So what can I say? We sailed—no, Connor sailed us—across the Chesapeake Bay, where once I had gone on a field trip to learn about estuaries.
This is what he did: He walked around. He lowered the boom. He manned the sails. He tied and untied knots. He caught the wind. He told me to watch my head. He let me steer. He checked compasses. We looked out at the water, our hair blowing wildly in the wind.
He sent me down into the galley for grapes and crackers and cheese, all on a platter in the little fridge, and Diet Cokes.
It was a little house down there. A lounge area with cushioned couches built in. And behind that was the bedroom, which came to a point just above the headboard. I leaned in the threshold and wondered how many people had slept there. And who they’d been. And who they’d slept with . . .
It actually made me a little seasick, and after spotting the bathroom, I walked back up with this tray of food and set it on the table, which was nailed down between the two sets of benches lined with pillows, life preservers stored inside.
I watched Connor at the wheel. He was every memory I’d ever had of him at once, all the good, all the times he came in to see me when I was sick and didn’t know what was happening to me. Once in a while I slipped: as he looked out at the water and away from me, I couldn’t help but think of him in that car, at the wheel in the Beamer, hand on some girl’s knee, stoned.
“Hey,” I said, picking grapes off the stem and popping them in my mouth. “Does anyone know you’re here?” For my part, no one knew I was even gone. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t where anyone would expect to find me. Off the leash: exciting and terrifying.
He nodded. “Sure.”
“No one knows I’m here,” I said.
He grinned at me and looked back out to the water.
I looked at Connor looking out to sea. “Look!” He pointed out, just beyond our boat.
I shielded my eyes with my hand and looked out. Three gray bodies arced in the sunlight, and I could see the flash of gray fins dipping in and out of the water, three faces shaped like smiles. Dolphins. They dove and swam beside us for several moments before they were gone, far out to sea.
“This is just amazing.” I turned to Connor. “Isn’t this just amazing?”
“I know. Sometimes they play by the boat. I like to think it’s always the same ones.”
I was disappointed for a moment that Connor had seen these dolphins—had seen this—before, but I shook it off. “Wow,” I said.
“Incredible,” he said. “A good omen, I think.”
I nodded. I turned to face him. “It is!” I said.
He smiled.
“Okay,” I said. “Where are we going, anyway?”
We ended the trip at a marina—no! a port of call—on Kent Island. We got off the sailboat and onto a dock and walked up this grassy hill to what turned out to be Connor’s house, which was large and white with blue shutters, little anchors cut out of them, and set against the trees, the leaves turning these spectacular colors. When we got closer, I could tell the house was, I don’t know, falling down a little? Eaten and beaten down by weather, maybe. There was a wraparound front porch with worn wicker chairs, some frayed reeds sticking out from the legs and arms, and two wooden bench swings you could imagine drinking cold lemonade on if it was summer. But it wasn’t summer anymore, and when Connor opened the screen door and walked us across the porch and then into the living room (did I mention the seahorse door knocker?), the house felt old and drafty.
“Is anyone here?” I asked Connor.
“Just us,” he said.
“Does anyone know we’re here?”
“Yes? My parents were like, go ahead, bring your girlfriend to our house on the bay and stay the weekend! No, stay the week!”
“I see.” He said girlfriend. Which went great with my boyfriend sweater. Which was better than my name after a sentence. “So, no.”
“No one knows where you are,” he said, making his hands into wolf paws. “Grrrr,” he said.
“Stop!” I was happy to finally be alone with Connor, but that he was playing with me creeped me out a little.
We stood in this large room with huge windows and Persian rugs in all colors of brown and beige and gold thrown about. Old stuffed couches were strewn with tapestry-covered pillows. It smelled a little like hay in there, and it looked just effortless and like all the couches, pillows, rugs, curtains, framed photos, and vases just somehow ended up there.
I placed my bag on the floor and looked out the window facing the water at the dock where the boat was moored.
“So this is it.” He reached his arm out to encompass the room.
“Yeah. Amazing.” I watched the boat rock gently in the water. “What’s Sea Fever?” I asked.
“A poem. My father likes these sea poems.”
“I like it,” I said. I had seen some awful boat names. Master Baiter. Buoy, Oh Buoy. Dock-a-Dent. This is what happens when you live near water.
I followed Connor into the kitchen, all yellow and open to the light, shelves stacked with multicolored ceramic bowls and plates, a long wooden table with uneven planks of wood. Beneath the window seat that faced the bay window, looking out to the backyard, were baskets overflowing with board games and candles and old blankets.
“This was my grandparents’ place,” he said. “Great-grandparents? I can’t remember, to be honest. But it’s been in the family. Old-time Maryland. That’s us!”
“How cool,” I said.
Another shrug. “Well, it is cool for my parents, because it’s a pretty short drive from DC. So they can come and go easily.”
It was all so beyond my realm. Last year we spent two weeks in Cape Hatteras. We ate hush puppies and crawfish more times than I could count. So there was that.
“Once it was all so grand,” Connor said. “This life.”
“Seems pretty grand now,” I said. I felt teeny and lost, but Connor didn’t fill up the space much either. The grandness didn’t seem to have much to do with him.
“But once”—he looked up at the chandelier, covered in dust—“once this was all brand-new.”
The being-alone and no-one-can-reach-me part turned out to be sort of great. We sat swinging on the porch bench and watched the sunset, holding hands beneath a horse blanket Connor pulled out from under the window seat in the kitchen.
And then, when the sun went down and it got very cold and we got hungry, Connor found some oatmeal in the cupboard. He made that and added brown sugar and raisins and maple syrup, and it might have been the most delicious dinner I’d ever eaten ever.
Soon it got very dark and there were stars everywhere. We went out on the lawn, blanket around our shoulders, and looked up at them. Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Cassiopeia; it was like a planetarium out there. We walked down to the rickety dock and watched the dangling moon, like it was suspended by an invisible string.
“Hey,” Connor said, bringing me close. It was warm beneath the blanket, and I felt him all around me.
“Hi,” I said. I let go. I was in the moment.
The blanket dropped and he pushed some hair out of my face. “Birdie,” he said. He traced my eyebrow—one and then the other—with the side of his thumb. “Bird.”
I hugged him tighter.
“I love you,” he said. He kissed the top of my head.
The shivering. From the cold, from that kind of kiss. I was silent.
“Do you? Still?”
“Still,” I said.
“I’ll take it,” Connor said. “Hey, you’re shivering.”
“It’s cold!”
“Let’s go in,” he said. And then, turning, he held my hand as we walked up the lopsided stairs. “So. Want to see my room?”
I giggled. “Yes,” I said, and followed close behind.
Well, being in the moment was swiftly behind me. Because now I was going into his room and I had to contend with what would happen in that room. I do not see how people stay in the moment. People who say they do this—what, Buddhists?—they have to be liars. All of them.
Also? I was always following Connor. In the hospital hallways, out to the rowboat at Fletcher’s, up those stairs.
“Bathroom?” I said, opening a door, stacks of neatly folded white towels, the smell of insects and dust. “I need the bathroom.”
“Linen closet,” he said. “Here’s a bathroom. If you need it. Whenever. This can be just yours. I’m the last door on the left.” He pointed down a long hallway.
I went in and shut the door, waited for his footsteps to recede down the hallway. I was trembling. Trembling from fear and hope and worry and happiness but mostly from fear.
I checked to make sure everything was okay and that I would not humiliate myself in a terribly obvious way, and I tried not to think about what it would be like for someone else—for Connor—to see it. Did he have to? Was there a way around it? Maybe we would only talk, I thought, as I left the bathroom and padded down the hall, my arms out, fingertips brushing the cool walls. Who knew what I wanted or what would happen, I thought, as I stopped, unsteady, at the last door on the left. Connor’s room.
Then I went inside.