The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  “Aunt Maire?” Nora took her hands, her expression warm yet searching, her two daughters beside her not so different from Maire and Maeve when they were young, Maeve taller, bolder. Nora’s older one too. A feisty thing. Oh, you could see it in her eyes, flint-dark and sparking. She seemed ready to bolt any minute, held only by the force of her mother’s will. And yet the other one had something of Maeve in her too, with her liveliness, her charm.

  Her niece and grandnieces regarded her with curiosity and a palpable mixture of anticipation and uncertainty. She had summoned them, after all. She had started it, opened the wound. She’d imagined this moment for so long, and now that it was here, she didn’t quite know what to do or say.

  “Nora.” She opened her arms, pulled this girl—no, she corrected herself, this woman—close.

  Nora gave Maire an extra hug before introducing her daughters. Her eyes flitted around the room. Did she recall being there? Did she remember sleeping in Maeve’s old room, upstairs, when her parents needed a night to themselves? When her father was reeling after Maeve vanished?

  “Come in by the fire,” Maire said. “I made muffins and tea. I was going to leave them on the doorstep of the cottage, but you beat me to it.”

  Come in by the fire. The same words she’d uttered when she found Nora wandering the beach as a child. Many days she was alone, barefoot, shivering. Did she remember? Maeve diving into the ocean, gallivanting across the island, near or far, Patrick searching for her by boat or car, too many steps behind. Bewildered at first, then angry, and, she supposed, in the end bereft, as Maire herself was after he and Nora went away.

  “I can’t believe we’re here,” Nora said, as her daughters fell on the muffins. She took in the sitting room, the pictures of her ancestors on the mantel, the jars of sea glass, the shells and rocks in a bowl on the coffee table, its top a spiraled mosaic of smooth beach stones.

  “It’s been too long,” Maire agreed. She adjusted a fold of her madras shirt, crisp, rolled to the elbows. Her jeans were cuffed to the ankle, and she’d retied her Keds with twine, because it was handiest when the laces broke.

  “I thought you were gone. That everyone was gone.” Nora’s eyes shone with tears, swiftly blinked away with an apologetic smile.

  “They are. Except me.”

  “My father said—”

  “I know. I wrote, but he—”

  “Yes.”

  There was danger in the half-completed thought. The way the two women could fill in the blanks, sense what was left unsaid.

  “You must find things very changed,” Maire said. “The cottage wasn’t in such rough condition then. Your father spent weeks getting it right. He made the cabinets by hand. I’m not sure they can be salvaged. I’ve been meaning to have a carpenter look at them.”

  Nora clasped her hands in her lap. “It’s so strange, so jumbled in my memory.”

  “I’d meant to fix the place up before you arrived,” Maire said, “but I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t give you more notice. That was thoughtless of me.”

  “No, really, I didn’t mean—,” Maire hastened to assure her.

  “There was so much going on.” That wry smile again.

  “I understand,” Maire said. She wanted to ask Nora more about what had happened in Boston, but now wasn’t the time. She didn’t know her niece well enough, and the children were there, no doubt already far more familiar with the situation than they ought to have been. There would be time enough for that later. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “This is exactly what we need.” Nora spoke with almost too much conviction, as if she had to convince herself she’d made the right decision coming here.

  Ella mouthed the words, As if. That age, so difficult to navigate, even without the present complications.

  “I have an idea. Why don’t we give the cottage a makeover?” Maire proposed. She’d draw Ella in like a fish on a line, a tug here and there, not too much at once. She was good at that. “We could start by picking out new paint colors at the hardware store in the village. The place could use some spiffing up.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Nora said.

  “It needs a going-over anyway. Too many chips and cracks.”

  “Blue!” said Annie. “Like the ocean.”

  “Gray,” Ella said. “Like the clouds.”

  “Gray’s depressing,” Annie said.

  “Exactly.”

  “El,” Nora said, a warning note in her voice.

  “I like gray,” Maire said, taking the diplomatic route. “It’s the color of heaven.”

  “Where the angels are.” Annie moved toward the window. “Come on, El, let’s explore. We haven’t seen this part of the beach.”

  “Good idea,” Nora said before Ella could object.

  Ella sighed to register the inconvenience and accompanied Annie outdoors.

  “I was wondering why you sent this.” Nora took a compass, scarcely the size of a dime, from her pocket. Maire had enclosed it with the letter. “Is it from the family?”

  “Yes. Your great-grandfather brought it over from Ireland. He said it kept him on the right path on his trip halfway around the world, into the unknown,” she said. “I sent it to you, because it’s rightfully yours.”

  “Mine?” She turned the compass over in her hands.

  “You were clutching it in your hand. Your mother must have given it to you to hold.”

  “I don’t understand. When?”

  “When they found you, on the beach at Little Burke. You kept the compass with you constantly after that. You even slept with it. You wouldn’t let it out of your sight. Not until I found it on the nightstand of your room, the morning after your father took you away.”

  “And you held on to it all this time.”

  “I thought you might need it someday.”

  Nora stared at the compass, the needle pointing north, magnetic, not true. It spurred her onward, but to what? This way, it seemed to say, because she still hadn’t arrived at her appointed destination. It was as if she’d been destined to return to Burke’s Island, the details of her past coming together, one piece at a time, with the intricacy of a fisherman’s net, a journey that had only just begun.

  Outside, Annie hopped from stone to stone. The rocks on that part of the shore resembled bowling balls, round and smooth with a few thumb-size holes in the top, regular and deep as if they’d been bored. The locals called that section of the coast the Alley. “Let’s play,” she said, jumping up and down as if her legs were springs.

  “I’m too old to play.” Ella kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering across the beach.

  “No one’s too old to play.”

  “Think again. If you can.”

  “What’s your problem, anyway?” Annie stamped her foot, nearly slipping off her perch. “You go around acting superior, casting aspersions—”

  “ ‘Casting aspersions’—big words for a little girl.”

  “I’m not that little—and you’re not the only one who’s smart. I just don’t make a big deal out of it like you do.”

  Ella smirked. “Score one for you. All right. I’ll play, but I get to choose.”

  “Fine.” Annie ran ahead.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I see something. Over there.” She raced toward a pile of driftwood at the base of the bluff. Annie was a fast runner, the fastest in her class, even faster than the boys. The low tide allowed relatively easy passage. “Look at the birds.” She indicated the colonies of puffins nesting in the outer rocks, bright-beaked and comical. “They could be in a cartoon.”

  “I wouldn’t get too close if I were you,” Ella warned. “You’ll get pecked—or swept out to sea.”

  “There you go, thinking the worst again.” Annie balanced on a log. “I’m Sir Francis Drake—”

  “He killed people, you know.”

  “I’m Christopher Columbus—”

  “Do you have a mul
tiple personality disorder or something?” Ella leaned against a granite boulder, hoping Annie would tire of playing the great explorer, that something truly interesting would happen. She wasn’t holding her breath.

  “Ha!” Annie spotted something tucked among the rocks and driftwood. “Behold: a boat!”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s waiting for us.” She pulled aside the piles of twigs and netting that half concealed the find, heedless of the scratches she sustained in the process.

  “I doubt that very much. It looks like it’s been there a long time, judging from the barnacles on its bow.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a few barnacles. Whales have barnacles. I might too, if we stay here long enough, like the sea people.”

  “Would you stop talking about the sea people? There’s no such thing.”

  “That’s what you think.” Annie climbed inside. The boat wobbled slightly as she settled her weight. “There. I’m on a voyage. I’m the captain.” She held her chin high. “You’re supposed to salute me.”

  Ella got in across from her. “You can’t be the captain. You’re too little. Captains have to be at least twelve.”

  “Who made that rule?”

  “Article three of the Mariner’s Code. Everyone knows that.” Ella thought for a moment. “You can be a cabin boy.”

  “I want to be a captain too. And besides, I’m a girl.”

  “Even if we decided not to honor the code—risking the prospect of being charged with treason—there can’t be two captains. You’ll be the first mate.”

  “All right,” Annie said grudgingly. “Where are we going?”

  “To the end of the earth.” Ella lowered her voice. She relished opportunities to give her little sister a good scare, like the time she’d put on a Halloween mask and hidden in her room in the dark, one of those instances when getting in trouble was well worth the consequences.

  Annie wasn’t deterred this time. “We should go to Little Burke.” She gestured toward the island. “It could be our great adventure.”

  “You’re still thinking you’re Mr. Columbus, aren’t you?”

  “That’s Sir Columbus to you.”

  Ella laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Thinking of you as sir anything.” Ella gazed across the channel. The water seemed calm enough for the journey, but she knew they weren’t ready. “One problem with your idea. No paddles.”

  They heard Nora’s voice in the distance. “Come on, girls,” she called. “We’re going to town.”

  “Oh, joy.” Ella alighted from the craft and brushed the sand from the seat of her shorts.

  “Didn’t you hear? We can get paint—for our room.”

  “Big deal. It will smell bad and poison us with toxins and fumes.”

  “You’re the one who poisons people with fumes.”

  “Ha-ha. You’re so funny, I forgot to laugh.”

  “And paint for the boat.” Annie continued, falling into step beside her. “It doesn’t have a name. We can name it anything we want.”

  “The Ella.”

  “We are not naming it after you. I was the one who found it.”

  The Endeavor.

  The Leaky Kon Tiki.

  The Mermaid.

  The Sea Maiden.

  They retraced their steps, arguing the whole way, Ella looking back over her shoulder, sensing that someone was watching them from behind an opening in the southern rocks.

  Chapter Three

  This is the main village, Portakinney. You must have passed by on your way in,” Maire said as they headed into town in her brown truck, a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. The village buildings, mostly stone, occasionally clapboard, huddled together against the elements. Nets were draped across fences, festooned with colorful floats, drying in the sun, and crab pots and rubber boots sat on front steps.

  “Portapotty, more like it,” Ella said.

  Annie laughed.

  “I wasn’t being funny.” Ella wore her combat boots that day, ready for battle. They were her preferred footwear, along with a pair of black high-top Converses. Nora had done little to discourage her daughter. There was a part of her that secretly reveled in Ella’s challenging the narrow strictures of the dress code at St. Ignatius (St. Iggie’s, they called it), where the girls had finished first and sixth grades, respectively.

  It had been a bumpy few weeks for Ella. She’d withdrawn from friends, locked herself in her room, iPod earbuds blocking external sound. (She kept the device at the ready on the island too, when she felt the need to tune them out.) The scandal hadn’t been quite as hard on Annie. Younger children had a short attention span for such things, if they paid much mind at all, and Annie’s generally sunny disposition kept any negativity at bay. Some of Ella’s friends, unfortunately, distanced themselves from her with a chill factor bordering on arctic—whether from standard mean-girl behavior, change of interest, or parental example—as many of Nora’s acquaintances, even those whom she’d thought close, had done; and Ella’s analytical, reserved nature did little to remedy the situation.

  “Portapotty,” Maire mused. “Some of the local kids call it that. Teenagers often get restless, wanting to see more of the world, be somewhere else. Small towns get too small for them, islands too.”

  Four representatives of the island’s teen population slalomed down a side road on skateboards at breakneck speed, not a helmet or kneepad in sight, narrowly missing the front bumper of the truck. Maire tapped the brake calmly, as if she expected them to be there. Nora caught Ella watching them, particularly two boys whose scruffy good looks, knit hats, and flannel shirts wouldn’t have been out of place in Boston. She guessed them to be about fifteen years old.

  “Saw you look,” Annie said.

  “Shut up,” Ella hissed. Before they’d left Boston, she’d taken to spending long sessions in the bathroom, primping in front of the mirror and practicing the muscle isolations required for raising a single eyebrow.

  Polly Clennon beeped from her postal van, a bright red boxy affair square as a postage stamp (apparently she handled the deliveries as well), as she roared out of town. “She’s a speedy one,” Maire said indulgently. “Never been in an accident though. There’s no one more capable behind the wheel. She could have been a race car driver.” Maire offered a running commentary on the other villagers they passed—a fisherman clomping down the road in waders, a duffel bag in hand (“That’s Duff Creehan, setting out to crew on one of the trawlers,” she said, tapping the horn in greeting); an elderly woman, her bent back echoing the shape of the pines nearest town (“Meera Dooley—she’s nearly ninety-eight now; walks into Portakinney every day”), who offered a wave—and a double take, as she noticed Nora and the girls in the cab. The island didn’t receive a great deal of visitors, being far enough off the tourist trail and somewhat deficient in amenities. Counting the latest birth, the population numbered 201, on a piece of land measuring three miles at its longest point.

  Maire steered down the steep main street, the truck bouncing. “Doesn’t have the smoothest ride,” she apologized, “but it gets us where we need to go. The roads have a lot of character, and it’s useful to have the high clearance.” She pulled into an angled parking space near Scanlon’s Mercantile. “Here we are.”

  The village was quiet except for clangs and shouts at the docks, where fishermen unloaded their catch. Longliners, trawlers, and purse seiners crowded the modest harbor. Their captains and crews, dressed in flannels and T-shirts stained with fish blood, shouted instructions to each other, while petrels, shearwaters, skuas, and terns circled for scraps. No news vans. No cameras. No questions Nora didn’t want to answer.

  A message board outside Scanlon’s bristled with pushpinned announcements and advertisements:

  Spare tires for sale—the automotive variety, not the ones around your waist.

  Don’t miss the Saturday Market. The Docks, Portakinney.


  Bodhrán lessons. Reasonable rates.

  Irish dancing workshop, the week of June 12. Contact Rena McGlone for details.

  A bell jangled as Maire pushed open the door, announcing their arrival. Eighties music played on the sound system, taking Nora back to her youth, when both her hair and her ideas had been big, her face unlined and relatively innocent, her boots and skirts short; not long before she’d met Malcolm in law school and they’d become inseparable. “Lies, lies, lies, yeah,” the Thompson Twins sang.

  “Do you know this one, Mama?” Annie asked.

  Nora nodded. Yes, she did.

  A golden retriever sprawled inside the entry. “That’s Mortimer,” said Maire, as he thumped his tail. “He’s a lazy, friendly fellow, especially if you give him treats or a pat on the head.”

  “Sounds like others I know, animal and human,” Nora said with a smile.

  “Humans are animals,” Ella pointed out.

  Nora stopped just short of rolling her eyes. Ella could be such a know-it-all.

  Mortimer licked Ella’s hand. She squatted down beside him, his head in her lap within seconds. “Can we get a dog, Mom?”

  Nora had seen that coming. “We’re only staying the summer, honey.”

  “I know. I meant, after we get back to Boston.”

  Nora had been avoiding thinking about their eventual return and what exactly it might involve. “We’ll see.”

  “You always say that,” Annie said.

  Nora didn’t feel like discussing the matter further. She selected a flat of red geraniums from the rack of plants by the front door.

  “Your mother used to grow those in the window boxes at the cottage,” Maire said. “She liked the way they brightened up the place.”

  Nora felt a prickling sensation on the nape of her neck. Had she known that?

  “No need to bring them in. Just let Alison or Liam know at the counter, and they’ll add it to the bill.”

  Annie begged for a treat from the candy and toy machines, their prizes encased in plastic capsules, things easily broken and lost, a coin in the slot the price of their release. Please. Please.