Her husband pushed her aside, ran forward, and shoved the boat off the dark wood piling with his shoulder. The sound of wood, fiberglass, and metal crunching together as the tons of boat rammed the dock made her smile.
Later, he assured her it wasn’t all her fault, and besides, there wasn’t really all that much damage to the boat. It was mostly cosmetic, just some scratches in the fiberglass, and he could easily get the kinks taken out of that stainless steel railing on the bow. His Verity could take a beating, he said. He’d known she’d be a strong, sound boat.
“You’re just gonna need to spend some time practicing before we take off for the Bahamas. It’ll be good for you. Get you back in shape. And I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
She had met him when she’d taken a job as a secretary at the construction company when she’d finally decided it was time to get serious about finishing her college degree. She was twenty-eight years old, and she had been dropping in and out of college for almost ten years. Her parents kept insisting that she simply needed to lose a few pounds, and then she’d finally get married and wouldn’t have to worry about school anymore. The project was a condominium complex down on the beach, and he was the foreman on the job. They’d dated less than a year before they got married, but she often wondered if it was the fact that they’d dated less than a week before she slept with him that had made him stop listening to her so early in their marriage. His face was badly scarred from teenage acne and his rounded shoulders did little to increase his small stature. Perhaps he figured that a girl who would sleep with him so quickly couldn’t be all that bright.
Teaching surprised her. She had always been a bookworm as a kid, and she found that sharing this love of books with classrooms full of reluctant teenagers satisfied her in a way that nothing else ever had. And she was good at it. She was not a strong and assertive teacher, but her students admired her quiet nature. She could not remember how many times through the years she had heard one of her students yell at another to “shut up and let the lady talk.” And they listened to her. They cared about what she had to say.
Gator and Cindy, his new wife, came over for dinner the night before they were to leave for their week in the Bahamas. The young woman could not have been more than thirty years old, and she was wearing a pink tank top with a push-up bra that reminded her of the waitresses in Hooters, one of her husband’s favorite lunch spots.
“I’ve never been sailing before,” Cindy gushed when she came into the kitchen and offered to help. “Gator says that if we like it, we’re gonna get ourselves a boat even bigger than yours.”
“That would be nice,” she said, and handed the woman a large wooden salad bowl heaped high with greens to take out to the dining room.
She was tired. Her students had been wild the day before spring break, bursting with energy and not the least bit willing to discuss Zora Neale Hurston. She had thought that the scenes of the hurricane’s devastation would touch these Florida kids, but they were all too young to remember Andrew, the last hurricane to hit the area. All her time outside school lately had been spent getting the boat ready for their trip and practicing with the heaving line as he’d told her to do.
After dinner, her husband took Gator and Cindy out to the boat to show them around, teach them how to use the marine head, and to help them settle their bags in their cabin. There were two guest cabins forward with double berths and her husband laughed loudly and winked when he told Gator that there wasn’t much room up there in those berths, that it was a good thing he had a skinny wife.
She was glad when they’d gone out the back door, glad when she clicked off the stereo and the house grew quiet. She almost thought she could begin to like this house, if only it could be quiet more often. When she had finished loading the dishwasher, she pulled the full bag out of the plastic bin under the sink and tied the red ties in a neat bow. She opened the back door and stepped around to put the bag in the can on the side of the house. When she came back around the house, she saw the three of them standing on the pool deck, pausing to talk in lowered voices before going back into the house. Her hand stopped on the doorknob and she stepped back into the shadows of the narrow passage between their house and the wood fence along the property line.
Cindy reached for the sliding glass door. “I’ve got to go to the little girl’s room. See you inside.”
The two men watched her go in. Her husband shook his head.
“Gator, I don’t know how you do it. What I wouldn’t give for something like that.”
“You just say the word, brother man. Cindy’s friend Kiki, she’s gonna be staying over on Paradise Island. She would love to go sailing with us. With you.”
“You don’t know how much I’d like that too,” her husband said. “The thing is, I know she’ll hate it.” He jerked his head toward the house. “Sailing. Especially if it’s rough. I’m pretty sure that by the time we get to Nassau, it would be easy enough to convince her to hop a plane for home.”
“Then it’s a plan.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Man, I don’t get you,” Gator said. “You could have your pick of women. That one,” he said, and nodded toward the French doors that led into the kitchen. “Look at her.” He spread his hands wide. “And she didn’t say a word all through dinner. Why the hell do you stay married to her?”
“What? Gator, how can you ask me that after what your ex’s have taken from you? I’ll take the monkey on my back before I’ll give her half of what’s mine.”
The next morning they were motoring out through Port Everglades channel when the gray light in the east started to turn pink and soon the gray woolly clouds were tinged with crimson. She came up the ladder balancing two mugs of hot coffee, wearing her sweats to ward off the March chill air. Her husband was stowing the last of the dock lines in the cockpit locker under the seat. She handed him a steaming mug and turned to look at the spectacle in the east.
“You know what they say,” she said to no one in particular. Gator and Cindy had shown up wearing shorts and tank tops, and they were cuddling under a blanket in the back of the cockpit. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.”
Her husband squinted ahead. “Where’d you pick that up?”
“Read it in one of your books,” she said.
He laughed. “Ran out of your own books? Yeah, well, cold front came through overnight, but it should be clearing up later.” He took a sip of the hot coffee. “Think you can handle a little rough weather, honey?”
She shrugged. “Are you sure it’s wise to go if we know the weather’s going to be bad?” The bow plunged into the first of the seas and spray splattered across the deck, peppering the clear plastic windows across the front of the cockpit.
“Damn,” he said when the deck seemed to drop out from under them in the next trough, and he spilled his coffee down the front of his Dockers. “Clean that up, will you?”
She struggled down the ladder and grabbed a dish towel hanging on the front of the stove. As she mopped up the brown liquid, more seawater splashed aboard. “Don’t you think it would be wiser to turn back?” she asked. “Wait a few days for this weather to settle down?”
“Honey, this boat can take it. Should take us about thirty hours to get to Nassau. We’ll get in late tomorrow morning. The Verity can take whatever nature can dish up.”
Gator took over the wheel while her husband got the sails set. The Verity had roller furling and electric winches, so the men were able to unfurl the sails without leaving the shelter of the cockpit. She watched them push buttons to pull the sails out, and wondered that this is what sailing had come to now. Gator had to let go of the wheel twice to heave over the side. Her husband teased him about the amount of beer he’d drunk the night before, but his friend wasn’t laughing when he hunched back under the blanket with his new wife. Cindy’s eyes had great dark circles under them where the salt spray has caused her mascara to run, and she was soaked through, her teeth chattering. Gator groaned and dry heaved a couple more times, then mumbled that he was going below and disappeared down the ladder with Cindy right behind him.