But now. What I wouldn’t give to expect him home at all.
The thing is, I liked Harry Borawski. We’d sit at this picnic table that looked over the marina, paging through binders of yachts for sale, or shit-shooting, drinking plastic bottles of warm iced tea. He sold yachts, he’d sold a lot of them, but whenever I came around he never seemed to have anything to do, or he’d given up on whatever that was. He was one of those old guys w/ encyclopedic knowledge about some subjects & huge holes of ignorance about commonsensical things. Big guy, smudged—you were kind of glad for his nonexistent wife that he never married her. Sometimes you just have this previous-life connection with the oddballs. And me, I was an easy target, showing up in my tie w/ my memories of my dead dad and ‘Odille.’ For some reason I opened up to Harry. I told him things I didn’t tell other people.
I told him about Juliet.
I think sailing would be good for my wife, I said to him. She struggles with depression. Though she hates when I say that. She had a rocky childhood. She was fine until we had our own kids. I think having kids kicked up the past. It’s been a rough stretch of years.
And nobody’s around to help us either, I told him. She doesn’t speak to her mother. And I’m away all the time. I’m at work or on business trips. I’m no help.
Then Harry says to me, Some of the best sailors are women. Always have been. Some sixteen-year-old schoolgirl just sailed around the world singlehanded. The sea doesn’t care who you are.
That’s when I first imagined that we could really do it.
That the boat would be good for both of us. And that I could have this dream I’d been carrying around since I was 15.
The sea doesn’t care who you are.
Sounded good to me!
Not everybody likes Juliet.
I thought Juliet and the sea would get along.
* * *
—
I knew a woman from the preschool who had divorced and was pretty happy about it. She told me about how she and her ex had calmly strategized their parting, how relieved they both felt. They’d worked it all out before their children were old enough to know the difference.
One cold morning—during the year Sybil was three, before George even came along—I went so far as to see a lawyer. The office was hushed, airless. The secretary whispered my name. It felt so covert, so guilty. I stood there trembling. Sybil was at home with a babysitter. Just a girl from the block, Patty and Charlie’s middle-school girl, barely beyond babysitting herself.
Are you OK, honey? asked the secretary.
I thought, What in the world do we do to each other? We love in springtime and doubt in winter. We’ll blame our heavy hearts on anything.
I’m sorry, I said.
I ran out. I never told anyone.
Harry talked like an Ashtabulian. That is, he saw things like the folks back home. I liked being able to talk about things I couldn’t even bring up in the break room at Omni lest some informant report back the presence of an independent thinker. It was good to talk freely & not be censored by the freegans & utopians, you just don’t know whose foot you’re going to step on. I live in fear of making an honest mistake in conversation followed by some kind of Maoist-style recrimination session. I am genuinely proud of my country & my life & do not understand the awkward silence that follows when I say so.
I’m just a regular person. To be taken at face value. I don’t have time to read towering stacks of books before forming an opinion. Maybe the reason I mystify Juliet is because she is overthinking my position. I just want to take care of my family & I don’t want anybody taking my rights. I especially don’t want anybody taking my rights & then