Page 16 of A Curse for the Homesick

NOSTOS

2017

“I just think,” August was saying, “that there’s not much point in studying abroad when your whole college experience is already abroad.”

“I’ve been promising Kitty I’d do a quarter in Oxford since freshman year.”

“Yeah, well, if Kitty was really your friend, she’d understand.”

“I’ve already bought my plane ticket.”

He made a dismissive sound that implied Yes, and I could buy you a different one.

When August had invited me to spend spring break with his family on a boat in the Caribbean, I’d told him thanks, but I’d probably just head to England early. The next day, he’d slipped a plane ticket to Martinique under my door. I’d found it when I’d been going to brush my teeth. Damian had said, “Damn, he spoils you.”

The Van Andel family boat was not actually a boat. It was a yacht, or perhaps a compact hotel, and it was called Serena . There were enough bedrooms for Mr. and Mrs. Van Andel, who did not invite me to call them by their first names, and for all three Van Andel brothers and their girlfriends. Connor, the oldest brother, was dating a woman named Samantha. Connor was stocky and did coke in the bathroom and worked on Wall Street. Samantha had wrists so slender that the hair ties she kept there slid around freely. August’s middle brother, Thomas, had declined to come because he was in a feud with his father over his decision to pursue a career in DJing.

At present, Connor and Samantha were lying on deck chairs on the other side of the boat while also answering work emails for their respective and vague business jobs. Mr. and Mrs. Van Andel had retreated to argue, which they only did in private. That left August and me standing by the railing as the sun began to drown in a bath of crimson light. I was wearing sandals that didn’t quite fit and a white dress that twisted around my calves in the warm breeze.

“But spring quarter’s the best time to be on campus,” August said. “You’ll miss everything.”

“I promised Kitty.”

He leaned against the railing. “Well, then, maybe I should come to Oxford with you.”

“The deadline already passed.”

“No need to sound panicked. I was just suggesting things.” August kissed me once on the corner of my lips to let me know he wasn’t actually angry—he never was—before going to talk to Connor and Samantha. I waited for him to turn the corner.

Then I took a picture of the ocean and sent it to Soren.

Even though it was late in Stenland, my phone buzzed within a few seconds.

Soren: How’s yachting?

Me: Like a cross between Moby Dick and Gatsby

Soren: In that Mum Van Andel has a peg leg and Dad Van Andel is making gin in the bathtub?

Me: In that it’s a waste of resources

Soren: Hey

Soren: I like Moby Dick

Me: No one likes Moby Dick

Soren: I do

Soren: It has a lot of dick jokes

Soren: I like being reminded that people in the 1800s were just like us

Me: Did they also lie about which books they liked?

For the past six months, Soren and I had texted each other almost every day. It was a combative conversational style; sometimes I lay in bed playing through fictional conversations in which I was so exceptionally clever he conceded defeat. If he’d ever done that in real life, I would’ve been disappointed.

I told myself it wasn’t flirting because we never mentioned anything like feelings for each other, and also because we would quite possibly never see each other again. But I also knew it was not the way I texted Kitty and Linnea. I imagined it was not the way Soren texted anyone else either because there wasn’t enough time in the day.

Me: How’s Abigail?

This earned me a pause. Sometimes I wondered if we inflicted punishments on each other for asking questions we didn’t want to answer. The long gap between replies. The stiff response when you’d been searching for banter. We both did it, and it had begun to feel like its own sort of grammar. When he employed a tactic that made me feel particularly outplayed, I would file it away for my own future use.

Soren: She says hi

Like that.

Me: Ask her if she thinks you actually like Moby Dick

Another pause.

Soren: How’s August?

I put my phone away so he had to use his imagination.

* * *

We ate dinner on the upper deck of the boat that was too big to be a boat. Dinner with the Van Andel parents should’ve been difficult because I had approximately zero things in common with them, but it was actually tremendously easy so long as I didn’t try to be myself. I imagined I was playing a character in a period-piece drama and behaved accordingly. Mr. and Mrs. Van Andel rarely spoke to Samantha or me, so we just took dainty bites of our food and sat with good posture.

I was debating slipping off to the bathroom to see if I had another text from Soren even though he was almost surely asleep already when Mr. Van Andel asked August if he’d heard back from their “mutual friend” about the DNC internship yet.

“Not yet,” August said. “Any day now, I’m sure.”

Mr. Van Andel said, “Sure, sure—just let me know if you need me to send an email.”

August looked faintly embarrassed by that, so he said, “Tess, have you heard back from anywhere yet?”

I had applied to twenty-four internships. Anything that had anything to do with cars. “Not yet.”

“I’m sure you will,” Mr. Van Andel said. “Companies are starving for female engineers.”

“And Tess is a great candidate,” August said. Under the table, he squeezed my knee.

“Did you apply for anything back in Scotland?” Connor asked.

“Stenland, actually,” I said.

“Yeah, but isn’t Stenland part of Scotland?”

“That’s Shetland.”

“Stenland’s part of Shetland?”

I smiled as serenely as possible. “Shetland is part of Scotland. Stenland is independent as of 1921.”

“Ah,” Connor said. “What do you speak?”

Samantha gave Connor a look that said Please stop , but he didn’t seem to notice.

“English,” I said.

“Like, what did you grow up speaking?”

“Yeah,” I said, “English.”

August interjected smoothly: “I’ve been saying for years that we should do a documentary on Stenland. You know my friend Damian? He’s studying film? We think it’d be amazing. Everything about skelds, the isolation of the island, the declining opportunities in rural communities…”

My throat felt tight. The only reason I didn’t tell August that his idea made me feel voyeured was because of his uncle, the one who died by a skeld.

With a note of finality, Connor said, “Well, I’d love to go someday.”

There was a brief pause; a scraping of a fork against a plate that made Mrs. Van Andel wince. It seemed like I needed to apologize for my country somehow.

“I was sorry to hear about your uncle’s time in Stenland,” I said to Connor.

He pursed his lips at August. I assumed the look was meant to chastise August for revealing family secrets. I looked at my lap and went back to not speaking.

* * *

The bedroom August and I were sharing had a nautical theme, should you forget you were on a boat. The ceiling was about three-quarters the height of a normal ceiling, so you couldn’t raise your hands over your head when you got changed. It made me feel like I was in a very expensive coffin.

I was lying in bed with a book when August looked over at me.

“What are you reading?”

I showed him the cover.

“In the Wake of Their Passing,” he said. “That sounds uplifting.”

“My mum really liked it. I’ve been meaning to read it for ages.”

“What’s it about?”

“Sad people,” I said.

“Do you want to have sex?”

I closed the book and set it on the bedside table. “How thin are the walls?”

“Not very.”

I considered him. His rectangular face and his Ken-doll smooth skin. He was wearing a silky pajama shirt, which I thought was the least arousing article of clothing any man had ever donned. I didn’t tell him this because he already thought I made fun of him for being wealthy.

“Do you think your parents like me?” I asked.

“Of course. They love you.”

“What would they love about me?” I said.

“You’re beautiful and brilliant and charming.”

“Name a single beautiful or brilliant or charming thing I have done since getting on this boat.”

August shook his head. “Why are you being so hard on yourself?”

This was the moment I realized I did not find myself beautiful or brilliant or charming, though perhaps I had at some point in the past. My period-piece character was a docile automaton shell whose skin I inhabited. The most interesting thing about me with the Van Andels was that I was playing a game of not being myself, and they didn’t even know I was doing it.

August propped himself up on an elbow. “I think they’re just protective of me. Because, you know, Val.”

“Your high school girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Since she cheated on me.”

“You never said she cheated on you.” My tone should’ve been sympathetic and comforting. Instead, it came out accusatory. August was always saying things like that, saying things that should’ve been important, but that he mentioned breezily. My mom actually had breast cancer when I was a kid. I got kidnapped on vacation in Italy when I was ten. I was going to go to a ski academy for high school, but I shattered my knee in eighth grade. There were times when I found myself thinking that August was the most boring person I’d ever met because as far as I could tell, he didn’t read, didn’t do a sport, and didn’t work all that hard. And then he would say something like that, and I would realize I only saw fragments of his giant life. I convinced myself it was my fault. That I wasn’t very good at asking questions. That I didn’t make him feel safe. Besides, it wasn’t as if I told him everything about my life either.

“Yeah, well,” August said. “I caught her with my best friend. Wouldn’t recommend the experience, if you’re considering it.”

“I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

“If only there was a way to help me forget about my deep emotional wounds.”

“How thin are the walls again?”

“They’re actually concrete. Really thick concrete.”

August had very nice abs. He took off his shirt, and I admired them. When we had sex, I felt myself stepping inside a different character, this one not my period-piece lady, but my action-film femme fatale. She flipped her hair a lot. Despite being very tough and competent, she gasped dramatically like this whole sex thing was rather startling to her. Right before August came, he told me he loved me. The femme fatale said it back.

As soon as he was done, I went to the bathroom and peed.

“Is it nice to be in a place where you can actually go to sleep next to someone?” he asked when I got back. He really was handsome; there was no taking that away. I wondered what he’d look like when he was fifty. I wondered what I’d look like. I wondered if we’d have three sons who also went to Stanford and wore pastel shorts.

“It’s great,” I said.

* * *

Every night on the boat, I woke up at three in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. I went outside in my pajamas and stared at the black ocean. You could jump over the railing and just start swimming. How far to Stenland? How many thousands of miles?

In honor of being on a boat, Samantha had been reading a retelling of The Odyssey. She’d mentioned to me, while we’d passed each other in the kitchen, that she had always thought nostalgia meant fond memory, but actually, in the Greek sense, it meant suffering because you so badly wanted to return home. I’d asked her, defensively, why she was telling me. She’d said, Okay, fine, never mind .

Static started to fill my ears. I sat down on the deck and pressed my face against the white painted bars of the railing.

What kind of person would miss a place like that.