Wanderlust (32 page)

When Helen woke me, I zipped into my red, white, and blue rain gear, reeling a little, and climbed up. I clipped in and sat up on the bench on the windward side of the cockpit, feet braced below. You had to be up this high to see past the bow. The horizon was close and dark; if there was anything ahead I'd see it only as we rode down a wave. The storm didn't abate. Even though the boat's weak beams were the only light, the sheen of the waves looked almost bright, as though the ocean glowed from within.

The direction of the wind shifted a few more degrees, and Tonga became officially hopeless. We couldn't sail straight upwind. Instead we'd go due north to Fiji, taking advantage of the storm to drive us forward. Fiji was hundreds of miles from Tonga, and I wondered how I would find Stu, but there was nothing we could do. I felt chagrined for him since we'd never even been able to radio Auckland. I hoped he was protecting my parents.

The mind isn't cut out to remain frightened and panicked for long periods, even when the frightening conditions go on. At some point you adjust, the conditions become the new normal, and the fear recedes. It was like this with the storm. It didn't subside, but we calmed down.

We shortened our watches to four hours from six to stave off exhaustion. I slept most of the time I was off, and sometimes read in my bunk. A small library was bungeed into the shelf above, and I plucked out a book about Provence. I let it take me away to a safe, bucolic, landlocked place, escaping from my escape.

Whenever it was my turn, I drank a little seltzer, tucked a bag of Saltines into my jacket, and climbed on deck. We were eating almost nothing. I watched the horizon as best I could, but our whole world was enclosed by waves. After the first ten minutes or so on deck I usually threw up, which was now so routine that I felt
it coming and leaned toward the rail, letting it be washed away. I huddled into my coat, tempted to crawl down to the floor of the cockpit, but this was forbidden, as I had to look ahead.

The days beat on. I had no idea how many went by. Once, at the top of a swell, I saw lights on the horizon, probably a ship, and then they were gone again as we dove into the trough. As often happens when sailing, there was too much time to think. I explored, massaged, and embellished my guilt over bolting from my job. I pondered the Tonga–Fiji dilemma. I wondered if my travels would end in an oceanic whirlpool.

And then I came on deck for my shift and saw that the distance between swells had lengthened and their white crowns disappeared. The gray ocean had taken on color, and the sky was pale. I stood in the cockpit and crinkled back my hood, and watched the horizon roll away.

A half day later we were in the sun. I'd lost track of time, but Ian hadn't: We'd been in the storm for seven days. We unreefed the mainsail and unfurled the jib. The breeze was ideal, fifteen to twenty knots. Now, when it wasn't my turn on watch, I moved around the deck. I sat on the bow, just because I could, watching the sky turn blue and white. Harnesses on, we took turns jumping into the ocean off the stern for our first baths, and then rinsed with a little fresh water from the tank. Ian cooked
dal,
filling the cabin with scent of cumin and onion, and we had our first real meal. For our second meal, we trailed a fishing line behind the boat and caught a fat, iridescent tuna. Ian clubbed it dead, bloodying the deck, and we ate thin slices of sashimi dribbled with lemon.

We were now about three days out from Fiji. In better conditions the whole trip should have taken only a week. The time ahead of us before we hit land seemed to expand and contract; I couldn't
decide if it was long or short. Ian and Helen, now liberated to blow off steam, squabbled in the cockpit, and I closed my eyes and lay on the deck. I craved land and other people; I thought this was going to take an eternity. But as the sun warmed me up, I thought our cruise couldn't last long enough. I was a little afraid of land. If traveling is a hiatus from life, cruising was one hiatus beyond. A complete checking out from the world. I didn't know if that was noble or cowardly. In Australia and even Papua New Guinea, news had filtered my way after the fact. Jerry Garcia, O. J. Simpson, Yitzhak Rabin. Now I was completely cut off.

Are we obligated to know the important events of our time? Or is the whole project of knowing, of being part of a society, neither moral nor immoral, but just away to pass the time? Is it enough to do no harm to the world, or do you have to contribute too? I wanted to go toward the man-made heat and light, the cultural center, the heart of civilization. At the same time, I didn't want to get off the boat.

In movies and books, sailors spot land and the next thing you know they're onshore. But in fact when land first appears, it's a line drawn with the smallest nib. It grows so slowly that you can't watch. You have to just ignore it and let it sneak up, so that when you look back a few hours later it might have been drawn with a felt-tip pen. From the time we first noticed the line and thought maybe it was a mirage, it took a day and a night for Fiji to take on dimension.

We eased into Suva one bright afternoon, anchored sailboats bobbing all around. When I finally stepped off the boat onto the marina dock, my legs buckled underneath.

chapter twenty-five

B
eing on land meant responsibility
and choices. It meant all the options were back on the table, each with its own consequence.

I tried to phone Stu, but our old mobile phone had been disconnected. According to our original plan he would be arriving in Tonga. I thought of trying to contact him there, but how was that going to work? Would I call some marina and ask if they'd seen a tall blond man? I decided to sit tight and let things work themselves out. I took a pink-striped bus into the city and wandered around. I took pictures of the rainbow-frosted Hindu temples, then came back to the yacht club and sat in the open-air bar. Pacific Ocean travelers washed in like old fishing nets. On the bulletin board there were numerous crew-wanted signs, and each one was a temptation. Vanuatu, Tahiti, Ambon. Maybe I didn't have to go home. I didn't want to go to Seattle.

But Seattle was my only springboard back to real life. Or maybe not “back to,” since I'd shirked real life so far. My existence had been all prep, pretense, and peregrination. When I got to real life, I thought, I'd know that I was in the right place at the right time. I wouldn't feel like I had to leave. To get there I had to do the right thing, which meant not sailing back across the
Pacific. It occurred to me that if I'd stayed at sea, I wouldn't have had to think about all this.

There were old salts and young salts at the bar. One was Leo, a compact Englishman with a blond swish across his forehead. He had a degree in marine biology and was a photographer; he had an elegant wooden sloop. He took underwater pictures of whales and sharks for magazines. He showed me the light table he had in his cabin for looking at slides, and told me he was going to Tahiti to shoot the whales. He was perfect, some man I would have molded out of clay.

I noticed that he'd put up a sign on the bulletin board: First mate wanted, only women need apply. I was amazed at the baldness of his search. Could you even do that? Put a sign up for an oceangoing hired girlfriend? Couldn't he have just found a girlfriend? He was charming enough.

His terms confused me. He wasn't offering money. He was offering something I wanted so much more—adventure. I'd thought that my specific desires made me special.
I
wasn't materialistic. And yet Leo had reduced what I wanted to trade. He knew a certain kind of woman would put up with a lot to swim with the whales. I knew he'd find someone to go. He wouldn't even have to mention the sex until fifty miles offshore. By which time his first mate would be dependent and cut off. Crew, screw.

When Stu found me in the yacht club bar, I ran to him the way I hadn't when I arrived in New Zealand, and he cradled me up in his anvil embrace. I was breathless and wide-eyed; I had to tell him all about my trip right now. I felt like I'd been lost and then found, and he felt like he'd lost me and found me. He'd flown to Tonga, figured out from other sailors what must have happened, and then flown here.

That night we checked in to the colonnaded Hotel Metropole, in a seedy room above the bar. We ate greasy fried rice in a Chinese restaurant and tried to decide what to do next. The prospect of going home still seemed surreal. It had been nine months for him, fourteen for me.

The next day we went back to the yacht club to say good-bye to Helen and Ian. Stu examined the tiller he'd installed in Auckland, which had come through the beating in good shape. I looked idly at the bulletin board, just for kicks, and saw that a South African family with a sixty-foot catamaran had put up a sign. Two of them were in the bar, and I went to talk to them.

Liam and Donna, the owners, were a couple in their fifties and were traveling with their son and his wife, who was eight months' pregnant. They wanted to get to Brisbane in a hurry so that she could deliver there. At “Brisbane” my synapses fired for Justin. A boat like theirs could cross the seventeen hundred miles in a few days, but they needed experienced help. Their state-of-theart boat was an engineering feat, with carbon fiber parts and the latest navigation tools. “I just sailed from New Zealand,” I offered, but they had no interest in me.

I pointed down to the dock. “That's my boyfriend,” I said. “He's blue water. And he's a boat builder.” They could see the Michelangelo shoulders, the Popeye arms. “We could take the both of you,” Liam offered. If they could have him on deck, I could lounge in a queen-size cabin for three days, then find myself in Australia again. I introduced Stu, and Liam repeated his offer.

I knew it was a fulcrum in time. If the balance swung one way, we started the trip all over again. Back to the ups and downs of a future unknown. I could travel north and west across Australia, sail from Darwin to Bali.

If I went back to America, I knew what was next. We faced the house and the debt. I faced the uphill climb of getting out of it all, which, from the dock in Fiji, looked Sisyphean.

But maybe, I told myself, it would just be a slog. I'd climbed over all those ridges in Papua New Guinea, even when I thought I couldn't make it. I'd extricated myself from Seattle once, and I could do it again, this time in a final way. This time organization would take the place of headlong flight. I'd apply to graduate school; I'd get on track. I saw my love for Stu as now thoroughly tarnished, not because we'd hurt each other or slept with other people or spent time apart—all those usual suspects made no difference. It was tarnished because now it was wrapped up in obligation. Obligation, of course, is what binds marriages all over the world. You get into financial dependence, kids, intertwined lives, and you can't get out. Mutual obligation is the norm, the glue. Loss of freedom is the point, the thing that evens out the vagaries of the heart. I didn't understand any of that.

Stu and I conferred at a table in the back of the bar. I knew I could convince him to hop the catamaran. This decision was on me. The impulse to go back to sea was as strong as any of those momentary flashes that had sent me on other trips. But I fought it this time. Just as Stu was thinking seriously about the possibility, I smiled to show it was all a flight of fancy, a joke. I let go of wanderlust. I didn't have to do a thing just because it was there. “We'd better go home,” I said.

We bought plane tickets to Seattle via Honolulu and left Fiji on July fifth. Because of the international date line, though, we landed in Honolulu at 11:00 PM on the fourth. I tried to work out that distortion, but it was pure magic to me, the hole through which
I'd wriggled back out of my mirror world. A television blared in the airport lounge, with snippets of all the day's parties. Fireworks over Chicago. A parade with confetti and floats down a small-town street. The ball dropping over Times Square in New York. I felt like I was arriving in a foreign land, observing its quaint rituals for the first time.