On Such a Full Sea (12 page)

If this brief period was not exactly a golden time for their family, it was certainly a heady stretch, when Glynnis and Quig (and even Trish, who didn’t know really anything of what was going on, save that her parents and especially her mother seemed much happier) could imagine themselves to be making the climb back into their life, reinstating their tennis club membership, renting a proper non-service-people’s condo, and traveling for the regional finals of the beauty pageant to a major Charter village on Lake Erie, where they stayed in a double suite at the best hotel with views of the water and a king-sized bed for Trish as well as for them, their splurging a way to spend the hard cash for sure but also to suppress the gaining feeling of impermanence that must have been marking their days, each sweet moment tinged dire.

It happened this way: Glynnis was making up Trish’s face and hair, and Quig was on a call with Ricky back home going over the heavy weekend orders when the line seemed to buzz. The suite door burst open, an angry platoon of midnight-blue-clad Charter security rushing in with their powered batons. Quig instinctively resisted and they shocked him nearly senseless, and they jolted Glynnis, too, when she tried to pull them off him. All the while Trish was screaming in horror and confusion in her lustrous dress that would get badly torn in the melee. They were flown back to their village and on Ricky’s testimony, Quig and Glynnis were tried and convicted. Within a week, the family was forever banished from the Charter, allowed only what they could fit into their wagon (less the confiscated cash) as their worldly estate.

Here was the point at which Fan’s knowledge of his past life ended, Penelope having gone no further in her postmeal tellings, and as they drove on, she found herself filling in possible details and events that had followed, glancing at Quig’s faraway glare and imagining what he must have been compelled to see, and possibly do, to arrive at this place in time. Had he witnessed the last moments of his wife and daughter? Had he killed a person, or two? Fan, being raised in our fashion, was not given to probing into others’ lives, at least not face-to-face, and so it was startling that she asked him right there, straight out, whether he could let her see a picture of his family on his handscreen.

He didn’t acknowledge her, or maybe he did; all the color had rushed out of his face. The muscles of his jaw were clenching, and now he worked the slow turns of a curvy descent with two hands instead of one. Of course, he knew people at the compound speculated about his past but gave no quarter.

If you don’t want to it’s okay, Fan said.

What’s it to you? he asked her, his voice, to her surprise, full of echo and ache.

I was just wondering, she said, which we must believe was the case. He must have, too, and not just because like
everyone else he thought she was younger than she was. Fan was not one to say things for her advantage, even out there in the counties. Often she remained silent, but when she did speak, it seemed only forthright and sincere, which is why people responded to her in the way they did.

There was a long silence when only Loreen’s faint snoring could be heard.

But then he said: Yesterday was her birthday.

Your daughter’s?

He nodded.

How old would she be?

He gave a sighing half chuckle, like he wasn’t quite accepting the turn of this conversation, or maybe that it was happening at all.

And yet he offered: Twenty-five. Maybe just about to be married.

From the side of his sunglasses Fan could see his eyes, searching the empty road, blinking steadily.

Penelope told us she was a very pretty girl. With many talents, too.

That’s right, he said, the idea of this seeming to crumple him inside, the points of his shoulders collapsing just that bit. That’s right. After a while, he touched his handscreen in the compartment of the middle console and some classical music came on. It was a viola concerto by Bach, he told her, a piece his daughter was beginning to play quite well.

Was she going to perform it for the pageant?

He asked if Penelope had told her about all that and she nodded.

She was, he said. She wasn’t a prodigy like some of the girls but she was very good. She had a fine ear. And she played with real enthusiasm, like she was enjoying it. The judges always appreciated that.

There are no pageants in B-Mor.

I suppose not, he said. Can you do anything special?

I can swim.

That’s what I hear. You were a tank diver.

Yes. I can hold my breath for a long time.

Really?

Yes.

How long?

A while.

Show me.

She took a round of slow, deep breaths to prime her lungs and then she took a last one in and closed her mouth. She pinched her nose so he could see she wasn’t cheating. At first he kept his eye on the road like he wasn’t paying attention but soon enough he had unconsciously slowed down, waiting for the moment she would crack. But she just sat there, totally composed, the coloring in her face unchanging; in fact, it looked like she was about to fall asleep. He ordered her to stop. She couldn’t quite hear him, or at least immediately react, as she had entered that state whenever she was in the tanks a long time and aligned with the underwater rhythms, that quelled, half-alive feeling that was neither frightening nor fraught but rather strangely liberating, for the wanting of nothing, not even air.

Stop it now, she heard him say from an outer orbit, that’s enough, yet she was fine, not even close to done, and she was notching herself down another rung when he slapped her face.

I said that’s enough, he barked. Loreen momentarily roused but nothing else was spoken and she fell back to her dreams. He was pushing the car faster now. He was breathing fast himself, like he was running and running. Fan touched her cheekbone, more startled than scared. He hadn’t hit her hard but he had scraped her eye slightly and it was tearing and she dabbed it with her T-shirt sleeve.

You all right? he said after a pause, though not looking at her.

Yes, I’m fine.

You’re a good girl, he said, if sorrowfully.

Thank you.

Listen, do you want to drive again?

That’s okay.

I mean for real. We have a long flat stretch here and I think you can do it.

Okay.

He pulled over and they quickly switched, Fan moving the seat all the way up so she could reach the pedals. She put it into gear and started too slowly and then jerked them forward, but once they were under way, her driving was smooth and assured. Quig picked up his handscreen and restarted the viola piece, the music filling the vehicle.

This is a nice song, she said.

Yes, it is.

After a while, he tapped at his handscreen a few times and he held out a picture for her to see: it was Trish, standing with her mother post recital, the gleaming viola at her side.

You want to know about them? he said. I’ll tell you what happened. Do you want to hear it?

She wasn’t certain anymore if she did. But he was going to tell her anyway. And so she said yes.

And so Fan, driving, listened to the tale of those first days for Quig and his family. Despite the awful details, his telling must have helped her relax at the wheel, the way music can allow our instincts to take over the countless mechanical operations that you couldn’t possibly orchestrate if you had to think through each one. Perhaps it’s the same for a storyteller, the sound of one’s own voice caretaking this turn and the next, and allowing the full flow.

Like everybody, Quig told her, they had read about banishments and would not hear again about those people, and so the day they drove away from their village, Glynnis was terrified, feeling certain that it was their death sentence. She couldn’t stop weeping, these squalls welling up from her chest. Quig was scared, too, though he tried his best not to show it. What helped was that he was preoccupied, though of all the things he should have been worrying about or focusing on, such as where they would spend that first night, or how they would defend themselves if confronted (like all Charters, they couldn’t legally own any weapons), he simply couldn’t settle on whether he should be driving slow or fast, which speed would attract less attention and thus be safest. So he kept alternating, slowing down and then accelerating for arbitrary stretches, until Glynnis finally begged him to stop driving that way. This broke the looped chain of his thoughts, and soon enough he realized that it was probably best to proceed smoothly and purposefully, as if they were heading someplace specific. But when you consider it, one comes to understand how the question might have gripped him. For what do you do when you truly have no idea where you’re heading? At least a pet could revert to its instinct to hide and forage and defend itself and even kill, but what of a former Charter family with meager funds and mostly useless trading possessions (a toaster oven, a cocktail dress) and just a tankful of fuel? Of course, there was no possibility of being accepted into a production settlement like B-Mor (which is always restricted) or trying to gain residency at another Charter, as their banishment was in force system wide. Imagine yourself at the helm of a ship slingshot beyond the Earth’s pull, one course into the spectral chasm as likely as any other, all coordinates open but potentially full of peril, each completely unknown.

He couldn’t help but think, too, that in her own way Trish was tilting with the same dreadful notions. She was totally quiet, which wasn’t like her, not making a sound from the backseat and barely grunting when he asked if she was hungry or had to go; aside from his own fear, his heart was breaking with the inescapable fact that her future was null and that her parents were the sole cause. He had considered suicide but he was sick with the idea of where that would leave his family, which in turn made him think of simply driving off the road at the next drop-off or ravine, delivering them together to a swift, merciful end. But that would be the coward’s path, and he was already angry at himself for the too easy slide he and Glynnis made into their illicit trade, when he should have been putting all his energies into retooling himself, and recalibrating his aspirations, even if it meant descending into the Charter’s service class and perhaps not rising for years, if ever. He should have allowed the linens business more time to grow; he should have been harsher with Glynnis when he first discovered the selling and demanded she cease, but he didn’t blame her, for he knew it was squarely his fault; he should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which had him dreaming more than doing. While his vet partners and Glynnis had been the entrepreneurial ones, he would have been content to welcome the pets and animals into his single office one by one, administering medications and performing surgeries and even brushing their teeth and clipping their nails if needed.

But now here he was, at the wheel of his family car, trekking into the open counties. There were some motels up ahead where you could also get a meal, but they were known at best to be grubby, dingy establishments, and very expensive, being relatively secure, certainly not affordable for more than a few days for any non-Charter. Naturally Charters would never stay there; they traveled by private copter or plane, or on upper-atmosphere globals if they went overseas, and would rarely take a car ride of more than a couple of hours.

Quig passed on the first two motels, one being full and the other so decrepit that it appeared it might imminently collapse, but there was nothing on the nav for a half day’s drive past the third one and he was compelled to stop. The large sign at the place read Who Falls Inn, as it was set beside a stream that ran, if meagerly, over a poured concrete dam, which was what made up the “falls.” What purpose the dam served, either past or present, was not apparent. There were a good number of other cars parked in the fenced-in lot and the two-level building was an aqua blue with roiling cascades of white water painted on the roof and on the walls under the eaves, well rendered in a certain way, if looking more like surf than gushing water. The place was tidy and well cared for, the plantings of flowers and shrubs around the building healthy and attractive, the footpath through the grass that unnecessarily snaked toward the front entrance lined with clean white stones and trimmed out with lengths of red garden hose, such that all in all the impression was of an establishment one might encounter in a folk tale, this colorful, friendly-looking hostelry in the middle of a nether land, which surely could not be as inviting as it seemed.

Which was why Quig and Glynnis had to warn Trish that they might not be staying there, their immediate shared thought being this was too good to be true. They waved to the vid cam and got buzzed in through the rolling section of fence gating. Quig composed himself by taking a series of long, deep breaths—he was not the man he’d soon have to become—and walked to the office window. He tapped on the three-fingers-thick plexiglass and a shade went up, revealing a bespectacled fellow, youngish but already bald, his Afro tightly sheared on the sides and meeting his neatly groomed beard and moustache. He wore a crisply pressed white dress shirt with a diamond-shaped monogram (LWA) stitched into the breast pocket of the shirt. When he saw Quig, who back then was wide-eyed and pale-skinned and looking very newly out of his element, the fellow’s expression hardened, no doubt anticipating the lengthy, pathetic sob story he’d endure and have to ignore once again. But Quig simply asked if there was a vacancy and if his car would be safe overnight, and the fellow—his name, they would soon learn, was Landon Wiggins Anderson—grumpily gestured that he should go retrieve his wife and daughter, and then he had them step through the metal detector.

Landon co-owned the inn with his partner, Dale, a short, tubby, florid-faced older white man who ushered them inside with a butterfly fluttering of hands and comments on how darling Trish looked in her polka-dot sundress and white patent-leather shoes and purse, an ensemble Glynnis had bought on their last day as Charter residents. It was something they could ill afford but Quig was actually happy she had splurged this one last time. Trish hadn’t said much at all about her new outfit but she was now showing off her new clutch to Dale, who disappeared and then returned with a box of costume jewelry pieces guests had left behind, and he said she could choose from and take as many items as she liked. Trish was a good girl so only chose a ring and a necklace, and it was only after Dale goaded her that she selected a ruby-crusted hairpin and a cowrie-shell bracelet.

Then he showed them their suite, one and a half rooms decorated in an English-hunt-country style (at least that’s how Dale described it), the walls painted to look like they were paneled with burled wood and the overstuffed furniture upholstered in faux leather and suede; framed prints of riders on horseback and foxhounds hung in sets of six along with the mounted heads of a horned gazelle and what looked to be a bobcat. There was a baronial carved-post bed in the inner room and the sofa outside was a sleeper and the bathroom, though not large, was beautifully tiled and set with an antique basin and claw-foot tub fitted with nickel-plated fixtures. There were only eight suites total (refitted from twenty rooms when they bought the property) because they never had more than a half-dozen guests and wanted each room done in a distinctive style, Vienna 1900 and Old Plantation and Balinese Treehouse, the work of finding and restoring pieces gradually accomplished over the years. They finally got everything done this spring, and though Dale was clearly pleased and proud to show off the inn, he admitted that without an ongoing project it was much too quiet, though Landon preferred it that way.

That evening at supper they met the other lodgers, two couples who owned their own businesses and a salesman for one of the huge agri-food concerns and a family of four from Denmark, who were touring America and were intentionally spending some time in the open counties. The Danes were exceptionally tall and attractive, and spoke a perfect, grammatical English, which was a stark contrast to the couples and the salesman, who were counties people of clearly decent means but were coarse in their manner and expressions and what they were willing to talk about at the table with strangers. One of the men kept going on about the side-by-side basins in his bathroom (the Aix-en-Provence suite) and how he made the mistake of doing his business in the wrong one and having to transfer it by hand to the other, which his wife and the other couple and the salesman wildly hooted at but that made Glynnis blanch with revulsion and misery. The Danish family was neither delighted nor disgusted, but rather fascinated, taking detailed mental notes about the social character and practices of these endemic creatures.

It was a good thing that Dale and Landon were in the kitchen at the time, as Landon in particular would have been appalled and perhaps demanded the rude guest leave the table and maybe the inn; you could see he was a fastidious and somewhat severe young man who held himself to an impossibly high standard and was being ground down inside by the burr of constant compromise and disappointment. But this made him, among other things, a needlessly excellent cook; the platters of pasta and salad and grilled wild pig that Dale brought out (it was Tuscan night) were as deftly executed and maybe tastier than most Charter restaurant fare, and he served to the adults
tout compris
a small glass of red wine—something you never saw outside of Charter villages because of its ludicrous price—simply because it was the perfect accompaniment to the meal.

The deep flavors and genuine warmth filling his belly made Quig think that perhaps life in the counties wouldn’t be as horrible as they assumed. Of course, they were spending a near tenth of their money stash for this single night and couldn’t justify staying for any longer, but the rational calculations that he would normally make didn’t seem relevant, not when he saw how the good food and softly lighted dining room was definitely calming Glynnis and had already lifted Trish out of her silence, as she was now gabbing with the Danish girl about their favorite pop singers and boy bands. They asked to be excused and went off to the chintz-heavy “reading room” to exchange songs and vids. Meanwhile, the adults discussed the issues of the day, at least as far as the open counties were concerned, the Danes and their teenage son listening intently and nodding and periodically asking for clarification of a certain term or reference.

The primary focus of their talk was an enduring counties topic, at least as Quig and Glynnis understood it when they were Charters, which was the idea of confederating the many hundreds of counties communities in this part of the country, much like the Charters were organized. One of the problems was the sheer number of them, some constituted and run like any old-time town or small city, with a fairly dependable infrastructure and public services, the much greater number being impromptu settlements that had grown over the years and were known only by somebody’s name, such as Tinkersville or the Vromans. Those who believed in confederation were always trying to enlist the contiguous or neighboring settlements to pool security and emergency resources, and increase their negotiating power for services, but it never got very far, the leaderships of the entities ultimately unable to agree on who would subordinate themselves, despite the fact that joining together would likely benefit their people. The settlements originally developed because the old-time towns and small cities were dying off because of crushing debts, as they couldn’t afford to run the schools and repave streets and fix the sewers, the last intact services usually being the police. There were many opportunistic gangs and sundry marauders. But it didn’t take long for the inevitable turn, which is that the police forces took over the towns, the chiefs and their officers deposing (often violently) the mayors and other administrators; in fact, many of the settlements are now led by the descendants of those first strongmen, who generation after generation have exercised a martial level of control over their residents, and have profited commensurately through the direct or shadow ownership of food stores and the flow of utilities. Naturally, the generally dismal quality of life from time to time fomented brutal coups, the latest instance of which usually pushed another round of chatter about confederation and its promise of stability and security, which is what was happening now.