My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock Read Free Book Online Page B

ship, killing and injuring passengers. Elliott and Anna Roosevelt fled to a lifeboat while Eleanor stayed on deck. The plan was for the crew to drop her overboard and Elliott would catch her. “My father stood in a boat below me, and I was dangling over the side to be dropped into his arms,” Eleanor wrote. “I was terrified and shrieking and clung to those who were to drop me.” She screamed as she fell through the air and into Elliott’s waiting arms. Water and heights, unsurprisingly, fell out of Eleanor’s favor after this encounter. It didn’t help that Anna and Elliott sent their traumatized daughter to stay with relatives while they continued on their six-month tour of Europe. From then on they usually left her behind when they traveled because of her fear of boats. Being fearful, Eleanor learned, came with consequences.
    A few years later there was another unfortunate incident while visiting cousins in Oyster Bay. Uncle Teddy Roosevelt “was horrified that I didn’t know how to swim so he thought he’d teach me as he taught all his own children, and threw me in,” Eleanor recalled. “And I sank rapidly to the bottom. He fished me out and lectured me on being frightened.”
    T he next morning I walked to the dock and met The Manatee ’s captain, Gus, a hefty man with long brown dreadlocks and a monotone voice. The fishing boat was smaller and more rustic than I’d expected. The sleeping quarters were belowdecks in the hull. There was only room for two people to stand up at a time. There were bunk beds—bunk benches, really—built into the slanted walls. There was no shower on the boat, just a hose on deck with water pressure that would be the envy of any fire department. And while I’ve never considered myself someone who demands the finer things in life, I do enjoy a good roll of toilet paper, and there was none in the bathroom—or “the commode,” as Captain Gus called it. I dug my cell phone out of my backpack and called Bill from the deck to ask him to bring toilet paper. Then, after making sure no one was within earshot, I hissed into the phone, “What if I have to go number two before we dock at Martha’s Vineyard?!”
    â€œMaybe you’re supposed to use the hose on the back of the boat,” Bill answered cheerfully. “Just think of it as an industrial-strength bidet.”
    All three of the other people on the trip were experienced divers. I took an instant liking to Ronald, a retired lawyer whose T-shirt read: WORK SUCKS, I’M GOING DIVING! On the back he had written BITE ME! in black marker and drawn a shark face, portrayed in three-quarter profile. Les, an underwater photographer, was a good-looking blond guy, but there was something creepy about his manner that I couldn’t quite explain. Mandy, a special-ed teacher from Pennsylvania, took off her swimsuit cover-up to reveal a neon pink bikini and an assortment of tattoos. Stretching across her lower back was an underwater seascape featuring sea horses, coral, and sea turtles. There was also a scuba diver tattoo on her left shoulder and, for the sake of variety, a mouse riding a motorcycle on her right.
    â€œThey were done by my friend, Mona. She really is an artist!” she said, arranging her body on the deck for optimal sunbathing.
    The plan was to make the six-hour journey over to Martha’s Vineyard—stopping along the way to do some shark cage diving—and dock for the night. Then we’d repeat the journey, in reverse, the following day. The motor coughed to life, and soon Gus was navigating us out of the hamlet, steering with his right foot while eating a bowl of Cheerios. My stomach flip-flopped. There’s nothing more nauseating than the sight of milk in ninety-degree weather. An hour into the sail, I was downright queasy. I’d never been seasick before, but I knew my day had come as I watched Gus toss pieces of