my chin. But what do you think think?
I don’t know, she says, taking off her glasses, and rubbing her eyes. He doesn’t admit to doing anything. Just a threat.
But the picture?
She looks at me. We hear the tread of a child outside the closet.
He’s gone, she says, eyes welling. He should be allowed to keep his secrets.
So, Sybil. How do you think your mommy is feeling these days?
Sad.
Do you worry about her?
All the time.
What does she say when you worry about her?
I don’t tell her.
If you could tell her anything, what would you say?
I…I wish I could tell her about before. The life before. When we lived together. When we were babies. I would ask her, Do you remember when you were inside my heart and I was your baby before?
Oh, you mean other lives? You believe in reincarnation?
Yes. If something bad happens, don’t worry, there’s always the next life. I’m worried that in the next life I will live near a desert because I don’t like sand in my eyes. Do you know how to make a distress call? You don’t scream, Help! Help! You have to say, MAYDAY. You have to say it three times. MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.
Did you ever have to do that, Sybil? Did you ever have to make a distress call?
What?
Did you have to make a distress call when you were at sea on the boat?
No. I was only pretending. But I know the national anthem. Would you like to hear it?
Sure.
Never mind.
Sybil. Would you like to talk about your daddy today?
[…]
Do you feel like talking about him, Sybil?
Ugh.
It’s your choice. You can talk or not. You choose.
Not.
That’s absolutely fine. I have some new smelly markers…We could draw, we could—
Can I tell you something?
Of course, Sybil.
He had a bad case of the stripes.
Who did?
My daddy.
VIII
Sit, I told him. Rest.
It was our second day of sailing, and he’d been piloting for hours. He was worried about the current sweeping us too far west. He said it was a drain on the autohelm to fight the current, but when he sailed by hand, we went off course. He looked tired. I noticed this. He held himself differently from when we’d set out from Cartagena the day before.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, he said.
Well, in that case, I said, let me have a turn at the helm.
He sat uneasily. But I didn’t mind steering. Without a single landmark toward which to sail, I found that navigation took on a certain poetry. You sailed by faith toward the legend of where you were going. Back in the fall, when I learned to sail, I would nervously check the telltales, the masthead fly, but eventually I found that I was most attuned to wind direction with my eyes shut. That way, I could feel the angle of the wind on my face. Straight ahead, it would blow into both ears. I could hear and feel the wind much better than I could see it. Sometimes the wind gusted briefly from a different direction, and I’d have to wake up and look around, while the patient boat slid around at my nervous over-steering.
On the floor of the cockpit, the children peaceably snapped together Legos. Under way, they behaved like small animals, like ferrets. Fits of screaming energy and hijinks below were followed by indolent cuddling. They had become very close, right under our noses. They had a life within our family life, small in scale.
Sybil asked, Can I steer with Mommy?
Michael gave a wan smile. Ask me again.
Captain, she said, snapping her hand to her