*
The black Honda is idling in the parking lot. I hesitate. I can still hear the last thing he said before ditching me: You’re nothing without me, you’re nobody. It pisses me off. It really does. But mostly it hurts because it feels like the truth. He dared to put into words my own fears; the whispering doubt, the loneliness that’s been building. Derrick made me feel alive again. Then I think of the drug deal, and I realize that I’m pathetic.
I almost lost the music. I’d let it go. Put away the violin and Grandpa’s songs. Silenced his voice. And then she made me remember. Miss Livingstone and her stories. I remembered what it felt like to really be loved. And even though it hurts and it’s hard and it’s messy, inside all of that I was somebody to someone. Who am I? Really? I have no fucking idea. But I know what I’m not. I know what I don’t want to be.
I thought I wanted to see him. I thought I wanted him to want me back, but suddenly I don’t want to be around him anymore. I turn and walk away from the car.
“Hey!” His feet crunch the leaves that litter the sidewalk. “Hey, come on, you never returned my messages. Can’t we at least talk?”
“I think you’ve said enough.”
“Hey, Morgan.” He grabs my arm, and I turn to face him. “I’m sorry. I . . . Look, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Nothing happened.” He rubs my arm up and down, caressing me, intimate. “Nobody got hurt. Nobody got in trouble.” He’s using that voice again, the one he saves for his nervous clients.
I look at his hand on my arm and take hold of it, wrapping my fingers through his so our palms are together, as much to stop him as anything else. “You’re wrong, Derrick. Something happened.” I look him right in the eyes. And it’s hard to hold his gaze. I drop his hand and turn, spreading out my arms to take in the expanse of the sprawling seniors’ complex nestled behind us in the trees. “This, this is shit. This is nothing. It’s kids’ play.” I turn back and look at him. “You know what I do in there? I sweep the fucking floors and put white paint on a fucking fence. The other day, if I’d been caught, it wouldn’t have been a bunch of old folks I was keeping company. It wouldn’t have been some fucking reconciliation and rehabilitation program. It would have been a hell of a lot different. And you know what? I don’t need that shit.” I look into those green eyes, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I can’t read what’s behind them. But they remind me somehow of the bags of powder sharing space with Grandpa’s violin.
I’m not angry anymore. I’m just tired. And a little sad.
“And I don’t need you.” I’m not saying that to be spiteful. I’m really not. But for the first time, I realize that he doesn’t define me. I’m not nobody without him. I never was.
I can feel the folded newspaper in my pocket.
“Good-bye, Derrick.”
Derrick clenches his jaw. I can see him working it through. He isn’t used to rejection. I think he’s surprised I didn’t come crawling back to him. I think I’m surprised, too. He adjusts his jacket collar and turns his back on me. I watch him walk to his car, see the black Honda kick up small stones and leave black marks on the pavement as he peels out of the parking lot. For the second time in a week, I’m standing alone, feeling small on the side of the road, watching the taillights as the car drives away.
This time is different.
*
There is only one computer for all of us to use. It sits in the dining room on a desk cluttered with papers and empty candy wrappers and other shit people can’t be bothered to pick up. Some of the kids have their own laptops, but I’ve never cared enough to find a way to get my own. It’s late by the time I get on it. The TV is on in the other room, and everyone else has collected there, so at least I will have some privacy.
I enter the name of the ship, Kelowna. Turns out that’s a city in British Columbia, and all the hits that come up have nothing to do with the ship. At least not the one I’m interested in. I put the paint-splattered newspaper article beside me on the desk, flattening it out so that I can see the picture of the two divers and the old photo from 1921. When I add “shipwreck” and “Lake Superior,” I find what I’m looking for—a listing of ships that sank on the Great Lakes. I click on the link. “The Kelowna, a steam-powered cargo ship, disappeared during a winter storm in late 1926. She was traveling to Thunder Bay with a full load and twenty-two people on board and was last seen, heavy with ice, passing Whitefish Point Light. An early winter storm ravaged Lake Superior”—God I love that word, ravaged, makes it sound so violent and passionate at the same time—“and it was assumed that she had succumbed to the waves and foundered near Passage Island. The wreck was never found.” There is the same photograph of the ship that’s in the newspaper, black and white, the rigging for the two masts adorned with flags and the caption beneath it noting the date the boat was launched: July 7, 1921.
There’s a link at the bottom of the page for Larkin and Sons, the company that owned the ship when it disappeared. It’s a nice website. The company is still in business in Chicago. They’ve obviously changed over the years, but they’re still in shipping and seem to be doing very well. I click on the “about us” tab.
It’s an odd place to find a reference to the sinking of the Kelowna. I expected more business type of history. But there it is. December 1926. Kelowna was making one last trip of the season, carrying goods from Montreal to Port Arthur, when it disappeared in the storm. Robert Larkin, one of the “and Sons,” was on board with his wife and two young children, traveling to Port Arthur to spend the winter with family. The ship was lost with all hands.
*
The house is quiet as everyone heads off to bed. Except Laurie. She’s in the kitchen, loading up the dishwasher like she does every night. She comes up behind me, and I know she’s looking over my shoulder at what I’m doing on the computer. I get it. But it bugs me.
“Homework?”
“Yeah,” I lie. It will make her happy.
She gathers up the candy wrappers, and while she’s doing that, sees the newspaper article and picks it up, reads it. “How tragic,” she says. “I can’t imagine being out on Lake Superior in November in a storm. I can remember it being bad enough in July.”
She puts it back, grabs an empty coffee mug, and heads back toward the kitchen.
“You used to boat?” I ask.
She opens the dishwasher, puts the mug in, turns it on.
“Every once in a while, when I was a kid. My uncle used to take us out sometimes; Thompson Island, Sawyers Bay, Loon Harbor, Porphyry Island. Most of the time it was great, but when the wind and waves picked up, it scared the hell out of me. But that was a long time ago. I haven’t been for years.”