We lost our favorite things all the time. My stuffed animal began to grow mold during a particularly damp winter when I was four. My brother’s yellow Walkman went flying into the water the first day we moored the boat in the marina. My mother’s Ray Bans from 1982, the same year she moved to Seattle with my father, slipped off the edge of her narrow nose and fell into the water when she reached to untie the lines one morning. Stretching over the hull of the boat, she grasped at the glinting surface of the water, but the glasses had already sunk. She said 15 years was too long to hold onto anything anyhow.
The river was home to equal parts trash and treasure. Some days it was a deep, bluish green color, alive with seaweed swirling below and bugs, bees, and birds above. Other days it was brown, sluggish, and murky after rain and wind stirred up the toxic mud that coated the riverbed. Bright, splattering oil spots floated on the surface, painting rainbows from bank to bank. Entrenched in the detritus below I imagined three-eyed fish and centipedes the size of my arm. I also thought of all the lost things that the river claimed as its own. (A silver necklace, a baseball cap, a screwdriver, a map of Puget Sound. A flashlight, an unfinished burrito, a diary whose secret words had bled into the flow of the water.)
I kept an inventory of lost things. Everything that got washed away, or else stuck in the mud, once it fell overboard. One of the other live-aboards at the marina once told me he was a rich man because of his fine-tuned metal detecting skills. He made his entire living rowing along the docks and scooping up all the things people lost. Then he resold them, door to door and boat to boat. My brother said it was all just a drug front. I asked what he meant and he told me not to worry about it.
At first, I was so afraid of losing things that I walked from the car to the boat with all of my prized positions clutched to my chest. I would tumble out of the car with my purple L.L. Bean backpack, a few toys, a book, and my favorite raincoat all bundled in my arms. I would begin a tentative walk toward the marina gates, my arms too short to fully secure my belongings, and my feet too small to be visible beneath the bundle.
The first time I fell was at a low tide, so the ramp from the parking lot to the dock was steep and slick with rain. I slid from top to bottom and arrived on the hard, slatted wood of the dock before I even realized what had happened. That day, I lost a bouncy ball and a toy horse through the gaps in the wood. A duck nearby plunged its beak in after the bouncy ball but relented after prodding the plastic surface a few times. As it turned out, when I wasn’t actually holding onto my belongings, they were safer.
We began using big wooden carts to transport schoolbags, groceries, and sometimes ourselves (when Mom wasn’t around) down the long, uneven docks home. We also began taking fewer things with us wherever we went.
“We” began as just my mother, my brother, and me on a 32-foot sailboat after my parents split. We added my stepfather (Tyler) when I was nine and the dog (Sammy) when I was eleven. We lost my brother (Shane) to college on the east coast a year later, but he left most of his things behind. My father moved to Vancouver when I was thirteen and some of my extra things that couldn’t fit on the boat went with him. It wasn’t until we tried to move off the boat that we realized how much we actually had.
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Years later, I still prefer organized clutter to disordered emptiness. I get sad when it hasn’t rained in a while, and I secretly like the smell of mildew. A small part of me still thinks I will get some sort of terrible disease from having been exposed to toxic mud and living without central heating and adequate air ventilation. I have odd sleeping patterns, still.
Memories sometimes take me back to a different rhythm. The river lulled me to sleep but woke me often with loud, slapping waves when another boat passed by or the tides came in. Sleep is something people take for granted, until they can’t.
One time, in particular, I am seven years old and small for my age but my room makes me feel big. I am almost too long for my bed, which is the old booth for the dinner table that we took out when we turned the dining nook into my room. The booth is built right into the side of the boat, so all my mom had to do was cut a piece of foam for a mattress, cover the entrance of the nook with a makeshift plywood door, and I had my very own cozy (if closet-sized) room.
On this night, the rain isn't letting up. The drops patter steadily against the hull of the boat, and a single bead of water keeps forming at the corner of the window by my feet. Every few seconds, it drips into the small pot I put on the floor next to my bed, making a constant, sharp pinging noise. I have an Eyore stuffed animal that rests to one side of my pillow. The melancholy donkey cushions my body from the damp wall of the hull. Nothing is insulated so everything is loud and cold. The waves strike over and over, and I hug the covers close as I fall in and out of sleep.
In the morning, I wake too early to my mother clanging dishes in the kitchen just on the other side of my door. The small space heater on the floor of my room has been on all night, but my toes still feel frozen as I wiggle them under my covers. Then I notice Eyore, who fell off the narrow bed in the night and now lies just to one side of the heater. His periwinkle tail, singed by the grill of the heater, is now a golden brown. I jump out of bed and run to show my mom, hoping she can do something to heal him. She says that an afternoon in the sun would do him some good, so we decide to untie the lines and take the boat to the islands.
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The water provided endless entertainment (trips to islands, watching ducks, geese and otters, rowing and fishing) and ever-present fear (of falling, of losing things, of drowning, of being poisoned). Only once did all of these fears become a reality.
It starts when I am twelve years old, sitting at the edge of the dock, my toes dangling inches above the glassy surface of the river. Anna and Lindsey are perched next to me, telling me all about a new boy who transferred into our seventh grade homeroom.
“He’s so cute,” says Anna, “he could be Leo’s younger brother.”
“DiCaprio?” I ask.
“No, Cohen,” Anna says, “but you know, he could be related to Leo DiCaprio. He’s. That. Cute.”
“It’s true,” says Lindsey
Sammy is pressed against my side, shaking slightly with each gust of wind, but somehow fast asleep despite the splintered wood of the dock's wooden planks. The dock itself rests at an odd angle, with the outer edge floating and bobbing in the water while the edge closest to the bank tilts up, lodged against the muddy riverbed where the incoming tide has not yet reached. Every time I stand up to check my fishing pole, it takes a moment for me to steady myself, my whole body slanting the opposite direction of the inclining dock just to keep balanced. If a wave comes, I’m done for. (Fear of falling: check.)
Then, suddenly, my mother’s voice floats out the dockside window. “Wren, come around the deck and grab the paint, will you?” She leans out the window, craning her neck to see that I haven’t wandered off somewhere. A curtain of wavy dark hair whips across her face, propelled by the wind, preventing her from saying anything discernable.
“But Mom,” I say, “what if a fish bites?”
“Well, then Lindsey’n Anna’ll learn fast how to reel ‘em in.” Her words are still muffled by the wind and her hair.
I stand up and jump from the edge of the dock to the deck of the boat, crossing the treacherous gap without looking down. Once on the deck, my bare feet feel secure, steady. The boat rocks slightly under my weight, but I know the movements so well that my body naturally counters them. The stretch of deck that wraps around the entire boat is only wide enough to walk with one foot in front of the other and a hand outstretched, tracing the forward progress, poised to back up a faltering step or stumble. I reach the window. Mom passes out the bucket of paint, which sways slightly. A thick orange glob slides slowly down the outer edge.
“Don’t spill any on the deck. That’s just for the name, okay? And here’s a few brushes. Don’t lose ‘em. I’ll come ‘round back to see how you’re doing once I fix this bilge leak.” She looks up at me as I crouch down to grab the paint bucket, brushes balancing precariously on the lid. A bit of black engine grease is smeared across her left cheek. She follows my gaze and tries to wipe her face with the back of her hand but only blackens her face more. Her hands are a mix of white primer, dark grease, and specks of orange and teal paint. “Better?” she asks.
“Um. Yeah,” I say, “just watch out for your hair.”
She smiles. “Remember, one hand for you, one hand for the boat on your way back.” I nod and grab the paint before pivoting slowly around and making my way back along the deck, watching the paintbrushes teeter on top of the bucket as it sways in my hand and I sway with the rocking of the boat on the waves. The littlest brush rolls off the top of the can and goes careening into the water. I watch it sink and slowly disappear into the murk. (Fear of losing things: check.)
We set ourselves up in the small white dingy, one end tied securely to the tilting dock and the other to the stern of the big boat, which we have officially named Elvis. (“No fucking way am I naming this boat after a woman, just like every other boat in this marina. It’s from 1954 and it still looks great; we’ve gotta name it after the King,” says my mother. My brother and I glance at each other and then turn back and nod vigorously.)
Anna, Lindsey and I pile into the dingy and kneel down so that we are even with the back of Elvis. I start on a large, swooping “E” for "Elvis" while Anna crouches below me to paint “S E A T T L E , W A” in small block letters, slightly askew from her stooped position in the dingy. Lindsey says she’s feeling “not so artsy” and sits farther back to help steady the boat. The wind has died down a little and the tide is beginning to come back in. The world is balancing out again, slowly. The sunlight has shifted from high above of our heads to a softer light curving around the shadow of the boat where we sit painting.
Just below the near-setting sun is an old abandoned Boeing factory, the source of the infamous and terrifying pollution that still seeps into the riverbed. The light glints off of the building’s rows of cracked and broken windows.
“You girls almost done?” My mother emerges, peering at the back of the boat from up high on the deck. “Looks fantastic, really.” Her smile envelops her petite face; laugh lines follow the contours of her cheeks and chin. Boat care and repair days bring out a hidden enthusiasm in her otherwise no-nonsense parenthood. She can barely contain her glee when she sees that we are using the burnt orange paint to shadow our teal lettering, and she doesn’t even seem to notice that it’s all crooked.
“You done with that bucket, then? Pass it up and I’ll start cleaning. The leak’s better, I think. We’ll know for sure in the morning. If we’ve sunk a few inches, it means we’re still taking on water.” Anna twirls her straight brown hair around her fingers and looks at Lindsey, worry spreading momentarily across her face. Lindsey bites her bottom lip but says nothing.
“It’s fine you guys, I promise. This happens all the time,” I say with a shrug, “but you don’t have to stay over tonight. If you don’t want.” (Fear of losing things, again.)
“Yeah,” Lindsey says, “maybe we can sleep over at my house again.”
I reach to hand my mom the bucket of paint, but as I rise up on my knees, Lindsey shifts her weight, the dingy rocks to its side, and we nearly spill overboard into the darkening water.
“That was close,” I say, but Lindsey and Anna are laughing too loud to hear. We’ve all fallen into a tangled pile, and somehow my entire hand is covered in blue green paint.
“Don’t rinse it in the river, I’ll get the hose.” Mom moves to step off the boat and onto the dock. As she’s turning, a wave from a passing boat moves under the dock and ripples toward the shore.
Elvis creaks, water sloshing between the dock, the buoys, and the boat. Mom reaches out to steady our dingy before it fills with water from the wave. Her only piece of jewelry, a thin bracelet with twisting strands of gold and silver, slips off her wrist and drops into the water with a modest plop. It sinks quickly, leaving behind a few solitary bubbles. “Shit. Fuck. Wren grab my bracelet. Grab my bracelet, quick!”
“What? No!”
“It’s right down there. It’s too muddy to see but I know where it dropped, you can jump in and grab it.”
“The water’s nasty I can’t. You always tell me never to go in the water. What about all the toxic metals?”
“Shit—sorry girls—I mean shoot. You’ll be fine, I promise.”
Sammy barks. Her tiny eyes dart from me to my mom and back again.
“Mom, no. Why don’t you just get it yourself?”
“I can’t swim! That’s my best bracelet. You have to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well I just never could put my head all the way under water and—now is not the time for this discussion. In fact, there is no discussion. You’re a great swimmer. Now get in the water.” (Fear of drowning: undeniable.)
Lindsey: “Do it, Wrenny!”
Anna: “Yeah, I’ll grab a light or something.”
The dog barks again.
Anna holds an oversized flashlight over the deck and shines it into the gray-brown water. Images of barracudas swallowing the bracelet and buckets of oozing toxic waste flash through my mind. (Fear of losing things, fear of drowning, fear of being poisoned.)
I close my eyes and jump. If I open them under water, I’m sure I’ll go blind forever. Or else I’ll be staring in the eyes of the mutant fish waiting to attack me. Or maybe it’ll just be too dark and murky to see anything. I grasp at the fine layer of silt on top of the hardened mud of the riverbed. I run my hands back and forth, combing through the muck and half-expecting something to bite my fingers off. Nothing. I resurface, gasping.
“Anything? Okay well—”
Before she finishes, I am back below the surface, blindly grabbing handfuls of water and muck and seaweed. As long as I’m poisoning myself, I better get the damn bracelet. As my lungs strain for air once again, my hands make contact with something solid and crescent shaped. I shoot to the surface and hold the bracelet high above my head. Someone’s hand reaches out and pulls it, and me, to safety.
That bracelet was the only thing I ever reclaimed from the river. I stood on the dock while Lindsey and Anna, bent over with laughter, regain enough composure to spray me down with the hose as I strip off the clothing I had forgotten to remove beforehand. The few other live-aboards near our slip lean out of their boats to look down the length of the dock. My mother marches out onto the dock, hands me a towel, and tells them to mind their own goddamn beeswax.
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There was only one other time I went into that water. I fell while moving the very last of our boxes off of Elvis and into the large wooden cart on the dock. It was only one pant leg, really, and Shane had resurfaced from college and was just in time to catch me (before I fell and was lost to the river forever).
With four big carts full of all of the things we managed to hold onto during the boat years, we took the long walk down the docks, up the ramp and across the parking lot one last time. My mother lead the brigade while Tyler and Shane each pushed a cart in front of them and pulled a the last cart along behind them. I followed, clutching the last and most important box of family photos, electronics, Christmas decorations, and other treasures. One edge of the box was damp from the river, or maybe just from the rain that was quickly turning from a light mist to a heavy shower.
The wind was picking up and the dock was beginning to rock in the waves, but our brigade soldiered on. Sammy zigzagged behind me, countering the movement of the docks beneath her paws.
When we got there, the house felt too big, too empty, and too dry. Our first purchase was a humidifier, followed a few days later by a television, pillows, mattresses, and bed frames.
Over the years, we began to replace the things we had lost in the water, but none of the replacements were ever as precious as the few relics salvaged from life on the boat. (The antique wooden steering wheel my mother refused to leave behind; Sammy’s first and only dog bed; my brother’s artwork that decorated the walls, now stained with water and mildew; Tyler’s collection of baseball caps; a few of my favorite books and the silver earrings I was proud never to have lost.)
The first night I spent in the house, the silence was suffocating. I couldn’t decide what room to be in; there were too many. We didn’t have enough belongings to fill the emptiness, so it was as if we didn’t belong. I brought my sleeping bag and Sammy’s bed into the living room next to the big front window and convinced everyone else to do the same. When my brother asked why, I said because it will be more like home.
Rain pattered against the windowpane as I drifted off to sleep. For weeks after I moved into my room, I would wake up to the sound of rain and feel the house moving around me, as if rocking in the waves. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever sleep so soundly again.
Painting Elvis, summer 2004