Life #6. Diana Wagman
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were between gigs—non-existent gigs—out of work and money, sleeping on his sister Lola’s foldout couch. In a month I would quit dancing and be terribly lost in a different kind of sea, but I didn’t know it at the time. In less than a month, he would be a junkie, but we didn’t know that either. I had told a friend Luc was “It.” Every cliché: he was the love of my life, my knight in shining armor, the man I had been waiting for. For all of my nineteen years, I had been waiting for an olive-skinned party boy with an arabesque higher than mine.
Why did I get on that boat? Why did I, non-swimmer, faint-hearted, so deeply planted in the earth, decide to go with him across the ocean? I had already followed him to New York. I would have followed him anywhere.
We set sail on November 5, 1979 when I was nineteen-years-old and on that boat I killed a man. Back on shore, I left another one to die. Telling this tale is the only cure for history.
Fiona woke up early on the sailboat that last day in port. Luc was already awake. He smoked a cigarette and scratched his arm. The scratching had become a habit.
“Listen,” he said. “Io. Listen.”
She rolled toward him. Io was his nickname for her, the two middle syllables of her name. Io was a nymph who Zeus seduced and Hera, his wife, jealously turned into a cow. Fiona liked the name, loved that it was Greek, didn’t mind the cow business, especially since Io didn’t stay a cow, but eventually regained human form and gave birth to Hercules. Luc had given her the name and told her she had a Greek soul, even though she was ash blond, blue-eyed and alabaster-skinned, Anglo-Saxon through and through.
He was looking for a way to open the sealed and bolted porthole. “Listen,” he said. “What the hell are we doing?”
Her stomach clenched. “I thought this was what you wanted.” This trip had been his idea. She sat up and faced him. “Remember? Three hundred bucks and our plane tickets back to New York?”
They’d met Nathan, the owner of the boat, at their catering job. He was a party guest and Luc had struck up a conversation. Nathan said he needed crew—better than waitering, isn’t it?—and Luc immediately said yes. To Fiona sailing sounded terrifying, but okay, okay, if Luc was going, she was too. An adventure. She suppressed the little voice in her head that asked if she was out of her mind. Going across the Atlantic Ocean with a bunch of strangers? She and Luc needed the money. Dance classes were expensive and she was desperate to rent their own apartment and stop sleeping on his sister’s couch. And—even though she had told Luc she didn’t mind about him and she really, truly didn’t—Billy sashayed into her thoughts. Billy, the beautiful gay dancer, and everything he brought with him. She needed to get Luc away. Away.
He scratched his upper arm, scratched and scratched. He sighed and his handsome, classic face sagged. The corners of his full lips drooped, his eyelids grew heavy as if they could no longer support his thick eyelashes. This had been happening lately, a sudden gloom like a shroud would fall over him. His hand with the cigarette trembled. She tried to hold his other hand, but he lifted it out of reach, went back to scratching.
“Io,” he said. “Listen. Listen. Listen. Would you still love me if I only had one leg?”
She almost let out a laugh, but caught it before it escaped her lips. Luc, who was never afraid, looked frightened of what she might say. Would she still love him? Ridiculous.
Before she could answer of course, of course, he continued. “What if I couldn’t dance anymore because my leg was missing?”
She tried to make him smile. “You’d be an incredible one-legged dancer. Amazing. People would come from all over the world to see you.”
“No, no. What if I cut it off—”
“You cut it off?”
“If a piano fell through the ceiling right now and amputated my leg, would you still love me?”
He didn’t want her to make a joke, so she couldn’t say it would have to be a grand piano, or ask him to sing her a few bars, or offer a peg leg so he could be her pirate king. He looked at her with such agony it made her chest hurt. She wanted to scratch this Luc away, dig down to the old, joyful him, the one who would never ask such a thing.
“I will always love you,” she said. “If a piano cuts off your leg and your teeth fall out and you go completely bald, I will still love you. I will. Always.”
Fiona repeated the conversation in her mind. Again and again as she walked around town that last day, doing the grocery shopping, buying supplies, outfitting the boat, she thought about what he had said, what she had replied. She had assured him she would love him forever. And he had looked so disappointed at her answer.
She shivered and wished—for the millionth time—she had her winter coat. She and Luc had come to Newport from New York packed for Bermuda, not a New England November. Nathan had said he’d supply foul weather gear if necessary. She’d expected the boat to be heated like an apartment, but the single, small electric heater in the main cabin didn’t do much. She couldn’t wait for the sultry island air, the clatter of palm fronds, lying on deck under a warm sky. Paradise.
She trudged back to the boat laden down with bags and packages. They banged against her legs, the corded shopping bag handles digging into her cold hands. She wished she had her gloves. It was her job to outfit the kitchen—galley—with everything they needed besides the two pots and frying pan already on board. Nathan said to skip the plastic crap at the boat outfitters and buy the best. He told her which pretty little store to go to and gave her a list of items and a credit card. She had never seen one before. A rectangle of plastic that could buy anything.
She worried over every item. Were these the right wine glasses? The very best china soap dish? She’d grown up without money, much less proper glassware. That’s why she didn’t know how to swim; lessons had been too expensive for Mom as she drifted from man to man, but Fiona hadn’t been able to say that to Lola. We’re going to sea! Luc had announced that night after they met Nathan. She had nodded and grinned and kept it to herself that she’d never been on a boat, didn’t know how to swim, that water anyplace but a bathtub terrified her. She knew Lola would frown, could hear her disappointed sigh as if the girl her brother loved had let him down—again. Fiona had never been to New York, ridden in a taxi cab, eaten feta cheese or black olives or a gyro until Luc. She had never heard Greek until he and his sister spoke it to each other.
“You couldn’t pick a Greek girl?” Lola had poked her brother, then turned and hugged Fiona. “I’m joking, joking. My girlfriend’s not Greek either.”
Fiona would learn to speak Greek. She would. Luc was a book to be read, a skill to be perfected, an entire country to be explored. He was all she had ever wanted to know or learn or see. And so in the fancy store, with Nathan’s plastic money, she shopped for what Luc would like, what she imagined Lola would choose. She did her best and, as her last and favorite thing, bought a ceramic fruit bowl painted with mermaids to sit on the galley counter.
The saleswoman asked if any of it was a gift.
“No,” Fiona said. “For our boat.”
“But it’s all so fragile.”
“It’s a really beautiful boat.” She imagined the sail across the sea like a ride in a large new car along a flat highway. It was the Cadillac of sailboats—the shock absorbers would be fantastic.
“Ask your Captain,” the woman was saying. “I’ll take them back anytime. If they’re still wrapped.”
“It’s okay.” Fiona was getting annoyed. “We’re leaving. Tomorrow.”
“In November?” The woman frowned.
“Newport to Bermuda is a popular route.” Nathan had told them so, but everywhere she went people were surprised they were going.
“In the summer. People sail in the summer.”