What I miss most is lettuce, I continued. I never thought I would crave lettuce.
I miss hamburgers and French fries and chicken patties and chicken tenders and pizza and cake and ice cream, Sybil said.
Finally, I rose. I went astern to check my fishing line.
I stopped cold.
A huge, humped cloud loomed behind us. Just an hour before, when I’d set the line, the sky had been blue and uncluttered, with a couple of cumulus tufts sailing away. But as if to assert its very right to change, the sky was now unrecognizable. I stood there gaping, as the cloud covered the sun, casting Juliet into shadow.
Michael! I cried.
It’s just a squall, he said, suddenly beside me. A thunderstorm.
I stared at him.
You’re scared, I said.
She’s staring at me like she just realized I am a fallible human being & an inexperienced sailor & is now re-evaluating a long list of assumptions. I’m thinking she’s about to lose it. I promised her we’d be safe.
I’m gonna go below and put on my tether and turn on the VHF, I say. I can probably get the sail down before this weather hits.
Juliet says nothing. Her gaze falls behind me, on the kids in the cockpit.
* * *
—
Juliet, he said. It’s normal to run into squalls. It’s strange we haven’t sailed through one until now.
But she says, How come we weren’t prepared? How come we didn’t see this coming? I tell her we are completely prepared (while a fork of lightning cracks astern). We prepared for months before we came out here. But we’d better move along now, babe.
* * *
—
Can’t we sail away from it? I asked him.
No, he said. Not now.
But we could make it to the coast quickly.
The coast is full of rocks, Juliet.
And she’s like: I want to go toward land!
* * *
—
We don’t have time to get there and anchor, honey.
You don’t know that!
* * *
—
Look there, he said, pointing to the open water. We are completely scot-free to leeward. Nothing in our way. Nothing to bump into. No reefs, no other boats. We are in a perfect position. We can just bob along. Boats are made for this, he said. We will bob along like a corked bottle.
I groaned, terrified. A corked bottle?
A bobbing bottle, he said.
Daddy? Sybil said. Why’s it dark?
I put my hands on her shoulders and give her a friendly little shake.
I will reef the mainsail, I say. You will get the kids below. You will shut all the hatches and ports. You will make sure there’s not a bunch of shit on the counters. We will ride it out. It’ll be over in no time. It’s a culo de pollo. Short and strong. They happen down here at this time of year.
* * *
—
But I was frozen. Frozen.
Daddy?
Now, Juliet, he said. Do you hear me?
And just then, as if to bring the point home, the rain began to fall.
I throw the mainsheet off the winch.
* * *
—
For some reason, I seated the kids around the saloon table. The appearance of normalcy? I’d given both children a handful of soda crackers and a plastic cup of water. Sybil’s eyes had grown two sizes. She stared at me devouringly. We could hear Michael’s crashing footfalls on deck. I felt some sense of accomplishment: We’d managed to put away all the crabs’ eyeballs, bottle caps, and sea stars that were lying about, which presented me with the possibility that we would be fine because we had followed protocol. Georgie looked from his sister’s face to mine. He reached for a soda cracker only to discover the crackers were marching toward him. He stared in awe as they jumped, one by one, over the edge of the table and into his lap, followed by his cup of water, which