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PARTISAN REVIEW
cut . But is was a hell of a lot safer than sailing with it flying into her
eyes.
If
you'd trim it short, now, you'd be salty as a chicklet."
Adelina blew her brains out about five years ago. 1 don't an–
swer, but lower myself back down into the cabin. 1 am intent on im–
posing my own will on the use of galley space. What will be stowed
where has become amazingly important to me. 1 have no intention
of hacking off my hair, or in any way imitating Adelina, but as the
limited space imposes on the passengers a repetition of ritualistic ges–
tures, 1 feel my own initiative is superfluous. At times 1 feel 1 have
become a new version of her. Still, 1 retain my own thoughts and my
own voice. Clearly Adelina was more addicted to list-making than I,
and, as Daniel is always buying me prune juice-which 1 never
drink - 1 have figured out that she must have suffered from constipa–
tion. Daniel assumes it will take me an hour to dress, which is fifty
minutes too much. He expects me to have nightmares, and seems
surprised that 1 fall asleep easily, not waking until the following
morning. He says his early days with Adelina were paradise. Well, 1
don't want to open that can of worms. My own marriage was earth–
bound. Kids, bills, some fighting about us both having careers and
so forth. Four years ago Lewis died of cancer.
1 have had a lot of sadness, but no complicated ghosts haunt
me. Sometimes 1 get mad at Lewis for dying and leaving me to do it
all alone and 1 grumble, "So you let the whole show fall on my shoul–
ders , so thanks a lot."
Because 1 want to know more about where we are going 1 am
reading about the Bay of Fundy. I don't know the rules of the sea.
I'm not yare. Although Daniel is a good sailor, his weakness is that
he underinforms his crew. BAY OF FUNDY ... THE GRAVE–
YARD OF THE ATLANTIC.
Elena, is this trip necessary? You need the
graveyard of the Atlantic? You are traveling with a first-rate sailor who no
longer values his own life.
My dentist- I am sure he bought his Ber–
muda 40 on my kids' braces - has been slipping me sea knowledge
while drilling cavities. "I wouldn't take an inexperienced sailor like
you or my wife across the Bay of Fundy at night. With a crew ofjust
one? And why do you have to do all that cooking? What's wrong
with a once-in-a-while shore dinner?" During my root canal time
with him, though, my dentist slipped me a lot of sailing information.
Which leaves Daniel at times baffled as to the source for my odd bits
of knowledge .
"May Day originally came from
m'aidez,"
1 say flatly.
"M'aidez?"
