The Rattled Bones

by S. M. Parker

I search Malaga with a strange disappointment swelling my heart. I don’t know why I feel solidarity with the girl; maybe because she’s not supposed to be out here. Same as me.

  I stand quickly, feeling trapped. My binoculars catch the edge of the key as they fall from my lap. The electronic gauges light up. “Well, hello,” I say, bringing my fingers to the dashboard. I turn the key fully and the motor turns over with a smooth rumble, shimmying the boat to life.

  “Good girl.” I pet her console before I set the Rilla Brae in gear and ease nearer to the island. I stop before the sea becomes too shallow. I look for the girl and her boat, but there are no signs of either. I press the heels of my palms against my eyes and know I need more sleep. Could I have imagined her? How else could she be here one minute and not the next?

  Because a boat can’t just disappear.

  Unless she pulled the skiff ashore and it’s resting in an island inlet I can’t see. I decide that’s what’s happened before turning the helm toward home. I set my course to Fairtide Cottage, the only home I’ve ever known.

  And I see our flag at half-mast.

  All the flags on our fishing peninsula ripple at half-mast.

  When I dock the Rilla Brae, Gram greets me, barefoot as always. She’s made of sturdy Downeast stock and tries to hide the grief that slumps her shoulders as she marches across the yard, intent on inspecting the cooler filled with a sampling of today’s catch. Tonight’s dinner.

  With each of Gram’s steps, the melody of the girl’s song returns, rising as Gram gets closer. It feels new and old all at once. Like I know it, but I’m also discovering it. My ears fill with the tune. My heart swells for it. My memory reaches for it. The song wraps me in the safety of my past and promises the same for my future. Come here, come here. My dear, my dear, it says.

  “What’s that song?” My words sound weak, as if I were too afraid to speak them.

  “Song?” Gram bends to tug on my dock lines to make sure they’re secure.

  I clear my throat. “The one you were singing.”

  “Wasn’t me singing this time,” Gram says. She’s been the world’s biggest fan of  The Who since forever ago. It’s not uncommon to hear her belting out “Pinball Wizard” while she’s beating eggs or glazing a pie. But today Gram puts her hand on my shoulder, like she knows maybe the song I’m asking about is in my head. Like she knows my head is crammed with too much noise. She gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze and the music stops.

  We’re left to the beat of lapping waves and the chorus of brawling seabirds hovering always at the shore.

  Gram boards the Rilla Brae as I study the rise of granite and trees that make up the forty acres of Malaga Island. I’m searching still for the girl, even from here. Listening for her song. Gram watches me carefully, an unasked question in her eyes. “Maybe Hattie’s singing.” She nods up at the house. “She’s waiting for ya.”

  Hattie. The last girl I want to see.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hattie is up by Gram’s medicinal garden, picking tiny blue petals off a forget-me-not as if she’s counting he loves me, he loves me not. I almost want Gram to reprimand her for this gardening offense and ban her from the property.

  Hattie meets me in the middle of the lawn that holds the divots of our cartwheels, the scars of our bonfires—the wounds of all eleven years of our friendship.

  “Hey,” she says, testing the waters.

  “Hey.” I let the silence gather between us.

  “So you won’t answer my texts.”

  “There’s a lot going on.”

  “Too busy to let me know how you’re holding up?”

  “I’m fine.” Lie. I shift my feet in the grass and envy the stability of the ground.

  “Do you wanna hang out? Keep your mind off stuff ?”

  I bristle, my back straightening. “My father’s death isn’t ‘stuff.’ ”

  “Of course not.” Hattie retreats a step, a concession so against her bold nature. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought you might want to go somewhere. You know, get away.”

  Like Senior Celebration Day, the day after graduation? Hattie dragged me there even though I’d told her a hundred times that I didn’t want to go to another predictable quarry party.

  “I can’t.” Maybe if I’d been working on the boat that day I could have radioed for help. Or maybe my father’s heart wouldn’t have had to work so hard if I’d been hauling traps with him.

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  Can’t. Won’t. It’s hard to see the difference. “Both. I don’t know, Hattie.” I realize it’s not rational to blame her; I was the one who abandoned my dad. Still.

  She casts her eyes to her feet. “Maybe I should go.”

  I nod as if that’s even an answer. Because the last thing I can do is explain any of my actions to her. All I know is that forgiving her means forgiving myself for leaving my dad alone to die at sea. How can I ever be ready to do that?

  Hattie turns, and I immediately feel a pull to run to her, get swallowed in her hug. But my feet are too grounded now. Stuck.

  I focus on Gram’s blooming lilac bushes, their branches bending with the weight of their own beauty. The air is filled with the smell of the warm lilac compresses Gram would make to soothe my childhood cuts, calm suspicious rashes. Is there any combination of flowers that have properties powerful enough to quiet the agony of loss?

  Hattie twists before disappearing around Gram’s garden. She fixes her eyes, hangs them on me with regret. “Losing you to Rhode Island next year scares the shit out of me, Rills. I just wanted one more day with you. An afternoon when we didn’t have to think about a future without each other.” Her plea now is so similar to the one that swayed me to ditch work on Senior Celebration Day, a lifetime ago. “If I’d known any of this would have gone down this way . . . I would have done it all differently and you know that. You know me, Rilla.”

  I’m not sure what I know anymore. I turn and head back to the boat.

  Filled with resentment toward Hattie.

  And forgiveness.

  And everything in between.

  * * *

  My father owned exactly one dress jacket, but I wanted him buried in his favorite sweater, the one with frayed cuffs and a high fisherman’s neck. I found his suit jacket at the back of his closet. It is navy blue and stubborn. It refuses to let go of my father’s smell, so I wear it over my dress as we return home from his funeral the following day.

  The jacket’s interior lining is silk and slips off my shoulders when I move. I pull the front of the blazer tighter across my middle as if the fabric is strong enough to keep the liquid spill of my heart from drowning our kitchen table.

  “It was the finest kind of service.” Gram doesn’t turn from the stove, where she is literally watching a pot that won’t boil. “I can’t think of a soul who wasn’t there.”

  I don’t point out the obvious.

  Gram adjusts the mesh silver tea ball steadied over one of the two waiting mugs, her small, practiced movements too much like his. “Your father would have been some touched by the speech ya gave today, Rilla.”

  A hiccup of grief jumps high in my chest, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe. I turn to the window, toward Gram’s flowers. My eyes cloud as they watch a bumblebee hover over the cone of a deep purple lupine. The insect’s bright color and free wings beam in direct contrast to the black wall of suits that stood in the church today, the straight broad shoulders of the fishermen who carried Jonathan Brae’s casket out of the church and across the cemetery green.

  I watch the bee crawl into the bloom, depositing a story, Gram would say. Bees sew stories through the earth, leaving one tale while raising up another. They carry the stories on the whisper of their wings, Gram says.

  I pull my eyes from the bee emerging from the lupine. “What do we do now?”

  The snake hiss of the kettle builds. “Now we get on with the business of living, hard as that may be.” The teapot scr
eams.

  Gram sets my mug in front of me, and lemon steams the air. Gram uses fresh lemon rind, shaved into thinness before she adds it to her tea leaves. I hadn’t grown past her knees when she first taught me about how the citrus skin would soothe my sore throat, how ancient healers believed inhaling the zest would improve a person’s mood. Today, though, I’m calling bullshit.

  Gram settles her mug onto the opposite side of the table before taking her seat. Even this small act reminds me how off-balance our family is now. We are a tripod missing a leg.

  “I think I have to notify the University of Rhode Island, let them know I won’t be coming.”

  “Is that what ya want?”

  “It doesn’t seem like the universe is particularly interested in what I want.”

  “Maybe so.” Gram rounds her gnarled fingers around the curve of her cup. “But I’m not asking the universe. I’m asking ya, Rilla.”

  I shift in my seat just to feel the cool silk of my father’s jacket slide across my skin. “I need to stay here. Someone has to fish.” And Gram is too old to lobster. “If I don’t keep lobstering, you know Old Man Benner will claim our grounds before my bags are even packed for school.” I fail to mention that my bags have been packed for the University of Rhode Island for weeks.

  “And would that be the worst thing?”

  We both know the worst thing has already happened. I bring my fist to my chest to keep the sadness from rising, too late. A sob escapes. “Dad wouldn’t want to forfeit our legacy.”

  “No.” Gram stirs honey into her tea. “He wouldn’t want that for him. But he certainly wouldn’t want ya sacrificing your future for his past either.” She tinks her spoon against the edge of her cup before her gaze challenges mine, forces me to look away. “From where I’m sitting, it feels wholly possible for ya to go to college and fish the summers. We’ll manage.”

  My head screams: How? How could we manage? Who will pay the bills? Watch out for Gram? Leaving is absurd; it’s no longer an option.

  I’m grateful when the doorbell announces Brenda Sherfey on the step offering tuna casserole and condolences. I abandon Brenda’s food to the counter because the fridge is already crammed with sorrow. Then I leave Gram to the soothing words of her bridge partner and disappear upstairs to my room.

  I’m not surprised to see Reed there, at the dormered window seat that overlooks the water. Reed Benner, the only good Benner. Old Man Benner and my dad hated when we started dating, and maybe that’s why we did it. At first. Reed’s been using the rose trellis to climb into my bedroom for the last two years, like our time together is a secret even if everyone knows about us. He turns when he hears me enter my room, pats the window seat cushion next to him. He is mere feet away, but it takes so long to reach him. My steps seem too slow, like time and my body are being dragged forward against my will.

  Dorm room cubes wait against the front wall of my room. They hold strangely normal items, like flip-flops and an extra-long twin sheet set. The sheets are sun yellow. The shower shoes are a size too big. I’d planned to exchange both, except now I can’t. How can I surrender the gifts my father presented waiter-style, a platter of sheets and shoes with an oversize hoodie from the University of Rhode Island perched on top? And his smile then, how it welled with pride for the first Brae to attend college. I dust my fingers over the edge of the sheet square as I pass and I’m surprised by how these insignificant items scream with importance now. It wasn’t like this with my mother, who has stayed away for years by choice, who left before making memories for me to miss.

  But my dad is everywhere.

  At the window, I let Reed gather me in his arms. He rests my head against his side as I tuck my knees into a ball, my body turned toward the water, the sea breeze. Dad’s dress jacket drapes over me, a blanket.

  “You’re stoned,” I tell him, like he doesn’t already know. It’s a familiar fog that covers Reed’s eyes lately.

  Reed twists a curl at my temple, lets the soft hair wrap around his finger like an eager vine. “Ayuh.”

  “At the funeral too.”

  “Had to be.”

  The funeral took years, each moment stretching itself into a day. “Did you have to smoke? It felt”—feels—“disrespectful.”

  “It’s a heavy day, Rill.” His words make a bullet of anger rise in me. Like I don’t know today is weighted with loss? But then he takes my hand and my fury gets pulled down, pushed away. If I don’t know how to deal with this kind of grief, how can I be mad at Reed for dealing in his own way?

  “Rill?”

  “I’m here.” I close my eyes to Reed’s rhythmic stroking of my temple, the way his fingers draw precise lines around my features. Memorizing me, he says. For when we can’t be together.

  “Maybe today. Maybe all this happened—”

  “Don’t.” My quick warning is a whisper, a plea. “Please.” Don’t tell me there’s reason in this.

  I can’t hear again how much Reed wants me to stay in Maine, turn down my scholarship. He’s never understood that I need to study harder, work harder than the men here. Reed left high school midway through our junior year to get his GED because he was already making good money catching bugs. Fishing’s all he’s ever wanted to do, which is fine. I just don’t have the energy to fight over our future again.

  “Okay.” Reed pulls me closer, his arm wrapped around my waist. “Let’s just sit here in the quiet.”

  Yes. Quiet. “Quiet is good.”

  He leans his head back against the window, exhales softly. Outside, the Rilla Brae bobs at the dock. The water is calm for the entire stretch of the inlet, as far as Malaga Island and beyond. These are the days my father wouldn’t fish. “Never trust a quiet sea, sunfish,” he’d say—each time sounding like the first time he was bestowing this bit of advice.

  I feel my father here with us as I fix my eyes on the sea and watch an impossible tidal wave begin to grow off the shores of Malaga. The water rises, becomes a wall reaching for the sky. Higher, stronger, its frothed cliff edge as white as the clouds. My back straightens. The rogue wave builds. Hurries toward my house. Its blue swell charges at us as if we are its target. I bolt upright and press my palms against the window, try to push back the water. The enormous wave slaps at the lawn, lunges toward the house.

  I claw at Reed.

  A scream rips from my throat, fills my ears.

  The pelting spray crashes against my second-story window, hard as hail. The bullets of water drive me backward as wind squeals through the window’s frame. I trip to the floor, screaming. The gust carries a northeast chill that traps ice in my bones.

  The air is as cold as death.

  Then there is Reed’s voice, his strong arms shaking me. “Rilla?” His eyes are wide, so alert now. “What’s wrong?”

  Reed. I scramble to my feet. “You’re okay.” My words mumble with disbelief. I dash to the window. “The wave, the—” The aftermath steals my thoughts.

  The Rilla Brae buoys gently in the sleeping current. Unharmed.

  I press my hand to the windowpanes, matching my fingers to the prints I left only seconds ago. The glass shimmers in the mid-June sun. Dry. “The water. It rose up over the lawn.”

  Reed’s hand meets my back in a way that suggests he’s holding me upright. “Water?”

  I point as Reed gazes out over our quiet yard. Our dry lawn. “Didn’t you . . . ?”

  My memory hears my dad answer before my question can fully pass my lips: “It’s been a longer day than any twenty-four hours has a right, Rilla. A mind can bend with exhaustion.”

  My father’s right. Even now, he’s right.

  “Everything’s okay.” Reed presses his hand against the small of my back. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” But I sense how he’s trying to make sense of this strangeness in me. And I feel his distance, how he doesn’t gather me to his side.

  “Tomorrows always arrive lighter,” my father says. Said.

  It’s the first time I don’t b
elieve him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I fear I’ll never know deep sleep again.

  Reed convinced me that yesterday’s vision was the fallout of insomnia: nightmares visiting in full view of the sun. I can’t shake the fear that it was something more. I should have asked him to stay with me last night—for protection or comfort. Or both. But independence was drilled into me early. I have a hard time asking anyone for help, even if it is Reed and I really needed it.

  I crawl out of bed and layer for the sea. T-shirt. Leggings. Fleece. My bright orange Grundens are on a hook upon the Rilla Brae, like always, even though I won’t need my rubber overalls or my all-weather jacket today. It’ll be different this winter. I won’t be able to pull on enough layers. If I stay.

  In the kitchen, I pack my lunch. I make Dad a sandwich too. Out of habit.

  Gram squeezes through the patio doors, joins me in the kitchen. Her sigh is heavy and foreign; Gram never complains.

  “Everything all right?” I suspend my knife in the peanut butter jar and hear the absurdity of my question only after it passes my lips.

  “Ayuh.” She wrestles her dirt-caked gardening gloves from her fingers and abandons them to the table. Tiny pebbles of earth skitter across its worn wood surface. Gram looks out at her back gardens, clean hands planted on her sturdy hips. “I’ve got grubs, Rilla.”

  I almost laugh. Insects? Insects are a solvable problem. “Grubs, huh?” I paint the peanut butter onto my bread, all the way to the very edges the way my father liked.

  “Those devils have got some moxie being so close to my peonies.” Gram huffs past me and dips her head into the fridge. She draws in a small gasp when she opens the door. “There’s more food in here than stars in the sky.”

  “What do you need? I’ll get it for you.” I place the knife onto the cutting board and join Gram at the open fridge.

  “Beer.” She says it like it’s not six o’clock in the morning.

  “Beer?”

  She fans her twisted fingers to hurry me along. “Well, I’m not gonna drink it, Rilla. It’s for the grubs. Give me as much as we’ve got.”