Chapter 16
The sidewalk cut into the soles of my feet. Hot concrete, then hot sand, then cool damp shore. The beach was empty. High tide, morning. My lungs filled with air, heavy as water.
I plunged into the ocean. The waves were harsh and resistant.
She was here somewhere, I knew it. Had she managed to make it through the worst of the waves?
I opened my mouth to say her name and it filled with water instead, that familiar feeling, shock of jumping into the pool before I knew to swim.
How vast everything seemed then. Indomitable mass of water.
The scarlet of Silver’s nose when wet, flat ears and darkened fur, salt-stiff curls on her stomach.
The scallops James cooked on the first night, glittering with butter, delicious.
“Rondo Alla Turca,” Casablanca. My life the size of my mother’s bed, happiness as achievable as sleep.
I surrendered below another wave, larger than the last. Thinking of Silver’s weightless body, I kicked myself past the most treacherous stretch—just a few feet farther and the ocean would grow calmer, I had to believe this.
And yes, when I traveled out, the waves were less forceful, but still I could not fully control my movements, could only let my body drift on the heaving surface, pulled by an indifferent tide.
For a long time I let the ocean handle me, losing feeling, finding nothing.
My throat burned with the effort of calling for her, scraped raw by salt.
The waves dragged me farther out to sea until without warning they arched above me and just like that I was underwater, flipped and spun like a sock in a washing machine, helpless against the brutality of momentum.
My lungs burned with need. I realized it was very possible I could drown.
And then James’s smiling face flashed in my head, and I filled with a devastation so pure it felt like love, and finally the waves spat me onto shore where I coughed and coughed until I could breathe again.
When the black spots in my vision cleared, I was surprised to see that the sky was blue. Seagulls crowded noisily overhead as if hungry, or in celebration. It was a beautiful day. I began to feel hopeless. The ocean was very big, and she so loved to swim.
—
Isabelle opened the door not two seconds after I rang the bell. As soon as he could spring through the opening, Bruno thrust his paws on my chest and licked my face. I swatted him off; I had no patience for his aliveness.
“Are you okay?” Isabelle wrestled Bruno away from the entrance. She was still in her pajamas, lavender silk with a paisley print and monogrammed pockets. “Did you run here?”
When I told her what happened, Isabelle disappeared into the house and came back running with Bruno’s leash. “You’re sure she’s not at home?”
I was sure.
“Did you check?”
I didn’t need to. The only thing keeping her from running outside was the locked door.
“And you know she went to the sea?” Isabelle wrangled an excited Bruno and clipped the leash onto his collar.
I nodded, remembering Silver’s pained meows. “She was desperate to get out.”
“And how long ago did you…” She paused. “Lose her?”
“I don’t know, maybe an hour, an hour and a half?”
My phone rang. James’s face filled the screen. Isabelle and I froze. I let it go to voicemail. He would never forgive me for this, I thought, and that would be fair.
“You don’t know that she’s gone,” Isabelle said. “I’ll help you look.”
“Now?”
“Of course,” she said. “No time to lose.”
Instead of retreating to change like I expected, Isabelle slipped on her sneakers and walked straight out the front door. Bruno trailed behind her. I was grateful for her determination, but it pained me. I knew Silver was gone. Isabelle would only be disappointed.
Isabelle drove us into town. We walked down Main Street and searched around every shop.
It didn’t take long, there were only a dozen stores or so.
I told Isabelle what James said about cats not liking town and steered her to the beach.
Since the morning, it had filled with people, middle-aged women in sheer clothing and topless sunburning men and children shaking buckets of sand.
Bruno stopped many times to sniff at nothing.
Isabelle jogged from stranger to stranger, asking if they’d seen a cat.
They shook their heads, some even laughed. I fought the urge to kick them.
When we neared the water, Isabelle started calling Silver’s name. Her cries melted into the roar of the ocean. With each crashing wave, I felt my stomach turn until I found myself on my knees, gagging.
Our search lasted a couple more hours. By the time the air chilled and the beach began to empty, Isabelle seemed to have understood what I already knew.
Her hand burned against my back. “Let’s take a break,” she said.
She led me to a crag away from the remaining people.
“I think this is where James found her. Maybe she’ll come to us here. ”
Isabelle’s beautiful pajama sleeves were wet and caked with sand. How could I repay her for this kindness? I couldn’t even replace her clothes.
Sitting on the crag forced us into an unfamiliar proximity.
The silk of Isabelle’s pants fluttered against my skin.
In the distance, bodies glinted on the surface of the sea like pieces of confetti.
Bored by our stasis, or perhaps attracted to something else, Bruno cantered out to the indigo water.
Beneath him, the sand darkened with paw prints before becoming smooth again.
I wondered if Silver’s paws ever left prints and found that I couldn’t remember. She must have been too light.
Isabelle broke the silence. “James will forgive you.”
“I don’t think he should.”
“Sure, well. He will anyway.”
I closed my eyes. Green blotches formed under the skin of my eyelids. “I think,” I said, “that for our whole relationship, I’ve been waiting for myself to do something unforgivable. And now I’ve done it.”
“I get it.” Isabelle’s voice was barely audible over the waves. “You want to prove that you’re bad. It’s self-destructive.”
I repeated the word out loud. Lou used to call me self-destructive, particularly on nights when I got too drunk, or when I nearly dropped out of school.
I saw these as frivolous acts, proof of my lack of suitability to real life.
Self-destruction was just another Lou-ism borrowed from her therapy vernacular.
It was for people who had a self important enough to protect.
Lou had a self. So did James and Isabelle.
What was it that made their selves so clear, was it their money?
But even Silver had a self, that was obvious: she made her own choices and stuck by them.
The issue was that I didn’t choose anything.
As soon as the thought formed, I knew it was a lie.
I chose to leave my mother. I chose to lie to James.
I chose to keep Silver at Holme. And now I was here, far from my mother, away from James, without Silver.
It turned out that not believing I was making choices didn’t make the choices any less real.
My life was not some distant thing waiting to happen—I made it happen all the time.
When I opened my eyes, the world was patchy with sunspots.
“It’s an honest mistake,” Isabelle said. “James isn’t going to blame you.”
I didn’t tell her that I wanted to be blamed.
“If you tell him what happened, and let him forgive you,” Isabelle said, “he will. But you have to let him, otherwise you’ll both suffer. I know what he’s like.”
Isabelle spoke in a calm, practiced manner, and I saw she understood James in a way I didn’t yet.
“James is a very caring person,” she said.
“He looks after his mother, he looks after me sometimes, he even looks after my mother. He’s been like that since he was a kid.
I don’t think he does it deliberately—or maybe he does, he’s just not thinking about it that deeply.
But he will want to make sure you’re okay. ”
I recalled the way James spoke about Isabelle. She was a very sensitive person, he said. He had many ideas for how she could be happier. Maybe that was why he was such good friends with her. A thought came to me, uncomfortable. “I think it might be a bad thing that he cares for me this much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t do anything,” I said, ideas I didn’t recognize falling out of me. “I just let things happen. I even let Silver run away.”
“Silver did that.”
I had already sensed the dynamic Isabelle spoke about unfurling between James and me, even tried at times to remedy it.
But if Isabelle was right, then he felt it, too.
When he cared for me, it was pleasurable for the both of us.
By doing nothing, I allowed him to do everything.
I liked to be the bad child with clenched fists, and he liked so much to give.
But I didn’t want to be helpless anymore. I wasn’t sure my life, or James’s, could sustain it.
At that moment, Bruno trotted toward us, his blond fur matted with water. People turned to look at him. The few remaining children pointed with their heads smushed against their parents’ chests. Isabelle said, “What’s that, Bruno, what have you got for us?”
Bruno slowed. I knew what he had for us. I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn’t. I kept them open, fixed on the dog with the half-open mouth, until he reached me. He lifted his chin and looked at me like he was sorry. I understood that he was.
He let go. She fell, making no sound, leaving no imprint. At the foot of the crag, a sleeping creature returned to where she was first found, tongue poking out.