The Long Way Home Read online

  All of those are by the sea. I never even Google Earth-ed anywhere not on the ocean.

  That’s your fault, too, probably.

  I spend a lot of time on the beach, staring out at the sea, like an old sea-wife, hoping for a glimpse of your ship returning home.

  God, I’m losing it. I’m losing it.

  Desperation is a discordant song within me: the warm-up of a symphony.

  I am undone.

  Wilderness is my soul.

  Flight, feral and of muted voice.

  Let me off this mad calliope,

  give me stable breath and solid world and brazen unvarnished truth.

  Laughter.

  Hot wild mad sex in the deeps of endless night.

  Screams in the dark, heat in my belly spearing through my veins and boiling effervescent into my skin and muscles and

  building like a tsunami approaching shore, becoming a violent release.

  This

  Give me this.

  I need it.

  You do not. Cannot. You are not here to give me this. You are nowhere and thus I am nowhere

  Thus I am nothing

  Thus I may only perish, one day at a time

  Reality is a shitstained shadow I cannot evade.

  Hatred is exhausting.

  You

  You

  You you

  You you you

  FUCK YOU

  I LOVE YOU

  I FUCKING LOVE YOU

  But god I hate you

  God, I hate you

  This is as close to breathing as I can get:

  gasps in the dark,

  waking in the moonless starless silent succumbing drowning depths of an endless night from which I cannot wake,

  from which there is no escape—i sigh, and I gasp, and I die, and I wake still alive, hating it

  every single moment of life because life is pain and life is loneliness and love is a sham and a lie and

  These words pour out, a waterfall, a deluge, a soul-scouring acid-bath.

  It is four in the morning and I cannot sleep, as I have not slept since—

  Since

  Him—

  Since the harsh knifing scything flatline beep in the tear-humid

  purgatory

  of the

  Pediatric Oncology Ward

  Where I died

  Where you died

  Where we died

  Where the once vibrant dancing brilliant hopeful animated being that was US

  Died

  Everything died that day

  And then I died again when you stepped from the sundrenched dock wood onto the fleeing deck of your escape

  I am a wraith.

  I am a shadow lost amid a wilderness of ghosts.

  Mothwings beat in the silvergraced gleam of the gloaming;

  THEY are alive.

  A frog belches throaty somewhere under my bedroom window,

  calling for his mate;

  She intones her reply in a hopeful chirrup;

  THEY are alive.

  A bat flits silently, tipping and tumbling and devouring and agile;

  Something enormous and dark breasts the waves,

  far out, spraying plume skyward;

  The shadows, the stars, the moon, insects in the grass,

  people sleeping next door

  and across the street

  and around the city;

  THEY are alive.

  I am a lichyard creature

  shuffling and dragging myself between mossy headstones,

  suffering a pretense of half-life.

  I wish, I wish, I wish, Christian,

  I wish it was harder to blame you.

  I wish it was easier to forgive you.

  I wish it was easier to forgive myself,

  The universe,

  God,

  Fate,

  Life.

  There is no forgiveness.

  Only suffering:

  my capacity for suffering is maxed out,

  the architecture of my soul is nothing but a pile of rubble and ruin.

  I have nothing left, Christian.

  nothing

  left

  28

  [Email from Christian to Ava; April 11, 2016]

  Ava,

  * * *

  Your last letter in that packet has me worried. I know you didn’t want me to email back, but I had to, after reading those letters. I miss you. I’m in Port Elizabeth and everything is a mess. The weather is not cooperating and Jonny is AWOL, and Marta and I, well…you’ll understand when you read the letters I’ve written you. But now, after that poem you wrote, or proem, or whatever you want to call it…I hate this.

  I really hate this.

  Please email back.

  * * *

  Always yours, even now,

  * * *

  Chris.

  * * *

  [Email in Christian’s inbox; April 11, 2016]

  * * *

  Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

  * * *

  [email protected]

  * * *

  Technical details of permanent failure:

  The server tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

  “The phone number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please try your call again later.”

  [Port Elizabeth, South Africa; April 14, 2016]

  * * *

  It’s four in the morning, and I’m unable to sleep. She’s deleted her email address. Shut down her cell phone. I’m not sure what to do. I’m horribly worried for her. She’s never had the best relationship with her parents and rarely sees them even though they only live a few hours away in St. Pete. She has an older sister whom she was close to growing up and still corresponds with her regularly, but Delta lives in Chicago and is a single mom, so it’s unlikely she’d be able to visit Ava in Ft. Lauderdale.

  If anyone could be there for Ava, though, it’d be Delta.

  I call Delta, but she doesn’t answer. I leave a voicemail, but I expect nothing back from her; I’ve never been Delta’s favorite person, for reasons I’ve never totally understood.

  I’m terrified for Ava. The poem, I mean…damn. That was intense. She used to write poetry a lot back in the day, but not as much as of late.

  What do I do? Ava has always been unpredictable…at least, she used to be. Now I’m not sure I know who she is anymore. The Ava I knew loved to eat, and always took her nutrition pretty seriously. Not eating at all? That’s not like her. But then, neither was getting day drunk, but that became a constant reality.

  Henry’s death shattered us both. Altered us totally. I’m not the same man I was. I haven’t reverted to the person I was before Ava and success found me, but neither am I the man I was before Henry’s illness and death.

  What do I do? What do I do? Abandon the journey and return? Find Ava and fix things, if they can be fixed?

  I hear noise, footsteps, muttering in Spanish. I’m in the saloon, sipping tea when he stumbles in. His shirt is ripped, his eye is turning black and blue, his lip is split, and his knuckles are a mess, and he’s three sheets to the wind.

  “The hell happened to you, Jonny?”

  “Bar brawl, amigo. You should see those pendejos, though. Thought they could take Jonny Núñez. No gringo pendejos can take me. Not even four of ’em.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m good, man. I’m good.” He grabs a pair of beers from the fridge, twists the caps off, and hands me one. “What you doin’ up at four in the morning?”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Well, no shit. You’re awake, therefore you can’t sleep. Why, though?”

  “Ava. She closed out her cell account and deleted her email address. Even her blog is down. Just a pinned post saying she was taking an indefinite
leave of absence for personal reasons. Sent me a bunch of letters all together. Lots of intense stuff.”

  “So you’re worried about her?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “So?”

  I frown at him. “What do you mean, so?”

  “So what’s the problem? You love her, you’re worried about her, you go back. Jump on a flight back to the States and check on her. I can watch the Hemingway for a few days.”

  “If I go to her, I’m not sure I’d be coming back, Jonny.”

  He rests his elbows on his knees and hangs his head, nodding. “Ah. I see.” He glances at me. “Do what you gotta do, man. I’ll be all right no matter what.”

  “Will you, though? I feel like I’m a bad friend. Seems like you got shit going on of your own, but I’ve been too occupied with my drama to ask you about it.”

  Jonny waves a hand dismissively. “Nah. I get like this every once in a while. Got no home, no family, no roots. I live my life on the sea, always have and always will. But sometimes I just get…homesick for a home I won’t ever have. Not a big deal. Get drunk, fight some bitches, fuck some bitches, and get back out to my one true love: el mar…el mar hermoso.”

  I have the fireproof, waterproof safety box full of my letters to Ava. “You’re gonna call me crazy, but…will you make me a promise?”

  He eyes me silently for a moment. “Anything it’s within my power to do, it’s yours, mi hermano.”

  I hand him the box. “If anything happens, give these to Ava.”

  “Chris, amigo—what do you think is gonna happen?”

  “You know what the sea is like even more than I do, Jonny.”

  Jonny hangs his head again, nodding sloppily. “Sí, this is true. She is a capricious mistress, as they say.” He takes the box from me, and the key that opens it. “What’s it, then?”

  “Letters.” He glances quizzically at me, and I tap a thick envelope on the table near my hand. “Those are the originals. I’ve got backups with me. I’m planning to bring them to her myself. I know I’ve got to go back, but I’m just…part of me doesn’t want to. I just got back out here, and I’m worried if I go back to Ava, I’ll never get back out onto the sea again. But…” I sigh. “I know I have to go see her. I have to try to fix things. I can’t just run away from it all. I needed time to heal, and I think I’m as healed as I’m ever going to get. At least…until I’ve either repaired my marriage with Ava or gotten closure from it.”

  “So we sail back to Florida.”

  I nod. “Yeah, sorry.”

  Jonny waves me off again. “Eh, no sorry needed. I’ve been east before, nothing out there I haven’t seen. I’m with you to the end, Chris, no matter what. You know that.”

  I drain my beer, reach out a hand, and he claps palms with me, which turns into a standing hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jonny.”

  “Get lost and be lonely.”

  I laugh, slapping him on the back. “There might be some truth to that.”

  He guffaws, pulling out three more beers. “Where’s Marta? Get her ass up, we need to do a toast to rounding the Horn again.”

  I let out a breath. “Um, Marta’s gone, actually.”

  “Gone? Gone where?” he asks, popping open two of them.

  I shrug. “Not sure. Another berth.”

  “Wait, like off the ship and gone, gone?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “What happened?” He eyes me, putting away the third bottle. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He wipes his brow with a dramatic flair. “Whew. Thank god. I was gonna have to kick your ass.”

  “I almost did, though.”

  “Fuck, amigo. You told me that wasn’t a problem.”

  “It wasn’t. Until it was. Valentine’s Day, I was drunk and lonely and melancholy, and so was she, and then she kissed me and things got out of hand. I couldn’t go through with it, though. I was sober enough to know what I was doing, drunk enough to not care in the moment. Figured things were over with Ava, might as well feel good for a minute, right? Wrong. I was this close to having sex with her, and I realized I just…couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “She wasn’t Ava.” I shrug.

  Jonny just eyes me. “She wasn’t Ava? That’s it? I don’t get that, man.”

  “She didn’t…feel the same. Didn’t kiss the same, didn’t touch me the same, didn’t…she wasn’t Ava. I wanted to be able to have sex with her, because it’d have made it easier to stay out here. I think I knew even then, deep down, that I was going to end up going back, and I didn’t want to. I really don’t. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to suck. I’m going to have to face myself, and my emotions, and hers, and everything. Going back means giving up sailing, for the most part, unless she’s changed enough to want to try again, which I doubt. But Marta, man. She was gorgeous, and cool, and a great sailor. We could have been good together. But I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “So she left?”

  “It was…I think it was necessary. For both of us.” I shrug yet again. “I think she had feelings for me, and that would’ve made things impossible. Things were getting awkward and difficult between us, and I also think she realized I was going to go back to Florida and Ava, and she wanted to go her own way, in that case.”

  “Glad you controlled your dick, even if it was at the last second.”

  “I think it was more a case of my dick controlling me, but in a good way for once.”

  Jonny laughs. “I think that may be the first time in history a man’s dick has led him out of trouble ’steada into it.”

  “Truth, brother, truth.”

  “So.” Jonny holds his bottle up toward me and I clink mine against his. “To rounding the horn twice in a month.”

  “We’re crazy, you know that, right?” I ask, laughing.

  “Always have been, always will be.” A pause. “When we leave?”

  I shrug. “Day after tomorrow, today, whatever you want to call it. Get some sleep, check things over, and leave next dawn.”

  “Sounds good. I’m crashin’, then.”

  “I’m gonna try to do that myself, again.”

  It takes a long time for me to finally fall asleep. Well past dawn. And when I do, I dream of Ava.

  Except, in this dream, she’s on the shore, reaching for me. Pleading. I can’t hear her, though. All I hear in the dream is a roaring, rushing wind, and snatches of her voice. In the way of dreams, I’m seeing her clearly, up close and in perfect detail, but she’s somehow far away. As if I’m seeing her through an impossibly powerful telescoping lens. She reaches out, pleading with me. Weeping, begging. But I can’t make out her words. She’s so thin she looks sick, frail. Her black hair is whipped by the wind into her eyes, and sticks to the tears running down her face. She falls to her knees in the sand, and a storm surges around her, hurling sand in stinging curtains, flattening dune grasses, pressing her clothes against her nearly skeletal frame.

  Please, Chris, please. Please. Please. Please.

  Please what, Ava? What?

  I’m coming. Wait for me. I’m coming.

  She shakes her head, reaches out across the ocean. I could grasp her hands, but I’m incorporeal, without a body, only a soul in the wind. Her agony, her terror is palpable. She’s desperately trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what.

  29

  [From Christian’s journal: April 18, 2016]

  I see you

  From across the horizon

  From a thousand thousand thousand miles away

  From half a league away

  From countless leagues away

  I see you

  I feel you, too

  Your soul throbs like a drum and I feel it pulsing

  Crashing behind your breasts

  Aching as I ache

  The sea is my home

  But you are my soul

  This ship is my place in the wor
ld

  But you are my breath

  And I have not filled my lungs since…

  Since our world was shrouded in darkness

  Since I tossed a handful of soil onto a too-small coffin

  I cannot breathe

  Because you are my breath

  And you are nowhere

  You are nothing

  You are no one

  I know this, love

  Because I too am

  Nowhere

  Nothing

  No one

  I fly to you, love

  But the sea is wide

  And the winds cannot carry me fast enough back to your arms

  But with each league crossed I ask a tumbling million questions

  Do you love me still?

  Will your arms curl around me as they used to,

  With soft warm strong gentle ceaseless affection?

  Will your words wound me or warm me?

  Can the shattered mirror of our love be pieced back together?

  Slivers are missing

  Shards have scattered across the floor

  Glass dust drifts in piles across the marble

  And even with all the pieces, all the slivers, all the shards,

  I fear the whole, once repaired, will not show a true reflection

  Or perhaps, more fearfully, it will show a more than true image

  Of me

  Of us

  Of you

  As we are now,

  Postmortem

  Undead

  Lichyard creatures shuffling and dragging ourselves between mossy headstones, suffering a pretense of half-life

  As you so accurately put it

  You used those words for yourself

  But in so doing described me, descried the truth of me

  From 2600 leagues away, you see the shape of me

  The truth of me

  12,500 kilometers

  8000 miles

  The distance between you and me

  It feels too massive a distance

  And at once not enough

  So many questions