We Are Pirates: A Novel (19 page)

Chapter 7

CAPTAIN SCROD
:

All hands are the wrong hands when they clutch what is not theirs. I learned this from the words of Socrates, and all my life I believed it like my given name, until the day everything was taken from me by the treacherous hands of the crown. So now I swear it, by this drawn cutlass, that on every civilized shore the most feared name will be—

(
offstage: cannon fx
)

And so on. The drama ran just over an hour, scripted, as with so much of pirate lore, by a variety of hands, passed on mostly via computer to hirelings at a large entertainment company that had nine
Pirates!
going in port cities across America and Canada, with scarcely any supervision save a week of unpaid rehearsals for the company of nine actors and one stagehand, plus the driver of the
Corsair
, who took the boat out on the same short loop with a coffee mug in his hand, filled with beer. Performances were at noon, three, five and seven, and tickets were fifty-five dollars for adults and thirty-five for children, because at this point in history everything cost less for children, on the grounds that they didn’t take up as much room. The stage was everywhere people weren’t standing, the lights were the fogged-out sun, and the music was a little prerecorded deckwork piped through speakers on the masts. San Francisco was a new port for
Pirates!
and despite a rich pirate history the city had not made the show a success. The boat was usually half-empty, the tourists cold in shorts and taking halfhearted pictures of the boys in tights and poor Sophia, about to abandon her theater major at the state university, in a prickly hoop skirt and her own makeup. A poster called it a one-hour ride that would last a lifetime. Even from shore, the only way Gwen had seen it, you could see it sucked, with flouncy boys shouting to be heard over the
Corsair
’s motor and the cap pistol often as not failing to fire. In the mornings the actors were required to pass out
Pirates!
flyers in targeted areas where rich people might take children.

The Savoy was the fanciest supermarket, with food shipped ethically from faraway ports. Gwen’s mother had already ordered the food from their catering department for the barbecue with the invitations leaving out Gwen’s name because she was a mistake. Near the entrance was a boy with an arrogant chin passing out flyers for something or other. Gwen’s mother sighed past him and rolled several shopping carts a few inches before choosing one, sighing again, and leading Gwen toward sparkly produce.

“So,” she said finally, “do you have anything to tell me?”

What had Gwen’s mother spotted? “What?” she asked.

“You heard me,” Gwen’s mother said, and took a list out of her pocket. “You’ve been distant.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, I thought so.”

“I was
grounded.
I couldn’t go
anywhere
until a little while ago.”

“Let’s put that behind us,” Gwen’s mother said, and put lettuce in a bag. She ate a lot of lettuce, which Gwen found embarrassing.

“Then, what?”

“Gwen,” Gwen’s mother said. “I’m just asking you if there’s something on your mind.”

“I want a folding knife,” Gwen said, because why not try.

“Do your apple thing,” Gwen’s mother said, and then “What?”

“A folding knife,” Gwen said, going over to the apples as instructed. Soon she would be released, she thought, from all bossy people. She was very good at finding the ones without bruises. “I think they have them here, near the cheese graters and stuff.”

“A weapon?” Gwen’s mother asked.

“It’s for picnics,” Gwen said. “I was thinking, you wanted me to use the Embarcadero.”

“Well—”

“That’s what you
said
,” Gwen insisted. “Anyway I thought I could have a picnic with some friends.”

“Well, we have cheese knives at home.”

“But those are
yours.
This would be my
own.
”

“Gwen, you get every single thing you want, and you are
still
demanding.”

“Don’t
yell
at me!”

“Gwen, I know you’re having a hard, I don’t know, something is hard for you. But expand your horizons.”

“I
am.
”

“Look around the world.”

“I
do.
”

“Interesting things happen every day,” she said, gesturing up and down the boxes of crackers. “You can find the out-of-the-ordinary everywhere.”

“Then it’s
not
,” Gwen growled, “out of the ordinary.”

But Gwen’s mother wasn’t listening. Her eyes were blinky and angled above the highest shelves. “It will happen to you,” she said. “It’s like when I went to France, although of course I was much older. I’ve told you that, I know. It will happen to you too, Gwen.”

Gwen knew this wasn’t the case. They had agreed that they would have to stick to the Pacific coast, heading south probably, to Mexican ports and South America. She would never get to France. A consequence of the life she had chosen.

(It was not true. Gwen would go to France and find it beautiful.)

They were silent through checkout, while the clerk pawed through their items and an old man, too old to be working, put them in bags. It was another injustice, Gwen thought. Her mother said something to the clerk Gwen didn’t hear, but the old man snorted, so she knew it must have been stupid. She stood on tiptoe and pretended to look into one of the bags so she could whisper to him, “My mother’s a bitch.”

The old man snorted again.

“I’m out of here tomorrow.”

The old man nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said.

“Fourteen?” Gwen heard the cashier say. “That’s a hard age.”

Gwen and the old man glared at her until the bags were finished.

“Have a good today and a good tomorrow,” the old man said to her. Gwen noticed that he had a hearing aid, the pink color an indignity, an outrage. “Don’t be a stranger.”

Gwen’s mother smiled nervously and pushed the cart away. “You really shouldn’t talk to strangers,” she said when they were outside.

“
Mother
, he was an old man.”

“The old men are the worst,” Gwen’s mother said, although she was smiling a little. “Anyway, I would think you’d had enough time like that, with your punishment. Where are the keys? I think the car’s over there.”

“I
see
the car, Mom.” Gwen was yearning to be reprimanded, so she could walk away. But Gwen’s mother was unfolding a triangle of paper she had found in her pocket. Gwen looked elsewhere and then back again. Her mother was reading it with a tiny smile, and—
perfect
—Amber was walking straight toward them. They pretended not to recognize each other, which was sexy, but Amber gave her a secret wave, her hand fluttering at her hair and clutching, Gwen knew, two hundred forty dollars in filched twenties from their dads. Amber’s ex worked at the Savoy making sandwiches. He was going to see to ordering and delivery, as Gwen and Amber had learned that liquor stores would not leap to believe they were of legal age, let alone deliver a case of alcohol to the Barbary Coast Hotel.

“What if he says he won’t do it?” Gwen had said on the phone a few nights earlier. “He could be fired for that, making up an order that he took on the phone.”

“I’ll tell him that if he does it I’ll give him a blow job.”

“
Amber
!
”

“And I will, too.”

“You told me you guys never even kissed.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t my idea. I’ll do it if I have to. Everybody does it sometime.”

Gwen had never thought about it but realized it was true, at least for all girls, pretty much. Blow jobs weren’t out of the ordinary. She was realizing it that evening when she slunk down the staircase at the instructions of her mother, who was in the living room switching purses. Everything was out on the table like evidence, and, to Gwen’s embarrassment, her mother was sucking thickly on a straw dipped in a bottle of iced tea. She had noticed the missing money, must be what this was about. If only she would stop sucking.

“What?”

Gwen’s mother put the bottle down. “I asked this morning if you had anything to tell me.”

Gwen looked at her carefully. “What?”

“Don’t
what
me.”

Gwen scratched her ear and felt her hair. Where was the haircut she’d meant to get? There wasn’t time now.

Gwen’s mother shouldn’t have sighed again, but she did, and reached down past her legs to the floor, as if looking for lost feet. But then she brought out a box from underneath the sofa. “I found these in your room,” she said, not even trying to sound anything but triumphant. “Hidden behind a bunch of books I know you’re not reading.”

Gwen felt all possible fury. It was an injustice, a grave injustice, that she had a knife but it was upstairs in the sweatshirt she’d wear tomorrow. It was in case blood had to be spilt. Her fingers were wide open, down at her sides like two splayed-out stars.

“You’re stealing again.”

“Those were a
present.
”

It was her boots, her unworn secret. Their ownership was not in dispute, as it had passed down without incident, to Gwen from Amber, to Amber from the boutique and the credit card, to the boutique from the factory, to the factory from the tanner from the cow. They were aboveboard, and almost tall enough to cover the burn.

“Do you know how much these cost?”

Three hundred fifty dollars. “
No
!
” Gwen said. “I said they were a
present
!”

“I don’t know what to do with you!” cried her mother.

“You don’t get to
do
anything with me,” Gwen said with scorn.

Gwen’s mother rose up with both her hands in the air. She had never laid a hand on Gwen, and she didn’t now. But what?

“I’m serious,” her mother said, in a hoarse and desperate voice.

“So am I.”

“This is
it.
If I weren’t your mother . . .”

She stopped talking, or anyway Gwen stopped listening. If Gwen’s mother weren’t her mother, she’d just be some lady. And beautiful, too. It was true. Gwen looked at her mother and thought, I’ll never see you again, Mom. Like her mom was a candy bar. But she had a hot feeling, down in her throat.

“Give me those,” Gwen said wearily. “They’re mine. You have no right to take them.”

“I’m not
naive
,” Gwen’s mother said, but then she reached down and threw the box in Gwen’s direction. It opened midair and the boots stepped out, beautiful and empty. “Take them, then. I wash my hands of it.
Take them
!
”

“I
will
take them,” said Gwen, although she let them spill on the floor. “I’ll take them and walk out of here,” and this is the part of this history with much shouting.
Guttersnipe! Cow! Scum! Ingrate! Galley slave! Sea hag! Fiend in human shape!
It was an uproar, the last of many, and Gwen knew even when she stalked upstairs and burst in on her father, who was hiding in the bathroom trimming his nails, to scrawl I HATE HER on his hand, that it didn’t matter. The liquor would be delivered no matter what Amber had to do. It was why she’d written it on her father’s hand and not her own, so she wouldn’t have to scrub it off in the morning like a fool. Tomorrow she would write
today
. The ship was almost already sailed. It was all about to be water that was about to be under the bridge, and when Gwen screamed at her mother, raged at her downstairs and upstairs, all the while she was doing a kindness, for never did it escape her mouth that the note Marina found in her pocket, the one that made her smile, was Amber’s handiwork.

Dear Marina,

This is just a note to say I was thinking of you, and that I will love you always.

Love, Phil

PS Don’t worry about our daughter. She’s beautiful.

There was no strategy to this. It was something she had asked Amber to do, just for a kindness. Just because she knew her mother would worry, as the mothers of all rapscallions have worried, gazing at the sea and wondering if they would ever return. Gwen’s mother deserved to worry, but still Gwen gave her this as the ship pulled away, a last call, just as the bartender called last call at the Pisco, the bar where the
Pirates!
cast went after the last performance of the day. Amber and Gwen had tailed them there at a discreet distance, and then convinced Manny to go in to watch the end of it, stone sober, as drinking was against his religion. “They drink up their pay until closing,” he’d reported over catmint tea.
Last call
, the bartender calls it. And then he says,
you don’t have to go home
,
but you can’t stay here.