, as if separation would return her panic. I made a show of admiring the blouse in my hand.
Why don’t you put this on, Joanie?
Who wants kids with an indecent woman anyhow. The children would be indecent. It runs in the family.
Put this on. You’re working yourself up again.
Sheila’s children will be highly decent.
That’s enough, Joan. Take off the nightie. Good. That’s it. Now put this on.
Later, I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in Florence. I was ten years old, Joan thirteen when we found the photograph. She ripped the page from the magazine and pasted it in her diary, which I wasn’t allowed to read. I told Mom. Mom smacked her cheek without taking off her rings. Joan had to buy a second copy from her own money. After two weeks, I took the new magazine into my room and cut the photograph with scissors and pasted it into my own diary.
We had both been that woman. It involved Kenneth and Patrick. It involved my swim costume. The beach. The service station in James Bay, where girls from Joan’s high school had asked men to buy them cigarettes. I used to follow her there. The men had wives at home, perhaps daughters, but they watched us as they filled their tanks, their eyes following our movement across the parking lot. They checked our bodies for newness—hips that softened over summer, breasts packed into last year’s bras. In return, the girls received entire packs of cigarettes still in their cellophane. I was younger than the others, but the men liked my legs. Their eyes darted from my ankles to my knees, as if measuring the length of them, how slowly they could peel the socks from my calves. I had recognized in their stare both shame and want. It had thrilled me.
By dinner, the tensions of that day, as the other tensions I noticed, began to contract. Joan gazed into the middle distance, with long intervals between each blink. Kenneth chatted with Patrick about plans—whether to turn around once the wind picked up or sail through the night to Ensenada.
The meatloaf tasted bland to me. For Mom, Eugene and Luke, I prepared meals you couldn’t bungle, like chicken thighs baked in cream of mushroom soup. Kenneth seemed to like it. He ate with his mouth open so you could see the brown meat on his tongue. By contrast, Patrick carved his slice into minute fragments. The more I watched him, his shirt buttoned, though misaligned, one half of his collar higher than the other, the more certain I felt he hadn’t aged. I knew so little about him—how he found university, who his friends were, if he had a girl in Ithaca—and he knew nothing of my life. Yet I recognized something. A trace of myself, which I had marked all those summers ago, as he had marked me.
A drop of salad oil fell on my breastbone. Both Patrick and I looked to it. I wiped it with my finger. We ate in silence. Or they ate. I practised a theatre of eating—pushing the meat this way with my fork. Slicing it. Dabbing it to my tongue.
Around us, the sun imprinted its belly into the sea, coating the waves with purple light. No one mentioned the dolphins anymore. I was taken by how serenely the creatures swam—they had internalized the rhythm of the surf, their dorsal fins cresting the moment the waves peaked, then sliding back under. I adjusted my breath to match them. I inhaled as the dolphins lifted over the waves and exhaled as they dipped, inhaled as they lifted, exhaled as they dipped. I closed my eyes and continued to sense our movement: my breath, the yacht, the dolphins linked by one body.
——
The wind picked up after dinner. We decided to sail through the night to Ensenada, Patrick and Kenneth alternating three-hour shifts at the helm. The restored motion of the yacht assisted the air of détente on the boat, literally a de-tension, and I slept deeply. My dream recalled an incident I had not thought of in years—when I had stolen a jar of cream from Roy’s dairy wagon. In the dream, I saw only the jar tucked in my blouse, cream rinsing the sides of the glass, tuned to the rhythm of my torso as I pedalled. Just that. The sway of cream in a jar. I woke from the timber creaking and made a half-conscious note to tell Patrick next time he asked. So it wasn’t as startling, this time, when the door opened.
He stood once more in white underwear. Perhaps it was the moonlight, but he looked malnourished. Ridges of bone bulged from his forearms. An arrow indented the gap between his pectorals, his ribs whiskering under his armpits. His thighs were all sinew: bone, tendon, vein twisted into rope.
Go to bed, Patrick.
I was on watch. It’s Kenneth’s turn now but I can’t sleep.
So you wake me up?
He smiled in his impish way and shut the door behind him. —I won’t stay long. You’re awake now anyway.
You can be a real pill, you know that?
He climbed onto the bunk, sat with his legs folded to one side. His eyes dropped to the strap of my nightgown. I tugged the wool blanket tighter around my chest.
I’d like to kiss you, he said. It would help me sleep.
Cut it out, Patrick.
Just once. Then I’ll leave.
I wondered how much Kenneth could hear from the cockpit.
One kiss, he said with a gentle smile. Then I’ll go back.
He raised his eyebrows in a playful way, like Luke did when he asked for ice cream money.
Just one? I said.
He nodded.
Then you’ll go?
That’s right.
I lifted my mouth, eyes focused on the wall above him.
Not there.
I didn’t know what he meant. He seemed pleased at my confusion. Excited by it. He parted the blanket from my lap.
Every muscle tensed as he bowed forward. I didn’t move. I wanted to tell him to stop, yet I didn’t comprehend what was happening. Then I realized I couldn’t shift my jaw. I tried to start there—a twitch to release my tongue, so I could ask him to cut it out. But the bones of my mouth had ossified. I could no longer see his face. His nose touched the cotton between my legs. He breathed deeply. I felt a rush of air where he exhaled. He kissed the crotch of my underwear. After a moment, he sat up and flattened my nightie over my knees.
See? he said. Just one. Now you kiss me.
That wasn’t the deal, but my jaw remained locked. He guided my head forward so it hovered above his groin. He moaned, anticipating my touch, and opened his thighs. The scent of him drifted from his underwear, which was blotted with moisture. I kissed him once.
When I sat up, he was grinding his teeth, his fist clenched into the mattress.
We’re almost done, he said.
What did he mean, almost. I hardly noticed his hand close over mine. He guided me out the door toward his cabin. I didn’t protest. His bunk appeared untouched, the top sheet folded over the wool blanket. He opened his toiletry case and removed a bottle of antiseptic.
Wipe yourself off, he said.
Again, I didn’t understand.
He lifted a pair of shorts discarded on the floor and removed his white handkerchief. He passed me the handkerchief along with the bottle. When I understood what he wanted me to do, and that he wasn’t going to turn away, I lifted the hem of my nightgown. I folded it high enough on my thigh so I could push down my underwear. I spilled antiseptic onto the cotton, the cold liquid dripping between my fingers. I clenched my teeth to avoid crying and dabbed my vagina. The liquid stung and smelled of permanent marker. He watched a moment longer, then nodded. I screwed the cap on the bottle and yanked the underwear halfway up my thighs before he stopped me. He guided me to sit down on the bed. He knelt on the wood sole and peeled my underwear to my ankles. I could see his nail brush on the bedside table, along with a pair of clippers. He nuzzled my groin. I focused on the nail brush. The antiseptic irritated the flesh of my vagina. His tongue chafed. After two minutes, maybe three, he pulled away and removed two clothespins from the toiletry case. Clumsily, as if undressing a doll, he yanked the nightgown over my shoulders. I sat naked on his bed. He opened a clothespin and clamped it around the base of my nipple. The jaws of the peg were high enough on my breast that the pain wasn’t sharp—more of an ache. He burrowed back inside my skirt and licked me. The flesh under the pin started to bruise.
Can I go now?
Relief gushed at the sound of my own voice. Something in my tone must have alarmed him, for he sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth.
No.
I’m sorry to hear that.
I removed the clothespins and tugged the nightgown back over my head. He didn’t stop me. The cotton chafed my nipples. I walked back to my cabin and closed the door. There was no lock. In bed, I shut my eyes and felt the throb of my vagina. It seemed to me the pain matched the rhythm of the sea.