The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  Owen came up behind her. “Thought I’d lend a hand.”

  “No need.” Being close to him made her fluttery. Polly was playing show tunes at the piano, singing slightly off-key. The voices of Maire and the girls grew distant as they explored the upper regions of the house. “You know the saying, too many cooks in the kitchen.”

  “But you’re not cooking, and I’m an expert at cleanup.” He brandished a tea towel like a matador’s cape.

  “So many hidden talents you have. Thank you for the chairs, by the way. You didn’t have to do that. I’d like to pay you for them.”

  “They’re a gift.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. I thought I’d made that clear. All I did was find you on the rocks and give you a coat that didn’t fit. You’d already saved yourself.”

  “Does it matter how we got here?”

  “No. It’s only—”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing. I want to be sure you understand.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “We’re friends, aren’t we, Nora? Why don’t we leave it at that for now.”

  “If we’re friends, why do I know so little about you?”

  “You said I don’t owe you anything,” he said. “You mean, except an explanation?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do. You have to forgive me, but I’m not used to men washing ashore and hanging around.” She’d meant to keep her tone light, but it didn’t come across that way. She could see that by the way his expression became guarded.

  “You’re used to them leaving?” he asked. Then, “We both have our reasons for being here. I took a hard knock on the head—”

  “Is it that you can’t remember, or that you don’t want to?” she couldn’t help asking. The question had been on her mind. It was the attorney in her, pressing for answers.

  “The same could be asked of you, couldn’t it?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, on the defensive now.

  “Look. I don’t want to argue with you. I’m just trying to get my feet on the ground and repay Maire’s kindness. Is that all right with you?” He’d leaned closer to make his point.

  She stepped back, heart racing, as Ella appeared in the doorway.

  “Mom,” Ella said. “You have to see what we found in the attic.”

  “Coming.” Nora caught the hint of suspicion in her eye and glanced away, the heat rising in her face.

  She told herself Ella didn’t have anything to worry about. There was nothing between her and Owen Kavanagh, nothing at all.

  Owen went into the living room to join Polly, while Ella took charge of Nora. “This way, Mama.” She took Nora’s hand and pulled her upstairs, to the second floor. Maire was waiting for them on the landing. Nora guessed it was her room off to the left, with a view of the ocean, the walls and coverlet echoing the colors of the sky. An old copy of Jane Eyre was on the nightstand.

  “One of my favorite books,” Maire said, following Nora’s gaze.

  “Mine too,” Nora replied.

  “We all dream of finding a Rochester, don’t we?” Maire mused.

  “Mom doesn’t need a Rochester,” Ella said. “She has Daddy.”

  “Of course she does.”

  They passed Jamie’s room down the hall, still carefully preserved, shelves displaying sports trophies, and a stuffed dog lying on the pillow. We were all children once, Nora thought. Filled with innocence and dreams. Higher they went, up a steep, narrow staircase, to the top of the house.

  “Mind the ceiling. It dips low at the entrance, as if it were made for elves,” Maire warned.

  “It’s like a tower room,” Annie remarked.

  “Off with your head,” Ella said.

  “I’ll keep mine, thank you very much,” Annie said primly.

  A bare bulb burned in the center of the long, narrow room, its cord swinging. The attic shelves were filled with boxes and trunks, neatly stacked and labeled, shadows at the edges.

  “Here it is.” Ella gestured toward a chart spread out on the floor in the corner near a small, round window, overlooking the orchard and hives, bathed in evening light, below. There were additional charts stored in tubes in a bin nearby.

  “Where did these come from?” Nora asked. The paper of the chart in question was tattered along the margins and stained the color of tea.

  “They’ve been in the family since the old days,” Maire explained. “This one dates to the first landing. There’s Little Burke and the channel.”

  “Who made them?” Nora asked.

  “There are no signatures. Some of our ancestors were navigators, I guess. I swear, each time I look at these—and I don’t that often—they never look the same to me.”

  “What are these hatch marks?”

  “My da said they were to indicate the seal colonies. Our ancestors tracked their movements, both the local seals, and those that came from the north, fishing for the summer. Apparently, there would be the greatest concentration of fish wherever the seals congregated. It was as if the family had worked out an arrangement with them, or so he said. Whatever the truth was, we did well with the fishing, until my generation. Then something happened. Bad luck or declining fish stocks or global warming—for whatever reason, the bounty lessened. Nothing lasts forever, I suppose.”

  No, Nora thought, it didn’t.

  After they lit sparklers and the few fountains Maire had purchased at a fireworks stand in town—Ella and Annie couldn’t wait until dark to set them off, despite the lack of effect—Nora and the girls walked home in the afterglow of the day, the sun fading into golden haze and dusk shading the waves and hills plum and indigo. The larks chattered to themselves in that quiet time before sleep, and a heron stood motionless on the dock. Annie and Ella scampered ahead, figures in a shadow play, over the hummocked turf, the trees in the orchard bending low, branches laced with lichen and fall-ripening fruit, shiny and green. The evening smelled of wildflowers, grass, and the tang of the ocean, and something underneath, a deeper, unidentifiable note that passed on the breeze. There one minute, gone the next. Her mother’s perfume? The oil Maire said she’d distilled from wild narcissus blooms? Intimations of the past snuck up on her at every turn.

  “Almost time for a story,” Annie said.

  Ella pushed open the cottage door. The shadows seemed deeper than usual—perhaps Maeve’s there too, disappearing around a corner, into the bedroom. Nora readied herself for bed, tracing the lines on her face, the gray strands that seemed to have multiplied at her temples, permanent souvenirs from the past few months, her features sharper. Was this how Malcolm saw her? His other woman a younger version of herself, skin smooth, life unencumbered, enthralling, mysterious. Was it possible to know each other too well in some ways, not well enough in others?

  “Mama!” Annie called.

  Nora roused herself to run a bath for Annie. She turned the tap and water poured from the faucet in a torrent. “Niagara Falls!” Annie exclaimed. “Iguazu!” Ella said from in front of the mirror, where she stood, untangling her hair. She was too old for mother-assisted bathing now, especially in the company of her little sister. She wanted her privacy, and yet she stayed with them, joining in the fun from her perch on the toilet lid, where she’d settled to paint her nails vermilion.

  Annie hopped into the tub, its feet clawed as a beast; what better place to play sea monster, like the one in the fairy tale.

  Nora ignored the discomfort of the hard tiles pressing against her knees and gave herself over to the warmth of the water, the iridescence of a single bubble floating up to the ceiling, the softness of her daughter’s skin, the silkiness of her hair. They helped Annie sculpt the suds into shapes—mountains, wigs and beards and hats—I’m a witch, I’m a shark, I’m a mermaid—their laughter ringing through the house that had been silent for too long, their jubilance echoed by distant crackles and booms.

  “It’s a fireworks show!” Annie cried, running onto the deck in her bath towel
.

  Clusters of sparks and explosions lit up the sky at the docks in Portakinney, launched just high enough to be visible from the point. Ella and Annie broke into cheers.

  “Happy Independence Day, Mama!” Annie said.

  Independence Day. Nora liked the sound of that.

  Chapter Ten

  The wind spoke with a peculiar tone the next day, as if it were playing the calliope of a traveling circus, plaintive and slightly out of tune. The girls listened as they prepared to launch the coracle into the cove. They’d never heard anything quite like it before. Reilly Neale accompanied them, ordering Patch to stay ashore. (He consented with great reluctance, head on paws.) Reilly’s boarding the boat caused some comical moments, his pants rolled up to knobbed knees, the coracle tilting dangerously, first one way, then the other, but in the end he managed to settle into the central position without capsizing them.

  “I see you’re properly outfitted now,” he said.

  “Wait. You don’t have a life jacket,” Annie said, as they floated in the shallows.

  “Never’ve had one. Sink or swim and all that.”

  “We’ll have to get you one before we sail. It’s the rules.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now. I’ll bring one next time. The important thing is you girls have them. Time is of the essence. Listen.” Reilly cocked his head as he and Ella paddled into the center of the cove.

  “It’s only the wind,” Ella said. “And the seals.”

  “A special wind. Only comes once a season, if you’re blessed enough to hear it: the sirens’ song.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a fire engine or an ambulance,” Annie said.

  Ella laughed. “Not that kind.”

  “Mermaids. They’re rumored to visit, in a cave around the bend,” Reilly explained. “Do you want to see it? The tide is right.”

  “Yes!” Annie cried.

  Ella didn’t believe in mermaids. She had her mind on other things. “Was this really our grandmother’s boat?” She trailed her hand in the water. “Do you know what happened to her?”

  Reilly shook his head. “I regret to say my mind was too clouded with drink in those days to make much sense of anything I might have seen or heard. Your grandfather was heartbroken, good man that he was. He bailed me out more than once when I’d gotten myself into a fix, on and off the sea.”

  Yes, their grandfather had hardly talked at all. They’d seen him for Sunday dinners when he was alive, solemn affairs with little sound track but the scrape and clatter of silverware. He kept a candy dish, a lidded tin filled with butterscotches and candy corn, treats their mother refused to buy, and could be persuaded to play marathons of gin rummy on those few occasions they went to stay with him. Ella remembered his sad eyes, his shoulders, hunched against an invisible weight, his patience as he taught her to tally scores, strategize the next move, the tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway marking the hours. There were crucifixes over every bed, a statue of the Virgin Mary, Saint Francis, and gnomes scattered about the garden, where she worked alongside him among the roses and played croquet with a set he’d bought at Mallory’s, her hand in his, cradled gently as a tiny bird, as they left the store.

  “Her disappearance is one of the island’s great mysteries,” Reilly said. “Bear left. Mind the rocks. See the arch? That’s the entrance.”

  Puffins dove into the surf and gulls wheeled, the air filled with warning shrieks and the papery fluttering of wings.

  “It looks like a castle,” Annie said. The rock formations did indeed resemble turrets.

  “So it does. Easy now.” They negotiated a series of outcrops under Reilly’s direction. “You must have done this before,” he said. “You’re naturals.”

  “If Ella’s the captain and I’m the first mate, does that make you the admiral?” Annie asked.

  “I’m whatever you want me to be,” he said, apparently mindful of Ella’s need to occupy the lead position. “Let’s say I’m your personal maritime consultant.”

  They seemed satisfied with the title.

  The dissonant melody intensified as they drew closer.

  “It’s not a pretty song,” Annie said. “But it makes me want to listen. It’s like you can’t not listen. May we go inside?”

  “We could get dashed against the rocks if a surge comes in,” Reilly said. “Best stay here.”

  “In ancient Rome, sirens supposedly drew men to their deaths,” Ella said.

  “A fellow student of history and mythology, I should have known,” Reilly replied. “My favorite subjects at school, especially the Greeks and Romans.”

  Each culture, even each family, had its myths, Ella thought, hers too.

  “Did our grandmother visit the mermaids?” Annie asked. “Did she take the coracle out that last day?”

  The sun glared on the lip of the waves, like a mirror tilted to catch the light. Reilly blinked, spots before his eyes, as there had been that day years before. The whiskey bottle rolling across the uneven floor, level with his one, half-seeing eye. The door open, with a soggy view of the beach, due not to the weather but to all he had imbibed. And through that opening, he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, Maeve and the girl, Nora, paddling beyond the cove, the water smooth as ice, their hair streaming in the wind, curled and shiny as black ribbons. A girl and her mother, on a fair afternoon.

  It wasn’t until later, when Patrick pounded on the door, that he came to the fuzzy realization that something was amiss. “Did you see them? Did you?” Patrick asked, but he couldn’t respond. Patrick shoved him out of the way and sprinted down to the shore, hands and feet tearing at the bank. The beach giving its own account in the scored marks left behind, where Maeve had dragged the coracle into the shallows, and their bare footsteps pressed into the sand, two larger, two smaller, his women, his family, gone.

  Days passed. The coracle eventually returned on its own, sitting on the beach as if awaiting the next passengers, leaving no clue as to where it had been or the fate of its occupants.

  Maeve’s granddaughters were the passengers now, Reilly too. He felt the weight of the past in the surrounding sea, in the curved boards that supported him and the girls. He ran his hand along the gunwales. Coracle. He remembered what his grand-da had told him when he was a boy: “Drop the c, and you have oracle.” This boat, holding secrets, still.

  “Yes,” Reilly told Annie and Ella quietly. “I think she did.”

  “Maybe I’ll write a story about it,” Annie said. “To add to the book of fairy tales.”

  “Go ahead,” Ella said, “if it makes you feel better.”

  They turned back, into the cove. Nora was waiting for them on the beach, arms crossed over her chest, face set. Patch sat nearby with a guilty expression, as if he knew what was coming. He didn’t even bark. The surf raced up the shore before backing away, as if it didn’t dare so much as dampen their mother’s feet, a margin of darker sand separating her from the waves that bore the coracle landward.

  “Uh-oh,” Annie said.

  “That must be your mother,” Reilly said. “She looks like Maeve.”

  “She’s got her mad face on,” Annie said.

  “Didn’t you tell her about the coracle?” Reilly asked. “I thought you had permission.”

  “Not exactly,” Ella admitted.

  “Well, you’re arriving safely. Perhaps that’s a point in our favor.”

  The bottom of the boat scraped against the pebbled shore. The girls jumped out and helped him drag the vessel up the beach. Nora met them halfway, her arms still crossed, fingers whitening at the tips from pressing into her skin. She wore a deep green tank top the same color as the pines near the cottage and a pair of jeans rolled to her calves.

  “Hi, Mom,” Annie said, as if a smile would set everything right.

  “Hi,” Nora said. Her voice was flat, her eyes narrowed. She was clearly attempting—not very successfully—to control her temper.

  “I’m Reilly Neale, Mrs.—” He doffe
d his cap and made a little bow.

  “Cunningham.”

  “Mama, Reilly is our friend,” Annie said. She glanced at her older sister, who shrugged and rolled her eyes.

  “I know your aunt,” Reilly tried again.

  “Funny. She hasn’t mentioned you.”

  “You can ask her—”

  “I will.”

  “I live down the shore a pace. I came upon the girls when I was out walking and gave them a hand with the coracle. I didn’t mean to interfere.”

  “Coracle?” Nora looked more closely at the boat. She’d apparently been so focused on the returning crew that she hadn’t examined it closely. Her face went pale.

  “We spruced it up. I thought they should have a chaperone.”

  “A maritime consultant,” Annie chimed in.

  “We didn’t go far,” Reilly assured her, not that she appeared to be in the mood for assurances. “They wanted to see the mermaid cave.”

  “Next time, consult with me first. I live over there a pace, in the cottage,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  He clapped his hands to Patch, who had been cowering at the sidelines, smart dog that he was, and headed for home, saddened that their excursion had ended on a bad note.

  What were you thinking?” Nora herded the girls up the bank after Reilly had gone, a hand gripping each arm firmly.

  “Ouch, that hurts. You made a red mark on my skin.” Ella pulled away.

  “There’s no mark,” Nora scoffed, though there was, a slight one that gave her pause, though it was already fading. She hadn’t meant to handle her so roughly.

  “You told us to experience the island,” Ella went on. “That’s what we were doing. It’s a cove. We know how to swim. We had life jackets. And besides, Reilly was there.”

  “A man I don’t know.”

  “He remembered you,” Annie said.

  “I don’t remember him. He didn’t have permission to take you anywhere. He gave you the paddles and life jackets too?” Her tone sharpened again. They didn’t understand how worried she’d been, wouldn’t understand, not until if and when they had children of their own.