Whidbey

I didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when I chose it, only that it was far. Only that it would take a great deal of work to get there, and more work to be found. When I say I closed my eyes and pointed to a map, I really mean that. I did. Red votive candle dripping over foil in the center of our dining room table, my girlfriend, Trace, sitting across from me, a full moon over north Brooklyn. Safety, we repeated, a Trace manifestation, and I hovered my hand as if feeling for heat— but when we opened our eyes to Elko, Nevada, it wasn’t exactly far enough, so I moved my finger further west to Whidbey.

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One month later Trace flew me to Seattle. We bought the one-way ferry ticket online, drove to the Mukilteo terminal. Then, there was my boat pulling in. Huge and white with a green lid over the top deck windows, a monstrous face to it, the gaping garage. Cars thumped from the ramp onto the ferry as I stepped on board, and it was dark in there, between all that machinery. I rolled my suitcase between cars and cinched my shoulders for better posture, wondering if any of the passengers were wondering about me. Who’s that girl with the practical green suitcase? the faces would ask. What about her?

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When I had thoughts this self-dramatizing, which was often, I imagined being hurled down a flight of stairs right after thinking them. Sometimes, knocked out by a mail truck, envelopes bursting onto a wet street. On the boat I followed passengers, and one of them— a gaunt freckled woman smeared white with sunscreen— held a door for me at the side of the garage. Thanks, I said, and trailed her and the others up the damp stairwell, like I knew where we were all going. Rather than carrying my suitcase by the handle, I let it clack-clack on each step, the sound echoing awfully. A few of the people looked back at me, just to see who, I guess. I had to commit to the choice now. I clacked all the way up.

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The second door brought us to a passenger seating area, and for a moment I was back in Penn Station. For a moment, I’d never left. A white sign read Upper Deck, and windows dotted the whole perimeter, casting a greenish pale light; tables, bolted between pleather booths, collected glossy half-finished puzzles. The room wafted fried fish and cleaning products, and doors led out to a deck. Out there, the day drizzled sloppily over the parking lot and water. Late May, first breezes of summer, but still a cold that crept up shrewd. People walked past me out onto the deck, no umbrellas or anything; they just stood beneath the rain, jackets darkening. They smiled, white caps melting on the mountains behind them, phones clamped onto sticks.

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I found a seat inside at the rear of the boat, and with an uneasy quiet, the glass window vibrated, woke to movement. The shoreline of Washington, the trees, Trace waving from our rented Honda Civic, they all grew smaller.