Emily’s hands are on the on the rail, flexed tight. The biting wind whips her hair as she watches the ferry’s prow split deep ocean into foam. A skim of fog curls in bright tendrils up into the pale sky. The engines thrum inside her knees and she imagines the land beneath them falling away, buried in water, drowned and shearing into the dark.
The land is behind me; the land is ahead of me. I’m caught.
Moisture in the air numbs her fingers. Her eyes fix on the horizon, probing for the precise division between sky and sea.
I’ll rent a car in Hyannis. I’ll drive the rest of the way home.
Morning smelled like roses and wet rocks. Emily stood on the boat landing, buried in mist and the first tentative creamy light of dawn. The water swished around the pilings as she dialed Aaron’s voicemail:
Hi, I’m leaving early. This is Emily. I’ll hit Hyannis around nine.
She held the phone close to her cheek, fingers tight on its plastic casing. She listened to her voice tremble in ways that only she could hear.
I’m renting a car. I’m driving home.
She closed her eyes, cleared the dregs from her throat. She held onto the phone and tried to imagine his face and could not summon individual features out of the Aaron-haze filling her mind. Her teeth chattered.
I’ll see you in a couple of days.
She hung up, walked into the terminal, and bought a cup of coffee. The rich scent of caffeine and hot cardboard entered her body and set off a chain reaction of calm. She sat with her bags on a plastic bench, fingers wrapped tight around the cup’s warmth, and watched through the smeared glass as the whitewashed sun diffused through the fog. She felt tired all through her body. Her bones held up her lack of sleep, moved inside it, took on a weight of coffee and disowned time.
She wraps herself in a heavy sweater. The air cuts through the woolen weave and polishes her cheeks into a red flush. She holds in her shivering and looks at the water, smooth and calm in deference to the early hour.
When the fog is gone I’ll go inside. I’ll stay out here and watch it fall apart first.
It tatters like a veil, pulling apart in currents of heat. This far out and there are no seagulls breaking the silence. Backlit by sun, the dissolution looks almost spiritual, radiant life force entering an invisible world and leaving the salty tang of spilled blue blood behind. The early morning sun knocks shards of light into her eyes.
Her cell phone rings. She pulls it out of her jeans pocket and looks at the screen. She doesn’t know the number. She ignores it.
Emily leaves the deck for the warm interior. She buys a bagel at the snack bar and sits beside a broad window, smearing cream cheese with a plastic knife.
The phone rings again. She glances at it.
“Hello?”
“Is everything all right?”
She closes her eyes for a brief moment. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“You still have three days of your vacation.”
“I know.” She squints into the brightness and takes a bite. “It’ll take me one of those to get off the Cape.”
There is a pause. In it she can hear water and engines and overlapping voices and her breath sliding over muted traffic noise. She wipes cream cheese off her bottom lip. “Are you on your way in?”
“Yeah. The traffic isn’t too bad.”
“I can hear it.” Saying the words makes her grin. “What you’re hearing from this end, it’s the ferry’s engines. Those things are huge and very loud.”
“Do you…” He takes a quick breath, lets it out. “Do you want me to meet up with you somewhere? I mean, I can take the time. Morgan can handle things. If he can’t there’s always Dave.”
She stops chewing. She folds up a napkin and wipes her mouth with it, swallowing.
“Emily?” He pauses. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no. No.” She makes gestures with the napkin that he can’t see. “It’s not necessary, you coming up here. I’m okay. They need you down there.” She laughs. “I can drive by myself.”
“I know,” he says.
She can almost hear the song on the radio. She presses the phone tight to her ear, listening through the static.
“Do you want me to?”
“That would be nice.” She looks down and smiles a little. “Thank you.”
“It’s a long drive.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
“Um”I’ll be in Hyannis by nine.” She looks up and out the window, hooking hair behind her ears. “It shouldn’t take much more than an hour to get a car and get on the road. I could be in East Wareham by ten or eleven o’clock tonight, provided the traffic doesn’t suck.”
“If you can wait in Hyannis, I can be there tonight.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He lets out a sharp sigh. “Look. If you think this is a bad idea, say so.”
“Oh, no. No.” She plugs her ear. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I’m pretty tired.” Her voice softens a touch. “You’re right, I probably shouldn’t be driving alone. I should at least get a nap in first.”
“Can you get a room?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean it’s barely the beginning of the season, so yeah.” She nods. “Yes.”
“All right. Let me know where you’re staying.”
“I will.”
“I guess I’ll see you later.”
“All right.”
Emily hangs up.
The land is behind me; the land is ahead of me. I’m caught.
She eats her bagel and ignores her burning tears until they abate. When she’s finished her food she goes into the tiny lurching bathroom and washes her face with the ice-cold chlorinated water running through the taps. She washes her hands and looks at herself in the stained mirror. Its edges warp where it has been bolted to the wall. Under harsh fluorescent light she reads the exhaustion written into her face.
Her lips are reddened and chapped at the corners. She looks loosened up, haunted. I am haunted. That’s a good word for it. I’m haunted by myself. I carved out my past, made an alcove, and put George Foyet in there. What…what were you thinking? The question falls through her, burning up on descent. Ashes rain into her bloodstream. Is this any better? Do the shadows make more sense? New memories and old ones all soldered together into a stain glass wall. They flicker like there are candles inside them. She’s alone in the nave of her mind, unsure of what to do. How do I worship this new god? What words to speak, what oils to anoint with, what incense to burn. It wants everything, and I have nothing left to give. Emily rinses off her hands, dries her face with a scratchy brown paper towel, and leaves the bathroom.
She looks through the wind-buffeted windows at the horizon. The sky is clear and bright. She sees its gentle pitch and roll and her throat clenches with weak nausea. She returns to her seat, where she takes off her sweater and balls it up into a pillow. She stretches out on her side. She closes her eyes but the motion of the water settles into her. She sloshes back and forth inside her skin.
I’ll try to sleep, then. I’ll try. A small voice burrowed inside her own climbs up to its hole. It whispers: Can you? Can you do it not knowing if you’re alone? Her own voice, the conscious tones of her mind, will have none of it: Of course you left island alone. You watched your fellow passengers board. You watched them closely. There are no excuses now. You know the rhythms and postures of his body. Thanks to the last twenty-four hours, you know them better than anyone. So shut up, voice. Crawl back down into your lizard cave. It goes, of course, hightailing it back down into the darkness, but not without leaving behind its most potent gift: unease. Subtract an e, scramble the letters, and unease becomes nausea. The land is behind you. Yes, the land is ahead of you, and you’re caught. Between those two things there is no hope of sleep.
Emily curls up her knees. She puts her hands together like a prayer, tucking them beneath her cheek.