The Family Ocean
an excerpt

The night the Australian coastline was swallowed up in the horizon was the night little Will had his first nightmare. Emse woke up heavy-eyed to hear him choking in his sleep. She rolled heavily over and went to her knees beside his little box bed. Big Will turned over in his sleep.

"Wake up, baby, wake up, I'm here." She shook the child's shoulder, petted his cheek, gathered him up in her arms awkwardly. Little Will went quiet, hiccuped, and then came awake crying. "Shhhhh" Esme said, "Shhhh, baby, shhhush shush, it's all right."

He threw his arms around her neck, his cotton nightgown pressed against her skin. "Mumma, it was a monster." He coughed as he cried. She sank further on the cabin floor, pressing him tight to her and arranging his limbs close to his body, squeezing.

Big Will sat up in the bed. "Goddamnit, Esme, make him stop." She made more shushing sounds and squeezed the boy harder. He quieted some, taking in big gulps of air.

"Where was the monster, baby?"

Little Will pointed to the bed. Esme gasped at him, made her eyes big. "He was in my bed? What'd he do?"

"He ate you, Mumma!"

"He ate me! Shhhh, it's all right, I'm all right, he's an awfully mean monster. Shush, baby. What'd the monster look like?"

"I don'know."

"Did he have green spots? A tail? Was he little like you or big like your Daddy is?"

Little Will looked up at his father's shadowy figure where he was leaning off the bed, turn his chubby face back into Esme's neck and started crying again.

After the boy was tucked back in his box bed, flushed, sticky and sleeping, Esme pulled Big Will into the hallway. "I told you," she hissed, "I told you you can't be doing that with him right there! You will not touch me again until we're off this boat and he has his own room!"

"Like Hell!" he said back, a bit too loudly. "He had a nightmare! He's a child, they have nightmares, Esme, and can't I sleep with my wife when I want to?" He put a heavy hand on each of her shoulders. She shrugged them off and stepped back over the doorstop, shutting to door behind her with a cold thump.

"Goddamnit!" Big Will banged his fist into the metal wall. It made a hollow thumping noise that echoed loudly in the quiet night. He leaned his head into the door and closed his eyes, thinking of Mei'lei's soft skin, the dip in her back above the brilliant dyed cloth of her sarongs. Her smile, like a string of fat pearls, and he sighed into the wall, his stomach tight and lonely.