I’d be gone for 2 nights. One to get to Porvenir and then the other to re-provision in Sabanitas.
I don’t like the idea of this, I tell her.
You think I can’t handle things by myself, she says. You encourage me to sail but deep down you don’t really think I can handle things by myself.
I shrug. I don’t take the bait. I tell her I don’t know which part worries me the most. Once I come back with food & an exit permit, we still have no motor. I will still have to sail to Cartagena w/ no motor. The kind of thing even a seasoned sailor would be nervous about.
She studies me. I’ve known you for years, Michael, she says, and you’ve always been able to keep your head on straight. I admire it. But out here, it’s more than that. You’re a sailor. You understand the sea.
I look over at her. Her cheeks are pink from the last dregs of Narganian wine. Her eyes have a bold, low-lidded look. She’s got her hair tied up in a backward bandanna, knotted at her forehead, like Rosie the Riveter. I stare at her for a moment, trying to recall who she reminds me of.
Then I remember who she reminds me of.
She reminds me of Juliet.
I’ll go, I say.
* * *
—
When we lived on the boat, my gift for sleep returned. Long days in the sun and wind left me limp on our berth, lying as I’d fallen, the amniotic swish of the water in my dreams. Meanwhile, Michael’s energy reached a new pitch. He seemed to dispense with the need for sleep altogether. In my thick slumber, I would sense him leave the berth. I could hear his footsteps on deck. But the next minute, there he would be again, lying on his side, staring at me.
The night before he left for Porvenir, I went above to find him. I missed his body in the bed.
He was sitting on the edge of the cabin top, his back to me, writing. The wind was strong offshore but the wall of jungle absorbed it. The sky was free of clouds, lambent with moonlight. Polaris shone fixedly over the mainland. I considered saying his name, but I didn’t. I considered calling him back to bed, but I didn’t.
It’s tiring to carry the weight of eternally unsaid words.
They get smaller & smaller. Juliet is holding George in the cockpit but Sybil has climbed up the mast partway & hangs just below the spreader. Juliet waves. She prompts George to do the same but he squints into the distance because he can’t see me. The sky is overcast but blinding. I blow kisses. But within seconds of clearing the anchorage, young Teddy kicks up the outboard & I nearly smack my chin on the stern.
I take a seat beside the motor, as if sitting this far astern will keep me closer to Juliet & the kids. When, in fact, as we veer around Snug Harbor, following the shore, I lose sight of them instantly.
My Christian friends exchange me like a package on a dock in Tigre. I thank them & say goodbye & hop onto a dented plancha. I begin retracing my steps. Sailing backward through our journey. Undoing. The motorboat slams westward. We pass Culebra Rock, Spokeshave Reef, Puyadas. Farther on, sooner than I expected, we thread through the Farewell Islands, & soon after that, we arrive at the crowded shoreline of Narganá, where we stop & pick up a crate of coconuts & a dead peccary (the stench makes my eyes water, even after we’ve returned to our suicidal speed along the coast). I’m relieved when we veer toward the coastline, & I don’t have to relive the journey, w/out ‘Juliet.’ Because the motorboat reveals just how inefficient sailing really is. In one day, I will travel a distance that took us months. And they have been, let me tell you, the best months of my life…
Watching the palms & the mangroves & the villages & smoke slide past, I realize that I’ve found