by Jessi Kirby
Once inside, I watched my dad’s headlights move north up the beach, slicing through the darkness in front of them. And then, like they always did, my eyes wandered over to the beach cottage. Between what Tyler and my dad had told me, it sounded like my great-grandma had been there until the end, when they’d all had to leave. Which meant my mother’s room had been too. I sat for a moment, considering Tyler’s offer to take me in. When I grabbed the spare flashlight from the charger, I told myself I’d feel better if I looked inside just once, by myself.
The padlock was rusted through. I wrapped my hand around the crumbling metal and yanked down hard. It fell to the dirt with a clunk, and the door inched open. I looked around to make sure no one had seen, then took a deep breath and stepped over the doorway. The now-familiar smell of damp wood and stale air hung heavy around me in the darkness and sat utterly still, in contrast to my heart, which jumped and kicked in my chest. I hesitated, then clicked on the flashlight, keeping it pointed at the ground. Mouse pellets, dirt, and wood shavings covered the floor beneath my feet, and dark wood paneled all of the walls.
My gut reaction was to get out—back into air I could breathe and back to the place I had kept myself in for so long, where my mother was just another one of my childhood memories that had long since grown hazy and surreal. But I had crossed the threshold, and now something in me forced my feet forward. I swung the flashlight in a slow arc around the edges of the room, which had probably once been the living area.
To my left I could see an old stove through a small doorway. Beyond that lay a short hallway with another door off to the right. I crept past the kitchen, then stopped and peeked into a tiny bathroom. A dry toilet stood in the center, surrounded by pieces of broken tiles and rusty pipe. As I turned to go on, the thick threads of a cobweb stretched across my face, and I swatted frantically at them, dropping my flashlight in the process.
It thudded onto the wood floor, rolling loudly before coming to a stop against the wall. There, in the narrow shaft of light, I saw the bottom step of a staircase that angled up almost vertically. Up until that moment it hadn’t felt much different from the other cottages in their broken-down state. I stared at the dust particles orbiting one another in the light, and I knew. If there was any space in the house that had been hers, that could possibly have some remnant of my mother in it, it would be up the stairs.
The first step sagged under my weight, so I crept up slowly, keeping my feet to the edges of the steps, testing them first before putting my weight fully on them. I was concentrating on this pattern of placing my feet, and then lifting my weight, when I reached the top step and finally looked up.
It was visibly lighter in this room. Not only because the walls were all painted white, but because of the large window that looked out directly onto the rocky tide pools that drew so many people, including myself. Just beyond them, a boat, probably out for lobster, sat beyond the breaking waves. Its blue-white light waved and bobbed gently over the shiny black surface and splashed a bright pool around the hull.
The image it created looked like a painting. I stepped back and realized why. The frame around the window was wide with detailed corners, a frame around the perfect canvas. I imagined how the picture in the center must continually change in color and texture, through seasons and weather.
Your mother was a brilliant artist.
I stepped closer, keeping the light as low as I could. To the side of the window a small door opened out to the balcony I had been so intrigued by. My hand reached for the crystal knob, then stopped short as a dark shape on the window frame caught my eye. Cautiously I raised my light up to it and brushed away a layer of dirt to reveal what lay beneath.
It was a tail.
A curved tail that tapered and ended in two curling tips. My eyes followed the graceful lines upward and found the woman’s body and waving hair that I knew would be there. I stood on my tiptoes and reached my hand up to the top corner of the window frame, then ran it down the length of it, squatting when I reached the bottom. Dirt and salty film coated my fingertips, but I didn’t wipe them off.
I continued with my hand, along the bottom of the window frame, wiping away the dust, then up the other side. Faded mermaids, beautiful in their curves and waves, swam among rocks and coral in an underwater garden. When I got to the top, I had to move on raised toes, wiping the grime away with each step. No swimming figures bordered the top of the window. Instead there were three words, scrawled in faded paint. I stepped back and shined my light on them.
BEAUTY, GRACE, STRENGTH.
I stared at them, afraid to breathe, then repeated them in my head. Beauty. Grace. Strength. No recognition or memory came to me, no special significance behind them. She had placed her brush on that window frame, and with delicate strokes had left something of herself, something meaningful to her that I didn’t understand. That I might never understand. Were those the things she valued most? The things she wished she’d had? Things she wanted to pass on?
I stood rooted to the sagging wood floor and switched off the flashlight. Then I sat down and cried.
She was all around me, everywhere I turned, from the moment we had arrived. And still … she wasn’t. I had fooled myself into thinking I felt some connection to this place. There it was, right in front of me. Her art. Three words. And nothing else.
I wiped my eyes, hard, wishing I hadn’t let myself think there had even been a possibility of anything else. She had left me alone in the dark long ago, and this time was no different. I put my head down on my knees, and my red moonglass slipped out of the edge of my shirt and swung back and forth on its chain before coming to a stop, dangling in the dark, inches from my face.
I closed my hand around it and felt the same smooth contours that I had for the last nine years, since the night she died. A piece of sea glass. That’s what she left me. I knew now that she had dropped it for me to find.
Some walks, when we combed the beach for glass, I would get discouraged when I didn’t find anything at first. It always seemed that as soon as I would want to turn around and quit looking, a piece of glass would magically appear in front of me in the sand, giving me just enough reason to keep searching.
I had heard her tell my dad as they lay next to each other on our beach blanket one afternoon, soaking up the sun, that she dropped them for me to find. A few feet away I carved a tunnel into my sand castle, and I decided to walk far away from her from then on, to see if I could find them all by myself. And so when I picked up the red piece that night, and looked up and down the beach, bursting to tell her, I believed I had found it all by myself.
Because she’d been walking out into the water.
I squinted through the morning drizzle, watching the town car make its way down the hill. Ashley had arranged for me to be picked up and taken to the race so we could go to the spa afterward. Between the rain and a sleepless night, I’d gotten up ready to bail on both, but I didn’t want to have to tell Jillian that I wasn’t running, or Ashley that I was canceling, so I’d forced myself into my uniform and packed a bag for the spa.
The car stopped directly in front of me, and the driver hopped out. He jogged around to open the door I was already reaching for.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to get out in the rain, though.” I dropped my hand and took a step back, allowing him to open the door. As he did, Ashley leaned her head out.
“Hiieee! Get in, get in!” She patted the seat and scooted over to make room. I sat down. “Are you ready for your race? And the spa? You are going to love this day.” The door closed, and she chattered on excitedly. “Sugar glow scrub, ocean algae body wrap …” I watched the turbulent gray water as we pulled away, still full of the empty melancholy I’d felt the night before, in my mother’s room.
“Anna? You okay? … You listening?”
“Yeah. Sorry. That all sounds great. I’m just a little nervous for this race,” I lied as we made our way down the highway toward the school.
She bu
mped my shoulder. “Oh, don’t be nervous. You and Jillian are, like, the best runners we have. You’ll do fine! Is your dad coming? Or Tyler? We could make a little cheering section.”
“No, Tyler has a water polo game, and my dad got called out early this morning for a missing boat or something. The waves are huge right now.”
“Oh. Well, don’t worry. I’ll cheer for ya.”
I nodded and turned back to the window, watching the gray streak past me. “Thanks, Ash. I appreciate it.”
When we pulled up to the course, I spotted Jillian right away. She wore a red plastic poncho over her uniform and stood stretching while Coach Martin went over something on his clipboard. I felt the slightest bit better, knowing we’d be running together and that I’d have to go all out. I needed to today.
We stopped in front of them, and Ashley squeezed my leg. “Good luck! I have Gatorade and snacks for when you finish. I’m gonna wait in here until the race starts. Tell them all I said good luck!”
“All right.” I opened the door and stepped out into the cool, wet air.
Coach looked over. “You got a chauffeur service now, Ryan?” He tossed a small plastic package to me. “Put this on. It’ll keep you warm before you get started.”
I opened the snap and shook out the poncho, then slid it over me. “Thanks.”
He turned and put his hands to his mouth. “Coast High! I need you guys over here.” Over his shoulder I saw red ponchos move through the crowd of runners and tents.
Jillian walked over. “Hey. Hope you’re ready to kick some ass today, cuz we’ve got serious competition.” She motioned with her head to a blue team gathered beneath a pop-up tent. “Their number one has the record for this course.”
“Great.” I tried to joke, but it was forced. “No pressure or anything.” I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go to the spa, and I didn’t want to be at home, either. I wanted to go far away from everything, somewhere my mom had never been or left.
The night before, I’d sat there on her bedroom floor for who knows how long, and something in me shifted. From the emptiness of the room and the sharp absence of her, anger rose in me. I’d never let myself be angry with her before, but now I couldn’t push it away.
Coach Martin clapped his hands together forcefully. “Okay, ladies, this is it. I know the conditions aren’t the best, but get over that. I need your heads in this race. Jill, you and Anna are going for one and two.” He looked over the rest of the girls. “We need to take as many of the top ten spots as we can, so stick together and go hard. It only hurts for three miles.” He put his hand out in the center of us, and we stacked ours on top. “Coast Breakers! Go!”
Our tight circle disintegrated as we backed up and shed our ponchos. We walked as a group to the starting line, where runners from six or eight different teams jumped up and down, rubbing their arms to keep warm. The official blew his whistle, and we reigned in our nervous energy enough to listen as he went over the course. We had an advantage, having trained on it, but its hills still made for a brutal race. A race that my head was definitely not in. The race official finished up his instructions, then walked the line, making sure we were all behind it. When he got to the other side, coaches raised their stopwatches out in front of them, thumbs hovering over the start buttons. The official held the gun high above his head and yelled the words that shot adrenaline through me every time. “Runners! Take your mark!”
The sharp crack of the gun sent us off in a crowd of elbows and feet jostling for space. Jillian was a step ahead of me, and I focused only on staying with her. Within a few seconds the group thinned out as we took our positions with the top runners from the other teams. And then the rain started.
It wasn’t a drop or two that made you wonder if it was really going to rain or not, building until you knew. It was like someone had taken a knife to the clouds and let loose everything in them. Instinctively we all put our heads down as we tromped over the dirt trail that would be mud within minutes.
I thought of my dad then, out in the rain, looking for a boat that had been stupid enough to go out, despite the storm warnings, and I felt ill.
My dad.
The night she left, while I sat huddled in a blanket with my grandmother in our warm house, he pulled on his own dive gear and went out into the icy water to search for her. And later, while I slept, helicopters flooded light down into the black chop of winter and radioed to him that they saw nothing. And finally, as I bent in my dream to touch a hand that reached out of calm blue water, she disappeared into the cold blackness of the night, leaving behind only swirls of questions and ripples of guilt. The thought of him out there looking that night, when I knew what had happened, pricked holes in my chest, and I felt my legs waver. Jillian glanced over.
“You slip?” She was breathing hard, red-cheeked.
“No, I—”
“Come on,” she huffed. “You’re slowing down.”
I squinted and tried to match her stride as rivulets of water flowed into my eyes.
“Come on. Run away from whatever it is. We got a hill coming up.”
We both breathed hard, and water splashed up our legs now with each step. I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave it behind or run away anymore. I’d been the reason life wasn’t what she wanted it to be. She may have chosen it in the beginning, but the night she drowned herself, she made another choice. One that didn’t consider me, or my dad, or what we might live with afterward.
I stopped running. Just stopped. Right in the middle of the trail.
Immediately two runners passed me, and Jillian looked over her shoulder, completely taken aback. She didn’t have time to ask any questions, though. She turned and kept running, looking back once, in time to see me walk off the course.
I inhaled slowly and willed back tears that sprung, hot, to my eyes. A short distance away I could see Ashley’s car in the parking lot, steam rising from the exhaust. Our tent was empty, and I figured everyone was out along the course, watching the second mile by now.
I needed to get away.
When I opened the town car door, the driver turned around, surprised. “That was quick. How’d you do?”
“I need to go home. I don’t feel well. Could you take me?” I was still breathing hard, water running down my face.
He looked around, confused. “Where’s Ashley?”
“I think she’s out on the course somewhere. But I really need to go home. Could you take me real quick? Please? I’ll call her and explain when I get home.” I knew I’d owe her an apology later, but I needed to leave.
He gave one last look around, then nodded once. “Hop in.”
Outside the town car’s window angry clouds loomed as far as I could see, and rain fell in translucent walls. I sat silently, but felt the driver’s eye on me in the rearview mirror.
“Not feeling well, huh?” I didn’t answer. “There’s always something going around. I tell ya what, though. You go home, get some sleep, then drink some yerba maté. You’ll feel much better. Ashley got me started on the stuff months ago, and I haven’t been sick since.”
I nodded politely and tried to smile.
“Actually”—he reached across the front seat—“I’ve got some you can take with you. Here.” He handed back a brown bag, then looked at me again in the mirror. “It’s wonder stuff. Great for the memory, too, I read somewhere.”
“Thanks.” I looked down at the bag in my hands. I didn’t need any help with my memory, though. That was crystal clear.
She had paused as I’d trailed behind her in the wind. And when she did, I froze, suddenly afraid of how angry she would be that I had followed her. She paused and she looked out at the ocean, her hair and skirt whipping around behind her. And in silhouette she was beautiful, like a mermaid out of water, and all I wanted to do was make her happy again, so I looked down to the sand at my feet, hoping to find a piece of glass for her. And it was there, all by itself, next to the vague imprint of her foot. She had walked right
over a piece of moonglass, a perfect delicate triangle with smoothed edges. I bent into the wind to pick it up, and when I held it up to the moonlight, it glowed a deep red. And I ran. Ran to show her what I had found, because I knew she would pick me up and spin me around and tell me I had found a treasure. She wouldn’t be mad once I showed her, so I yelled, ecstatic, as my bare feet slapped over cold, wet sand. “Mommy! Mommy! I found moonglass!” It would make her so happy.
And then I slowed down, confused and out of breath, until I stood digging my toes into the sand as I watched.
She stood knee-deep in the water, and her skirt clung to her legs. On sunny days we would sometimes wade in up to our knees and peer down in between the breaking waves to look for pieces of glass being tumbled around underwater. But she wasn’t looking down. She wasn’t searching for glass. She was staring straight out at the ocean, like she didn’t even feel the cold or the wind.
I watched, confused.
I watched her walk out there. And the wind howled around me, and my toes went numb, and I watched. She loved to swim. She was the one who could coax me into the water when the sound of the waves scared me onto the sand. But on that night I didn’t follow her. I watched from the shore as she waded out into the frigid black water.
She didn’t flinch or turn back when it reached her chest. She didn’t raise her arms up to keep them from the cold. She didn’t swim.
She just walked out.
I stood there who knows how long, watching the spot where she went under, waiting. I didn’t take my eyes off it, because I didn’t want to miss her when she came back up. I would surprise her there on the beach, and she would be so proud of my red piece of moonglass—
“Miss? If you like, I could walk you the rest of the way to your cottage.”
We were parked at a sign that read FOOT TRAFFIC ONLY at the entrance to the park. The driver turned around, waiting for me to answer. Behind him rain streamed down the windshield and wind whipped the palm trees, threatening to break them apart.
