Straight No Chaser

Aurora

Simone, aggravatingly enough, has holed herself away below decks; this after an hour-long bout of stumbling around up top, dry heaving over the sides of the Sea Treasure, insisting she'd never find her sea legs and that Dustin should just wake her at their destination.

As if he'd protest. As if, after seven years of her bitchy theatrics, Dustin hasn't learned not to let them get in the way of a flawless agenda.

So then, she's down there--fine, great, phenomenal--and he's up here, gripping the helm so hard his normally brown knuckles are an angry shade of pale red, flawless agenda nonetheless intact. The ring is an emerald-cut tri-stone set in squared platinum, nearly three carats total; its box sits heavy in the front pocket of his khakis, a comforting reminder that, in spite of Simone's passive-aggressive protest against the day's outing, their return trip, at least, will be a happy one. Simone dislikes sailing, detests it, even, but she can't stay mad after a proposal like this, a ring like this. And if he's wrong, and she can, then God help the girl find a way back to the mainland.

*

Simone awakens with a jolt and immediately checks her cell phone display. Ten-eighteen. Fuck; for all her pains, the nap has only stolen fifteen minutes from thsi damnable trip, and no wonder--this rocking, this queasiness, it's what's got her wanting an escape anyway.

Dustin's footsteps thud dully overhead, probably another reason sleep wouldn't take. Simone sucks her teeth and sits up on the uncomfortable little cot, face trembling with irritation. So inconsiderate, so cruelly oblivious of him not to realize, after seven years of this, that she still hates sailing; that, in all likelihood, there will never come a time when she does not hate sailing, Rich family pastime though it may be. He has suggested more than once that they someday sail to this island, a tiny piece of land a few miles east of Key Largo, and Simone has responded, each time, with obvious reluctance if not outright refusal.

The island belongs to some cousins of his, an older couple in Ocala. Reason enough, Simone thinks, to decline their offer of its use. Like the rest of the Rich family, the cousins have never liked Simone; have referred to her--if at all--only as "the white girl." Seven years of this. At twenty-five, it made her laugh (how could people with so much money be so ignorant?); at twenty-eight, it made it cry (maybe this, his family's disapproval, was Dustin's latent reason for so completely ignoring the marriage issue?).

Now, at thirty-two, it is a distant stressor, a source of only mild disgust. Besides his arrogant parents, who sometimes drive down from Atlanta, they never see his family; it's the major perk of having moved in together.

*

It is its own sort of highway hypnosis. Watching the sapphire blue waves breaking at the bow, Dustin nearly misses spotting the island on the horizon. When he does, it gives him a physical thrill; he can't help smiling goofily, whistling the opening bars to "Sailor's Hornpipe."

It's been six years since his last visit--the summer after law school, a fishing trip with Cousin James, who'd already proclaimed it'd be his last. There they'd sat for three days, two men--one young, one old--feet propped up on lawn chairs, lines pulled taut at perfect angles. Beers and wings, "ordinary" foods James Rich only enjoyed in shorts, and in secret.

Before that, it had been tenth grade, and they'd all set sail--James and his wife Carlene, Dustin and his sister Layla. James and Carlene had chosen careers over children, and had recently begun to recognize their young cousins as receptacles for dormant parental instincts. The camping trip would always remain among Dustin's favorite childhood memories. Spades games made interesting by a collective citronella high. Bottled Cokes with lime juice and all the junk food two kids could eat in a week. Baths in a basin at the center of the island, with soap from Cousin Carlene's perpetually well-stocked "just in case" supply trunk.

Today, there will be no fishing, no cards, no beers or wings or twisted sodas. Only Simone Pedescleaux, a ring, and the deviled eggs and champagne chilling in the cabin. He covers a yawn with the back of one sun-darkened hand.

*

Simone strips and stands before the full-length mirror Dustin keeps for quick changes below decks. She sweeps a hand behind her neck and gathers her sun-streaked brownish hair up into a slippery ponytail. She is sweaty, red and freckled from those few minutes of sun, earlier; bloated, too, thanks to the poor timing of an early period.

It's been sixteen months since she last refilled her birth control prescription. Sixteen months spent whimpering on the toilet each month; of staring wistfully into store windows and covered strollers; of torturing herself with the knowledge that she is singularly failing to perform the one act that might inspire Dustin to commit.

Her sister, the religious one, calls it an act of God. "Because this way," she reasoned, when Simone called sobbing after one of the early disappointments, "it's for the best for everyone's sake. You have no idea how hard it'd be to raise a kid like that."

A kid like what? Curly-haired, with a perfect complexion and Dustin's long fingers? Simone didn't speak to Leigh for weeks afterward, feeling, suddenly, the weight of a profound disconnect. If Leigh couldn't understand Simone's disappointment at not "accidentally" catching pregnant after so many tries, then maybe there was a lot she'd never understand, just as Dustin's family never had.

She mourns the unchildren alone now, and it's fine this way. Phenomenal, Dustin would say. Hasn't given up, just yet, on little Owen-or-Aurora.

He has to know, by now. Time was, he'd stand guard every day at the bathroom sink, pretending not to watch as she opened the compact and tipped one of the pinkish tablets back into her throat. Making sure. And then, upon completion of the task, he'd embrace her from behind, nip giddily at her earlobes, press a newly confident erection into the small of her back. Safe.

His little sterility ritual has been dead sixteen months, at least. He has to have noticed.

*

After she takes the ring, he'll tell her about Jessica, because with the ring on her finger, she can't get mad.

Just the basics, he'll tell her. That she was a coworker of his sister's, and that it was brief. So brief that now, weeks later, he barely remembers her last name, what she looked like. (Dayton-Jones, and she is gorgeous--vegetarian-thin, even after the abortion, with wispy blond angel curls. Green eyes.)

With the ring finally on her finger, she'll forgive. Won't wonder for a second whether it's truly over, because he'll tell her it is. And she won't, thank God, say what Layla said, the thing about his "prototype," blah blah blah obsession.

Not an obsession. A preference. Like he told Layla.

The island looms, suddenly close enough to swim to shore. He is tempted to do it, to peel off his cream-colored Polo and freestyle toward his boyhood haven, but someone has to dock the boat and carry the cooler. He steers the Sea Treasure toward the westernmost point of entry, Cousin James's fishing spot of choice. The rudder stalls underneath and he remembers the sandbars. Smiles.

"We're there," he hollers down into the cabin. "Wake up and come on."

*

"I'm awake," she yells back, frowning as she steps back into her olive green cargo pants.

She trips and bangs her shin against the third stair. "Shit," she utters violently, colliding with Dustin's slender frame.

He shoulders her off and steps aside. "Look," he commands, pointing.

She looks. It's bigger than she'd have guessed. Still, she can't imagine what they'll find to do here all day.

*

Dustin leaves his sandals on the boat and suggests that Simone do the same. "They'll just get lost," he explains, hefting the cooler onto one shoulder. "Or you'll get tired of them, walking around, with those thongy things."

She balks, of course--she wouldn't be Simone if she didn't--and after five minutes of the back-and-forth, Dustin falls silent and climbs down the ladder without her. He sets the cooler down in the sand--which scorches his feet, yes...

He leaves her behind. He doesn't want to hear her I told you so.

He jogs the perimeter, perfectly gratified to act as a tour guide without an audience. There is the giant palm Cousin James rigged with fishing wire and an L.L. Bean lantern to generate late-night overhead lighting. There is the giant slab of rock where Layla used to score intense card games. There is Cousin Carlene's "just in case" supply trunk--

Ripped wide open.

Dustin slows and jogs in its direction, frowning. It couldn't have been the wind; the lock is broken but they've always kept the latch down, for the pigs. Those stupid pigs that never bothered anyone except when provoked, and never gave a shit about the scraps they left on the beach but loved to nose around in trunks and duffel bags. The thrill of the hunt, they assumed.

He kneels in front of the trunk and examines the latch. Intact; flipped up as if by a human hand. And, inside, the inventory is considerably lower. Half what it was. Liquid soaps, floss containers, lotion bottles--all there, some partially used.

"Hmm," he says pensively, looking around. Toiletry pirates. The thought makes him snicker.

*

Simone sits. Waiting. Checks her watch; eleven-thirty. The bastard. He's been gone nearly twenty minutes, long enough for her to grow entirely bored with watching the tide.

She sets off down the beach in the opposite direction, sandaled feet itchy in the swirling sand. She can't imagine sitting on this beach for hours, days at a time, throwing balls or playing cards or whatever the hell it is Dustin and his family used to do out here. Fishing. The Pedescleaux clan has always been indoors-oriented, happiest when roofed and walled in.

There is a tentish sort of thing set back several yards from the shoreline, and near it, a rock-lined circle of ash and timber. A fire setting; probably what Dustin and his uncle used to cook the damn things after scraping away the entrails and worm shit. She shudders at the thought, but wonders, taking a closer look, how after so many years the ashes still look so fresh; the tentish thing, so livable.

She pulls back the tarp at the opening and peers inside. Blankets and cushions line the ground; there is an easel standing off to one side with a painting displayed on it. It looks remarkably like a Boy Scout hostel, a decent if not ideal place to spend a night or two. Weird, that the blankets should still be untouched after so many years of disuse. Almost like looking back in time, as though at any moment a younger version of Dustin--pudgy cheeks, boyish grin--might nudge her from behind and step inside to don his swimming trunks. The thought chills her.

A blanket moves.

Tense and surprised, Simone screams.

*

Moments later, Dustin spots them and screams.

*

The girl is visibly too weak to cry, as badly as she wants to. Her little face scrunches and she draws tiny fists protectively up to her scrawny chest, but the tears will not come. She curls up and shudders, instead, practically seizing in place, her hazel eyes pained and miserable.

"Oh, my God--" starts Simone, kneeling. She touches the girl's face and it is cold, dry. One tiny hand bats limply at Simone's larger one, an impotent attempt to push it away.

"'Top it," whispers the girl.

Her lips are dry, her complexion is gray and her wrists are like twigs. Snappable is the adjective that springs to mind. Simone slides her hands beneath the blanket and lifts the starving child's slight weight. "It's okay," she whispers, pushing slowly out into the sunlight. As expected, the girl shields her face but is too weak to protest otherwise. Two and a half, maybe three. A very small three.

Tears roll down Simone's face as she walks briskly toward the boat, toward the cooler. Evian bottles and deviled eggs.

The nearly lifeless child convulses faintly against her chest, but does not cry.

*

The smell of death will not leave Dustin's nostrils, not even as he stumbles back in the direction from whence he came, frantically gulping down throatfuls of the sea air.

His lungs burn. He distracts himself, along the way, by retallying each landmark a second time, in reverse order.

The trunk.

The stone.

The tree.

A woman, on the ground. Age indeterminate but it couldn't really matter anyway; she was lying on a circle of blood-soaked sand, brown and raw. Ripped open, ripped wide open at the torso.

He'd have guessed it was the pigs' doing if not for the other--a man, blonde, splayed on his side beside her, his thin frame clad in a stained white t-shirt. A knife beside him, plain as day.

Something in his arms. Dustin saw, he knows, but his eyes had crossed by then, and they will henceforth remain amorphous tan blobs in his memory, two of them, doll-sized, and this vagueness is a small blessing.

He collapses before he reaches the boat. Just before. He hears Simone making a fuss about something--God only knows what, and there's no way it matters now. His legs spasm behind him and his nose, he wants to rend his nose away from his face, fully remove it and toss it to the sea. And his ears--anything to shut her up, his would-be-fiancee who keeps squalling something about a kid, about Evian; what the fuck is she talking about, and does it matter?--he thinks not, he lets his eyes drift shut, closes his eyes and his brain to the memory of the corpse family by Uncle James's fishing ledge.

*

The girl's response to the bottled water is immediate; her eyes brighten and she looks momentarily happy before lapsing into a cherubic sleep.

Simone places her on the cot below decks and brushes the matted hair away from her face. They should be curls; they would be curls if tended properly. Just as the little girl's skin, if moisturized and nourished with a toddler-appropriate diet, would glow a beautiful sun-kissed bronze. She is sure of it.

She examines the fingers; petite. Well.

*

The ring box is lying a few inches away when Dustin opens his eyes, a casualty of his traumatized fall. He clambers to his feet, grabs it up and makes a run for the boat.

*****

i have had a bad week. i don't know why i am still awake, at five o'clock on a tuesday morning. except that i am starving.

*****

At age seven, Aurora Rich is suspended from Palmetto Preparatory Academy for repeated behavior problems. Belligerance and insubordination are the family's buzzwords, words she quickly adds to her ever-growing vocabulary.

It wasn't really her fault, though. Yes, the teacher had to call her name more than once, but she never answers on the first call, never ever. Aurora sounds wrong, it sounds foreign, sometimes, and when she is caught in one of her daydreams, its familiarity is not strong enough to pull her away.

So it wasn't on purpose, but they don't believe her, and it doesn't matter anyway. A sitter comes for the week and lets her watch hour upon hour of the nature channel. She is sorry when it's time to return to school.

*

After Aurora's eleventh birthday, Aunt Leigh flies to Hong Kong to pick up her new baby, and Aurora's bad dreams begin.

You never have to worry, says Mom. You are not adopted; you are ours. You are a perfect combination, you see? Halfway between my color and Daddy's. Go back to sleep and don't worry about it anymore.

The dreams eventually stop, replaced by new worries. Hair and bleeding and boys. She still cries at night, but not for the imaginary birthmother she hopes might someday come to Tallahassee to find her.

*

She loses her virginity at sixteen, or rather surrenders it to the boy whose smile makes the world stop, and who moves back to Hawaii six weeks later. Daddy and his new wife Jessica announce their pregnancy just as Aurora runs out of ways to conceal her own.

The arrival of her baby girl seals her fate. Cousin Carlene takes them both in; her late husband would have wanted it that way.

The boy writes back, only once, with his suggestion for a middle name. Aurora sends back a birth announcement.

Mia Kailani Rich.

*

Mia-Kai is bounced back and forth between Simone and Carlene, while Aurora completes her fine arts degree in fiction writing. Her first manuscript hits shelves the summer after her daughter's tenth birthday. Others follow rather rapidly.

Mostly, she writes about beaches.