by Naima Coster
“It’s all here,” Ruth said, and caressed her face. “You look happy. Are you happy here?”
“Yes, ma’am. I am. Where’s Bailey?”
“Oh, he went off to give us some time, just the two of us. You’ll see him before I go.”
“I haven’t seen him in—how long?—sixteen years. He’s still a little boy in my mind.”
“He’s a man now. I couldn’t be prouder of the two of you. Come on. Let’s eat.”
Noelle led Ruth to her favorite pub. They had tables on a wooden deck overlooking the water, the boats anchored in the marina, the birds pecking around the boardwalk. They could see, too, the wild horses roaming the sliver of island in the bay, digging for groundwater with their hooves. They ordered quickly so they could spend their time together talking. Noelle ordered the fried shrimp and a green salad, Ruth the blue crab cakes and cheddar grits. They had beers: Ruth’s tasted of peach, Noelle’s of cucumber and ginger.
“Well, it suits you,” Ruth said. “This little town with its craft beer and fancy menus.”
“This is all for the tourists,” Noelle said. “But I do like the breweries. They remind me of living in a big city.”
“You’re a city girl at heart.”
“I’m not sure anymore. I love it here.”
“How could you not?” Ruth waved her hand over the view, the glittering water.
“It’s good for right now. But it’s very white.”
“You’re very white, honey. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”
“Maybe,” Noelle said. “But my child won’t be.”
“You still saving up for that adoption? You should set up a website. Crowdfunding. That’s how Bailey got his farm.”
Ruth had been visiting Bailey at his farm, about ninety miles northwest. When Ruth told Noelle she’d be so close, Noelle had invited her down to lunch. The coast was in the opposite direction of home, and she’d have a longer journey back, but Ruth said she didn’t mind. Now they had these hours together. Noelle was grateful.
When the food arrived, Ruth inquired about the theater, and Noelle filled her in eagerly. She was the manager of the company, which meant more here than it had in her last job because the operation was smaller, the budget infinitesimal. All the staff was part-time except for her. She designed all the flyers for the productions herself, wrote the press releases that went to the local papers. Sometimes, she polished the windows, supervised and made the sets, called the roster of donors. Even before they’d pulled off their first production with Noelle at the helm, she was convinced she’d been right to move out here by herself, to let an apartment above a farmhouse several miles outside downtown. She spent her days in the theater, her nights drinking beers at home from a growler she filled every few days at one of the breweries in town. She fried fish and made chowder, started pickling the vegetables she bought each week at the farmers’ market. She didn’t want to spend money on a car, so she rode her bicycle everywhere. Her legs had grown wider, stronger, her arms freckled and tan. It was routine, and it was solitary, but it was different from the drudgery of Golden Brook. She wasn’t waiting on anyone, not a husband, or a future, or a better version of herself. Her life was little, complete. And when the child came, she would fold him into the life she had already built. She could raise him in her flat, affix a little trailer to her bicycle, bring him with her to the theater, take him kayaking at the beach.
“You can do it on your own,” Ruth said, although Noelle hadn’t asked for the reassurance. “It’s not as bad as people say. It isn’t easy, but hard and bad aren’t the same thing. You know Bailey is the love of my life.”
Noelle nodded, although it hurt her to hear it. She had wanted Ruth to say that she was, too, but she knew she had no right to a wish like that.
“Seeing much of my mother these days?”
“I ran into her and Hank at the mall the other day. I was getting my hair done”—Ruth gestured to her new incandescent blond—“and there she was, shopping for a present for Alma and Diane. They just adopted a dog, she told me, and Lacey was shopping for a collar, a rhinestone collar for her. They named the dog Princess. Can you believe it? Your mother sure has come a long way.”
“Maybe. I can never tell with her.”
Since her surgery, Lacey May had taken to wearing a beautiful auburn wig around town. They were waiting to see if the tumor would grow back, and in the meantime, she had quit working at the store, declaring life was too short to spend it restocking shelves. She sometimes helped Diane at the camp, said she liked being with the dogs because they reminded her of Jenkins. Now, Alma came along to dinners at the house; Lacey May served them coffee and dessert.
“We all learn from our mistakes, Noelle. She won’t do to Alma what she did to Nelson. Honestly, I’m impressed! Alma isn’t just a woman—she’s a different race, too.”
“Sure, but it’s not quite the same.”
Ruth furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, and Noelle decided to push a little more. “It’s not the same as being black.”
Ruth smiled, disbelieving, and shook her head, as if what Noelle had said was absurd, but it wasn’t worth arguing. She was willing to indulge her, her foolish notions. She tucked back into her crab cakes. Noelle figured this was bound to be her life if she stayed tethered to the people she had known since she was a girl. They’d be decent in some ways; they’d astonish her with how they seemed to keep up with the news, the shifting language around identity and race. Once, she’d even overheard Lacey May refer to Alma as a person of color. But they’d be incensed, too, by the encroachments they saw on their world—the stars cast in movie franchises they had formerly adored, the people who had the nerve to go to marches and complain and vote in elections. They would guard everything they had, however little, as if their lives were prizes they’d rightly won that others had no right to claim. They’d never admit how willingly they’d played their parts.
For all the years that Ruth had loved her, and called from time to time, and sent Christmas cards, she hadn’t asked after Nelson much, requested he be put on the line so she could say hello. It was too easy for people to see their interests and disinterests as pure, functions of their desires and personalities. They just didn’t like Nelson much; they just preferred that other candidate for mayor; something about that doctor just didn’t sit right with them. She might not have believed it herself, if not for Nelson. Maybe that was proof she really was white—she had to love him in order to see.
“What about my father? Have you seen him around?”
“Your mother says he’s fine. Goes to visit Diane sometimes, fixes little things for her around the house, and then asks for money.”
“That sounds like him.”
“But he’s got a job for a moving company, so he does long hauls out of state. He’s got an apartment somewhere on the east side. He’s in a program.”
“He’s done programs before.”
“It’s a good thing, according to Lacey May.”
“Those two are going to keep this up forever, aren’t they?”
Ruth shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to know.”
“You’re right,” Noelle said. “Enough about the Venturas and the Gibbses. You’ll be back at the hospital tomorrow. We’ve got to squeeze out the most of your last day of vacation.”
“Vacation?” Ruth rolled her eyes. “Bailey had me sticking my hand in beehives and pulling up weeds.” She huffed and reached for the bill. Noelle didn’t fuss and let her pay.
The pirate museum was along the boardwalk, and Ruth asked if Noelle would mind if she invited Bailey to join them. He’d been infatuated with Blackbeard as a boy and might get a kick out of the relics they’d salvaged from old ships.
“Wasn’t he the one who killed all his wives?”
Ruth slapped her arm and laughed. “Of course not. You’re thinking of Bluebeard.” Ruth explained that when he was a boy, Bailey read storybooks about English pirates and marooned ships, the Graveya
rd of the Atlantic. He would dress up in her beaded necklaces and romp around the house, a miniature marauder. She relayed this history to Noelle all while beaming, as if the boy Bailey were in front of her now. It pleased Noelle to see how much contentment Ruth could still extract from her memories of her son as a boy. She relished it, longed to delight in a child the same way.
They waited for Bailey in front of the museum, and Noelle didn’t recognize him when Ruth first started to wave. He was tall and sunburned, his face nearly all hair: a full beard and mustache, thick sideburns enclosing his cheeks. His dark hair curled beneath his ears. His eyes were blue, and Noelle couldn’t help but remember lyrics from the song she’d listened to that morning. Tus ojos azules, azul que tienen el cielo y el mar. She’d never had a thing for blue eyes, but she couldn’t help but be disquieted by his: they were the color of frozen water.
He kissed his mother before he awkwardly nodded at Noelle, folded her into a stiff hug. He smelled of wood chips, tobacco. He wore the same Clementine Farms T-shirt as his mother, brown work boots, and jeans. He had flecks of silver in his beard, lines at the corners of his eyes that swept up to his temples when he smiled. But he was younger, she remembered, around Margarita’s age: thirty or close to it.
“You’re all grown up,” she said, unsure of how else to greet him.
Bailey smiled at her. “You too.” He ushered his mother inside, away from the sun.
The museum was hokey and dim. Old wooden steering wheels were mounted on the walls, alongside replicas of the bronze mermaids that had adorned the prows of the ships. Nautical maps were displayed in glass cases; a long, battered sail drooped from the ceiling. Ruth pointed to the placards she thought Bailey would find most interesting. He and Noelle trudged behind her, studying each other more than they did the exhibits. When she caught him looking at her, he’d snatch his eyes away, look at his hands, then back up at her, as if for permission to go on staring. She smiled at him, and they ambled on together.
“How’s your sister?” Bailey finally asked.
“Which one?”
“Margarita. The model.”
“Oh, she’s an actress now. She just landed a recurring part on a show for this season. She’s a nurse on a hospital drama.”
“Does my mother know? She’ll get a kick out of that.”
They wandered past a display of a typical sailors’ lunch—a rubber fish, a bowl of cornmeal mush, a plastic goblet filled with plastic rum.
“I used to have a crush on her, you know. I thought she was so beautiful.” Bailey stammered and corrected himself. “You all were.”
Noelle smiled. “I don’t remember that.”
He asked her about the theater, and she told him, although he must have known much more about her than he let on. He didn’t bring up Lacey May’s cancer, or the divorce. She asked about his farm. He raised chickens and bees; eggs and honey and beeswax paid the bills. But he harvested grapes, too, and flowers, the garden vegetables he’d grown as a boy: tomatoes and bell peppers, cucumber and squash.
“Clementine is my ex-wife. When we separated, I bought her out. A buddy and I keep it up now.”
“So, you’re still gardening?” Noelle teased. She asked why they’d separated.
“We stayed together for a while after she got saved and became born-again, but it wasn’t the same after that. She was always picking on me for something—smoking a cigar, drinking too much. And I’m not a drinker—believe me. Finally, she figured divorce was bad but being yoked to an unbeliever was worse.”
“You don’t believe in God?”
“I’m mostly interested in this life,” Bailey said. “It’s enough for me.”
Noelle stared at him, wondered what kind of man he was.
“We got married too fast. I was twenty-two, and just finishing up school. We liked surfing together. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. It was stupid.”
“Prettier than Margarita?”
Bailey put his hand over his heart. “Oh, no. No one, in my book, is prettier than Margarita Ventura, age fourteen.”
They left the museum before long, underwhelmed by the exhibits, but Ruth was electric, satisfied at seeing the two of them together. She flung an arm around each of them and suggested ice cream. Noelle showed them to a parlor, warned them it was mediocre, but they all ordered their cones, and Bailey paid.
“Agribusiness treating you well?” Noelle said, and realized she was flirting.
“You can get the next round,” he said, and they all walked back toward the water.
They sat on a bench facing a strip of marshland where the horses grazed.
“Isn’t this nice?” Ruth said. She seemed nervous, talking to fill the silence, as if she could sense what was between them now. They licked their cones, and eventually threw them away. The ice cream was too fatty, not sweet enough. Ruth muttered it was a pity. Wasted calories, she said. Soon it was time for her bus.
“Well, now you know where to find me,” Noelle said. She pressed Ruth’s body to hers and felt naked in her need for the woman. She admired her, longed for her. She was the mother Noelle had always wanted to have. Sometimes, she wondered whether she should say these things to Ruth, but she assumed she already knew.
“Next time I come and see Bailey, I’ll stop by and see you, too. And you let me know when you’re back in town. I hardly saw you last time. It was criminal.”
“It was a bad time.”
“I know,” Ruth said. She took Noelle’s face in her hands, kissed both her cheeks.
As she was boarding the bus, she pointed firmly at her son.
“Now, you drive Noelle home before you hit the road. I don’t want her cycling back in the dark.”
“I’ll be fine, Ruth. I do it all the time.”
Ruth shook her head, waved her index finger in the air. “You let him drive you home.”
They stood together in the street until the bus disappeared, turning toward the highway. It was dusk, the light over the water transforming to gold.
“It sure is pretty here,” Bailey said. “You’ll probably spend the whole summer in the water.”
“I sure as hell won’t. Don’t you listen to the news? Every year, there’s a shark attack somewhere new. Atlantic Beach, Wrightsville Beach. All up and down the coast, there’s some kid whose lost an arm, a leg. And that’s in the shallows. No thank you.”
“Didn’t you all go to the beach a lot when we were kids?”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
“I can see that,” Bailey said, slitting his eyes against the setting sun. “Let me take you home.”
They picked up Noelle’s bicycle, and Bailey drove them along the sound toward her apartment. He kept looking over the wheel at her, and she felt herself go warm. There weren’t very many single men her age in this town. They were married, or, if they weren’t, there was a sour story as to why not. She didn’t like picking up men in bars, and the ones she found online lived too far away. Noelle didn’t know how else people met each other. She hadn’t dated all of her adult life.
She felt herself growing larger under Bailey’s attention. Her skin expanded, a gentle thrum in her throat, her limbs. She wasn’t surprised when he pulled over, said, “Let’s go for a swim.”
“But I already told you about the sharks.”
“Those are ocean beaches. This is a sound.”
“It’s too cold,” Noelle said.
“We’ll be fine.”
They parked atop a small hill and crawled down through a thick brush of sea lavender. They found a strip of sandy beach, ringed by high grass that gave way to the water, placid and slate blue. Down the bank, a few boats were docked in front of large Gothic Revival houses, their peaks facing the sound. There was no clear entrance to the tiny beach, no one else around. A lone bench stood at the edge of the water.
Bailey stripped down to his underwear, and Noelle followed him. They waded in. It was cold, and Noelle let the water fill her mouth when she san
k under. It had the sweet tang of fresh water mixed with salt.
“I didn’t think you’d come in,” Bailey said. He was treading water, his hair slicked back. “My mother told me you’ve had a rough time. But we can’t stop living. We’ve got to keep on doing things like this.”
Noelle swam toward him. “And why is that?”
“The planet is dying. We’ve got to cherish it all.”
“That’s true,” Noelle said, and she wondered why she didn’t think of it more, the wreckage that was soon to come. She wanted children. She wanted them to live on the earth. Maybe this was another way that she was white: the ease with which she could ignore calamity, focus mainly on what she wanted.
She swam closer to Bailey. His shoulders were beaded with water. A band of fat clouds was blowing in toward the shore.
“You know, they say that’s what gives life meaning. The fact that we’re all going to die,” he said. “I don’t believe that at all. I don’t need death to remind me how good life is. If I had an infinite amount of life, I’d be happy to go on living. Look at all this.”
He swept his hand toward the endless water, the pale pink sky.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and the plainness of his declaration, the truth of it, was so great that Noelle didn’t know how to answer except to say, “Yes, it is.”
They were onshore and giddy, shaking their hands and feet to shuck off the water, the sand caked to their legs, when Noelle heard a chirp from her phone. She was shivering in her underwear as she clicked through her messages and saw one from Diane pronouncing she had better call her back right away. She thought first of her mother, then of her father, all the things that might have gone wrong.
Diane picked up quickly, and Noelle couldn’t help herself. “Well, what is it?” she sputtered.
“I finally did it,” Diane said. “I asked Alma to marry me.”
Noelle felt relief, then the rush of excitement. “This is so wonderful. I’m happy for you.”
“You better think about getting a car. I’m going to be needing lots of help from my maid of honor.”