"your hair is long,
but not long enough to reach
home to me.
but your beard
someday might be."
blood by the middle east
.
.
.
He doesn't tell her his name because he doesn't have one.
He learned long ago in his business, with his callouses between his fingers and his leather jacket weighing down his shoulders, that history pulls you back, that family, names, the blood running through blue veins, will only keep you grounded when you need to sail, soar along the ocean like nothing. There will be no flying when your heart is in someone else's chest, and everything about him has always been his, he wouldn't give away pieces of himself until he can't stand anymore, he's seen it happen too much to let it happen to him.
He doubts that Lizzie, with her still small voice and feathery jawline, would be able to find out if she tried, not unless he let her find out. The only difference between him and anyone else on the ship are his fingerprints and his teeth, his never-open mouth. She avoids his touch when he tries to take her hand, and she wouldn't even have his hands to compare too, she can't memorize the feeling of every bump and ridge like he was halfway planning to do with hers.
She doesn't know his name because she calls him Davey, and he doesn't mind it so much, he used to act a bit in school, and it's kind of fun now. Frankie's a good kid. He starts to mind a little bit when he finds out who Davey was, he starts to mind a lot when he finds out what he did, exactly. She's so quiet, he's grateful that she never flinches when he moves too suddenly. He's careful to make his movements slow, certain.
He doesn't tell her his name because she doesn't need to know it. She never asks to know it, he leaves, waving at Frankie goodbye, I'll come back. Promise.
He hopes he means it.
.
The water constantly changes, some men can't stomach the endless motion, and at the start neither could he. He would tremble on the deck when the tides changed, the waves rolling in from the middle of the sea, and they looked like silver under the huge and burning sun. The entire ship is bathed in a cold, grey light, straining against the steel surface that looks for some reason like bullets.
He can hear his heartbeat in his ears when the water gets like this, rolls toward the ship looking like it could wipe them out, but he knows it won't. He reads a book in his room one day where an entire ship drowns, zoo animals and Indians dashed to pieces in a storm, and it makes him a little paranoid, but he has enough faith. If not in God, then in the crew.
At times like this he misses the land, misses the colours in Scotland, even if the sky is just as grey and green, even if the fields still look like the sea, rolling green hills like coming up for air. He misses the colours, orange, red, purple, when the young girls would talk on the streets and their skirts would flare around them in decorated fabrics, and they would smile and laugh like music. Everything is muted here, it's like being underwater even if he can still breathe. His hands, strong as oxes now, rough as sandpaper, move without him, and he breathes the air like salt.
Marie gets worried when he's gone, sends letters to different ports and tracks his progress with little pins on a cork board. He thinks of her when he sees Frankie's set-up, a map of veins, blue and red, running along the side of his bedroom wall. He feels sorry that he isn't his father, he couldn't be his father, and he smiles, almost says it out loud. Frankie wouldn't be able to hear him even if he did, and he wishes he had a cigarette.
Marie tells him every time he's home, the Glasgow sky looking like white and beige tiles, cold and ceramic, the buildings built up up up, higher and higher like tidal waves, he feels suffocated. She wishes he would come home, he doesn't need to work on a ship. His hands don't belong to the crew, don't belong to the metal equipment gasping huge breaths, don't belong to the sea, when the salt seeps into cuts on his arms and he has to spend the whole night trying to fix the wound. He doesn't belong there, and he knows it.
Every time he comes home it's fewer and further between, he hears from Marie about the bloke she's seen once at the shop and he's handsome, yeah? And the next time he comes home they're engaged, and then the time after that they've already been married a month and a half. He tries to make it back for the wedding, but miles and miles and miles of water slow their progress, and the cuts on his arms filled with rocks of white salt look horrible and hurt like hell.
Whenever he comes back the earth looks more and more like water, brown dirt begins to take on a blue-grey tinge and the colour of a girl's eyes reminds him of his sage green jumpers, and there's his sister's wedding dress, hung perfect and pale in the closet, the folds look like waves, jewels and lace like the scales of a fish. And the salt air chokes him, fills his lungs with things that cut him up on the way down. He carries his work with him like his own blood.
Lizzie looks at him with a plea in her eyes, will you help me? Please? And he sighs, nods, yes.
.
When he and Marie are children their father is the same way, he leaves for months at a time. He grasps at his father's trousers, his big, leather jacket, pulls him back with chubby fingers and fat, salt tears, but the ocean is so big and he so small. He draws x's along the sides of the map, crossing out every new place with his little black pen, and waits.
He finishes secondary school and goes to the ocean, and when he breathes in the saltwater air it's like going home, horrible and distant.
And so he goes, watches the land become smaller and smaller in the distance, and the sky turns dark, and he can't see anything out on the water. Marie sends him letters instead of their father, somewhere in Scotland but never with them, tracks his progress with little pins of different colours, and now sometimes he writes back. His handwriting is messy, an unreadable scrawl, so he draws little pictures along the sides to illustrate what he means, little fish and the burning sun.
He kind of wishes he had gone to university, Marie tells him about the books she's reading, about James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway and the Brontë's and Shakespeare and at times he's skeptical about all of it, but she sends him one of her textbooks, and he reads it in the dim light of his room where no one can see. He struggles over the words, but he feels accomplished when it's finished. He asks her for a book about marine biology after, and she sends him one, a children's book, but he reads it anyway, almost entirely unironically. He sketches out pictures of the fish inside with a heavy hand and sends it at a port somewhere in England.
Lizzie wants a man with no past, present, future. So he doesn't give her one.
.
His hand on her waist is large and cold, she jumps a little at the sudden contact, and he thinks if he tried he could crush her in his palm, as easy as an insect. His friends from school used to pull the legs off of crickets, and he would miss the sound they made, hide every bug he found in a jar to save them from the same fate. He went to a museum once and saw butterflies pinned, dead and pinned in place, and he'd cried while his mother tried to calm him down. She dies when he's seven and Marie is five, and at the funeral, his father wearing a tie for once instead of a grey jumper, he wonders why she hasn't been stuck through with a tack.
His father's hands were always too heavy and too rough, he goes back to the sea, gets swallowed whole by the water, and their aunt stays with them when he's gone, which is all the time. Now his fingers are like his da's, and he manipulates the folds of Lizzie's sweater, soft and warm. It feels like everything he's never had, and he smiles.
She looked shocked when he had the book about marine biology ready for Frankie to read, and he shrugged a little. He wondered what she was thinking, if she thought he went out and bought it or if she knows that he'd already read it, thumbed through the pages with dry, cracked hands and devoured the words as Marie wrote him everything she knows. She sways to the song that he doesn't recognize, her hair looks like something else in this light, it doesn't remind him of water, for once, it's something he can't place. It's on the tip of his tongue, if he could just remember, and he wishes he could runs his fingers through, just to see how it feels.
His sister, young and already married, and she sends him pictures and writes that she wishes he could have been there. He cracks open the book of poems she sent him, finds himself reciting bits of Coleridge at odd moments. Telling the Chief not to shoot the albatross, don't do things just because he can, and the other man quirks a brow and continues on. The third engineer leaves, and he knows how to do the job but someone else, someone with a degree and hands just as good as his, gets it. He writes about that in his next letter to Marie, and she tells him he should try out university for real, not just read the books. He could do more, she says. He writes that he'll think about it, but he won't.
His mother would wail when his father left, he hopes Marie doesn't do the same. He thinks she doesn't, her husband smiles when he sees him and shakes his hand, and she looks happy for once. He knows that she remembers mum too, them crying when she screamed at their father because they could understand, don't leave me here, you promised, don't you walk away you vicious thing.
His hands are cracking open, Marie runs her fingertips over his knuckles, tells him he needs to take better care, and he memorizes the sensation because he hasn't felt someone else's skin in so long. He memorizes the way her fingerprints are in case he can't and needs to find her. His little sister, she's so much better now, and she and her husband wave at the end of the dock when he leaves again, promises to write her. This time the ocean reminds him of the land, and he thinks he's remembering more. He's not very good at drawing, but he draws the sun setting over the sea, turning the salt and water orange and red like fire. He reads Moby Dick because he supposes he should, but he doesn't like it very much.
He smiles because Frankie's won his bet, hasn't he, even if he isn't the boy's father, not really. He's happy he has a reason to dance with Lizzie, and when he spins her she smiles too.
.
His father has a heart attack while he's out on the water, too many miles from the coast. The day he lands back on shore, his legs unsteady, his hands unsteady, shaking like the water's waves, he's already dead, white blanket draped carefully over his head. He can see the outline of his mouth, open, his heart was always too strained, even when they cut off all contact. Only after he did, of course. Marie cries, and for some reason his lips taste like salt.
He's buried in the same cemetery as mum, piles of dirt in so many pieces on his coffin, and he spits on the ground because his mouth tastes like salt still. He and his sister walk away, already orphans, an empty funeral. His head feels like a graveyard, he can't think, and he sits in Marie's spare room as she cries in her husband's arms. He leaves the Melville on the coffee table when he leaves early in the morning, and by the time the day gets hot he's back on the ship, brochures for university tucked safely into his jacket pocket.
The mornings get darker and the days get shorter, it's freezing cold on the deck and he sometimes walks out at odd hours of the night to see his breath leave his body. It reminds him that he's alive, the burn of the cigarette on the end of his finger looks like sparks. He poisons his lungs slowly, and he feels more alone than before.
He considers finishing school, getting a better job on the ship, getting a real job on land for Marie, but in the end he is his father's son, isn't he? The sea is wide and horrible, his hands are sliced up like apples, and he smokes more and more every day. Cities all look the same, and now sometimes he sees his own face in the eyes of other men, in the lines wrinkling their brows. He's getting older. It's at the point that he can barely leave the ship without feeling something widen in his chest, when Marie asks him for a favor when the ship docks in Glasglow.
Her name is Lizzie, he needs to meet her at a coffee shop, all he needs to do is play pretend for a little while. No past, no present, no future. He can do that, he thinks. He doesn't tell her his name is Louis because he hasn't said it aloud in so long, the syllables feel foreign and strange on his teeth, and he says he'll help her.
.
He leans forward, slowly, delicately. Lizzie's breath is ghosting across his mouth, and he presses his lips to hers. Something closes in his chest, and he pulls away. She looks as uncertain as he feels, and his fingers reach unbidden for the folds of her clothing.
.
He goes back to the ship, and the water now looks like the flare of a girl's skirt or a blue map on the wall of a boy's room like veins. The books around his room look like ugly reminders, he hides them in drawers, puts them in the pockets of the clothes he never wears until his room is barren, is a wasteland. He throws away the brochures for university because what was he thinking? He's too old, he's beginning to look like the Chief, fifty years and as nameless as he is, like the numberless men he passes in the hall who nod curtly and pinch the bridge of their nose with their thumb and forefinger.
He doesn't smoke as much, but sometimes his hands shake.
He sees a girl who looks like he thinks Lizzie must've looked back before Davey. Even now he can't stand that that's what she'll call him, the same name as her wayward husband, angry and frightening and vicious, but she'd looked at him with those eyes, now the man who was gentle with her son and kissed her because he couldn't do anything else. Sometimes he says his own name under his breath when he's working, like a chant, remember me? I'm not him.
So he sees a girl who looks like she must have, because he's sure she was happy with Davey, once upon a time. She's got light brown hair and bangs, small features and an almost never opened mouth but she's with a boy and she smiles, lights up like the sun. Her face is unmarred and her legs are smooth, covered by a skirt that looks like the ocean, and he turns away.
He wonders if she remembers the way his mouth felt, if she feels the phantom of a stolen kiss, like school children throwing rocks, smiling shyly, on nights when she'd rather not think of him. He wonders if they're the same. She's somewhere in Scotland, he wonders if she stayed in Glasgow after he left, if she still moves from place to place in some misplaced sense of fear, hiding from the monster with an address change and her arms covering her shoulders.
And he was on the shore yesterday, skipping stones as smooth as velvet like out of an old memory.
The young couple wait at a bus stop, she's leaning on his shoulder, straight brown hair slipping across his jacket like silk, and he kisses her forehead when he brushes her bangs aside. Louis pushes up the sleeves of his shirt and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. It's an unusually hot day, he's waiting for a bus to the post office because Marie said she'd send her mail here this time in her last letter.
The girl giggles, young and in love, she can't be more than seventeen, and the boy who runs his fingers over the palm of her hands, along her blue-veined wrists, looks the way he supposes he did when he was nineteen. They smile a little at him, friendly and unabashed, and he tries to contort his mouth to smile in return. He thinks he did okay, they go back to each other as soon as he lowers his eyes.
Lizzie, who could only ever protect and defend and says so quietly what she should be shouting to the world, here I am, I exist, I am not afraid, and loves her son the way he hasn't loved anything in a very, very long time. Not-her turns her head into the crook of her boyfriend's neck and smiles, slow and happy.
The bus rumbles up, huge and slow-moving, a massive mechanical caterpillar sliding along the street. They're the only people onboard, and when he's stepped out he's grateful for fresh air free of adoring looks and secretive messages passed from tongues to teeth.
He walks into the post office, sighing heavily as he asks to check his box. The woman working looks him over, smiles, charming and sweet, and nods her head. She's young and blonde, she lingers a little too long when he takes the mail, and he knows he's handsome in a "your parents would never approve" kind of way, but he walks out before she can say anything else.
It's only when he gets outside that he realizes her mistake, and he walks back in to correct her. "Did you give me extra?"
She furrows her brow, frowns. "No, of course not, sir. This is all yours. I only took from your box. Is there a problem?" She looks concerned, and he waves her off with his hand.
"No, no, it's fine. I just wasn't expecting it. Have a nice day." He walks out again before he can hear her respond in kind, which he realizes is a little rude, but he shrugs it off.
He has two letters, and he was not expecting that. The first is obvious, the handwriting neat and perfect, the postage stamp a little bird, as is Marie's usual. The second, he frowns over, turns over in his hands to make certain it's real. The writing is block print, messy and scrawled, it looks a little like his. Frankie wrote him.
He smiles, wide and careless, and somewhere he can hear the waves crashing but right now it sounds too much like music to be real.
.
Dear Louis,
I always knew you weren't my da, so I don't want you to feel sad that I know who you are. You're Marie's brother, because that's what she and mum said about you. So I know everything. I'm happy you helped me with my bets against Ricky, except now he's nicer than he was before.
Marie said she sends you letters when you're traveling, and she said she'd give me the addresses she sends them to when you go there. I use the map to see where you are, just like before, but now it's real. So Marie's gonna send this when I'm finished, and you'll get this wherever you are.
I miss you. I wish you were my da, even if I always knew you weren't. Mum misses you too, even if she never says it. Sometimes she looks at my map and points at where you are with her finger.
I got 100 on my geography test. I think it's because of the map. Thank you for the book. Marie says it was yours. Do you ever see any fish when you're on your ship? I'd like to know.
Write back.
Love,
Frankie
.
Dear Frankie,
I'm glad that you're not upset about your father. I feel bad that we lied to you, but I'm happy that I helped you win your bets. I'm happy Ricky's nicer now too.
Tell Marie I said thanks for the letters from you. I'll write it in my letter to her, but just in case you get yours first, tell her. I don't know when I'd be coming back to Glasgow, if you're still there. Are you still there?
I miss you, too. I've been trying to learn sign language since I got your letter, I bought a book. It's difficult, but it's not as bad as I thought. I think I've been getting better. You'll have to tell me how I'm doing when I come back.
Congratulations on your geography. Keep on with those maps. And you're welcome for the book. I do see fish when I'm on board. They look a little like this, see?
.
.
.
I'm not very good at drawing.
When the sun hits them just right, they shine, and their scales look like they're on fire. You'd love to see them when they're natural like that. An aquarium doesn't even compare.
Tell your mum that she can write me if she wants. I'd like to hear from her.
Do well in school. Be good. Write back when you can.
Love,
Louis
.
The ocean is bottomless and massive, sometimes when he's looking down he thinks it could reach up and swallow him whole. He thinks of Marie's old psychology books, gazing into the abyss and having it look back with dark, cavernous eyes. He's cut down to only a few cigarettes a day, and now he watches the smoke curl like mercury around his fingers, the sparks at the end the only visible light.
He stamps it underneath his boot and walks back inside. It's winter, the ice freezes over the top of the water but the ship stirs it, nudges it out of the way, and he's bone-tired, tired of losing everything that he never had because maybe he should get to have it at least once before he can say it's lost. A father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a son, and Lizzie with her pale skin and bright eyes. Watches the smoke settle around his wrists and the saltwater air blow it away.
He sometimes gets letters from Frankie now, too, telling him about his tests and how Ricky and him might be friends after all, and how he knows if he's in love? Because Catriona is very pretty, after all, and he likes her a lot.
Louis doesn't quite know how you know if you're really in love. He thinks maybe it's when you're around them, and sometimes your mouth or your hands work on their own, they speak or want to touch, and you didn't even make them. Your limbs tell you in unmade gestures exactly what you want to do, and your lungs want to breathe what they are breathing, your eyes want to see what they are seeing, and you hope very much they feel the same way about you. He thinks maybe that's love, yeah?
The ocean is very big, and he misses you very much. He's coming to Glasgow in a few months, will you be there?
Yeah, I will. Mum and I are still here. We're very happy you're coming back.
.
It's spring when he gets to the city, the spring after Frankie's first real letter, the sun burns his dark hair, his jumper sticks to his back, and he rolls up the sleeves. It's been more more than a year since he's seen them, he's thirty-five, and he doesn't really know what he's doing here, after all. The air tastes like something sweet, sugar burned brown and cracked, and he breathes.
Because the flowers are blooming on the trees and they look less like bruises this time around, and he's finally trying to quit smoking because there are lines showing on his face and his teeth are yellowing and his voice sounds like the Chief's when he turns in his letter of resignation. He thinks maybe he should at least try, he explains when the ship docks in Glasgow. His suitcase is full of everything he owns, and he breathes in the air like nectar and pollen and so much life.
The light cast over the buildings looks like the back of a fish, glittering in the half-burning sun.
.
He goes to Marie first, walks into her shop, and she gasps. "You're here!" Moves around the counter to hug him tightly, and he smiles, just a bit. Whenever he comes back it's like they're kids again, he can still see the little girl she used to be in her eyes, the little girl with skinned knees and a fast-moving mouth. "Welcome home, Lou."
He smiles wider, charming in a way he never is. "Good to be back."
Then they have coffee, sit at off-white tables and he lays out all of the brochures that he never actually threw away, for night schools in Glasgow. Could learn to actually do engineering, if he could maybe work here for a bit. He shuffles the papers around on the tabletop, and Marie grins and squeals her excitement, takes his hand. And then she practically shoves him out of the shop to go find Frankie and Lizzie.
"I know you've been wanting to go see them, now go," she insists as she closes the door in his face. He rolls his shoulders as he walks away, like preparing himself for battle.
When he sees her for the first time (since the first time), it's exactly the same and so, so different. She's as pretty as before, the understated beauty in her eyes and her thin shoulders and her slight smile that curves her lips like a bow. But now she looks better, she doesn't cast her gaze somewhere just beyond what she wants to see, she doesn't hunch her shoulders forward to cover her body, her muscles don't scream look away the way they once did. She looks free, and something tightens in the pit of his stomach.
She's across the street, she's walking with her head high, sunglasses perched on her nose because it's a particularly sunny day, and he's on the other side, in the shade of the trees lined up around the border of the park. He lifts his hand a bit, arms unhindered without his jacket, starts to wave at her. And she steps up onto the curb and her slender arms are like paper, thin as envelopes he licks with a salt-rimmed tongue and sends words and his heart in the mail.
Suddenly he remembers every moment he was with her, every moment he was gone, it hits him with the force of a train, knocks the wind from him, him leaning forward, inch by inch, and her eyes on his and her breath in his lungs. Dancing in the half-light of a community dance hall, making a bet that he could get her to dance, no, get her to smile, just once, wide and happy the way he knows she hasn't in years. Handing Frankie a book about fish, showing him a little aquarium and taking him aboard his mock-ship, teaching him to throw stones because that's the one thing his father ever did for him and he should know at least that. Wishing he could give his not-son the world, and even if he only has a day and a half he'll give it a damn good try. Talking and keeping his teeth together when it came time for him to share, no, go on, tell me what it was like. Was he a good man, did you love him? And finally just barely apart, the two of them mirroring each other like satellites, bright and certain like the moon. He tried so much to be gentle whenever he touched her, slow and careful and delicate as porcelain, and she looked up at him like it meant so much, like he meant so much to do what should've been done for her years ago. He should be so lucky, and he knows this when he closes the space between them and kisses her finally, feels her hesitance and then acceptance and kisses him back.
He can remember it all, clear as day.
Frankie exits his school and runs up to his mother, and Lizzie bends at the waist to hug him hello. He's taller, signing rapidly about his day, and Louis can only pick up bits and pieces of the silent language from his rudimentary lessons, but they look happy. He waves from across the street when they finally look over, looking up like they know someone is there who normally isn't. Lizzie's mouth drops open in shock when Frankie beams up at her, and she lifts her sunglasses up like she can't quite believe it, her mouth open and starting to lift at the corners. He sees her laugh when she tugs Frankie by the hand to cross the street.
The wind rattles through the trees, petals like satin falling from the branches. And the sunlight is dappled and gold through the leaves, Lizzie is standing right in front of him, small and gorgeous and real, Frankie at her side looking up with happy eyes at the man who should've been his father.
"Louis?" she says, uncertain, reaching out her hand to take his, brushes his out-turned palm with her fingers. "You're back then?"
He chuckles ruefully, nods his head and scuffs his feet against the ground. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm home now."
Frankie looks up, signs excitedly. "Have you been learning?"
He replies with his hands, clumsily. "Yes, a little."
"How long are you here for?" She's looking at him with hope in her eyes, a smile playing around the edges of her mouth. "Thought you wouldn't be here for a while yet."
"Got back early," he explains, runs his hand over his hair. "Dunno how long I'll be here. I was thinking I'd see how staying in one place goes."
She doesn't hide her grin this time, and it's wide and brilliant and beautiful, the light is cutting a pattern along her shoulder and he takes her hand on a whim, runs his thumb over her smooth knuckles. Frankie walks away, already en route to wherever he needs to be, following the sun casting off of the buildings like blue and green scales, like the water or a map or the folds of Marie's white dress, flaring around her in the sunlight.
"Let's go," he says, and smiles.