He Divorced Me at His Ship's Christening, So I Held the Ship novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bottle
Wendell hands the christening bottle to his mother and divorces Filipa on the microphone; she drops her ring in the bay, steps onto her father's tug on the pilot's hand, and pulls the horn.
My husband handed the christening bottle to his mother, then picked up the microphone and divorced me.
He did it in front of three hundred guests on the Tenth Avenue pier, with a television camera ten feet away.
I was standing under the bow of the ship named for her, in a pale blue dress and a white sash that said SPONSOR.
I had carried that bottle in its net of gold rope for a week.
Wendell tapped the microphone twice and gave the crowd his investor smile.
"Thank you all for coming to welcome the Clarissa B. to San Diego," he said.
"My wife has done wonderful work for this family on the water."
"As of this morning, she is no longer my wife."
A sound went through the guests, a hundred glasses stopping halfway to a hundred mouths.
"The petition was filed at eight o'clock," Wendell said.
"The towing contract with Medeiros ends at noon, and Harborline tugs will take the ship out."
His mother crossed the platform in cream silk and lifted the bottle out of my hands without looking at me.
Clarissa Braddock had not looked at me directly in three years.
"A sponsor should be family," she told the camera.
I stood there with my empty hands open in front of me.
Behind the rope at the end of the pier stood the dock families in their orange vests.
They were longshore crews and their wives, invited to watch.
Every one of them was looking at me.
My father's three tugs were tied to the ship, two at the stern and the Santa Rita at the bow.
I had put them there myself at dawn for the sail-away.
Two hundred guests already stood at the ship's upper rail with their champagne, waiting to be carried out under the Coronado Bridge.
Clarissa swung the bottle at the hull.
It bounced.
She swung again, and it bounced again, and a murmur ran along the dock families that I understood without hearing the words.
A christening bottle that will not break is bad luck for the ship and everyone who sails on her.
Wendell's smile did not move, but his eyes found mine, and I saw that he was waiting for me to cry.
I took off my ring instead.
It was a square-cut diamond he had picked out in one afternoon, and it came off easier than it had gone on.
I walked to the edge of the pier and dropped it into the bay.
It made a very small sound.
"Filipa," Wendell said, off the microphone now, his teeth together. "Do not make this ugly."
"You made it ugly at eight o'clock," I said. "I'm only late to it."
I walked down the pier toward the Santa Rita with my sash still on.
Between the pier and the tug's rail was a gap of black water about three feet wide.
My heels were not made for it.
A man in a navy pilot's jacket stood at the edge with a radio in one hand.
He had come down the gangway to check the lines.
He was the only person on that pier who had not looked at me with pity.
He put out his free hand without a word.
I took it.
His palm was rough and warm.
His thumb pressed once against the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was running much too fast.
He held on a moment longer than he needed to.
Then he let me step across onto the deck my father had stood on for thirty years.
"Captain Medeiros," he said, and I understood he meant me and not my father.
My captain, Anselmo Furtado, was already waiting at the wheelhouse door with his cap in his hand.
He was sixty-six, broad, and had run the Santa Rita for my father for thirty years.
"Anselmo," I said. "We are not casting off."
"No, Capitana," he said. "We are not."
Wendell had followed to the edge of the pier, and the camera had followed him.
"Pilot!" he called. "The sail-away is at noon. Order those tugs to let go."
The man in the navy jacket looked at him without hurrying.
"Mr. Braddock, I don't give orders to another master's lines," he said. "If Captain Medeiros holds them, the ship stays where she is."
"She's in breach of contract!"
"She has until noon," I said from the rail. "I'm using every minute of it, Wendell."
Two hundred people at the ship's rail were suddenly very interested in their shoes.
On the pier, Clarissa stood with the unbroken bottle in her hands and her mouth a thin line.
The pilot lifted his radio and spoke into it quietly. "Pilot to all stations. Lines stay fast until further notice. I'm in no hurry."
Anselmo handed me the lanyard of the Santa Rita's horn.
Nobody had told me to do it.
I pulled the cord and held it down until every head on the pier had turned toward me.
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