Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Joseph
June 2002
Waves seep away from my bare feet as I sink and wiggle my toes in the wet sand. Last weekend Bernard Beach buzzed as it always does at the start of each season, wave runners circled Captain’s Rock, music blared from speakers, swarms of beachgoers toted coolers and called out to friends they hadn’t seen since Labor Day. Today the beach was quieter, filled with local families settling into their summer rhythms, carrying sand chairs and waving hello as they claim their usual spots, giving each other wide berths along the crescent shoreline.
The Long Island Sound stretches before me, the tide rises as the sun begins to fade. This morning I woke to gentle rolling waves and birds chirping through the open window. I traded my coffee for a brisk swim to Captain’s Rock, my body jolted by the cold as I dove off the dock, my skin red and tingling as I toweled dry. The family trickled in over the next few hours, widening our claim on our section of Bernard Beach. The tide was going out when we arrived, revealing glistening sandbars we dragged our chairs onto, passing cellophane-wrapped sandwiches and cherries and crinkled bags of chips. The water slid away from our ankles as the morning slid to afternoon, exposing the smooth hard mud beneath, dotted with spiral shells of hermit crabs, clusters of mossy-brown snails and, to the trained eye, the occasional squirt of a burrowing razor clam, a telltale dimple in the sand left in its wake. An unseasonably hot day for the first of June, more like July or August, signaling an extended beach season to come, summer days stretching before us like an open hand.
I stand at the edge of the icy water until my calves are numb. A lone seagull cries as it swoops overhead. I see a glint of glass, and hope, as I always do, it is the messages sent adrift last summer, somehow, someway, finding their way back to us. The words I never got to read, her final letter, still floating out there, somewhere. But as always, it is the break of a wave, a trick of the light. The sun is getting lower, but my skin holds the heat from the rays even as the temperature drops. We are the last ones left on the beach, as the sky ripples into clouds streaked purple and pink, reflecting across the sea. Light and sound hushed, calm. This was always her favorite time of the day.
I turn back toward our semicircle of blankets and chairs. Rain and Tony are tucked under a striped umbrella, Eve cradled in Rain’s arms. Jane lounges nearby on a blanket with Marcus, propped up on his elbows nursing a watery iced tea. Violet and Connor sit together on beach chairs, tunnels of sand dug by their heels before them. Violet laughs at something Connor says and he rests his hand on her knee, light moments that add up to something more, the way globs of watery mud stack and solidify to form a drip castle, tiny grains of sand creating a foundation on which to build. Thomas and Ann meander toward us, stopping to peer at a horseshoe crab washed ashore on their walk back from the jetty.
The sun sinks lower, a half circle settling on the horizon.
Time to go.
And yet, my skin is still tinged with its heat. The clouds sweep watercolor strokes of magenta and orange over a fair blue sky. The faintest breeze dances on my skin. I breathe in the salt air, the musky and healing scent of the ocean that will always be hers.
I pat Thomas on the shoulder, pull him toward me.
“You don’t have to go yet, do you, Dad?”
“It’s time. It’s been a perfect day.”
He holds me tight. Ann wraps her arms around me and buries her face in my neck. The rare show of affection takes me aback, plunges me deeper into the reality I have been chasing away since I woke. Violet bites her lip and forces a smile, her curls lift in the wind; Connor is stone-faced and resigned, but both stand to embrace me. I kiss Rain’s forehead, and Eve’s cherub cheek, then hug Tony and Marcus. Jane weaves her arm through mine, insists on walking me to the edge of the beach.
When we reach the road she whispers, “Tell her hi for us, will you?”
I nod, a sob caught in my throat, and hold her tight.
As I turn away my legs are weak, unsteady. I don’t risk looking over my shoulder, although I feel all of their eyes on me, dragging me back with force, like the gravitational pull of the moon on the tides.
I press on, memorize each detail of my path one last time even though I could navigate it blind. Knowing my way like I knew every blemish and curve of Evelyn, worn maps imprinted in the deepest corners of my mind.
These are the dunes covered in swaying switchgrass, a long-ago hiding place where Evelyn nibbled my ear under the glittering stars. This is where the path becomes Sandstone Lane, blistering asphalt that burned the bottoms of the grandkids’ feet each time they raced barefoot to the beach after it was paved. Here are the towering oaks where Thomas once lodged a toy plane. Here are the cedar shingled cottages, their scratchy crabgrass and rickety front porches and clotheslines draped with fluttering linens. Here is the row of swamp rose that curves along our driveway, where there was once a wooden sign that I carved and Evelyn painted to declare the Oyster Shell Inn open once more. Here is the crunch of the path leading me home, the front stoop where my mother shook out towels, where Tommy barreled into the kitchen, the front door where I’ll always see Evelyn waiting for me to return.
Inside, I make my way to the study and to her dueling pianos. I can almost hear her music rise up to meet me, a familiar song of which I’ve lost the name. My fingertips graze the ivory keys. I play a solitary note, and it sings.
I open the hinged bench and find the letters and the prescription bottle hidden inside. Swing past the door to the kitchen. I place the letters on the counter, two stacks, one for each of us. I trace my fingers over her handwriting, deteriorating with each envelope. The symmetry of mine penned with steady hands.
I pour myself a glass of water from the sink. It is so cold, so refreshing in my throat and I down it in two eager gulps. I finger the pills on the counter. I pour another glass of water. The sun sinks fast.
There isn’t enough time.
There isn’t enough time.
There will never be enough time.
I press a palm against the cap, apply pressure and twist it open.
But there is still time enough.
I turn on the faucet, and tip the bottle, the pills cascade and disappear down the drain.
I open the screen door with a creak and step onto the porch and into the garden. The flowers glow in the evening light, a tapestry of our family, woven into the earth. The daffodils have not yet begun to bloom, although I imagine them each year hereafter, bursting golden through thawed ground, reaching toward the sky.
I thought I loved Evelyn when she was beside me, but I was wrong. On these days without her, when I can mistake the breeze for the softness of the undersides of her arms intertwined with mine in sleep, when I can hear the musical notes of her laugh and look up to see Jane, when I can hold Eve, and know our great-granddaughter may have her ever-changing eyes, when I am asked for the story about the train and I am still here to tell of her floral perfume that lured me like a spell, when I can open a window and inhale the brine of the sea that always belonged to us, listen to the music of the waves we made our own, lulling me from my grief into the deepest peace, these are the days I love her most.
I lie down on the earth among the violets, breaking the last promise I ever made to her, a promise she never wanted me to keep. Whisper a new promise, a tomorrow without her.
What a beautiful garden we have made, Evelyn.
I tilt my face to the setting sun and smile, soaking up the last of its warmth.