The Book of Speculation (41 page)

A patch of skin worn hard and smooth by a fishing rod.

When light bleeds in again it’s forgiving and comes as dots that fuzz and fade into more light, then grains of sand, then dots again, brownish pink. Alice’s arms, pied like the shore.

I vomit a deluge onto the sand. Saltwater, algae. Once, as a child, I fell from the monkey bars on the elementary school playground and had the wind knocked from me. I lay on the pavement, diaphragm fluttering, gasping, waiting for the empty to fill. Undrowning is that in reverse. What’s full is emptying to again take in life. My lips move. A word forms, a scratchy “Hey.”

Enola answers, tiny, angry as I’ve ever heard her. “You asshole.”

And then I’m smiling.

*   *   *

On the sofa in the McAvoys’ living room I run my finger over the edge of Alice’s thumbnail, though I know that drives her crazy. There’s a solid sureness to fingernails, the shell over the tenderest parts of us. I tap on the tip of her nail and she flinches. Instead of pulling away, she tightens her hold. I stare at the scratches on my skin from the crabs’ feet, and the fresh black bruises that line the inside of my arms. It wasn’t easy to pull me up. I could tell her about her hands, and of all the women around me—all the water, the drowning, the voices—that it’s been her hands, always. But it hurts to talk. The Sound has left my throat raw.

Doyle is talking, pacing, telling Enola and Alice what I told him. Littered with nuances and tipped phrasing, he makes my words sound a little like wind. I watch his long toes bend against the living room floor and remember the bite of a spark on my skin. At some point, when I was fresh from the water, he must have touched me.

“I didn’t think he was gonna do that, Little Bird,” he says. “I swear I thought he was gonna torch the cards or I wouldn’t have swiped them.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “He’s always been like that.”

I let them talk about me as if I’m not there. I’m tired. I look at the room from across Alice’s shoulder, the slight bump of her vertebra, the still damp weight of her braid. I can see Frank in the kitchen, hunched over, shaken. Leah moving about, making tea. She walks with purpose, calmly sliding a cup into my sister’s hands, as though her entire world hasn’t shattered. Enola might not even notice where the cup came from, but she drinks. I look up at Alice’s mother, and catch the corner of a smile. Subtle, as if to say,
let them talk.

Alice’s voice is soft but forceful. The angry librarian. “He’s worked himself to death for you, you know. Worried about you, wondered if you were ever coming back. Simon’s been killing himself over you for years.”

Enola says quietly, “Don’t you think I know?”

It’s Doyle who asks, “Shit, what’s he gonna do? He can’t swim at Rose’s.”

“Shit,” Enola says.

The deepest shame is the one that comes from looking my family in the eye after having died and woken up. They’ve imagined me drowning again, dying three times nightly in Thom Rose’s dunk tank. I can see them piecing together what to do with me, figuring out whether or not I need to be watched. I’m not used to being carried, but there are obligations that come with family, letting them care for you when they need to. Not one of them seems to notice that Enola’s hands aren’t twitching anymore, or that Doyle’s stopped quietly checking in on her. The nervousness has leeched from her, leaving behind someone closer to the Enola I knew when she was a little girl. That lifts the shame. I won. Let them worry a little while. Watching me keeps them from noticing the shift in the air, in the way the salt smells, and the turning that has happened inside us.

“He can stay with me,” Alice says. Enola starts asking questions about what I’m going to do, where I’ll work. I stop listening. I picture the mobile in Alice’s bedroom with its tiny horseshoe crab, and the photograph of her that her father took.

We carry our families like anchors, rooting us in storms, making sure we never drift from where and who we are. We carry our families within us the way we carry our breath underwater, keeping us afloat, keeping us alive. I’ve been lifting anchors since I was eighteen. I’ve been holding my breath since before I was born.

“No.” No one hears me, so I say it a second time. When silence at last descends I say, “I’m not staying here. I have to be somewhere.”

Enola’s eyes get round. Alice lets go of my hand.

30

JULY 27TH AND AFTER

The sand is hot and riddled with stones, unbearable for a man his age. It would take a lifetime to build feet to walk on this sand—hard feet. His loneliness is unexpected, but it’s been some time since he’s traveled without his wife. Marie is minding the shop under the guise of indulging him. She saw how worried he was; it was kind of her to let him come. He would not have come at all were it not for her gentle push, her patient encouragement of his flights of fancy. He’s been fortunate; true companionship is an elusive type of butterfly. He puts a foot in the water.
Good lord, that’s cutting.
He misses his wife and the warm blanket that is an Iowa summer. This is the Northeast, he thinks, bitter and cold at the core. He wonders how anyone stands it.

A dilapidated staircase sprawls up the cliff’s edge. A man journeys down it, an older fellow by his pace, though younger than the man on the beach. The descending man is stout, wears a fishing cap, and has the look of a carpenter. He walks past a smattering of rubble, what remains of a house.

“This beach is private. Are you somebody’s guest?” the hatted man calls as he nears.

“Are you by any chance Franklin McAvoy?” the man on the beach asks.

Confusion crosses the hatted man’s face, but is followed by a terse nod.

“I’m Martin Churchwarry, a friend of Simon Watson. He’s spoken of you fondly. Do you know if he’s around?”

At the mention of Simon, Frank McAvoy’s expression shutters.

Churchwarry’s knees wobble, but he soon steadies himself. “Is he all right? I saw the house,” Churchwarry says, motioning to the cliff.

“He’s fine, he’s just not here.” Frank shakes his head slowly. “Damndest thing. That house has been around since the 1700s, then gone in one night. He’s lucky he didn’t go with it.”

“Very.” The relief Churchwarry feels is palpable. It’s odd to feel protective over someone he’s never met, but he’s fond of Simon, almost unaccountably so. Both men put their feet in the water and stand next to each other, neither admitting to the cold.

“Churchwarry, you said?”

“Has he mentioned me?” Churchwarry’s eyebrows snap up.

“Once or twice.” Frank looks at the man beside him—a disheveled figure, pants rolled to the knees, a wild brush of gunmetal-gray hair, a long-ago-broken nose. “How do you know Simon?”

Churchwarry pushes his hands into the pockets of his threadbare trousers. He lets the wind blow at his back and wonders what on earth Simon might have said about him. He settles on something easy. “Our families were once close.”

“You’re the bookseller, aren’t you? The one who sent him that book,” Frank says.

“I thought he’d find it entertaining,” Churchwarry replies. “It had a bit of family history in it. You knew his parents, I believe?”

“Yes,” Frank says. At the mention of Daniel and Paulina, he winces.
I killed her. I am a killer.

“Will Simon be back soon, do you think?”

“Doubt it. He left a letter for me to send you. Haven’t gotten around to mailing it.”

“A letter? How wonderful.” Churchwarry nearly stumbles as a wave splashes his shins. The water is cold and of course he’s not as young as he once was.

“I read it,” Frank says.

“Of course you did,” Churchwarry replies. “It’s impossible to leave a letter unopened.” Out in the water a bluefish jumps, twisting and splashing down.

“It’s a thank-you, mostly, and an apology for losing your books. He wants your help on some kind of project. Didn’t make much sense to me. Wasn’t supposed to, I guess.” He shrugs, not the least bit bashful. “It’s back up at the house. You can come in, if you don’t mind a walk up the stairs.” He looks up the steps, thinking perhaps he should have checked with Leah first. He never would have in the past, but now he is learning his wife again, a process not unlike walking barefooted on the rocks.

“That would be fine.” Churchwarry agrees. There’s something pleasant about the idea of sitting down with Frank McAvoy. There’s a familiarity to Frank that’s more than just having one of those faces—a peculiar breed of d
é
j
à
vu that Churchwarry finds himself reveling in.

“He doesn’t have a phone right now, but he said he’ll be in touch once they’ve settled. He’s with his sister.” The word
they
has a bitter sound to it.

“Oh, of course. He’s moving. I should have assumed that after seeing the house.” He scratches the back of his neck. “A fresh start can be a very good thing,” Churchwarry says, looking back up at the house
.
Simon’s sister is alive. A breath that he was unaware of holding escapes. He feels Frank surveying him, trying to puzzle him out. “You have a daughter, yes? I think Simon mentioned her.”

Frank nods. “She left with him. Alice, Simon, Enola, all of them went together.”

Churchwarry smiles.
Fitting,
he thinks. A small flash of white rolls at the top of a wave. Too far out to reach, Churchwarry waits for it to come in. “Simon’s family, yours, mine, there’s history there.” The rest he does not know how to say. “In a strange way we know each other, Mr. McAvoy. You have grandparents a few generations back who went by the name of Peabody.”

Here a murmur. “I do. And?”

“I was hoping to be able to tell Simon; I think he’d find it important. Does the name Ryzhkov mean anything to you? Ryzhkova, perhaps?”

Franks shakes his head.

“Ah, never mind then. Have you ever wondered why you’re drawn to certain people?”

“Haven’t thought much about it,” Frank says, though he knows it is a lie.

Churchwarry inhales deeply. He’s never understood the uninquisitive; but Frank McAvoy is a boatwright, so there must be a spark of art somewhere in him. A small white rectangle washes in on the tide, swaying with the waves. Churchwarry bends down for a closer look. A wave carries the flash of white close enough for him to snatch it. A bit of paper, soft, ruined. Out in the water another piece rolls in. Churchwarry’s hands shake. A sharp pain runs through his chest, but it is soon chased by elation. He is touching history. His history.

“What’s that?” Frank asks.

“A tarot card, I think,” Churchwarry says. Across its face a blurred image, the faint outline of what was once a man’s leg, with a small dog by its heel. The Fool. He watches the ink bleed and pool around his thumb until the last suggestion of what had been washes away.

“Oh, hell. Those were Paulina’s,” Frank mutters.

Churchwarry looks for cards in the waves. He thinks of all Simon told him and what little he remembers of the book.
Of course. It was the tarot cards.
There had been something more about the sketches, something outside the pleasure of old paper and fading ink. It makes sense, he thinks, that the family of mermaids would destroy a curse with water, far more sense than burning things. He chuckles.
More poetic.
He looks at the man next to him, then thinks of the young man he never met. Alive. Churchwarry knows it matters little how much of it he believes, only that Simon believed. And he’d like to as well. For all the wideness of the water, the town he is in feels closed, isolated. Perhaps the book opened a door; books have a way of causing ripples. He watches a card dip and vanish under a whitecap and sees in the water’s spray a hope so bright it blisters.

At the shoreline a dark shape skitters near the sand. Churchwarry can make out the gentle movement of a sharp tail. He leans closer. “Horseshoe crab,” he says softly. He turns to Frank, smiling at the descendant of the book’s original author. “Magnificent creatures.” He thinks on how they grow and shed shells, each new skin a soft and glistening beginning. Millennia of crawling, traveling, and clearing their tracks with swishing tails, patiently correcting. He smiles.

“Mr. McAvoy, I’d like to see that letter now. Then I think we should have a drink if you are so inclined. I suspect that we could become friends.”

*   *   *

The car is the only noise for a hundred miles, even when passing through the city, as if the world has gone to sleep around them. The toll collectors make no remarks at the dented yellow trailer pulled by a car barely held together by rust.

“It looks like hell, but the engine is still good,” Enola says.

Alice doesn’t know whether to believe her, or whether to care. Being broken down in Delaware would still be preferable to being broken down in Napawset. She feels bad for leaving her mother, but knows that staying would have been worse. Impossible. Her mother needed her to go.
It’s not good for children to see a parent grovel,
her mother told her on the porch.
Go for a while. When you call and both your father and I pick up the phone, come visit
. Alice knows her mother, how she can shame someone with a look. Her father will grovel. She almost feels sorry for him, but then it is easier to decide not to think about him at all.

When they drove past the reedy salt marshes and the clam diggers crouching in the loam and muck, she knew it was the last time she’d see them, and that she’d miss them. Now Alice stares down the highway, knowing that what she’ll miss is the rhythm to her days—dawns spent fishing on the pier, looking at the playwright’s house and wondering about the torrid affairs that took place inside it. She glances in the mirror at the two men sleeping in the backseat. Simon’s shaggy black hair is pressed against the cracked vinyl. He sleeps as if making up for years of being awake. No, not beautiful, but hers. Doyle snores softly. Now and then a tiny snap of a blue spark dances off the end of a fingertip when it touches the window.

From the passenger’s seat Enola turns to Alice and whispers, “It’s like licking a penny.” Alice does not reply and so Enola continues. “People wonder what kissing him is like. He’s like a fresh penny.”