Two bald eagles soared overhead, circling each other as the afternoon sun started its decline, and we were on our backs, admiring the day, listening to the water clap against the hull of the Chubasco. The docks were still, and we looked at the row of sailboats bobbing in rhythm, slowed by the wall of tires and old wood that surrounded the marina. No one was in sight. The eagles flew to the wooded hillside across the bay, a fish caught in the talons of one.

“Do you think it’ll pick up? The wind?” Mary shifted her back with the hull’s subtle movement. Her brown hair, long as ever, splayed against the dirty white fiberglass.

“Eventually.” I stood and stretched. Eventually, this damned boat will be out of our hands. It had been moored for years at Garfield Bay, collecting more and more slime. The inside, which was once immaculate and warm, now gathered mold from leaks around the pop-up roof. Streaks of green frosty growth grew like widening triangles over and around the bench seats and table, the cabinets, and bed. Long time ago, we had a stereo installed in town, and we listened to The Beach Boys as we sliced through calm waters, like the waters today.

Mary held a hand out for me to grab, and she pulled herself up. She was about an inch or so taller than me, a trait carried down from our mom, from our grandma, and so on, as mom had told us growing up before she left—Las Vegas was always calling her name—about the great genetic history of our lineage, or hers I guess. She seemed to be thinking the same thing too. It had been years since we faced each other. That was three summers ago.

“I mean, if it doesn’t pick up, we can always motor over. The outboard is enough,” I said.

“I know. I just want to get the sails up, one last time.” She handed me the paperwork for the Chubasco and climbed aboard. She moved gracefully, finding the right steps with the right feet to navigate over the side and onto the formed seats in the stern. It was as if she was the one who came out to the marina after storms or heavy rains to check and see if the boat was still floating and upright. It was as if she had taken time off from work, spent hours in the dead of night monitoring the water levels in the hull, repairing the broken sump pumps (there were two), trying and failing to keep the mold at bay, and paying the slip fee every month even though no one ever used it. But, the boat had to be somewhere.

Mary clambered inside, propped up the roof, and looked back at me. For a moment, I saw her as she was when we were kids, before we got jobs and married, before the world closed in on pieces of our lives, like snow accumulating on the edges of a pasture, drifting up against fences, until the storm fully hits. And she’s seven again, and I’m fourteen. Mom makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and she looks from the table in the hull because we are all sitting inside, and she sees something moving outside on the formed bench seats, hooks her finger, and smiles.

“Well, I don’t think there’s any point in waiting longer. Might as well get going with the motor and hope the wind comes. The guy said he’ll be at his dock till eight tonight.” Mary submerged deeper in the cabin of the Chubasco and returned with a white towel and sunscreen.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll get the motor going. Untie us, will ya?” I said.

With the motor humming, a trail of black smoke streaming out, I powered us from the slip, from the docks new with a recent remodel three years ago, from our separate cars (the guy said he would drive us around the lake after the deal) and the hillsides of Garfield Bay. Two eagles meandered on an updraft. They looked like scouts.

We left the cover of Garfield Bay, the little motor churning the water, Chubasco chugging like a train leaving the station, and I steered us, angling toward the far side of the lake. If the engine didn’t die, and the wind stayed quiet, we’d be there in about couple hours. Maybe less.

“Do you think we are getting enough? Like, do you think we’re getting ripped off?” Mary sat in the stern, propped against her towel for her back, thumbing on her phone. “I mean, some of these sailboats can go for a lot. Look at this one.” She leaned over and showed a picture of a 27-foot Catalina, crisp white with blue accents, sails like new cotton, windows polished, trim, and accents buffed until it could have been seen from across entire oceans. It was obscene.

“Doesn’t it remind you of ours? Like, before?” Mary asked.

I shifted closer to the rudder, pretended to focus on our course. “Yeah.”

“I miss sailing this thing so much.” Mary sat back down and continued to thumb her phone. “Yeah, I guess we are getting a fair price. I mean, I’m surprised this thing still floats.”

A gust of wind struck us, starboard, and her hair and mine buffeted. I watched the lake, which was the color of dirty sapphire, the darkening of the distant trees, for the sun was descending, and I was again fourteen. We play Monopoly at dusk. Mary slides the wheelbarrow to a purple square. She collects go. Mom pays her, because she is the banker, always. I skip my top hat to free parking. Mom moves her dog to her own house in Indiana. A lantern drives along the entire side of the board, and it doesn’t seem to stop.

“But, when you think about it, this thing’s got new pumps, the sails are all intact. Like, seriously, we totally could’ve gotten more,” she said, looking out at the lake. Maybe, when she looked at me, she was also transported. But then the thought was gone, drowned in the drone of the motor.

“Yeah, but she’s gonna need a deep cleaning. And she’s gonna need new seals for the roof, and the cabinets have water damage. She needs work.”

We were in the middle of the lake now, and clouds billowed over the hillside, dark and guilty. I pushed the rudder slightly. Another hour or so of small talk, of how’s the husband, how’s the job, how’s the Toyota, how’s the life inside of an apartment building downtown, where she liked to walk around and around. And it’s not as if she was to blame for anything.

We were both young, absent, and Mom unaware. Sometimes, in the dark, a wave will strike and that is nature. Nature, I’d been told once, years ago, cared, but didn’t know how to show it, and it was up to us to discern that from the waves striking, striking.

“Do you think if you’d have cleaned this up, we could have gotten more for it?” Mary transferred from port to starboard, applied more sunscreen.

I kept a hand on the rudder.

“Hey,” Mary said. “I brought along a little surprise.” She pulled from her bag two sandwiches in Ziploc bags and threw one to me. “Like old times.”

It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I ate while I steered, and Mary peered over the roof of Chubasco, thinking of something that caused her forehead to wrinkle, and I felt for the first time since we had hugged at the gate to the docks how time pressed down on us equally, and I knew we had both a lot and little to say. We had simply said hello and passed through the gate, her in front, and I followed, unaware of those sandwiches, hidden and cool.

When the sandwiches were gone, and the plastic bags stored in another plastic bag inside the cabin, when I made the last major adjustment for the rudder, because we were getting closer to our destination, I saw the trees sway. Two eagles took off from branches, seen as specks, and traveled deeper inland. They carried nothing.

“Do you think, after all this time, Mom’s happy?” Mary had moved from starboard and was now sitting next to me on the other side of the rudder. The motor was straining after running for so long. The journey, when I mapped it out on Google using waypoints, said it should’ve only taken three hours or so, was on its fourth hour. But the land was closing in. Another hour, we should be there, which was good because the sun was setting, and I didn’t know if the lights worked.

I paused, listened to the breeze through the cables and ropes that attached to various spots over the deck. Sometimes, the wind whistled a joint or connector. The wind was, after all, picking up.

“I think Mom’s happy. She’s got a new life. Her boyfriend seems nice. You’ve visited them, right? I was there a couple months ago for a week, for training.” I felt my hand grew cold on the till, and I realized that, even though we were in the heart of summer, the lake was cold. I had forgotten how air changed over water. I thought I heard a howl of a coyote, distant as if it were traveling through time to be heard.

“I was worried. For a while, it seemed like it might’ve been the end of her too, ya know.” Her face was angled toward the setting sun, and in her face, I saw our mom’s nose, sharp, pointed—prone to expressing the inner workings of thoughts. Did she see something on my face? In me? The waves on the lake were getting frustrated, and the Chubasco breached each crest like little brick walls. Sometimes, if the waves were great, the propeller would surface, and a small great whirling sound could be heard for a breath, a breath.

She said, “I mean, we all were. I couldn’t sleep for days. Charles stayed home with me. I mean, that part was nice. I just didn’t know what to do with Mom. She was either completely reclusive or going out all the time, and I’d spend time with her at the house, or I’d pick her up from bars after she’d been drinking too much. Did she ever call you? I can’t remember if she ever called you on those nights. But you were helping, right? I’d see notes and messages from you and pot roasts and casseroles and packs of menthols and wine. It’s funny. We never saw each other at the same time at the house.”

She was quiet. Her arms, when she had talked, moved from her waist to out in front of her, cross, and finally, rest, wrapped around her torso. It was graceful, in the same way it was to watch her board the sailboat. 

“Of course, I was there. Just not when you were I guess.”

“Yeah, weird.”

I said, “Well, I think we were working different times. You had your nine to five and I had my graveyard job at the window place. That’s probably what it was. Wasn’t planned.” I paused. “Plus, there was this boat. It needed a lot of time to stay afloat.”

The wind was gusting now. The clouds had finally arrived, and with it, sprinkles of rain. On the surface of the lake, which was a mirror that reflected and refracted the sun’s dying light, droplets interrupted the surface like echoes. The sun was still grasping to the edge of the horizon, but the clouds darkened everything we saw.

“Why didn’t you ask for help? With the boat?” Mary asked.

“Why didn’t you ask for help with Mom?”

“I thought you were busy.” she said.

“Kind.”

She grabbed her sweater from the cabin, put it on, and returned to the starboard bench, and looked out. I watched her profile.

I wondered if he ever saw us sitting on these bench seats in the high contrast light of pre-dusk. Or, if he listened to us bickering about Monopoly, about Mom’s sandwiches, about how much longer we had to be on this boat.

“Let’s put the sails up,” I said.

“It’s raining.”

“So? We’ve done it before. Remember?” I said, and I knew she did. We were both there. We were all there. Of course, it was on a friend of the family’s sailboat. And it was three years ago.

  Mary shifted, raised her face to the specks of rain. “I do,” She said looking back at me. “Let’s put the sails up.”

I tied the boom, unfurled the mainsail. I fought the rope to hoist it up, but it kept snagging on the mast. I pulled, and it would only rise a third of the way up. I pulled harder, hoping to break through whatever was in the way, whatever the blockage that was with the runner. Mary, having tied off the staysail, grabbed the mainsail rope, and together we broke through. The mainsail rose higher and higher until the top. She tied off the rope.

We were gasping for air. Our chests heaved, and we were bent over. I lay on my back on the port side bench, propped my head with my hoodie. Mary lay on the starboard bench. We watched as the sail filled with air, bloomed, and became taut.

The rain poured now. Between blinks, I saw the brightness of the sun’s last light illuminate the mainsail, heard calls of coyotes, and the steady breathing of Mary. We used to sleep in the same room growing up. I see in the darkness of a weeknight night, Mary’s bed from a sliver of moonlight through our blinds. The light crosses her bed corner to corner. Mom tucks her in, closes the door almost, and walks softly down the hall to their room, clicks their door shut.

“Remember when you dove off those cliffs?” Mary asked.

“I do.” I said.

“Remember his advice?”

“When you dive from high up, it helps to disturb the surface of the water beforehand, so that the impact will be less,” I said. I peered over the roof, checked our course. Another twenty minutes. “Do you recall what he said to use?”

Mary seemed to stare into the sky, the heavens yelled rain, “A hammer. Throw a hammer at the water before you hit. Break the tension.”

Two eagles flew back to the wooded hillside, looking for shelter from the water coming down all around, and the Chubasco bobbed with all the life of our past lives.  

– Benjamin Murray