Brunonia Barry - The Map of True Places

EVER SINCE EARLY JUNE, WHEN she’d told Hawk who she was, Zee had been having dreams about Lilly: Lilly on the bridge. Lilly being chased by Adam. So when she started having her recurring dream about Maureen’s story again, she was almost relieved. The night she started up with Hawk had been several weeks ago, back on June 10, the first really warm night of the season.

Zee had been too tired to sleep. She was so exhausted, and it was far too hot upstairs. Every time she settled down, her legs would jump her awake again. Desperate, she’d taken one of the sleeping pills Mattei had prescribed.

And then she’d had a dream about the Friendship, a dream she’d had off and on for years. Zee dreamed about the lower level of the ship, as Maureen had once imagined and described it, with very specific details: the hold, the bunks, a lantern that hung from a chain.

When she woke up, Zee became obsessed by the idea of seeing the Friendship for herself and finding out how accurate Maureen’s description had been. The fact that she didn’t want to wait until morning, when she could pay her admission and go aboard the historic vessel, should have been her first clue that the obsession was a reaction to the sleeping pill. Everyone had heard stories of people who’d done odd or unusual things while under the influence. But the drug was still in Zee’s system, and so her compulsion to immediately see the Friendship seemed logical.

Her mother had never set eyes on the Friendship, or rather on the replica of the 1797 merchant ship that the City of Salem re-created in the 1990s. Maureen had died back in the 1980s, long before the plans for building the ship were even drawn up, though money was beginning to be raised for the project. Tonight, for some reason, Zee was obsessed with discovering how accurate her mother’s detailed description had been.

And so she quickly dressed and snuck out of the house, tiptoeing down the stairs, stretching over the squeaky one near the bottom, and letting herself out through the kitchen door, careful to close the outside screen door slowly so that the spring didn’t slam it shut and wake Finch. Once outside, she cut across the backyards and alleys until she reached Derby Wharf, where the Friendship was tied up. The night was clear, the stars seemed bright and close.

The ranger’s station was deserted, as was the rigging shed. When she got to the Friendship, the ship was dark and there was a chain across the gangplank. But the moonlight was strong, and she easily ducked under the chain, removing her shoes so that she wouldn’t make a sound on the ramp. When she got to the ship’s deck, she looked around. She knew there was security, knew Hawk to be part of the team who took shifts making sure the Friendship was safe, mostly from kids who might sneak aboard and vandalize it. The Park Service rangers were really the ones in charge, but the men who worked on the ship also volunteered on occasion, taking turns keeping watch.

Zee found the stairs and descended to the cabin below. Her heart was racing. It was so dark that she could barely see a few feet in front of her. Though she was still drugged, she was beginning to realize that this had been a stupid idea. She should have waited until tomorrow and taken the tour with the tourists.

Ever so slowly her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The moonlight merged with the streetlight, and the beam from the tiny lighthouse at the end of the wharf provided just enough illumination that she began to make her way around. She could see only traces of things. She moved as if blind, feeling for the structure of objects as Maureen had described them and the positions where she knew those objects to be. Here was the hold, the bunk, there the hanging lantern. Each confirmation filled her with awe, but it also scared her a little. The sea was calm and the ship tied securely, but she could feel it rolling, feel the floor shifting beneath her feet as if it weren’t here in port at all but in the middle of a stormy sea. It must be the sleeping pill, she thought, and then it occurred to her that she might be only dreaming now, dreaming that she’d left Finch in his bed and made her way down here on such a determined mission. She began to hope she was dreaming.

A beam of light swept toward her, and she froze.

“What’s going on?” Hawk’s voice filled the empty space. Then he stopped in recognition as the beam from his flashlight lit her face. “What are you doing here?”

She might have passed out. Or maybe it was the effect of the drug. But the next thing she knew, she was sitting on his boat. He was making her tea or coffee or something hot. And she was coming back. He didn’t ask again what she was doing on the boat. He didn’t ask anything, just waited for her to explain, which she didn’t do. She’d heard about this kind of thing. Sleeping pills affected people in a variety of ways. Some had blackouts where they didn’t remember driving. The prescription came with warnings: Don’t drink, don’t operate heavy machinery, blackouts may occur. This wasn’t a blackout, not in any traditional sense. But sitting here, embarrassed and confused, she made a mental note never to take another sleeping pill. There was something too intimate about being here on his boat, with his personal things scattered about. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling exactly, except that she wanted to erase this night.

When she was okay again, Hawk offered to walk her home. As they walked down Derby Street, she started to shiver, and he gave her his jacket. They walked in silence.

At the door she realized she had locked herself out. She’d left the interior door unlocked, but the screen door had clicked shut and locked behind her, an extra precaution she had set up to stop Finch’s wandering. Hawk tried one of the side windows, but they were also locked. Then, looking up, he spotted the vine that led to the open window in Maureen’s room. Zee stood watching as he climbed the vine in the same easy way he’d climbed the rigging that first day she’d seen him, and for just a moment she saw him as the young sailor in her mother’s story.

When Hawk let her in the kitchen door, Finch’s alarm was going off. He stood at the far end of the tilting hallway, staring at Hawk.

“It’s okay,” Zee said. “You remember Hawk. I locked myself out, and he let me back in.”

Finch didn’t answer but just stood staring at them both. “Let me get you back to bed,” Zee said.

By the time she got him settled and calmed him down, Hawk was gone.

THE NEXT NIGHT ZEE ASKED Jessina to stay late.

She walked down to the Friendship and then to Hawk’s boat, moored at one of the slips on Pickering Wharf. He wasn’t there. She found him at Capt.’s, sitting at the bar with the rest of the crew. All heads turned as she entered.

Hawk stood and came over. “Two nights in a row,” he said. “Lucky me.”

She realized she could take the remark two different ways.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“For walking me home. For your jacket. For not having me arrested.”

He laughed.

She handed him the jacket. He put it on and went outside with her, holding the door as they exited.

They walked down the wharf, past the Friendship and the dog walkers and the granite benches to the tiny lighthouse almost half a mile out into the harbor. They sat on the bench.

She had expected to have to offer him an explanation, had been working on what she would say for most of the afternoon, but everything she could think of sounded lame.

But he didn’t ask her. Instead he sat looking out across the harbor.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“The house I grew up in,” he said, pointing to the Marblehead side of the harbor.