The Tears of Dark Water (6 page)

“They left yesterday.”

Aster touched her arm. “I know it was a hard decision.”

“I didn’t decide,” said Vanessa, shaking her head. “I just kept putting it off.”

Aster pondered this. “What did the letter say?”

Vanessa brushed a stray hair out of her face. “He asked me to remember.”

“And?” Aster asked softly.

“I tried. I can’t be selective about it.”

Aster didn’t have to respond. The look in her eyes was enough to convey her understanding. All at once, Vanessa began to cry. Aster wrapped her arms around her and held her, expressing without words the truth Vanessa had struggled all her life to believe:
I’m here for you. You’re not in this alone.

“Thanks,” Vanessa said after a while, drying her eyes on her coat.

“I bet you could use some company,” Aster said. “Abram can take care of the kids.”

Against her instinct, Vanessa shook her head. Aster’s husband was a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and his free evenings were rare.

“Suit yourself,” Aster said. “Call if you need me.”

“I will,” Vanessa replied and gave her friend a hug goodbye.

She drove out of the lot in a daze and braced herself for a long commute. The Capitol Beltway and US-50 East were bumper-to-bumper. She listened to Vivaldi’s entire
Four Seasons
concerto before she emerged from the congestion. In time, she left the highway and drove through Annapolis toward the Wardour neighborhood, an upscale enclave of wooded lots and waterfront estates near the Naval Academy. Her home was at the end of Norwood Road on the banks of the Severn River.

When she pulled into the cobblestone driveway, she found the two-story Cape Cod ablaze with light, courtesy of the home automation system Daniel had installed before the voyage. She sat for a moment and stared at the house. She loved it as she had never loved another place in her life. But she had never quite thought of it as hers. Daniel’s parents had bought it for them before Quentin was born.

She gathered her purse and walked through the grape arbor to the front door. Skipper barked once and greeted her in the foyer. The house had been the pet project of a retired architect, and it looked the part, with vaulted ceilings, a sprawling floor plan, and windows everywhere. Vanessa had filled the walls with paintings and mirrors and the rooms with classic furniture. Daniel’s contributions were few, but they dominated the great room—a six-foot brass searchlight; an outsized map of ancient Rome; and a hand-built Bösendorfer grand piano for Quentin.

Vanessa went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine, and Skipper followed in her wake, his feet clicking on the wide planks of the reclaimed wood floor. She poured the wine into a decanter and then took Skipper for a walk down to the boat dock.

As he always did, the dog bounded ahead of her into the trees beyond the swimming pool. Vanessa walked at her own pace, following the lighted path between the forest and the lawn. The stars were bright overhead, as was the Naval Academy Bridge in the distance. She inhaled the crisp air and listened to the gentle sounds of the river lapping against the shore. Her yard was a magical place, the kind of Arcadia she had dreamed of as a young girl, as her mother, Trish, dragged her from the cabarets of New York to the casinos of Las Vegas to the Hollywood rock scene, trying men on like wedding dresses until she lucked upon Ted, Vanessa’s stepfather. No matter how insane married life had driven Vanessa—negotiating Daniel’s compulsive productivity, Quentin’s emotional instability, and her own relentless perfectionism—the river had always brought her peace.

She met Skipper at the end of the path and followed him across the sun deck—another of Daniel’s innovations—to the stairs that led down to the dock. In the summer, she might have taken the dog out on the bay to watch the sunset, but it was late autumn and she didn’t like navigating the channel after dark. Instead, she strolled past the Nautique and the
Relativity
—Daniel’s trusty old Passport 40 yacht—and stopped at the railing at the end. The wind blowing off the water turned her eyes moist and her hair wild. She scratched Skipper’s head and allowed the solitude to envelop her.

She thought of her husband and son on the other side of the night. She had no idea what it felt like to sleep on a sailboat beneath the stars. The thought of it terrified her about as much as it thrilled Daniel and Quentin. In a few hours, the sun would rise over the Indian Ocean and they would sail on into another tropical day. What would they do for all those hours surrounded by sea and sky? Daniel had tried to explain it in one of his letters—the notion of ocean time; the observation of winds and weather; the repairs necessary to keep the
Renaissance
shipshape; the plotting and logging of course and drift; the conversations with Quentin about his correspondence courses; the reading and journaling and thinking and dozing. He was certain that the sea had changed him. But Vanessa wasn’t so sure. It was easy to say half a world away. The proof would come when he returned home—when his clients started calling and Quentin went off to college and they were alone again. Would he be different then?

In time, she returned to the house and her bottle of wine. She poured herself a glass, switched on the fireplace, and sank into the plush cushion of her favorite chair—a Belgian wingback. Skipper followed her into the living room and curled up on the Oriental rug beside the fire. She took a few sips of the wine and placed the glass on the table beside her. Her heart lurched when she saw the letter there. She thought she remembered putting it with the others in Daniel’s office, but she must have forgotten. She stared at it for a long time, struggling with the voices inside her head.
At last, she picked it up and read it again. He had written it on October 11, a month ago.

Dearest V:

We’re in Sri Lanka, about to depart for the Maldives. We made decent time crossing the Bay of Bengal. The winds were intermittent, but the weather held and we made the passage without any sign of a tropical depression. We were fortunate. The harbormaster in Phuket insisted we wait until January. I told him we had survived 55-knot winds and 30-foot breaking waves in the Tasman Sea. He said we were crazy, but I don’t agree. We just decided not to be afraid.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear in the past two weeks. I feel like I’ve spent the last twenty years managing my own insecurities. You said it during our courtship—that I grew up in the shadow of my father and never quite stepped into the sun. I avoided the Naval Academy because my mother intervened. But Dad didn’t change his strategy. He told me in a thousand not-so-subtle ways that my passions for thinking and writing were a waste of time. “Philosophers don’t make history,” he said. “It’s the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the engineers, the businesspeople who take their ideas and shape the world.”

It’s ironic, but he was right in a way. Boldness is what I lacked—boldness to break out of the straitjacket he had fitted for me. Instead, I went to law school, like he did. I packed away my feelings in my mental attic and reduced my life to a pragmatic equation. It pains me now to think about it, but I understand why I did it. I was scared of failure, of being the laughingstock of my more successful peers. I accepted his theory that pragmatism is the keystone of progress, that idealists drive themselves insane or die at the Bastille. But the pragmatic path, I have found, also requires a sacrifice—a sacrifice of the soul.

Of course, I don’t completely regret the choice I made. If I hadn’t gone to Columbia, I never would have met you or known Quentin. Approaching you at Carnegie Hall was the boldest thing I’d ever done. I’ve been reflecting on that moment a lot—what I was thinking and what we said to each other. Do you remember? The butterfly metaphor came out of nowhere. It was like an epiphany, as was your reply. Your honesty gave me courage to take the next step. And you met me there. You took a risk and invited me into your world.

I’ll never forget that spring. Every word you spoke, every song you played for me, every hour we spent in Central Park, every time we made love, it was as if I was living someone else’s life, someone with far better luck than my own. I’ve felt that only one other time—out here on the ocean with Quentin. Beauty is all around us; the world is bursting with it; and nothing else really matters.

I wish I could share it with you. I’m still holding out hope that you will meet us in the Seychelles. People say that La Digue is the most beautiful island in the world. Please come, Vanessa. Like I came to Schapiro Hall. We could find that joy again.

Do you remember?

~ D

When Vanessa finished the letter, she let the pages fall onto her lap and stared into the distance, her eyes unfocused, her body still. An idea had taken shape in her heart as she read her husband’s words. It was a litmus test of sorts, a challenge that, if met, might resolve her indecision. She had never believed in fate, in the mystical alignment of stars and planets—even, if she were frank, in the notion of Providence. That was the stuff of fairy tales, one of many myths her childhood had debunked. Life was what you made of it; God helped those who helped themselves. But there was a contradiction in her worldview, a wild strand of feeling that refused to be confined by rationalism: her music.

She stood up from her chair and walked slowly toward the piano, its black case glistening beneath halogen bulbs. Skipper raised his head and watched her go, intuiting her destination. Beside the piano was her violin. Hand-crafted by Francesco Bissolotti in Cremona, Italy, the hometown of Antonio Stradivari, it had been a gift from Ted at her high school graduation. The insurers appraised it at $22,000 and her bow, a Bernard Millant from Paris, at $4,000—valuable but not exceptional in the rarefied world of violinmaking. To Vanessa, however, they were priceless.

She lifted the Bissolotti off its stand and assumed the starting position, her chin on the chinrest, her bow just above the strings. She closed her eyes and felt a twinge of apprehension. She hadn’t played the Beethoven in years, and never without an orchestra behind her. The solo parts were not meant to be played alone. But therein lay the test. If she could play the third movement from memory—including the eminently difficult final cadenza—perhaps she could take a step as bold as Daniel had taken.

Her bow began to move almost without bidding. The fiddle-like opening notes flowed out of her with an exuberance that surprised her. She paused at the right moment, hearing in her head the orchestra’s entry, reprising the rondo theme. Then she came in again and hit the high notes with perfect pitch. Her fingers danced on the fingerboard, her body rocking back and forth with the rhythm of the music. Minutes passed like this as she alternated between the solo and orchestra parts, the latter playing only in her mind. She imagined herself in Carnegie Hall again, a 22-year-old girl who had no idea what the future held but who was determined to make something of it. She remembered the thrill of those moments—and the fear. Then came the Kreisler cadenza. She nearly tripped on the double stops in the long run of sixteenth notes, but somehow her bow found the strings. At last, the rondo theme returned, sweet and delicate at first, then passionate and powerful, as it built to the climax. The voice of the Bissolotti rang in her ears like the song of an angel—pristine and perfect.

When she finished, she let out the breath she was holding. The muscles in her arm were on fire, and her neck was stiff as it always was after she played an extended piece. But her heart was feather-light. She returned the violin to its stand and took her glass of wine to the dining room table where her MacBook was charging. She opened Safari and searched for flights to South Africa before Christmas. That was Daniel’s plan—to sail into Table Bay on December 21 and spend the holidays in Cape Town. She felt the doubt again, like an echo in her heart, but she made the choice to set it aside. She wanted to be there on the wharf when her husband and son arrived. The music had made her remember.

She wanted to see if the change Daniel spoke of was real.

Daniel

The Indian Ocean

06°54´56˝S, 55°35´07˝E

November 8, 2011

The squall came upon them just before noon. Quentin was the first to see the thunderclouds on the horizon, moving toward them like the vanguard of an army. He shouted a warning to Daniel, who was at the navigation station in the cabin updating the logbook. Daniel looked out a porthole and saw the dark haze of rain in the distance. The storm was still miles away, but they didn’t have much time.

He stowed the logbook and secured the lockers and the galley. When the swells hit, everything that wasn’t attached to something or contained in a compartment would be tossed about. He turned off the audio system, stopping Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” in mid-beat, and listened to Quentin operating the winches. After many squalls at sea, they knew the drill. They would sheet in the headsail and put two reefs in the main, leaving just enough canvas to give them steerageway in the storm.

As soon as the cabin was battened down, Daniel removed a panel in the floor and closed the seacocks—the holes in the hull through which sink water and sewage emptied into the ocean. Then he checked the bilge pump and the seals on the hatches. He glanced at the barometer. Only minutes ago, the pressure had been 1005 millibars. It was now 990. In the gale off New Zealand, the mercury had dropped to 962 millibars and stayed that way for over fifteen hours. Daniel doubted this storm would take the pressure below 975. Squalls in the tropics could be fierce, but they were short-lived. He made a note in the logbook and went topside to help Quentin tie off the sheets and secure the dinghy.