Portion of the Sea (2 page)

It was also the first vacation he had ever taken me on. He didn’t like vacations. He had accumulated a treasure chest of wealth and money but didn’t know what to do with it, nor did he care. It wasn’t the money he liked but the acquiring of it. He was a man who lived to work, and earning salaries that rose higher each year was pure recreation to him. Vacations, vocabulary competitions, and me in general, only got in the way.

I’m sure wives know as much or more about their husbands than daughters do about their fathers; so, my mother must have known this about him, which is why she put it into writing, that sometime around my sweet sixteenth birthday my father must take me here to see the place she loved. They found this request of hers in a letter she wrote the same morning they found her on the bedroom floor.

I turned to the front of my diary, to where I had first started entering all the information I had gathered about my mother. And now the book was like a precious seashell to me, with a living creature inside. As I flipped my thumb through its pages, I swore I heard her laughing, whispering, and crying out loud.

I clasped my hands together tightly, closed my eyes, and whispered to my mother. I only talked to her every so often and didn’t know whether or not she could hear me. “Thank you for insisting that I see this island. I love it. If loving a place is an inherited trait, then I got it from you. We are alike in many ways, I think.” I stopped only to wipe a tear from my face and then continued. “But I hope we’re different. Please tell me we’re different.
I want to be different from you, too.”

I opened my eyes and listened, thinking I heard and felt someone or thing hovering behind me. Maybe it was the seagulls, for great numbers of them had been stalking my box of crackers. Or maybe it was my mother’s spirit. But then I twisted around and looked up to find a woman standing behind me holding a plastic bucket.

“Did I interrupt?” she asked, soaring over me, wearing a white bathing cap decorated with brightly bold circles. She looked like a movie star.

“No. Interrupt what?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought maybe you were praying, so I waited to hear an ‘Amen.’”

“No, I was talking to my mother,” I said, and then regretted telling her that. I should have said I was talking to myself or, better yet, said nothing at all.

But she didn’t look at me like I was crazy and instead turned her focus toward some shells in her bucket and nonchalantly picked a few up and tossed them back to the beach. I had to stare. She was glamorous, wearing one of those two-piece bathing suits, the kind my father would never allow me to wear, and the kind I had never seen anyone other than a mannequin at Marshal Fields wearing. I pulled my eyes up off her belly—a good quarter of it was showing—and placed them back onto her face.

And that’s when I noticed she wasn’t looking into her bucket at all, but rather her eyes were stretching all the way down to my diary, lying open on the blanket beside me. The woman was trying to read what I had written, so I nudged it over a few inches to be sure, and then she cocked her head to the side and continued reading with the fervor of a gull feasting on its prey. As I did with the cracker box earlier, I slammed it shut, not wanting some stranger to peek any further inside at the essence of my mother captured in a book. Then I jumped up from the sand, ready to “shoo” her away, to fling my arms and possibly kick, but I didn’t know her next move and feared she might take off down the beach with the seagulls, my diary and the words depicting my mother dropping from her mouth.

“Hi. I’m Marlena,” she said in the most elegant of voices, turning her eyes back at me. “Marlena DiPluma. Are you here on vacation?”

“Yes,” I said as quick and snappy as one might say the word “yes.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”

“Lydia,” I said. “Lydia Isleworth.”

“And your mother?”

I made a face at her and then remembered it was me who said in the first place that I was talking to my mother who clearly wasn’t here. “She died when I was an infant.”

“I’m horribly sorry to hear that.”

“It’s fine,” I said, sitting back down again. “I’ve written everything my father has told me about her in my diary. And it’s private. Diaries are private, you know.”

She laughed and started swinging her pail back and forth like a child as she looked up at the clouds. There were only two clouds in the entire sky, and they weren’t shaped like anything fascinating so soon she stopped swinging the pail and bent down eye-level with me. “I respect journal keepers more than you could know,” she said. “And I am a firm believer that the words a woman writes in her journal are like bits and pieces of her heart, soul, and mind.”

I loved words, vocabulary words, but I never thought about words as bits and pieces of anyone’s heart, soul, or mind. I wanted to ponder what she had said, but I also wanted to know why she wore a scarf wrapped around her head, covering her nose. Back home we wore our scarves as belts or halter-tops, or tied around a ponytail like mine was now, but never around our faces to cover our noses, like she wore hers. It was a pretty scarf, brightly colored chiffon.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said, standing back up again. “But is your father remarried?”

“No,” I snapped.

“So you’ve been raised by a man?”

“No,” I said again. “I’ve got nannies, housekeepers, and tutors, and they’re all women.”

“I see. So, where are you visiting from?”

“Chicago.”

“Do you come here often?”

“No. It’s the first time I’ve been back.”

“Since when?”

“My conception.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Really? Not many people know that sort of information.”

“My father regrets telling me.”

“Where’s your father now?”

I reached for my pink saddle shoes and my socks. She was nosy, and I wanted to leave.

“Maybe you could introduce me.”

“No,” I said. “He bumped into an acquaintance, and now they’re having a business meeting. He’s always working.”

“And where do you want to work when you grow up?”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her. “Work? What do you mean?”

“A job, a profession. What do you want to be?”

“A wife and a mother.” I started to back up, sweeping the sand off my feet with my hands while looking up at her.

“I see,” she said, her dark eyes peering at me like a bird digesting its meal.

“So what is your most favorite thing to do?”

“Write,” I answered without hesitation. “In my diary.”

“You love it?” I nodded.

“You love it more than …” She scratched her chin. “I don’t know. It’s been a while since I was young like you … more than Hopscotch and Hula Hoop and dancing?”

“More than anything.”

“Then why not apply it to a profession one day? You sound like an intelligent young lady.”

“I am,” I said. “My father says I’ll be able to keep up with my husband in conversation and educate my sons one day.” I couldn’t get all the sand out from between my toes, so I tossed my shoes in my bag instead of putting them on and then stood up and tugged the blanket out from under her foot. “I’ve got to get going,” I said as I lightly shook the blanket.

“If that’s what you want to do, fine,” she said. “I won’t keep you. I just think it’s a shame that in addition to being a wife and mother your father has you thinking there is nothing else in life a girl can do. What about one day when your kids grow up and your husband works all day? What will you do then?”

“I don’t have to worry about any of that. I’m only fifteen.”

“Oh, I think all girls around your age should be challenged to look ahead and ponder who it is they want to be and what sort of life they’d one day like for themselves. But people don’t give it any thought until they’re grown up and disliking their lives and then they don’t know what to do. If only they could think back to when they were around your age and remember what sorts of things they loved to do, things they were good at and things that made them happy.”

“Interesting,” I said. “But I’ve got to go.” I started to walk.

“It was nice meeting you, Lydia,” she called after me. “But don’t forget how much you love writing. I do think you could be a writer one day, perhaps a famous one.”

I stopped and turned my head. “How do you know?”

“I don’t for sure. I said ‘perhaps.’ You were the one who said you loved to write more than anything in the world.”

“Yeah, but only in my diary.”

“Well, we all start somewhere. You just remember that, darling. If a successful writer is what you see for yourself, then by all means, you’ll become it. I believe in you.”

I turned fully around and walked a few steps back toward her. “You do?”

“Yes. It was a pleasure talking with you.” She blew me a kiss in a movie star sort of way, and then turned as if, this time, she was the one ready to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll let you read a little of my journal, if you like. You can tell me if it’s good or not.”

She laughed. “I’m honored. Let’s go sit down.” She walked over to an enormous piece of driftwood shaped like a bench and sat down as if to perch. I followed and pulled my journal out from my bag and handed it to
her, hoping I wasn’t handing my mind over to the claws of some bird of prey. But I never thought of my writing as being good or bad. I only thought of it as something I loved to do, so maybe I could use some objective feedback. I watched as she flipped randomly to the front of the book and her eyes began to skim.

“An ever-serving, obedient and domestic wife,” she read aloud. “Thrilled and thankful for being born a woman, destined to become a wife and mother,” she continued. “A woman envied by all her neighbors for having the most meticulous kitchen floor and dinner on the table by five o’clock nearly 365 days a year.” She stopped and looked up at me. “Mature words coming from a girl your age.”

“They’re my father’s words, not mine.”

“Yes, I assumed that much.” She rolled her eyes.

“They’re things he has told me about my mother. I can’t write creatively. I can only write about things that have happened or things people have said. I’m not at all good at making stuff up.”

“Then you’re a nonfiction writer,” she said. “That’s what most journal writing is. That’s fine. Maybe you’re in the making to become a journalist.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I’m just a girl.”

“Yeah and Sanibel was just a sandbar once. Look at it now!” She glanced from east to west. “And Thomas Edison was just a boy. Did you know his mother schooled him at home because he drove his teacher nuts with so many questions in the classroom?”

“No.” I laughed.

“It’s true. What would this modern fifties world be like had he never gone on to become more than just a boy? What if he didn’t pursue his interests?

We’d be living in a rather dark place, I think.” I thought about it a moment. “But what would Edison have done had his own mother not been there for him? His mother deserves credit,” I said. “She had a very important job. Every mother does.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”

“If you ask me, anyone with a mother is fortunate.”

She handed back my diary. “True, dear, but we need to look at what we do have and not what we don’t have. You, for instance, have a desire to write. I do believe you will be a successful journalist one day, famous maybe. If that’s what you want to be.”

She read a little more, this time to herself and I thought about whether I should bolt from this stranger, the strangest stranger I had ever encountered and that was pretty strange. Living in Chicago gave me daily opportunities to pass by, say hello, exchange eye contact with, or walk right by strangers, and sometimes they’d mumble something my way, and once it was about the end of the world coming, but none of them ever told me anything like this. Not even anyone I knew ever told me I could be and do anything that I wanted, and I wondered whether or not I should believe her. Believing her would bring options and possibilities to my life that I never knew I had, but then again, she was only a stranger, and it would be stupid of me to listen to what some stranger had to say.

“I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” I said, standing up from the driftwood. “I don’t believe anything you’ve said.” I walked a few steps away, knowing I should keep going, that my father would go ape if I didn’t return soon.

“Then what do you believe?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. I believed one day I would get married and have babies and those were my only options. I never believed anything other than that. I never gave it any thought.

“Do you believe you can build a snowman here on the beach?”

I turned and laughed. “You’re crazy,” I said.

“Oh, no. I’m not. I’ve been called many things—dramatic, eccentric, fun, but crazy I am certainly not.”

“How can anyone build a snowman here on a beach in Florida? It’s impossible. There’s no snow.”

“If you believe, you can achieve,” she said, jumping up from the driftwood. “Now get down and help me build a snowman.” She dropped to her knees and started digging in the sand. A moment later she looked up and said, “C’mon, join me, and I’ll show you.”

I didn’t want to get my new pink sailor dress dirty, but there was something
inside me that wanted to believe; so, I joined her on my knees and started scraping my hands through the shell-fragmented sand, and she started humming. We were close enough to the shore that the sand was damp, and it packed nicely into a mound. I noticed her fingernails, long and beautiful, painted in mauve, and I felt the pressure of sand building behind my own nails, short in comparison. Her humming grew louder, and I dug harder until broken miniature shell pieces pricked the tips of my fingers. I no longer needed my sunglasses, so I took them off and tossed them aside.

“What are you humming?” I asked.

“A lullaby my mama used to hum.”

“Oh.” We dug and packed some more, and when I looked at her, I noticed the scarf around her face loosening and falling to the ground. There were white bandage-like wraps covering her nose, and she caught me staring.

“I was born with the long, curved beak of a White Ibis and wanted the nose of a woman,” she said, stopping to retie it. “I always imagined how beautiful I might look with a more womanly nose; so, I just recently got a nose job.”