The Ocean Inside

by Janna McMahan

  Ainslie looked at her beautiful sister in the mirror. There were so many questions she wanted to ask her, so many things she wanted to say to her. Everybody was talking about Sloan in those quiet adult voices and Ainslie was afraid that Sloan would end up in jail like that mean boyfriend she’d had. It seemed like everybody knew she was involved in something bad, they just couldn’t figure out what. And Sloan never said anything to anybody.

  Ainslie blurted out, “I know you gave that envelope of money to Mommy and Daddy.”

  “What money?”

  “That money you had after you went on that trip and you came back all sunburned. I saw that envelope fall out of your backpack at the gardens that day you had a fight with Cal.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “I’m not admitting anything to you.”

  “But will you tell me some day?”

  “Sure. When you’re, like, an adult.” Sloan got up from the bench and started gathering swimming gear. She handed Ainslie her fins and towel. “This conversation is over,” she said. Sloan checked her cell phone before shoving it into her backpack.

  “Has he quit calling?” Ainslie asked.

  “Yeah. Finally.”

  “Promise me you won’t ever call him back.”

  “I promise,” she said.

  “Promise?”

  “I said I promise.” Sloan bent forward and looked Ainslie directly in her eyes. “How come you never tell on me?”

  Ainslie shrugged. “A sister’s supposed to help, not get you into more trouble.”

  Sloan nodded. “Thanks.” She motioned toward the exit. “Now come on, your therapist awaits.”

  Ainslie pushed through the thick door and pool sounds vibrated against her. Her physical therapist was already in the pool, a sleek, tanned young man fresh out of college.

  “Oh, he is so cute,” Sloan said. “Try to swim on this end a lot.”

  Ainslie rolled her eyes and walked to the pool.

  “Hey, Ainslie. Get on in here,” Kevin said. “How’s your right hand doing?”

  “I think it’s getting better.”

  “Motor skills improving?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hey, how’s that new dog of yours?”

  “He’s so cute. I just love him.”

  “What kind is he?”

  “Just a mutt. Mixed breed, but he’s cute.”

  “Let’s throw this ball back and forth and work on your motor skills and you can tell me all about him, maybe bring me a picture sometime.”

  Working out with the physical therapist was a drag when all Ainslie wanted to do was swim and splash and have a good time like all the other screaming kids in the pool. He’d make her use the kickboard until she was exhausted, to build back her strength. She was getting strong, but her weak right hand made her writing hard to read. Her teacher cut her slack, but she hated special treatment and she hated having to sit out kickball and dodgeball games because of her head surgery.

  After physical therapy, Sloan said she could play in the pool, probably because she wanted to flirt with the physical therapist, but Ainslie was too exhausted and hungry to stay. On the way home, they stopped at Pirate Dogs, their favorite hot dog stand. Before Ainslie got sick, their mother hated for them to eat chili dogs and fries and soda. She always tried to make them drink soy milk and eat fruit. But she’d let up on the food rules because she wanted Ainslie to gain weight and the girls had taken full advantage of the opportunity.

  They carried their paper-wrapped food to a red and green splotched picnic table plagued by flies under a stand of palmetto trees.

  Sloan swirled a French fry in a puddle of ketchup as she said, “Yum. Salt and preservatives and fat.”

  Ainslie stared at the hot dog-eating pirate on the roadside sign. She said, “We’re studying pirates in school. South Carolina used to have a bunch of pirates. Blackbeard and Calico Jack and a woman who dressed up like a man and killed a bunch of other pirate dudes.”

  “I remember studying that stuff.”

  “They used to come ashore and pillage the locals,” Ainslie said around a big bite of chili dog.

  Her sister laughed and swatted at a fly.

  Ainslie swallowed and sucked on her soda straw. “You know,” she said. “I bet there are still pirates out there somewhere.”

  “Absolutely,” Sloan said. “I’m sure of it.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Testing the Waters

  They waited on their dock. It had been a crystal clear day, and even though the sun dropped toward the tree line on the mainland, the light was still white and pure, making colors pop, delineating each strand of graying marsh grass, every cloud in the indigo sky.

  Her mother leaned against the railing, jacket pulled tightly against the November chill off the water. She held a book, but didn’t read the moisture-warped pages. Sloan’s hand moved across her sketchpad capturing the scarlet of her mother’s scarf and hat against pale skin, dark sunglasses, the weathered wood of the dock.

  She drew her mother’s image over the faint impression of another portrait, a ghostly outline of Verulo from the previous page. Sloan had ripped that portrait from her book of drawings and stashed it in a secret place along with the metal cuff bracelet Cal had bought her in Mexico. She also kept some money there, just in case. Sloan planned her life more carefully now. She kept a contingency plan, a just in case scenario.

  As she drew Sloan tried not to look at the great swaths of cordgrass that had been carved away behind her house. The machine that cut back the vegetation of their choked creek had started on their end and would work its way south. Every day, Sloan stood on her back porch and watched the machine gnashing away. She waited for the workers to suddenly stop and shout and scramble down to stand in shock over Ronald’s gnawed remains.

  “He’s late,” Ainslie said. She poked at barnacles collected on the wooden steps that disappeared down into the creek. She already had mud on her shoes.

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” their mother assured her.

  Her own hands were cold, but Sloan continued to draw, smudging uneven color with a finger.

  “Let me see,” her mother said.

  Sloan held up her artwork.

  “You’re very talented,” her mother said. “Just like your father.”

  “When’s he coming?” Ainslie asked again.

  “Patience, child.”

  “Mom?” Sloan said.

  “Yes?”

  Sloan had wanted to ask this question for a long time but had been too afraid of what the answer might be. “When will Dad move back into our house?”

  She took so long to speak that Sloan wondered if she was going to answer at all. Sloan could feel her sister tense, listening for their mother’s reply.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “We’re talking about it.”

  Sloan had wondered all summer why their father had not moved back in now that their financial situation was better. She knew her mother had accused him of messing around with the city manager woman, when the truth was it had been Cal’s father who was having the affair. So why hadn’t their father come home?

  Sloan whispered, “You know he didn’t do anything. Why can’t you just let him come back?”

  “Sloan.” Her mother leaned forward and took off her glasses. She got close enough that Ainslie couldn’t hear. “Did it ever occur to you maybe your father hasn’t yet decided what he wants to do?”

  “But you told him you forgive him, right?”

  “Yes. But maybe he needs time to forgive me.”

  “What did you do?”

  She sat back on the bench, pulled her jacket tighter. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s complicated. I guess you could say I lost faith in him. He’s a good man. I know that. But he isn’t perfect. Nobody’s perfect. I’m not saying I didn’t have good reason to be suspicious and angry and hurt.”

  “You were scared.”

  “Sure. But
so was he. We were all scared. That’s when it’s supposed to mean something to be a family. Family is supposed to stick together, support each other, and I, well…”

  “Did you tell him you were sorry?”

  “I did. I apologized…for being so hard on him…and for other things.”

  “For kicking him out?”

  “Yes. For embarrassing him.”

  “Didn’t he forgive you?”

  “Honey, it’s not that simple. He needs time to think.”

  “It’s been, like, six months.”

  “Not quite.”

  Her mother paused and Sloan could tell she was considering if she should say what she said next. She checked on Ainslie, but the girl was once again busy with something at the waterline.

  “Sloan,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t be surprised if he decides not to come back.”

  Now it was Sloan’s turn to lower her voice.

  “Are you going to get divorced?”

  Her mother sighed then, but it was no longer the same way she used to sigh from exhaustion or frustration when Ainslie was so sick. It was a sigh of resignation.

  “Your father and I have a long history of being disappointed in each other. We need to get past that and decide what we want our future to be. Things change. People change.”

  Sloan thought about this. And about how much she missed Cal and how he had made her feel good about herself when they were first together. He’d told her she was special and she had wanted to believe him, to fit in his group, to live his life, to be his girlfriend. Still, his increasing drug use, his abrupt meltdown, his crazy changes that frightened and disappointed her only made her miss the old Cal more. She missed him every day, longed for his crooked smile, his slash of shiny hair, his hands on her body. But she had never contacted him, never returned a phone call, never written a note or sent a text. He had finally stopped calling after his indictment. He had kept their secret.

  “Don’t you miss him?” Sloan asked.

  Her mother sighed again, and Sloan knew she was unaware of this, her new habit, that made melancholy cling to her like a haze. “I miss something, but I’m not sure what. I’m not sure if I miss the familiarity of having him around or if I miss him.”

  “Mom!”

  “Well, you’re asking adult questions, I’m giving you adult answers. I love your father and he loves me. We just have to decide, after everything we’ve been through, if we’re still in love. There’s a big difference between loving somebody and in being in love.”

  And there it was. Sloan had been in love, but she hadn’t loved Cal. She had been swept up in the heat, crazed with passion, in love with the idea of love, but she had never actually loved him. For all their adventure and sex and fun, he could have been anyone, any guy who could distract her and entertain her and make her forget her problems.

  Her situation was the opposite of what her parents were going through.

  “So you’re not in love with Dad anymore?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t say that. I shouldn’t even talk to you about these things. It’s just that I guess you have the right to know. Life has a way of beating up on people, of wearing them down. It’s hard to stay married and…well…you know that marriage counselor we went to that one time when Ainslie was sick? She said we had to be careful, that the strain of illness points out all the strengths and weaknesses in people. It exposes all the cracks in a relationship. It accentuates the negatives. Honey, it’s hard to hold a marriage together under normal circumstances.” She shrugged then as if to say she had resigned herself to the fact that she had no control. “It’s really up to your father now.” She turned away then as if the matter were closed.

  Sloan focused back on her artwork, but her mind lingered around her parents. So her father had chosen to stay away. He had been there for her and Ainslie in so many ways over the past few months, taking on responsibilities formerly left to their mother. He had helped Ainslie with her summer homework. He’d been diligent in helping her study so she could start fourth grade with the rest of her class. And Ainslie had slid back into her school routine without a hitch.

  Since their parents weren’t officially separated, their father had no custody. He came around on occasion to visit, to fix something broken—to test the waters, was how Sloan viewed it. Their father stayed for dinner on many occasions, but he always went back to Larry’s afterward. The first few times he arrived, the girls had hoped he was trying to mend more than a leaky faucet, but that hadn’t been the case. It was confusing.

  Their mother tried to make things normal, to do some of their things their father had done. One job that seemed to be beyond her was grilling steaks. Her steaks were always tough or undercooked or not seasoned properly. Ainslie had complained once and their mother had taken her glass of wine to the end of the dock where she sat for hours until it turned dark. Sloan had finally cleared the plates and told Ainslie to just eat her stupid steak and say it was good the next time.

  Sloan could tell her parents missed each other. One evening their father had arrived and swept the platter of steaks from the counter. He’d opened the spice cabinet, shaken his secrets over the meat, and gone out to the grill as he had a hundred times before. After a while, their mother brought him a glass of red wine and they stood there, sipping, bathed in the barbecue smoke as if nothing unusual had transpired between them.

  The girls watched from the kitchen window.

  “Are they making up?” Ainslie asked in a hopeful voice.

  “I don’t know,” Sloan replied. “I can never tell what’s going on with them anymore.”

  He had left that night, as he had all the other nights, and Sloan had decided then to stop speculating about her parents. The steaks were tough and that was life.

  “Hey! There’s Daddy!” Ainslie said and pointed to the mouth of the creek. Their father drove the gleaming boat around the bend. It shone with polished brass and wood, all new hardware and seats.

  “Ahoy, there!” He waved and smiled as he floated toward the dock. Ainslie jumped to grab the rope and tie her expert nautical knots around the dock’s cleats as her father had taught her. She was always his helper. Sloan had no idea how to tie a knot.

  “Emmett, she’s beautiful,” their mother said. “Just spectacular!”

  “And I’ve got a surprise. The best part.”

  “What? What?” Ainslie asked.

  “Check the name.”

  All three women moved to the back of the boat and there they saw in script, “Arion.”

  “It’s a Greek god dolphin name,” Sloan said. “Dad let me pick it.”

  Her father said, “It means lofty native. I thought Sloan made a nice choice.”

  “But I thought it was bad luck to rename a boat,” their mother said.

  “I don’t believe in luck,” he said. “Besides, it’s time for a change. All aboard.”

  They purred along in their sleek boat, seabirds embracing the sky at their approach, wide white wings soundlessly lifting into flight. He navigated the creek to the public boat landing where they tied off and disembarked. Beach music drifted toward them and Sloan recognized, “Under the Boardwalk.” Lights twinkled into action on their approach. Dusk was falling as they made their way down the boardwalk out to the party at the new pavilion. The whole island had pitched in to raise money to finally rebuild the pavilion Hugo had crushed.

  Autumn always came late to South Carolina and was heralded by the smell of propane and boiling seafood. At the party, bowls of cocktail sauce and anemic sleeves of saltines were strewn along eight-foot rectangular tables draped in newspaper. Men hovered over cook pots, poking inside with slotted ladles, discussing the contents with serious expressions. Beer flowed freely. People laughed. Couples of all ages shagged outside, holding hands, dancing smoothly in six-count patterns, most of their movement below the waist.

  Someone handed Sloan a blunt oyster knife and a thick glove and she stepped up to the table across from her parents.
Two men overturned a giant cook pot onto the table and steaming oysters rolled out, smelling metallic and muddy. With gloved hands, neighbors distributed them down the table. There were familiar pops as shells cracked. Sloan found a weak point in a shell, inserted her stubby knife, and twisted. The shell broke open, and inside she found a fat, steamed oyster. She expertly scraped the animal from its shell, eased it off onto a saltine, topped it with cocktail sauce and popped it in her mouth. Heaven. At another table, others ate oysters raw, preferring the sweet taste of the sea unsullied on their tongues.

  Her mother struggled with a shell and her father reached for it and shucked it with one try.

  “Grab a cracker,” he said, as he scooped the oyster out. Then, “Hold on. Let’s make the first one of the season perfect.” Her mother held the cracker as he squeezed lemon juice and added a dollop of cocktail sauce.

  “Now,” he said. “See what you think.”

  The cracker crunched in her mother’s mouth and she rolled her eyes in pleasure.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  The DJ put on “Carolina Girl” and shaggers rushed the dance floor.

  “May I have this dance?” her father asked.

  Her mother nodded and stripped off her glove. They held hands as they moved toward the dancers and joined the flow, their arms sliding smoothly together and apart. Sloan wondered if her sister saw this, but when she finally found her, Ainslie was engrossed in a moth stuck to a wooden pylon.

  Next the DJ spun Van Morrison’s “Brown-eyed Girl,” and her father grabbed Ainslie and pulled her onto the dance floor. He twirled her, his hand skimming her waist. He acted silly, pointing at Ainslie and mouthing the lyrics, “You’re my brown-eyed girl.” Ainslie laughed and clapped. Her mother jumped in and they all held hands, a dancing triangle.

  The pavilion vibrated and Sloan sensed the steps of her family and friends in her own feet. A rumble like distant thunder meant another pot of oysters had been dumped. The shadowy creek below reflected faint purple and orange, lingering at the edges of the evening sky. The creek was rising. The ocean was on its way in.