The Cottage at Glass Beach

by Heather Barbieri

  “Intrigued, are you?” She turned to him, her face softening. His presence had an immediate calming effect. “You may have passed some of the wreckage on your way in, the night you first arrived. There aren’t many sailors who manage to make it to shore in conditions like that.” Her eyes clouded again, perhaps thinking of Jamie, of her husband, and their own fateful meeting with the rocks.

  “I’m counting my blessings, that’s for sure.”

  “How many were lost?” Annie asked.

  “Too many to count. Their ghosts are rumored to hover over the water on winter nights when the mist is thick and swirling.”

  “I told you,” Ella said to her sister.

  “I’m glad it’s not winter.” Annie shivered.

  “Oh, they mean no harm, most of them, lost souls that they are,” Maire assured her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ella told Annie. “We won’t be here that long anyway. We’re only staying for the summer.”

  “For the summer.” Maire gave them a searching look before continuing. “Whalers, shrimpers, passenger ships veering off course, so many types of men and vessels, have gone down out there—a woman, Molly Gerrin, too. She captained her husband’s ship when he was swept overboard. Sailed for ten years in the late 1800s, until she was taken herself, the mast of her ship, like the others, at the bottom of Solomon’s Rift.”

  “Solomon’s Rift?” Annie repeated the words, scooting closer.

  “That’s what they call the undersea canyon where the first recorded ship went down. Named for the fact that only King Solomon can decide who will survive, separating the living from the dead.”

  The kettle whistled, a long hard blast. Nora rose to take it off the burner, Owen following along behind.

  “Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what to do.” Nora took a plate down from the shelf. She arranged shortbread on one side, tea cakes on the other. “She seems fine now, but—”

  “She fainted?”

  “I guess so. We found her in the garden. She said she was only out for a moment. That she sometimes gets lightheaded, because of her diabetes. She has type two, apparently. I wish she’d see her doctor. I’m not sure how much to say.”

  “Your being here is enough.”

  “Is it?”

  “Think if she’d been on her own. Better keep an eye on her, in case.”

  “Yes.” Nora paused. “About the other day—”

  “It’s fine. I understand.”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

  “You don’t have to explain. You’re their mother. A good mother. Anyone can see that.”

  She bit her lip. “I’m trying to be.”

  He studied her hands, the gold rings encircling her finger, skin pale beneath the bands: the diamond solitaire, the plain wedding band.

  She curled her fingers inward.

  “Is he coming?” he asked.

  She stared out the window at the orchard, with its fruiting trees, their gnarled, grasping branches. “I came here to get away from him.”

  “And have you?”

  “I’m beginning to think we can never fully escape the past.”

  “Still looking for answers?”

  “How can I stop? I was left behind. First by my mother, now by my husband. It’s not a good feeling. . . . And you?”

  “It might be easier if I don’t remember everything. I’m content here. Maire needs me. Maybe you do too.”

  She didn’t reply. She rested her hands on the counter, near his.

  “Mom?” Ella said behind her, not so much inquiring as commanding. To come out of that room, away from him.

  Nora picked up the tray, its pot of tea and floral, gold-rimmed cups rattling in an effort to remain upright as she returned to her aunt and children and the safer realm of fireside conversation, where there was no danger of lines being crossed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maire opened the churchyard gate of St. Mary’s by the Sea. She’d walked there, a pleasant stroll through the woods and meadows by one of the island’s many footpaths. She liked walking. It helped her think.

  The white church with its simple spire was small, more of a chapel really, with room for a mere two hundred and fifty congregants, if they squeezed close together, though fewer attended now, given the decline in the local population. The church door was cracked open. Votive candles flickered within. She might light one and make a petition. Every little bit helped.

  There was a single stained-glass window above the altar. The others were plain, long and narrow, to let in the light. The benches were worn, the kneelers too, from the countless parishioners who had worshipped there. No tower, only a bell in the yard that Father Ray or one of the children rang before mass Sunday morning. A plaque was embedded in the wall to the left of the main door. “Est. 1855,” it read. The building had withstood many a gale and harsh winter, a testament to the strength of their faith, the more devout among them might have said.

  Father Ray’s motorcycle was parked out front. A vintage Harley, no less. It made Maire happy to see him riding around the island, a leather jacket over his blacks, white collar around his neck, a smile on his face, a pair of old-fashioned German goggles shielding his eyes. Not today. Today, she found him planting cucumbers in the church garden. (He gave the overflow to parishioners in need, bags of produce and flowers at a roadside stand at the entrance for Friday pickups, no questions asked.) Maire often helped with the harvesting and packaging. She and Father Ray shared a love of gardening and swapped tips about the best means to repel pests (“Even some of God’s creatures need a blast from the hose now and then,” he said, referring to the rather persistent aphids that had taken too much of an interest in the zucchini) and methods to encourage heat-loving plants to grow in cool climates. He wore a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee and a Notre Dame sweatshirt (his nephew played football there) that afternoon, which only accentuated his powerful build (he had more of a belly now that he had entered his sixties), along with a pair of rubber boots and a canvas fisherman’s hat, both of which worked equally well for jigging for squid from the pier or mucking about in the yard.

  “How are you today, Maire?” he asked, getting to his feet. He took off his work gloves, tucking them under his arm, so that he could shake her hand. She was one of his favorite parishioners.

  “I’m well, Father Ray.”

  “How are your guests settling in? A welcome change from the city, I imagine, especially this time of year.”

  “Yes, the heat has been particularly bad,” she agreed. “I suppose you might have heard about my niece’s troubles.”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid it was hard not to.”

  “The coverage has been relentless.”

  “No reporters on Burke’s Island though, unless you count Jonathan Dee.” Dee was the writer and editor of the local newsletter, the Burke’s Island Record, and was, thankfully, visiting his daughter in California that summer, or he almost certainly would have been on the prowl.

  “Not so far. I wish there was something more I could do for her.”

  “I’m sure you’re doing everything you can,” he said. “Is she finding some peace here?”

  “She keeps a tight rein on things. The only time she seems truly relaxed is when she’s in the sea.”

  “The sea reinvents itself with every wave, doesn’t it? Maybe she will too, eventually. We need time to find our way, on our own terms,” he said, adding, “I hear you have another visitor, too.”

  “Yes, Owen. Owen Kavanagh.” She gazed out in the direction of the ocean, biting her lip.

  “Is something wrong?” He sat down on the garden bench and patted the space beside him.

  She sighed and settled next to him. “The wreck has brought back the day I lost Joe and Jamie, just when I was starting to feel as if I were ready to move forward.” So many questions remained: Had the depleted fish stocks caused Joe to take more chances than usual? Had the accident be
en preventable? Had Joe or Jamie made one small miscalculation, one misstep, that set off a catastrophic sequence of events? She’d never know. They’d lost radio contact early on—he’d been meaning to get the antennae fixed—the last conversation they’d had filled with lingering tension and static.

  Father Ray nodded, waiting for her to say more.

  “He wasn’t mine, you know. Jamie. We adopted him.”

  “I didn’t.” Father Ray had taken over the parish when the elderly priest, Father Noonan, passed away ten years before. “He was yours, all the same.”

  “I couldn’t have children,” Maire went on. “The doctors couldn’t pinpoint why. The women in my family had never had fertility problems. There was no history to suggest. . . . We went to Boston, looking for answers”—she’d driven by Patrick and Nora’s house, hoping to catch a glimpse of them, though she didn’t dare ring the bell—“but they didn’t have the technology they do now, not that it would have helped.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it was a judgment, a curse, for my having failed Maeve.”

  “Your sister.”

  “She lost a child, before Nora. And I always felt it was my fault. I was there. I should have—”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. You need to forgive yourself.”

  “I felt Jamie was taken away from me as some sort of karmic retribution.”

  “And now?”

  “And now, with Nora and the girls here, with Owen coming to us, it’s like a second chance.”

  “Life is full of second chances, Maire, you know that.”

  “Yes, but not for me. I’m afraid there won’t be time—”

  “For what? You’re only sixty. You’re still relatively young. There’s plenty of time for new beginnings.”

  She hoped he was right.

  Maire dropped by the cottage on her way home. Alison’s black Capri was parked out front. (The letters had fallen off; Alison’s brother had reattached them to read “Crapi,” a jibe at the car’s unreliable nature.) She was helping test the paint colors they’d purchased at Scanlon’s. At the girls’ urging, Nora had finally opened the cans.

  “Let’s paint the rooms now,” Ella said, pushing a chair away from the wall.

  Nora shook her head. “We need to live with the swatches first. See how they look at different times of day, as the light and weather change.”

  Annie sighed in disappointment. “How long?”

  “A day or two, perhaps more. Don’t worry, we’ll break out the paintbrushes again soon enough.”

  Alison fingered a necklace Nora had been working on. “This is beautiful, Nora. Do you have more?”

  “A few. I’m dabbling.”

  “She made me this too,” Maire said, showing off the eyeglass chain Nora had crafted for her.

  “I’m sure there would be a market for these. I have a friend in New York who works as a stylist. Local girl made good and all that. I could send her some samples, if you’d like.”

  “Mom, your stuff might be in a magazine!” Annie clapped her hands.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Seriously. Keep it in mind,” Alison said, and Nora agreed. She certainly wouldn’t mind having that kind of publicity, something to truly call her own.

  “Are you an artist too?” Annie asked Alison. “You look like an artist.”

  “Yes, what’s in the bag?” Ella gestured toward Alison’s open pack, which overflowed with curious-looking tools.

  “I’m headed to Nell Grady’s after this. She’s an old school friend of mine. She wants a tattoo.”

  “You’re a tattoo artist?” Ella asked. “That’s so cool!”

  “Studied with the best, Paul ‘The Needle’ Foley, in Portakinney. I’ll be taking over his shop in town, once he retires.”

  “Is there enough of a clientele?” Nora asked.

  “Are you kidding? With an island full of fishermen?” Alison looked at Nora, speculatively. “You should get one too. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

  “No, thank you,” Nora demurred. “I’m not really the type.”

  “You don’t have to look like you belong in a carnival. I meant something small and tasteful.”

  “Your mother used to have a wave, right here,” Maire said, touching the inside of her left wrist, “so that wherever she went, the sea would always be with her.”

  “What sort of wave?” Nora asked.

  Maire drew a picture on a piece of scratch paper. “Something like this.”

  “Can we get one?” the girls asked.

  “Maybe when you’re older.”

  They groaned.

  “You’re old enough,” Ella said to Nora. “What’s stopping you?”

  “That’s not the issue—”

  “We could put it on the inside of your wrist, or the base of your spine, where no one would see,” Alison said.

  “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

  “You need to do this, Nora,” Alison insisted. “I’ve been tattooing long enough that I have a sense of these things. C’mon. What do you say? You trust me, don’t you?”

  “It’s not a question of trust.”

  “Does it hurt?” Annie asked, voicing a question Nora probably had herself.

  “For one this simple, not too much.”

  “How about you, Aunt Maire?” Nora asked.

  “I already have one.” She showed them the tiny Celtic cross on the inner arch of her foot. “Alison is very persuasive. I got mine for my sixtieth birthday. Polly put me up to it. She has a grace note behind her ear. Says it’s the only way she can carry a tune. You’ll see it if you look closely. We’re a bunch of subversives here.”

  “Rebels with a cause.” Alison grinned. “You’d better watch out, Nora. Soon, I’ll have a stud in your nose too.”

  “I draw the line there.” Nora laughed.

  In the end, Nora went with the placement on her inner wrist, like her mother, so that she might look at the mark and take courage from it, a reminder that she could do the unexpected, that she could surprise herself.

  Owen was waiting for Maire on the porch of Cliff House, bearing a basket of crabs. “I see you’ve brought dinner again,” she said. “You spoil me. Why don’t you come in and help me cook them up?” She was grateful for the company.

  “Will Nora be here?”

  “Not tonight. They’re dining in.”

  Owen followed Maire into the kitchen. If he was disappointed at Nora’s absence, he didn’t show it. They put the shellfish in a pot of water to boil. Some melted butter mixed with white wine was all they needed for a dipping sauce. A salad of garden greens and slices of the crusty bread she’d baked earlier that week would complete the simple meal.

  “Nora and the girls have taken to the water well,” Owen remarked as he set the smaller table in the kitchen, two places across from each other, as if they’d been dining together for years. “They’ve been swimming nearly every day.”

  “Noticed, have you?” She’d seen the way he looked at Nora.

  “Well, they do live right next door.” He smiled.

  “You’re a strong swimmer. Perhaps you’ll enter the race in August as well. The inhabitants of the point might sweep the categories.”

  “Only if you enter too.”

  “My sister, Maeve, was the swimmer in the family. I could never keep up with her. No one could. There had been talk of Maeve leaving to train on the mainland when she was fourteen, but she didn’t like the thought of being in a pool, of leaving the island. ‘I need the sea,’ she said. My mother wanted her to go. But those were my mother’s dreams, not Maeve’s.” Maire wondered how different their lives would have been if her sister had left.

  She scooped the crabs out of the pot, placed them in a serving bowl, and set them on the table, along with crackers and forks for extracting the meat. She took the seat across from Owen.

  “So swimming runs in the family,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Yes, I suppose it does.” That, and other things. “Yours too?”

  He shrugged. “I guess you could say that.” He didn’t need the utensils. He broke the claws open easily with his hands. She was glad to see he’d recovered his appetite.

  “Should I make more salad?” she asked. She could rarely interest him in fruit or dessert. He didn’t seem to have much of a sweet tooth.

  “No, thank you. You’ve made a feast as it is.”

  “You have to regain your strength. Are you feeling stronger? You weren’t in the best shape when we found you.”

  “I’m getting better, thanks to you. Is there anything more I can do to be of help? I want to be sure I’m doing my share, to compensate for the rent.”

  “I told you. That’s of little consequence. The fishing shack is barely habitable. You’re doing me a favor, keeping the mice away.”

  “It suits my needs.”

  “Which are, apparently, few.”

  “I’m a simple man.”

  “So you are. And for that very reason, your being here is compensation enough.”

  “Really—”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose you could fix up Joe’s boat. I’d been meaning to have it seen to.”

  “The wooden boat at the dock? It must have been a beauty in its day.”

  “It’s been in his family for years. An antique now. Doesn’t have any of the modern conveniences. Joe hadn’t taken it on the water in quite some time—he’d bought a new one for fishing—but he couldn’t let it go. He knew it would be of some value once it was restored. It was to have been his retirement project. Our getaway fund. We thought of cruising to Bermuda, doing some fishing along the way.”

  He reached across the table and touched her hand.

  Tears came to her eyes at the gesture. She dabbed her cheeks with a napkin. “Sorry about the waterworks,” she said with a sad smile.

  “No need.”

  “I miss my boys. I wish I’d hadn’t been upset that morning. I wish they knew how much I loved them.”

  “They knew. I’m sure they did. You’re a kind woman, Maire. The kindest I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m not, really. But I try.”