By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  “Mum!”

  She bent down to cuddle him; he put his hands on her cheeks.

  “You’ve got sticky hands, Eden. You’ve been eating sweets again.” She moved his hands from her face.

  “We had a sandwich first,” I said.

  There was a string of Christmas cards that my mother had hung up along the window.

  “Guess what I bought?” my mother asked, opening her eyes wide.

  “Are those all the Christmas cards we’ve had?” I looked at them, hanging like laundry over the sink. There were only five.

  My mother looked back at them, over her shoulder. “We’ll get more,” she said.

  Things like that are important, how many people send you Christmas cards.

  “What did you buy, Mum?” Eden asked.

  “A Christmas cake. I thought we could make icing for it and decorate it; you like doing things like that, May.”

  I nodded. “Did you remember the marzipan?”

  “Yes, and the little silver balls.” She pulled out a plastic bag from the cupboard. In it were the cake decorations.

  “Clear a spot and we’ll make the icing,” she said.

  She took the measuring cup down from the cupboard, the eggs from the fridge, and the icing sugar and put them on the table.

  She read the recipe out loud, and I poured the icing sugar into the measuring cup.

  “What can I do?” Eden asked. He was sitting at the table, resting his chin on his hands.

  “Get a wooden spoon.”

  The phone rang. My mother jumped up, quickly, as though something had just pinched her on the bottom.

  Eden and I watched her as she picked up the phone, taking a breath in, waiting a moment, like a wish, before she said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, darling . . . . I’m just phoning to see if the parcel arrived.” It was Annabel. I could hear her voice coming through receiver.

  “It hasn’t come today.”

  “The post is up the wall these days . . . .”

  I took the blue-and-white mixing bowl from the cupboard and put it on the table. Eden was standing outside the door, with the wooden spoon in his hand, looking down the hallway. I tried to take the whisk out of the drawer, but it got stuck and wouldn’t open when I pulled the handle. The whisk, the spoons, and the spatulas all rattled together.

  “I think someone’s ringing the bell,” Eden said. I followed him down the hallway. My mother was still on the phone. Eden and I stood very quietly listening; the bell had been fixed, but it was still hard to hear. Then it came, the light buzzing sound of the front doorbell.

  “It’s the postman!” I said, and we hurried down the stairs. I worried that he might have been ringing for a long time and would leave before we got there.

  The first thing I saw when I opened the door were the black buttons on his coat.

  “Hello, May,” he said. I looked past him at the bare hedge against the white and blue sky. A damp wind blew against my face and neck, and I opened the door all the way.

  “Hello, Rufus,” I said. He stepped into the dark hall, slowly, carefully.

  “Rufus, do you have a Christmas tree?” Eden asked, when he saw him. He had just come down the stairs.

  “No, I don’t,” Rufus said, laughing.

  “Oh, because we have one now,” Eden said, as he skipped towards him.

  “My mother’s upstairs,” I said.

  “I wanted to talk to her.”

  “She’s on the phone,” I told him. He was looking up at the staircase, where my mother was standing, holding on to the banister.

  “Lucy, I hope you don’t mind that I came by like this, but I wanted to talk to you . . . .”

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said, shaking her head. “Where did you come from?”

  “London. I drove this time.”

  “Well, would you like to have a cup of tea . . .?” Each word she said sounded unsure, as though she were speaking in another language.

  “Yes, thank you. I would.”

  Eden and I followed them upstairs into the kitchen. My mother lifted the kettle from the stove and filled it from the tap. Rufus unbuttoned his coat and put it over the back of a chair.

  “Would you like something to eat?” my mother asked.

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  No one spoke. The only sound was the fire from the stove.

  Then Rufus asked, “Are Annabel and Simon still here?”

  “No. They went back to London.”

  Eden and I sat down at the table. We opened the bag of cake decorations. There was a miniature Father Christmas, a sleigh with reindeer, and a snowman. We put them on our cake every year and decorated the rest with silver balls and holly and sometimes other sweets that we would stick on the icing.

  My mother handed Rufus a cup of tea. They both sipped their tea standing up. Outside, the sky was turning a darker blue. You could hear, when we were all still and quiet, the sound of the waves hitting the rocks below.

  “You left your hat here,” my mother said to him.

  “My hat?”

  I opened the marzipan wrapper; we would have to roll it flat and wrap it around the cake, underneath the icing. Eden stuck his finger in the icing sugar.

  “That’s not the reason I came back. Lucy, I wanted to talk to you.”

  Some people need to be told like that, and even then they still don’t believe. They hold on to their heart so tightly that it can’t hear.

  “I wanted to give you this,” Rufus said, and he held out his arm to her. I thought, What is it? In his hand he held a folded piece of paper. She put her tea down and took a step, slowly reaching out her hand towards his.

  Eden was making a marzipan cat, pinching up the ears, rolling out the tail.

  “Eden, we need that for the cake,” I said, but then I started to make one too.

  I heard the crinkling sound of the paper in my mother’s hands as she unfolded it. Rufus looked away.

  She seemed to hold it for a long time, looking down at it, not speaking. Rufus put his hand around the back of the chair. His eyes went from the floor to her: to her hands, to her face. Eden and I worked on our marzipan animals, pretending to concentrate, but really we were both quietly watching.

  When she had read the letter, she refolded it and walked over to the sink. She stood at the window, underneath the hanging Christmas cards, holding it tightly between both hands. Her lips began to tremble and she brought her fingers to her mouth, as if to still them. The room was quiet. No one spoke. No one moved. The only sound was my mother’s crying.

  …

  Later, I found the note in my mother’s jewellery box.

  Dear Lucy,

  This is the translation of the note: “The key to my locked

  spirit is your laughing mouth.” That is what I have always

  felt, what the truth has always been.

  Love,

  Rufus

  We walked over the rocks and down to the beach below. The sky was pale blue and the air was cool. We had our long winter coats and scarves on. My mother and Rufus walked side by side, talking, their hands in their pockets. Eden ran ahead, picking up stones and shells out of the wet sand and rinsing them in the sea.

  The tide was coming in; the waves rose and fell slowly, as though they were tired and wanted to sleep. Seagulls flew above us, landing on the shore. I felt the sand underneath me and thought, How could I have ever been afraid of this world, which has given me everything I need?

  “Look!” Eden shouted. He was farther down the beach, pointing to a pile of seaweed that had washed ashore.

  My mother looked at Rufiis and they both smiled, almost starting to laugh. Then she said, trying to sound serious, “What is it, Eden?”

  “There’s a starfish in the seaweed!” he shouted back excitedly.

  We walked over to look. The starfish was tangled in the green and stringy seaweed. Eden knelt down and carefully picked it out. He stood up, holding the small, sand-coloured animal
in the palm of his hand.

  We waited, looking at it. It was young with thin arms, it sat frozen in Eden’s hand. I touched it with my finger. It felt cold and rubbery, like a dog’s nose, but it didn’t move.

  “It’s not moving,” Eden said, his face fallen. “It’s probably dead.”

  “Put it in the water,” Rufus said. “Maybe it will come back to life.”

  We found a small pool of water at the bottom of the rocks. The starfish dropped lifeless to the bottom.

  “Oh . . .” Eden said, his hand dropping to the sand, as he watched it fall. He put some shells in for decoration and a piece of seaweed for it to eat.

  “You have to wait a minute,” my mother said.

  A cool wind blew in from the ocean, and my mother made a shivering sound.

  “Are you cold?” Rufus asked.

  “A bit.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, and she rested her head gently on his shoulder. That’s what it looks like to be held in the arms of someone who loves you: soft as sleep and as pure as the moon.

  Two seagulls circled above us, making a sound. Eden looked up at them, worried.

  “They might try to eat it,” he said, covering the small pool of water with his hands.

  “No, they won’t. Don’t worry, Eden,” I told him. I knew they wouldn’t like it, it would be too gummy and hard to swallow.

  I dipped my fingers in the clear water, then touched them to my forehead, like a blessing. I put one finger in my mouth and tasted the cold water and salt.

  “I think it just moved,” Eden said, putting his head closer so his nose almost touched the water.

  I looked down at the pale green water, at the small shells and stones, at the floating pieces of seaweed. At first I thought it was just the water moving over it, so I stared without blinking, to see if it would happen again.

  “Yes, it’s moving!” I said. It seemed to be waving its arms, swimming over the rocks and shells.

  “It’s alive!” Eden said, looking at me, his eyes wide. He jumped up, smiling and yelling.

  We saw our mother and Rufus walking hand in hand farther down the beach. The sky was still light and pale blue above us; the wind blew in softly from the ocean. Eden ran towards them, shouting.

  “Mum! Rufus! The starfish is alive!” The seagulls on the shore flew up and away from him as he ran, yelling. “The starfish is alive! The starfish is alive!”

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the following people a thousand times: Joe Dolce and Jonathan Burnham for reading this manuscript and recommending me to my agent.

  Kim Witherspoon, whom I somehow knew would be the best agent for this book, and I am thankful, every day, that she is. She guided it quickly and smoothly into the perfect hands.

  Elisabeth Schmitz, for her thoughtful, careful edits which refined this book. I could not have imagined working with such a caring and respected editor and am continually aware of how lucky I am.

  Morgan Entrekin, Judy Hottensen, Charles Woods, Deb Seager and Molly Boren at Grove/Atlantic where I feel that I’m in such good hands I don’t have to worry about a thing.

  Felicity Rubinstein, for so enthusiastically representing this manuscript in England.

  Dan Franklin, my editor at Jonathan Cape, whom I am honoured to be working with.

  Mary Gordon who taught me to choose words carefully, to read closely and to work hard. Connie Budelis and the Barnard English department for letting me take Mary’s writing class every semester.

  New York University’s creative writing program and The New York Times fellowship. My teachers: Susanna Moore for her friendship and guidance, Mona Simpson for teaching us to take our writing seriously, and E. L. Doctorow for telling me to, “Press on.”

  Lyn Chase for her interest in my writing since I was eighteen.

  Ami Armstrong for her helpful advice.

  Gideon Weil, Joshua Greenhut and Maria Massie at the Witherspoon agency for their continued kindness even before I was a client there.

  My mother Sophy Craze, for reading this draft by draft, chapter by chapter, and for patiently correcting my spelling and punctuation.

  My friends who read this manuscript along the way and offered encouragement: Christina Wayne, Holly Dando, Lizzy Simon, Elizabeth Yost Song, Nora Chassler, Amber Lasciak, Meg Thomson, David Grand, Rebecca Abbott, Anna VanLenten and Jett Craze.

  Harry Joseph for finding the starfish.