the line when she’s ashore.”
She’s setting them to their tasks when Max pokes his head up from below, the lenses in his fashionably nerdy glasses catching the light as he peeks around at her. He must know Ginger pretty well, because he doesn’t emerge. He allows her the entire stage.
“How do I stop this thing?” I mouth to him. Despite the fact that the sail is down, there is a reason the heron’s cackle is sounding alarm, its black flight feathers springing to action, opening into a wide blue-gray of gracefully pumping wings.
Ginger, with her back to me at the front of the boat, can’t see Max grin in response, a smile that matches the nerdy glasses, that makes me like him all the more. His neck is going just as surely as ours are—his neck and his hair; how does he pull off boyish and charming even with his wrinkled neck? He looks a little like that heron, but in a good way.
“Hold on tight,” he says, his words blowing toward me, “so you won’t fall overboard when we smash into the pier.”
He disappears below just as Ginger turns and heads back toward me, her jacket still improbably spotless, its shawl collar still perfect at her neck. I point to the heron, and Ginger turns and looks. “Wish on it!” I call out as we watch the bird skim low over the water, then rise up on the wind.
“W ISH ON IT !” Ginger had called out all those years ago, that first night on Cook Island—not pointing to a bird or to a shooting star but rather to our champagne cork rising up over the mast. The cork from abottle we’d brought all the way from Ann Arbor, stored first in the trunk and then in the galley fridge. In the gunshot echo of that cork pop, we’d sent our wishes up into the night sky, into the hoot of an owl and the gurgle of briny-grassy water sucking around in the marshes, the thrum of insects pressing in under the bottomless stars.
“Who’s up for skinny-dipping under the moon?” Ginger had called out, already pouring champagne as the cork plopped into the bay. We’d accepted plastic cups spilling foamy white, and skinned off our shoes, dropped our jeans, pulled off our sweaters, all as lighthearted and full of laughter as Ginger was.
She was pale pale pale as she stood naked in the moonlight, no swimsuit under her clothes like the rest of us. Her face, still baby-fat round then, seemed a reflection of the moon itself as she raised her cup.
“All the planets will be aligned this week,” she said. “There’s going to be a syzygy Wednesday night. All the planets banded together on the same side of the sun.”
“Like us,” Laney said. “Like we’ll always be, banded together on the same side, even when we aren’t sharing rooms or houses anymore.”
Betts had said, “To the Syzygy Bradwells!” then, and we’d all raised our cups together, our unspotted hands clicking plastic on plastic as we shouted, “To the Syzygy Bradwells!”
A S G INGER TAKES the wheel back from me this time, skinning off her pumps, I imagine she might wrap a whole poem around that funny word: “syzygy.” I imagine her stirring the word into the awkward call of the great blue heron, mixing these two things that don’t go together at all and capturing in iambic pentameter the joy of being who we were the last time we arrived together at Cook Island, four happy young women just weeks away from graduating into lives we were sure would be more real than the days and months and years we’d shared. It’s the kind of poem Ginger would do well—not that I know the difference between good poetry and bad. The kind of poem I want her to find inside herself. A poem about a time when we could strip down to swim naked in the cold water of the bay, focused on the wide stretch of our wings, on the few bright planets in an endless darkness that would, in just moments, break into beautiful dawn.
GINGER
THE CHAWTERLEY PIER, COOK ISLAND
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8
S KINNY-DIPPING: YOU have to wonder how different that shitass
She’s setting them to their tasks when Max pokes his head up from below, the lenses in his fashionably nerdy glasses catching the light as he peeks around at her. He must know Ginger pretty well, because he doesn’t emerge. He allows her the entire stage.
“How do I stop this thing?” I mouth to him. Despite the fact that the sail is down, there is a reason the heron’s cackle is sounding alarm, its black flight feathers springing to action, opening into a wide blue-gray of gracefully pumping wings.
Ginger, with her back to me at the front of the boat, can’t see Max grin in response, a smile that matches the nerdy glasses, that makes me like him all the more. His neck is going just as surely as ours are—his neck and his hair; how does he pull off boyish and charming even with his wrinkled neck? He looks a little like that heron, but in a good way.
“Hold on tight,” he says, his words blowing toward me, “so you won’t fall overboard when we smash into the pier.”
He disappears below just as Ginger turns and heads back toward me, her jacket still improbably spotless, its shawl collar still perfect at her neck. I point to the heron, and Ginger turns and looks. “Wish on it!” I call out as we watch the bird skim low over the water, then rise up on the wind.
“W ISH ON IT !” Ginger had called out all those years ago, that first night on Cook Island—not pointing to a bird or to a shooting star but rather to our champagne cork rising up over the mast. The cork from abottle we’d brought all the way from Ann Arbor, stored first in the trunk and then in the galley fridge. In the gunshot echo of that cork pop, we’d sent our wishes up into the night sky, into the hoot of an owl and the gurgle of briny-grassy water sucking around in the marshes, the thrum of insects pressing in under the bottomless stars.
“Who’s up for skinny-dipping under the moon?” Ginger had called out, already pouring champagne as the cork plopped into the bay. We’d accepted plastic cups spilling foamy white, and skinned off our shoes, dropped our jeans, pulled off our sweaters, all as lighthearted and full of laughter as Ginger was.
She was pale pale pale as she stood naked in the moonlight, no swimsuit under her clothes like the rest of us. Her face, still baby-fat round then, seemed a reflection of the moon itself as she raised her cup.
“All the planets will be aligned this week,” she said. “There’s going to be a syzygy Wednesday night. All the planets banded together on the same side of the sun.”
“Like us,” Laney said. “Like we’ll always be, banded together on the same side, even when we aren’t sharing rooms or houses anymore.”
Betts had said, “To the Syzygy Bradwells!” then, and we’d all raised our cups together, our unspotted hands clicking plastic on plastic as we shouted, “To the Syzygy Bradwells!”
A S G INGER TAKES the wheel back from me this time, skinning off her pumps, I imagine she might wrap a whole poem around that funny word: “syzygy.” I imagine her stirring the word into the awkward call of the great blue heron, mixing these two things that don’t go together at all and capturing in iambic pentameter the joy of being who we were the last time we arrived together at Cook Island, four happy young women just weeks away from graduating into lives we were sure would be more real than the days and months and years we’d shared. It’s the kind of poem Ginger would do well—not that I know the difference between good poetry and bad. The kind of poem I want her to find inside herself. A poem about a time when we could strip down to swim naked in the cold water of the bay, focused on the wide stretch of our wings, on the few bright planets in an endless darkness that would, in just moments, break into beautiful dawn.
GINGER
THE CHAWTERLEY PIER, COOK ISLAND
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8
S KINNY-DIPPING: YOU have to wonder how different that shitass
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