Crossing
The summer of 1969 ended on a ship crossing the Atlantic. Through a hurricane.
It was my mother’s notion of how one ought to travel back to America after a year spent in England with the colonizers—and besides, it was cheap. Her exact words were: Think of all the people who’ve made this passage. Think of the conditions they endured. The uncertain future. Think of your own ancestors. Those who didn’t make it. This is as close as we’ll get. Pay attention.
My father said nothing.
One brother, 17, didn’t hear.
One brother, 15, said: Yeah, think of the Titanic. The Lusitania. The Andrea Doria. Think of the slave ships. You want us to experience a famine ship.
Such words as the storm we had sailed into knocked them off course.
My mother spent the time alternating between staring out at the lunging sea and making friends with interesting people over drinks.
My father dozed away in the ship library, book splayed across his chest like a sleeping baby, head pitched and lolling like their ship on the seas beyond.
One brother, 17, doing his best to channel a harrowing crossing of centuries past, was confined to his top bunk in their closet cabin in the ship’s bowels, sick and groaning.
One brother, 15, Houdini reincarnated, found ways on deck even through doors lashed shut, and had to be rescued repeatedly as he leaned out over the railing to be flayed by sea and wind. Confined to quarters, he grew restive and surly.
As though in purgatory, I roamed from place to place—the empty dining room with its baffling Norwegian smorgasbord of pickled fish, the entertainment hall with its lousy movies and idiot games, the tiny father-filled library, the tinier brother-filled cabin. I was too queasy to read, too awake to sleep, too frightened to focus, too bored to rouse myself.
The crew boarded the windows. Made us perform safety drills. Human sounds vanished beneath crash of wind and waves, the awful noises of a ship. Little by little, it was as though something that had held us together got snagged on a nail. When we finally docked in New York, battered and shaken, something had come apart, drifted away, but I couldn’t say what or why.
Lots of things had come apart while we were away that year, lots had happened: Richard Nixon, Apollo 11, Chappaquiddick, Charles Manson, the student riots, Black Power, Woodstock, puberty. We stepped off the ship and into mayhem. Personal and not so personal wars. Other rough crossings. Who knew? Not us. Not me. And no one else either. I mean, look at us–you wouldn’t have guessed though some people claimed to have seen it coming.
You couldn’t have known. There were no life preservers to throw, no sturdy ships to send, no maps to offer.
You wouldn’t have guessed that within a year my parents would split up and the kids would leave. One of us would run across to Canada. One would run away to the circus. One would just run. And none of us would come back. Not really. Not completely. Not ever.
Nostalgia for a Phantom Place 