Interlude
Now
Bea
The following week doesn’t go by in a flash but clops along as I go from frantic, near-angry determination to settling into a new sort of acceptance.
I continue to look for rentals every day to no avail.
I pack the minimal things I need. Mostly, I do my best to slow down.
I allow myself to think of Merritt more and more, renewing my sense of purpose every time I do.
The pain feels more like a reminder than a reason not to go through with this.
I even start carrying her letter around with me.
On a morning that is clearer and marginally less frigid than normal, I pull over on my way to work to watch the sunrise over Founder’s Point.
I walk down the winding wooden stairs that lead to the beach, onto sand that’s hard-packed and still frozen here in spring.
It’ll still be cold at the height of summer, so right now, I can feel the bite of it through my shoes.
I don’t think it’s a miraculous sunrise or anything, but it’s still .
. . still beautiful. It’s still something worth seeing, I think.
Out past the haystack rock formations, the sun glows like a ripe slice of lemon peeking out from ice cream clouds, its yellow reach bleeding into a periwinkle sky.
And below all of it sits a dark, rough ocean.
Rocky, miserable sand. Sharp and craggy islands that look like sentinels guarding the shore.
Gray on gray on gray, just like that painting from the lawyer’s office, twin to the one that sat above Merritt while she was infused with poison that was supposed to save her life.
That sun has some fucking nerve, doesn’t it? Downright ebullient above so much bleak uncertainty below. I scowl at it until my eyes water in the breeze.
But then the world turns and the sun slips behind the clouds, casting everything in shadow.
I deflate, the anger going out of me, carried away from the shallows and back out where it’s dark and deep, where it gets swallowed up by so many other things.
I stand there until all the ends of me sting with pins and needles, surrendering to each wave of emotion until it is inevitably pulled back, just like the waves themselves, crashing a few yards from my feet.
And after a while, it becomes a sort of comfort, knowing each feeling will ebb.
Knowing my anger and sadness are small here.
Everything is temporary, after all.
The world turns some more, and the waves continue to break. The sun returns again. This time when I look out at the sea stacks, I spot the silhouettes of trees growing atop them.
Maybe I can be like those islands. Broken, shaped, and scarred, but mighty and solid nonetheless, rising up from a brutal ocean with new growth—new life. Hope in action.
That day, I am late to work for the very first time in my life, smiling to myself at how this would have shocked the hell out of Merritt.
I don’t bother trying to disguise my puffy eyes.
And when Martha O’Doyle comes in for her monthly trim and asks me if I’m all right, for once I don’t give her a polite answer and change the subject back to her.
“I just miss her a little extra today,” I admit.
“She would have loved that wedding the other night.” Even though we didn’t exactly share the same circles as Wren and Ellis, she’d been heartsick alongside the rest of our town when they divorced, and she’d have loved knowing they made it back together.
When I meet Martha’s tearful eyes in the mirror, her face splits into an unsteady grin. “You know, hardly anyone buys Butterfingers,” she tells me. “Guess people don’t like how they get stuck in their teeth. But I keep them in stock for her.”
A genuine laugh breaks free. “Thank you, Martha.”
“All sorts of little memories of that girl tucked all over the place. Every few months when I have to dust off the canoe, I’m reminded of her, too. . . .”
She goes on to reminisce about how Merritt and I used to flip coins into the decorative canoe that’s suspended from the ceiling in her store, pretending it was the equivalent of a wishing fountain for Spunes. We sunk all sorts of money into that thing.
“You never fished the coins out?” I ask, surprised.
“Nope,” says Martha. “It never quite caught on with anyone else other than you two, anyway. Probably only a few bucks in there.”
I guess it felt like more to me, the same way dreams and wishes—and time—feel inexhaustible when you’re young.
Similarly, a few days later, when one of my clients from outside Spunes asks me how I’m doing, I answer while I go on foiling.
“I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before,” I start, “but . . . my best friend died. It’s been a little over a year now.
” Saying this out loud, it occurs to me how I’ve managed not to speak to most of these people about Merritt, even the ones from my town who knew her.
I only see so many of them every six to eight weeks, sometimes upward of twelve.
“Some days are harder than others,” I finish.
“Not . . . not the aesthetician? The one with the balloons?” Joelle asks.
The memory hits me like an anvil, right through my middle in one crushing drop.
It must have been four years ago or so when Merritt showed up here on one of her days off with a literal bouquet made up of balloons, courtesy of the guy she’d just hooked up with the night before.
She met him at her nephew’s fifth birthday party the day prior, where he’d been hired as the entertainment.
“BB, I am not even shitting you, when I let him know I had to be on my way, he handed me a coffee and made me wait while he whipped this all up in front of me, then tucked his card into the balloon bow. Longest, most awkward three minutes of my existence, including the uninspired sex from last night.”
“Merritt!” I tried chiding her, dipping my head toward the client in my chair. The snicker I let out didn’t give it much weight.
“What?! Oh! Here.” She only plucked one of the balloon daisies from her bouquet and passed it to Joelle with a smile. “Don’t worry, he made up for it with finger dexterity and lung capacity!” she exclaimed, and the entire salon broke into hysterics.
I meet Joelle’s gaze again and nod. Her mouth falls open, her hand reaching up to cover it.
I tear my eyes away and try to go back to foiling, awash in instant regret.
Joelle has been a client of mine for nearly six years.
We’ve taken her from box-dyed brown to red to a cool-toned platinum, the Odyssey of hair journeys.
I’ve seen her through three sets of bangs.
She is never late, tips me thirty dollars regardless of whether I do a full or a partial on her, and I’ve just made it uncomfortable.
I do my best to recover. “How is your son, by the way? He end up making the mountain biking team?”
“Would you tell me a little bit about her?” Joelle asks. “If it’s not too difficult?”
She smiles encouragingly at my shocked reflection, and I stumble my way through a yes, before I proceed to hop around through some of my favorite funny memories of her.
I think it heals a small crack in me, this person willingly exposing themselves to some pain, who wants to know a piece of Merritt, despite already knowing her tragic end. It makes me feel like her being gone isn’t the biggest, most defining thing about her.
Joelle squeezes me tight in a hug when I finish checking her out a few hours later.
“This grief you’re feeling?” she says beside my ear. “It’s just a different sort of love, you know. You’re loving her by living, carrying your memories with you as you go.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, and it’s the first time I don’t feel a flicker of anger when I say it.
Now the day that Silas is scheduled has arrived, and while I feel more fortified in my plan, I also feel more unsure about his involvement in it.
The point is to get to a place where I feel ready and confident enough to honor the gift Merritt’s given me, to become someone’s mom, regardless of anyone else’s feelings about it.
Maybe needing someone’s help while I get there defeats the purpose.
It doesn’t seem very sea-stack-island of me.
I retreat into myself while I debate it all day, on autopilot for the rest of my clients.
He is exactly seven minutes early when he arrives, something I’m ashamed to admit I know because of the way I’ve been watching the clock.
He folds himself over his forearm at the front desk to say something to our receptionist, Isabel, who emits a girlish squeal at whatever it is.
I spot the blush exploding over her cheeks from here.
One of the other stylists struggles to look away from him. Her client hisses out an “Ouch!” after she leaves the blow dryer on one section too long.
“Jesus. It’s high school all over again,” I mutter under my breath.
He does a double take when he catches sight of me, mouth slanting before it melts into its full curve.
He pushes off the counter to saunter in my direction, pulling off his COUNTY FIRE baseball cap as he goes.
The movement makes his white shirt catch on the slope of his bicep, and the sight of it sends a bolt of electric heat through me.
I look down in surprise, like the word DESIRE is palpitating through my skin and giving me away.
“What? You forget I was on your books today?” he asks when he reaches my station.
“No.” And per usual, it’s hard to look at his wide-open grin without returning some version of it.
“This place is great, Bea,” he says, looking around.