Saltwater

Saltwater

Helen Lingate

Now

Money is my phantom limb. It was part of my body once. I know this because I feel its loss like an ambient current that runs up my spine, an occasional, sudden shock. Money is metabolic, a universal part of our constitution. Lorna taught me that.

Before her, I didn’t have the vocabulary for money. I changed the subject, I demurred, I shifted my weight, brushed my hair behind my ear, smiled. I twisted the Cartier bracelet on my left wrist again and again until the skin turned strawberry.

What I’m saying is, I lied.

Money has always made me uncomfortable, both having a lot and not enough.

That ends now. I saw how heavy the bag was when Lorna lifted it. Bulky with our cash. I still don’t remember whose idea it was. Hers or mine, it doesn’t matter. After today, we’ll whisper the story to each other like an incantation. Do you remember? They never knew. Then, I hope, we will laugh.

Good stories are like that. They become a reflex, as automatic as breathing. I know this because my body was built—bone by bone—out of stories like that.

Stories about money.

They were also lies.

Every week my father recited them to me, their outlines as familiar as my own hands. That my great-grandfather had struck oil while prospecting for gold. That it had happened not far from our house in Bel Air. That the exact site had been paved over but was near the intersection of Glendale and Beverly Boulevards.

My great-grandfather never wanted the oil. That part, my father emphasized, was a mistake. All he wanted was gold. What he got was better: property, mineral rights, imported hand-painted French pillows. A name—Lingate.

What a mix-up! A surprise! A moment of aw-shucks luck. It could have happened to anyone. That’s America’s promise—that it still could.

It’s a good story, right?

But even in my childhood, the contours of the lie were visible. The landscape of that Los Angeles couldn’t be occupied by mortals. It was prelapsarian—tangled bean fields and sweet orange blossoms, oil running like foamy soda up to meet the derricks, streams that could still be panned for gold.

In college, I learned the truth. For twenty years they kept it from me. I don’t blame them. To us it was more than a story; it was a myth. Our own family heirloom. We passed it down the way some families hold on to a piece of silver, insisting to each subsequent generation that it’s early American. Maybe forged by Paul Revere himself. A sign of the family’s ancient, unshakable commitment to the Revolutionary cause. They show it off at DAR luncheons, they’re a Mayflower family. Only later, when they go to sell it, do they discover it’s from the nineteenth century, a reproduction.

In the end, it’s just a story.

The truth was, my family had swindled their way into the largest oil lease in California—the Wilson Oil Field—at the dawn of the twentieth century. We had done so by promising the original leaseholder, a wildcatter’s widow, that the family would split the profits if oil was found in the first five years. Five years and one day later, the first oil derrick was drilled.

She sued, but lost.

You can understand why they preferred the story.

These days, it’s rare anyone thinks about the oil. Instead, it’s the events that happened on this island thirty years ago that get top billing. My mother’s death. Whether or not my father got away with her murder. My family resents that she tarnished their myth, that they can’t polish her blood off their silver.

But I’m grateful. Because it’s her story I can use. After all, shouldn’t I be able to profit from family stories, too? Isn’t that a fair exchange for never having known her, for being back on this island, in this villa, every anniversary of her death?

I think so.

My phone tells me it’s noon. Anywhere else, noon might be considered late, but not here, not on Capri. My tongue is thick, my vision jumpy in the sunlight. It’s my hangover, cresting, punishing.

I pull back the sheets and swing my legs over the side of the empty bed. I only remember pieces of last night. The sheets tangled around our legs, Freddy’s back slick with sweat. He went directly to the pool this morning; I heard the splash.

I make it to the bathroom, where I cup water in my hands and slurp it until, unsatisfied, I drop my head and drink directly from the tap. I brush my teeth, scrub my face, and examine the creases my pillow has left on my skin. With one last glance in the mirror, I slip into the hallway and walk toward Lorna’s room.

She’s still asleep, I’m sure. Her night tumbling into day, the sun barely up when she returned to Capri. I press the door open. Just a crack. It’s enough to see that her sheets are still pulled tight, unmussed by the weight of a body, a tangle of hair.

I step into her room. It’s full of midday sunshine, the curtains never closed. The bathroom sink—I check that, too—never used the night before. There is no evidence of her, of Lorna. Her absence so total that, for a minute, I doubt she ever came with us at all.

I tell myself it’s only a delay. That she’ll be back soon. That I’m wrong. That the story she told me, the story we told each other, was the truth. It wasn’t a lie.

But then, I know all about stories. And lies.


Lorna

Hours before Lorna’s disappearance: 36

I am at sea.

The realization is accompanied by a familiar, bland horror. The kind that always seems to whisper: Is this how I die?

Only it sounds like this: I am at sea.

It’s the same.

Behind us, Sorrento is getting smaller. Its square, stately hotels, their lettering bleached by the Mediterranean sun, are now just smears of color—pink and white—a collection of rusting balconies and terraces. The Lingates don’t seem to feel it. The way the dark water churns across the stern. The way we are trapped, all six of us, on this fifty-foot yacht.

Minutes ago, it wasn’t too late to send them ahead without me. I could have stayed ashore, feigned an emergency. But then my bag was loaded and the lines were thrown and the simple truth was I needed to be here. I can do anything for a week. Longer, I have learned.

I pull my eyes away from the shore, where the Italian peninsula is quickly going out of focus. When I turn, my employer, Marcus Lingate, is looming over me, blotting out the sun and the island ahead of us. He has left his wife of almost forty years, Naomi, on the bow. Helen Lingate and her boyfriend, Freddy, sit across from me. Richard, Helen’s father, the widower, is alone under the flybridge.

Marcus thrusts a champagne glass in my direction, forgetting that I don’t drink. I take an obligatory faux sip. I close my lips against the sweetness, the bubbles. I smile. It’s good, I’m saying. All of this is good. He nods at my pleasure, and when we hit chop from another, larger boat, he lurches into the seat next to me.

“No working this week,” he yells over the wind and the engine. He’s smiling. Like it’s a secret we need to keep from everyone else—my sterling work ethic.

“So you’ve told me,” I say. He has.

“What?” he says, as if he didn’t hear me. But then, a few seconds later: “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you!” I say it loud, with the kind of enthusiasm that masks the fact I don’t. It’s part of the job, the charade, being a good sport, taking it on the chin. I’m excellent at this game when it gets me something in return. Despite my smile, I know there is work ahead.

When the boat picked us up in the marina, I tried to make it clear to the captain and crew that I wasn’t with the family. Not really. I’m not one of them, I wanted to say. I actually arranged this pickup. I’m the assistant. I almost took him aside—our young, short, deeply tanned captain—and tugged on his uniformed sleeve. I’m working, I might have said. We’re on the same team.

But then, I don’t speak Italian.

So instead, I said it by lugging my own carry-on, by being unsteady on my feet, by not knowing I had to remove my shoes before boarding. By wondering, Has leather always been this soft? By running my hand over the navy stitching of the bench seat with the same appreciation our captain ran his hand over the knee of the stewardess when he thought we weren’t watching.

First-class or private. Concierges. Luxury surfaces. That’s what no one talks about—the finishes. Hand feel. Mouth feel. Unctuous. I learned that word from Helen, my boss’s niece.

No one should be allowed to have this life.

And of course, ahead of us—the island of Capri. Where, for the next week, it has been alleged, I won’t be working.

It’s not what I imagined. It’s smaller. Sharper. Steeper. Much steeper. Two bony shards jutting out of the Mediterranean with a swale in the middle. Blond cliffs everywhere. It’s a wonder they don’t bother them—the cliffs.