The Best American Short Stories 2015 (32 page)

She turned, broke free, ran.

When they pulled her from the water a second time, she saw a man hurrying toward her, carrying his cell phone, pointing it at her, watching the screen as he filmed her rising from the low, gray waves: she would, she knew, be on the news in just a few hours.

—Tomas, she whispered. Tomas.

A sedative dulled her. A policewoman sat in a corner of the room, silent, watching, a teacup and saucer in her hands. Through the large plate-glass window Rebecca could see figures wandering about, casting backward glances. One of them appeared to be scribbling in a notebook.

The Gardaí had set up in the living room. Every few moments another phone rang. Cars turned in the narrow laneway outside the cottage, their tires crunching on the gravel.

Somebody was smoking outside. She could smell a rag of it moving through the house. She rose to shut the bedroom window.

Something has ended, she thought. Something has finished. She could not locate the source of the feeling.

She paused a moment and strode across the floor toward the door. The policewoman uncrossed her legs but did not rise from the wicker chair. Rebecca strode out. The living room fell quiet, except for the static of a police radio. A wine bottle on the table. A discarded party hat. The scraps of their Christmas dinner heaped in the sink, swollen with dishwater.

—I want to join the search parties.

—It's best for you to stay here.

—He can't hear the whistles, he's deaf.

—Best stay in the cottage, Mrs. Barrington.

She felt as if she had chewed a piece of aluminum, the pain in her head suddenly cold.

—Marcus. My name is Marcus. Rebecca Marcus.

She pushed open the door of Tomas's room. Two plainclothes police were sifting through his cupboard drawers. On his bed was a small plastic bag marked with a series of numbers: strands of hair inside. Thin and blond. The detectives turned to her.

—I'd like to get his pajamas, she said.

—I'm sorry, miss. We can't let you take anything.

—His jammies, that's all I want.

—A question. If you don't mind.

As the detective approached, she could smell the remnants of cinnamon on him, some essence of Christmas. He struck the question sharply, like a match against her.

—How did you get that bruise?

Her hand flew to her face. She felt as if some jagged shape had been drawn up out of her, ripping the roof of her mouth.

Outside, the early dark had taken possession of everything.

—No idea, she said.

A woman alone with a boy. In a western cottage. Empty wine bottles strewn about. She looked over her shoulder: the other guards were watching from the living room. She heard the rattle of pills from the bathroom. An inventory of her medicine. Another was searching her bookshelves.
The Iron Mountains. Factory Farming. Kaddish. House Beautiful. The Remains of the Day
. So, she was under suspicion. She felt suddenly marooned. Rebecca drew herself to full height and walked back toward the living room.

—Ask that person outside to please stop smoking, she said.

He came down the laneway, beeping the car horn, lowered the window, beckoned the guard over:
I'm the child's father
.

Alan had lost the jowls of his occasional drinking. The thinness made him severe. She tried to look for the old self that might remain, but he was clean-shaven, and there was something so deeply mannered about him, a tweed jacket, a thin tie pushed up against his neck, a crease in his slacks. He looked as if he had dressed himself in the third person.

He buried his face in Tomas's duffle by the door, then sank theatrically to his knees, but was careful to wipe the muck when he rose and followed her to her bedroom.

The policewoman in the corner stood up, gave a nervous smile. Rebecca caught a glance at herself in the full-length mirror: swollen, disheveled.

—I'd like to be alone with my wife, Alan said.

Rebecca lifted her head.
Wife:
it was like a word that might remain on a page, though the page itself was plunged into darkness.

Alan repositioned the wicker chair and let out a long sigh. It was plain to see that he was seeking the brief adulation of grief. He needed the loss to attach itself to him. Why hadn't she woken? he asked her. Was the door to her bedroom open or closed? Had she slept through her alarm? Had Tomas eaten any breakfast? How far could he swim? Why didn't you get him a wetsuit that fit? Why didn't you hide it away? Did you give him his limits? You know he needs his limits.

She thought about that ancient life in the Dublin hills, the shiny kitchen, the white machinery, the German cars in the pebbled driveway, the clipped bushes, the alarm system, the security cameras, the
limits
, yes, and how far the word might possibly stretch before it rebounded.

—Did he have gloves on?

—Oh stop, please, Alan.

—I need to know.

The red lights of the clock shone. It had been twelve hours. She lay on the bed.

—No, he had no gloves, Alan.

She could not shake the Israeli story from her head. An Arab couple had lost their two children to two illnesses over the course of five years: one to pneumonia, the other to a rare blood disorder. It was a simple story—small, intimate, no grand intent. The father worked as a crane driver in the docklands of Haifa, the mother as a secretary in a corrugated-paper firm. Their ordinary lives had been turned inside out. After the children died, the father filled a shipping container with their possessions and every day moved it, using the giant crane and the skyhooks, to a new site in the yard, carefully positioning it alongside the sea: shiny, yellow, locked.

—He feels invincible, doesn't he?

—Oh Jesus, Alan.

The search parties were spread out along the cliffs, their hopeless whistles in the air, her son's name blown back by the wind. Rebecca pushed open the rear sliding doors to the balcony. The sky was shot through with red. A stray sycamore branch touched her hair. She reached up. A crushing pain split her shoulder blade: her rotator cuff.

Cigarette smoke lingered in the air. She rounded the back of the cottage. A woman. Plainclothes. The whistles still came in short, sharp bursts.

A loss had lodged itself inside her. Rebecca gestured for the cigarette, drew long and hard on the filter. It tasted foul, heavy. She had not smoked in many years.

—He's deaf, you know, she said, blowing the smoke sideways.

A tenderness shone in the detective's eyes. Rebecca turned back into the house, pulled on her coat, walked out the front door and down toward the cliffs.

A helicopter broke the dark horizon, hovered for a moment right above the cottage, its spotlight shining on the stone walls, until it banked sharply and continued up the coast.

They went in groups of three, linking arms. The land was potholed, hillocked, stony. Every now and then she could hear a gasp from a neighboring group when a foot rolled across a rock, or a lost lobster pot, or a bag of rubbish.

The stone walls were cold to the touch. The wind ripped under a sheet of discarded plastic. Tiny tufts of dyed sheep wool shone on the barbed wire: patterns of red and blue.

Along the coast small groups zigzagged the distant beaches in the last of the light. Dozens of boats plied the waves. The bells on the ancient boats tinkled. A hooker went by with its white sails unfurled. A fleet of kayaks glided close to the shore, returning home.

The moon rose red: its beauty appeared raw and offensive to her. She turned inland. The detectives walked alongside. Rebecca felt suspended between them. Cones of pale torch beam swept through the gathering darkness.

At an abandoned home, roofless, hemmed in by an immense rhododendron bush, a call came over the radio that a wetsuit had been found, over. The male detective held a finger in the air, as if figuring the direction of the wind. No, not a wetsuit, said the voice, high alert, no, there was something moving, high alert, stand by, stand by, there was something alive, a ripple in the water, high alert, high alert, yes, it was a body, a body, they had found something, over, a body, over.

The detective turned away from her, moved into the overgrown doorway, shielded the radio, stood perfectly still in the starlight until the call clarified itself: it was a movement in the water, discard, they had seen a seal, discard the last report, only a seal, repeat, discard, over.

Rebecca knew well the legend of the selkie. She thought of Tomas zippering his way out into the water, sleek, dark, hidden.

The female detective whispered into the radio: For fucksake, be careful, we've got the mother here.

The word lay on her tongue now:
mother, máthair, em
. They went forward again, through the unbent grass, into the tunnels of their torches.

Alan's clothing was folded on the wicker chair. His knees were curled to his chest. A shallow wheeze came from the white of his throat. A note lay on her pillow:
They wouldn't let me sleep in Tomas's room, wake me when you're home
. And then a scribbled,
Please
.

They had called off the search until morning, but she could hear the fishing boats along the coast, still blasting their horns.

Rebecca took off her shoes, set them by the bedroom fire. Only a few small embers remained, a weak red glow. The cuffs of her jeans were wet and heavy from the muck. She did not remove them.

She went to the bed and lay on top of the covers, pulled up a horsehair blanket, turned away from Alan. Gazing out the window, she waited for a bar of light to rise and part the dark. A torchlight bore past in a pale shroud. Perhaps there was news. At the cliff he had twirled the imaginary cane. Where had he learned that Chaplin shuffle? The sheer surprise of it. The unknowability. Unspooling himself along the cliff.

From the living room came the intermittent static of the radios. Almost eighteen hours now.

Rebecca pushed her face deeper into the pillow. Alan stirred underneath the sheets. His arm came across her shoulder. She lay quite still. Was he sleeping or awake? How could he sleep? His arm tightened around her. His hand moved to her hair, his fingers at her neck, his thumb at the edge of her clavicle.

That was not sleep. That was not sleep at all.

She gently pushed his arm away.

Another torch bobbed past the window. Rebecca rose from the bed. A gold-backed hairbrush lay on the dressing table. Long strands of her dark hair were tangled up inside it. She brushed only one side of her hair. The damp hem of her jeans chilled her toes and she walked toward the wicker chair, covered herself in a blanket, looked out into the early dark.

When dawn broke, she saw the door open slightly, the female detective peeping in around the frame, something warm in the flicker that went between them. Alan stirred, pale in the bed, and moaned something like an excuse. His pinkish face. His thinning hair. He looked brittle to her, likely to dissolve.

In the kitchen the kettle was already whistling. A row of teacups were set along the counter. The detective stepped forward and touched her arm. Rebecca's eyes leaped to catch hers, a brief merged moment.

—I hope you don't mind. We took the liberty. There's no news yet.

The presence of the word
yet
jolted her. There would, one day, be news. Its arrival was inevitable.

—We took one of Tomas's shirts from the wash basket.

—Why? said Rebecca.

—For the dogs, the detective said.

Rebecca wanted suddenly to hold the shirt, inhale its odor. She reached for the kettle, tried to pour through the shake in her hands. So there would be dogs out on the headland later. Searching for her son. She glanced at her reflection in the window, saw only him. His face was double-framed now, triple-framed. He was everywhere. Out on the headland, running, the dogs following, a ram, a hawk, a heron above. She felt a lightness swell in her. A curve in the air. A dive. She gripped the hem of the counter. The slow, sleek slip of the sea. A darkening underwater. The shroud of cold. The coroner, the funeral home, the wreaths, the plot, the burial. She felt herself falter. The burst to the surface. A selkie, spluttering for air. She was guided into a chair at the table. She tried to lean forward to pour the tea. Voices vibrated around her. Her hands shook. Every outcome was unwhisperable. She had a sudden thought that there was no sugar in the house. They needed sugar for their tea. She would go to the store with Tomas later. The news agent's. Yes, that is where she would go. Inland along the bend of narrow road. Beyond the white bungalow. Crossing at the one traffic light. Walk with him past the butcher shop, past the sign for tours to the islands, past the turf accountant, past the shuttered hotel, the silver-kegged alleyway, into the news agent's on Main Street. The clink of the anchor-shaped bell. The black-and-white linoleum floor. Along the aisle. The sharp smell of paraffin. Past the paper rack set up on lobster pots, the small blue and orange ropes hanging down, old relics of the sea. She would walk beyond the news of his disappearance. Bread, biscuits, soup. To the shelf where the yellow packets of sugar lay. We cannot do without sugar, Tomas, second shelf down, trust me, there, good lad, get it, please, go on, reach in.

She wasn't sure if she had said this aloud or not, but when she looked up again the female detective had brought one of Tomas's shirts, held it out, her eyes moist. The buttons were cold to the touch: Rebecca pressed them to her cheek.

From the laneway came the sound of scraping branches. Van doors being opened and closed. She heard a high yelp, and then the scrabble of paws upon gravel.

She spent the second morning out in the fields. Columns of sunlight filtered down over the sea. A light wind rippled the grass at the cliff edge. She wore Tomas's shirt under her own, tight and warm.

So many searchers along the beaches. Teachers. Farmers. Schoolchildren holding hands. The boats trawling the waters had trebled.