Cottage by the Sea

by Robin Jones Gunn

  What Erin didn’t know until her recent conversation with Tony and what she guessed her parents never knew was that Tony experimented with drugs when he was in high school. He could have been on something the day the photo was taken.

  “Jack, why didn’t you ever tell me you had such a handsome son?”

  Jack’s eyes opened wide. Sylvia carried the picture over to him, and Erin didn’t stop her. She was curious to see his response when he looked at his son now that his emotions were in such a state of immediacy.

  Sylvia held up the picture. Jack stared at it. He didn’t reach for it as he had the picture of him with Faith. At first he just stared. Then the sobs came. These were different sobs from those Erin had heard from him before. It sounded as if the pain in his heart was leaking out.

  Apparently Sylvia could tell the difference as well because she quickly backed up and handed off the picture to Erin. “That wasn’t a good idea, was it?”

  “It’s okay,” Erin said softly. “Talk to him. Change the subject. Tell him what’s been happening at the Jenny Bee, and he’ll perk up.”

  As Erin predicted, her father was easily redirected. Sylvia took it upon herself to be more entertaining than usual, and for that Erin was grateful. While Sylvia was with her dad, she went outside to make a phone call. She had considered making this call several weeks ago but didn’t want to sound the alarm until the right time.

  With Marge’s comments about the state of her dad’s kidneys in mind, Erin left her brother a message. It was time for him to come. He had asked for “a little more space” before reconnecting with their father. They were running out of life space, and Erin didn’t think either of the men needed any more. What they needed was to get face-to-face.

  She wished she and Sharlene could have been face-to-face when they had their conversation that evening. Erin was in the garage, wearing her well-used Paddy’s Crab Shack fleece jacket and holding a cup of Irish breakfast tea. The tea was as much for support and cheer as it was to keep her hands warm. The coastal chill slid under the closed garage door and sent shivers up her legs.

  Erin started the conversation by saying, “I want you to know I’ve given this a lot of prayer and thought, and I really don’t want to sell my half of the business—”

  Sharlene cut in. “I thought you might say that. So I went ahead, and I met with an attorney today, just so we could both know what our options are.”

  “Wait.” Erin put her cup of tea down on the garage floor. As soon as Sharlene said “attorney,” Erin’s hand shook, and she didn’t want to spill hot tea down the front of her. “Are you saying you’re going to bring an attorney in on this?”

  “Only if we need help with clarifying the terms on the contract we signed with each other.”

  Erin couldn’t believe Sharlene was saying this. Was she going to force Erin out of her share in the company?

  “Before you say anything else, Sharlene, let me tell you the rest of what I started to say. I do not want to sell, but I recognize how unfair this is to you. I know that I need to stay here for as long as I need to stay here, and so I’ve decided to sell you my half of the company.”

  Erin didn’t expect the tears that puddled in her throat and choked her as she spoke those last words.

  Sharlene seemed as surprised at Erin’s statement as Erin had been when Sharlene said she had met with an attorney.

  “So . . .” Sharlene didn’t seem to know where to go next.

  “So I agree to the terms in the e-mail you sent earlier. You can have the papers prepared, and I’ll sign them.” Erin was trying hard to keep her voice steady. “Again, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what’s fair to you, and that’s what’s most important to me at this point.”

  The last few minutes of their conversation were awkward and felt like trying to offer a hug to a person who doesn’t like to be touched. This was a far cry from their easygoing friendship all the way through their business partnership.

  After Erin hung up, she picked up her cup of tea and sipped the cooled comfort in three big gulps. It was done. Over. For now, this was her focus. This place. This time. This opportunity to be there for her dad. Mike understood and agreed. In the grand scheme of life this was what mattered.

  Erin called her brother again and left another carefully worded message on his voice mail. He returned her call the next day when she was picking up some audiobooks in a bookstore located in the next town up the coast from Moss Cove.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner,” Tony said. “I was camping, and the phone service isn’t reliable where I was.”

  “Were you able to listen to my messages?”

  “Yeah, how is he?”

  Erin found a corner of the bookstore where she felt she could talk more freely and proceeded to give Tony her evaluation. She concluded by saying, “So I think you should come. You shouldn’t wait too long.”

  She could hear her brother’s long, low huff of air into the phone. “Okay.” He seemed resolved. “I’ll figure it out. You’re right. I need to come.”

  “Let me know your plans once you make them.”

  “I will. And, Erin? Do me a favor and don’t tell him I’m coming. At least not yet. If you’re saying his emotional reactions are immediate and spontaneous, I don’t want him thinking for a long time about my coming. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes. I’ll wait until you tell me what to say and when to say it.”

  “You’re turning out to be a lot like Mom. Did you know that?”

  Erin felt her heart swell. “Thanks for saying that, Tony.”

  “It’s true. She was always the peacemaker. Now you are.”

  Erin wasn’t sure she should be called a peacemaker. Her brother didn’t know the secret thoughts she harbored toward Delores.

  On her way back to the cottage, Erin pulled off at a turnout for a state beach that had caught her attention each time she had driven that way. The afternoon was sunny and windy. She didn’t think it would be a problem if she stayed out a little longer.

  The parking area had only a few open spots. Erin found one, got out, and followed the trail through a glen of tall, thin-trunked trees. The trail brought her to a wide beach. The sand was a light gray shade, which didn’t surprise her. The surprise was in the astounding rock formations that rose from the sea near the shore. They were stunning in their rugged simplicity. In the same way that an expert gardener would take delight in shaping animals from large bushes, it appeared as if God had taken delight in shaping forms out of rock and leaving them for the wind and waves to reshape.

  As far as spending an afternoon on the beach, the visitors there were doing the same sorts of things vacationers everywhere at a beach would do. Families were eating picnic lunches, couples in beach chairs were reading and napping, children were building sand castles.

  The difference between this beach and the ones she had frequented at home was that so few people were here. More important, most of them were wearing sweatshirts. The wind was at work along this pristine stretch of coastline. Three people were flying huge kites.

  Erin walked down toward the firm sand along the shoreline. She slipped off her shoes and let the stunning cold of the sand and water invigorate her feet. With her eyes focused on one of the huge rock formations to the south, she walked, feeling the salty air fill her lungs.

  For a long stretch of the beach she walked and walked. She thought about her brother’s comment regarding her being a peacemaker. Erin knew that deep inside she had built up a case against Delores, and toward that woman she felt absolutely no peace.

  Worse than that, she had let her feelings of hurt and betrayal grow ever since her phone conversation with Sharlene. It wouldn’t have been so painful, she decided, if Sharlene hadn’t called in a lawyer. Erin was prepared to peacefully hand over the business; yet Sharlene was making preparations to move in and legally take the business.

  What hurt the most was that Erin knew she had lost her closest friend. Their friendshi
p couldn’t go on with this separation that now stood between them.

  With her frustration rising to the surface, Erin did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She jogged. Just a short distance was all she had planned to run. But then her lungs seemed to fall into a steady pace with her feet, and she kept going, feeling the stretch in her long legs and welcoming the endorphins that the exercise released into her system.

  Erin thought about how her father used to jog all the time. She had joined him off and on for a few years when she was in high school. She would rise at 6:00 A.M. with her dad and jog around the neighborhood. Erin didn’t like running, but she craved her father’s attention.

  Knowing her limits, Erin stopped jogging and caught her breath as she continued walking in the sand, holding her shoes and filling her lungs with the brisk air. She reached down and picked up a small shell in the sand. It was a mussel, opened yet still hinged together so that it took on the shape of an ebony butterfly.

  She trotted back to the parking lot, feeling the bottoms of her feet being massaged by the sand. It occurred to her that many women she knew would give anything to step out of their routines and come away to the wild Oregon coast where they could walk along the beach like this and take the time to reflect on their lives. When she put this extended sabbatical into that context, it seemed like an unwanted gift in the midst of a dark time.

  Erin returned to the car with sand still clinging to her toes and thought of a verse she had read that morning.

  “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by name.”

  Erin got in the warm car and stared out the windshield at the vast blue sky streaked by thin, pale clouds. She tried to imagine what it would be like to hear God call her by name. It made her wonder what happens when a soul steps into that invisible realm the moment after death. What did her mother see? Did she hear God call her by name?

  Starting the car and pulling back out onto the main highway, Erin realized that her normal life didn’t contain space for her to contemplate those sorts of things. Everything had slowed down for her and had been sifted to the essentials. She liked having this sort of room in her thoughts.

  Every evening after Marge went off duty, Erin had been reading aloud to her dad. She was reading through the Psalms, which he liked. That evening was especially chilly so, before she started to read, she put two logs in the stove and made herself some cocoa.

  Her dad sniffed the air, doing his Smokey the Bear routine, as she settled onto the couch. “You can smell my cocoa, can’t you?”

  “Yaaaa.”

  She tilted her head and gave a feeble apology. “I hope it’s not torturing you for me to drink this.”

  He looked at her and sighed.

  “Does this bother you? To see people eat in front of you? I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

  He had become pretty expressive with his big blue eyes. The way he looked at her with the crinkled lines extending from his left eye, Erin knew she wasn’t bothering him.

  “You’re glad I’m here, aren’t you?”

  “Yaaaa.”

  “I’m glad I’m here, too. I’ve been going so hard and so fast for the last few years I haven’t had time to just think, you know?”

  His eyebrow lifted, expressing his interest.

  “I mean, I can’t tell you the last time I read an entire book. And in only a few nights we have read through almost the entire book of Psalms. When was the last time either of us did that?” She reached over and gave her dad’s foot a playful wrangle.

  “Your foot is cold.”

  Erin popped up and went to the bedroom dresser. She opened the top drawer and saw a file folder tucked under the neatly rolled-up socks. Taking the socks and the mysterious file with her back to the living room she asked, “Do you mind if I open this?”

  He looked at it as if not able to place what it was.

  “It was in the bottom of your sock drawer. Are these some important papers? Something personal, maybe? I won’t open it if you don’t want me to.”

  He motioned for her to go ahead. Erin put the socks on his feet and placed the file on her dad’s lap so they could open it together. She turned back the top flap and saw a few notes in her dad’s handwriting.

  “Do you don’t know what these are?”

  “Naaaaa.”

  Erin pulled out an old, faded Valentine’s Day card. On the inside in her dad’s handwriting was a little jingle she had forgotten all about. As soon as she saw it she remembered the way her dad used to recite the poem to her mother.

  “Do you remember this, Dad?” Erin read it to him.

  Her smile is as wide as the ocean,

  She lives in the cottage by the sea,

  She’s the wife of Jack O’Riley,

  So give her a kiss for me.

  He responded with a short sigh.

  “That never made sense to me, Dad. Who did you expect to kiss your wife?”

  He pointed to the ceiling.

  “The sky? No? The sunshine? The rain? The rain is supposed to kiss her?”

  “Naaa.” He pointed again.

  “Heaven? God?”

  He nudged her guessing forward with his eyebrow raised. She knew she was on the right trail.

  “Oh! Angels. Is that it? Is it angels?”

  He winked his left eye.

  Erin remembered the mention of angels in other Irish blessings. After all these years, the jingle finally made sense. “You’re saying that the angels should give her a kiss for you simply because she’s your wife.”

  The look of delight on his face was grand. The two of them never had communicated this well when he had a voice and a full vocabulary at his bidding.

  Erin laughed. “So all along you were asking the angels to give Mom a kiss. I never got that. I do remember when you used to quote this to her. She laughed every time. You would put on that brash Irish accent of yours and come across as Mr. Smooth, that’s what you were.”

  He tried to laugh but started to cough instead.

  Once she got him cleared out and settled down again, he had a great look of contentment as she went through the file and read the rest of the letters to him. The tender part of it all was that either Erin’s mom or her dad had saved the letters all those years. The odd part was that Delores must have seen these papers. How did she feel about all this? Had Delores decided to leave Jack alone with his memories of Faith here in his cottage by the sea?

  Looking at her dad she said, “People are complicated, aren’t they? Life is pretty unpredictable, don’t you think?”

  He raised his eyebrow in agreement and gave a somber nod.

  The rest of the week continued at the same pace. Marge arrived at seven thirty each morning; Erin found time for a walk into town or along the beach in between laundry, phone calls to insurance companies, and going through boxes in the garage. Sylvia now stopped by every other afternoon at three thirty, and Erin read to her dad each evening. For the time being, this was her life, and she was okay with that. All feelings about Sharlene and the loss of The Happiest Day were set aside. She hadn’t received the official documents yet from Sharlene for her to sign over her part of the business. Sharlene had stopped forwarding business e-mails to Erin, and Erin had no brides-to-be to call.

  She felt as if she had faded into that same blue-gray space between the sky and the sea where she had imagined her father went when he tried to remember the past. The past was a blur. The future uncertain. For now, this was all there was, and it wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was strangely serene.

  16

  Deep peace of the running waves to you.

  Deep peace of the flowing air to you.

  Deep peace of the smiling stars to you.

  Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

  Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you.

  Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.

  The next day Erin d
rove to the nearby state park. She decided that morning that she needed to go for a walk and use the time to think, pray, and listen.

  The listening part of her life seemed to be the biggest surprise since arriving in Moss Cove. It was quieter there than at home without the city noises like cars and leaf blowers. Yet in the cove the sounds of nature—of the bigger world—were with her whenever she went outside. Sounds of the wind in the trees, the seagulls, and the constant ocean with its changing moods made their presence known.

  Erin now could recognize the waves’ varying sounds. She knew, just by listening to the intensity of the waves’ roar through the open kitchen window, when they were crashing against the rocks and sending a spindrift into the air. She also knew when the sea was at rest, simply breathing in and out, sending the waves rolling to the shore and then curling them back.

  Today the sea was feisty. With a curled-up fist, it hurled the whitecapped waves onto the shore. The salty avengers tumbled far up on the sand before receding in haste and preparing for their next pitch.

  Erin kept a fast pace as she walked beside the agitated ocean. This place of walking, listening, thinking, and praying felt familiar. Walking beside the sea on a day like this was like sitting beside her father on one of his agitated nights. The ferocious breathing in followed by the rumbling exhale that rattled the deep didn’t frighten her. She had been listening to those sounds long enough to know they signaled life grappling to do what it was created to do—breathe.

  Erin returned to the car with sand in her hair. A gust of ocean breath had picked up the tiny grains and tossed them at her as she trounced along the shore. She closed the car door against the wind and inhaled the warmth the sun had created for her without the wind’s opposition.