The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  Nora shook her head gently. They could talk about it later.

  “There are always the summers,” Polly said.

  Yes, the summers, past and present. A wind chime sounded on the deck, a fragment of melody, a half-completed thought, ringing in the air, dissipating.

  Nora looked around the room. “Let’s deal with the cleaning to start out with. Otherwise, we’ll leave it as it is for now. There’s no hurry.”

  “No, of course there isn’t,” Polly agreed.

  Because no one lived there anymore.

  Ella ducked outside, the others seemingly unaware. She marched past the fountains of switchgrass and the arthritic pine, past the lark’s nest and the snarl of dinghy nets and floats, those hollow plastic globes that were supposed to keep things afloat, cracked at the seams, worthless. She glanced behind her. Annie hadn’t followed, for once. Annie, who always followed, a little sister, a little conscience. Ella didn’t need her now. She would only complicate things. She couldn’t be relied upon to play her part, do what had to be done.

  The fishing shack was as ramshackle as ever, not meant for full-time living, only for storing tackle and lines. Who could live in such a place? Who would want to? A curl of smoke rose from the chimney in a question mark, as if asking what she was doing there. She told herself she didn’t believe in fairy tales, in magic, and yet there was an eerie atmosphere that made her shiver. She squared her shoulders. This was no time for doubts.

  She rapped on the door. No answer. Maybe he’d stepped out. He hadn’t been at the dock. She nearly lost her nerve, ran back the way she’d come, when the door opened, as if of its own accord, and he appeared, this man who had paid too much attention to her mother, and she knew what she must do.

  “We’re going home,” she said.

  “Your mother—” His eyes swept over the field behind her, as if for some sign of Nora.

  “She sent me to tell you. She said it’s easier this way. That you’d understand.” Her delivery was flawless. Her father would be proud. Perhaps she’d take acting lessons in Boston that fall. “You understand, don’t you?” She made her eyes sad, so that he would know that, in the end, she sympathized with him.

  “Yes.”

  She knew he wouldn’t inquire further. That he didn’t dare. She felt a thrill of triumph when she saw the regret in his eyes. Triumph, and a flicker of doubt too, though she didn’t let it show. The pleasure of hurting him wasn’t as satisfying as she thought it would be. Though hurting him was beside the point. The point was to get home, to her father.

  They would return to Boston.

  And Owen would go back to wherever he was from.

  Nora went through boxes in the attic. Annie was studying the charts. “The marks have moved,” she said. “More seals are on Little Burke.”

  “I think those marks were already there, honey,” Nora said. “The map is mildewed. We might have to get rid of it.”

  “No!” Annie said. “We have to keep it. No matter how old it gets. . . . Aunt Maire said the magic is everywhere, within us too. All we have to do is find it.”

  “She did, did she?” Her confused mind, braiding together their past with myths, true or invented. Would they ever know which was which?

  So many family heirlooms, carefully preserved. Maire, the conservator. What else had she kept? Hidden? Things of Maeve’s too? There were porcelain dolls from the sisters’ childhood. Pull toys. A top. “Look, it spins,” Annie said. “Like the compass. Is the compass broken? It spins at weird times.”

  “I don’t know,” Nora said. Its erratic movements had unnerved her to the point that she’d stuck it in the nightstand drawer. “I’m not sure how it works.”

  “But you said Grandpa showed you.”

  “His compass wasn’t like that one. Maybe something got into the works.” It didn’t seem to play by the same rules.

  At the bottom of a steamer trunk, filled with dresses from the 1950s and ’60s—the fabrics were gorgeous, if slightly yellowed from storage; they looked as if they hadn’t been touched for years—she found a leather-bound journal. A journal, locked, without a key. “Private” embossed on the front cover. Could something more be written there, something Maire hadn’t said, from a time her mind was clear? Nora slid it into the bag of cleaning supplies, vinegar and orange oil among them, substances to remove tarnish, to dust, to restore, to bring things to light.

  Nora had her own journals, kept in a box in the far corner of the storage room in the house on Oak Street, behind the girls’ outgrown rocking horse and crib. The toys and baby furniture she and Malcolm had held onto, because the girls may have outgrown them but they didn’t want to let them go; a tie to the past, to the heart of their childhood. Nora stopped to consider: Did she want her daughters to read her journals someday, for that sort of evidence to remain? Her mistakes, joys, sorrows, complaints, observations, over things that seemed insignificant now? (She’d stopped when the girls were born. There wasn’t time for her own thoughts, much less to write them down.)

  Private. Maire was gone now. Nora couldn’t speak to her, request permission. There would be no more conversations, searching or mundane. She could only gather what she could from what was left behind—including this journal, part of her inheritance, after all. Maire had left her everything except the boat.

  “Did you find something?” Annie asked.

  “Aunt Maire kept everything, didn’t she?” Nora evaded the question.

  “The attic is like a big treasure chest.”

  The journal most of all.

  Nora would decide whether to read it later, when eyes weren’t upon her.

  Ella was neatening the deck when Nora and Annie came downstairs. “I didn’t realize you were so handy with a broom,” Nora said. “You wield it quite professionally.”

  “I’m good at cleaning up messes.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to tackle the cottage next.” They couldn’t keep ahead of the incessant sand.

  “Whatever you say,” Ella said calmly. Thank goodness her mood seemed to have improved.

  Polly called to them from the kitchen. “It’s all boxed up. Do you want help carrying the provisions to the cottage?”

  “We’ll take what we can manage for now,” Nora replied. “You and Alison should have the others. It’s what Maire would have wanted.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay? We don’t have to go into town, if you need us,” Alison said.

  “We’ll be all right.”

  Polly’s gaze flickered toward the point, where the smoke continued to curl from the chimney. “I forgot you have Owen.”

  Alison shot her a smile with a hint of mischief. Perhaps she guessed what had been going on.

  Nora didn’t think to ask Ella what she’d been doing during that missing hour, an hour that could not have been taken up entirely with the tidying of the deck—or whatever else she was sweeping away.

  Chapter Twenty

  After the girls had gone to sleep, Nora settled beside the fire and cut the strap that secured the journal. The brittle leather yielded easily to her scissors, and yet she hesitated before opening the cover. A shower of petals dropped from the vase of late-season daylilies on the table. Maire had given her the bouquet of unopened buds before she died, and they were beginning to wither. A sign? Perhaps.

  The words floated up from the paper as she skimmed the entries. She heard her aunt’s voice, as if she were there in the room, the language simple, yet vivid.

  Thought Da would have been pleased with my marks this term. I showed him the paper. But all he talked about was Maeve. How she’ll be the Queen of the Fleet this year. How she’ll ride the float through town and everyone will clap and cheer. When he saw my face, he said I would be too, in another year or two. But I know I won’t. I’m not that sort of girl. The sort of girl everyone admires. Everyone votes for . . .

  Fought with Maeve today. With hairbrushes. I drew blood for once. M. told Mam she’d hit her head. There are some t
hings we’ll never tell on each other for. It will make a scar when it heals. Something for her to remember me by. . . .

  Cried in my room today. Johnny B. heard I liked him and treated me like I had leprosy. Meanness to cover the embarrassment. Having a crush. I’d never thought about the weight of that word. How it can harm the person who has it. Maeve heard me and made me tell her what was wrong. I can never keep anything from her for long. She said she’d blacken his eye if I wanted her to. I’ve never seen her so angry. It’s all right for her to make me cry, but whenever anyone else does, she gets protective. I told her not to punch him, but I felt a little better, knowing that she would have come to my defense.

  Maeve took center stage at the dance again, the girls jealous because the boys couldn’t take their eyes off her, giving her the candy and flowers intended for their dates.

  No one ever looks at me that way. I wonder if anyone ever will.

  Da towed a man into port today. His sailboat was battered in the storm. Mast broken and everything. Da says he’s lucky to be alive. He’s staying in the fishing shack for a while. Da seems to like him. I do too.

  He’s staying. I don’t know for how long. Sometimes, I sneak down into the meadow and hide, watching him. Maeve caught me at it and made fun, threatening to tell.

  I saw them. Him and Maeve. Through the window. Why does she have to get everything? Everything she wants?

  Nora skipped ahead, another year or two. Maire hadn’t been the most prolific writer.

  Maeve went into labor. Mam gone. Had to help her on my own. She didn’t want anyone else there. I thought I knew what to do. The baby came out blue. Patrick there, holding her. The cord around the baby’s neck. Maeve screamed and cried until she didn’t have any strength left. She lay there, not speaking, looking at me with vacant eyes. I think she blames me. I blame myself. I can’t help but think things would have turned out differently if Mam had been there. . . . A little cross in the churchyard, marking the grave. I’ve never seen a coffin that small. Patrick made it with his own hands.

  The pages went blank for a time, then a final entry:

  I knew something would happen eventually. It was bound to, given her nature. Wanderlust. A perfect word. I didn’t know she’d take Nora with her. A child. What business did she have, taking a child out there? But maybe she hadn’t meant to go far . . . I’d never seen Patrick so distraught. He’d always been steady. That was one of the things that drew me to him.

  We found Nora on the beach at Little Burke. I helped take care of her as I always had. The fantasy I’d dreamed of seemed to be coming true—that it would be the three of us, our own little family, as it should have been from the beginning, because I was the one who’d seen him first. He should have been mine.

  I stayed later at the cottage that night. A week ago, it was. I haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it until today. Even now, I hesitate to do so, because I’m not sure I want to commit it to the page. To admit my part in it.

  We’d had ale with dinner. I’d brought the jug on purpose, from Da’s stores. After I tucked Nora in bed, I went into the kitchen. Patrick was waiting for me, and I for him. He was nearly trembling, with desire I thought, hungry for signs of affection, of need. He pulled me to him roughly, and his kiss wasn’t like anything I’d imagined. It was hard, angry.

  “Is that what you want?” he asked. “Is it?”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. I started to cry. He didn’t have any sympathy for me. It hadn’t happened this way in my dreams. I’ll never forget the look on his face. The look of utter revulsion, as if he might be sick.

  “You’re not her. You could never be her.”

  He didn’t want me. He never had.

  The next day, we found he’d taken Nora and gone.

  What have I done?

  Nora closed the book with a snap and pressed it to her chest. She needed to go through the photo album again. Perhaps there was something she’d overlooked.

  She hurried along the path, the flashlight’s beam swaying wildly over the ragged fields, the narrow band of dirt and sand marking the way ahead. She glanced back at the cottage. She couldn’t leave the girls for long. They were safe enough there—there’d been no further trouble from Maggie Scanlon or the Connellys—but she didn’t want them to wake and wonder where she was.

  But as she drew closer to Cliff House, she found her feet taking another path, toward the point, toward Owen.

  The night was full of shadows, the shack dark. That didn’t surprise her. He might have gone to bed early; most fishermen did. The bass were running.

  She knocked.

  He didn’t answer. The silence made her uneasy. Even the seals were quiet that night. The seals, which were never quiet. She tried again, knuckles stinging. She turned the knob. She hoped nothing was wrong. He had always been there when she needed him. “Owen?” Her voice was too loud in the room, his name echoing. She lit the kerosene lamp by the door. His bag—the one Maire had given him, the one that used to be Jamie’s—was gone.

  The landscape listed around her as she ran to Cliff House, as if everything had slipped its moorings. He wasn’t there either. A door opened, but it was only a draft. She checked the dock, where the fishing boat had been tied. It wasn’t there.

  A twig snapped behind her.

  Nora whirled around, shining the flashlight in Ella’s face. “Jesus, El, you need to stop sneaking up on people like that.”

  “He’s gone.” Her daughter’s eyes were hard as stones.

  “How do you know that? What did you do?”

  “What did I do? What did I do?” she cried. “You mean what did you do? Leaving Dad, bringing us here, going off to see him.”

  “What did you say to Owen?”

  “I told him we were leaving for Boston.”

  “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Because it was the only way you’d go back.”

  “Go back? I brought us here to get away from the scandal.”

  “And Dad. To get away from Dad.”

  “He hurt us.”

  “He hurt you. That’s why you started talking to Owen, wasn’t it? Because you needed someone to like you?”

  “He was Aunt Maire’s guest. She was the one who—”

  “You were too! You more than anyone—”

  “And so you lied to him? He couldn’t have believed you.”

  “I’m not stupid. I didn’t put it as a message from me. I said you told me to tell him. That it would be easier that way. I must have been convincing, because it worked. Maybe he didn’t like you as much as you thought. Maybe he has someone waiting for him too.”

  Nora grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “You had no right.”

  Ella pushed her away. “I had every right—and you know it.”

  “I can’t let him think—”

  “He already does. And what does it matter anyway? It’s time for us to leave. We don’t belong here.”

  “Get back home. Now.”

  “That’s exactly where I’m going.” Ella stormed up the path.

  Who knew how much of a head start Owen had had, how far out to sea he was by now. No ships’ lights shone in the distance. The water was flat, expressionless, beneath a wan sliver of moon. How could Nora get in touch with him? Let him know it was a mistake, that she wasn’t ready for him to go? She had felt more alive with him in those few weeks than she had in years. Maybe it was the newness of him, the lack of real life intruding with its problems, its conflicts. Maybe it was never meant to be more than an interlude. Still, she wished she could talk to him, hear his voice. She could tell Polly what had happened, see if she could summon him on the ship’s radio. She nearly did, racing into the kitchen of Cliff House, picking up the phone receiver, dialing her number, then hanging up. Second thoughts again.

  After all, he wouldn’t have left if he hadn’t wanted to. He’d had a choice. Perhaps the news had only made it easier for him to go.

  Chapter Twe
nty-one

  Nora took the girls into town the next day, thinking a change of scene might do them good. They’d agreed to meet Alison and Polly for fish and chips that afternoon at Sloane’s before the latest dustup, and Nora didn’t want to have to get into the reasons for cancelling. Besides, she didn’t relish the thought of being trapped with Ella in the cottage the entire day.

  The fish came wrapped in newspaper, tails still on. It was the best Nora had ever tasted. She’d never had such a craving for seafood as she did on the island. Ella and Annie went over to play foosball in the corner after they’d finished their meal. The women lingered over cups of coffee.

  “Has he gone? Owen?” Polly asked. “The harbormaster said he saw a boat go by yesterday evening.”

  “It looks like it. I don’t know.”

  “Owen didn’t say? I’m sorry. I thought he would have.”

  “Maybe it was time,” Nora said. “He made it clear that his life is at sea.”

  “That’s not how it looked to me,” Alison said.

  “Looks can be deceiving.” She’d had time to think about the consequences of asking Polly to try to locate him, how desperate she’d look.

  “It could have been too painful for him, losing Maire,” Polly said. “She was like a mother to him.”

  Nora nodded. To her too.

  “Any news from that husband of yours?” Alison asked.

  Nora shook her head.

  “Ghost lines,” Polly said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Abandoned fishing lines,” Polly explained. “Things get caught in them. Like a snare. They can be rather treacherous.”

  She was obviously talking about more than the lines themselves. So many things had turned treacherous on the island and the surrounding sea, below the surface.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to mention,” Nora said. “I found a journal in Maire’s things, from when she was young. I have to confess I read it. I’m not sure I should have—”

  “Well, it’s part of your inheritance,” Alison said. “If she hadn’t wanted it to be read, she would have destroyed it. My guess is either she couldn’t let go of the memories, or she wanted someone to know about her life. To have her say.”