Desperation Reef

Thus, at forty-six years old Jen is not in the best shape of her life, but near it. Her running and swimming speeds aren’t quite what they were twenty-five years ago, and she’s not as limber, and her knees creak when she gets out of bed in the dark every morning to hit Brooks Street. But her jet ski skills and underwater breath control are better.

The biggest question is, how good is she at riding enormous, fast, lethal waves in fifty-degree water over jagged rocks?

Well, Jen knows she’s not quite as good as she was back then, in the thick of it with John.

But this coming December, less than two months from now, she’ll be ready to surf the Monsters of Mavericks, women’s division.

And to tow Casey. And Brock, if he wants her to. Though Brock’s wife, Mahina, wants that honor and, as his wife, Jen knows she deserves it. And she knows Mahina is good, but good enough? No room for error, she thinks, and all that.

A blunt fear eddies inside Jen as she considers towing either or both of her sons in the waves that killed their father. But they’ve trained hard and they’re ranked among the top twenty big-wave riders in the world.

This fear is part of the larger fear of riding those waves herself. After witnessing what Mavericks did to John, she has lived and relived and dreamed what they can do to you.

Just the idea of being on the water at Mavericks again terrifies her. More than the towing in and the riding of the waves. The wild soul of nature lives there, without conscience or remorse.

Her husband taught her how to face it.

And for John, she’s going to complete the journey she began with him.

Now, Jen’s thoughts boomerang back here to Brooks Street, and she drops into another nice right, a smooth five-footer with a steep, smooth shoulder to work with. She banks the big heavy SUP off the upper face, dragging her paddle along the ribs of the barrel as she heads for the bottom turn. Then straightens and rises up the face, her bowl of orange hair matching her paddleboard and wetsuit — orange and black, John’s colors for his wetsuits and big-wave guns — and then she’s inside this gin-clear barrel, and her colors quiver and fragment within it. This would be a beautiful sight for an onlooker but there is none at first light.

Just Jen Stonebreaker, here alone. Alone since John made his early earthly exit.

She had ridden her first big waves with John when she was eighteen and he was twenty-three. The waves inspired a primal fear in both of them, a fear that kept them respectful, alert and — until that day — alive.

Jen had towed John into a Mavericks monster on her jet ski for the first time two months after her eighteenth birthday.

Married him on the beach at Sleepy Hollow in Laguna six months later.

Partnered with him in big-wave contests all over the world: Jen towing John into the men’s heats, and John towing her into the women’s. Winning a little prize money. Sponsorships. Earning some respect. Even as middle-class haoles from small-wave, big-money Laguna Beach. Even from the Hawaiians on the big-wave tour.

Jen buried her husband up in Newport Beach when she was twenty-one.

Gave birth to his sons, Casey and Brock, nine months later.

Not a day goes by that Jen doesn’t think of him, usually not an hour.

Mostly, she thinks of how she failed him.

In the privacy of her Laguna Canyon home, and her office in the Barrel, she talks to John. Answers for him in a voice that even sounds a little like his.

John had meant almost everything to her. She gave herself to him, heart and body, and there was practically nothing that she wouldn’t do for him. Practically nothing she hadn’t done for him.

Loved him and listened to him; cooked his meals and did his laundry; handled the money and paid the bills; endured his hangovers and his surprising, petty violence. Saved his life one brooding evening at Todos Santos with a jet ski and a rescue sled.

Their dizzying, smoky hours of pleasure in the little cottage on Victory Walk.

Not an endless summer at all. A brief one, but crammed with life.

But since that day at Mavericks twenty-five years ago — excepting the careful, focused raising of her two sons — Jen Stonebreaker has felt few moments of joy. Her life since John’s death has been over two decades of dedication to motherhood and the Barrel. Two decades of thinking she might try to ride the big waves that terrify her.

She hasn’t ridden a big wave since that day, but that’s about to change.

During her waking hours, she can imagine those monsters, can see herself making that drop, carving that turn, riding the thing with her own particular strength and grace. Yeah, babe, she thinks: you can still do that.

But in her dreams, she feels the enormous mountains, lifting her higher and higher, carrying her toward land faster and faster, then heaving her toward the world of rocks and whitewater so far below. From up there, she sees the pale sharks gliding over the reef. Sees John’s body, leashed to the rocks, surging peacefully back and forth like kelp.