Bob’s plan is for me to commute so we don’t have to be apart all the time. I can study on the boat. I can come whenever I want (when he invites me). Like the last place, up north above the treeline, where I sat alone while he worked, except when Martelle, his colleague, would have me for tea or take me to the greenhouse to look at flowers in a snowstorm, or when the three of us would have dinner.

Sometimes we went for hikes with this ravishing red-headed linguist who was working with the Grey Nuns and learning Inuktitut. Deirdre spoke a pile of languages and when she was drunk, which seemed to be most of the time, the languages all mixed together and it was hard to know what she was talking about. She was always biting her nails and chewing her lips. She was from back home, too, but from the eastern part of the Valley floor. She explained to Bob that not everyone from the East Coast knew each other. And she hadn’t spent much time on the North Mountain anyway. She said it was desolate. This made me laugh because she didn’t mind the tundra and frozen ice. It seems to me that desolate is a state of mind.

Bob was great at arranging for his eclectic colleagues and acquaintances who weren’t working to entertain his wife. He said it was a nice little ritual we had, how when he was busy he made sure I had something fun to do as well. It was nothing more than babysitting, assuaging his guilt for always changing plans at the last minute. And keeping an eye on me. As though he thought I might slip away when he wasn’t around.

But I didn’t want to live on the boat part-time and take the bus to Mission. I dreaded it. My life was in the city. I hated sailing. Or rather, living in a boat like it was a trailer because Bob’s sole focus now was on making some money for the round-the-world voyage. Until then, he wouldn’t have time to sail. It was nothing like my life back home. My father and brothers would be ashamed of a boat tied up, the sails rotting and the engine sitting idle. It’s why I hadn’t let them meet Bob. Why we married at city hall. They struggled already to accept I was a scholar living in a big city on the Pacific side of the country. Living in a boat that didn’t even sail anymore would be anathema to them. They haven’t yet forgiven me for eloping, my mother especially, me being the only girl and all.

This falling-apart boat has triggered all my fears. No matter how hard I try I can’t please anybody. My mechanical and carpentry skills are better than Bob’s but really quite basic. Bob doesn’t seem to understand that. I fished on a boat. I didn’t sit below. I get claustrophobic thinking about being cooped up through the winter in the Snapper. I haven’t told him that; I’ve just avoided visiting him. And the one thing I’ve realized is that I’m most attractive to Bob when I’m avoiding him.