On Little Wings (9 page)

My eyes kept drinking in the faces until one hit me like a wave in the face. “That’s you,” I breathed softly, meaning
you
in the plural. Two little girls in bathing suits and cut-off jeans laughed up at the camera while they draped their arms around each other. Their long, wet hair dripped in tangled strands in the sunlight as they stood on a rocky beach. “You and my mother.” My mother’s silly grin squeezed her eyes nearly shut.

“Your mom was a goof,” Sarah said as she smiled at the memory more than the picture. “We can put your things in your room.” Sarah took the handle of my suitcase and grappled up the steep, narrow staircase with the heavy luggage while I followed with my smaller bag. She led the way to a thick, wooden door, the same color as the honey floors, just at the top of the stairs. “This was my room, growing up. I use my parents’ room downstairs now, but I think this is still my favorite.” She said as she turned the brass knob.

Inside, a black iron bed covered in an exquisite quilt made of the tiniest, most colorful blocks I ever saw stood against one wall. A small sheepskin rug lay beside the bed and through the window I could see the entire cove glinting in the late light of the day. An antique desk with a an outdated globe squeezed against the wall across from the bed and a tiny closet door, looking like it had to suck in its breath to fit, crammed itself into the far corner. “This is amazing!” I cried as I rushed to the window. I spun around and reached out for the quilt. “This is …amazing.” I repeated.

“Your grandmother made that. It took her over a year. She loved that quilt.”

I gently fingered the chaotic, clashing pieces of cloth, forced together and somehow, made beautiful, orderly. “I think it is the prettiest blanket I ever saw. It looks perfect in here.” I scanned the room again, catching new sights with each glance, like the outdated, framed maps on the wall and the brass reading lamp on the wooden nightstand.

“It’s not big,” Sarah admitted. “Claire and I once wanted to share a room but my father couldn’t fit her bed in here.” She gestured to the opposite wall, to illustrate the size. “We kept bugging him about it until he finally agreed to try. I remember him taking the frame of her bed apart and when he reassembled it in here …” Sarah’s shoulders shook lightly and she giggled. “When it was back together. . .” This time the giggles deepened into a laugh. “He got the last screw in somehow and there was less than a foot between the bed frames.” She held her hands apart by only a few inches.

She sat down on the bed and slipped off her sandals before digging her feet into the thick rug. “Claire didn’t want to admit defeat so she kept on swearing that there was plenty of room and she could get through just fine. She was only seven. She did this sideways shuffle-walk on her tiptoes between the beds…” She shook her head to brush away the funniest part of the memory to continue. “So she gets to the middle of the beds and turns around to show my mother that it isn’t bad at all and,” Sarah’s voice built and exploded in hilarity, “she got stuck!”

“Stuck?” I exclaimed.

“Her little hips wedged tight!” Sarah’s laughter rang with unhindered joy. “I don’t know how! She just turned around really fast and looked up with a panicked face. She managed to turn sideways again and get free, but she bruised both her legs and Mother made Dad take the bed back to Claire’s room. We never got to share. It became one of those family legends.”

As our laughter dwindled it left a faint trail of sadness behind it, like the white clouds that follow airplanes through the sky. We both knew, very quietly and in the back of our minds, that Mother should have passed that story down to me years ago.

Sarah showed me the rest of the house. My mother’s old room was next door, its sloping ceiling and porthole window making it even smaller than Sarah’s. A blue tiled bathroom at the end of the hall completed the upstairs tour. Sarah’s current room downstairs was decorated entirely in shades of off white and light beige and looked like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. French doors opened from her room onto a brick patio overlooking the waves. Sarah converted the dining room into an office which, oddly enough, was entirely devoid of books.
I can’t get work done if I’m tempted to read
she clarified. In the kitchen new stainless steel appliances stood out against the antique cabinets and the original brick backsplash.

“I’ve done a lot of work,” she explained when she caught me staring at the gas stove that looked like it belonged in a restaurant. “I know it’s silly with only me, but I like to cook. My neighbor has four children and they let me feed them my experiments.”

The smell of garlic and tomatoes wafting from the crockpot filled the house and stood testament to her skill. It would have made my mouth water even more if not for the slightly fishy undertone tainting the scent. Truly, lobster in spaghetti? It seemed an irresponsible thing to do to perfectly good Italian food. “We can eat in about an hour, after we’re hungry again,” Sarah offered when I sniffed the aromas.

“Do I have time to go see the water first?” I asked meekly.

The question delighted Sarah. “You bet. I’ll set the table and get everything ready while you go explore. You can go alone. Take your time. I won’t interrupt.” She promised. “Just go out that door,” she said pointing to a door at the back of the kitchen, “and walk until you get wet.” I smiled back at her, thankful that she understood.

Once in the yard the garlic and tomato smell disappeared instantly, but the fishy undertone did not. It seemed to seep up from the earth here, the way the smell of warm dirt seeped into the air in Nebraska. But outside, bathed in the tilting slant of sun and washed in the cool, salty breeze, the smell didn’t rankle – it belonged.

The underbrush at the edge of the yard grew thorny and thick, divided only where a small path led to the beach. Sarah was right – as soon as I saw it I knew it wasn’t like any other beach. It was an untamed mix of elements. What should have been sand looked like a seashell battlefield, the devastated remains shattered and scattered across the dark shore.
Definitely not a barefoot beach
I thought as I traversed the wild wreckage of nature.

After meeting Sarah, Smithport, and Shelter Cove, there seemed to be only one introduction left to make. My feet shuffled carefully until my toes, peeking out from my sandals, kissed the cold, moving water. I lowered myself to the ground, not minding the chilly wetness soaking through the seat of my shorts. Sarah would understand if I came back wet. I threw a self-conscious glance over my shoulder and, reassured in my absolute solitude, I whispered to the water, “I’m Jennifer.”

I closed my eyes to hear her answer. The gentle hissing of the pushing water pervaded the air. A bird called from the forest, but other than my voice and the short conversations singing through the trees, the ocean hummed her lullaby by herself. The sounds felt so tangible that I kept my eyes closed for a long time, letting the sunlight make shimmering patterns on the inside of my eyelids. When I finally opened them again the beauty of everything seemed doubled. I peered at the sight, surprised to find it still there.

“So I’m really here,” I whispered. “This is
mine
.” My chest swelled with possessiveness for the little cove. I sat with my chin tipped up, my ears straining to memorize the foreign sounds, until a fast movement in the sand caught my eye. My body reacted before my mind, jumping up and away before I realized it was a crab. And it was running straight at me. I raised my foot nearest the white, spider-like creature and took another hop backward. It never changed its trajectory and still running, rose on its back feet and clicked its fat pinchers at me. I let out a scream as I stumbled and fell into the water, sitting down hard against the brutally sharp bottom. And despite the pain, and the cold (the water seemed to flow directly from Iceland), I kept, forgive me for the pun, crab walking, to put more space between the offensive creature and myself.

If that crab didn’t look just like a tarantula wearing armor I wouldn’t have lost my balance, but nothing terrifies me like a spider. Or to be more precise, nothing terrifies me like the way a spider
moves
. While scrambling clumsily in the ocean I collected that notorious experience commonly labeled “the most embarrassing moment of your life.”

Bursting my assumption of privacy, a boy, taller than me, but roughly my age, came running from somewhere. I saw his shoes first, grass stained and ratty, jogging toward me. When I raised my head the rest of him came into view as he halted in front of me, slightly breathless, his hand extended to help me up. The shock of his sudden materialization made me scramble unsteadily to my feet, my clothes dripping while I shivered. Instead of taking his hand I leaned away from him, scrutinizing. He was 98 percent normal, scruffy boy. His hair was dark blonde, streaked liberally with light browns, just like mine, and stuck up in spikes over his perspiring forehead. He wore a grey t-shirt with sweat marks under the arms and cargo shorts with one pocket half torn off. A thin white scar ran a reckless line from his top lip to his nose. And then, there was the two percent remarkable: I tried not to stare at his dark blue eyes. I will never describe them as they should be described, but they tightened at the corners, giving him a perpetual squint and an aura of intelligence.

“That’s just a crab,” he said, looking where the creature now squatted, still and docile on the sand. “Are you okay?” He said it like he worried more about my mental health than physical. He lowered his hand, seeing that I refused to take it.

“Where did you come from?” my eyes traveled the entire cove, wondering how I missed a person in plain sight. Angry at the way his eyes studied my dripping clothes I murmured grumpily, “This is private property.”

That made his squinting eyes wrinkle at the corners, and his mouth twitched up. “You’re bleeding,” he said bluntly, nodding toward my leg.

It didn’t burn until he said that. “Shoot,” I sighed as I smeared a small red trickle across my ankle with the side of my hand. The boy took a few steps and with the skill of a snake charmer grabbed the crab by the claw and flung it into the waves before it could pinch. “He won’t bug you anymore,” he said patronizingly.

I pulled my t-shirt away from my body, aware of the way it stuck to my skin and tried to sound nonchalant. “It didn’t bug me. It just surprised me. I was thinking about something else and I slipped.” He pulled a serious face and nodded while the amusement flashed through his eyes. My face flamed. “I have to go.” I didn’t like turning around and leaving him on my beach, but to avoid any more humiliation I picked my way as quickly as possible over the uneven ground toward Shelter Cove. With each step the heat in my cheeks increased and poured down into my chest. I felt his stare as I stumbled, my waterlogged bottom dripping, and my self-consciousness made me angry. When I reached the strip of sharp, but stable sand, I spun around and called back to him with my last vestige of dignity, “This is my aunt’s back yard. You should ask her before you come back here.” He looked completely unconcerned by my rebuff and stared back without word or apology until the blush in my cheeks turned to a mottled flush of spite. I whipped around and continued to Shelter Cove.
Rude
I spat furiously inside my head.
Rude, rude, rude.
When I opened the door to the kitchen my fuming face and wet clothes made Sarah jump away from the stove in alarm.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Did you fall?”

I tried to temper my response, reign in my frustration. “I saw a crab and I slipped.”

“The crab made you slip?” she asked perplexed, her slotted spoon suspended in mid-air.

Why was that so hard to believe? Do people in Maine not slip?
“It just ran at me and when I tried to get out of the way I fell. I’ll just go clean up,” I muttered. A small throb made me look at the heel of my hand and I saw miniscule pools of blood in the skinned flesh to match my ankle. Sarah saw it at the same time and fussed over it until I convinced her I didn’t mind a little scratch. “There was some kid at the beach. He came out of nowhere,” I confessed as she grabbed some bandages.

“Kid?” she asked in a surprised voice. Then a small light dawned on her face as I sunk into a kitchen chair. “Do you mean a boy? About your age?”

“Yes,” I answered, annoyed at the memory. How stupid had I looked? I tried to replay the scene from his eyes and my stomach fell painfully. Pretty stupid.

“Did he introduce himself?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face.

“No. He snuck up on me. I told him that it’s not a public beach,” I pressed the Band-Aid over my leg, watching the blood ooze through the tan fabric, turning it pink.

“Wash that first,” Sarah murmured but then her smile twitched up in amusement at my story, exactly like the boy. Remembering his small grin provoked me. “What?” I asked, too passionately. “What is so funny about that?”

“Nothing,” Sarah said quickly. “Well…it’s sort of… that’s Nathan. He lives on the cove, too. You can’t see his house from here, but he’s just down the road. He’s my special student I told you about when you first called.” Sarah’s eyes scanned my face, mixed with pity and humor. “I got confused at first because I’ve never thought of him as a kid.”

My stomach which had been falling a moment ago, landed with a horrible thud that made my heart skip a beat. Pretty stupid, indeed.

Toward the end of dinner Sarah interrupted our discussion of authors that nearly drained my small but fervent pool of literary knowledge to say, “There is a sort of game that we play here. Well, no. Not game. Habit? Ritual? I don’t know what to call it, but it’s something we do every night.”

“We?” I asked, very aware of the quiet emptiness of the rest of the house.

“Nathan and I,” she said.

“Oh.” Nathan. I hope she meant every night when I’m not visiting.

“You see, Nathan is a special … person. I’m sure he didn’t mean to sneak up on you. He’s not like that. I’m sorry you met him that way.” Sarah rested her elbow on the table by her plate and propped up her chin thoughtfully. “He is the smartest person I ever knew. But he is hindered in other areas.” I nodded, inviting her to continue, my interest in his flaws surpassing my interest in his intelligence. “Technically, he isn’t my student anymore because he doesn’t attend public school now, but he is the closest thing to family I have.” She looked down bashfully. “Had,” she corrected. “But Nathan is like a son to me. I found him when he was three. They sent me out to assess him because his preschool teacher suspected he was mentally handicapped.” Sarah shook her head in disbelief. “I may not have ever really known him, but the special education teacher that worked with handicapped students was on long term leave. I had the degree, so they sent me.”