The Sound of Glass

by Karen White

  “Well, we have to go to my house to get the boat. It’s a long swim otherwise. If you like that kind of thing, there’s an annual charity Beaufort River swim each May.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Although I’d be happy to be a spectator and watch you.” The words were said through clenched teeth as we neared the end of the bridge, the talking helping by making me not hold my breath.

  “I haven’t done the official river swim, but I have done it accidentally.”

  I looked at the receding bridge in my side-view mirror and felt all of my muscles unclench.

  “You did it,” Gibbes said softly. “I guess you just proved Cal wrong.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t afraid anymore. But I did make it across,” I said, allowing myself a small smile. Turning to him, I asked, “How do you accidentally do a river swim?”

  Gibbes glanced into the backseat, where Owen and Maris were playing Go Fish with a deck Owen had brought with him.

  After raising the volume on the radio, he said, “I was being a stupid teenager. Me and Sy Williams drank a couple of six-packs and thought it would be fun to walk the bridge at night. We were on the pedestrian part, not too high up, and I managed to go over the side.”

  My heart seemed to flip over and shrink all at the same time. “Was he able to pull you back up?”

  “Heck, no. He kept on walking. Didn’t even know I wasn’t there. He walked home, then got in bed and passed out.”

  “Your grandmother must have been frantic.”

  “She didn’t know until the nice people in the boat that plucked me out of the water about a mile downriver called her.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t tell many people that story, because it’s embarrassing to admit that my brush with death was completely due to my own stupidity. But I learned something, too.”

  I waited for him to speak. Finally I asked, “What?”

  “I figure Loralee has probably said this before, but everything must happen for a reason. Maybe being a doctor is part of that. Who knows? Did you ever think that surviving your accident prepared you for something else?”

  The panic returned to me, the blinding light that always washed away my sight and replaced it with dark, silent water. “No.” I shook my head, trying to erase the image to replace it with the dusty road ahead, the moss weeping from the canopy of oak trees above us. “Please. Don’t. I don’t talk about it.”

  “Go Fish!” Owen shouted from the backseat, oblivious to our conversation.

  “You didn’t drown,” Gibbes said carefully.

  My hands gripped my bare legs, my nails making crescent moons in the skin. “Because my mother pushed me through the broken window.” I dug my nails in harder. “And when I tried to turn back to try to help her, she pushed me away again.”

  We drove in silence for a while, and I cracked open my window to remind myself that the air outside was warm and dry.

  His voice was steady and reassuring, as if he were preparing a patient for a shot. “Until we’re parents ourselves, it’s hard to understand what a mother will do to protect her child. I see that a lot with my critically ill patients. And I see it in Loralee.” He was thoughtful for a moment, weighing his words again. “Be kind to her, Merritt. I think she could use an extra dose of kindness right now.”

  I turned to him, anger and surprise battling with each other. “I’m more reserved than a lot of people, but I don’t mean to be unkind. I don’t resent her anymore, if that’s what you mean.”

  He nodded, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “She’s a single mother, which is never easy. She appears strong, but I think she could use a little TLC. She’s always worrying about others, and I don’t think there’s anything she wouldn’t do for her son if she thought it would be good for him.”

  I looked down at my folded hands and the crescent marks on my thighs that hadn’t yet faded, and listened to the children’s loud giggles from the backseat. A reluctant smile tugged at my lips. “Like traveling to another state so Owen and I could finally meet?” I turned my face to the window and took a deep breath of the sticky, heavy air. “That’s why I resented her, you know. Because my mother had sacrificed herself to save me, and I did everything I knew to honor her memory.”

  “And then your father met somebody else, and you thought he was somehow dishonoring her.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. He said he’d always love my mother, but that there were so many more years left in his own life and he wanted to live them. It wasn’t Loralee—I would have resented anybody my father fell in love with who wasn’t my mother. I just couldn’t forgive either him or Loralee. It was like I wanted to punish them, to make them suffer as much as I was. Because I’d been there with her, in the water. I was the one who was arguing with her when she lost control of the car.”

  He didn’t say anything, and we listened to the roll of tires on dirt and broken shells, and the sound of children playing a card game. A white egret settled delicately on the side of the road in front of us, its slow, graceful movements seeming to calm the wild beating in my chest. My mother loved birds, had loved to watch them at the feeders we kept around the yard. She would have loved that place, with the exotic flowers and the birds that were eerily prehistoric and tropical at the same time.

  I pressed my forehead against the window as we drove slowly by the egret, and it seemed to be watching me with its round yellow eyes, prompting me to continue. There was something about Gibbes that invited confidences. I’d once believed Cal was like that, too. Maybe that was why I pressed on, wanting Gibbes to hear my story, to offer the absolution I’d never thought I deserved. Or maybe I was still the old Merritt, and was hoping to push him out of my life and get him to leave me in the solitude I’d come to Beaufort to find.

  I continued. “I tried to help her, but she was stuck between the steering wheel and the seat. She just . . . pushed me away. She knew I could swim—she’d made me take lessons at an indoor pool when I was a little girl, even though she was afraid of the water herself. So I swam through the broken windshield—that’s how I cut my leg—until I reached the surface.” I swallowed, tasting the salt air that was so different from home, transporting me away from the cold night and the icy rain so I could remember it almost as if I were watching it happen to someone else. I breathed in deeply, smelling the scent of the marsh mud and sun-heated grass that had once been so foreign to me but had already become so familiar. And I thought of Cal leaving it all behind.

  The children were giggling again and I closed my eyes, trying to lose myself in the sound, to escape my thoughts. But the summer air and the gentle presence of the man beside me made the words fall from my mouth anyway. “Cal told me I was a coward for leaving her, just as he’d said I was a coward for being afraid of the water. He said I should have tried anyway.”

  Gibbes was silent, making me believe that I’d finally succeeded in pushing him away. I tried to console myself, to tell myself that that was what I wanted, but all I could feel was a heavy dread that felt oddly like disappointment.

  He didn’t look at me when he spoke, and although his words were soft, his hands gripped the steering wheel with whitened knuckles. “Courage isn’t about the absence of fear. Courage is doing the one thing you think you cannot do. Swimming away from your mother took more courage than most people have.” He stretched his fingers, encouraging the blood to flow through them again. “I think I’ve told you this before, Merritt: You’re a lot braver than you think you are. And you’re a survivor. Never forget that.”

  My spine seemed to soften against the leather seat, the breath I’d held escaping through my opened mouth as if I were expelling demons. It was like being crippled for years and then being told I could run.

  “Go fish!” Maris shouted from the backseat, reminding me of where I was and where we were heading.

  Facing him, I asked, “Are you telling me this because I’m about to get in a boat again?” I thought he would smile but was surprised when he didn’t.

  �
�In part,” he said. “But I imagine there are lots of times in life when you’ll need to remember that.”

  There was something in the way he said it, something in the way he measured his words like doling out cough syrup, that made me believe that he wasn’t talking about the boat.

  When we reached the house, the children retrieved their bags full of sand toys and towels, and two small beach chairs from Maris’s mother, then raced each other to the dock despite Gibbes’s reminder to keep Owen’s weight off his ankle. Owen responded by hobbling as fast as he could.

  I felt lighter somehow, as if something I’d been carrying around for a long time had been jettisoned. I took off Loralee’s sandals and allowed myself to feel the soft soil beneath my bare feet, unable to remember the last time I’d been outside without shoes.

  I helped Gibbes carry everything to the boat, but allowed him to load it all. I’d put on my life jacket and insisted the children put on theirs, too, but Gibbes waited until he’d gone inside and changed, which made me nervous every time he stepped onto the boat before he did.

  He caught me frowning and grinned. “Are you worried that I’ll get hurt?”

  I frowned back at him. “I’m worried that if you get hurt I’m going to have to drive us back across the bridge.”

  Gibbes straightened, his eyes serious. “I wouldn’t make you do that. Not until you’re ready.”

  Not until you’re ready. His words meant that he believed it possible, that I would someday be able to drive across the bridge by myself. Because he thought I was brave.

  “When alligator eggs are laid, they’re not already boys or girls,” Owen announced. “It depends on where the nest is. If it’s warm, the eggs become boys, and if it’s colder, they’re girls.”

  “Why are you talking about alligators?” I asked, glancing around nervously.

  “Because they’re all over the place,” Maris announced matter-of-factly.

  I took a step off the dock and looked at Gibbes, hoping he’d reassure me that they were joking. Instead he said, “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

  “Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth. “I think you’ve mentioned that.”

  “They’re not aggressive like crocodiles,” Owen explained. “These are just alligators. I hope we get to see one.” He bounced on his toes with excitement, just like our father used to do.

  A loud splash caught our attention about thirty feet from the dock, and I reached a hand out toward Owen and Maris, getting ready to pull them away from danger.

  “It’s a dolphin!” Owen shouted, pointing at where large ripples of water were pulsing toward us, the dock gently bobbing under our feet.

  A gray fin appeared above the surface of the water, nearer now and close enough that I could see the sleek texture of the animal’s skin, the sun reflecting off the arched back as it dived under the dark water. We watched in silence for a full minute, our patience rewarded as it rose above the water again, its large almond-shaped eyes seeming to be full of human emotions, its long mouth with tiny, sharp teeth curved upward like a smile. It jumped in an arc, showing off its loveliness, then dived beneath the water one last time before disappearing.

  “Did you see it, Merritt? Did you see it?” Owen spoke in his church voice, hushed and reverent.

  “Yes, I did,” I said, my voice almost a whisper. There was something magical and fairy tale–like about that place of black mud and marshes, of insect symphonies and long-legged birds with elegant necks, where dolphins leaped from the water right in front of you. It made me feel as if everything in my life, all the gains and all the losses, had always been leading me there.

  Owen continued to stare out at the water, as if by doing so he could make the dolphin reappear. “We used to have a bench swing in our backyard that Mama called her happy place. She says that wherever we live, we should always find a happy place—kind of like ‘base’ in a game of tag, where you can go and all of your problems and worries can’t touch you.” He opened his eyes wider, mirroring the ceiling of blue sky that was big enough to fall into. “I think this dock would be mine.”

  Gibbes placed a hand on his shoulder. “And you’re welcome to come here anytime, Rocky.” He looked at his watch. “We should get going. I checked the tide schedule to make sure we don’t get shortchanged on our time. You can always tell the tourists, because they put in on the side of the sandbar that gets covered up first when the tide comes in, and I want to make sure that we’re not right there with them.”

  Gibbes and Owen helped Maris and me into the boat before settling in themselves. I kept my hands pressed between my knees, trying very hard to keep my mouth closed and not shout in alarm every time Owen or Maris put their hands in the water. I watched the water carefully from under the brim of my visor, keeping an eye out for any alligators that might have the idea of eating children’s fingers for breakfast, and felt the soft slap of my silk chiffon scarf against my shoulders as we moved out into the river.

  “You okay?” Gibbes shouted over the sound of the motor.

  I gave him a thumbs-up, feeling the sun and the spray of water on my skin. I took off the visor and tilted my face, imagining myself rising from the dark depths beneath and guided upward by the light of the sun.

  Despite the early hour, the sandbar was crowded as we neared—although not nearly as crowded as it would be in another half hour, Gibbes assured me. It looked like an abstract painting while we were still far away, with splotches of bright nylon colors dotted against the sandy background, and white bouncing shapes tethered closely to the strip of sand, bobbing and dancing to the rhythm of various songs playing at the same time. It should have been garish and loud and overwhelming, but I felt my stomach leap with excitement.

  Cal had come there as a boy and a young man growing up. Maybe somehow I’d find in the waves and the sand the boy he’d been, the boy I’d seen glimpses of. The boy I’d loved and the parts of him that had loved me back. If I were to make any sense of my seven-year marriage, I needed to find him.

  Because our boat was small, Gibbes was able to maneuver it to the front row of watercraft—including a couple of yachts, a few larger motorboats, and some stump-knockers like ours that looked even older—and dropped anchor in the direction of the incoming tide. He did it with a precision of movement, a sleek show of muscle that made the roof of my mouth like flypaper to my tongue.

  He took off his life jacket and tossed it in the boat, then kicked off his topsiders while the children shed their own jackets and shoes. Then Gibbes hopped out of the boat, standing in water that wasn’t even up to his knees. He lifted Maris out and then Owen—keeping the wrapped ankle dry was already a lost cause—and watched them until they were completely up on the sand before turning to me. I looked down at the water, wondering how high it would be on my legs.

  “Are you going to take off your life jacket?” he asked softly.

  I looked at all the people on the sandbar, noticing that not a single one of them wore a jacket. I looked uncertainly at Gibbes.

  “I’ll hold your hand the whole time and not let go. But I won’t carry you.”

  His words would have provoked anger in me only a few weeks before. But I saw them now not as a challenge, but a direction on a path. A path I’d been wandering ever since the night my mother died.

  I quickly undid the buckles of my life jacket, then looked over the edge of the boat. While I was wondering what the most graceful way would be to get into the water, Gibbes placed his hands on either side of my waist and lifted me over. Instead of plopping me in the water as he’d done with Owen and Maris, he held me for a moment, then slowly slid me into the water until my toes touched the soft, wet sand.

  “How does it feel?”

  His voice was close to my ear, his breath warm on my neck. My tongue was finding it hard to dislodge itself from the roof of my mouth. “Fine,” I finally managed, feeling only his hands on my waist and my chest pressed against his.

  “Good.” He
pulled away and took my hand, just as he’d promised, and led me to the sand. When I was safely standing next to Owen and Maris, Gibbes regarded me closely. “If I’m going to unload the boat, you’re going to have to let go of my hand.”

  Embarrassed, I immediately dropped his hand and then organized a relay line to unload the boat as quickly as possible, still feeling the pressure of my hand in his.

  We set up our chairs on the creek side of the sandbar so the children could take turns bogging in the mud and then swimming in the river to wash it off. Gibbes had unwrapped Owen’s ankle and laid the bandage out to dry with a promise that it would go back on the second Owen returned to the boat. Although both children were strong swimmers, Gibbes went out with them each time, while I stayed on the sand, watching.

  The last time they’d come back from swimming, the children sat in the sand and began making a large castle with a deep moat. Gibbes sat down under the umbrella in the chair next to mine and reached over into a cooler and grabbed a beer, then handed one to me.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go swimming? You could hold my hand again.” He grinned like he was joking, but I knew he wasn’t.

  I shook my head. “I waded in the water. I think that’s enough for one day.”

  He took a swig from his can. “You said your mother made you take swimming lessons. You probably still remember how.”

  I pressed the cold can to my cheek, trying to cool a burning sensation that had nothing to do with the sun. “I know. But knowing how doesn’t make me want to dive right in. I just don’t like the water.”

  I felt his gaze on me and turned to meet his eyes. “You said that Cal once tried to help you get through your fear. What did he do?”

  Putting the can to my mouth, I drank three gulps, the cold alcohol trickling down my throat and into my bloodstream. I took three more, wanting the alcohol to get to my head quicker so I wouldn’t have to remember.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said, my body feeling heavy as I shrank further into my chair.