Sea Violet

The wind is cutting sideways when I step outside the following morning. As I walk with Mac out to the street he tells me we're going to have a wild ride. I feel my chest expanding. A pulling that is as exciting as it is terrifying.

When I get to the car, there is a woman in the front seat. She has long silver hair pulled back into a braid.

'This is Maggie,' Mac says as I climb into the back. The woman turns around. She's wearing thick black sunglasses. Gazing vaguely in my direction, Maggie extends her hand. I reach across. And in the moment my skin touches hers, there's an unfolding, and a closing-up. Like the sky is spreading out, getting bigger. Like the earth is contracting, getting smaller. Our bodies drawing nearer, closer, until it's just her and I. Her and I.

'I'm Maggie,' she says. Her voice is a colour I've never seen before.

Maggie. Velvet lilac.

She is wild violets in the tundra.

'I'm Oli.'

She smiles. 'I know.'

***

Half an hour's drive north of Pa's apartment, we pull up at the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, nestled on the banks of Pittwater. Lines of yachts pattern the sky with their masts, stripes of stiff white. I feel giddy with excitement.

When Mac pulls up the handbrake, a dog sticks its head up between Maggie's knees. The sudden sight of it scares the shit out of me. I squeal.

Maggie is still facing forwards, gazing out the window, as she has been the entire drive. She laughs, patting the dog's head. 'This is Coco,' Maggie says.

Coco is all sleek black fur with big button eyes. Chubby, even for a labrador.

'Hey, there,' I say.

Coco wags her tail eagerly. It thumps against the dashboard. 'She's very excited,' says Maggie, still facing forwards. 'We rarely make new friends.'

Mac gets out of the car and opens my door. I climb out and follow him around to the back of the car where we unload two bags from the boot. From where I'm standing, I see Maggie open her door. Coco leaps out onto the concrete. Maggie follows, carrying some sort of harness. She calls Coco to her feet, then she reaches down and fits the harness to the dog. And it hits me.

Maggie is blind. Like, really blind.

And yet she strides off confidently with Coco, calling back to us, 'Well? Are you coming?'

I look down at my feet rooted to the pavement. I'm rendered speechless. 'Told you,' Mac whispers, a smile spreading. 'She's incredible.' I nod wordlessly and he laughs, pats me on the back. 'Let's go, kid.'

We follow Maggie and Coco down the dock to where the Sea Rose is tied up in her berth. How Coco found this boat among all the other boats is beyond me.

Maggie undoes Coco's harness, chucks it on deck, then climbs up and over the lifelines. Coco jumps up and follows Maggie into the cockpit. Sitting down, Coco licks Maggie's ankles. Maggie grins and pats the dog on the head. 'Love you too, hon.'

Mac and I climb on board. 'Up here,' he says, motioning for me to follow him up to the front of the yacht. 'Shoes off first, though,' he says. I untie my sneakers, pull them off and leave them in the cockpit, then join Mac up front.

'Have you sailed before? Other than last week, I mean?'

'My family used to holiday on a yacht,' I tell him.

'What kind of yacht?'

I shrug.

'Did it have sails?'

'No, only a motor.'

'That doesn't count then.'

'Because it didn't have sails?'

'Thank you, Captain Obvious,' he says. 'Motor yachts make noise. They churn water, spit exhaust. Sailing—and I mean real sailing—is about listening.'

'Sure.'

'The first step in learning to sail is finding out how much you don't know.'

'Well, I don't know anything,' I say.

Maggie laughs, calls out from the cockpit, 'Great answer!' I feel something swelling in me. I giggle.

'The second step is learning that the ocean and wind are unknowable.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means that no matter what you think you know, you must always be open to the unexpected. I've been sailing my entire life, and yet the older I get, the more the sea surprises me.'

Maggie yells, 'Go easy on her, Mac!'

'I think that makes sense,' I say.

'The third and final thing is this: you can't change the wind. Okay? All you can do is learn to adjust the sails.'

'But you can look at forecasts, no?'

'What was lesson number two?'

'Expect the unexpected?'

'Exactly. Boats sink when people think they can control the wind, control the sea. But sailing isn't about control. It's about listening, feeling, surrendering, and adapting.'

Maggie chimes in. 'It's also about getting wet and cold while going nowhere fast.'

***

Mac knows the Sea Rose like it's an extension of himself—the way I imagine you'd know a lover after fifty years of nights. How you'd learn to see them in the dark.

I help him raise the big sail, which he calls the main, by pulling on a thick red rope. When the sail reaches the top of the mast, he seems to open out with it, his chest broadening, his smile widening.

'See that?' he says, pointing across the bow to a dark patch of rippled sea. 'That's wind.'

I watch the dark patch fan out across the bay. It moves closer; closer still. Mac counts down, 'Four, three, two,' and as he whispers, 'one,' the dark touches the edge of the boat. The gust rises, fills the sail. The Sea Rose strains, then lifts at the edge, pulls forwards.

'Beautiful,' he says, eyeing the sail, all white and spread out flat against the ruffled grey sky.

I follow Mac back down into the cockpit where Maggie is sitting at the wheel, steering, Coco at her ankles. Fitted to the cockpit near where she's seated, an audio compass is voicing information aloud for her.

Sailing is about listening.

A flock of seagulls passes over us, their shadows hitting Maggie's face. Can you feel a shadow?

'If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?' she asks.

'I don't know,' I answer honestly.

Maggie says, 'I'd be a whale,' and Mac cracks up.

'You can't sing,' he says.

'I could if I was a whale.'

'What would Coco be?'

'She's a dog, Mac. She'd be a dog.'

I laugh, then ask her, 'What kind of whale?'

'A humpback.'

'Why?'

'They swim from the Coral Sea all the way down to Antarctica every year. What a journey!'

'I'd be an albatross,' Mac declares. 'The same as Robynne.' I ask Maggie, 'Did you know Robynne?'

'Know her? I knew her first!'

'So you two met through Robynne?'

Mac chuckles. 'You could say that.'

'Robynne and I took a gap year before gap years were a thing,' Maggie explains. 'At least, certainly before they were a thing for women. And so we turned up on the beach at Bondi, two wide-eyed Brits, and found that there weren't any girls swimming—they were only sunbathing. Robynne didn't care, of course. She just marched into the waves. I followed. We got sand everywhere. Almost drowned. Then this guy and his sister had to come in for us.' She points to Mac. 'Couldn't stop laughing.'

Mac smiles. 'Couldn't believe my luck.'

'Robynne sounds like a lot of fun,' I say. 'Oh, she was,' says Maggie. 'She was a riot.'

'What happened to her?' Silence pools in the cockpit.

'I'm sorry,' I say, regretting the question.

'Don't be,' Mac says, patting me on the back.

'My grandpa died last week,' I blurt out.

A gust ripples through the quiet on deck. It catches in the sail, like a butterfly in a net. Pulling on a rope at her feet, Maggie draws the boom pole in. Everything tightens. We pick up speed.

'Oh, Oli,' she says, 'I'm so sorry to hear that.'

We're nearing the heads of Pittwater now, swells are climbing up out of the deep. The Sea Rose rises and falls. Rises and falls.

'I found him.'

Maggie taps the seat, motioning for me to sit with her. I shuffle across the cockpit, squeeze in beside her. She puts her arm around my shoulder, draws me in, so tenderly. Like I'm becoming a part of her, a part of her body, a fold of skin. It's warm and round and full. Mac comes and sits on my other side. With both arms, he envelops Maggie and me. Three become one. Rising and falling.

And the weight, this crushing weight I've been carrying, is lifted. Because they hold me in a way that lets me let go of myself. In them, I come undone. I burst into tears. The sound that comes out of me is creamy blue.

'Someone told me a special story about death,' Maggie says. 'She told me that we are like rivers, all of us. We begin as clouds, and then one day, we rain down and become a trickle. We grow into a stream … thicken into a river. We travel great distances, wind through all kinds of valleys and forests. Sometimes we come together with other rivers, flow together, swirl together in great lakes, part ways, flow alone … But we all meet again in the end at the river mouth, where we empty into the sea.'

I think of all the years Pa's river flowed with Nan's, how heartbreaking it must have been when their rivers parted ways. Creamy blue cries wet my cheeks, wet Mac's sleeve, but it feels good, to empty like this. I imagine Nan and Pa meeting at the river mouth, swirling together, blue and gold.

'Who told you that story?' I ask.

Mac answers, 'Robynne.'

Maggie nods.

'Robynne disappeared one night in the Southern Ocean,' Mac says.

I feel my insides lurch. 'Disappeared?' Wondering how a body made up of memories and desires could just dissolve. Like ice into the grey.

Mac takes a deep breath. 'It was just the two of us on board. We were thirty years old and sailing the world.' He pauses. Closes his eyes with the memory. 'I woke up for watch and she was gone.'

'Gone?' I whisper. 'I don't understand.'

Mac holds us tighter. 'I know it sounds strange, but I hope it wasn't an accident. I like to think it was her decision.'

'Really?'

'Yeah,' he tells me. 'I mean, I know she loved me. She absolutely did. And I loved her. She knew that. But she had dark days … I like to believe she made a choice.'

I breathe in. We choose to breathe, don't we?

I imagine Mac waking up for watch. The panic. Searching a monochrome for detail. The ocean like a painting. A site for yearning.

I shudder. 'Don't you wish you could go back? To try to stop her? Save her, even?'

'I did wish that. For many years. But the worst feeling in the world is wanting to go back to another time. Because it takes you out of time—out of this time.' Mac wipes his eyes. 'Me and Robynne … our time will come again. At the river mouth.'

Maggie takes my hand. I am shaking, I realise. She holds me until I am still.

'Life is a series of happy and unhappy endings, Oli. But it is also a series of beginnings … Never forget that.'