The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  “Don’t worry. I tossed the papers with the headlines. A good few days’ worth—they do go on, those news people. I let the islanders think the delivery truck broke down—which it did, though not for as long as they thought. I’m the postmistress, so I get a look at all arrivals and departures, at least of the postal persuasion. Anyway, I remembered you. You look like Maeve. I felt protective of you, and of Maire too, so I took things into my own hands, as it were.” Mrs. Clennon put a finger to her lips. “What transpired over there,” she said, gesturing to the distant mainland, “will be our secret.”

  Nora wondered if that were possible, though she appreciated her discretion. The islanders, or at least some of them, must have Internet, after all. “You knew my mother?” she asked.

  “Not well,” the older woman said, perhaps too quickly. “I was barely a teenager at the time. Didn’t run with the same crowd, being three years younger, although my sister did, God bless her. Passed on. Two years ago, last April. Lung cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.” Nora touched her arm.

  “She’s in a better place now.”

  Ella and Annie emerged from the rocks, where they’d been pretending to be spies. “What darling girls. They have the McGann look about them.” They gathered around as Mrs. Clennon slipped the key in the lock and gave it an expert jiggle. “I’ve told Maire to change the locks, but she’s fond of the old keys.”

  Skeleton keys, apparently, Nora thought, considering the shape.

  “So you must have passed Maire’s place, Cliff House, on the way in. That’s the main residence your great-grandfather built once the family was more established. They lived here in the cottage at first. And there’s a fishing shack farther up the point, past Maire’s.” She gestured to the north. “Shack being the operative word.” She grunted as she attempted to persuade the door to yield. “Funny how you need to be a locksmith to get into the place.”

  “Or a cat burglar,” Annie chimed in.

  “True!” Mrs. Clennon laughed. “Here we are.”

  Nora sneezed as she crossed the threshold, a hint of dust lingering in the air, despite what must have been a recent cleaning. The whitewashed interior was simple and bright, the view of the ocean through the large picture window in the main room stunning as ever. She remembered standing there as a little girl, resting her arms on the sill, staring at the waves on stormy afternoons, imprinting the glass with her fingertips, with the fog of her breath.

  Mrs. Clennon bustled about, throwing open curtains, testing taps, peering into the fireplace flue. “The first tenants in thirty-five years, and family to boot. What a happy coincidence. I think Maire had the sweep in not long ago. Wouldn’t want you to have a chimney fire the first night and burn the place down, would we?”

  “There’s no TV.” Ella took in the contents of the room and clearly found them lacking, dismay registering on her face.

  “Maire has one,” Mrs. Clennon said. “You could always go over there. No cable though. I don’t like to miss Sex and the City reruns on Sunday nights myself. I made my husband get a satellite dish, so he has his football and I have my dramedies.”

  “What are we supposed to do without a TV?” Ella hissed when Mrs. Clennon was out of earshot.

  “Use your imagination,” Nora said.

  “She doesn’t have an imagination,” Annie said. “She has common sense. That’s what she’s always telling me.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time to get one,” Nora replied.

  Mrs. Clennon flitted through the rooms, testing the lights. “Everything seems to be in working order, fingers crossed. Could do with some new bulbs. Mind, the electricity’s not very reliable. One of those realities of island life, I’m afraid.”

  Nora fingered the doorframe near the kitchen, the height marks Maeve had ledgered there visible in ink.

  “Were you really that little, Mama?” Annie asked, reading Nora’s name repeated at intervals, along with dates and measurements.

  “I was,” Nora said. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” The last time she’d been inside the cottage, she’d seen everything from a child’s point of view. The interior appeared more modest to her adult eye, reduced, at once familiar and strange.

  “At least the pipes haven’t burst,” Mrs. Clennon went on. “You never know, after a long winter. Doesn’t warm up some years until May. Maire set traps on account of the mice—and Flotsam and Jetsam will be on patrol.”

  Nora gave her a puzzled look.

  “The cats. Half wild, they are. If you bribe them with fish tails and kibble, they should do a fine job controlling the resident rodent population. Don’t spoil them too much; they’ll take advantage if you do, sly creatures that they are. There’s driftwood for the fire. The nights can get chilly, even in summer.” She laid sets of quilts and sheets on the bare mattresses before heading to the living room to light a fire in the hearth.

  There were two bedrooms. Nora’s old room, the one the girls would share, looked out over the grassed meadow and stands of spruce and fir to the north, the roof of Maire’s house visible over the needled spires. A teddy bear sat on the bed, as he had in the old days. “That’s Siggy,” Nora told Annie, surprised at how quickly the name came to her. “I bet he’s glad to see you.” He must have fallen out of the bag her father packed hastily the day they left. She thought he’d been lost for good. Her father had bought another bear, once they settled in Boston, but it hadn’t been the same. She’d pined for Siggy for months afterward.

  “And look at this.” Annie pulled a book from the nightstand, Siggy on her hip. “It’s a book of fairy tales.”

  Irish fairy tales. “Your grandmother used to read them to me before bed,” Nora said, startled by the sight of the faded red cover after all that time. She’d begged Patrick to let her bring the book to Boston, but he refused.

  “You’ll read to us later, won’t you? Like your mother did when you were a little girl?” Annie asked.

  Nora nodded, scarcely trusting herself to speak. “Maybe tomorrow. We’ve had a long day, and we need to settle in.” There were groceries to be put away, clothes to be unpacked, Saint Christopher medals tucked in each of their personal bags, a tradition instilled by her paternal grandmother, to ensure safe travels. Books (the Brontës, Wilkie Collins, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), games (Go, backgammon, Scrabble, Jenga, Candy Land, Sorry), sunscreen, bug repellent, Neosporin, foam noodles, boogie boards, and snorkeling equipment. The back of the SUV so crammed she’d barely been able to see out the rear window. She had tried to think of everything, unsure of how well stocked the shops were in town.

  Nora took her parents’ room, fronting the sea, the queen-size lace bedspread yellowed with age (“A good vinegar bath should set it to rights,” Mrs. Clennon said) and the tarnished vanity mirror before which her mother used to sit brushing her hair before bed, Nora watching, until Maeve tucked her in with another fairy tale, a kiss on the cheek. Sweet dreams. The room seemed smaller than she remembered. All the rooms seemed smaller, shabbier—lonelier too.

  She turned to the main living area with its sag-bellied couch and balding chenille chair, the kitchen (“I think the stove tends to be a bit temperamental,” Mrs. C. warned, “don’t hesitate to give it a thump”), and the single bathroom with cracked tile. There was a streak of rust in the porcelain tub, a persistent drip from the tap.

  They made their way to the deck, two sun-bleached chairs on either side, armrests akimbo, depressions in the split cushions, as if their inhabitants had risen from them moments, rather than decades, before. “Maire talked about getting new ones. Scanlon’s might have something that would do. Or you could make your own, if you’re so inclined. Your mother, Maeve, had an artistic bent, I seem to recall. Crafty. No, that sounds wrong. Craftsy?”

  Nora nodded. She could already feel the island inspiring her with its ever-changing palette of blue, green, gray, and amber.

  In what other ways was she like her mother? The waves washed against the shore, sighing briny whis
pers, reaching for her, as if to say, You are here at last, you are home. Come closer. . . .

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. C. asked. “You look pale.”

  “A bit tired,” Nora confessed.

  “Is it as you remember? The cottage and all?”

  “I was so young then.” Nora ran her fingertips along the windowsill. Yes, it was real enough, and yet it also seemed like a mirage, as if it might disappear any second.

  “You were,” Mrs. Clennon agreed.

  Annie exclaimed over the purple and orange starfish that clung to the newly exposed rocks, the tide at its ebb. She scrambled across the headlands, Ella not far behind.

  “Be careful!” Nora called after them, almost reflexively. “The ocean is stronger than you think.”

  “Look, Mama,” Annie cried. “A seal!”

  Indeed, a shiny head bobbed in the eddies that curled toward the shore, indigo depths between. The creature met Nora’s gaze directly, its dark eyes wide and oddly human, before the children’s laughter drew its attention once more.

  “Every seal has his harbor,” Mrs. Clennon said. “The resident colony lives on Little Burke.” She gestured toward the faint outline of an island in the distance. “You might want to paddle over, when the tides and weather are right, though the currents can be tricky.” The wind nearly plucked the scarf from her neck. “Maire should be back tomorrow. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything, anything at all. ” She handed Nora a slip of paper with her number written on it. “Civilization can be as near or far as you need it to be.”

  That evening, as the girls played Go Fish before the fire, Nora walked down to the beach. It was after sunset, the day fading in the coolness of twilight. Malcolm was somewhere on the other side of that body of water, far south, out of sight, but not out of mind. A spiraled piece of shell lay at her feet, bone white, split open to its inner workings. She fingered the edge, worn smooth by the waves.

  The beach’s uneven surface made it difficult to find the proper footing, a goose-necked barnacle here, an angled rock there, a slick of kelp and seaweed, large pieces of driftwood tossed high during a storm, as if they weighed nothing at all. The tide pulled back from the shore with a mesmerizing rhythm, carrying rock and shell fragments as it went. It seemed as if she and the girls had been on the island for weeks, not hours, her life in Boston, her life with Malcolm, receding with the tide. And yet the problems had stowed away on the journey; they refused to be left behind. She sighed, trying to clear her mind, to no avail.

  The girls’ voices rang across the bluffs through the open window as they played another round of cards. Sound carried near the water, when the wind was still. “You cheated. Cheater! Cheater!” Annie cried.

  Nora pressed her fingers to her temples.

  Cheater. Cheater.

  She should go in. She should tell them to stop.

  But she stayed there a moment longer, drawing long breaths in tandem with the waves that crept closer, closer still. One tear after another ran down her cheeks and fell into the ocean, small and insignificant in that great body of water, yet a part of it too, salt-tinged and grieving, finding their way home.

  Chapter Two

  Maire noticed the SUV with Massachusetts plates as she passed the cottage the next morning. At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. It was early, before dawn, a time of shifting shapes and shadows. She’d been up all night for the birth of Sheila O’Brien’s first child. A twenty-four-hour labor, exhausting for everyone, and yet the baby, a boy, was healthy—Bevan, seven pounds, five ounces, with one of the strongest sets of lungs she’d ever heard. Maire was getting on in years for this sort of thing, sixty that spring, but she couldn’t think about retiring. The islanders needed her, and she needed the work.

  Though Burke’s Island wasn’t exactly having a baby boom, a birth here and there kept her busy, not only with deliveries but with prenatal care. Most island women opted for home births, given the difficulty of traveling to the hospital on the mainland, and Maire was the person they turned to, as they had to her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother before her, generations of women at Cliff House, bringing new life into the world. With Joe and Jamie gone, she was the only one left at the point. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to it, this afterlife filled with interminable hours and silences. She’d been a good wife and mother in that house, and now, given the opportunity, she would be a good aunt too.

  Her heart quickened at the thought of what the presence of the SUV meant: her niece, Nora, had returned to the island. Maire was surprised and relieved. Nora must have received her letter. Polly had seen Patrick’s obituary in the Boston paper, and Maire had decided to try writing to Nora again. Previous attempts at communication had gone through Patrick, and, she supposed, had never reached their intended recipient. Years of birthday, Saint Patrick’s Day, and Christmas cards, a few bills tucked inside. Who knew what he’d done with them? She didn’t blame him. She knew that by writing, she revived memories he wanted to forget, and yet there was Nora to consider. There had always been Nora to consider. Nora, who deserved to know the truth, such as it was.

  No lights shone in the cottage at that early hour, and yet they would later that day, and hopefully, for days to come. It had stood vacant too long.

  Her great-grandparents had been part of the first wave of settlers that had put down roots on Burke’s Island after a stint in the Massachusetts quarries. They’d brought little with them on the coffin ships, except the few possessions they could carry and the stories and myths of that patch of Donegal they were from. The deep knowledge, they called it. The dreaming. They’d constructed the cottage in the style of the crofts back home, of hewn granite, now grayed with age. They knew how to cut and shape the rock. Hard, bloodying work, it was. But the place was theirs. The first property they’d ever owned, free and clear. The cottage sheltered them until they had enough resources to build Cliff House years later, and yet the cottage remained a touchstone. The modest home held its own through storm after storm, its squat frame withstanding the worst gales, a Celtic sea dragon carved into the wood over the door hinting at its inhabitants’ steady fire and endurance.

  The roof was shingle now, rather than turf, the dragon weathered to near invisibility. One had to know it was there. After Maeve and Patrick moved into the cottage, he upgraded the interior, crafting the cabinets and other woodwork by hand, an ever-present level on his belt in those days, which Maire thought appropriate somehow, because he balanced her volatile sister so well, their differences not yet driving them apart. Maire visited regularly, being unattached in those days, a little sister, two years younger, bringing baskets of vegetables and fruit from the Cliff House garden, for even then she had the greenest thumb in the family. She remembered Patrick’s hands, strong, yet sensitive and slender-fingered, working with measured certainty as he sanded and planed, joining edges and corners, polishing the grain until it gleamed.

  No one stirred at the cottage this morning. Nora was still sleeping, she supposed, the curtains closed, only larks awake, flitting through the predawn meadow in search of seeds and grasses. It was nesting season, her niece too, coming home to roost. Maire had seen a picture of her in the papers. (Polly had shown them to her and pledged to keep the contents confidential, ever the good friend, despite her gossipy nature.) The image caught Nora half shielding her face from the cameras. The affair had apparently been going on for months before it came to light. How long had Nora known about it? This thing that should have been a private matter, but became public because of her husband’s position and his status as a rising star in the party. Maire couldn’t imagine what Nora must have gone through—continued to go through. She wondered if Malcolm had come with Nora to repair the damage. And the children. She supposed there were children; she didn’t know for certain. The articles hadn’t mentioned any. They only referred to Nora, Malcolm, and the other woman, a trinity of infidelity and betrayal.

  Maire had intended to get a
few hours’ rest that morning after the birth, but the excitement over her guests’ arrival made sleep impossible. She headed home, the tires of her truck churning over the shell road, scattering a hail of broken fragments behind her. First, she’d make a batch of rhubarb muffins. She’d leave them on the porch for her niece, tucked in a basket with a jar of island honey from the hives she tended in the orchard at the eastern edge of the property. The rhubarb plants grew on the south side of the house, against the stone foundation, past the main garden. Maire selected the choice stalks after giving them a firm but gentle tug, taking only those that yielded easily to her touch. She twisted off the leaves with a firm flick of the wrist and tossed them into the compost pile. There. She had what she needed. Some brown sugar, oil, flour, eggs, buttermilk, and baking soda, and voilà. If only everything were so simple.

  She heard a splash near the dock as she opened the kitchen door. A seal, most likely, what type, she couldn’t tell. She could have sworn she saw a flash of silver. There hadn’t been silver seals in the waters surrounding the island for as long as she could remember, though people spoke of them, sometimes, with awe. But then it was nearly midsummer, and in midsummer along that coast, anything was possible.

  Midsummer, the season of her sister’s disappearance.

  Nora looked like her. Maeve. With perhaps less of the flirt factor, which Maeve had in spades, even after she married. She couldn’t help herself. It was an essential part of her personality, that irrepressible spirit. She couldn’t resist charming any man in the room. It was as if Maeve cast a spell, the village women said, wishing she’d leave some for the rest of them, wishing they knew her secret.

  All three had the McGann curly hair, Nora’s dark, like Maeve’s, the girls’ lighter, like their father’s, perhaps. A sprinkling of freckles across their noses. The high cheekbones, the eyes tilted downward, ever so slightly, at the corners.