The Language of Sand

by Ellen Block

  As the afternoon wore on, Abigail caught herself waiting for the CD to falter, yet the music played on uninterrupted. She began to hum, losing herself in the buoyancy of the violins. Paul had favored cello music. They would often debate what they should listen to in the car, vying over symphonies and comparing the virtues of each stringed instrument as if arguing political positions. For Paul, the cello spoke to the soul, with its mellow, sonorous voice. Abigail preferred the lighter, loftier range of the violin. The low tenor of the cello was too melancholy for her taste, well before she knew what true melancholy even felt like.

  Strips of wallpaper plopped at her feet in growing mounds, while bits of paste speckled her clothes and the tips of her fingers took on a bluish cast from the cornflower color in the design. Eventually, the butter knife bent under the pressure of scraping the calcified glue. Only belatedly did it occur to Abigail that, as a rental tenant, she had no right to remove the wallpaper. The lighthouse wasn’t her property.

  “Way to go. That’s playing it safe.”

  What was done was done, and nobody—not even Lottie—would disagree that the kitchen appeared more spacious minus the dated paper, a supreme achievement in light of its dimensions. Abigail considered it a victory. She took a break to open the windows and let in some air. The breeze seemed to rustle the paper-thin curtains in tempo to the music. Dust had collected in their lace trim, making the edges appear mealy.

  “You’ve got to go too,” Abigail announced, snapping off the curtain rod. Then she heard a bump.

  It was the curtains. No, it wasn’t that close. Was it upstairs? Relax. You’re overreacting.

  Abigail dismantled the other set of curtains to see if it would happen a second time. The violins played on and there were no other noises.

  “You’re losing it, Abby.”

  Yeah, you’re definitely losing it if you’re calling yourself “Abby.”

  After her assault on the kitchen, it looked as if it had been looted. Empty drawers hung open. The cabinet doors were swung wide, the shelves bare. What mattered was that everything was clean. Abigail had removed years of grease from the appliances and decades’ worth of dirt from the sink. Beyond the slanting shelves and dislocated counters, she could imagine how the kitchen had once been: homey, pleasant. Perhaps it could be that way again.

  The master bedroom was next on Abigail’s agenda. She laid the freshly laundered towels and linens on the rocker, preparing to make the bed. Stripped, the sunken crater in the middle of the mattress looked like a pothole.

  “Maybe the other side isn’t so…concave.”

  Flipping the mattress took muscle. Deadweight, it teetered, then collapsed onto the box spring, sending a piece of paper fluttering to the floor as a plume of dust fogged the room.

  “Some people keep money under their mattress. Or dirty magazines. Here you have”—Abigail bent over to check—“a newspaper article.”

  The news clipping was amber with age and had been cut rather than torn out. The edges were neat, purposeful. The bold-type headline said: BISHOP’S MISTRESS SINKS, ENTIRE CREW LOST.

  Before Abigail could read on, she was overcome by a coughing fit brought on from the wave of dust constricting her tender throat. She dropped the article on the nightstand and went to the bathroom for water. A sip from the tap and she was fine, albeit shaken.

  “Here’s a headline: Woman Chokes to Death on Dust While Cleaning.”

  Abigail put the fresh sheets on the bed, along with the fabric-softener-scented quilt, which was prettier than it originally appeared. Handmade with squares of blue and yellow material and worn soft through the years, someone had put their heart into the blanket. Abigail admired that.

  After carting the mop and bucket she’d bought upstairs, she swabbed the bedroom floor. The wood boards were actually a different color without the film of dirt darkening them.

  “From mahogany to honey maple. Somewhat appalling. Yet somewhat impressive.”

  The water in the bucket rapidly went from clear to murky. She had to dump the waste down the tub’s drain again and again before she could proclaim the floor clean. Neither the nightstand nor the dresser changed hue as did the floor, but each had new luster due to soap and a rag. Once she’d dusted the insides of the dresser drawers, Abigail unpacked.

  The closet was minuscule by modern standards. The refrigerator downstairs was roomier. Five wooden hangers hung from an unfinished dowel acting as the closet rod.

  “This Mr. Jasper must not have been into fashion.”

  None of Abigail’s clothes had survived the fire, so her mother ordered her a new wardrobe in bulk through catalogs while Abigail recovered in the hospital. A kind gesture, her mother’s intention was to be helpful, to give Abigail one less thing to worry about. However, as Abigail hung the tops in the closet and folded the jeans and khakis into the drawers, she had the distinct sense she’d picked the wrong suitcase off the luggage carousel at the airport and wound up with a stranger’s clothes. The necklines on the tops were too high and the sleeves were too long and the pants had too many pleats. Even someone as close as her mother didn’t know exactly what Abigail would want. Sometimes Abigail didn’t either.

  Standing in front of the closet, she felt a pang of longing. She missed her old clothes. The silk blouses and designer wool slacks she’d amassed over the years were hardly haute couture; however, they meant a great deal to her. Whether she was going to a consulting job or lexicography conference, tweed skirts and tailored shirts were her customary garb. On her salary, high-quality versions of such items were difficult to come by, so Abigail religiously combed the discount racks. Her persistence sometimes paid off, as it did when she came across a pure cashmere sweater on sale for forty dollars. It was a luxuriously soft turtleneck in a shade of burgundy that always garnered her compliments. Abigail envisioned the sweater hanging in her former closet, alight with flames and falling to pieces from the hanger. With a sigh, she ran her fingers across the collection of cotton knits and oxfords, resigning herself to the new Abby.

  She opened the windows to air out the bedroom, which was somehow brighter despite the bilious green shade of paint and the jaundiced polyester drapes.

  “It’s a start,” Abigail said to herself as she went to empty the last bucket of dirty water, having totally forgotten about the newspaper article on the bedside table.

  The sun was sinking, the temperature was falling, and the violin quartet was playing its umpteenth round of the same concerto. Abigail shut off the CD player. The music evaporated instantly, as though sapping the warmth from the room. If she didn’t want to freeze, she would have to make a fire.

  Abigail didn’t need any more firewood. The log rack was already full. But going to the shed to get more delayed the process she was dreading. As she tromped through the tall grass, Abigail mulled over what Merle Braithwaite had told her.

  “Why didn’t you mow the lawn if you’re so concerned about keeping Mr. What’s-His-Name happy, huh? How about that?”

  She opted not to dwell on what Merle had said that morning. Diverting herself with housework had been an intentional measure. What she couldn’t distract herself from was the threat of spending another night in the bitter cold. Abigail unlocked the shed and the hinges sobbed.

  “Take a number. You’re not the only squeaky thing around here.”

  The firewood had been quartered, making one edge especially sharp. Her forearms took a beating as she bunched the logs.

  “There has got to be an easier, less injurious way to do this.”

  While searching for a container to carry the wood in, Abigail spied a flashlight behind a phalanx of kerosene lanterns. Seeing how unreliable the house’s wiring was, a flashlight could come in handy. She reached for it, inadvertently disturbing the delicate balance of firewood, and the logs proceeded to tumble to her feet.

  “This is going swimmingly.”

  Hands now free, Abigail switched on the flashlight. Nothing. She gave it a shake.

&nb
sp; “I guess I should put batteries on the shopping list along with primer, rollers, sandpaper…”

  She hunted through the shed for painting supplies. The brushes she found were rock hard, bristles petrified with paint. Another visit to Merle’s store was in order.

  “Won’t that be a treat?”

  Flashlight and logs gathered in her arms, Abigail kicked the shed door shut, leaving it unlocked.

  “Time to start a fire.”

  With the wood set on the log rack, the match ready and waiting, Abigail remembered she still had no kindling. Lottie’s brochure was buried somewhere in the mess, and she had no pad or paper except for the register in her checkbook and her checks. There was the newspaper article from under the mattress. Except Abigail didn’t feel right about burning it. The article had survived too many years to meet such a fate. Paper bags, which she had in abundance, were the best bet.

  Fighting her trepidation, she struck the match. Abigail tried to stare down the flame but lost her nerve. She lobbed the matchstick into the fireplace, the flame caught on the bags, and the wood took.

  “The first time is always the hardest,” she told herself.

  Abigail was well aware, though, that any time she had to start a fire it would be hard on her. She shuddered at the cold as well as the thought that she might have to do this every day from here on in.

  Since the fireplace had no screen, she stayed close, holding vigil at the hearth and contemplating the fact that the word fire was almost as ancient as what it signified. Its ancestry spanned the millennia. The Greeks baptized it pyr. In Old English, it was labeled fyr, in Old High German, fiur. Fire was elemental to life, hence to language. The fear of fire was equally elemental. Abigail’s fears had been justified. She had a right to them.

  “Maybe you’ll get used to this,” she said. “Probably not.”

  Night drew itself up along the shoreline as Abigail sorted through the boxes of books strewn across the living room floor. It was high time to find a home for them in the study upstairs. She doused the fire with a few mugs of water, then grabbed a box. The staircase sung a dissonant scale of screeches with every step.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you.”

  The second floor was blindingly dark. Abigail hurried to switch on all the lights—the overhead fixture in the study, the bulb in the bathroom, and the lamp in the bedroom. Once they were lit, Abigail could breathe easier and concentrate on unpacking.

  Several flights of stairs later, the study was filled to capacity. Boxes were piled on the desk, the cot, and the floor. Shelving the books was a project Abigail relished. Her packing process had been hasty, done without regard to order; hence, opening each package was like opening a gift. For her, the sprawl of bland brown boxes rivaled Christmas. As she organized, she allowed herself to read the first few pages of each book, tasting the story or sampling a morsel from a text. It was as if she were bumping into an acquaintance on the street—Abigail couldn’t simply pass them by.

  She was a fraction of the way through the project when the growling in her stomach told her it was time to eat again. Despite the ample selection of groceries she’d bought to prepare herself a proper meal, such as chicken cutlets and rice and fresh green beans, Abigail had no inclination to cook. Because it would mean she would have to turn on the stove.

  “I’m hungry. But I’m not that hungry.”

  Instead, she made herself another sandwich, laid it on a paper towel, and took it to the study with her. She ate while thumbing through a Hemingway novel she’d found in her parents’ attic, a first edition of The Sun Also Rises that her father ran across at a garage sale and gave her as a present.

  Time drained away as Abigail lost herself in the first chapter. The weight of the novel in her hand anchored her, the pages supple as suede. She had a clear vision of the day her father brought the book home. It was summer. She’d recently turned fourteen. She remembered lying on her stomach on their porch, reading that first chapter while the crickets hissed in the heat. Abigail could have sworn she felt the porch boards under her elbows and smelled the chlorine from their neighbor’s pool, though in reality she was wedged into the little desk in the study.

  All of a sudden a thump came from above, reverberating through the house’s brick walls. Abigail jumped.

  It was nothing. It was nothing. It was nothing.

  The phrase repeated in her mind, syncopated with her breathing. She tried to stand. Her legs wouldn’t budge.

  “Sitting is fine. Sitting is good. I’ll stay right—”

  Another thump resounded through the house, this one more distinct. It was loud and hollow. Whatever was making the noise wasn’t solid.

  The oil pail.

  Abigail’s thoughts corkscrewed back to that morning, to climbing the spiral staircase, entering the lamp room, and accidentally kicking the tin pail. What had Merle said as she’d left his shop? He’d told her not to move it.

  Except that was ridiculous. There was no ghost.

  Rational thought couldn’t thaw Abigail from her position, frozen at the desk. She deliberated whether to go up to the lamp room and investigate or to leave it for tomorrow, when she had daylight on her side.

  “It’s dark. You don’t have a flashlight. One false step on those stairs and…”

  She preferred not to ruminate on what could come after and.

  If the bedroom door had a lock, Abigail would have used it. She changed into her pajamas and considered climbing into bed and hiding under the covers, but she hadn’t brushed her teeth or removed her contacts.

  “Forget brushing your teeth. Being scared beats oral hygiene hands down.”

  She sprinted into the bathroom and plucked out her contacts in record time. When she slammed the bedroom door behind her, it sent a gust of air coursing through the room, setting the newspaper article on the nightstand aloft. The paper came to rest under the bed. Too tired, Abigail left it there. She pulled the quilt over her shoulders, thinking back to the nights when Justin awoke with bad dreams. She and Paul would comfort him, rub his head, kiss each cheek, and tell him that the kisses would keep the nightmares away.

  He believed you.

  Abigail had cherished that unconditional trust, the wholehearted faith only a child, her child, could bestow. It was an incomparable honor. And it was gone. This time, she didn’t bother stopping the tears when they came.

  Amo, amare, amavi, amatus.

  Oro, orare, oravi, oratus.

  Wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm, Abigail hummed Latin verbs until they lulled her to sleep.

  hamartia (hä′ mäe tē′ə), n. See tragic flaw. [1890–95; < Gk: a fault, equiv. to hamart– (base of hamartánein to err) + –ia –IA]

  Sunrise was different by the ocean. It came on fast and was impossible to ignore. Abigail groped the nightstand for her glasses so she could read her watch, which said it was after six. She felt harried, as if she’d overslept, but there was nothing pressing she needed to do, nothing that awaited her. Her arms ached from her cleaning rampage and when she rubbed them, she could feel the indentations left on her skin by the bedding. Deep valleys and ravines crisscrossed the flesh, a topographical map of where her dreams had taken her during the night.

  Abigail slid her sneakers on in lieu of slippers and made the bed.

  “What an attractive sight you must be. Bleary-eyed in pajamas, two sweaters, and a pair of tennis shoes. Thank your stars there isn’t a full-length mirror here.”

  As she tucked in the sheets and straightened the quilt, it struck her that she didn’t have to make the bed or look presentable. She lived alone now. There was nobody to see her. What she did need to concern herself with was the lighthouse and the slew of duties that came with it.

  Two weeks after being released from the hospital, Abigail had searched out Lottie’s real estate agency and consented to lease the caretaker’s cottage before Lottie even faxed her a photo. It was easily the most impetuous act of Abigail’s life, one she was second-guess
ing.

  She poked her head into the hall, praying that the bathroom light wouldn’t be on.

  It wasn’t.

  Warily, she made the rounds of the second floor, on alert for the slightest difference. Her contacts case sat beside the faucet in the bathroom, unmoved. Mounds of books lay on the desk in the study, her shelving effort cut short. She questioned whether or not she’d imagined the noise last evening.

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  The trip to the lighthouse turret went faster this morning than it had the previous day. Abigail was less circumspect, though just slightly. She noted the numbers of the squeaky steps from memory.

  “Sixty-seven…seventy-one…seventy-nine.”

  That small practice comforted her. She preferred knowing what to expect. Upon reaching the lamp room, Abigail steeled herself for what she might see.

  The oil pail appeared to be right where she’d left it.

  Because she’d righted the pail after stumbling on it, Abigail couldn’t tell if it was in exactly the same spot as before. She wanted to be certain. The rim of the pail was squared with a plaque soldered onto the base of the light. Rusted over, the plaque was illegible except for the year inscribed at the bottom—1893, the date the lighthouse was erected. Abigail took a mental picture of the pail’s placement, then nudged it away from the lamp base with the toe of her tennis shoe, so the pail no longer touched any part of the plaque.

  “This is merely a test, a test to see if…I’ve lost my marbles or not.”

  She hoped she would pass.

  Abigail wound her way down the spiral staircase. From the bottom, she stared upward at the lamp room, the mesh ironwork a sieve for the sun’s gauzy rays. Maybe what had happened the night before was a fluke. Maybe it wouldn’t happen again. The word maybe meant that something was possible or probable yet uncertain. It was the uncertainty that got under her skin.

  The sight of the kitchen in the bright morning light was sobering. Seeing the room in glaring clarity made her want to go back to bed. It was clean, but with the splotchy walls and slumping cupboards, it wasn’t pretty.