In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  Ford’s heart was just beginning to slow. He cut back past the dining room, glanced inside. The long table, and the chandelier above—Diana didn’t like the chandelier, but Ford loved it. The lights were off, but with the light coming in from the windows around the front door, he could see clearly. Four of the six chairs, all high-backed and antique, red velvet cushions, were pulled out.

  With a China Doll sitting on each one.

  Small plastic teacups on the table before them.

  Samantha. Must’ve been fucking with the dolls again. He swallowed his breath. It really put him over the edge. He gave her everything, and all he asked in return was one simple thing. One simple thing, one simple request, and she couldn’t control herself. He knew she was little—he got that—but was it really that fucking hard? She had every toy under the sun, more than she needed, but still, she … had … to … go … and… fuck … with … the … dolls. He felt his blood beginning to boil, both wishing she was home, and glad she was not. He wanted to finish this, clear it up—one more time—needed to snap, but then again it was better she wasn’t here. Give him a little time to compose himself—a little distance—calm down a little. Then he could be reasonable. Explain it clearly, one more time. He didn’t even have to yell.

  Wouldn’t yell.

  And he could show Diana how reasonable he could be.

  He wondered if he should just sell the dolls outright before they were ruined. There were six of them, but only four here now in the dining room. Two with blonde hair, one with jet-black, and one with dark auburn hair; she had a green velvet dress, her hair up under a green hat with a white feather. Empty glass eyes. They all had the empty glass eyes—one of many things that had always unnerved him a little about dolls. One of the blondes wore a red dress, ballroom style, and the other baby blue, white apron, and matching blue bonnet. The black-haired one sat in the chair closest to the mantle, at the side of the table. She had a black dress to match, a black veil, now pushed back over her head, and a small bible clutched in her hands. A doll in mourning. He never would have thought they’d make a doll in mourning, but then again, Victorians were strange about death. They romanticized it somehow, and it was so common back then, an everyday part of life. Both for the old and the young, the weak and strong. Even children. Little kids were always dying. How many children’s headstones had he seen in the cemetery out back? Surmounted with sleeping lambs, or sometimes even a sleeping child—hands folded beneath their heads. All ages. eight years, three years, and sometimes just a matter of months. Ford never liked the graves of children.

  He wondered what the odds were that all his brothers and sisters would have lived to see adulthood if born a century earlier. Probably slim, and probably for the better. Fewer punching bags, less fodder for the old man. Nine of them, and as far as he could tell, he was the only one who wasn’t royally fucked up. Everybody, everywhere, had their issues, but he had always prided himself on staying a step ahead, always within earshot, just around the corner. People couldn’t one-up him. Lord knew enough had tried.

  He didn’t like looking at the dolls, but he couldn’t let Samantha just destroy them. It was getting ridiculous. They were antiques. Worth a lot of money.

  And the house wouldn’t like it.

  What had his aunt said? Something like that. Way back when.

  Ford stepped into the room. Picked the first doll up, wanted to gather them all, and put them back where they belonged in the back parlor, but then thought better of it. He needed to leave them where she had left them. Evidence. Exhibit A, for when he talked to her—“Look—kid, dolls. This is the kid, and these are the dolls, and the kid, you, doesn’t touch the goddamn dolls.”

  He supposed, maybe he was making too big a deal out of it, but they were antiques; he knew that for fact. That was that, and they had to be worth something. And if he were honest with himself, if truth be told, he wouldn’t mind getting rid of them. He was kind of fascinated by them, but he had never really liked them, not even when he was small. His aunt used to move them all about the house, and it seemed that when he visited, each day he would walk into a different room and there they would be. Always staring—at him or one another. They unsettled him for some reason, and it never seemed a stretch to imagine them talking. Especially when his aunt would arrange them on the window seat in the alcove off the back parlor, a clear view of the cemetery beyond, watching the dead. It seemed the perfect place for them, the perfect background. The dolls inside, and the dead beyond. And for that reason, when she put them there, they frightened him all the more.

  “You should sell them,” he remembered suggesting to his aunt. He was seventeen, down for Columbus Day weekend. Raking leaves, and patching a hole in the roof above the upstairs bedroom. It had rained the week before and his aunt had said that water had come in.

  “Sell them?” the old lady had said. “Oh no, I couldn’t sell them. That wouldn’t go over well at all. I would hear about that, and that is for certain. They are as much a part of the house as I am. Maybe more—they’ve been here longer than me.” She had stared at him a moment, a look in her eyes half-smiling, half-measuring. “And the others would not be pleased.”

  The others would not be pleased.

  That’s what she had said.

  His aunt had wispy white hair, and was already crooked by then, walking with a cane. But her eyes were beautiful. Sky blue and always looking amused. He had started coming down on his own in junior high school, taking the bus to the ferry at Woods Hole, and after he would do odd jobs for her, in the house and around the yard, she would always have treats for him. Cookies and candy or soda when he was young, sometimes ordering a pizza, and later, when he was a junior or senior in high school, she would keep a six-pack of beer in the fridge for him. And even back then the house had made him a little uneasy. He would never have admitted it to anyone—he would have sounded like a pussy—but he didn’t like being alone in the house, even alone in some of the rooms, and sometimes he would follow his aunt about, casually, coming into a room after she had already settled in there, pick up the Rubik’s Cube she used to have, or open a beer, pretend to do something, always keeping an eye over his shoulder, his ears open for sounds.

  Whispers.

  Sometimes even back then he swore he could hear whispers.

  And his aunt would read his eyes, see it.

  “Spooking you, are they?” she said.

  “Spooking me?”

  “You get used to it,” she said. “Every house has its history, just like people. We all have our pasts, and you can’t just sweep them away. You just learn to live with them.”

  Ford had tried to smile. “Who is ‘them’?” he asked, but his aunt didn’t answer, or at least she didn’t seem to.

  “I like you, Ford,” she said. “You’re a good boy, and you even have the potential to turn into a fine man, if you don’t give in.”

  “Give in to what?”

  “Life. And your weaknesses—you do have a few. But you can’t let them beat you. Too many of the men in our family have let them beat them. And once that happens, forget it, you’re of no use to anyone. And it is the people around you who end up suffering. Just look at your father. I suppose he may have almost been a good man once, but look at him now. No use to anyone.”

  But Ford was of use to her, and she had made him feel good. Even at sixteen or seventeen, he didn’t mind coming down by himself and spending time with her. Any respite away from his home, away from Big Daddy, would have been a welcome one, but the old lady made him feel needed, and she made him feel loved. With all the kids in the house at home, and the way things were, it was pretty much impossible to feel loved, he always thought, and of course, his mother being a corn husk shell of the woman she once might have been, and Big Daddy being Big Daddy, just made it worse.

  But his aunt, the old lady, was different. It was hard to believe they were all related to her sometimes. Even when he wasn’t on the island, she was always sending him cards. Fiv
e dollars here. Ten. Twenty. And other than birthdays, he was the only one. She loved his brothers and sisters, too, she once told him, but he was special.

  Now he flicked off the light and went to the kitchen. Took out a beer, some butter, two eggs, and an English muffin. He loved beer and eggs. He greased a frying pan with some butter, and then cracked the eggs. The yolk broke on the second egg. He hated it when the yolk broke; Diana broke one nearly every time she cooked him some, and it made him crazy. But he always just bit his tongue. She was lucky he was so good at biting his tongue—a lot of guys wouldn’t be, but she didn’t always understand that. He took out another egg. Perfect. Took a sip from his beer, and then popped the English muffin in the toaster. She wouldn’t be home for at least an hour, he figured, at least an hour. He reached up into the cabinet above the sink and took down the bottle of Jameson. His boss at the PO had given it to him two weeks before—for his birthday—and he still had almost half left. That was pretty good. It was expensive though, and he wanted to make it last, but his nerves were still shot, a little on end. The noises. The footsteps.

  He poured himself a shot, threw it back quick. The whiskey burned in his throat for a moment, and then warmed in his belly. The warmth rushed immediately up through his face, temples, tingling. He took another sip from the bottle, just a small one.

  Ford looked out the back window while he waited for the eggs to finish cooking. A line of cars, pulled over onto the grass, and a crowd of people. Gathering beneath the canopy. It didn’t look like it would rain though; there were a few clouds, but the rest of the sky was a deep blue like it could only be in early to midfall. He could see it like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle through the branches of the enormous oak tree. He wondered who had died. They didn’t’ have many burials out there this late in the year, didn’t have many period anymore. They used to have quite a few, and he and his aunt would watch from the back window, and his aunt would quietly pray.

  Now people were crying, he could tell from here, and there was a woman sitting in a chair before the casket, all dressed in black, her head down. The mother or the wife. Had to be. She reminded him of the doll in the dining room. He wondered what it would be like to be loved that much. Diana loved him, he knew, but not that much. Not enough to understand him. He reached up into the cabinet, and poured himself another shot.

  On his way back upstairs, something caught his eye as he passed the dining room. The light was back on—he could have sworn he shut it off. He stepped inside and reached for the switch, and as he did, he felt a jolt to his heart. The doll that had been sitting closest to the mantle—the doll in mourning—was now sitting in the chair at the head of the table, and the doll that had been there, was flat on her back on the floor beside the chair. And the chair was turned out, facing the door.

  5

  The business with Stephen escalated not long after Diana had introduced Ford to her parents. Diana and Ford had a small Christmas party with her siblings, a few friends, and her cousin Freddie just a few days before Christmas. They served hors d’oeuvres and beer and wine, and after dinner they had a toast of champagne. Ford hung his dartboard in the living room, and he and her brothers played a few games. He was sipping whiskey, but he had been in a good mood from the start of the evening, and she was happy to see him getting along well with her brothers. After the incident with Charlotte the Saturday after Thanksgiving, she had been walking on egg shells leading up to the party, not sure if her brothers would come, and if they did, how it would go between them and Ford.

  Phillip had assured Ford a few weeks back while playing cards that he shouldn’t pay much attention to their mother—“I love her dearly,” he said, “dearly, but she’s a pathological liar and she’s nuts”—and tonight he had been arguing with Ford a little bit about music from the early eighties, drunker than usual and spittle gathering about his lips, but it was good-natured and everything seemed to be going well until Stephen disappeared into their bedroom.

  It was late. Their friends had all gone home, and Freddie, and Diana’s brothers Roger and Eddie, were on the couch playing video games. Samantha was sleeping, and since Ford’s room was farther down the hall than the spare room, farther from the noise, Diana had put her in there. Phillip’s roommate Barry was playing DJ, all eighties new wave, and only Phillip and Ford were left playing darts. Diana had decorated the apartment—with wreaths and lights, tinsel and old-fashioned-looking Thomas Nast Santa Clauses—but Ford had insisted that they wait until Christmas Eve to put up the tree. It was his family’s tradition, he said, to wait until Christmas Eve to put up the tree.

  The coffee table was covered in bottles and cans, and the music was blaring—Men at Work, “Who Can it Be Now?”—when Ford looked around the room, put his drink down on the stereo and disappeared down the hall. Diana barely had a chance to move herself, when she heard voices rising. Mostly Ford’s, and then Stephen saying something, arguing back. And then there was a loud knock against the wall, something falling over, crashing, and the two of them were in the hall, Ford pushing. Stephen tried to take a swing at him, but Ford grabbed him by the front of his shirt and clocked him in the face. Phillip stood frozen, but Eddie and Roger were right on their feet, Freddie not far behind. And then Eddie and Ford were getting into it, both struggling and both exchanging blows, and Diana was screaming.

  Diana had them all out the door less than five minutes later, and Ford collapsed back on the couch, his eye already beginning to swell. He took a shot of whiskey, and was silent, staring at the wall. Sam had awoken and was crying, and when Diana demanded from Ford to know what had happened, all he would say was “He was in our room. I don’t want that maggot in our room.”

  He refused to talk about it over the course of the next few days and on Christmas Eve. Diana and Samantha had gone to her grandmother’s, but Ford had stayed home, refusing to go.

  Diana was home by nine; it never ran any later, and by the time they arrived Ford was loaded.

  He had just finished putting up his tree.

  “I thought you were going to wait for us to decorate,” Diana said, slipping out of her coat. She had figured she would stay here until midnight, let Samantha fall asleep, and then whisk her off home. Maybe come back for a few hours if it looked like Ford was going to be able to stay awake—he had finally started at the post office, and had worked the night shift the night before.

  He turned and flicked his cigarette in the ashtray. A small tin tray he had taken from the pizza place down the street. There was a quart of Jack Daniels out on the coffee table, half gone, but he was using a glass tonight. Water and ice.

  “Can’t wait forever,” he said without looking at her when she commented. “I didn’t know what time you guys planned on showing up. It’s a shame you had to stay over your mother’s so late. If not we could have all decorated it together. That’s what I was hoping. Maybe next year we can all do it together.” He took a step back. “It’s a beautiful tree though, isn’t it? I think I did a good job.”

  It was the next morning as he was cooking breakfast—French toast—that he told her he had to talk to her. He had an apron on, standing at the stove, wearing a starched white shirt with green stripes beneath. His Christmas shirt. Ford had been the first one up, already showered—his hair combed perfect—and dressed by the time even Samantha awoke. He had given Samantha his presents—a Miss Piggy doll, and a framed photograph of the three of them taken outside a haunted house in Salem the previous Halloween—and Samantha had happily opened them, but then looked around the room, a little confused, looking for more.

  “Santa brought the rest to Grandma’s,” Diana said, immediately feeling guilty. She had meant to leave in the middle of the night, to carry the little girl back to her mother’s, but then, after the way Ford had responded to their missing most of Christmas Eve with him, she wasn’t sure what he would do. “You’ll have a lot more there,” she said to Sam

  “Did Santa bring me a stocking?” Samantha asked.

  �
�Sure, he did,” said Diana, “but it’s at Grandma’s. He can’t bring you stockings to two different houses, you silly.”

  “Can we go now?” Samantha asked.

  The smirk waned then, and Ford crouched down beside the little girl. Leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Maybe Mummy can go pick them up for you after breakfast,” Ford said. Diana shot him a look, but he didn’t meet with her eyes.

  “We all can go,” Diana said, but Ford still didn’t look at her.

  After he finished making the French toast, he set Samantha down with a plate in the dining area off the kitchen, orange carpet, and a dusty seventies chandelier hanging low above the table. He covered the toast with syrup and powdered sugar, and then asked Diana to come into the bedroom so he could tell her what he needed to tell her.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, sipping some tomato juice. Diana wondered if there was vodka in it. He patted the bed for her to come sit beside him.

  “I think I’m getting my period,” she said.

  “No. It’s not that.” He reached over and put his hand over hers. Diana could hear the Barney song starting up in the living room. “I love you … You know it’s true …” Samantha loved Barney, and Ford had even gone out and bought several of the video tapes so she could watch while she was visiting. “I need to talk to you about Samantha,” he said.

  Diana’s senses suddenly jumped to alert. “What about her?”

  “I didn’t want to ruin Christmas, and that’s why I was waiting to tell you. But I’m not sure you should take her to your mother’s today.”

  “Well, why not?” Diana asked. “I understand if you don’t want to go. My mother was rude to you last month, and after what happened the other night with Stephen, I don’t blame you. But she’s Samantha’s grandmother, and it’s Christmas.”