The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  “This way,” Maire said, her rubber boots, the ubiquitous island footwear, squeaking across the sloped linoleum floor. Nora and the girls picked boots from a display at the end of aisle 1. The navy and forest green footwear had an L.L.Bean appeal at half the price.

  The shop sold everything from rope to fishing nets, oilcloth to embroidery thread. Maire directed them to the east wall, where paint samples were displayed. Annie selected cerulean, as promised, Ella dove gray (at least it was a pretty shade; Nora thought she might have gone for something called “scowl,” if such a hue existed), and Nora pale eggshell, with a warm white for the trim. They proceeded to the rear of the store, skirting stacks of crab pots and waders, to have the colors mixed by a pale, monosyllabic young woman—Nora guessed her to be in her early twenties—in black skinny jeans and a holey T-shirt, a snake tattooed around her left wrist. As she flipped through a graphic novel, she blinked at them through a curtain of shaggy dark bangs.

  “She looks like a vampire,” Annie whispered.

  “Careful. We have extra-sensitive hearing.” There was a flicker of amusement in the girl’s gray eyes. “Like bats.”

  “She’s kidding, right?” Annie asked Ella. She continued to study the girl, her lips moving as she counted the piercings in her ears (six), on the lookout for any sudden diabolical moves.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Ella said.

  Nora shushed them. They must have been watching Dark Shadows reruns before they left Boston—Ella, in particular, couldn’t get enough of them—though Nora had explicitly said not to. Annie was susceptible to nightmares.

  “How goes it, Alison?” Maire asked.

  The girl shrugged. “The usual. Trying not to die of boredom.” She glanced at Annie. “Oh, I forgot. I’m one of the undead.”

  Annie pointed to the bandage on Alison’s finger. “You are kidding. Vampires don’t bleed.”

  “You’re good.” Alison cracked a smile. “And you picked my favorite color, cerulean. It’s worth liking for the sound of its name alone.”

  As the mixer shook the cans with a near-deafening rumble, a woman bundled in an oversize army green slicker and fisherman’s sweater shuffled through the back door. Her short neck craned forward from the shell of her coat, giving her the appearance of a large, disgruntled tortoise, lips bent into a perfect upside-down U. Her eyes, dull at first, sparked when they locked on Nora. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Nora stammered. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “Maggie, this is my niece,” Maire began.

  Maggie ignored her, her attention fixed on Nora. “You have some gall coming here.”

  “Mom, what’s going on?” Ella asked.

  “It’s okay, honey—”

  “Gran—” Alison attempted to calm Maggie. “I’ll take care of the customers. Why don’t you—”

  “Customers? She’s no customer.” Maggie Scanlon stabbed a dirty-nailed finger at Nora. “She’s—”

  “You must have mistaken me for someone else.” Nora held her ground. “My name is—”

  “I know who you are,” Maggie said. “You can’t fool me, the sea witch, the whore that you are.” She trembled with rage, spittle flying from her lips.

  “Gran!” Alison took Maggie’s arm as the older woman headed for Nora. “That’s enough!”

  “Maggie, please.” Maire stepped between them.

  “There’s no call for that kind of talk,” Nora said, shielding the girls.

  Maggie’s voice rose to a shout. “Get out! Get out of my shop!”

  “Fine,” Nora said. “We’ll take our business elsewhere.” She hustled the girls out the door.

  What was the matter with that lady?” Annie asked from the safety of Maire’s truck. “Is she going to come out here and yell at us again?” She scrunched down and peered over the lower edge of the rear passenger window.

  “No, honey. She was confused, that’s all,” Nora said, though she too stole glances at the storefront, wondering if Maggie Scanlon would barrel through the front doors and accost them again.

  “I’m sorry,” Maire said. “I wouldn’t have suggested going there today if I’d known that was going to happen.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Nora said.

  “I feel responsible. I heard she’s been having some issues, but I’ve never seen her like that before.” She dug through her purse, murmuring something about the frequency with which she seemed to misplace her keys.

  “I guess I have that effect on people.” Nora tried, not quite successfully, to keep her tone light. Her hands trembled as she fastened the seat belt.

  “I told you we should go home,” Ella said.

  “We’ll be there in a jiffy,” Maire assured her. “I just need to find my keys. That’s what I get for carrying such a big purse. There’s more room for things to get lost in. Sometimes I feel as if it’s a magician’s hat. Polly says that one of these days I’ll pull out a rabbit.”

  “I meant our real home. Boston,” Ella said.

  “We just got here,” Annie protested, “though that lady is kind of scary.”

  “Don’t let Maggie frighten you off,” Maire said, still rummaging around in her handbag in mounting frustration.

  Nora hoped Maire hadn’t left the keys in the store. She didn’t relish the thought of any of them going back inside.

  “I’m not frightened of anything,” Ella said, stubborn as ever. “I just don’t like her.”

  “She hasn’t been herself lately. Please don’t judge her—or the island as a whole—by this unfortunate episode. She’ll probably have forgotten about it by tomorrow. Her memory comes and goes, short-term, especially. Happens to me sometimes too. A symptom of age, I suppose.” It apparently dawned on her that she’d slipped the keys in her pocket before going into the shop. She selected the proper key and inserted it in the ignition.

  “Do you know her well?” Nora asked.

  “We islanders all know one another, after a fashion,” Maire said, starting the engine and putting the truck in gear at last. “Too much in one another’s business. I wouldn’t say the families were close, not since—”

  They jumped at a knock on the glass. It was Alison. She motioned for Nora to roll down the window. “You forgot your things.” She handed Nora the bags and retrieved the flat of flowers from the rack outside the shop as the truck idled. “I’m sorry about what happened in there. Da doesn’t want Gran in the shop, but she still acts like she runs the place. Don’t pay her any mind. It’s dementia. She’s got good days and bad. Thursdays are probably the best to come in, for future reference. She’s at my aunt’s, up-island, so she won’t bother you then.”

  Nora thanked her.

  “Come back and see us again,” she said, with a note of dry humor that only made Nora like her more. “It’s usually not so dramatic.”

  “ ’Bye.” Maire pulled out of the parking space and turned in the direction of the main road.

  Alison waved from the sidewalk, growing smaller in the rearview mirror as they headed for home. On the outskirts of town, the close-set cottages and buildings gave way to open fields, dotted with flocks of sheep, goats, cows, and an occasional horse, a tranquil scene at odds with what had happened a short time before.

  “Who did Maggie Scanlon think I was?” Nora asked as they passed a broken fence, the wood weathered gray.

  Maire weighed her words before speaking. “Your mother.”

  Later, after a dinner of thick clam chowder and homemade bread at Maire’s house, the girls played on the deck while the women talked in front of the fire over glasses of wine. Maire figured they could use a glass or two after what they’d been through that afternoon.

  They sat on the sea green sofa she’d reupholstered herself, the chenille soft and plush, the cushions deep and inviting. A stack of gardening books by Rosemary Verey and Gertrude Jekyll rested on the end table beneath a silk-shaded lamp, favorite passages marked with Post-it notes, a garden journal open to the cu
rrent date, with jottings of chores to be done that month and records of plantings. Sun filtered through the curtains, dappling the slate blue walls with spots of light and shadow, the doors and windows open to let in what remained of the day.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable at the cottage?” Maire asked. “You have enough room? You’re welcome to stay here at Cliff House, you know—”

  “There’s plenty of space, since there’s only the three of us,” Nora said, more free to talk now that the girls weren’t underfoot. “Malcolm, my husband, is staying in Boston.”

  “It’s settled, then?”

  “No, not exactly. We both needed space to figure things out. Or at least I do. It’s for the best. The media seems to follow him everywhere these days.” She fingered a loose thread on her sweater, a green that brought out the color of her eyes. “I wish you could have known us before all this happened. We were good together once.”

  “I’m sure you were. You might be again.”

  “Maybe,” Nora said. She didn’t sound optimistic. “What about your family?” She nodded to the photographs on the mantel.

  “Joe and Jamie were lost in a fishing accident three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”

  “We’ve lived whole lives without each other, haven’t we?” There was so much about Nora’s life she didn’t know.

  “Yes, we have.” Nora paused. “And after what happened in the shop today, I have a feeling there’s a lot I don’t know about my mother, too.”

  Maire swirled the liquid in her glass, contemplating the whirlpool it made, spiraling down the stem. She’d made it a policy not to talk about Maeve much up to then, though she remained ever-present in her thoughts. Anything could spark a memory of her—the color purple (plum, for the sky at evening, the waves too); the sound of the wind chimes, which she loved to touch as she came in the back door, announcing her arrival; sweet scallops on the half shell . . .

  “What was she like?” Nora asked. “You were her sister.”

  Sister. A word freighted with shades of meaning. “Maeve had a special way about her. A light.”

  “Was she beautiful?”

  “She was lovely, yes. But it was more than that. There was something special that came from within. You must have seen pictures. Your father took so many. He was a talented photographer.”

  Nora shook her head. “There weren’t any. I didn’t know he even had a camera until I cleaned out the attic after he passed away last year. It was as if she’d been erased.”

  “Oh,” Maire said, startled. “Well, then. I guess that gives us a place to start.” She pulled a photo album from the built-in bookcase and sat next to Nora on the couch. The album had a scarlet cover, worn down at the corners, the images within black and white. “Here are your grandparents with your mother and me on the beach, when we were girls.” The family resemblance was remarkable. Her mother faced the camera, a hand on her hip. “Bold as brass, as your grandmother used to say. Maeve wanted to be a pirate queen when we were little, until she realized it wasn’t as romantic a profession as it seemed, even if it had been possible for her to take up arms and sail away.”

  Maire flipped the page, the tissued inner leaves crinkling. “This one was taken when she was eighteen.” Maeve stood up to her thighs in the water, seemingly heedless of the waves lapping her dress. Her clothes clung to her curves. “She’d gone swimming in her skivvies that day. She couldn’t always be compelled to change into a bathing suit. She jumped in whenever she felt like it, heedless of the temperature, clothes and all. She wasn’t bothered by the cold like the rest of us.” In the photograph, Maeve’s eyes were dark, her brows too, skin radiant as pearl. Maire peeked from the edge of the scene, as if hoping to be noticed.

  “Was it difficult for you, being her younger sister?” Nora asked. “You were close in age.”

  Maire paused. “I loved her more than anyone in the world. But yes, I suppose it was hard, sometimes, being in her shadow. She didn’t mean to cast it. There it was, all the same, and I probably stood in it too much, when I should have moved and found my own light. That was my own fault, not hers. I was so quiet and hesitant in those years. I didn’t have her fire. She made things happen. I waited for them to happen.” And yet there were similarities too, as there are with sisters—the same gestures (they both tended to talk with their hands), the same musical laugh (though Maeve’s was heartier), the same brown eyes, courtesy of their father.

  She turned the page. “Here’s a picture of your mother and father, shortly after he came to the island.”

  “How did they meet? He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Your father arrived by accident,” Maire said. “His boat had been crippled in a storm. He sailed into port for repairs. We didn’t get many schooners passing through in those days. He was lucky to be alive. Men died that night. I imagine he thought Maeve was an angel, for he never took his eyes off her from the moment he set eyes on her, though there were other women who sought his attention.”

  “Like Maggie Scanlon?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And my mother fell in love with him?”

  “I believe so. Caused a scandal, her falling for an off-islander. People rarely married anyone from away in those days, now either.”

  “Were they happy?”

  There were no simple answers, not when it came to Maeve. “Maeve was always something of a restless soul, but she settled down with your father, made a home in the cottage you’re staying in now, the cottage that is, by rights, yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “You’re the last surviving McGann, after me.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “I’ve never seen Maeve as content as she was then. She was delighted when she learned she was pregnant with you.”

  “I was born here?”

  “On the beach. Maeve had some odd notions as she got close to term. She insisted on giving birth in the ocean. Very nearly did, but we found her just in time.” She’d been pacing in the shallows, talking to herself. Maire hadn’t thought much of it at the time—it was a week before the due date, after all—until she heard Maeve cry out.

  “She wasn’t attempting to—”

  “Drown you? Oh, no. It was her peculiar idea of a water birth, I suppose. I doubt she would have considered it if it hadn’t been summer. You were a darling little thing. You didn’t cry at all. You seemed perfectly at home.” A good-size baby, eight pounds, ten ounces, with a full head of black hair and alert dark eyes. Maire recalled how the infant Nora gazed around her with interest—at the faces of the women, and especially at the waves, creating their own cradle song as they shushed against the shore.

  “Maybe that’s why I’ve always felt drawn to the ocean.”

  “Do you like to swim? Your mother did too. She won the annual open water race for her age group every year. They’re thinking about holding it again this summer. Perhaps you’d like to sign up? The girls could too, for the shorter distances.”

  “Maybe we will,” Nora said.

  “The sea calls to us, doesn’t it?” Maire said. “What was it I read? That we contain the sea within us, made, as we are, of salt and water?”

  “Yes, I remember hearing that too.”

  The two women turned toward the open window. The sound of the waves carried across the bluffs, the cool breeze stirring the curtains, mixing with the voices of the girls, laughing and squabbling by turns.

  “But something happened, didn’t it? To my parents?” Nora pressed on. “Did they grow apart after I arrived?”

  “They made their lives here, happily so. Your father became the new harbormaster. He’d worked for a shipping company in Boston; we were fortunate to obtain a man of his experience. And your mother, your mother took to wandering again, as she had before she met your father, before she had you. I don’t know what got into her. She had that faraway look in her eye.” Maire would come upon her sometimes, arguing with an unseen person behind
the rocks, near the point, but when she rounded the corner, there was no one there but Maeve, eyes flashing, revealing nothing.

  “Could it have been postpartum depression?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Maire replied. “She wouldn’t tell me what was on her mind. She was never much for confidences.” Maire closed the album. That was enough for one evening. She hadn’t anticipated how draining such discussions could be.

  The sun slipped toward the horizon, silhouetting the girls and the distant shore of Little Burke against a gold-and-plum-painted sky.

  Maire yawned. “I can’t hold my wine the way I used to. I’m afraid I’m a little sleepy.”

  “You must be tired after such a long night.” It was clear Nora wanted to continue the conversation but was too polite to insist.

  “Yes, for the very best reason. There are few greater joys than bringing new life into the world. Babies are such a gift.” She squeezed Nora’s hand, a gentle pressure. Like you were, too.

  Nora and the girls walked the beach home, twilight inking the waves. The same beach on which Nora had come into the world, on the changing tide, that long-ago evening. Had her mother given birth there, by the tide pools? There, on that soft patch of sand where the rocks curved into a perfect half-moon?

  Piano music drifted across the fields from Maire’s open window. The crystalline notes stopped abruptly at times, before she began again. She’d said she often played in the evenings, Debussy primarily, the impressionistic passages filled with a passion she didn’t readily express in words, which made Nora wonder about the deep well of memories and feeling she stored within her. Her aunt was clearly talented. Nora wondered if she’d ever yearned to pursue a concert career when she was young.

  Ella swatted at a mosquito in time with a particularly strong chord. Nora was surprised that they hadn’t seen more of them, but Maire told her the bugs were worse in the spring and that the wind and the swallows tended to keep any malingerers at bay; she rarely bothered with repellent at that time of year. Too bad there wasn’t a repellent for straying husbands—and the women who would steal them away—Nora thought.

  “What are you thinking about?” Ella asked.