I REMEMBER my mom saying that one of the worst things about my dad was that if he came and asked for her back, she would go. The worst thing about him was that he never would. She said this the first time when I was five, with raccoon eyes and purple arms. She said it again in the car on the way to our new town. With a twenty-eight hour drive listening to Mom and Aunt Charlotte’s lecture on “What a Horrible Man Your Father Is,” featuring “Everything You Thought You Knew About Him Was Wrong,” as the only topic for our entire cross-country escapade, I was almost relieved to arrive. I sympathized with their decision to keep me in the dark about where we were going once I saw the place for myself. No description was the most fitting description. It was a naked cow town of lifeless blue collars and feeble grocery stores, all of it soaked in yellow film and hung to dry. The Leaning Tower of Unwashed Walls, that we generously titled a ‘house,’ begged for relief from its own weight, gray and pouting. My mom and aunt had up and downed it with pride when they initially climbed out of the car. But I sat stubbornly, assured no house had enough room inside for my family’s affairs. 

It was on my second or third day that the walls effectively suffocated me, which prompted my wandering to the nearest field, searching for some clarity in this world of mine that had now been uprooted, twisted and shaken well as if instructed by an unopened carton of creamer, and shipped across the country all without my say. Just a few miles down the road that I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of, I found my dad’s boat: a wooden dragger, fifteen feet long, with the patchworked net trailing down its stern even longer. What the boat was doing in the middle of a meadow surrounded by overgrown cattails rather than seaweed bested me, but I took it as a sign that my dad was still with me – despite my recent insight into All That He Really Was, (Extended Edition).

I had to jump to reach the ladder because the boat’s belly was propped up on stakes – standing on chicken legs to expose its unfinished paint job. The splintered rungs wanted to give with my weight, so I climbed swiftly to ensure they wouldn’t have the chance to. I pushed past the net hanging down the stern like a rotten-smelling version of a hippie shop curtain, and was overwhelmed by my dad’s presence on the boat. I traced my fingers along the chipped siding, the abandoned buckets exuding age-old fish residue, the forgotten hooks swallowed in rust that told triumphs of fishermen in their battles at sea. This was my dad. Not those stories my mom and aunt unloaded on me. Not that horrible feeling I got in my stomach whenever I looked in the mirror and saw his eyes in my own face. I could almost hear Billy Joel playing from the radio, his voice crackling through the water-damaged speaker on the bow’s splash zone. I could smell the coffee and bagels creeping up from the cabin, the ones he ordered with strawberry cream cheese as a remedy for waking me up before the birds. As I waltzed around the sides of the sea-less ship, I could recall what it felt like to have his hands on my hands, holding a reel together. 

I was six when he decided it was time for me to make my first catch, and took me deep-sea fishing out in Montauk. He knighted me with my own pole and held me from behind while I dangled it over the rail. After ten minutes or hours of struggle, and more assistance on his part than he’ll ever admit, we found two stripers linked to the end of my line, rather than one. He was so proud of me that he jumped around like the deck was made of jello. I remember being knocked to the ground by one of his flailing arms that couldn’t keep up with the speed of his delight. A natural, he had called me, a prodigy – his prodigy – as he pulled me back onto my feet and kissed me sorry with his stinky breath.

Sitting on the edge of the abandoned bow, pretending that the sea of dried-out grass I swung my feet over was Irish Moss, quickly became part of my daily pastime in the otherwise time-stilled town. It was the only place where I was allowed to miss my dad without feeling bad about it. I took in all there was to see from my new vantage point. About four houses total occupied the street, each their own display of hoarded junk, coffee-stained paneling, unfinished projects and broken mailboxes. Beyond that was nothing but fields. Overgrown, fruitless fields. I strained my eyes, hoping to find something hidden in the horizon, and investigated each passing breeze for salt – signs for some body of water, a hint of  where the boat once belonged – but the grass deserts stretched desolate for what seemed like miles. Something about it all was oddly calming. 

“You catch anything up there?” a Bass Pro Shop hat accompanied by the most eye-roll worthy accent called at me from the ground. Used to the silence that occupied the air from atop the boat, I nearly fell off the edge at the presence of the young voice. I think a grin of crooked teeth emerged below the hat, but I didn’t look long enough to be sure. I immediately fled to the back of the boat and attempted to scale down the ladder. But by the time I reached the stern, the same face was gazing up at me from the other end. 

“Shouldn’t go climbin’ on other folks’ property if ya don’t want ‘em catchin’ you.” His accent was so thick I expected a cough to accompany his words on the way out. I considered all my exits, contemplating if my legs could sustain the jump. By the time I’d decided that they couldn’t, I was met at eye-level with the accent in the hat. A shaggy-haired boy stood across from me on the deck. He introduced himself as Rodney.

“I’m sorry.” I started past him towards the ladder. He put up a large hand to prevent my leaving and I immediately folded into a defensive position, my eyelids clutching against each other. His dark eyes flashed, and he dropped his hands and softened his voice at once. “Yer name’s Sorry?” 

I leaned past his blister-ridden hands and this time they conceded. 

“I’m finishin’ her paint job tomorrow, if ya wanna help!” He called after me as I jogged away through the field, rolling my eyes at his request. “Maybe I’d forgive yer trespassin’ in exchange for the extra hand!” 

~~

When I woke up the next morning, disappointed again that my nightmare hadn’t ended with my sleep, I found that my mom and aunt had fully unpacked. Everything. All the cardboard boxes titled “Nella’s” in scribbled black pen were waiting for me flattened on the stairs. It was like we were actually staying. 

I barged into the living room and was overwhelmed by the decorations I grew up with plastered in new places on crooked walls. Mom’s favorite pots and pans were hanging under the fruit-fly-infested cupboards in the kitchen, and Aunt Charlotte’s plants had conquered all the window sills. Magnet pictures of our old life and friends were already slapped on the front of the fridge, and my grandma’s jade-shade lamp was propped next to the sunken sofa. 

I remember having been dead asleep when my mom woke me up the week before at three in the morning and whisper-shouted at me to grab the lamp. Disoriented from my dreams, I didn’t even know what I was doing, or what I was doing it for. I grabbed the lamp and trudged down the dark stairway in my pajamas. Down in the kitchen was where Aunt Charlotte greeted me for the first time in two years, the pile of cardboard boxes waiting alongside her pitiful smile. Now I stood in a dusty fort on the other side of the country with the stupid jade-shade that I had grabbed without question, staring me back in the face. 

“What do you think?” My mother’s voice asked tentatively from behind me, as if I were prone to shattering. There wasn’t a single picture of my dad to be found. My mom placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and I sprinted out of the house. 

~~

Somehow I found myself back in the field, walking up to the Dragger. It was the only place I knew to go. The boy Rodney stood at the base of it, whistling and swirling lines of deep black along the belly, just as he promised he would be. I wasn’t yet sure if I wanted him to see me. 

“Look who showed up,” he said way too smugly when my approaching steps gave me away. “It’s Sorry!” Seeing him without a hat, there was a stark kindness in his peach-fuzz littered face that calmed the panic I felt the day before. I looked down at his feet and saw a paint roller waiting for me in an empty pan. I grabbed it and got to work in silence. 

Rodney and I spent the next couple of days like this, meeting up every day to finish the boat’s paint job. He’d attempt to ask me questions about my life and sometimes I’d answer them. I’d listen to story after story about his. I didn’t mind when he talked. His accent became more bearable as the days went on. And he didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t like to talk as much. We would stand side by side, or bow to stern, or across the deck, and work to cover and heal all the cracks on the boat’s shell. We painted in the sun for as long as it was in the sky. And sometimes I’d even stay after it went down, wanting to prolong my return to the house. On days like these, he wouldn't leave me alone in the dark. He and I would sit on the bow of the ship and gaze up at the stars.

“Tell me about yer hometown,” Rodney said to the sky on a particularly long night. We laid head-to-head. 

“It’s very different from here.” 

“In what way?” 

“In every way.” We were having a staring contest with the night. “The air is different. It’s stickier over there, more humid. But fresher at the same time. Especially out on the water.” 

“You go out on the water a lot?” 

“Yeah. With my dad.” 

“Where’s he at?” he asked. I shrugged. Rodney turned his head towards me. “I like to think he’s on his boat.”  

“One thing about here that I don’t mind, though,” I continued unprompted, tipping my chin up towards the excess of white paint splatter in the sky’s face. “Is that. You can’t see stars like this at home.” 

My dad and I would watch The Titanic every other weekend. It was the only movie we had on tape. I remember watching Jack hold Rose on the bow the same way my dad put his hands on mine when we went fishing, and I remember feeling just as alive as Rose swore she did. He held me up to the sea and showed me its endless face. That night under the stars with Rodney felt like one of those moments too. Both spaces granted me asylum from my mom’s cries. Or at least brought me far enough away to not feel so guilty hearing them. 

“Well I’m glad ya found one thing ya like,” Rodney said. I could feel his breath on me with those final words so I got up quickly and wished him goodnight. He didn’t move when I did, so I questioned if he was spending the night on the ship.

“Why not? Like you said, can’t get a view like this anywhere else.” He laced his arms underneath his head in a most-satisfied sort-of-way. I left him in that position. 

“Tomorrow’s the last day! We’re almost done with ‘er, she’ll be good as new!” He liked to call after me whenever I walked away, as if he didn’t care that the stars might be his only audience. I liked that he couldn’t see the smile on my face when he did. 

~~

When I came down the stairs the next morning, Mom and Aunt Charlotte were waiting at the small circular table they called the ‘dining room.’ They were bent over the telephone between them, sharing whispers back and forth under the arch their heads created. 

“What’s going on?” It seemed like I had just woken them up with the way their eyes fluttered to their habitual fake-joy disposition. 

“Nothing, sweetie–” 

“Was that dad?” I stepped towards the phone and the flicker in my mother’s eyes told me everything. I looked between the two of them and down at the phone. Then I looked at the jade-shade lamp next to me. “Can I talk to him?” I asked the lamp. 

“You don’t want to talk to him,” my mom decided. I left the lamp and held her eyes. I wasn’t so sure I would like it if mine looked like hers either. I walked away and knocked the lamp off the table as I did, letting it shatter. 

~~

Rodney and I had been working on the boat for eight days in a row and we only had a small section by the engine left to finish. Despite our approaching goal, I slapped my brush against the wood and carelessly flicked paint into the grass. 

“Dear Lord Sorry, yer gettin’ it everywhere!” Rodney edged closer. I stopped to look up at him as he slid his thumb down my temple, clearing away a smear of black. He held my eyes intently. I laughed. 

“What’s so funny?” he asked, slightly offended. 

“Nothing,” I smirked, turning away. “You just made me remember something I thought I forgot.” 

“Remember what?” 

“This one time I was helping my dad paint our garage ceiling.” I continued to flick and swish my brush before me. “I think I was four or five, maybe.” 

“Tell me about it,” he said, his voice soft. I paused for a few minutes before continuing. “I was terrible at it,” I chuckled in remembrance. “Got the paint everywhere. I don’t know why he let me help.” I drew swirls on the boat. 

“Sounds like you.” His words smiled. 

“I think there was more in my hair by the end than on the ceiling.” 

“How’d ya get it all out? Cause we’re gon’ need some tricks for this shitshow,” he joked, pulling at one of my stained curls. I stopped the movement of my brush, stuck on a crack that wouldn’t fill. 

“My dad poured paint thinner on my head.” 

I didn’t look at Rodney, but I could feel his smile drop. The silence drowned us. Rodney didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to either. I could tell he was still looking at me, listening. I couldn’t look away from that one crack as I remembered everything all at once.

“I think it hurt real bad,” I told the boat. “I remember standing in the shower screaming while my mom tried to scrub it all out.” I’d never heard Rodney be so quiet before. His breathing and mine stood alone in the air. I shrugged. “But it worked. Got all the paint out of my hair.” I laughed once more as my brush found its movement again. I drew long lines up and down in front of me, avoiding the intensity of the eyes staring at me inches away. Rodney suddenly tried to stop my brush, interrupting my flow. I struggled against him, trying to continue painting like I never said anything. He held me tighter from behind, his hands on my hands. “He could’ve burned your scalp off.” 

“He thought it would help,” I mumbled, to him or myself. 

“You realize how fucked up that is, Nella?” 

I suddenly felt angry at Rodney and I didn’t know why. 

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot recently.” 

Rodney let go of my hands and turned me by the shoulders to face him. He reached out to pull back my hair, as if he was searching for scars. I flicked him away with my brush and watched black paint splatter all over his surprised face in polka-dots. A smile took the place of his previous open-mouthed stare. 

“You did not just do that.” The mixture of joy and frustration in his face made mine smile. 

“Final touch,” I teased, my voice still shaking off the memory. “I think she’s all done.” I patted the Dragger’s side. “When do we get to take her on the water?” 

~~

Rodney hitched up our sleek-looking wooden vessel to the back of his tilted ford truck two days after the paint had all settled. He hung a lanky arm out the window to see where the bed of his truck ended, his greasy-hair tucked under the same Bass Pro hat as the day I met him. I couldn’t help but analyze the sweat beads that mazed through his peach fuzz, or stare at the small dimples that I could never tell him carved moons into his cheeks, giving him a boyish charm. The half-burned cigarette resting on his bottom lip conversely aged him. I couldn’t picture anyone like him existing outside of this town. 

It would be a two hour drive to the nearest body of water, and I questioned why he took the boat so far away from it in the first place. 

“It’s a funny story. See, she was such bad luck, couldn’t catch a damn thing on ‘er. So we dragged her far away, hoping the ocean might repopulate its fish with her gone or somethin.’ That’s why when I saw ya sittin’ up there that first day, I thought, damn. Maybe the old girl finally caught something good.” 

He switched on his radio after that so I couldn’t have a chance to reply. He warned me that only one station worked, and Billy Joel blared through his speakers. 

About an hour into the drive, he turned down the volume and put one of his hands on my leg. 

“Don’t you need that to drive?” I joked. But I didn’t move it away. 

“I gotta serious question for ya. ‘Cause I wanna know how big an idiot I’m bein’ lettin’ myself fall for ya.” I had no idea what was coming. 

“Okay,” I said. 

“What if yer dad came and found ya ‘n wanted to bring ya back home. Would ya go with him?” I looked at Rodney. I could tell he was nervous. But I couldn’t tell how I felt, so I didn’t answer.

“Not just for my sake, but for yers.” My inquisitive look told him I wanted him to elaborate, but his passionate tone told me he was going to anyway. “See, cause ya seem to idolize the old man, and I’m not so sure yer seein’ the whole picture.” 

“And you think you are?” I jutted in. He took his eyes off the road and stared at my demanding ones. 

“Didn’t say that.” He turned away, inhaling the window breeze. “But I see you. And I see you tryna see the good in people. And I see it not always doin’ you much good in return. I mean, why you even hangin’ out with me?” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

He didn’t answer before the sirens started. 

“Ah, shit,” he cursed, taking his hand back to steer the truck to the side of the road. My leg suddenly felt cold alone. 

The police officer that knocked at Rodney’s window looked even more hill-billy than him. Unshaven and tan, with a donut-gut pouring over his pants in a U-shape, he had the confident waltz of a young cowboy. 

“‘Scuse me sir, you gotta registration for that thing yer towin’ back there?” Rodney’s voice went higher than I’d ever heard it when he admitted that he didn’t. 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. See, ‘cause I just got a phone call from old Mr. Simpson sayin’ he saw some teenagers drivin’ away with his boat.” Rodney’s face completely gave him away, to the officer and to me. I put my head back against the leather seat and closed my eyes. We were so close to the water.

~~

I wouldn’t talk to Rodney the whole time we were in the back of the cop car, no matter how much he tried to explain or begged me to listen. I followed the racing raindrops on the window and wondered whether it was raining back at home. 

“You each get a phone call,” the hill-billy officer told us when we arrived at the station, and tossed a phonebook between us. I stared at the telephone and let Rodney take his call first, debating who I wanted mine to go to. When he was done, I dialed the only number I knew by heart. 

While waiting, I was overwhelmed by a strange feeling of familiarity in the room I was in. It smelled like coffee and strawberry cream cheese. The comfort of it lulled me against the cool wall.

I see my dad coming through the door. He looks scruffy, sweaty, angry. The police are hesitant to let go of his arms when they walk him out of the cell to where Mom and I wait. She had told me to close my eyes before he came out and I didn’t listen. He wrestles out of the policemen’s clutches and marches his way over to us. I can’t figure out why he is so mad. I can’t figure out why Mom isn’t happy to see him. He walks past her and turns down to me with open arms. He kisses me with his stinky breath. 

“‘Scuse me, hon. Wake up darlin.’ Yer parent’s here.” I sat up excitedly, but I was greeted by the same coffee and strawberry-smelling room, without my dad in it. Mom was instead waiting for me at the door. I could tell she was holding back tears. 

Mom grabbed my neck and pulled me into hers too tightly. 

“What are you doing here?” I said into her hair, my arms still by my side. She pulled me back to search my eyes and face for harm. 

“Are you alright?” She asked, her voice shaking. 

“I didn’t call you.”

“I know.” I pulled myself out of her embrace. “Your friend did, sweetie. Robbie? Robert?” She stroked the hair along my cheek. I started crying. 

“Rodney.” 

“So I guess that’s where you’ve been off to everyday.” She wasn’t accusatory, or mad, or even disappointed. 

“I didn’t call you.” I collapsed into her arms and let her drag me to the car for the second time.