Unfurled Read online

  George stands. “Go get your stuff, I’ll go first.”

  “Fine,” I say, harsher than I mean to, putting my brush down on the newspaper under the half-painted chair and running into the house through the back door. Inside, I move too fast and knock into the kitchen counter with my elbow as I race toward the stairs. “Shitfire!” I whisper, mimicking George when he swore at a baseball game on T.V. and fingering the back of my elbow as I shuffle up to the second floor. My joy at this rupture from good behavior is swift and intense. I gather my things and Lizzy, who spent the night next to me, still in the catch bucket of sea water.

  When I get back downstairs I watch the three adults from behind the screen door. My mother is standing next to my dad on the parking strip. She is wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt and her hair hangs down long and straight. She has her sunglasses on her head. All three of them are talking exactly as they would on an ordinary day. I open the front door and walk slowly toward everyone, my fish bucket still in my hand.

  “George says you guys caught three fish yesterday,” my dad says in a voice that isn’t his own.

  “Three smelt.” I slow my steps even further. “Just small ones.”

  My dad is wearing the same slacks and Huskies t-shirt I saw him in the day before when he dropped me off, but now he’s no longer someone I know. George clears his throat and stares down the street.

  “That’s great, honey,” he continues in the same odd voice. “Where did you guys go?”

  I look at George to answer this question, wondering whether it would be okay to mention the ferry ride and just pretend we took the car. Usually I’m not allowed to ride his motorcycle. But George’s face remains turned the wrong way.

  “Did you go to the peninsula? And what’s in the bucket?” he asks.

  “Let’s all stop being so stupid, shall we?” my mother breaks in, an easy smile on her face. Her head is tipped toward me. “I haven’t even been gone that long.” Then she raises her shoulders and turns to my dad, “I know, John, I should have told you where I was going, I know, I know. I didn’t mean to worry you. I really didn’t. But like I said, you’ll never guess what I found up there.”

  My dad shifts on his feet, glances at me. “We’ll talk about it later, honey.” Then he says, “We need to let George have the rest of his day.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” George says.

  But my dad shakes his head.

  Then my mother continues, “It’s really useful, I’ll tell you all about it. We’ll have to decide what to do, though, now that we know …”

  “Let’s just get Ella home, ok?”

  She frowns at him, then, and they stare at each other for several seconds. Then she shakes her head and turns to me. She steps forward and I have to put the bucket on the ground because she’s coming so close. She kneels down before me and looks me straight in the eye.

  Her eyes take me in, up and down and it’s a relief when she says, “You’ve grown three-fifths of an inch!” This is how my mother sounds when she’s being silly.

  She leans toward my head, “Your hair smells like my shampoo!”

  Then she leans back and says, “You’re going to be taller than me one day.”

  She reaches over and takes my right hand in her right hand, and she shakes it. Up and down, keeping us eye to eye. “Hello, Ella. I’m Maggie.” She seems ready to burst out laughing, and she winks at me. But she sounds like my mother. She’s gone away but here she is again. Her eyes are bright, and she’s looking at me in the way that I know means she’s exactly right there. She’s with me. My dad and George seem far away and I shake her hand back, because we are agreeing on something, whatever that is, and I am certain I have done the right thing by taking the fish.

  “So, Elly Bean,” she says, her face serious. “You’re safe now.”

  “I’m safe,” I repeat. “I mean, I am?”

  “Darn sure.”

  “Ok.”

  “Then it’s a deal,” she says.

  I don’t know what she means so I turn to the catch bucket and say, “This is my fish, I found her,” I say. “Her name is Lizzy.”

  My mother leans in and whispers, although it’s a loud whisper, “Ok, I get it. I can keep a secret. What kind of fish is it?”

  I whisper back, confused, what does she mean by secret? “George says it’s a sculpin.”

  She stands up, “Rock fish, right? You’ll have to study her, won’t you? Make careful observations.”

  I take in a deep breath then because I was right. I knew she’d understand. “That’s my plan. And you can help me, if you want.”

  “I’ll always help you. You know that.”

  But she isn’t looking at me when she says it so I take her hand and squeeze her fingers, tight. Just quickly. She squeezes mine back and her eyes meet mine. I let out my breath.

  11

  WE LEAVE THE LAKE AND GEORGE WALKS BACK with me to my dad’s house. It takes us eight minutes; we walk side by side. He holds Daisie’s leash, he asks me about work, about Wenatchee, about Neil’s parents whom he met a few months ago when they came to visit. It is such an ordinary conversation that it begins to trick me. I watch him from the corner of my eye—did he actually mention a cabin? Did I hallucinate this instead? Are there really photos of my mother in the bathroom drawer at my dad’s house? And my nausea and tender breasts? Isn’t the rest of my body sore, too? Couldn’t it all just be grief and shock working their way through my body? Like an animal weak with hunger or fatigue or injury, perhaps I just need time.

  The eighth minute has us walking up the driveway of my dad’s house, and we have to duck to avoid a branch from the neighbor’s spindly dogwood tree. Both of us lean our bodies at the same time, twist our shoulders. This tree is always hanging over the fence. Bare in winter, clouded in white flowers in spring. And in front of us, hanging askew on the garage door is the Parking for Pirates Only sign. Below it a long scratch in the beige paint. A scratch that has been there for years. I lean down to unleash the dogs and I feel it—the sensation of comfort, of here I am, of this is home. I have not lived in this house for twelve years but still it feels like home. And the lights are on behind the thin kitchen curtains, so for just a second, I can pretend.

  He would greet me like this: “Elly Smelly Bean, the greatest fisherwoman in these wild northern parts.”

  And I would say: “Quite a compliment coming from Cap’n Johnny Fish himself, the man of 500 Chinook.”

  Except I cannot say this. I cannot say this to him and I cannot throw open the back door and race inside and yell, “What the fuck is this about a cabin?” I watch George, who is paused with his hand on the screen door latch, deep within the shadow of his own arrival here—is that a trembling hand, a downturned face?—and all I want to do is tack around and get the hell away from these unfamiliar waters.

  We shuffle ourselves inside, the warm dry air making us blink and squint like we’ve emerged from some dark enclosed space. Neil is there and I cannot look at him, and the dogs zip about as we remove our coats and drop the leashes and begin to remove our shoes, and then a woman’s voice comes toward me from the other room. Distinctly feminine. Throaty. Vibrant. A panic rises, can George hear this, too? But he’s oblivious, still blinking furiously to clear the heat from his eyes after our walk in the cold. I twist and reach for the back door, rushing my body away from the sound. It cannot be. It simply cannot be.

  But it isn’t. Lisa is walking toward me, arms outstretched for an embrace; I can only choke back my absurd fear. The thought of my mother vanishes as Lisa rocks me back and forth in her arms. It has been years since her ghost has risen toward me this way. I lean over to accept Lisa’s comforting, try to breathe through the edges of my residual panic. She says things like oh, honey and this fucking world and tragedy and I’m sorry and countless other meant-to-be soothing words.

  “Are you alright,” she says, pulling back to see my face. She isn’t really asking this, so I don’t need to answer.

>   Lisa is a talker. A hugger. Still mostly a hippie, a kind of Wiccan even. She wears her gray hair long and curly; she always smells of patchouli and marijuana. Her clothing billows around her in lengths of grays and browns and heather.

  She holds my hand, tears running down her soft face. She is the best and safest kind of griever. Her own grieving will take up so much space that no one else’s will matter. I press her hand in return while George walks down the hall and into the living room, then comes right back. He tries to stand with us in the kitchen, but then with only the slightest nod, he walks out into my dad’s workshop in the garage.

  I disentangle from Lisa and offer tea, rummage around in the cupboard for crackers or bread. Neil helps, Lisa is still talking. We sit down together in the living room where I pour the tea, I sip the tea. My stomach takes it. It even quiets for a moment. I nibble a cracker and for the first time in days my nausea takes a step back. There is such relief in this, my head clears and my heart starts racing. I sit up. Energy returning. I keep nibbling. My teeth working the cracker into dust between my lips, then washing it down with the hot tea.

  Neil is telling Lisa what the surgeon told us, and she asks questions which mean George has already told her many of these same things.

  “So they think it was instantaneous?”

  “The angle of impact, the damage so extensive.”

  “And there was nothing they could have done?”

  But none of us minds the repetition. We keep on this, mimicking each other, nodding, refilling our tea mugs, asking and answering the same questions. Over and over. If a pause in the conversation arises, someone quickly covers it with something we have already said. Eventually Lisa takes over, repeating what we’ve all said and then she just steams right ahead. Tragedy and this fucking world. And I’m so sorry. At some point I realize she’s talking about the last time she saw my dad.

  “Such a good friend. Not just George’s friend. My friend, too.”

  From the garage comes the sound of drawers being pulled out and closed, of cupboards being opened and shut. The whir of an empty fishing reel. I lose the thread of Lisa’s talking and I see my dad again, his feet firm on the rocks, his rod held high, sunglasses and baseball hat in place, his arms working the tension in the line as he catches a bite from twenty feet below.

  I come back to hear, “But also because of John and Ella’s life. I don’t want to consider such lovely, happy people as a tragedy.” She glances at me, quickly, “Nothing about you is tragic, but you know, losing your mother like that.”

  I hear the thud of a pair of waders falling from their hook on the wall. The rustle of bags, of tackle.

  Neil is speaking now. His careful curious tone. “Yes,” he says, “But Ella doesn’t consider it a tragedy. She’s always been clear about that.”

  He knows so little of what happened. I haven’t told him.

  “Ella is very brave. She’s had to be.”

  George shuffles into the room. His nose is red. His shoulders down. He sits down on the arm of the couch.

  “It’s good to be here,” she says, placing a hand on his leg. “It’s good for us to sit here together.”

  George humnphs, his gruff self while Lisa keeps on. This is what she does, bringing people into her warmth. “We need to be together. We need to talk about John, and his life.” She turns to me then, eyes wide and soft. “Ella, we were talking last night about the photos.”

  I nod like I’m willing to talk about this, but I gather up our empty tea cups and go into the kitchen. Ghost ships always invite the curious thrill seekers. But they’re really just dead wood. All good sailors know this. There is never any sunken treasure.

  I hear George clear his throat. Neil will have sat up a bit. I stay in the kitchen. I will make more hot water. I will pour more tea. I rinse our tea cups and pot.

  Neil says, “Did you know about Ella’s mom? I mean, what do you think?”

  George says something but I don’t hear it. Then Neil responds. I turn off the water. Stand perfectly still.

  The pitch of George’s voice means that his hands are twitching; he’s nervous. “And then she left. I know that John might have gotten some information about her once or twice. This was early on. But then nothing after that. She was just gone.”

  Yes, I think. Go on, George, tell them that she was just gone.

  “How old do you think she is in the photos from John’s wallet?” This from Lisa.

  “I just think John would have told me. And now this weird thing about the cabin. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “A cabin?” Neil’s voice is louder now.

  “Up on Hat Island. Ella didn’t know about it. It’s a small place. I assumed you two had been up there.”

  This was lucky, Cap’n Johnny. Not keeping this cabin from George, but keeping it from me.

  “Wait, you’re saying John had a cabin. We didn’t know about this. Did Ella know about this? You’ve been there?” Neil’s voice is hushed, surprised.

  “A couple times. Spent the night so we could be out at Wilkinson for the dawn run of Blackmouth.”

  “When’s the last time you went?”

  “Two, three months ago.”

  Lisa’s voice is calm, curious, “So this cabin might have something to do with Maggie?”

  “How?” says Neil.

  “I just mean if they were in touch again. Maybe she lives there?”

  How quickly the world splits. But George breaks in, “No, no. I went there. It’s a fishing cabin. It’s really small. No one was living there. I’m sure.”

  My hands shake as I pour the hot water into the tea pot.

  “But anyway,” George continues. “It doesn’t make sense. John just wouldn’t.”

  And here I agree with George. My dad just wouldn’t. None of this—he just wouldn’t. I put the tea pot onto the tray, wipe the palms of my hands against my jeans. Try to calm the tremor in them.

  Lisa breaks in, calls for me. “Ella, honey, come back here, can we talk about this?”

  Of course we can talk about this. I put four mugs on the tray and walk back into the room.

  I hand around the mugs and I’m already talking, “We need to contact St. Mark’s. I meant to do it first thing today, but now that I think about it, I’m worried the church won’t be big enough.”

  Everyone stares at me.

  George says, “Maybe he told you and you forgot? Maybe this isn’t anything important.” He pauses, then, “Ella, surely he told you.”

  Neil’s brow furrows, “But I would have known.”

  “Think about it,” I say. “The entire ferry service. That’s a lot of people. And neighbors, too. St. Mark’s is kind of a small church.”

  “Ella?” this from Lisa, her face grave. “I know this is hard. I know you don’t want to talk about your mother.”

  I blink and meet her gaze. I am extremely calm.

  “But this is the time,” she says, and her face grows emotional with her idea. “I mean, really, I’ve never liked the hush hush about everything. I told John that. I’ve always told John it wasn’t good you never talked about it.”

  George shushes her gently but it’s no use.

  “That woman,” she says. “That woman caused so many problems. I know I wasn’t around when it all happened, but you’ve said enough,” she looks at George, who is looking at his hands, a deep frown on his face. “I’ve heard enough to know that, frankly, you two,” she is looking at me now, “were lucky she left. I’m not saying it wasn’t sad—of course it was sad—and I’m not saying it wasn’t tragic, well, tragic for her.”

  I don’t know what she says after this because I have reached for the hot teapot with my bare hands, have picked it up, palms flat on the burning porcelain. I have to drop it, throw it away from my skin. It smashes to the floor, and hot tea splashes high. “I’m so sorry!” I yell, already racing into the kitchen for tea towels while everyone swipes at their arms and clothes, tries to mop up the spill with napkins and
tissues.

  “Let me see your hands,” Neil says.

  I show him, palms up. I’m not really burned, but I go and run cold water over my fingertips in the upstairs bathroom because Lisa has gone into the downstairs one to rinse a tea stain from the sleeve of her shirt.

  I let the water run and run because I know that George has to get to work. I shout downstairs and I hope this will be enough but Lisa comes upstairs anyway, sticks her head through the door and says, “Come by later, I’ll cook for you.”

  “Thank you,” I say, but I know we won’t do this. I keep my fingers under the cold water.

  “It’s best to talk about these things, my lovey. Don’t hold it in. We can take it. We can help you.”

  I nod at her. Just go, I’m thinking. Just please fucking go.

  And she finally does. I keep my fingers under the water until they’re pink with cold, and then I dry them, standing, staring at my reflection in the sink. I am not her. I am not her. She does not exist. She left. She was gone. I know this is true. There is only one thing to do. I take my cell phone out of my pocket, I search for the number of the gynecologist I had when I still lived in Seattle. I dial and let it ring, then I hang up. But I call back and before I can think about it, I make an appointment for three days later. I will need a blood test. I will need to be sure. The tea and crackers have kept my nausea at bay but I don’t feel quite right. My body is trying to tell me something but I don’t know what it is. When I hang up I sit perfectly still and I concentrate, think and settle and listen, and I evaluate the state of the animal in my presence. But it doesn’t work, this animal isn’t giving anything away.

  I can hear Neil in the kitchen downstairs and so I walk into my dad’s den, shut the door behind me. Everything in this room is about boats—the prints on the walls, the paperweights and pencil holders. On the shelf is his collection of books about The Graveyard of the Pacific, that harrowing strip of ocean that has claimed something like 2000 boats since people started keeping track. He loved studying this history, and so I know he’s the only one who might know what to do; he knows all about the perils and depths of the sea. I am remembering how he loved to sail up past the Columbia Bar, telling me how difficult it was to navigate safely. How many times did we do this? I see us watching for boats, for waves, looking for safe harbor.