The Practical Navigator (12 page)

“You know who Bear-Bear used to belong to?” Anita's voice is wistful. “He belonged to a little girl.” She has Jamie's attention now. His green eyes are on her. “I think that little girl would be very glad you have him now.”

“Was she you?” asks Jamie.

“Yes,” says Anita. “I gave Bear-Bear to your dad to help out while I was away.” Even if she didn't, it seems true to her now. “I wanted to know you both were in really good hands.”

Penelope gently touches Michael's shoulder. When he looks at her, she nods. And then she turns away and retreats quietly down the hall to her room.

*   *   *

“You may come in now.”

Anita opens the bedroom door and peeks in. For the last ten minutes she has been outside, waiting as she told him she would, listening with an almost painful pleasure to the sound of a running faucet and the buzz of an electric toothbrush, thrilling to the sound of a carefully repeated gargle and spit. She has noted that Jamie murmurs to himself as he dresses for bed. Drawers open and close, accompanied by out-of-context phrases and nonsensical words, by sounds, musical notes, mutters, and hums. Her heart has leaped twice as he said what sounded like “mother.”

Jamie is in bed when she enters, lying on his back, the blanket drawn to his chin, green eyes open, solemn and unblinking. She can't get over him.

“All set?”

“Yes.”

“Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the rest?”

“No.”

“And if they do, then take your shoe and knock'm till they're black-and-blue.” She's hoping for a smile but doesn't get one. “May I kiss you good night, Jamie?”

“No, you may not,” he says. Not hurtful. Just a fact.

“Next time then.”

He rolls away, not looking at her. She wants desperately to reach out and stroke his head, but doesn't. Something about autistic kids not liking to be touched. She turns out the light. She turns away. She's at the door when he speaks.

“Good night, Mom,” he says.

“Good night, Jamie.”

 

21

She finds him in the garage.

Michael, with rebreather on his face, has mounted a polystyrene blank on a V-shaped horse and, with a paper trace, has begun the rough shaping of a surfboard with a jigsaw. Particles and dust fill the air.

She's watched him do this many times. Watched him shape a board, cut it, sand it, fiberglass it, all in the course of a single night, and then have it out in the water the next afternoon. He stopped after the injury. Turned his steady hand to other things. Or maybe not so steady anymore. Anita flinches as the saw jerks and the foam crumbles in its teeth. Michael curses under his breath. He looks up and sees her. He turns off the saw and takes off the rebreather.

“He asleep?”

“I waited till he was,” says Anita. “Think it went okay?”

“Hard to say.”

“Will you let me know?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah.
Such a short, simple word. A word a bus driver might use to tell you that you've paid your fare and now can take a seat. Anita glances toward the rack of blanks, the tools on the counter. “I thought you didn't do this anymore.”

“I don't. But I've been thinking about doing one for Jamie. Only they might be too old.”

“What about that one?” She points. It's the old wood blank. Cabinet-grade, chambered balsa. Fragile and easily broken but when properly shaped, sanded, and glassed, one of a kind. She remembers when Michael brought it home as collateral on a loan to a down-on-his-luck board shaper, a loan never collected.

“That one, huh?”

“That one.”

“You've only just given me about forty hours of work, you know.”

“You better get started then.”

Michael puts the saw and breather aside. “Want some tea?”

“Since when do you drink tea,” says Anita.

“I always drank tea.”

“Not at night.”

“So now I drink tea at night.”

“Sleepy Time?” Her voice is teasing him. “Little pudgy bear in a nightcap?”

“Chamomile.”

“I'd love some,” says Anita.

*   *   *

She sits at the kitchen table watching as he brings the water to a boil.

“Milk? Honey?”

“You don't remember?”

A shrug. “Things change.”

“Still both.”

He turns to the refrigerator. The cups and saucers he's brought out are of the fine china, the setting for eight given to them by her mother at their hastily arranged wedding. The last thing they wanted or needed but Anita finds herself pleased to see them now.

“I send you checks, you never cash them.”

“I would if I needed to,” Michael says.

“I wish you would.”

He says nothing. She'd like to tell him that it hurts that he has never let her contribute even from a distance, that it feels as if he's punishing her. But she knows she doesn't have a leg to stand on. “You seeing anyone?” she says instead, pleased that already knowing the answer, she can still sound so chipper.

“I don't think that's any of your business.”

“Just making conversation.”

He looks at her a moment, then fills the cups with boiling water. The smell of chamomile fills the kitchen.

Conversation.

He wonders why he isn't raging at her. He should be. Has every right to be. Yet somehow seeing Anita with Jamie tonight has flushed the anger right out of him. Fari has told him that men have a tendency to compartmentalize thoughts and emotions in order to deal with immediate needs. He's not sure this is a bad thing if the immediate needs are those of his son.

“I guess I am. A doctor.”

“You?”

“Moving
up
in the world.” Hmm, maybe he
is
still angry.

“How'd you meet?” says Anita, ignoring the jab.

“She ran me over with her car.”

“Ooh, love at first sight. Is it serious?”

“It could be.” He is saying more than he wants to now, more than he should but he can't seem not to. “There's some baggage.”

“Yours or hers?”

“No comment.” Michael sips his tea. He usually takes it without milk or sweetener but in making it for her, has added both to his own. He finds it warm and delicious.

“How about you?”

“What, do I have baggage?” Anita laughs. “They fine me when I get on airplanes.”

“Yeah, I can see how they would.” His voice is flat and humorless. No doubt about it. He
is
angry. “Do they ask for autographs first?”

He sees the moment she realizes that he knows. The color drains from her face. She's like a creature that no longer breathes air.

“You saw it?”

Michael nods. “That's some heavy baggage.”

Anita sips her tea, hesitates, tries to laugh again. And then she's out of the chair, bolting around the center island, and at the sink, depositing the milky tea and what dinner she's had into the drain. He listens to the mewing sounds, waits patiently till she's finished.

“I hope you plan on washing the sink.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Anita says softly.

“Fine. Then leave so I can clean up the mess. Again.”

Anita turns and sinks to the floor, her back against the sink cabinet. She wipes her eyes, pulls down on the skin of her face as if trying to take the flesh off the bone. He fights the urge to go to her.

“It was such a bad time, Michael. Bad place, bad crowd.” Anita stares down at the floor. “I don't know. Maybe I thought it'd be empowering. What a laugh. Probably I was just trying to punish myself. I mean, what else is new? The offer was there and I just …
did it
.”

Feeling nothing, thinks Michael, has never felt so good.

“I was so disgusted with myself afterward. I don't think I got out of bed for a week. But then I figured nobody'd ever see it. Only these days everybody sees everything.”

Michael moves to the sink and pours the remains of his tea down the drain. Without thinking, he turns and slides down the cabinet to sit next to her on the floor. It's only when she rests her head on his shoulder that he realizes what he's done.

Mistake.

But it's not. Not really. “We do things, sometimes we don't know why we do them, we just do them,” Michael says.

“You don't.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“No. You're good, Michael. You only do good things. You're not capable of bad things.”

“I'm glad you think so.”

“I do. So remind me of something good now.”

It takes him a moment to think of it but he does. “Fiji. Tavarua. Perfect three-foot swells.”

Anita smiles tightly. “Cloudbreak,” she says, naming their favorite spot. “Namotu Left. Wilkes and Desperations. You out on the water. Me watching from the beach. It was so beautiful. You were.”

“We were.”

“Why did it ever have to end?”

“It didn't. But it had to change. And you couldn't.”

“I wanted to. I tried.”

“I know.”

“I warned you. You know I did.”

“You did. Still, I just didn't see it coming.”

“So who's the asshole then?”

“Me, definitely.”

Both of them smiling ruefully. Anita wiping her eyes, putting her hand on Michael's shoulder for support, rising to her feet. She is almost out of the kitchen when she stops and turns back.

“So what are we going to do, Michael?” she asks.

“About what?” he says, standing.

“Everything.”

And then, as always wanting or needing or perhaps just afraid of the last word if it belongs to someone else, she's gone.

*   *   *

We will be together.

He is twenty years old when he sees her for the first time. He is twenty, almost old enough to legally drink, still living at home but certainly no longer a kid. He has worked various part-time jobs since high school, washed cars, bused tables, sold sandals and wet suits in a surf shop, all the while working diligently at his real job—riding a polyurethane board covered with fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin down the face of a barreling wave, a wave created by reef, rock, shoal, or headland and shaped by weather patterns, wind, and current. For the last two months he's begun putting in forty-hour weeks on construction so as to finance surf trips to No-Cal, Hawaii, and Tahiti. He has recently begun competing in ASP sanction events. He hasn't placed yet but he knows it's just a matter of time.

Meaning he is twenty years old and he knows where he is going.

He has smoked dope and found that inhaling smoke and holding your breath underwater don't mix. He has dropped both acid—fun the first time, a horror show the second—and ecstasy, which gave him a sense of euphoria that quickly devolved into nausea, sweating, and muscle cramps. He has snorted cocaine, which allowed him to drink far too much and stay up far too late and left him with such a debilitating hangover, he was dry heaving in the water between sets the next day. He has come to the conclusion that his drug of choice is cold beer. He has had actual, ongoing sex with four different women. He takes relationships seriously. He is selective and doesn't care for random hookups. He is currently seeing Lisa O'Malley, an attractive, perhaps overly outgoing junior at the University of San Diego, who will fuck him at the drop of a hat.

Meaning he is twenty years old and has been around the block.

He considers himself sensible like his father. He looks before he leaps. He believes letting go should be learned before learning to get. He doesn't believe in love at first sight. He isn't sure if he believes in fidelity. He has the whole world ahead of him and for the time being he plans on traveling it solo.

Meaning he is twenty and he knows the score.

And then he sees her across the yard and he realizes he knows nothing.

We will be together.

It is not desire. It is not love, not yet. It is a simple fact, both exhilarating and, in its inevitability, frightening at the same time. It suggests his fate is not his own and that any plans he has ever made are precarious and subject to change.

We will be together.

He doesn't question it. It never occurs to him that it might be a warning as much as a benediction. It never crosses his mind that you can be bound to someone by their absence as much as by their presence. After all, he is just twenty. Practically but not quite a drinking adult.

 

II. Harbor Phase: Navigating to a harbor entrance through bays and sounds, and negotiating harbor approach channels.

 

22

Father, in glorifying Christ and sending us your Spirit, you open the way to eternal life. May our sharing in this gift increase our love and make our faith grow stronger.

Tisha Beacham has been told more than once in the fifteen years since being born again that if she prays hard and often enough, God will
return the phone call
. It won't necessarily be a long conversation—God, after all, is busy—but rather an acknowledgment of her dedication and faith, a few tender words confirming she is on the right track, sort of like that movie about baseball she enjoyed—
build it and he will come
. It bothers Tisha Beacham that she seems to keep getting a busy signal.

Strengthen within our hearts the faith you have given us; let not temptation ever quench the fire that your love has kindled within us.

There are people at the church here out in Santee who, Tisha is sure, don't pray nearly as long or hard or as cogently as she does, and yet they—the prayer warriors, they proudly call themselves—report that God talks to them all the time. God, in fact, is a chatterbox, full of wisdom and good cheer. And even when God doesn't pick up the phone the prayer warriors still find great solace in the act of prayer. They report that their senses become more acute, that smells are richer, colors more vibrant, that their thoughts are vibrant and clear. Prayer, they say, gives them confidence and peace.