I have started to think of the sickness not as a single, contained catastrophe, but as part of a series of waves. We are still burning. What will be the wave that puts us out? I feel the heat of my mother’s photo in my pocket and try not to think about what might be coming next.
Marcus is no longer wearing his mask. The scarred skin around the damaged eye looks like melted wax. He left the mask in Miami, the rabbit face floating in the water. I didn’t ask him to explain. I know what it’s like to want to leave part of yourself behind.
I am shedding too. I left the gardening gloves on the choir bus. I don’t need them anymore, now that we are away from the cold.
In Key West, the palm trees are storm-battered. Green fronds have gone missing, bark tongues flop away from trunks. The ocean is clearer and I can see dark masses of seaweed floating in the water like continents. The beach is not a smooth white crescent like the one in Miami, but a narrow sandy strip, rough with broken shells and driftwood, guarded by a concrete seawall.
We pass a graveyard with stone mausoleums sitting on the grass like little houses. A row of folding chairs and a tent are set up in one corner of the graveyard, the mark of a service that has already happened or has yet to begin.
We pass the Key West weather station, an L-shaped concrete building with a radar dish. I imagine people scurrying around inside, going crazy trying to keep up with the changes in the atmosphere. We pass a museum devoted to shipwrecks. I wonder if any of my mother’s finds are in there. I picture us standing on the decks of wrecked ships, climbing the lookouts, crawling through the cool dark of the hulls. We pass an elementary school painted with red hibiscuses, houses standing on cinder blocks, houses surrounded by faded picket fences that make me think of shark’s teeth, a house with a tree growing through the roof, the thin branches twisted together and dripping with brown, hair-like moss. We pass a Laundromat where all the dryer doors are hanging open like mouths awaiting permission to speak.
Wild roosters peck at the sidewalks, their red tail feathers swaying. A calico cat stands on its hind legs and watches the passing bus.
Imagine a world where the animals are slowly taking over.
Imagine a world where the weather does whatever it pleases. Blizzards in summer. Heat waves in winter.
Imagine a world where you can go to a store and pick out a new person to be. You can buy that person off the rack and just become them. A new face, a new name, a new soul. In this world, it is that easy.
Imagine a world where ghosts get to stay real.
Imagine a world without mothers.
The bus stops at Mallory Square, a brick marina lined with skeletal palm trees. A road sign announces MILE MARKER ZERO. We have reached the southernmost tip of the Florida highway. The bus is full. We are not the only ones who wanted to get far away from the mainland, far away from wherever we were before.
The passengers scatter into the streets. The bus speeds away. Above us electrical wires crackle. There is something thrilling about being on the coast, on the edge of the land.
The lone boat at the marina is a party boat, just like the one the man in the semi told us about, only this one has a different name. It’s a white double-decker with BOOZE CRUISE painted across the side in red letters. When we talk to the captain, we learn that we are the only interested passengers. There is no schedule, no set route. You simply pay and tell him where you want to go.
I give the captain a hundred dollars and tell him Shadow Key.
The party boat captain is barefoot. The tops of his feet are tan. His toenails are pitted and yellow. He’s wearing ragged denim shorts and a white captain’s hat and a white shirt with gold buttons. He tucks the money into his shirt pocket and tells us that he used to have a boat called The Lion’s Paw, but he lost it in a storm and now he has this one instead. The old boat was named after a children’s book about three orphans who run away together and live on a sloop.
“Do you know it?”
We shake our heads.
“It’s a beautiful story,” he tells us.
The Booze Cruise does not have a story.
Marcus takes my hand and we climb aboard. The boat sways. We launch from the marina, into a white spray of water, a biting wind. I wonder if there will be whales. We look out at the stony beaches and the rock fingers that jut into the water, dark and pocked like volcanic rock or what I imagine volcanic rock to be.
A child in yellow shorts stands at the end of one of the fingers, waving.
We wave back. We don’t know if we will ever return.
The wind lifts my hair off my shoulders. I lean against the railing and feel the spray on my face. I taste the salt. I listen to the churn of the engine. When I look back toward the marina, the wake is a wide white tail behind us.
A green cooler stands against the helm. Back when the Booze Cruise was a real party boat, I imagine the cooler was filled with ice and beer. When we look inside, it’s empty and dry. Lit up tiki torches have been staked in the deck corners. Sweet smoke curls into the sky. The fire flickers in the wind, but finds a way to keep burning. A song about margaritas plays over a speaker. It is not a song that does justice to the gravity of our moment. I touch the slight roundness under my sweatshirt and think about the months that lie ahead, the ways my body will become alien to me.
I imagine me and Marcus stepping onto my mother’s houseboat, my hands cupping my stomach, and offering her another path. I imagine all of us grabbing this new life and living it and living it and living it.
We wander to the upper level. We sit down. The blue vinyl on the seats is peeling. I pull back a gummy strip and try to see what’s underneath. I feel the vibrations of the engine against my thighs. The margarita music is louder up here and I think about the Pathologist’s voice crackling over the Hospital speakers, dripping into the rooms and hallways, all the lies he told us.