The Cottage at Glass Beach (6 page)

“I'd love to help. But the girls—”

“Our houses are so close together, they'll figure it out. Or leave a note on the door, and they can find us when they're ready, though we'll probably be done before they are. You know children and their schemes. They could be busy for hours. Play is good for them. There's not enough play in children's lives these days, if you ask me. Too many schedules to keep.”

It was hard for Nora to overcome her tendency to hover, her instinct to protect the girls heightened by what had happened in Boston. But perhaps Maire was right. The sooner the girls put some distance between themselves and the complications at home, by whatever means the island offered, the better.

Nora accompanied Maire to the garden shed at Cliff House and put on her aunt's spare beekeeper's outfit. She felt like an astronaut, the grassed meadow surrounding the hives at the edge of Maire's property a new frontier. At first her steps were ungainly, tentative, the suit cumbersome, the netted hat too, a pith helmet, really, with a mesh veil. Bees circled, seemingly curious about the visitors in their midst. They alighted on her gloved hands and shoulders and scaled her arms, antennae twitching, gossamer wings fluttering, exploring the peaks and valleys of the fabric.

Maire walked ahead of her, steps easy, measured, as if she were leading a procession. She opened and closed boxes, wafting smoke as she went to calm the bees. They didn't seem to mind the intrusion.

“Hail to the queen,” Maire said. “She rules the hive well. See how the others follow her every move. They're Italian honeybees. I chose them because they're reputed to have the best dispositions. It rained the day I was supposed to put the bees in, so we had to wait. A keeper told me to put them in a cool, dry place until the weather cleared, so I sprayed them with sugar water and brought them into the house with me.”

“In the house?” Nora asked. She couldn't imagine doing that.

“Polly just about had a fit when she saw them, until she realized they wouldn't do her any harm. In the end, they weren't bad tenants at all. I missed them after they moved out, though I think they're happier here, in their own place. Each hive has twelve thousand bees. Kingdoms unto themselves, I suppose you could say. Close your eyes. They beat their wings at two hundred and fifty cycles per second. That creates the humming sound. It's astonishing, isn't it, the complexity of life?”

Nora did as Maire instructed. The melodic hum filled her senses with a song of purpose and beauty. Moving among the colony, like swimming in the ocean, gave her a serenity, a oneness with nature, that seemed, however fleeting, a form of benediction.

“Like this.” Maire showed her how to waft smoke over the boxes. Nora paused, the smoker dangling from her hands like a hypnotist's watch, swinging back and forth, the smoke rising upward in a twisting column.

“I know we haven't been acquainted very long,” Maire said, “not in real time, but I want you to know you can depend on me.”

Depend on her, as she hadn't been able to depend on her mother. Or Malcolm.

“I've been drifting these past few months,” Nora admitted. “It's not like me. I don't like the way it feels.”

Maire thought for a moment. “Perhaps not so much drifting as gathering yourself,” she said. “We each have our own paths to walk. One isn't necessarily better than another. They jig and jag and turn back on themselves. They have dead ends and breathtaking vistas too, if we stop and look.”

“Yes.” There was, after all, Maire, standing before her, who she might never have seen again but for the letter. There were the girls, those challenging, precious bundles of humanity, the best things to have come out of her marriage. And her growing knowledge of herself, what she wanted, what inspired her. These things had come from that path, difficult as it had been. There was this island, this land, and the ways in which it offered sustenance. The ocean. The garden. The fields.

“After all, you have to understand where you've been before you can begin to move forward,” Maire said. “You've already weathered some of the worst of storms.”

Had she? “I'd rather have avoided them entirely.”

“I've wished that myself. But life doesn't work that way, does it? We can't be in calm waters all our lives. I suppose our existence might be rather dull, in the end, if we were.”

“Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting against a current—that I have been, my whole life. It's hard to explain.”

“You had an unusual start, separated from the home, and some of the people, you loved. That would cause anyone to wonder about their place in the world, let alone the other things you've been through lately.”

The bees hummed, a choir. “Thank you for finding me, for sending another letter,” Nora said. “It must have been difficult, not getting anything in return for so long.”

“I should thank you. For answering.” Maire opened the box, exposing row upon row of labyrinthine honeycombs. “Whenever I have a problem, I bring it to the bees. Here, take this.” She handed Nora the box lid. “See, that's the honey.” She pointed to the glistening amber beads. “Even among life's stings, there can be sweetness. There will be for you too. Give it time.”

Chapter Five

E
very afternoon, Nora and the girls swam in the cove. They stepped carefully over the sun-baked stones. Their towels, draped over pieces of driftwood, snapped in the breeze like colorful flags. Sometimes they wore snorkels, so that they could observe the vibrant life beneath the surface—sea stars, minnows, anemones. They made the acquaintance of an eel that lived in the southern rocks. He peeked at them from his stone fortress, a sour expression on his face, thick lips moving soundlessly. He had an elder's visage, reminding Nora of a Confucian sage or an English magistrate.

“Will he bite?” Annie asked. They treaded water, a group of three, legs scissoring among the sea grass.

“Probably only if he feels threatened,” Nora said. “Best to watch him from here, all the same.”

What had he witnessed during his long life? Had he, or his ancestors, seen Nora and her mother the day they went out in the coracle for the last time? Had they overheard the conversations Nora had been too young to remember?

“Mom, you're drifting,” Ella warned as Nora edged too near the rocks.

“Thanks, El.” Nora kicked toward them. “Do you want to swim laps? How about if you go between these rocks?” She indicated a reasonable, safe distance in chest-high water.

“What about you?”

“I'll be right here.” She gestured to the wider cove.

She dove down, surfaced, stroking through the water with ease. It was as if the ocean itself were breathing, its swell the rise and fall of its chest, as if she breathed with it, inextricably connected. A seal appeared, then another, swimming alongside, leading her into deeper waters. She felt as if she could go on for hours, as if she might never stop.

Maeve had taught her to swim in that very cove, a hand on her back. “Chin up. Eyes on the sky. It's all right. I've got you. There. You're floating. See. You're a natural, like me.” They moved on to the breaststroke, which Nora liked because it made her feel like a tadpole or a water bug, skimming along the surface, then the freestyle. “Elbows up, reach and grab the water. Kick from your hips. That's where the power is. Head down, chin to your chest. That's it.”

The seals had followed her and Maeve during the lessons.

“What do they want?” Nora asked.

“They're curious. They wonder what sort of creatures we are.”

“What are we?”

“What do you want to be?”

“A sea creature.”

“Then that's what you are.”

M
om!” Ella cried.

Nora turned, treading water. She was outside the cove now. Ella stood on an outcrop, waving her arms and yelling. “Didn't you hear me calling you? That's too far!” She looked so small, standing there.

The seals ringed Nora in a half circle, as if to see what she'd do next. She found their scrutiny odd, but she wasn't afraid. They fascinated her too. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “What do you want from me?”

They dove out of sight. She waited a few minutes, hoping they would reappear, but the water remained still. They had moved on. It was time for her to do the same. She stroked back to shore, limbs burning. She'd underestimated how far she'd gone, how much energy it would take to return.

“You need to stay closer. I could barely see you,” Ella said as Nora emerged from the water.

“I was following the seals,” Nora replied. Her body felt heavy, her muscles rubbery, now that she was on land, the waves no longer supporting her.

“It's fine for the seals. They live out there. We don't.” Ella paused. “I swam the lengths faster than I ever have. You should have seen me.”

“Me too,” Annie said.

“Must be something in the water.” Nora shook the droplets from her hair.

They spread the towels and collapsed on the beach, beads of water sliding off their bodies, absorbed by the sand, dried by the sun, a drop at a time, leaving a salty film on their skin. Nora recalled lying in the sun like this at the modest beach house of her friend Maria Cordova. From the ages of eleven to thirteen, when Maria and Nora were best friends, Nora would go to the Cape for a week each July. She loved the smell of paella and the boisterous conversation of Maria's extended family, in contrast to her own quiet home. She was the only student at her school, St. Agnes, without a mother.

“Will it stay warm like this?” Ella asked. “I want to work on my tan.”

“It's hard to say. There might be a storm later,” Nora replied. “Though they tend to blow through quickly at this time of year.”

“How do you know?” Annie asked.

“The ocean is telling us.” The waves had flattened to rolling swells that crashed against the shore, gaining momentum. Her father had told her what to watch for during their Saturday-morning sailings in Boston Harbor when she was a child.

“What else does it say?”

“That remains to be seen.” Nora tickled her. “Let's go up to the cottage. It's almost time to make dinner.”

W
hile Nora washed dishes that evening (she and the girls each took a night—the dish democracy, they called it), the girls played Jenga and discussed the validity of fairy tales, a literary debate that was proving particularly contentious. Annie believed in them completely. Ella had her doubts.

“They aren't meant to be real,” Ella said. “They're stories people make up to explain things they don't understand, that frightened them.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Your argument isn't sound. There's no evidence to support your point of view.”

“You're sounding like a lawyer again.”

Like their father. Nora turned a plate over in her hands. She glimpsed a shadow of her face, a mere suggestion of a person, half formed. Who was she now, apart from her role as politician's wife, a role she'd allowed to define her for so long? She had a law degree, she hosted visiting dignitaries for the municipal league, served on the board at the arts center, but who was she, really? What did she want? She was still figuring that out. Cleaning agents stood at attention on the counter, reporting for duty: Purpose, Aim. If only they could rout uncertainty as well as ketchup stains.

She stuck the plate in the rack and scrubbed, more furiously than necessary, at a pan coated with singed spaghetti sauce. She'd been having trouble keeping her mind on things lately. She felt at home at the cottage, but uneasy too. The place hadn't proven to be quite the refuge she expected. It raised questions, the little girl she once was falling into step alongside her, in double exposure.

“I'm right,” Ella said. “You just don't want to admit it.”

“You're like a dark cloud that rains on everything.”

“Rain's good. It's cleansing. It makes things grow,” Ella replied.

“Not the hard kind. The kind that makes mud and floods. The kind that beats things down and drowns people.”

“What are you quarreling about?” Nora sensed it was time to intervene, before the conflict escalated any further.

“Rain, sort of,” said Ella.

“Leave it to you two to find an argument concerning something as innocuous as rain. Sometimes I think we should rechristen the cottage the Bickerage, with the squabbling that's been going on around here lately.”

The girls fell silent, thinking perhaps of their father, who when they argued in his presence at home might stage a mock mediation, wearing a funny hat or blowing a horn left over from a New Year's Eve party, assuming the persona of a comical judge, Hermunculus A. Budge (“That's Judge Budge to you”), dissolving their conflicts into laughter.

“Your move,” Ella said.

“There's no move I can make.”

“It's your turn. You have to—unless you want to forfeit.”

“Cunninghams never give up.”

Their father's words again. He was everywhere, in everything. Nora couldn't pretend he wasn't. She scrubbed and scrubbed until her shoulder ached, her fingertips pruned. He persisted in her thoughts, in her dreams, her feelings for him enduring, in fragments, along with the anger, the hurt, almost against her will.

After much deliberation, Annie removed a wooden piece from the game. The tower teetered one way, then the other. She flapped her hands in the air around the structure in a panic. “No!”

“Don't touch the other pieces. You can't touch them, only the one you're taking out.”

“I know!”

The tower tumbled onto the table with a clatter. “I hate this game.” Annie kicked a rectangular block across the room.

“That's because you always lose,” Ella said. “You have to have a strategy.”

“Your strategy is going first. You always go first.”

“The privilege of the firstborn.”

“It's not fair.”

Ella leaned forward, her jaw thrust out. “Life isn't fair.”

“El, that's enough. And Annie, don't kick the game pieces,” Nora said.

The lights flickered.

“Is the power going out?” Annie asked.

“It might,” Nora said.

“Brilliant,” Ella grumbled. “Now I get to freeze to death and stub my toe in the dark.”

“It's not that cold. You can't even see your breath.”

“We have enough firewood for tonight,” Nora said, though they'd need to restock. She'd have to bring more driftwood up to dry. “And candles if it does. Aunt Maire has a generator. We could always head over there.”

“I don't want to go out in that storm, thank you very much,” Ella said. “I'd be soaked in a second.” Raindrops streaked the windowpanes, illustrating her point. It had been blustery all evening. “Why couldn't we have gone someplace warm, like the Caribbean?”

Where they'd been planning a family vacation that winter, until the trouble started, redirecting their itinerary, on and off the map.

“The storm should blow through soon,” Nora said. “The moon is already putting in an appearance.” Indeed it swept across the roaring surf at intervals, the beacon of a celestial lighthouse.

“It is?” Annie pulled up a chair and gazed out the window, elbows on the sill. “Aunt Maire said there were shipwrecks in the old days.”

“Maybe the ghosts will come up here and haunt you,” Ella said. “That's what happens when you watch for them out the window. Your eyes meet, and in that split second they make a connection to you. You let them in.”

“They'd go for you first, because you're mean and you need to be taught a lesson.”

“Oho! Listen to you!”

Nora sighed. She had suds up to her elbows and didn't want to rinse off and referee another spat. She often wondered what it would have been like to have another child. She and Malcolm had talked about having a third, before his affair came to light. (Though she spoke of it more often than he did, now that she thought about it.) There would have been another child, between the girls—a boy, perhaps—if she hadn't miscarried that winter nine years ago. Her mother or Maire might have cared for her after the procedure, if they had been a part of her life then. She hadn't told anyone she was pregnant, since it was so early, and in the end, she said she was down with the flu, because she didn't want to deal with others' pity or grief. Malcolm did what he could to support her, but despite his best efforts she'd felt alone in those weeks, hearing the latch click as he went off to work. She remained at home in the silent house, Ella off at preschool, a parade of black-and-white films showing on the television screen,
Bringing up Baby, Casablanca, The Third Man
, beloved classics that couldn't penetrate the fog of disbelief and sadness, until finally she couldn't stand it anymore and forced herself to get out of bed a few days later. She'd been afraid to try again, afraid during the first few weeks of her pregnancy with Annie, and yet the months went by easily in the end, the birth, too, more so than Ella's, who, being a firstborn, caused some pain and trouble.

Now she watched her growing daughters through the open kitchen door of the cottage at Glass Beach, considering how swiftly the years had passed, from infant to toddler to child to nearly teen. Annie, with her face close to the glass—or so Nora guessed from the halo of breath fogging the pane. Ella, her nose in her book.

Annie began waving. “I'm waving at the waves. They always wave back.”

“One of life's deep truths.” Ella snorted without looking up.

“I see something,” Annie said.

“You're always seeing things,” Ella replied.

“No, really. There's someone down on the rocks. They're not moving.”

“It's probably a seal,” Ella said.

“I know the difference between a person and a seal,” Annie said, adding in a hushed voice, “What if they're dead?”

“Now
that
would be interesting,” Ella said.

“Mama!” Annie appealed to a higher authority.

“Let me see.” Nora joined Annie at the window.

Yes, something, someone, lay on the ledge. “Stay here.” She tossed on a rain jacket. “I'll be right back.”

Nora staggered against the gale, coat winging out behind her. The hood refused to stay in place. She let it go and was drenched in seconds, water trickling down her spine, hair plastered to her scalp in flat ringlets. The rain came down so hard, she could barely see. Clouds raced across the moon, casting shadows that swept over the beach, elusive, spectral. It was easy to imagine things that weren't there. The ocean reared back and threw itself against the rocks, sending up plumes of spray. Pebbles and shells tumbled over the shore with the sound of dragging chains and breaking crockery. Nora stumbled forward, the way slick and treacherous. She hadn't bothered to change into boots. Her only thoughts had been for the person below. She glanced in the direction of Maire's house, dark now. No time to wake her.

She slid down the embankment, a border of mud collecting on her shoes. She leaped across the rocks, nearly losing her footing. She could see more clearly now. It was a man. He lay on his side, as if sleeping. She called to him, but he didn't stir. She reminded herself to stay calm, to remember the CPR training she'd had years ago, after Ella was born. She checked for a pulse, for breath. Yes. He was alive. “Hello,” she said into his ear. “Can you hear me?” Did his eyelids flicker? The rain was still coming down heavily; she wasn't sure. His skin was tan, scored, as if he spent a great deal of time outdoors. A fisherman, no doubt. A scar on his brow, others on his arms and chest too, his face strong-boned, his clothes—or what was left of them; they looked as if the waves had nearly torn them from his body—draped around his waist like a shroud. His feet were bare. He had a deep cut on his head, abrasions and scratches elsewhere; he'd probably need stitches for that nasty head wound. She tore the cuff from her work shirt, doubled the fabric, and pressed it to his temple. She felt the fluid warmth of his blood beneath her hand. Her biggest concern was hypothermia. She had to get him warm as soon as possible. She took off her coat and draped it around his shoulders. It wasn't big enough to cover him completely, but it would have to do.