What the Waves Know

by Tamara Valentine

  I did not believe the old sea witch paced the cliffs at night, not really, but a small part of me was willing to try handing my secret over to something bigger than myself, something with stronger arms to carry it. Maybe it was the way God had come up missing over the last year, or the way Yemaya had dragged Captain Booth’s soggy body back home to safety even after he almost harpooned her that got to me. Or maybe I was just like my father and needed to believe there really was magic, something strong enough in the universe to pluck us out of our worlds and save us from ourselves.

  Turning for home, I ran my hand over a gouge in Luke’s paw from the edge of the pipe, glancing back at Riley. He was there, standing statue still in the pouring rain, staring into the distance as though searching for something he couldn’t find—and then he was not. I only caught the tip of his head slipping below the edge of the bluff, but what I can say for certain is that the ground below my feet turned to quicksand. Maybe it is truer that the entire world turned to quicksand, sucking me into it with every step I took closer to the ridge.

  The sensation started as a mere heaviness in my legs until the shhh, shhh of the waves breaking below filled them up with cold molasses and slowed me to a thin crawl. My fear of heights returned to me with drawn claws. Remy had told me the sand below Knockberry Ridge was the color of chestnut skins because it was sifted through with slivers of ships and wrecked lives. And who knew what else was down there. It sent a chill shaking straight through me at the thought. My throat clenched and a full thirty seconds ticked by before I realized I had stopped cold in my tracks with nothing but a bouquet of flowers staring back at me where Riley had been moments before.

  Take me. . . . The red stars dipped and danced, danced and dipped through the daisies and black-eyed Susans, away from where I stood on the porch, with my mother clutching my shirt to hold me back. The Nikommo whispered and whisked them away and all I knew was that I had to get them back. A scream. A screech. The stars skipped into the night and toward the moon, skating across the ripples. Taking flight. And then they were gone. Hurry . . . hurry . . . . hurry . . .

  What had just happened hung over me for a moment, settling on my brain one speck at a time until it punched through to my gut in a fit of blown-out panic. It is not every day a person witnesses someone tilting right off the edge of the earth and it is not a thing a person ever forgets—even if you spend a whole lifetime trying.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I did what had grown natural to me in times like these: I ran. Noise flooded my brain from every direction even though the world had gone magnificently quiet. If there was a sickening thud of Riley’s body thumping over the rocks below, I did not hear it. The noise in my brain lifted to the high-pitched squeal of long fingernails running down the belly of a chalkboard or steel scraping endlessly over rock. Eight more legs seemed to sprout below me, each stumbling and tripping one over the next. No sooner would I get one foot planted beneath my weight than the other would skittle out from under it as I ran.

  It was minutes, or maybe only seconds, before I landed on the front steps of Remy’s cottage. The cold rain had turned my insides to sheer ice and knocking on the door threatened to snap my fingers clean off my hand. All the force I could muster produced an exasperatingly soft rat-a-tat-tat until Remy pulled open the door with a confused look on her face, eyes ping-ponging between me and the puppy in my arms.

  “Je-sus fucking Christ!” She pulled me into the warmth of the kitchen and pushed me into a tattered Boston rocker beside the woodstove. “What demon of the night coughed you up? Where have you been? Does your mother know where you are?”

  I shook my head numbly.

  “Does she know you’re gone?”

  I shook my head again, but it was less pronounced as my whole body began to shiver from the heat of her fireplace mixing with the cold from my clothes.

  Remy pulled Luke from my arms, setting him beside the fire, then yanked my shirt over my head before peeling my pants from my legs like well-pasted wallpaper. She slipped the terry-cloth robe from her own shoulders to wrap around me much the same way Riley had done for Luke. “Son of a bitch! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are you trying to do, kill yourself?” She pulled the robe tight over my shoulders, standing before me in nothing but a pair of men’s boxer shorts and a frayed long john shirt. From the television set behind her, light glowed and I could hear the theme song from M*A.*S*H.

  “R-R-R . . .” I pushed the sound with all my might through my shrinking throat. “R-R-R-i-i-i-ley!” His name choked out of me just before the opening in my esophagus closed completely at the memory of him teetering into the ocean from a 120-foot cliff, and the frustration of it was almost as overpowering as the fear. I folded myself in two under the warmth of the robe, rocking into the waves of silent heaving sobs that seemed to be flowing from whatever spring had been tapped earlier that day with my mother. Something was wiggling loose along with my voice, no matter how hard I tried to push it back. I couldn’t pull it into focus or make the pieces fit, but I knew it hurt. It is an unnatural thing to sob noiselessly. Luke gave a concerned whimper, limping protectively over to my toes.

  Remy knit her brow, going ashen at the mention of Riley’s name. “What about Riley?”

  “Ffff . . . ffff . . .”

  She waited only a moment before realizing the floodgate had resealed itself and bolting into the kitchen. A split second later she reappeared waving an old receipt and an eyeliner pencil in the air.

  “Write.”

  The Ridge

  I had not finished the last two letters before Remy grabbed her two-way radio and ran into the night barefoot, wearing nothing but her boxers and long john shirt and screeching into it, “Jim! Jim! It’s Remy. I think you’d better come over here.” As she disappeared from view into the field that led to Witch’s Peak, I snatched Luke up and held on tight, folding myself back into the rocking chair as I wondered why Riley would jump.

  I hadn’t even known Harriet Gleason, but that is who I thought of while I was sitting there. I imagined her standing on the football field cheering everyone else on and wondered if anyone had ever bounced up and down yelling her name. I pictured her opening her acceptance letter to college and wondered how many people in her life told her that the letter was nice, but they wanted her to stay. I wanted to believe that Yemaya had scooped up what was left of her and filled her back up with luck. Then I thought about Riley and the look on his face in the microfiche reader, like the world had just ended. He had never liked me, so I’m not sure why I cared, but I did.

  I wanted to tell him it hadn’t; the world hadn’t ended—it had changed.

  It was five minutes before the lights of the sheriff’s cruiser pulled me back out of my thoughts. Remy was already trudging back across the field toward the cottage, looking wilted from the cold rain, but grounded. Through the window, I could see her lay an arm over her brother’s shoulder and kiss him on the cheek. She spoke to him for a minute while he nodded slowly, glancing through the window at me. After a minute, he headed away at an easy walk toward Mr. O’Malley’s yard.

  Remy came back inside, letting the door slam with a sharp slap behind her. For a second, she stared at me as though she had something to say, then instead ducked into her bedroom and reappeared a moment later in a pair of men’s sweatpants, an angler’s sweater, and wool socks. Depositing a pair of folded sweatpants and a thermal shirt on the couch beside me without saying a word, she made her way into the kitchen. On the other side of the wall, I heard the gas stove pop to life and the tin bottom of the kettle scratch into place over the burner. While the kettle heated up, the clickity, clickity, click of her rotary phone made its way into the living room.

  “Zorrie? It’s Remy. I just wanted to let you know that Izabella’s at my place. No, she’s fine. I’ll drop her back home once I get her dried up.”

  Click.

  She came back into the room balancing a mug of tea in each hand and slipped one onto the floor in front of me.
<
br />   “Riley’s fine.”

  I felt my insides thaw for the first time all day and my stomach ached from being knotted up in a ball of fear. Setting Luke gently beside the mug, I grabbed the paper and liner. But I saw him jump.

  “There’s a side path that cuts down to the inlet by the peak. He was sitting down by the water. His dad’s gone down to get him.” She paused.

  I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. My lungs felt starved for oxygen after holding my breath.

  “But there is still the matter of you. What in the hell? Is there something you do not understand about me telling you to stay away from that ridge? Riley was born and raised on it. He knows every corner of this property and walks it almost every day. You, on the other hand, seem intent on killing yourself.”

  For what felt like eternity, we sat staring at one another in silence, Remy sipping at her tea, me rubbing Luke’s belly. Finally, she set her own mug on the floor beside her rocking chair with a sigh.

  “Riley told me he’s heard you speak. I heard you on the boat. Does your mom know about your voice?”

  I shook my head and stared into the flames lapping their way up the hearthstones. Her eyes followed as though she were turning the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle angle to angle, trying to make the picture fall into place.

  After a time she said, “You know, when I was younger, while I was raising hell on the mainland, I got to visit this old Byzantine monastery. The monks take a vow of silence, creepy as holy hell; you could poke one right in the eye, and they wouldn’t say ‘boo.’ They believe it lets them hear God speak and offers penance for any horrible sins they may have committed.” She gave me a sidelong look.

  “You know what I think? I think they’re full of shit. Holy shit, but it stinks just the same. There is nothing in this whole world that cannot be forgiven. Even God fucks up, probably more than all the rest of us combined. When that happens, there’s nothing to do but buck up and ask forgiveness for making a boneheaded mistake. And if we’re big enough, we do it. We forgive.” Picking up her mug, she downed the final drops before returning to the kitchen and setting it on the butcher’s block.

  “Throw those clothes on,” she called. “I’ve got to bring you home before your mother makes her way over here and keeps my tired bones up for another damn hour.”

  “You better get some sleep,” Remy ordered, stopping the car in front of the Booth House. “You’ve got a date with a paintbrush bright and early.”

  I scooped Luke up, and she scratched him between the ears and shook her head, sputtering something about a damnable dog. Grandma Jo and my mother were both up and waiting for me when I got in.

  “I’m not going to tell you how incredibly irresponsible and downright stupid it was to go out in the middle of the night without telling someone.” My mother gave me a stern glance so I thought better of pointing out that she just had. “And in return for the favor, you are never, ever going to do that again. If you need to go, you get me and give me a chance to go with you. You don’t just leave, damn it.” The words were dusty, like she’d had them packed away for a decade, waiting to set them free on someone, and I felt a sting in my chest, knowing exactly what she meant.

  I thought about my father, and Riley, and Harriet, and Grandma Jo’s map. For the very first time, I knew in my heart of hearts that there were some corners of the universe a person had to go to alone, but I didn’t say so.

  Grandma Jo shot my mother an approving look as she lifted Luke from my arms and fed him a peanut butter sandwich before plopping him in a sink full of suds.

  “He’s got a cut on his paw,” she called through the door. “Someone grab me a bandage and some peroxide.”

  “Peroxide, Mom? Count yourself lucky that there’s toilet paper,” my mother answered.

  “Come here, Izabella,” Grandma Jo called back.

  My mother gave me a final look that suggested she was serious about what she’d told me then tilted her head at me questioningly. “What are you grinning about? There is not one thing funny about this. I’m serious—you could have died. That isn’t something to laugh about.”

  Making my way to the table for a scrap of paper I looked at her and scrawled across it then walked into the kitchen to help Grandma Jo. Behind me, I heard her shuffle across the room to pick it up.

  “‘You love me,’” she read aloud. “Well, of course I love you. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why wouldn’t I love you?” she sputtered like a crazy woman.

  I glanced at Grandma Jo, who chuckled right out loud, handing Luke off to me while she went looking for something for his paw.

  “That doesn’t mean you aren’t in trouble for sneaking out. How often do you do that, anyway?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her, nodding toward my hands, which were full of dog.

  “Don’t you think we aren’t going to talk about this later, young lady. I’m on to that whole ‘I can’t talk right now, my hands are busy’ thing. You don’t just go gallivanting into the damn night like some sort of gypsy.”

  She may have been ranting, but I knew what she was really saying, she was just saying it in Remy and Mr. O’Malley’s language. She didn’t want me to leave.

  A few minutes later, Grandma Jo came back into the kitchen with a towel, a strip of fabric hanging over one arm, and two oregano leaves in her hand.

  “This should do the trick!” She fanned them in the air. “See? There is use in spending time with a medicine man!”

  “That’s my good shirt!” My mother lifted the fabric off Grandma Jo’s arm.

  “Was, darling. That was your good shirt,” Grandma Jo corrected, drying Luke with the towel. “Like all that old wood you spend your days around, sometimes a thing just wants to be put to good use.” She lifted a corner of the fabric, shaking her head at the dull cotton button-down. “Or out of its misery. The nature of healing is all in letting go.”

  “Not for my shirt!” My mother’s eyes widened.

  “Well, healing the soul is a higher priority.” My grandmother laughed, crushing the oregano leaves and packing them against the cut before wrapping Luke’s paw in the remnants of my mother’s shirt. “I’m sure your shirt is happy to die for a good cause.”

  “Okay, can we go to bed now?” My mother yawned.

  I nodded.

  “Do I need to put bells on the doors, or are you in for the night?”

  I let a sparkle settle into my eyes, the way I’d seen Grandma Jo do a million times when my mother spun into orbit, and watched her go into her room without bothering to shut the door behind her. She was already out of sight when I realized both of my hands had settled onto the small shelves of my hips the way hers always did.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “You missed a spot.”

  Wiping the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm, I looked over my shoulder at Mr. Herman, who put on his spectacles to inspect the frame around the front window.

  “Right here.” He pointed to the spot where the two pieces of wood met at the corner. “You gonna get that?”

  I nodded, pushing back my hair and leaving aqua streaks behind from the paint on my hand.

  “See to it,” he said, going back inside.

  I’d already been working for two hours on a day unnaturally hot for October, and in that time, Mr. Herman had shuffled out to check on me on at least eight occasions. Half of those occasions were to make sure that I wasn’t screwing anything up, but a few times I had the feeling he was looking for company. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d been watching him through the window for a while and all I ever saw him do was stand in the corner with his arms folded over his chest or sweep. It looked lonely, and in all the brushing back and forth to make sure I’d filled in the nail holes I started thinking about his crotchety tone. Remy had told me he didn’t have family, and nobody seemed to really like him. This is what I came to: he’d barricaded himself behind a big wall of grump and grudge to keep people from getting in. He never said much�
�he just complained to push people away. His nastiness was his silence, his way of disappearing inside himself, where nobody could ever get in. That was a thing I understood. I had done the same thing; it’s true. And so had my mother and father in their own ways.

  I ran the paintbrush down the seam of the frame one more time. I had another hour before I had to go back to the pier to help Remy unload the passengers she was carting over from the mainland. She’d abandoned me earlier to help Mr. O’Malley, concerned that the ferry would be brimming to its masts with tourists making their way to Tillings for the festival.

  I climbed down off the ladder and dipped the brush into the paint can before slathering the corner with aqua. After examining it from every angle humanly possible to be sure it was covered, I climbed back up to finish the top plank. Ten minutes later, I heard his voice again.

  “You get that missed spot?”

  I nodded, not bothering to look back at him. Satisfied that Mr. Herman would not find one speck of the wood’s natural grain, I climbed down and was surprised to find a cold bottle of cola waiting for me beside the bottom rung. Picking it up, I looked through the front window to where Mr. Herman was bagging up groceries. When he glanced up, I smiled, and he gave me a sharp nod.

  Across the street, the owner of a small boutique called Jasmine’s stood staunchly at the door while a stream of tourists washed in, poked at the trinkets, and filtered back out onto the sidewalk. Around the corner, the high squeal of a child’s laugh broke through the muffled murmur of voices of those sitting outside the White Whale. Electricity seemed to be pulsing across the island in anticipation of the festival. I recalled what Mrs. Mulligan had told me about the magic in the air, that it could pick you up and carry you away. I wondered if she would ever make it to the festival again, to the statue where her husband first kissed her. We had chosen to be alone: Mr. Herman, my mom, and me. Even my father had chosen it before he left with the tap, tap, tap of his typewriter and trips. But not everyone got to choose.