Shipwreck Stories

Abstract

Shipwreck Stories Merrie Snell (bio) May be you know this one already. I was a double adulterer. Meaning he was married, I was married. We were—all four of us—married. I like marriage. I do. I trust it. Not the old, woman-as-chattel-type marriage nor the swinging polyamory of artists and gurus, but modern, agile, mutual-respect-and-comfort-type marriage. I am good at it. When I am at it. It's still the best thing going. The ocean swells are temperate and smooth enough to ride to shore. A seaward glance can tell you all (or most) of what the atmosphere is planning. In the so-called wedded state I am as devoted as the next devoted person. Don't look at me like that. A good marriage calms the redwing blackbirds in the hedges. Be tranquil, it says. Becalm your feathers; refill your nests. I had one of those. I have one now. Raise a glass to second chances. Maybe you know this one already? Once there was a woman. Life was not all fun and games, not even on TV. She strung bi-polar swings like cranberry garlands. Popcorn, berry, popcorn, berry, Tom and Jerry, Sugar Plum Fairy. I mean, she came with risks, was unpredictable as Christmas. This woman loved her husband. How much, you say, how many years? I can tell you it was lots, it was many. Then one day she—okay, I—fell into an affair. An apt phrase, fell into, like "so-and-so fell into a well," "into despair," "the wrong hands" (spoken with mild schadenfreude: the muted frisson of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God). None of which compares with falling in—in line or in love. Don't ask me to speak of falling for. If you must know, the affair was ugly and glamourous, like writing poetry on a train and catching your reflection in the window watching pornography on a train. We were industrious and sordid and pleased with ourselves. Friends said I'd lost my senses. They were right. I'd lost the ability to see my husband or hear his voice or smell the candle burning in the window or feel its coaxing warmth against the sudden chill and daily losses. I was numb to my husband's fading grasp, while the other man draped an asp across [End Page 77] my breast (because he could and just to see what happened). This man had many names. Sceneshifter. Crapshooter. Counterfeiter. Epicenter. Master. Disaster. A doer, he was busy. Don't look at me that way. I can tell what you are thinking and of course I must agree. But that was years and another continent ago. This is one I never tell: There is a woman —may I hide behind the safe remove of third-person?— she is on a plane. She is watching the picture of the little plane moving across the little map on the little screen above her Bloody Mary. There it goes, traveling east off the coast of Newfoundland, and there, an inch or so south, is a tiny ship stamped like a hallmark on the sea at the location of the RMS Titanic wreckage. The mapmakers have marked all the major shipwrecks on all the oceans all over the little map. Titanic. Atlantic. Delight. Each a subliminal message: Travel by air if you know what's good for you! These days the woman heeds even the glossiest cautions, open to accident but no longer catastrophe. Onward, slowly, arcing east across the North Atlantic into the hastening night, the plane and its little representation progress together like mind readers and the woman thinks of herself and all the passengers tucked inside amongst their carefully measured bags. She asks herself the Big Questions. Why do we die and Who wrote the book of love and When are we at last forgiven and Where do the icebergs go when they melt? Maybe the woman seated beside her asks them. Maybe everyone does, together in the low murmur of risking their lives together. The woman begins to sob. The little plane standing in for the big plane slips...