In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  She doubted the tower would be open, not this time of year, but when Freddie knocked, and then tested the door, she was surprised to hear a voice from inside.

  A small old man sat behind a wooden desk covered with postcards and keepsakes, brochures and books on the history of the light and the history of the Vineyard. The man wore a knit hat, and had dark skin and long gray hair. Thick black-rimmed glasses, magnifying his dark eyes behind them. There was a small green shaded lamp on the desk casting dim light upon the brochures, but other than that the small round room was dark, the only light filtering down from the windows high above.

  The man asked them to shut the door, and held up a bag of butterscotch candy, offering them each one. “It’s too cold out there for me,” he said. “You invite the cold in for too long, and she never wants to leave.”

  “I didn’t even think you would be open,” Diana said. Sam clung to her leg, staring.

  The old man smiled. Remarkably straight white teeth, that Diana imagined had to be dentures. “Sometimes we are,” he said. “And sometimes we ain’t. I ain’t got nothing better to do. You get to be my age, you won’t have nothing better to do either.”

  “How old are you?” Sam asked.

  The old man shifted his eyes slightly to the left. “My mother says that I’m eighty-seven, but I’m not sure I believe her. She likes to tell tall tales. I’m not as old as the lighthouse here, though. That much I know. You see the cliffs out there, little lady?” he asked Sam, his eyes smiling. “You know why they’re red?”

  Samantha shook her head.

  “They are red because a long time ago, before the white people came, Moshup, a giant of the Wampanoag people—some say he was a God, and some say he was a devil with super-great powers—loved to cook whales. He also liked to feed the people, so each day he would wade out into the sea—back then whales used to come close to the shore—and he would grab a whale by the tail and throw it against the cliff. Then he would pull a tree from the ground, and build a fire to roast the whale for supper, and everyone would have a feast. The cliffs are red because of the blood of the whales, and that’s why there are no trees out this way. No big ones at least.”

  “Poor whales,” Samantha said.

  “Maybe,” said the old man, “but the people gotta eat. And if you dug in the clay you would still find coals from the burnt trees, bones from the whales, and sharks’ teeth, too. That’s what they say. Moshup used to use sharks’ teeth to pick his own teeth clean after he was done eating. We still call that beach at the bottom of the cliffs Moshup Beach. Moshup shaped all these islands out here. The Elizabeth Islands, Noman’s Land, Nanucket, and Noepe.”

  “Noepe?” Diana said.

  “The Wampanoag people call this island Noepe. You know what Noepe means?” he asked Samantha. He kept his chin high as he spoke, looking down at Samantha from the bottom corners of his glasses.

  Samantha shook her head.

  “It means ‘in the midst of the sea.’ But nobody much calls it that anymore. They had to build this lighthouse because of all the wrecks down there. There’s a big ridge coming from the bed of the sea out there—they call it the Devil’s Bridge—and boats would smash on it all the time. There was a big one in 1884. A ship called the City of Columbus ran aground out there, and the lightkeeper and a bunch of the Wampanoag people went out in a lifeboat to try and save them, but they were too late, and weren’t able to save too many. A hundred of them drowned.” He nodded. “I still see them sometimes, usually in bad weather, or sometimes close to dusk, out there trying to swim in the waves.”

  “You see them?” Diana asked.

  The old man smiled. “That’s the funny thing about this island. A lot of ghosts. Seems like people never want to leave. A lot of the lightkeepers have said they have seen them over the years.”

  “How long have you been a lightkeeper?” Freddie asked him.

  “Oh, I’m not a lightkeeper. I’m just a tour guy. I sell the books and open the place up. The light is all automated now. They tore the lightkeeper’s house down in 1956, and there hasn’t been a lightkeeper since then. Although, most of them that did work here, I’m willing to bet they’re still here, too.” The old man smiled. “Once a keeper, always a keeper.”

  Diana held Samantha’s hand going up the winding iron staircase, and Freddie followed behind them, keeping an eye on the little girl’s feet in case she tripped. They stopped at the level of the lower platform—Samantha was afraid to climb the narrow ladder into the lens room—and squeezed through the small iron door. The wind had picked up, and Diana almost believed she could hear the tower creaking, shifting, but the view was breathtaking. The cliffs stretching into the distance, the sea breaking on the rocks below. Cold and blue. White breakers rolling to the shore. She rarely made it out to this part of the island, and she had never been up here before. She put her hands on Sam’s shoulders and held her close; there wasn’t much separating them from a drop to the ground. A narrow rail and iron bars, spaced some six to eight inches apart, nothing more.

  Samantha looked left to right, scanning the water, the wind blowing her hair across her face. Diana thought of what the old man had said about the wrecks. The City of Columbus. The surf, the bodies, the rescuers, and the souls. If you focused hard enough you could almost picture it. Maybe he was right. What he said about the island. She thought again of the day on the beach with Ford, the girl on the rocks. But it was crazy to even think of it, she supposed. Crazy.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked Sam.

  “Whales,” she said.

  “I don’t think they come that close to the island anymore,” Diana said. “That was in the old days.”

  “I hope that giant didn’t kill them all,” Samantha said.

  “That’s all you need,” whispered Freddie in Diana’s ear. “Now she’s going to be having nightmares about giants, ghosts, and devils.”

  The little girl turned her head slightly and looked up at him. “No,” she said. “Just devils.”

  12

  Diana had just stepped out of the shower when she once again heard Sam talking in the room next door. It was an overcast Sunday, and Ford was out. Said he was going into town to pick up a few things—maybe a leaf blower at the hardware store on Circuit Avenue, if it didn’t cost too much. That was the biggest problem with living on the island, he said, things cost too much, but worst-case scenario, they at least needed a new rake; the entire backyard was covered in a carpet of leaves from the big oak tree and more blowing in from the cemetery beyond.

  Diana wrapped a towel around her, and stepped quietly over to her doorway, her hair still wet and cold against her bare shoulders. She heard Sam get up and walk across her room, and then the bed creak as she must have sat down upon it.

  “She’s not a little girl,” Sam said.

  Her words were followed by silence.

  “Oh. Well, maybe a long, long time ago, but she’s not anymore. She’s my Mummy’s age. She’s very nice.”

  Silence again.

  “She bought me a Malibu Barbie Beach House once for Christmas, and she took me to see Disney on Ice once for my birthday. She’s pretty. Her hair is long.”

  Diana stepped closer. Shivered a little. There was a draft coming in from somewhere.

  “Umm … it’s still that color,” Sam said. “I think. I haven’t seen her in a couple little while. Mummy says she is coming down for Thanksgiving. Maybe we can get new dresses for Claudia and Sabrina.” Silence. “Ummm … no. I don’t know her. Mummy says she used to live in this house, and she was a very old lady. My grandma is an old lady, but not wicked old. She isn’t covered with seven thousand hundred wrinkles and she doesn’t walk with a cane. And her hair isn’t white.”

  Diana inched her way closer to Sam’s door. She felt a chill again.

  “My grandma? Sometimes she was nice, but sometimes she would yell a lot, and then she would slam a pot down on the stove and scream, ‘I’m sick of this shit!’ And then after
she did that, she would have to go take some headache medicine and lie down on the couch while my grandpa watched the news in the other room. And then it started to snow, so he went outside to shovel. Daddy yells a lot, too. Especially if he needs a beer.”

  Silence.

  “No,” Sam said. “I like him sometimes.”

  Diana peeked in the room. Sam was on her knees in the middle of the floor, the white-and-pink braided oval rug. Surrounded by the dolls. Two in her small rocking chair, and two more at her small play tea table in the corner of the room. A fifth on the floor beside her. The blonde in the red velvet dress. The only one missing was the doll all dressed in black, the doll in mourning. Claudia. Sam picked up the blonde and began to brush her hair.

  “I used to like him more when he wasn’t always grouchy.” She looked up at the bed. “Do you like him?”

  Diana poked her head in the door. “Hi, Angel.”

  Sam turned her gaze toward her. “Hi, Mummy.”

  Diana looked around the room. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Well, we were having a tea party.”

  “I guess. I hope the tea wasn’t too hot.”

  “We put it in the freezer to cool it down.”

  Diana stepped into the room. The draft came again. It was even colder in here than out in the hall. She walked over and checked the windows. Ran her hand around the perimeter. Felt nothing, but she pushed her hand against the window and it rattled a little. They would need to be replaced within the next few years, she thought.

  “It’s chilly in here, honey.” She turned back around. Sam now had the doll she was holding quietly talking to one in the chair, her voice barely whisper.

  “Sam honey,” Diana said. “What do you think Daddy will say if he comes home and finds you with all these ladies upstairs?”

  Sam looked up. “It will be … okay, Mummy.” She put the blonde in an empty chair at the table. “It will be … all right.”

  “Sam …”

  “Claudia is downstairs on the lookout. She’s going to let us know when Daddy gets home.”

  “But, Sam, I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but you know how Daddy gets when you play with his dolls.”

  Sam shook her head. “The dolls don’t belong to Daddy, Mummy.”

  Diana felt the chill again. She wrapped her arms tight around her, hands on her shoulders. “Well, who do they belong to, then?”

  “Cassie.”

  13

  Maybe nothing more would have happened with Ford if she hadn’t invited Norman and Cybil down for Thanksgiving. Maybe, she thought, but in her heart she knew it wasn’t true. It had been building—in both Ford and in the house—and it was coming one way or the other.

  Ford had worked the night before, and slept throughout the morning as Diana prepared the food. She had brined the turkey for two days prior, under the advice of her brother Phillip, and she had also made twice-baked potatoes along with butternut squash lasagna. A honey baked ham. Asparagus and goat cheese. Stuffing, and corn. Cranberry sauce, shrimp cocktail. An apple pie, and a chocolate torte for dessert. Diana had opened a bottle of wine while she cooked—a Sebastiani Cabernet—and Samantha helped her in the kitchen, frosting some cupcakes. Diana had dressed her in a long, festive dress, and her hair done up with yellow ribbons. Cybil and Norman were staying at a B&B down near Ocean Park, and Sam was happy when she heard they were coming. Cybil was always nice, she said, and usually brought her presents, and Norman, sometimes gave her money. Samantha had kept her money in a pink elephant piggy bank for the past two years, but the elephant was gone now, she said. It was missing. Or maybe someone had stolen it. Or maybe Daddy had taken it because her room was a mess, she said to Diana. He went over the edge when her room was a mess, and once, last year he had filled three bags with her toys and thrown them in the trash. Then later that night after he had gone to work, Diana had taken her outside and gone through the bags, letting her keep a few things she really wanted, and hiding the rest in Tupperware bins in the cellar.

  “You can’t keep everything, or he’ll know. Then we’ll both be in trouble. But you need to try and keep the room clean.”

  “But if the room’s not clean,” Samantha said, “he might not notice what we pulled from the trash.”

  And her room was a mess now, so maybe the elephant was still in there somewhere, Diana figured. Ford had given her the piggy bank last year—he usually wouldn’t throw out anything he gave her himself—with a five-dollar bill for her birthday, saying he wanted her to learn to appreciate money. To save. But the piggy bank wasn’t the only thing to go missing lately. After the shirt, there had a been a wristwatch with a built-in stop watch that Diana liked to use when she went for a run, and there had been an expensive corkscrew from the kitchen, a picture of Diana and her father—taken when she was in kindergarten—that she kept on the mantle, and even a pair of pajama bottoms that Ford sometimes wore to bed. Along with the James Taylor biography; he had flipped his lid when the book went missing.

  Now Samantha licked the frosting from the butter knife. “I think a robber might have come in and taken it.”

  “The piggy bank?” Diana asked. She finished kneading the top of the pie crust, and slipped it in between two sheets of wax paper. Preparing to roll it flat.

  “Yeah,” Samantha said. “If he climbed up onto the outdoor shower, he could jump up and grab hold of the balcony outside of you and Daddy’s room, and then climb in through the window. And then if I was asleep I would probably never hear him. Unless he tripped and fell, and then he would make a lot of noise.”

  “Well, if he tripped and fell, we all would hear him,” Diana said, “especially with all that junk you have all over your floor.”

  “Cassie says she never even had many toys when she was little.” Samantha licked at the knife again. “And that she didn’t even get toys for Christmas.”

  Diana began to roll. “She didn’t, huh?”

  “Yup. She said all they did on Christmas was sit and pray.”

  “You know, I’ve been wondering, honey, just who exactly is this Cassie, anyway?”

  “She’s a lady,” Samantha said.

  “A lady?”

  “Yeah. A lady.”

  “And where did you meet her?”

  “In my room.” Samantha peeled another cupcake wrapper. “She sleeps with me at night.”

  “Sleeps with you?” Diana asked.

  “Yeah,” said Samantha, “at night.”

  “Isn’t Cassie your little stuffed dinosaur?” Diana opened the oven, a blast of heat rising as she did. She squinted, backed her face away, eyed the turkey.

  “She’s Cassie, too. They’re both Cassie. This Cassie is a lot older. She lived here a long time ago.”

  Diana shut the oven. The little girl was frosting another cupcake. Frosting smeared all over the counter.

  “A long time ago?”

  “Yeah.” Samantha nodded, took a bite. “Now she’s dead.”

  Diana felt her heart jump.

  “Dead?” she said, deciding to make light of it. “Well, that’s silly. How can she be dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “But that’s what she told me.”

  Diana just looked at her a moment. Nodded. “Well, tell your friend Cassie she is silly.”

  Diana turned back to the oven. Dead, she thought. It had to be an imaginary friend, of course it did—plenty of little kids had them—but she wondered why Sam had to make her’s dead. Maybe the cemetery, she thought, and their game with inventing lives for the people in the tombs. Maybe she was taking it and running with it, in which case it would be better to ease off, play another game. She asked her how often the lady came in to sleep with her, and Samantha had looked at the ceiling a moment, and then told her again she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And with that Diana hadn’t pushed. Imaginary friend or not, if she pushed it too much, she was afraid she might scare her.

  Cybil brought a box of fudge, two bottles of Pinot noir
and a bottle of sauvignon blanc. She wore a tight black skirt, and low-cut red blouse. Red lipstick. Cybil always looked good, always ready for a night on the town. Samantha had run and jumped into her arms. Cybil pulled her close, kissed both of her cheeks.

  Samantha giggled. “Both cheeks?”

  “That’s how they do it in Italy,” Cybil said, and then she gazed hesitantly up the stairs. “Is Ford still sleeping?”

  “I told him I’d wake him at three,” Diana said. “I figure three would be good.”

  Cybil raised her eyebrows, nodded. As much as Diana liked Cybil, wanted her to come, it always made her nervous. Cybil didn’t always care much what she had to say in front of her brother, and that could set him off. And the last thing Diana wanted to do was set him off, ruin the holiday. She took their coats and hung them in the closet beneath the stairs. There was always a strange smell coming from the closet—something old and not quite right—but she had cleaned it out front to back and had never found anything, couldn’t figure out what it was. But there it was, still there.

  “I can’t believe how dead Circuit Ave is,” said Cybil.

  “It’s a summer island,” Diana said. “Everything is dead this time of year.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Cybil. “I just figured that things would pick up a little with the holidays. I was never down here much in the winter before.”

  Norman went to the cabinet, pulled down some wineglasses and opened the bottle of sauvignon blanc. Norman liked to drink, but it never seemed to affect him adversely. Not in the way it affected Ford. Norman might get silly, and a little more lovey, flirty, and maybe a little obnoxious, but that was usually it. Diana had never seen him get angry with it. Never any rage.

  The parade was still on television, and Samantha was in front of it, opening the first of two presents Cybil had brought for her. Struggling with the ribbon. Cybil knelt down beside her to pull at the knot. First her fingers, then her teeth. Cybil could make anything sexy, it seemed—even pulling at a ribbon with her teeth.