I get the idea that I'm going to spend a lot of this afternoon in my hammock, slung between two dying maples. I determine to bring a book with me: Fatal Shore. I also bring my IPod. And some ice water with lime juice. Before I go out to sling my hammock I post on my Facebook page: Hammock. Book. IPod. Immediately a friend comments that she likes my status and don't forget to wear sunscreen. I throw caution to the ever-increasing breeze and lay there, in my hammock, face to the sun, no protection whatever. It's the first time the sun has felt warm since October.
When I actually get into my hammock all desire to read leaves me. The pages of Fatal Shore flutter in the wind like a flip book. The weather report for today gives sunny and a little breezy, giving way to clouds. Squinting, no clouds yet, holding my IPod above me against the glare, I make out a woodpecker in the branches directly above me. Listening. I have a feather from a wing like hers in my kitchen, in an old glass inkwell that my ex-lover gave me in 1977 when we were courting, when she presented me with a tiny bouquet of Forget-Me-Nots. That was in Alaska. The state flower. The feather is black with tiny white dots. The woodpecker darts in and out of the branches. Listening. Calling. Listening.
Not inclined to read, I scan my IPod. Playlists...music does not amuse. Podcasts: The Ascent of Money...Secrets of InDesign...Understanding Balance Sheets...Nanotechnology, The Next Big Thing. I choose This American Life, the episode about frenemies, those people close to us about whom we have a great deal of anxiety, friends with whom we hesitate to spend a lot of time because of this anxiety, friends with whom we feel competitive, like those women on New Housewives of Orange County. Part of the Frenemies broadcast is about the genesis of the phrase "I'm not here to make friends..." which, it appears, was first uttered on an early episode of The Apprentice, a reality TV show. It's been uttered on reality TV shows many times since then which is the point of reality TV. Frenemies concludes. Then I listen to a collection of pieces by Scott Carrier; one is about amnesia. Carrier interviews a hypnotherapist, asks her generate thirty minutes or maybe an hour of total amnesia in him, but she doubts that she can. Few people are really that willing, she says. He goes for it but, upon coming out of hypnosis, is disappointed to find that he can still recall what he's been doing that day, the name of the friend he brought with him whose job it would be to help him navigate when he'd forgotten everything. A psychologist, also part of this piece, suggests that we forget that which makes us uncomfortable. The fact that he's not willing to forget becomes part of Carrier's podcast. This material is not really the sort of material that I should presently be listening to. But I persist. I have this feeling.
It's been five days since I learned that my friend died, with her partner, in a boating accident on Chesapeake Bay. My friend of over 35 years whose body washed up on Westerhouse Beach five days after she left in bad weather to presumably take the boat to Colonial Beach, on the other side of the Bay and up the Potomac. Her partner's body has still not been found. This was in December. I am sitting in the sun in Maine on the day before Equinox. I learned of her death in an email sent to me by our mutual friend and my friend's long time lover, now, of course, her ex. The three of us were together constantly in college in Alaska. Robin majored in geography.
It's been five days since I learned that my friend died. In that time I've sent email to everyone I could locate who knew us in Alaska. I've posted of her death on two email lists and people I have not met, but who have a sense of my life, have emailed back to give me the strength I've asked to borrow.
In Google Earth I've found Robin's House on her peninsula at Deep Creek. In the satellite view, her boat is tied up at her dock. Although one couldn't tell from the satellite, it's a Chris Craft, a 31 footer. I've searched for, found, and closely examined nautical charts of the waters between Deep Creek, Westerhouse Beach, and Colonial Beach Marina. Especially in the area identified as The Targets immediately south and west of Tangier Island, around which they would have had to navigate to get to the marina from their origination point. The Targets are a bomb site where naval aviators out of Norfolk practice getting good at hitting things. It's also said to be a good fishing spot. Anglers bring up unexploded ordinance, however, so one must be careful. There's a circle on the charts labeled "Prohibited Area". I've even conducted Google searches on Chris Craft, hoping to find out if her boat might have come with Loran installed. But no luck. I only learned that Chris Craft makes boats a lot bigger than the one that broke up, presumably in the area of The Targets. People who look for such things in circumstances like this have found deck chairs, a table, and small pieces of the boat but nothing else. Robin was identified through an autopsy and investigation. They found a car registered to her at Colonial Marina and the police put two and two together.
It's been five days and now I know a little bit about the waters around Tangier Island. I know that some guy who fueled them up said the weather was nasty, that he warned them not to go out. I know there were conflicting reports about how many people were on the boat. I want to know the cause of death, if the examiner found water in her lungs. I want to speak with the investigator and the reporter who posted five stories that I could find. And that guy who fueled them up, him, too. I want to get in touch with her two friends - the ones she told me about the last time we talked on the phone who have bought property twenty miles from where I live and who report that they love it there, that they eat out every night they're here. It was this couple who assured my friend who emailed me that, no, I had not left Maine. That I was still to be found here. My friend, the one with the news, tells me that once she found me she tried to call. But she would reach my answering machine, hear my voice, and go to pieces. No message. And so, three days before Robin's birthday I get the email.
I, too, am in pieces. Broken up like the boat. Who knows. I don't. I'm sleep walking into and out of the hole in history that now exists in my heart.
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