There's No Place Like Home Page 4

  And there you were. Hunched over at the bar, your hair a frizzy, tangled mess from running your hands through it a million times, playing with it as you do when you’re agitated. There was an electric bell on the door of the cantina; it dinged as I entered, and you turned, saw me, and tried to pretend you hadn’t seen me, that you didn’t know me.

  You were the only native English speaker in that bar. It was probably not the safest place for you, especially alone.

  But there you were. Ignoring me, still angry with me. You’d probably been sitting there all damn day, drinking yourself into a stupor, talking yourself into a rage about how much of a dick I was.

  I sat down beside you, and when the bartender came over, you waved at him dismissively. “Don’ serve him, José. He’s an asshole, and we hate him.”

  José just quirked an eyebrow at me and poured me a Dos Equis anyway, and then vanished somewhere. Before he vanished, he met my eyes, gestured at you, and gave a subtle hand signal: a chopping motion at his throat, signifying that you’d been cut off. Indeed, as I glanced into your glass, I realized you had what you thought was a margarita, but was mostly just margarita mix, ice, and a lot of lime, with just enough tequila to make you think it was a real drink. You had no idea. You were babbling at the person sitting next to you, an older man who glanced at you every now and then, silently, and kept his eyes otherwise on the TV, sipping his cerveza, ignoring you. You didn’t care. You didn’t care that he probably didn’t speak a single word of English. You just wanted to rant. About me.

  I sat beside you for three more beers; enough to take the edge of my own mood, now that I knew you were safe. After thirty minutes of ranting as if I wasn’t there, you finally let your head thunk forward onto the sticky top of the bar, groaning.

  “What do you want?” you asked me.

  “For you to come home.”

  “Why? So you can scream at me about fucking peanut butter some more?”

  “No, because I love you, and because you’ve been gone for twelve hours and I was worried sick.”

  You giggled. You reached into your jeans pocket and produced your phone, which was lit up as if it were on, but the screen was blank, and swirled with rainbows. “I got sick of ignoring your calls and messages, so I accidentally on purpose dropped it in the toilet.”

  I sighed. “Nice.”

  “You wouldn’t leave me alone! I just wanted to get drunk in peace!”

  I couldn’t help a laugh. “I get that, but it would have been nice to know where you were, or if you were safe.”

  “Like you care.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “YOU EAT CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER!” you shouted.

  I laughed again. “I’m not arguing with you about this again, Ava.”

  “Why not? It was fun the first time, right?”

  I realized, then, that you weren’t capable of reason. Your eyes would cross and uncross as you looked at me, and sometimes you’d just drift off into silence in the middle of a statement.

  So I tried a new tack. “Ava, can we just go home? We can figure this out tomorrow. It’s time to go home, okay?”

  “You go home. I’m fine here. I need another margarita anyway. If I can talk, I’m not drunk enough.”

  I wanted to tell you that you’d had enough, but didn’t dare—I knew exactly how that would go down. “How about this—if you come home with me right now, I swear I’ll never say another word about peanut butter again. Okay?”

  You snickered. “And you’re still arguing with me about peanut butter. Go stick your dick in your creamy peanut butter, you fucking dick.”

  I sighed, and rolled my eyes. “Actually, I’m just trying to get you to come home.”

  “Why? So you can try to seduce me with your wicked ways?” You leaned close, and I felt a flare of hope. “Not…gonna…happen.”

  I was tempted, then, to just sit here and feed you straight tequila shots until you passed out, but I didn’t. For one thing, I had no idea how many margaritas you’d had, and I was afraid of giving you alcohol poisoning, and for another, I knew from experience that you were capable of putting away a startling and somewhat absurd amount of tequila and stay something akin to conscious and upright. Which meant that plan might backfire.

  I tried every way I could think of to get you to come home, and you shot them all down.

  Finally, you had to pee. You stood up, stumbled into a nearby table, but shook off my hand. So I followed you to the bathroom and stood outside waiting for you to finish. After five minutes, I was worried. So I went in, and found you passed out in the stall, jeans around your ankles, leaning sideways against the stall wall.

  I stood you up, leaned you against me, and with a lot of effort, got you dressed. You sort of came to, and I was able to mostly carry you out to my truck. I set you on the passenger seat and buckled you in. Then I drove home as slowly and carefully as I could.

  Got you in bed.

  Put Tylenol and water on your bedside table with a note saying that I loved you. That nothing mattered to me but you, and us.

  I was woken from a fitful sleep. I was bleary and disoriented and half dreaming. You were in the bed behind me. Your presence woke me up the rest of the way, and I rolled over to face you. Expecting a confrontation. Expecting…I don’t know. Something. Anything.

  You were asleep.

  Mouth open, a soft snore soughing gently from your parted lips. Fully clothed, And god, the sight of you in bed, sleeping, snoring…it slayed me. Erased, in that moment, at least, all my anger.

  Reminded me of my love. Reminded me what you meant to me.

  So, I went back to sleep.

  And when I woke up, you weren’t in bed. A dozen emotions seared through me—anger again, confusion, panic. I left the bed, and found you sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open, headphones on, as if nothing had happened.

  Only, on the island, side by side, were two jars of peanut butter, one creamy, one crunchy. You’d printed out photos of us and taped a photo of me to the creamy, and a photo of you to the crunchy; the photo had been a selfie of us, arms around each other, on that vacation to Iceland. The way you taped the photos to the jars made it look like the jars were embracing. A peace offering.

  I made us breakfast: fried eggs with melted cheese on top, breakfast sausage…and toast. Creamy for me, crunchy for you.

  We never talked about it.

  I learned the depths of my love for you, how desperately I needed you.

  I learned, in those hours you were gone that survival without you is possible, but it is sheer and utter Hell, and I never wanted to do it again.

  Which begs the question, my dear mystery love, my Ava: how did I end up in the Atlantic Ocean, injured and alone, without identification, hundreds of miles from the nearest land?

  Where are you, Ava?

  * * *

  I set the pen and notebook aside and let my mind wander, perusing what I just wrote, and what it means.

  I’m conflicted.

  How can I remember all those details, but not my name, or where I’m from, or how I got here? How can I remember the exact wording of a text message from myself to Ava, but not how old I am? How do I know Ava and I met at the University of Miami, but not my parents’ names, or where I grew up? How could I describe the fight in that story so accurately, but do not know how I ended up drowning in the Atlantic? The details in the story—are they real, or are they invented?

  I think I am a writer, for the telling of stories comes easily to me. A little too easily, perhaps, because it is increasingly difficult to tell fiction from fact.

  Dr. James says that the human memory is a strange creature, one that we know very little about, and that we seldom remember things as they truly happened, that we invent details and fill in gaps unconsciously, and we cannot tell the difference. Even modern, fancy Western medicine knows very little about how memory works, even with all the fancy machines and gizmos.

  Dr. James has a theory, though:
>
  Ava is so crucial to me, to who I am, that even memory loss cannot erase her from my psyche. She’s woven into the very fabric of who I am. So even though the trauma I suffered has possibly been blotted out—either permanently or temporarily—my memories of myself cannot completely blot Ava from my mind.

  I suppose that makes a kind of sense.

  Ava.

  I whisper her name, and the hot African breeze snatches the syllables from me and flutters them across the courtyard.

  I imagine that a bumblebee hears me whispering Ava’s name and carries it out to the shore, whispers it to a passing gull, who carries it in raucous, playful, mischievous circles out to sea, and then the gull calls out her name to an albatross, winging slowly on a warm updraft, far, far out, where the waves reach Heaven and there is nothing but Sea and her moods. Then the albatross carries her name for thousands and thousands of miles, across the ocean, where a tern hears the name being sung in the swirling wildness of a thunderstorm ravaging the southern coast of the United States. And then, I imagine, the tern alights on the sand of a beach, somewhere. A little white thing with black on its wings and quick, orange feet, and a shrill voice. And this tern will hop along the sand, and it will find Ava. She’ll be on the beach, sitting on a blanket, sunglasses shielding her vivid blue eyes, and her face will be tilted up to the sun, and the tern will whisper Ava’s name in a quiet, ethereal voice, and Ava will hear it, and know it is me. Whispering to her from across the sea:

  Ava.

  Ava.

  3

  [On board The Glory; The Atlantic Ocean; November 9, 2016]

  You’d think this would be a great adventure, leaving the safety and comfort of everything I know to board a fishing boat and sailing across the open Sea in search of my husband.

  But for the most part, it’s boring.

  I cook, and I clean, and I write in my journal, and that’s pretty much it.

  I avoid the deck, and the men. I avoid their mundane conversations, their vulgar jokes, their nose picking and farting and spitting. It’s an all-male crew, so such things are to be expected, and I avoid it.

  My life is more insular than it has ever been.

  Which…is really saying something, I’m realizing.

  My life has always been insular, but I seem to have reached a new plane in this respect.

  My head and my heart are screaming at me to avoid going down this path of thought; it’s like a sore tooth, aching, painful, but you can’t quite seem to stop probing it with your tongue.

  If I’m going to throw my entire life into a sequence of change, throwing literally everything I know out the window, then I might as well try and do some serious introspection, right?

  Right.

  So, despite the pain, which will accompany an examination of my flaws, failures, and faux pas, I’m not going to shy away from this.

  I have lived a sheltered, privileged life—fact number one.

  I grew up in St. Pete, in a solidly middle-class home, the daughter of two parents who loved each other and who have been married for many, many years. They were not wonderful parents, but they got the job done. They provided for Delta and me, they didn’t hit us or abuse us, they got us to school and made sure we kept up our grades, got us presents for birthdays and Christmas. They checked off all the parenting boxes. Really, when you compare the way some people grew up, the things some have endured in childhood, I had an easy life. I went to school. Came home. Acted in a few plays here and there throughout middle school and high school, had a decent circle of friends with me from elementary school through high school, and a couple of friends who stayed with me through college, but no one I remained in contact with after we graduated and started marrying off. I was never bullied. Everyone gets picked on or made fun of once in a while, but I experienced nothing that really stuck with me, or affected me long term.

  I lived in the same home from birth through college, and only ventured as far away as Miami for college, which was four hours from home. Close enough to head home for laundry and a home-cooked meal on the weekends. But, as I got older and more independent, Mom and Dad eased into retirement and started vacationing more and more. They stayed in touch, mostly, but once I graduated high school, it seemed like they just figured they’d done their duty as parents, got us to college, and were done parenting Delta and me.

  I was never close to them. They were Mom and Dad, and I loved them, I suppose, and they me, but they always just seemed to be just so…wrapped up in each other, I guess. More concerned with their own lives than Delta’s or mine. As soon as Delta was old enough, they’d leave me with her and go do…whatever. Party? I don’t know. By the time Delta left home I was old enough—in their eyes, at least—to be on my own, so Mom and Dad were gone even more.

  It wasn’t as if I had bad parents, I just wasn’t close to them.

  I’ve gotten off topic, I think.

  My point is less about my parents than it is about my insular life. I lived in Florida my whole life. Lived in a middle-class neighborhood, never struggled for money, never experienced significant trauma. Never wanted for anything.

  I got partial scholarships to UM—one for academics, and several grants for various essays. I paid for the rest of my college tuition with loans, which included my living expenses. I was never a broke college student. I had a decent car, a dorm room to live in, a roommate I liked, a circle of friends, enough money to eat, and some savings from working at a diner during high school and throughout college so that I could go out with my friends.

  When I met Christian, and gradually began spending more and more time with him, he just naturally began taking care of me. He often treated me to meals, tickets to movies, and the like. And then, over the summer between my junior and senior year, we moved in together. We lived on his boat, at first. And then, when I decided I didn’t really enjoy the cramped quarters of his sailboat’s cabin, I convinced him to get an apartment with me. He was already writing by this time, had sold a collection of short stories and his first novel, which had brought in enough income that Christian had put the deposit on the apartment himself and paid for the utilities, and I made sure we had groceries; we had a system that worked, a system in which Christian took care of me.

  I kept waiting tables at the diner through my senior year, but then Christian’s father died, which required us to take an extended leave of absence in Illinois, where Christian grew up, and rather than asking them to hold my spot on the roster, I just quit my part-time job. After that, I never went back to any kind of full-time work; I didn’t have to.

  The death of Christian’s father had been traumatic for him, and had been emotionally devastating for him. Not because he was close to his father, but rather more the opposite. It was relief, perhaps, which in turn made him feel guilty, I think. I don’t know for sure. I just know that instead of going to counseling or something, Christian locked himself in his study when we finally returned home, and had written a full novel in three weeks, pouring out his emotions into a book. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies and ended up getting him a film deal, which officially cemented our financial position in life as “doing really well.”

  Meaning, I never had to do a damn thing after that. Christian was perfectly happy for me to stay home and write. I had a novel I was working on, and a growing audience for my blog. It was a life of leisure. We spent a lot of time together. Went out for long lunches, dinners and movies, long weekend trips and extended vacation, and I lived a life wherein I did…

  Essentially nothing.

  God, now that I put my life in perspective, I’m coming to a horrible realization: I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing in my life.

  My book did okay, but the idea for a follow-up never panned out, and then I got pregnant and had Henry, and became a mom, and that was my life. That was the only thing I’ve ever done which had any real meaning. And then he died of a brain tumor when he was just shy of eighteen months old.

  My meaning, my purpose
in life, my son, was taken from me. And look where that led…

  God, I don’t know if I can go there, just yet.

  Let’s just take this brutal self-examination one step at a time, shall we?

  I’ve never been alone.

  I’ve never taken care of myself.

  I’ve never done anything crazy or daring.

  Never, never, never.

  My life had gone from being taken care of by my parents, to a brief period of quasi-independence at college before I met Christian, and then I was taken care of by him.

  And now? What is my life, now?

  Apart from my sister and these guys on the trawler I am completely alone.

  My home is gone.

  My life as I knew it is gone.

  My Henry is gone.

  My Christian is gone.

  I am gone. I am nowhere. I am no one.

  In searching for Christian, am I searching for myself? For a semblance of a life that once was?

  In an attempt to make sense of it all, I sit on my cot in my cabin, and I write:

  [From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 11, 2016]

  I had a dream last night.

  I woke sobbing.

  I was at home in the condo in Ft. Lauderdale. I had Henry in my arms. Alive. Warm and wiggling. Cooing. A baby, not quite newborn, but still a baby. He had on his little blue hat, and he was all burritoed up in his SleepSack. That was it. That was the dream. I was just…holding him. Staring down at him. His eyes, still the innocent pale blue of a baby, were gazing up at me. His mouth was open, working, gurgling. He’d gotten one little hand free of the swaddling, and he was reaching for me. That clean baby scent was in my nostrils, and his weight was tiny and yet so significant. The sun was shining in through the open sliding door, so the sound of the ocean could be heard as it crashed constantly. The sound was in soothing, shushing, mesmerizing.