Sea Change

by Aimee Friedman

  “I could really use your help,” Mom had told me over the phone. “I want to sort through Isadora’s personal effects as fast as possible, and you, my love, are extremely talented when it comes to organizing.”

  I’d felt a warm flicker of flattery as I stood outside my high school, having just taken my disastrous English final. I was curious about the unknown strands of DNA that linked me to the South. And although I had my internship lined up, part of me had longed to escape what was shaping up to be a lackluster, lonely summer. My nineteen-year-old brother, Wade, was with our father in Los Angeles, and I sort of enjoyed the idea of the genders being divided across the country, like the Union and the Confederacy.

  So after several e-mails to the museum, my internship was deferred until July fifteenth, and I was buying tickets on Travelocity.

  “How’s everything going so far?” I asked Mom now as we stood facing each other under the azure sky. The water’s rhythmic lapping against the dock was soothing.

  She groaned, putting a hand to her forehead. “Don’t ask. Aunt Coral keeps calling me, hollering her head off about how the house should be her birthright, and…”

  Mom paused midrant, and her jaw dropped as her gaze fell on something behind me. Her face blanched beneath her tan, and for one crazy second I wondered if she’d seen the kraken unfurling from the ocean.

  I looked over my shoulder to see Sailor Hat loading luggage onto a rolling cart. The man with salt-and-pepper hair from the ferry stood at his side, nodding and handing him a few folded dollar bills. The man’s dark-haired son was walking off the boat, his head still bent over his iPhone. A few other ferry workers tramped around them, preparing Princess of the Deep for its return voyage.

  “Who are you looking at?” I asked as I turned back to my mother, intrigued.

  “Nobody,” Mom replied, and she took hold of my arm. “Come on, you must be starving, and we have a ways to walk. They don’t allow cars on the island.”

  I threw one last glance back at the ferry, then hurried after my mother. We headed off the dock, cutting through swaths of scratchy yellow grass, and then started up a pebbly path that snaked away from the water.

  More questions bubbled on the tip of my tongue; the solid land of questions and answers was where I felt most comfortable. I wanted to ask Mom for more details about my grandmother’s funeral, which had been a lavish affair; apparently, a mountain of magnolias had been fashioned into Isadora’s likeness, and a gospel choir had sung “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore.” I also wanted Mom to elaborate on the Aunt Coral drama. But when we emerged onto a paved road called Triton’s Pass, I was struck silent by the strange beauty of our surroundings.

  Massive live oaks lined the road, their green leaves forming a canopy overhead, and lacy, pale-gray Spanish moss dripped from the trees’ branches, creating a ghostly effect. Slimmer, white-trunked trees—“crepe myrtles,” Mom told me as we passed—bloomed with brilliant purple flowers that filled the air with a ripe sweetness. A shiny, lumpy armadillo lumbered right past us.

  Though the island’s flora and fauna looked wild and untouched, it felt as if Mom and I were walking along an elegant, old-fashioned promenade. There were columned houses behind the trees, and men tipped their hats to us as they passed. Two girls in white dresses, sailing by on bicycles, offered cheerful “good afternoons.” If I was one to believe in time travel, I might imagine that the ferry had carried me into the past.

  “This is us,” Mom said as we rounded a corner and stopped in front of a wide lawn. The house—the biggest I’d seen yet—was painted a pale blue, with four columns and a wrought-iron wraparound porch. The lawn was weed-choked and overgrown, and the screens on the bay windows were torn, but it was clear that the house, like a delicate-featured elderly woman, had once been a stunner.

  “No, it’s not,” I replied automatically. The facts did not compute. I peered around, half expecting to find the barrel of a shotgun pointing at us for trespassing.

  Logically speaking, how could Mom and I possibly be connected to this…mansion? A mansion in which to shoot a Civil War movie, not a place for regular people like Mom and me.

  “Take a look,” Mom said, guiding me over to the rusted mailbox. On its side, in chipped white paint, were the words:

  THE MARINER

  MR. AND MRS. JEREMIAH HAWKINS

  10 GLAUCUS WAY

  SELKIE ISLAND, GEORGIA 31558

  I felt a flush of recognition. Jeremiah Hawkins was my grandfather, who had passed away when my mother was still in high school. But…

  “Who’s ‘The Mariner’?” I asked, angling my head to better study the writing.

  Mom let out a small laugh. “Oh, that was your grandmother being pretentious. She named the house after her favorite poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ ” When I looked at Mom blankly, she added, “You know, ‘Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink’? Samuel Taylor Coleridge? The albatross?” I shook my head, and she nudged me in the side. “Oh, Miranda. You should read something other than your biology textbooks once in a while.”

  I sighed as I followed Mom up the curving path to the house. Somehow, in between her surgeries and medical conferences, Mom always found time to read novels or poetry collections. I simply found works of fiction too…fictitious.

  We climbed the crumbling porch steps, and as Mom dug in her purse for the keys, I studied the blue-and-white life ring that hung on the door like a wreath, now yellowed with age.

  “When was the last time anyone stayed here?” I asked. Mom herself had only arrived the day before.

  “About two years ago,” Mom said, unlocking the door. “When I was around your age, after my father passed”—she cleared her throat—“Isadora decided that the family shouldn’t summer here anymore. She’d come out by herself now and then, but when her health started failing, she locked up The Mariner and stayed in Savannah for good.”

  The mingled scents of mildew, dust, and Lemon-Fresh Pine-Sol floated toward us as we stepped into the large foyer. A tingle of eagerness raced through me. Then the toe of my sneaker caught on a loose floorboard and I tripped. Sea legs, I thought. To steady myself, I grabbed hold of a flat cardboard sheet that was propped against a wall, waiting to be turned into a box.

  “It’s a wreck,” Mom warned me, shutting the door. “Everything’s ancient and falling to pieces. There’s no TV, no Internet, and it’s a miracle there’s cell reception.” She tutted as she set my duffel bag on a claw-footed chair. “Some gift!”

  I usually shared Mom’s taste for sleek, modern design—our apartment in Riverdale was all glass and steel gray—but there was something beautiful about the foyer’s dark wood paneling and the frayed lace curtains over the windows. Gilt-framed seascapes hung on one wall, and another wall was covered in peeling blue wallpaper patterned with tiny sea horses. History seemed to breathe in each corner of the house, from the twisting wooden staircase to the cut-glass chandelier.

  I was reminded of how I often felt when I walked into my high school. Over the entrance hung an enormous color mural featuring scientists through the ages: Galileo, Copernicus, Marie Curie. School legend had it that the money used to pay for the mural was supposed to go toward a pool. I would have loved being able to swim every day, but I loved the mural more: It made me feel like I was part of something bigger, a tradition of inventors who’d inherited the lessons of those who came before them.

  “Welcome to The Mariner, Miranda,” Mom said softly as she flipped a switch to turn on the ceiling fans. Her gaze was on me, and I wondered if she was a little bit amazed to see me standing there—her new life suddenly inserted into her old one.

  As I walked up to a coatrack in the shape of an anchor, I felt a surge of wonder. Was this really the house where Mom had slept and eaten back when she was just Amelia Blue Hawkins, and not my mother? Had an adolescent Mom strolled down this very hall, her sandals skimming over the faded green compass painted onto the floor?

  I shivered. What was I doi
ng, conjuring phantoms? I never let my imagination roam so freely. When Mom set her hand on my back, I started violently, and she laughed.

  “Whoa, there! I was just going to ask you if fresh fish sounds good for dinner. I got grouper at the market and was going to grill it up with corn on the cob.”

  “Sounds great,” I answered truthfully, my stomach growling. I was surprised that Mom was going to cook; at home, we were all about Thai takeout.

  “In the meantime, I’ll prepare some sweet tea to tide us over,” Mom said. “Why don’t you relax on the back porch and I’ll meet you out there?”

  I nodded. “Sweet tea” was what Mom called iced tea with two heaping spoonfuls of sugar; it was one of the few Southernisms that lingered in her speech. Most of the time, Mom sounded like a clipped, crisp Northeasterner; she said that she’d shed her Georgia accent as soon as she walked into her freshman dorm at Yale, which was also where she met Dad.

  Mom pointed me in the direction of the living room, where a pair of French doors faced the ocean, and then she bustled off toward the kitchen, which was past the stairs.

  I padded into the living room, passing antique sofas, the stuffing bleeding out of their backs. I could feel myself starting to unwind from the day. I wandered over to the marble mantelpiece and studied the two framed photographs that were perched there.

  The first one showed a family grouped outside The Mariner: a shapely brunette woman—Isadora; a distinguished-looking bald man—Jeremiah; two girls; and a boy. My heart thrummed when I realized that the littlest girl in a starched pink dress, holding a parasol over her light-brown head and scowling, was none other than Mom. Which meant that the other girl—grinning and frizzy-haired—was Aunt Coral, and the boy—crossing his eyes for the camera—was Uncle Jim.

  Although Mom and I never went to Savannah to see them, my aunt and uncle had both visited us in New York. Coral, with her frosted-platinum bob and Neiman Marcus charge card, had complained about the filthy subways. Uncle Jim, a clone, I now saw, of his father, had complained about the shameful quality of grits in restaurants. After her siblings left, Mom had complained about them.

  When I moved on to the next picture, my breath caught. It was a solo shot of Isadora, taken when she must have been no older than me. I’d never seen a photograph of my grandmother so young; in the handful of photos Mom had of Isadora back home, my grandmother was middle-aged. Here, the teenage Isadora reclined on a porch swing, her coy dark eyes glinting from under the brim of a beribboned hat. She wore a strapless pear-colored sundress, her jet-black curls spilling over her porcelain shoulders, and her ruby-stained lips parted in a smile. She and Mom didn’t resemble each other at all.

  “You look like her, you know.”

  I whirled around to find Mom in the doorway, holding two glasses and a pitcher of iced tea on a silver tray. She gave me a small smile and nodded toward the photo. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Mom, are you kidding?” I shook my head, a little bit dazed. I may have inherited Isadora’s coloration, but her beauty gene had clearly skipped me, like a stone over water.

  “You’ll have other opportunities to check out Isadora’s image while you’re here,” Mom said as she ushered me through the French doors and onto the back porch. The cooling air swept toward us, carrying the smell of the sea. I sat down on the cushioned bench, taking in the startling view. Frothy waves rolled onto the sand, chasing away twittering sandpipers, and the mellowing sunshine turned the water into diamonds.

  “She essentially made The Mariner a shrine to herself,” Mom went on as she tipped the pitcher over a glass; a waterfall of amber-colored liquid poured forth, along with a cascade of lemon slices and shards of mint. “Lord, was that woman a monster,” she concluded with a sigh.

  I flinched as I accepted the drink. Mom had referred to Isadora in similar terms over the years, but now, it felt wrong to speak ill of the dead. Plus, I couldn’t quite imagine the luminous creature from the photo as cruel.

  Then again, what did I really know about my grandmother? On occasion, when I was growing up, Wade and I would receive a Christmas or birthday card signed Isadora Beauregard Hawkins in looping, stylized script. I’d always been vaguely amazed that she even knew of our existence.

  As Mom sat down beside me, I glanced at her profile, wondering how she had come to feel so harshly about her mother. A week ago, when Aunt Coral had called us with the news of Isadora’s death, Mom’s eyes had turned stormy with tears and her face had gone all splotchy. The sight had rattled me; Mom never cried. But when I’d inquired about the cause of death—I like diagnoses—Mom had snapped back to her usual sardonic self, blowing her nose and saying that complications from being eighty and drinking peach juleps every day had probably done Isadora in.

  “What’s wrong, my love?” Mom asked now, pulling me out of my thoughts. She poured iced tea into her own glass, then faced me, her brow furrowed. “I know you’re always pensive, but, lately, you’ve seemed…” She paused, biting her lower lip.

  I froze. Mom couldn’t have failed to notice how, over the past month, I’d retreated from the world like a hermit crab into the sand. I used to go to my best friend Linda Wu’s house after school, or have Greg over to the apartment for “tutoring sessions.” But since May I’d been coming home alone and taking long, restorative baths before curling up on the sofa to watch the Discovery Channel.

  “I’m fine,” I replied quickly, and sipped my drink, but discomfort stained my cheeks red. I wanted to tell Mom, I did, but I was a little bit frightened that if I started to talk, I’d break down.

  “Okay,” Mom said, regarding me carefully. “But here’s something that might cheer you up: Tomorrow, there’s going to be a party on the boardwalk. We should stop by.”

  “What kind of party?” I asked, chewing on a piece of mint. My stomach tightened briefly at the memory of the last party I had attended.

  “It’s called the Heirs party,” Mom said, swallowing her tea.

  “Airs?” I echoed, thinking of the colorless gases that comprise the atmosphere. I pictured a faintly pagan ceremony on the shore involving billowing robes and kites. I couldn’t begin to imagine my mother—or myself—at such an affair.

  Mom tipped her head to one side, smiling. “As in, heirs and heiresses. You know…” She twirled her wrist for emphasis, the ice cubes in her glass clinking. “The descendants of those who’ve summered on Selkie forever. The LeBlanc family, one of the most prominent on the island, started the tradition at the end of the nineteenth century. The last week in June, all the summer people meet and toast one another’s wealth.” She rolled her eyes, but there was no mistaking the nostalgia in her tone.

  “So we were invited?” I asked, a little bewildered by all the pomp and tradition. I did feel a spark of interest; after the past month, it might be nice to socialize with people again. Not that I had anything to wear to a party; amid the T-shirts and jeans I’d packed was a sole drawstring cotton skirt with a hole in its hem.

  “There was an invitation sitting in the mailbox when I arrived last night,” Mom confirmed, crossing her legs. “Intended for Isadora; she always got one automatically.”

  “But do we belong there?” I asked, finishing my drink.

  “We do,” Mom said quietly, meeting my gaze, and I realized she must have attended the party many times before. “For better or worse, you are an heir, Miranda. And so am I.”

  My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean. None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Mariner, I suddenly understood. Mom and I weren’t trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.

  Three

  TALES

  Right after dinner, I decided to go for a swim. The nearness of the ocean was too tempting to resist, so I hurried upstairs to change into my bathing suit.

  The room I’d be staying in was the bedroom Mom and Aunt Coral had sh
ared back in the day. It seemed stuck in time: the wallpaper with its rosy seashells, the pink quilts covering the two twin beds. I was not a fan of pink, and I envied Mom, who was settling into the blue-and-green master bedroom down the hall.

  I plunked my duffel bag on one of the beds and began removing my neat piles of clothes, transferring them to the drawers of the wooden bedside dresser. Nothing calmed me more than creating order. It was no wonder that, in my room back home, Dmitry Mendeleyev’s periodic table of the elements hung above my desk, a sort of inspiration. I was probably the only living sixteen-year-old with that decoration.

  Once I’d unpacked, I stripped off my clothes and wriggled into my black one-piece swimsuit. I hesitated for a second before kicking off my Converse. There probably wouldn’t be any other swimmers out at this hour, so I could remain barefoot.

  I was born with the toes on both my feet webbed—“like a pretty little duck,” Dad would say. Since my parents are both plastic surgeons, they had a colleague operate on me as early as possible, and the webbing was removed. But my feet still look undeniably odd; scars run like needlework along the skin between my toes, and the toes themselves are slightly curled. Syndactyly is the proper name for the condition; I’d done plenty of research on it, reading about babies’ development in the womb. I was the only one in my family with this strangeness, which doctors aren’t sure is genetic. I was just sure that I preferred flats to flip-flops.

  Wrapping a towel around my waist, I glanced out my window, which faced Glaucus Way. Blush-colored stripes were appearing in the sky, and blinking fireflies danced between the rooftops. A young mother was quickly pushing a stroller under the shadowy branches, and the Spanish moss looked like the spidery beards of old men. I didn’t relish the idea of swimming in the dark; I had to get a move on before night fell.