I try not to think about what’s happening on the boat. I stand at the foot of the bed for a few moments, gazing at them while they sleep peacefully, watching their easy breathing, knowing it will likely be their last night like this for a very long time.
My father looks like a bear; he’s a big guy, heavy, who likes scotch and cigars and rich food. Even though it’s a Sunday, I’m surprised that he’s home; I remember him working almost all the time. He’s a corporate attorney, which is a pretty high-stress job. Sometimes I think he’s a workaholic; he had a mild heart attack when I was only fourteen years old, and he was back at work less than two weeks later.
It’s funny; after my mom died, I was always so worried about my father’s health. I used to try and imagine what life would be like without him. I think that after losing one parent so young, I was always kind of bracing myself for the other shoe to drop. So to speak.
It never occurred to me—not for a moment—that I could die before my dad. I’m only eighteen! Eighteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to die.
But Alex did, and when he was only seventeen. And now me. I can’t stop wondering—why are we together? I barely knew him. He was quiet, shy, obviously a loner. Nevertheless, despite our apparent character differences, I have to admit it’s much better to have someone to talk to than it would be to go through this all alone, like Alex has been doing for the past year.
As Alex watches me, softly—as though I’m afraid of waking them—I crawl into bed between my parents, on top of the comforter. It’s something I haven’t done since I was very little, and only with my real parents—never my dad and Nicole—but right now it feels like what I need to do.
I lie between them and listen to their quiet breathing. Just like it was with my friends, I can’t really touch them. It’s as if there’s something invisible preventing me from fully making contact, no matter how hard I try.
I stare at my father’s full, aging face, and try to focus on it through my tears.
“I love you, Daddy,” I whisper.
Nicole’s cell phone rings on her nightstand. I don’t have to look to know who it is. Her alarm clock says it’s 8:49. Before nine on a Sunday morning, it doesn’t take a genius to guess that something’s wrong.
“Don’t answer,” I murmur. “Come on. Don’t answer, don’t answer, don’t answer.”
Nicole’s eyelids flutter open. “Marshall,” she murmurs. That’s my dad.
“Hmmm? Who’s calling?” He doesn’t open his eyes. He yawns. “What time is it?”
I am sobbing now, willing to do anything to keep them from having to hear this news. “I’m right here, Dad,” I whisper. I put my hand on his arm, knowing he can’t feel it. But even though there’s that odd space between us, preventing me from making full contact with him, I can almost feel him, and it’s enough to bring me some small comfort. I can sense his warmth beneath my touch. I can sense the blood running through his living veins. Oh, Dad. Once is enough to have your heart broken. He’s already lost my mother. And now this.
Nicole stretches her arms, reaches leisurely for the phone. She squints at the caller ID. “It’s Liz.” She glances at my dad. “Why would she be calling this early?”
He yawns again. “Beats the hell out of me. Answer it. See what she wants.”
It’s Liz? How is this happening? I’m right here—and back there, I’m in the water. Then it dawns on me: whoever’s calling is using my phone.
I feel slapped, terrified. It’s not fair for things to be happening this way, not fair for my parents to lose this last brief moment of peace before everything bursts into chaos.
Nicole answers the phone, her voice tired but cheerful. “Liz, honey, what is it?”
There’s a long moment as she listens. The voice on the other end is male. I recognize it immediately as Richie’s.
“Wait—Richie, slow down. You’re scaring me. Okay. All right, we will. We’ll be right there.”
She closes the phone. She stares at my father. Her face is the color of death. I know from experience.
“That was Richie,” she tells my dad. “He says the police are on their way to the boat. He says there’s been some kind of accident, and we need to go down there right now.”
My father sits up. “What kind of accident?”
She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t say.”
They stare at each other.
“Why did Richie call? He used Liz’s phone? Why not Liz or Josie?” my dad asks.
Nicole doesn’t say anything at first. Then she puts a hand to her mouth. “Get dressed, Marshall.”
I can’t watch anymore. I get out of bed and cross the room to Alex, who is standing there wordlessly, waiting. He doesn’t seem surprised when I put my hand on his shoulder and close my eyes again.
In an instant, we are on the boat, inside, and outside there is wailing, five voices working all at once, heartbreak upon horror.
There is no place to go that doesn’t hurt. There is nothing to do but wait.
Four
The police have called divers. When they arrive, I see that it’s two men and two women, dressed in full wet suits. They climb down the ladder at the back of the boat and work together to free my body from the space between fiberglass and wood. While they work, the police—there’s a slew of them—push the boat away from the dock to create more room. My body rolls onto its side and then onto its back, from the waves created by all the motion. Then, so quietly, so slowly, the divers hold on to me and guide me toward the rocky shore. Once I’m out of the water, they place me—carefully, as if they’re afraid I’ll break—into a shiny black body bag. A body bag. Me. On my freaking birthday.
My parents see it all. My friends look on, silent and numb. None of them are crying, not now. Nothing feels real.
“Liz?” Alex asks, his voice just a tad beyond indifferent. “You’re being so quiet. Are you … you know … okay?”
I glare at him. “Oh, I’m fantastic. The police just dragged my body from the ocean. I looked like shit. It’s my birthday, and I’m dead, and if that weren’t bad enough, I’m so bloated and disgusting from being in the water that they probably won’t even be able to have an open casket for me. I’m ugly. Am I okay? No, Alex, I’m not freaking okay.”
“You will be,” he says calmly, ignoring my rant. “You’ll get used to it.” He pauses. “You just died, Liz. Is that really what you’re most concerned about? How your body looks right now?”
I bite my lip. It would certainly seem that way, wouldn’t it? Was I really that superficial? There’s so much else that is more important. I don’t know how to respond to him.
I notice Alex’s gaze drifting across the crowd to the periphery, where the female divers have stripped off their wet suits and are pulling sweats on over their one-pieces. “Look,” he says.
The divers are standing together, talking. One of them is crying. She says something to the other woman.
“I want to hear what they’re talking about,” I tell him. “I’m going over there.”
The first woman has short brown hair. Her fingers are pruny from being in the water. She keeps her head down, like she’s trying not to let other people notice that she’s crying.
“I have a daughter her age,” she tells the other woman, a tall blonde. “She lives with her father in Vermont.”
The blonde shakes her head. “What the hell happened here?” She lowers her voice a tad. “What the hell kind of parents let their kid throw a party on a boat? With alcohol? And you know there was dope in there. Those kids were wasted last night.”
But we weren’t! Okay, maybe a little bit. Obviously too much. But my parents didn’t know we would be drinking. They never would have let us drink. My parents are good people. And like I said, we’re good kids. At least, I thought we were; Alex obviously feels differently, and I’m starting to think he might be right. Again, the thought flashes bright as neon in my mind: how did this happen?
The blonde shades her eyes with one hand; wit
h the other, she reaches down to grip the crying woman’s arm. “You can watch your kids all you want. You can almost never let them out of your sight. It doesn’t matter. Things happen for reasons we can’t understand.”
The brunette wipes her eyes. She gives the blond woman a sharp look. “You mean God?”
The blonde nods. “Giveth and taketh away. We can’t control it.”
There’s a long pause. Then the brunette says, “You know, I think that’s a load of bullshit. Those parents could have prevented this if they had half a brain.”
And like that—without any sense of motion, without willing it to happen—I’m at my father’s side.
My dad and Nicole are standing among my friends. There are four policemen with them. I only recognize one of them—his name is Joe Wright, and he’s the town sheriff. It’s funny; I have this vague sense that I know him somehow, aside from just recognizing his name and face. So I close my eyes and try to let myself slip into a memory, and almost immediately I see it happening, right there in front of me. There’s Richie and me, having a run-in with him just a few months earlier, after the junior prom. We’d gone parking down by the beach at Groton Long Point in Richie’s dad’s SUV, which he’d borrowed for our Big Night. We were in the back of the SUV, under a blanket, when Joe Wright tapped at the foggy window with his flashlight.
He seemed like a nice enough guy at the time. He took our names and told us to go on home. It was after four in the morning, way past curfew for kids under eighteen in Noank. But it was prom night, so he cut us a break.
Instead of going home, though, we just went up the road, parked in Richie’s driveway, and walked down to my parents’ boat. We spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms, talking about what it would be like to be seniors, about what college we might go to together. There was never any question, not for either of us, that we’d stay together after high school. Richie Wilson was the love of my life.
“So that’s your stepmom,” Alex says, yanking me out of the memory. He’s still at my side.
“Yeah,” I say. “Her name is Nicole. She’s Josie’s mom.”
Alex lets out a low whistle. “Man, she is hot.”
“Would you shut up?” I give him a shove, so hard that he almost loses his footing on the dock. Not that it would matter. What’s the worst that could happen to him at this point?
“How can you treat all of this so lightly?” I demand. “These are people’s lives. My parents, my friends—their lives are probably ruined.”
Alex gives me a look. “Somebody sure thinks highly of herself.”
“Alex. They just found my body in the water.”
He nods. “That’s true. But they’ll move on eventually.”
I look at my father. His gaze is lowered. I can’t imagine what he must be thinking. “No, they won’t,” I say. “Not all of them. Not my dad.”
“Death is a part of life,” Alex murmurs. “Everyone dies.”
“Not like this.” I look toward my body, zipped and concealed on the shore. Why are they just leaving it there? Why aren’t they taking it somewhere, like, now? Small-town cops, I think to myself, are incompetent. What do they know? It’s not like there’s ever any real crimes in Noank for them to solve.
A local news crew has arrived. People from the other boats are awake and staring, hands over their mouths. Looking past the docks, I can see my neighbors standing on their front porches or peeking out from their windows. Watching. Fascinated. It’s probably like a movie to them, something to dish about over coffee all morning, a gruesome story to share with their friends who might have missed the big show. Beyond the latest hot gossip, people in Noank care about things above all else. They might be upset that I’ve died, sure, but I’d bet anything that they’re all wondering what my death will do to their property values.
Joe Wright looks like he’s doing his best to keep things from dissolving into total chaos. He’s gathered my friends and my parents on the front deck of the boat, and they’re heading inside.
I look at Alex. He nods. “Let’s go.”
Inside the Elizabeth, there’s a mess kind of suspended in time: sleeping bags still unrolled on the floor, the coffee pot filled with grinds but no water, empty beer cans scattered on the kitchen countertop. Above the captain’s seat there is a photograph, taken only a few months before my mother died. Ironically, it was my stepmom, Nicole, who took the picture—she and her husband were always close with my parents, and Josie and I were always best friends. I’ll never forget that day on the boat, both of our original families together and happy for what was probably the last time. At least, we were as happy as we could have been, considering the circumstances. See, my mom was really sick by then. In the picture, I’m eight, almost nine, and am wearing my dad’s captain hat. My parents stand on either side of me. We are all smiling. My mother is so thin that her cheeks are sunken into hollows. Her arms are like rails. Any fool could have seen she wasn’t well.
Mommy. I want to be with her so badly right now. I would give anything. I close my eyes, trying to imagine her from a better time, before she got so sick.
And like magic, there we are: I stand watching the two of us in the bathroom of the elementary school. I’m wearing a black ballet leotard, pink tights, and pink ballet slippers. My light blond hair is pulled into a tight bun, secured with bobby pins. It must be the evening of a dance recital. When I was a little girl, I took everything: ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics—even acting lessons with our community theater for a while.
“I’m afraid I’ll mess up,” I say to my mom; I’m clearly nervous. I’m maybe six years old. My mother is still painfully thin—I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t—but she looks happy. She always seemed to enjoy my recitals. Beside her, balanced on the lip of the sink, is a makeup bag. She kneels in front of me, her eyes narrowed as she carefully swirls blush onto my young cheeks.
“You won’t mess up, honey. You know all the steps. I’ve seen you do it. You’ll be great.”
“Can I wear mascara?”
She smiles. “Sure you can.”
“Will Daddy be mad?”
“Because I’m letting you wear makeup? No, he won’t be mad. You look like a princess. You look beautiful.”
“Daddy says I don’t need makeup to be pretty.”
My mom bites her lip, hard. She fumbles through the makeup bag, pulling out a yellow tube of mascara. “Open your eyes wide,” she tells me. “Look up. I’m going to show you how to do this.”
After she’s finished doing my makeup—blush, mascara, even lipstick and eye shadow—she puts her hands on my shoulders and stares at me. “You’re perfect,” she says.
“Really?” I fidget in my slippers.
“Yes, really.” She kisses me on the tip of my nose. “My perfect little girl.”
I want so badly to be inside my younger self, to feel her touch. But all I can do is watch.
“Mrs. Greene says it doesn’t matter what a person looks like on the outside. She says the only thing that matters is being beautiful on the inside.” Mrs. Greene was my dance teacher. I pause, thinking. “But I think it’s important to be pretty on the outside, too. Isn’t it, Mommy?”
My mother hesitates. “It’s important to be pretty on the inside,” she says. “It matters a lot, Elizabeth. But you’re a girl. It’s different for girls.” And she gives me another kiss on the nose before she stands up and takes me by the hand, leading me out of the bathroom.
As I follow, I see that my dad is waiting for us in the hallway, where there’s a crowd of other parents with their little ballerinas, getting ready for the recital to start. When he sees me, when he notices my heavily made-up face, his own face turns a deep red.
“What are you doing?” he whispers to my mom. He’s obviously angry.
“She’ll be on stage, Marshall. I want her to stand out.”
“She already stands out. She’s half a foot taller than everyone else, and she’s rail thin.” My dad flashes me a for
ced smile. “Like a real ballerina.”
“It’s just a little blush.” My mother frowns. “It’s nothing. Just to bring out the color in her cheeks.”
“She looks like a goddamned geisha,” my father mutters.
“What’s a geisha?” I ask, gazing up at them. “Are geishas pretty?”
My parents stare at each other. My father positively glowers at my mother, who is expressionless now, her blank look defiant and final.
“Geishas are pretty, yes,” she tells me, “but not as pretty as you.” And she kneels down again, leans close, and whispers in my ear. As I’m watching the three of us in the memory, I have to step closer and strain to hear what she says.
“You’re the prettiest girl here,” she whispers. “You always will be.”
My father walks away from us, into the auditorium.
I’ve seen enough. I blink and blink, willing myself to be back in the present.
“Where’d you go?” Alex asks. “What did you see?”
“None of your damn business.”
He smiles widely. “Well, it’s good that you’re back. You were about to miss the show.”
I start to cry again as my friends quietly find seats inside the boat. I’m crying because I know that this is real, that I’m truly dead, but also because of the aching that remains inside from the memory I’ve just seen. I’d never realized before that my parents had problems. Everybody’s parents fight sometimes. But I get the feeling the tension I witnessed between the two of them—in our whole family, really—was nothing new. As difficult as the memory was to witness, though, it made me want to be with my mother even more.