long form fiction

   On a Sunday morning in 1977, under a layer of blue grey clouds, a persistent breeze filled the stark white sail attached to Iris's red skiff cutting through the waters of San Diego Bay, quiet as a scalpel through flesh, separating the body from the soul. The chill from the water violated every unguarded path to her skeletal figure, her clothes pressed into the hollows of her body, and her sharp cheekbones carved easily through the crisp air. She put her hands behind her on the back of the boat, puffed out her chest, and inhaled all the newness the ocean brings. 

   Getting close to downtown, on the east side of the bay, she pulled hard on the tiller and leaned back over the stern to let the boom pass in front of her while the boat turned in the opposite direction. She looked so alive and at one with the universe as she arched her back and the tip of her ponytail skimmed the surface of the water. When the sail was taut, she tied off the boom and let the wind carry her to the little strip of sand on the east side of Coronado Island. This was the part of the journey when all the doing stopped and her mind could wander as free as the tiny skiff.

   Iris thought about her parents and how, at any moment, they would be walking into their Presbyterian church in Iowa, a sad brown brick building with a white steeple, so generic it might have come out of a Sears catalogue. Iris's church had become these Sunday mornings on the water with the blue arch of the bridge reflected in the rippling water, creating an apse so large it held the vast Pacific Ocean. Behind her, beyond the city, the morning sun fought with the opaque marine layer to create a moving stained-glass window of bright fiery oranges and deep amethysts over lilac grey mountains floating over the skyline.

   The name "Arnie" adorned the bow of the boat in gold paint matching the flag of the Marine Corps. The same week she had enlisted in the Navy in 1971 the real Arnie had enlisted in the Marines. At first, during his training, letters came regularly and held all the joy and excitement of the young man she knew. Despite the conflict, or the war, or whatever anybody wanted to call it, Arnie and Iris both held on to a duty and pride of a bygone era about joining their respective military branches. After he shipped off, the space between his letters grew longer and the picture of Arnie's smile in her mind's eye faded. Other than these ethereal mornings on the water, the only other time Iris had surrendered to a universal power, was when Arnie's letters had stopped coming at all. 

   Her fears lifted when her mother, Betty, mentioned in one of her letters the homecoming party Arnie's parents had held for him. She had even managed to send a picture of him. What was missing in his face and eyes and soul made Iris glad she had married Douglas. Her "I do" relinquished her from making any decision about Arnie. Of course, soon enough, Douglas's alcoholism and abusive rages would turn her into a twenty-four-year-old divorcee. A first in her family. By then Arnie was dating a girl named Cheryl who worked for Crawford County in the same department as he did.

   Far enough away from shore to cause concern, the sail's sudden deflation snapped Iris back to the present. She untied the boom, but no matter how she positioned the sail, the wind was gone. Coasting towards the beach on lingering momentum, the boat slowed as if the water were somehow growing thicker. Iris felt thankful when the bow of the boat gently touched the shore like the back of a mother's hand feeling her child's forehead.

   She pulled the little red boat up onto the sand and said goodbye to her proxy Arnie with a salute. The sun was winning its war with the clouds and creating jewels on the surface of the bay. In less than ten hours, Iris would be giving her mother an awkward hug before the hour and a half drive to Crawley. Six years ago, she had left home filled with the unending promise of a Navy career and now, at least in her mind, she returned a failed seaman and a failed wife. 

   All the passion Iris had packed in her suitcases as they sat on her childhood bed had gone; some stolen by a lecherous superior officer and the rest pummeled out of her by a man who had promised to love and cherish her. Like a combine passing over her father's corn field, these two masculine harvesters of life took what they wanted and left the chaff for the wind to carry away. Iris submitted to defeat and made the decision to trade the blue waves of the Pacific for the amber waves of the Midwest, the everchanging coast of California for the sturdy landlocked boarders of Iowa, the sudden unnerving of an earthquake for the comfort of a tornado siren. She had built the plan on emotional quicksand and the ill-conceived idea that putting physical distance between her and her past would bring about an emotional distance. But some ghosts aren't so easily exorcised.

   Later, as her plane climbed into the air and passed over her abandoned skiff, Iris wondered if she'd ever get the wind back in her sail.