The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  “No,” Ella said with a curl of her lips. “Owen did.”

  “Owen?” Her jaw tightened.

  “We’re sorry, Mama,” Annie said. “Aren’t we, El?”

  Ella didn’t reply. She pressed her mouth into a stubborn line.

  “You’re only seven and twelve years old,” Nora continued. “I’m responsible for you. Don’t you understand that? If anything were to happen—”

  “But it didn’t. It wouldn’t have,” Annie said.

  “That boat is too old.”

  “It’s lasted all this time. It was your mother’s. Didn’t you recognize it?” Ella asked.

  “Yes, I did.” The sight of it had stunned her, as if she’d been suddenly shoved into a dark room. Her pulse still hadn’t slowed. She opened the door to the cottage and motioned them inside. It was dinnertime, after all. Maire had gone into town that night to play bridge. They were on their own. She checked the stove, the burners heating up, the liquid in the pots simmering. She poured in the pasta, checked the vegetables. She was serving penne with broccoli from Maire’s garden that night, the girls’ favorite. “Get changed,” she said. “Your clothes are wet.”

  “They’ll dry,” Ella said.

  Nora knew Ella didn’t want to stay in her soaked garments; she was being recalcitrant. “Do as I say,” Nora said sharply. She gripped the edge of the counter and took a deep breath.

  The girls retreated to the bedroom, their voices a low murmur of conspiracy united against her, behind the closed door.

  Nora stared at the waves. The waves her daughters had traveled, that she must have traveled, in that very boat. She remembered when Maeve first showed her the coracle. “This will be yours someday,” she said. “A crafty little craft for sailing the sea. A crafty little craft,” Nora had repeated with a child’s love for alliteration, clapping her hands. It had seemed bigger then. Everything seemed bigger. Only the ocean had retained its size, larger than life, enigmatic as ever, holding the key to her mother’s fate. The coracle was hers now, but she had no desire to take it out again. She didn’t want the girls to, either, but they seemed to love it so much it would be difficult to prevent them. Best not to make the boat more intriguing than it already was. She would allow them to explore, but she would keep watch, as she always had.

  Her cell phone buzzed on the countertop. She glanced at the display. Malcolm. “Hello?” she said quietly. She didn’t want the girls to hear, to get their hopes up. There was no reply. “Hello?” Did he have a bad signal? Or was it her, calling to hear the sound of Nora’s voice, curiosity getting the best of her? Nora had done the same thing weeks ago, thinking she might confront the woman, but she’d hung up quickly, her resolve faltering, the voice lingering in her ears. A prep-school voice, girlish, young, or so it seemed. A voice that couldn’t have been more different from Nora’s own.

  The sun slanted in the kitchen window, catching on the diamond of Nora’s engagement ring. A ring Nora continued to wear, because it was hers, because they were still married, she and Malcolm, weren’t they, even if they didn’t live in the same place any longer. The gem cast a spot of light that moved jerkily across the bare wall, as if searching for something lost, something that might still be found.

  The path to the fishing shack was clear enough, though slightly more overgrown than the others that crisscrossed the fields and copses on their part of the island. The grass grew higher here, brushing against her legs, and the trees were more contorted, bearing the brunt of the weather that struck the point. As she drew closer, something tugged at her memory. She had been here before. It was a place her grandfather retreated to, to mend nets, to think. She remembered the bare patch in his beard, where the hair wouldn’t grow because of a hook scar, the rich smell of pipe smoke, the rumbling lilt of his voice as he taught her sailor’s knots—bowlines, angler’s loops, clove hitches, figure eights, sheepshanks, reefs, eye splices, Windsor ties, rolling hitches—twisting simple lines and ropes into elaborate designs, his fingers moving with swift assurance.

  The shack hadn’t changed much, at least outwardly, set as it was into a knoll so that it seemed to emerge from the rock itself, moss and grass growing on the roof, no smoke in the chimney, no light in the windows.

  Her grandfather wasn’t there any longer, her father either, only Owen, the latest resident of that solitary place. Owen, with whom she needed to discuss the matter of the furniture, her daughters and what he had given them, innocuous as it may have seemed at the time.

  She’d meant to knock, to confront him directly, but she became stealthy now that she was close.

  “Looking for me?” He appeared behind her.

  She started guiltily. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I came to give you this.” She presented him with a check for the furniture, Malcolm’s name still printed above hers on the upper left-hand corner. She’d left the amount blank. She would leave it to Owen to decide his worth.

  He didn’t extend his hand to take it. “I’ll tear it up.”

  She supposed he didn’t remember anything about his bank account either, if he even had one. She should have thought of that. “Were the paddles a gift too?”

  “What?”

  “The paddles you gave the girls—for the coracle. You did give them to them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I thought—”

  “You thought wrong. You obviously don’t have children. You don’t understand the dangers—”

  “You didn’t know what they were up to?”

  “No. I didn’t.” She blamed herself for having let her vigilance slip. “I want to make this perfectly clear,” she went on. “I don’t want you giving us anything. I don’t want you—”

  “Okay,” he said, raising his hands. “Okay.” He crumpled the check and tucked it into her palm, pressing her hand in his, then releasing her.

  “Good.” Not trusting herself to say more, she hurried back in the direction she’d come, to the cottage, to her daughters.

  She paused in the meadow, composing herself. A flock of swallows swooped by, banking, darting, inches from her face. One alighted on a reed and trilled at her, an admonishment, perhaps, for shattering the calm of the evening with harsh words. She regretted losing her temper. She regretted many things.

  The door to the cottage opened, and a small figure ran toward her: Annie, her ever-cheerful emissary. “We want to read the next story in the book of fairy tales.”

  “Which one will it be this time?”

  “The story of the shell people,” Annie said as they reached the door. “I peeked.”

  “Sneaky girl.”

  “Hurry! It’s time to turn the page and find out what happens next.”

  Behind them, the light left the sky, a curtain closing on the day, another opening, the coming of night, and the dreams it would bring.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nora woke with a start. She could have sworn someone had spoken to her—a faint echo of her mother’s voice in the air—but the room was still. A shadow slid from the edge of the mirror and across the floor, causing her to sit upright, hands clenching the sheets, but it was only the sun rising higher, the start of another day. The compass needle trembled on the nightstand, as if it too had been moving in the minutes before dawn, charting a course through the waters of memory and dreams. She cupped it in her palm, but it revealed no answers. It could not guide her unless she knew where she wanted to go. She had the sense of the room having been animated before she woke, of things shifting, and yet they appeared to be as they were the night before, years before, for that matter. A mausoleum to her parents’ past lives, a marriage that fell apart. Hers too.

  An eye peered at her through the crack in the door. Nora stifled a shriek.

  “Scared you!” Annie laughed.

  “It’s too early for scaring.” Nora swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched. “You nearly gave me heart failure.”

  “Your heart can’t fail, Mama. It’s too strong.”

  Sometimes s
he wondered if it truly were. She pulled on a sweatshirt.

  “What were you thinking about? You looked like you were remembering something.”

  “Waking up.”

  Annie smiled. “Aunt Maire told us to come over early today, remember? She’s going to move more plants out of the greenhouse and said El and I could help.” She picked up the compass. “Has it told you which way to go?”

  Nora rubbed her eyes. “It’s only a tool, honey. You need to have a destination.”

  “Whatever you say.” She darted out of the room and jumped on Ella’s bed, or so Nora deduced from the squeaking of mattress springs. “Get out of bed, sleepyhead!” she cried.

  Then a thump as Ella most likely threw a pillow at her, with sufficient force to knock her sideways.

  “Ow!”

  “Go away! God, you’re such a pest.”

  Yet within minutes, both girls were dressed and eating cereal at the table. Ella eyed Nora over a spoonful of Cheerios (the same cereal she’d fed them as toddlers; she remembered how they’d pick up each piece with stubby-fingered precision, one at a time; how Malcolm would leave a trail of them along the newly washed floor, to illustrate a reading of Hansel and Gretel, doing all the voices, including the witch’s).

  “When are we going home, Mom?” Ella asked. The girls used various words for her: Mom when they were serious/put upon; Mama when they were wheedling, or doting, or in need of consolation; Mother when they were disdainful or angry, Ella being most likely to employ the last.

  “I told you, El, at the end of the summer.”

  “It’s fun here. I don’t care if we ever go back,” Annie said.

  “What about your friends?” Nora asked.

  “They can come visit. And I’ll make new ones.” She paused. “Besides, Aunt Maire needs us.”

  “She’s done fine without us,” Ella said.

  “How do you know?” Annie asked. “You weren’t here. She must have been lonely.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “He can move here too.”

  Nora didn’t like to hear his name mentioned, but she knew she couldn’t, shouldn’t stop them talking about him. She’d have to make a decision soon, to give Malcolm another chance or strike out on her own. Thinking about it set her on edge. She accidentally tipped a cup of coffee down her front. “Damn it!”

  “Language,” Ella said with an evil smile.

  Nora blotted the stain. She recalled the morning some weeks ago when she’d thrown a cup of coffee at Malcolm, the color bleeding into his pristine white shirt, not dissimilar from this one. She’d drunk too many cups, brewing pot after pot, waiting for his return; she’d been up all night, her nerves screaming with caffeine and fury, because she knew exactly where he’d been. The girls had gone off to school, unaware. She’d covered for him, saying he’d gone to work early.

  “Jesus, Nora!” Malcolm whipped off the shirt and left it wadded up on the kitchen floor. The skin on his chest was red, where the liquid had scalded him. “You burned me.”

  “Now you know how it feels,” she said. It was minor enough, not even third degree. He’d heal. And the shirt? She let it sit. She was damned if she was going to treat it for him.

  “Must have been some strong coffee,” the dry cleaner said, unable to get the stain out, and yet she’d thanked him for the news, because it seemed appropriate somehow. She hung the garment at the front of Malcolm’s other dry cleaning, bagged in smothering plastic, the last batch she picked up before he moved out. That brown blotch a statement of his betrayal, of the stain he’d made on their lives, deepening and spreading.

  This morning’s stain would come out. She slipped off the shirt, to get a better angle, and stood at the sink in her bra.

  “Couldn’t you at least put on a T-shirt or something?” Ella wrinkled her nose.

  “We’re all girls here,” Nora said. “And besides, a bra isn’t that different from a bathing suit top.”

  “Let’s go, Annie-pan. This view of Mom’s love handles is disturbing.”

  “Not nice, El.”

  “Is that what made him leave? Is she prettier than you?” Ella asked, her eyes widening with the shock of what she’d said, giving voice, at last, to something that must have been on her mind for weeks.

  Nora turned, conscious of where her skin had slackened, from childbirth, from the effects of time and gravity. She refused to do Botox or surgery. Let time do its work. She’d earned every wrinkle. She looked good, not perfect. She didn’t have to be. Not for Malcolm. Not for anyone.

  But those words, her daughter’s words . . . She pulled the damp shirt to her chest, droplets of cold water rolling down her stomach.

  “Who?” Annie asked.

  “That woman Dad is with.”

  “Of course she isn’t. Mom is beautiful,” Annie insisted. “She’s ours. Dad’s too. He just has to find his way back.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Ella said, as Nora left the room to find a clean top.

  Whose indeed.

  The girls walked a certain distance ahead, Annie moving between Nora and Ella, negotiating a peace. Nora wanted to shake her eldest daughter. Don’t you realize how much I’ve shielded you, without lying to you? Don’t you realize how hard that is? How I don’t want you to hurt anymore? Don’t you realize that if you went back to Boston, if you lived with him, as you’ve sometimes said you want to do—not that he’d permit it—he’d disappoint you? Because he can be that amazing person we all know him to be, yes, he can, but not for us. Not anymore. But she didn’t. Because then it would be about her, Nora, her pain, her losing control. She couldn’t do that to them. She would take whatever Ella chose to inflict. Deflecting, disciplining when the need arose, absorbing; they just had to ride this out, this long, crashing wave.

  “Mama, look!” Annie cried. Painted lady butterflies clung to her arms. “I’m a fairy queen, like Grandma Maeve.”

  “They probably smell the milk and cereal you didn’t wipe off your face,” Ella said.

  “You’re jealous because they like me best. They don’t like angry people.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Then hold out your hands. Mama, you too.”

  Ella sighed and extended her arms, Nora as well.

  “Don’t move,” Annie whispered.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Ella replied.

  “Shh. You’ll scare them away.”

  They stood motionless, holding their breath, the wind stirring their hair and clothes, the limbs of the trees, the grasses. A butterfly tiptoed over their fingers, then another, and another, wings fluttering, antennae probing.

  Annie twirled in a circle, Nora and Ella with her. “Fly!” she cried. “Up to the sky!”

  And the butterflies rose in a cloud of orange and black, like sparks, like cinders, into the gray pearl clouds.

  Onward they went, into the woods. The pines gave off a sharp green scent, thick, pungent. The shadows were deep for the short length of the copse, before Nora and the girls stepped into the light of the meadow closest to Cliff House, the grass a riot of daisies and lupine.

  “Mom, why is Aunt Maire lying on the ground like that?” called Ella, who’d gone ahead a length or two, as always. “Mom!”

  Nora ran to Maire’s side. Annie began to cry. Ella was shaking. “Get Owen,” Nora said. “Now!”

  They didn’t have to be told twice. They raced down the path.

  “Maire.” Nora listened to Maire’s heart, her breath, checked her pulse. “Maire—”

  Why hadn’t she sent one of the girls to the phone? She couldn’t think straight. She had nearly shouted for them again when Maire opened her eyes, her gaze faraway. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “You’ve come back.”

  “Yes.” Nora held her hand.

  Maire’s grip tightened. “I didn’t mean what I said—”

  What on earth was she talking about? “I’m here now.”

  “I wish I’d—” Maire stared into Nora’s face, and yet it wa
s as if she didn’t see her.

  The way she looked at Nora, the vacancy in her expression, gave her a chill. “It’s all right,” Nora said.

  Maire blinked rapidly. “Nora?”

  Who had Maire thought she was? Maeve?

  “What happened? I—”

  “You must have fainted.”

  “I lost track of time, of where I was for a moment.”

  “Where did you think you were?”

  “A place where the fog never lifts.” Her voice trailed off.

  “What do you mean? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Maire breathed deeply, collecting herself. “It’s only dizziness. A momentary lapse.” She brushed at the dirt on her arms. “Ah, well, no harm done. Not even a scrape.”

  “But you fainted. Don’t you think—”

  “It happens sometimes.” She scoffed. “Darn diabetes.”

  “We should call your doctor anyway.”

  “There’s no need. Really. One of my spells. I’m sorry I gave you a fright. What you must have thought, finding me this way.”

  “You’ve had them before?”

  “It’s no cause for alarm.”

  Nora wasn’t convinced. “At least go in and rest for a while.”

  “I suppose a cup of tea wouldn’t hurt.” She took Nora’s hand.

  Nora felt her sway slightly as she got to her feet, hands shaking. Something had clearly unsettled her, something she wouldn’t talk about. “Yes, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

  The girls and Owen rushed in the door as Nora got Maire settled on the couch and put the kettle on to boil. A smear of dirt on Maire’s arm and a sprig of chickweed in her hair were the only signs left of the incident.

  “I should at least put out some treats. What a poor hostess I am.” Maire started to get up.

  Nora put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” her aunt protested. “I wish you’d stop making such a fuss.”

  Owen took a seat next to Maire and attempted to distract her. “The girls and I were wondering if you could tell us more about the shipwrecks offshore.”