Good Dirt

La Mer

La Mer

2019

O kay, Ebby’s had enough. She’s been practicing a little spiel while waiting for Avery to come out of the hospital. She wants to find a polite way to ditch Avery. Her plan is to make herself one hundred percent unavailable until tomorrow sometime, when the rental car is ready to be picked up from the police. Then Avery can take things from there. If Avery were anyone but Henry’s girlfriend, Ebby wouldn’t feel odd about spending more time with her. But she does.

“Henry’s doing all right,” Avery says. “He sends a hello.”

That feels weird, Ebby thinks. “When is he getting out?” she asks.

“The doctor plans to discharge him by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Great,” Ebby says. “Um, listen, Avery, while you’re waiting for Henry, I’m going to…”

But Avery interrupts. “Oh, I really don’t want to sit around waiting for him,” she says. “I was thinking to head out to la mer tomorrow morning.”

“The seaside?”

“Maybe it was your story about those sailors, but I’m just feeling a yen for the sea, and I thought you might want to go to the coast with me. The rental car will be back, so I could drive.”

The word coast is all Ebby needs to hear to forget her plan to call a halt to sightseeing with Avery. Ebby has never lived this far from the shore. Wherever you go, you can find beauty. But living a good two-hour drive from the water feels off to her.

Ebby feels the absence of the sea. Much as she likes this village with its lazy, duck-filled river snaking through the middle of it. Much as she loves seeing a million willow leaves rippling in the breeze. Much as she loves that absurd little hoopoe bird that pounces and preens and calls out in the yard.

“All right,” Ebby says slowly, “but I’ll drive.” She wants to be sure she’s in control of the situation.

This odd state of affairs.

The next day is hot, sunny, and filled with the smell of sand and salt water. They are only there to walk and take in the views, not lie on the beach like everyone else.

“I missed this smell,” Ebby tells Avery. She looks out over the water in the direction of a series of colorful fishing huts perched on stilts.

“Oh, yes, all that dimethyl sulfide,” Avery says.

“Mhmm,” Ebby says, nodding. She tries not to smile.

“Algae farts, essentially,” Avery says, enunciating each syllable.

Ebby can’t stop herself, now. She laughs outright, and Avery joins in with a yap-yap sound that makes Ebby laugh again. She looks at Avery. At the pale pouf where the extensions lift the hair at the top of her head. At the neat curves of her pale brows. At the shell-colored ovals of acrylic covering Avery’s nails. Avery has surprised her, once again. That sound, coming out of her mouth.

Ebby googled Avery last night, she couldn’t resist. Apparently, she is one of the tri-state area’s young attorneys to watch. Exactly how one assesses the quality of an attorney at such a young age, Ebby isn’t sure. The point is, Avery is no lightweight. She suspects Avery is the type to read legal articles while waiting all those hours to have her hair extensions done. She suspects Avery is damn near perfect.

Avery’s quirky little laugh is a surprise, but so is the ease with which Ebby finds herself joining in. She feels a current of sadness run through her as she thinks what a relief it must have been for Henry to be with Avery after two years of Ebby. Two years of restless nights. Two years of being gossiped about. Two years of being called and texted repeatedly by Ebby’s mother every time they went away on a trip. And suddenly, painfully, Ebby sees, so clearly, the tone of her relationship with Henry. She glances at Avery again. Well, of course.

Of course.

But Ebby sees this too: that nothing excuses Henry’s behavior. No matter that it might have been difficult for Henry to be with Ebby at times, and that the prospect of being linked to her indefinitely might have come to feel like too much. People fall in love, they dream, then adjustment kicks in. Sometimes disillusionment. Fine. But Henry was a shit about it. That hasn’t changed. Nothing excuses the fact that he didn’t call her on their wedding day. That he didn’t show up and face her like a man.

Ebby grew up with little privacy, but she still craved it. When Henry ghosted her, knowing, full well, that the media would be following their nuptials, it was as if he had stripped off her clothes in public. He hadn’t even tried to protect her. She looks over at Avery. Doesn’t that set off alarm bells for her? Once again, she wonders what woman would want to be with Henry after knowing what he’s done.

And isn’t it outrageous for Ebby to feel as she does now, overcome by a tremor in her chest as she thinks of Henry and his pending return from the hospital? Love leaves a memory in the heart, even when your head tells you it shouldn’t. Ebby must not be at the house when Henry comes back. She will make a plan for the evening. She will grab a book, she will take a sweater, she will drive in the opposite direction from the hospital. By the time Ebby returns, Henry and Avery will have settled into the guesthouse for the night.

“Do you think you love the sea so much,” Avery is saying now, “because it’s part of your heritage?”

“My dad thinks so,” says Ebby. “He thinks we’re tied to the water because we had mariners in our family.”

“No, I mean, you know, the whole African water-spirit thing.”

“ African water-spirit thing? ” Ebby says, frowning at Avery. She sees where this is going. People see her skin color and decide that her heritage is more foreign in nature than theirs. No matter that Ebby’s family have been in New England for four hundred years. Probably longer than Avery’s. No matter that their ancestors were all foreigners, at some point, if they weren’t from one of the indigenous peoples. Which, come to think of it, part of the Freeman family was.

“I mean the idea,” Avery says, “of water being a link to the spirit world.”

“Could be,” says Ebby. “But in my case, I think it’s mostly the fact that I grew up on the Sound.” Ebby stops and turns to Avery. “How about you? Do you love the sea?” She tries not to sound sarcastic.

Avery nods.

“Is there, like, a water-spirit thing going on in your heritage?” Ebby raises her hands to form air quotes as she says this. Can Avery hear the irritation in her voice? Probably, because Ebby sees those pink splotches appearing on Avery’s face. Didn’t Avery stop to think that Ebby might feel uncomfortable with that kind of question?

“Actually, yes,” Avery says. “My mother’s side is German. Going way back. She says the sea is in our blood. She used to tell me these stories about shape-shifting sea deities. But I have my own view.”

“Which is…?” Ebby says.

“That it goes beyond culture,” Avery says. “That it’s in our nature as humans. Our world is more sea than land. We came from the sea, we eat from the sea, we travel across the seas. We seek out the salt water to soothe our bodies and our worries. The sea is part of us. Whether we live at the shore or not. I believe this is what that Willis guy must have felt when he reached the port city for the first time. The moment he saw the bay and breathed in the coastal air, he may have recognized a part of himself that had been missing.”

Ebby nods.

“My father would agree, for sure. But I think the initial attraction was a more practical one. Even for a boy whose ancestors would have been dragged across the ocean to the Americas, against their will, the sea raised the possibility of a different life for Willis.”

Ebby knows this, for a fact, because Willis himself told this to his grandchildren. And one of Willis’s grandsons was Ebby’s great-grandfather.