You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

That life—the past, the beforelife, the beforemath—was a boat. I was on it with my husband, and later our daughter joined us, and still later, our son. The sea was sometimes calm, and we could see right down into the water. We could see everything beneath us. I felt like we were being held—kept afloat, buoyed—by everything we saw. Other times the sea was rough and gray, ruffles on the waves when they curled over and broke. There are stowaways in so many stories about long journeys across the sea. There are storms—the water gnawing at the hull, desperately wanting to find its way inside. There are shipwrecks. But sometimes it is less dramatic but more tense. There is something moving, dark and slow, in the water beneath the boat—something you don’t want to see, but you have to see it. Otherwise, what passes for plot?