Chapter Text
1978
“Honestly, Helen—I don’t know how that doesn’t make you sick.”
Helen’s head snapped up from her book, and she met her mother’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Bonnie sniffed alongside a brief shake of her head, and returned her eyes to the road before she reached to the passenger seat to ruffle David’s hair.
He got carsick just like she did (and seasick, and homesick, and every other kind of sick), so he’d started sitting shotgun at an age far younger than Helen remembered herself doing. (She might have found it in her to be jealous, but she recalled too keenly the way David could never quite make it to the paper bag he’d keep hold of whenever they were driving anywhere further than five or ten minutes away. The way the acrid scent clung to every surface, even with the windows open.)
Rapidly she blinked, clearing away the sheen of a marine specimen library from the station wagon interior. The whirring submarine controls giving way to the car’s center console, the crackling radio caught between stations.
She adjusted her thick, illustrated volume of Twenty Thousand Leagues, folding it closed over her finger before she straightened her canvas shorts, again. Time number five hundred? One thousand? No matter how many times she was up to, she couldn’t stop the backs of her thighs from sliding on the sweaty leather bench. Even traveling just a half hour inland was enough to render the air so thick and stuffy it was hard to breathe, no salt-sharp breeze left to break it in two.
When she glanced sideways, her father was grinning at her. He combed his fingers through the sparse white hair still sprouting from his crown, then rapped his knuckles against the window so his wedding ring clinked on the glass.
“Knew you’d be into that one, Helly.”
“We’re not supposed to call her that,” David chastised, voice quavering as if he were the one who’d been slighted. “She doesn’t like it.”
“It’s fine,” Helen said quickly, flashing her father a smile.
There was a flash of hot pink and the scrape of styrofoam against her cheek, as Tom brandished a pool noodle around the belly of the trunk.
“Shiver me timbers!” he yelled, in the lip-curling, scallywag affect he’d been favoring all summer.
Andy burst into giggles, and grunted as he struggled to grab the makeshift weapon for himself.
Then the pool noodle came Helen’s way again, but this time she was ready. She turned, catching the blade fast in her fist. With a good, hard tug she wrenched it from Tom’s grip, and stuffed it beneath the backseat.
“Moooooom!” whined Andy, while Tom threatened Helen with a long walk off a short plank.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Bonnie snapped. “I told you to leave that thing at home.”
Another few grumbles rang out, but one soft “hey” from their father—his wrinkles smoothed out the way they always did when he was serious—was enough to quiet them.
On the Umsteads bounced, down the pothole-ridden highway (summer never seemed long enough for road crews to repair all the damage done during winter). Stopping and starting in time with the rest of the traffic crawling toward the fairgrounds.
The county fair only came once a year, and Helen had been excited for it. She was finally tall enough to ride the biggest rollercoaster, the one Tom couldn’t stop talking about after he’d ridden it five times in a row the year before.
But now that the day had come, she found herself forlorn above all. Not only was she tall enough for that rollercoaster, but she was old enough to man the Sunfish by herself, too. For now, only up and down the length of the inlet river adjacent to their neighborhood—braving the open ocean still required she play first mate to her father, or at the very least to Tom.
But still it was something—well, really, it was everything.
All her life she’d been known first and foremost as a bookworm. More than that. A word-worm. No string of them short or dull enough to pass muster, to fly by her eyes without them locking on and drinking them in. She struggled just as much to tear herself away from the novel she kept stashed inside her desk at school as from cover story blurbs at the grocery store magazine rack, or bumper stickers on cars in the parking lot. Fliers papering the brick walls downtown, the bleeding inky newspaper corners that dissolved slowly in sidewalk puddles.
So often her mother was grabbing her wrist to tug her along while her head swiveled backwards, wondering what would follow DON’T MISS THIS!
Sailing, though, was something different. Everything different. She didn’t dare bring something so precious as a book out there, and risk dropping it into the wide-open tide.
On their thirty-footer, there was some material stashed in the cabin that she could make do with, if she’d wanted. Preambles to navigational charts. Owners’ manuals. The beat-up, salt-stained copy of Gulliver’s Travels her father had kept out there since he was Helen’s age. But the Sunfish had no room for luxuries like that.
She didn’t bother with them on the Ballyhoo, so she never missed them when they were gone, either. There was so much else to read out on the water—the patterns of shoals, the nature of the wind. The rising wake left by an aggressive roaring powerboat, that Helen knew she could use to her advantage if she drove over it at just the right angle.
Misjudge that angle on the Sunfish, and you really might end up flipping into the drink. It’d happened to Helen more than enough times, but it always left her laughing. Hot sun or cold rain or dead-dull doldrums, it seemed that she always left that ironing board of a boat laughing.
She’d been taking it out every day she could, usually first thing in the morning before anyone else was awake. There hadn’t been time that day, since they’d had such grand plans to get out the door in time to beat the fair traffic.
Start. Lurch. Stop. Lurch. Again and again and again. Even from his shotgun seat, David groaned.
Their mother clucked sympathetically at him, patting him on the thigh. Tom yelled that if he was gonna hurl, he’d better do it out the door.
Helen sighed, and tipped her head against the window. Heat rippled upwards from the asphalt, reminding her of the waves in a way that made an ache lap inside her.
At least with the pool noodle stuffed under the seat—heel of her sneaker digging in hard, just in case Tom tried to climb over the bench and retrieve it—she could get back to her book, and imagine herself surrounded by the ocean.
Submarines didn’t have the same appeal to her as sailboats. But for the time being, she could make do.
* * * * *
Lunch came first, once they’d reached the fairgrounds and braved a muddy trek from the far-stretching parking lot. Eight hands jockeying for position amidst the baskets of fries and paper-wrapped hot dogs, while their parents sat back with their frosted glasses of beer.
Helen squirted a wiggling line of mustard down her second hot dog, before she stuffed as much of it into her mouth as she could. The way she and Tom always did, like the cookout was their own personal Coney Island contest.
Suddenly a pinch stung her upper arm, and she whipped around with a glare at the ready. Fist clenched, in case she needed to wind up at whichever brother it’d come from.
But it was her mother who her eyes found, with her lips pressed together.
“Would you at least try to eat like a lady, Helen? Please?”
“Oh, give her a break,” said her father, before he took a big gulp of beer that left a mustache of foam above his upper lip. “It’s the fuckin’ county fair, not the Plaza.”
“Harold,” her mother hissed, while all four children cackled.
“You said a bad word!” Andy choked out, pointing at him with a ketchup-covered finger.
“He’s allowed to,” David assured him as he pushed his glasses up his nose. The quickest to recover from the shock of laughter, and put on his serious face once again. “He’s a grown up.”
Tom quieted down next, keeping a wry smile like he’d known all along it wasn’t really a big deal to swear at the table.
“How old do we have to be before we can curse, Mom?” Andy piped up again.
Instead of answering, Bonnie tapped a cigarette out of the silver case she kept in her breast pocket, and leaned away to light it behind her cupped hand.
“Why don’t you kids go play some games?” she said in a muffled voice, pulling out a few bills from her wallet that she extended toward Tom without handing them over. “Make sure you save enough to get fried dough when you come back.”
Only when he grumbled a reply did she give up the money.
As they meandered through the crowds toward the bottle toss, Helen was mesmerized with fear by the height of the rides. All the excitement she’d felt for the big rollercoaster was starting to prickle out of her palms, now that she could see how small the riders shrunk as they eked steeply toward its crest.
They approached the Ferris wheel next, and she watched two women laughing together up at the top. Their heads bent together, and Helen’s ears burned.
After that, she kept her eyes down on the ground. And decided maybe she’d wait until next year to ride any of the biggest rides, after all.
* * * * *
Their luck at the bottle and ring tosses was poor, their luck at the strongman bell even worse. There was barely enough money left for a small portion of fried dough when they returned, around the same time the hazy blue sky above started to soften.
When they reached the tent and saw the dinner rush pressing up against the order windows, Tom stuffed the money into Helen’s hand and snickered as the boys ran off.
“Come on!” Helen protested, scowling after them. But her voice was lost easily to the noise of the crowd, so she hurried to the end of the line before it got any longer, at least.
It inched forward achingly slow, until at last there was only one person ahead of her at the order window she’d been funneled to. Any relief she might have felt was soon dashed, however, as a debate between that one patron and the bored-looking teenager manning the register stretched on, while every other order window turned over again and again.
The girl holding things up was about Helen’s age, with her hair braided in two egregiously mismatched pigtails. When she turned—shoulders sinking in defeat, eyes red around the rims—Helen thought she looked a bit like a doll she’d had when she was younger.
Later, she’d tell herself that was the reason she sprang into action so quickly and so easily. But later still, she found herself doing things like this a lot. So it was difficult to say, really.
One way or another she was marching forward, ignoring the drone of the teenage cashier calling “next” to grab the girl tightly by the arm.
“What’s wrong?” she said, as the girl’s shock at being accosted by a stranger seemed to subside her tears.
She stared hard at the hand of Helen’s clutching at her, but Helen didn’t let go.
“I don’t have any money,” she said quietly, averting her eyes. “I just wanted some cotton candy.”
“How much is it?” said Helen.
When the girl looked back at her, her expression was unsure. Like maybe Helen was playing a trick on her.
That idea—and the idea that maybe something like that might have happened to her before—made Helen’s heart clutch together.
“Two dollars.”
Helen looked at the money in her hand. Five dollars left. And the fried dough was three-fifty.
“Two cotton candies,” she said boldly, voice angled toward the cashier even as she kept her eyes on the girl. She felt a flush climbing on her cheeks as the girl’s eyes lit up, and a ghost of a smile danced across her lips.
Her hair was a shade of blonde that Helen’s mother would probably equate to dishwater, but that didn’t stop her from noticing how pretty she was.
She had a pretty smile, too. It widened to show her missing front tooth, and make her nose crinkle.
Helen traded the cashier for the two paper cones, and handed one to the girl.
“Thanks,” she said, the ‘s’ on the end whistling through the gap in her teeth. “That was really nice of you.”
She waved, then she skipped off through the crowd. And she was long gone before Helen had a chance to tell her that she didn’t feel like she was being nice at all.
Bonnie’s exasperation at the choice of dessert faded quickly, since she seemed eager above all else to shepherd everyone back to the car. Mumbling something about how maybe they could beat the traffic this time around, while she cleared away the baskets and trays and several more frosted beer glasses from the table than had been there before.
As they ambled home, she and David shared one cotton candy in the front, while Helen tore off pieces from the other to hand around to her father, Tom, and Andy. Harold kicked his feet up on the front console as he launched into a slurred and velvet story, that wove the children into a rag-tag band of pirates getting up to any number of misadventures.
Helen did all she could to make her cotton candy last. Keeping her mouth open around each bite, like maybe it could be spared the warmth of her cheeks just another moment. The way it glittered on her tongue before it melted reminded her of the spray from the water. Just sweet, instead of salty.
As her father’s story swelled and receded—the inconsistency in its details not yet something that bothered Helen, the way it would as she got older and internalized more and more stories—she found herself wondering what it might be like to sail across an ocean made of sugar. Waves made up of billions of pink and blue crystals, refracting like tiny diamonds in the sunlight.
She imagined the sound of a hull slipping across them. It’d be soft, she thought—something like a hush.
And with that she fell asleep, before she could learn what happened to the pirate-version of herself dreamt up by her drunk and loving father.
* * * * *
1986
“Land ho!” Tom shouted, throwing his head back as he cracked open a beer that quickly foamed over the lip and dripped onto the deck.
“Get away, dickwad!” Helen shrieked, kicking her feet out of the way. She leaned back far enough that the helm jerked sideways, making the boat keel hard for a moment until she steadied it.
She smirked when she saw that the motion had sent Tom’s arm flying out to keep his balance, and that the stream of foam had spilled into the ocean instead of all over her bare feet.
“Dad’ll be pissed if you get beer on the cushions,” she scolded. “Also, we’re on the river. The ‘land ho’ is kind of implied.”
“Well then it’s accurate, isn’t it?” he said with a grin. “Land ho-land ho-land ho!”
Helen rolled her eyes, but deep down she hoped Tom would keep being annoying. Maybe then she wouldn’t miss him so badly when he left for college the next week.
He gave her the second half of his beer in exchange for letting him take the helm the rest of the way, so she sat back and watched the shoreline drift idly by. The beer wasn’t cold anymore, but it was bright and refreshing and went well with the glugging sound of the water below.
The buzz it gave her stayed pleasant right up until they walked in the back door, and Helen heard the sound of two televisions going at once. The one in the den playing a talk show, the one in the living room roaring with the first Patriots game of the season.
She and Tom exchanged a look. Their father was supposed to watch the game with his buddies at the bar in town like usual.
(When he stayed home, he got a lot drunker.)
Tom back pedaled out the door with the remainder of the six pack, going to stash it in the cooler in the garage.
(Not entirely out of reach, but somewhere he wouldn’t think to look for it.)
Helen wished she hadn’t drunk that half a beer. Then, she wished she’d drunk the rest of the beer, so nobody else could have it.
Tom returned, and she looked at him. She didn’t speak, but she saw in his eyes that he knew what she meant to say.
What am I going to do without you?
She turned away before she could see the answer she knew was waiting for her on his face, the one she couldn’t bear to get. And she tip-toed into the living room, where her father snored in the recliner with all the lights turned low. Working the whiskey glass out of his grip, and forcing a smile when the sound of it clinking on the coaster made him snuffle awake.
“Hey, Helly,” he croaked, grabbing her hand.
“Hey Daddy.”
“Wanna watch with me? Eason’s havin’ a great game.”
Helen’s eyes flashed to the screen, and she swallowed down a question of how he could know that, when the Patriots were losing and he’d likely slept through most of the second half. Instead she smiled again, and sank down to the floor so she wouldn’t have to wrench her hand away from his.
She didn’t like football much, but she told herself she’d only have to watch for a little while. Then he’d fall asleep again, and she could go upstairs to finish editing the AP Lit paper assigned to her over the summer.
But even after his snores started back up she stayed put on the floor, choking down tears whose source she couldn’t quite name.
* * * * *
1994
Seven summers spent waitressing, and Helen could say with absolute certainty that the Sunday brunch shift was the closest thing to torture one could find in a seaside town.
It was bad enough at a restaurant that was actually outfitted to serve brunch. Even worse at the clam shack, with its sad attempts at replicating the sort of luxuries people supposedly came there to escape in the first place.
Her stomach still turned to remember the color of the hollandaise sauce drooled over every eggs Benedict she tossed onto the pickup counter. Red light from the warming lamps only serving to turn it more sickly—the color and consistency of bile. Liquified jaundice over runny eggs, dried-out deli ham, and Thomas brand English muffins—all of which Helen had purchased herself at Market Basket.
Thinking of jaundice made her stomach turn the other way. Inward, instead of outward.
Her father and his stories. He’d had to come up with so many of them, to suppress the guilt and shame that descended on him after his DUI last spring. After the medical workup he got in the aftermath of the accident showed that his liver really was in danger of quitting for good, if he didn’t give it a rest.
The tale that got told out over and over—right up until the day he took the whole family out to dinner and announced his and their mother’s move to New Mexico—was that it was the ocean itself making him drink. You couldn’t call something a drink for years and years without the symbolism coming home to roost, he’d said. He’d be sure as all hell to have better luck drying out in a dry place.
He’d nodded so sagely over the rim of his club soda, like he’d come to the soundest, truest conclusion in the universe.
Helen held back her critique, telling herself she could save all that for the hours she was sure to log sifting through the slush pile, once her publishing job started up in the fall. And she wanted to be glad he was trying, especially when she remembered seeing him all cut to pieces in his hospital bed back in April. The way her mother had sighed—the tone more resigned than worried. Like it was just a matter of time before he did himself in.
They’d taken off West right after her MFA graduation ceremony, leaving her the keys to her childhood home. Since David was spending the summer working on his research, and Andy was touring with the latest in his string of bands. And Tom was settled right nearby, wife and life happy with a baby on the way.
Soak it in, she tried to remind herself, every time the silence of the empty house surrounded her, and made her shiver. Soon enough she’d be in a shoebox apartment stacked high above a bustling city street. Probably begging for a single moment of peace, hands clamped hard over her ears as another train or bus rattled by.
Come August, though, she’d had enough. She was positively steeped in solitude, apart from the times Tom would come over to sit with her on the deck. Usually, they’d stare at the small shred of water that could just be seen in the far distance instead of talking.
He’d asked her to come sailing about three dozen times, but every time he did she turned him down. And she hadn’t gone out alone, either. Something about it felt wrong, without their father onboard. Or at least waiting back home, eager to hear her brag about the adventure.
She could call him to brag about it, she guessed. But that felt wrong, too, when he’d been so desperate to escape the water. However ludicrous it was, she had a sickening premonition that talking to him about it would make him start drinking all over again.
So she spent most of her time at work, where at least there were people to talk to. Between shifts, she buried herself under a quilt on the couch with the AC blasting and Golden Girls reruns droning in the background.
This summer, she’d tried her luck with a dive bar instead of returning to the clam shack. But still she couldn’t escape from sub-par Sunday brunch. The place was empty, apart from the group of college guys crowding around the register.
Helen hauled a dripping dishrag up onto the sticky bar top, wiping futilely while Gertie explained to yet again they didn’t serve alcohol before noon.
“…but I’d be happy to get you a brunch menu,” she said, sounding bored and already turning away, like she knew what the answer was going to be.
“Why would you be open if you can’t serve us?” the blondest of the group said in a sniffy voice. His sunglasses were resting backwards on his head, his neon blue collar popped.
Gertie didn’t bother referencing the menu again—she just shrugged and went back to washing pint glasses.
Helen rolled her eyes as the gaggle retreated out the exit, bumping shoulders with someone trying to come in the same door.
The woman who traded places with them was alone, and at first glance she seemed young, almost childlike. As she moved, though—feet scuffing along the floorboards, the stool she hauled over clattering clumsily into place beneath her hips—that apparent youth leaked out of her fast.
She looked tired above all. Threadbare sweats, dingy sneakers. Hair long, fair, and frazzled—half-gathered into a ponytail, with two big strands left free of the elastic and tucked behind her ears. Like bangs that had been growing out for a long, long time.
“Vodka rocks,” she said as she rested her elbow on the bar and scrubbed a hand up and down her face. “You know what—make it a double.”
Helen exchanged a glance with Gertie, who raised her eyebrows in an expression Helen knew well by that point meant something along the lines of “good luck.”
“Can’t serve you ‘til noon,” said Helen, nodding toward the clock on the wall behind her.
The woman let out a long, dramatic groan, and threw her head down on her arms.
Another glance exchanged with Gertie, who seemed to be holding in a laugh.
“Sorry,” said Helen, returning the dishrag to the bucket under the bar before she leaned over the counter opposite the grieving woman. “State law.”
One eye peeked out from the crook of an elbow, and the woman lifted her chin to glare at the clock.
“It’s fucking five of.”
Helen nodded.
“That’s not close enough to noon?”
“Noon is close enough to noon.”
The woman glared at her instead of the clock. “What about coffee? Is that vice permitted to me on this day most blessed?”
“Sure thing,” said Helen lightly, mouth twitching up at the woman’s biting tone. She poured a quick cup from the almost-empty pot. Normally, nobody drank the coffee except for her and Gertie.
It wasn’t particularly good, but neither was their vodka. (Or their beer, or wine, or rum, or whiskey.) Even still the woman gulped most of it down in one go, smacking her mouth a few times around the bitter heat.
“Hm,” she said, examining the mug from all sides. “Thanks. What do I owe?”
“On the house, so long as you promise to stick around for that vodka.”
A smile started curling on the woman’s mouth, but she seemed to suck it back down. “What’s another five minutes?” She drained the rest of the coffee. “I’ve been driving all night.”
“Yeah? Where you headed?”
She shrugged, and fiddled with the empty mug. “North, I guess. Figured I’d detour all the way to Provincetown before I keep going. But god—the traffic here. Awful. Even at fucking sunrise.”
Helen nodded, and picked up the tray of glasses Gertie had been washing to stack back in place behind the bar. “You take the Sagamore bridge?”
“Yeah.”
She clicked her tongue. “Well see, there’s your problem—you should’ve taken the tunnel.”
“There’s a tunnel?” the woman lamented, face falling. Then she caught the glint of mischief in Helen’s eyes, and gave a loud scoff. “Oh, fuck you.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and Helen found herself wishing there was anyone else in the bar for her to serve.
Not because the woman wasn’t nice to look at. Because she was too nice to look at. And with that kicked-puppy air about her, the signs of dishevelment. All Helen’s weaknesses, rolled into one. The sailor’s mouth doing her no favors.
But she didn’t want a favor. She wanted to know more.
Before she could ask it of her, the woman beat her to the punch.
“So, you’re from around here?”
Helen nodded. “For now, anyway.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“Sailing,” Helen answered automatically. She felt the prickle at the back of her neck she usually got when she was lying, even though it wasn’t untrue.
The woman scoffed. “That’s fun for you? Sounds like hell. There’s nowhere to run!”
“Come on,” Helen goaded. “That’s what swimming is for.”
“I suck at swimming.”
Helen flashed her a grin. “That’s what lifejackets are for.”
The woman’s face lit up, and for a second Helen felt a licking, victorious flame in her chest. But then she saw the woman looking past her shoulder, pointing to the clock.
“Hey look—it’s noon! Hop to it, barmaid.” She drummed her hands on the lip of the bar, raising her eyebrows impatiently.
“Jesus,” Helen mumbled, pulling a bottle of vodka down to pour heavily into a glass. “Don’t get too excited. It’s not top-shelf or anything.”
She stretched the glass toward the woman, then tugged it back just as she reached for it.
“ID?”
It was half-reflex, half-joke. Just a way to drag out the woman’s suffering a moment longer. But then her face fell, and Helen felt sorry that she’d asked.
“I’m twenty,” the woman conceded, voice deflating. She looked down at her hands.
Helen chewed on her lip. She eyed the glass, and the woman’s slumped shoulders.
Gertie had disappeared into the back office. Well, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
“Tell you what,” said Helen, in a low, conspiratorial voice that made the woman perk up slightly. “My shift ends at four—if you promise to come sailing with me after, you can have this.”
She picked up the vodka, jiggling it around so the ice rattled together.
The woman narrowed her eyes, mouth hanging open for a moment before she spoke. She looked like she was working something out—the answer to a riddle or a crossword clue.
“You’re mean,” she said, giving a small, pouty frown. “And kind of… selective about the rules, no?”
Helen shrugged. “If you’re gonna drink, I’d really rather you did it in the house, honey.”
That won her a laugh, and she grinned with pride. The woman threw up her hands, and her laugh gave way to a heavy, grunting sigh.
“Fine. Okay. Guess I’ll go sailing with a complete fucking stranger. Hope to god you’re not a serial killer.”
“Back atcha,” said Helen, as she set the glass down on the bar and crossed her arms, giving a smug smile that made the woman roll her eyes.
“Well, cheers,” she said, tipping the glass in Helen’s direction before she slurped down a big sip. Her lips puckered against the burn, but in a pleased way. Like that was exactly what she’d been hoping to find.
Helen busied herself wiping down the counter yet again, and shuffled some receipts around before she tore off a strip of blank paper from the roll to scribble down her address.
Their knuckled brushed together as she pressed it into the woman’s hand, dragging away her emptied glass and the bills she’d laid out on the bar.
“You’d better show,” she warned. “Otherwise I’m calling the cops.”
The woman scoffed. “Come on, haven’t you heard of mutually-assured destruction? Plus, I know where you live.” She held the paper up, then she tucked it into her pocket as her eyes flicked to the name tag pinned to Helen’s apron. “And your name, Helen. Seems like I’m the one who should be making threats.”
Helen squared her shoulders. “So threaten me.”
Brief touch of the woman's tongue to her top lip, then she hesitated for a moment before kicking against the bar to push the stool backwards.
“I’m Carol,” she said as she hopped to her feet. “I don’t really have an address right now, other than my car. Which is parked right outside. So, we’re even.” She cocked her head, and smiled sweetly. “But if you call the cops on me, I’ll throw you off the goddamn boat.”
Carol swung her purse over her head, and waved as she called over her shoulder in the doorway.
“How’s that for a threat?”