Sailing Toward France

Big white clouds move in neat columns across a sunless, blue sky, like an assembly line of hope. My arm casts a shadow over the water, debris, and the terrace walls left behind, yet I cannot see a thing. My brain is mine, though I did not make it. Scientists have no words for their mysteries, and no one knows how they are constructed. The brain feels like a gift. Like they’ve been given to us, even though my brain is mine, a temporary stranger, a flash in the pan, and between those flashes, the darkness in the interval: The child in the womb, born without a memory, and those memories either die or are forgotten until we are pulled from the womb, again.

She is older and gently touches my unshaven, tired face, doing what she can with her bare lips to smile. I am unmoved, but surprised. She wears a black sweater, and her other arm is wrapped around her stomach. No one in their right mind would ever claim to see a belly where there is a flat and fragile stomach, but I could, and perhaps I was not of the right mind. She came to visit me, and though it is subtle, she is shocked at the state I am in. I grab my crutches and ask if she will join me on the balcony. She says, “Of course,” in a soft, British accent that reminds me of every squandered dream or belief.

Her eyes have never been this open, and I suspect she is starting to see what the world is up to. I look for the sun, but cannot find it. I struck a match and lit my cigarette. It rained earlier, and woke me up. You could still smell it somewhere behind us. I imagine the darkened cobblestone streets, and wherever the dust comes from next: a house, a phone booth, or a bus will stick to the rocks in the road.

“Isn’t it funny?” I ask.” “How did we find each other? It seems like a miracle.”

She moves closer, but her posture conveys concern that I feel. It is uncomfortable. She is the physical manifestation of, “What has happened to you? What are you doing?” without any sudden movements. She studies me like the clock in my father’s office and waits to touch my shoulder.

“I like your black sweater,” I say, and she nods, but I almost miss it; her answers are quick while I look at the sea that’s been her home her whole life, though she looks like a land-loving woman of dirt and flowers. An appreciator of God’s gifts in the garden. Yes, she is a few years older and does not hide the white hair that sprouts from her temples in the shape of a smooth wave. She is beautiful, and her expressions are timeless. She worries so much. She always has. I do not forget.

“Yes, it is a nice sweater, and it is a miracle we met, but I’ve never thought for a second any of what has happened to you to be funny, though I see wine beside your bed, and you smoke out here during air raids.”

“Is there one?”

“Who knows? They’re so quiet now.”

“The rockets?”

“They’re not like the old ones.”

“The V-1’s were terrifyingly loud, but at least we heard them coming. Sometimes you could even see where they were going.” I lean on the balcony and look at a busy ocean: the dark blue and sea-foam green old-timer that is perpetually inviting us all to the bottom. An impossible depth to see from the USS Dorothea L. Dix, named after an activist who lobbied for the mentally ill and helped create America’s first mental asylums. I don’t know how she got a ship.

I relit my cigarette, and though Jessy stopped when the war started, I can tell she wants one. Our vessel breaks a large wave and rocks. I think she might still want me, but I have thrown her from my saddleless back many times. I inhale and wonder how she got here.

“The V-2’s are terrifyingly quiet. Is that what you meant when you said, ‘Who knows?’”

“Sort of.” She looks up at the blue between the big white clouds. “These rockets fall from space and make a noise only after they explode.”

I join her, looking up, grinning with the charm of Clarke Gable, and squinting like Jimmy Stewart. “I hear nothing,” but she does not hear or acknowledge what I say and walks back into my room to grab my wire-framed glasses. I tell her, “I hate these things,” but she hands them to me as I need them, as I needed her.

“I know,” she says. “But look, you can see them going to London.”

“Is that how close we are?”

She points at the sky. “Look, there’s one.”

The rocket is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. It travels over our heads and out of sight. I turn to her, “Jessy, how did you get onto this boat? What are you doing here?”

She picks up a pair of binoculars that are apparently mine and says, “It is safer here than back over there. I also wanted to see how you were doing.”

My chest naturally extends, or puffs as we roosters call it.

“Right as rain,” I say. “What do you think?” She does not look at me. I receive an occasional glance, but it is only because I stand in front of whatever it is she is looking at.

“You’re not yourself,” she whispers. “Which is fine, but it breaks my heart.”

I roll my eyes as hers produce a tear or two.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “I’m fine. Right as rain, I say! Right as rain!”

She looks at the sea, away from the approaching land, and away from anything but the few seagulls that look and sound more like doves than anything that is naturally over the channel.

“Do you believe you could crawl into the skin of a man or woman, and feel what they feel? Do you have the androgeny in you to see another’s pain?”

I turn and slowly walk into my carpeted room. I am slow because my knee is wrapped with gauze pads and bandages, as is my head. I pour myself some wine. The natural light behind me is powerful. Then, dark as she steps into the doorway.

“I’ve been on this boat as long as you have, but I had to walk through the rain to get to it.”

I drink and look at the drapes of my room, a room usually reserved for officers. I’ve been treated well, and I tell her so. She asks me not to go, but I tell her I have to. “I’m being paid,” and then she asks what I am paying with. “Whatever’s left,” I say.

She closes her eyes and says, “Soon, there will be no more.”

“I know,” I said.

I wait for her to leave the room, but I can’t look at her, and so she waits until we are close to one another and the beaches of France, where the rockets launch into London.

“I know,” I said.

She touches my burnt hand. She is gentle and cool, like the water beside the wine. How I want them both, but she turned the hourglass when she entered the room. I see it in her blue eyes.

“I know,” I said.