Beach Girls

by Luanne Rice

  “Oil? Like the kind that killed the birds?” Nell asked, squinting at her father. He nodded, but with a look in his eyes that told her to drop it. The other adults were saying something about scientists washing the birds with special soap so they could fly safely away, but all Nell could picture was their slick, black, dead bodies in that newspaper photo, and she knew that the adults were just telling a story to make everyone feel better.

  Nell felt worse. How could they think that special soap could make everything okay? Her fingers still smelled like gas. Her eyes teared up to think of birds having such a gross film on their feathers.

  Now, casting a look back over her shoulder, she set off down the beach. Cool, clear sunlight sparked on the cove. The rocky beach was hard to walk on, but she made her way slowly, looking down at her feet for shells. Up ahead were a flock of gulls, pecking at something that had washed up. As Nell approached, the birds wheeled away—her ears rang with their mournful cries.

  Nell could see that whatever they'd been feeding on was dead, lying inert in the rocks. When she got close, she saw that it was a duck, sticky with tar, its side freshly torn open by the gulls. She raised her eyes, saw other ducks with similar markings swimming in the cove. The duck's family, she thought, thinking of Ebby—of how his fellow crows had gathered outside Stevie's house. Not even thinking, she jumped to her feet and began to madly wave her arms—to drive the ducks away.

  “Leave here,” she cried out. “Go away . . . fly!”

  She wanted them to be safe, not get stuck in the oil that had killed the duck that lay at her feet. And as she watched them dance across the water's surface, striving toward flight, their webbed feet slapping the waves, she imagined them lifting her up with them, flying her away—to safety, to love, to Hubbard's Point. Surely her father would have to follow her if she left . . . he would understand how much she needed to go home, back to America, back to her real life.

  “I'll be like you,” she wept to the dead bird. She felt choked, as if she had swallowed a ball of tar, as if her feathers were all stuck together by a substance that wanted to kill her. She felt almost the way she had back in Georgia, right after her mother's death; as if life was unreal, as if she didn't belong with the living anymore.

  She had felt that way until Hubbard's Point, until Stevie. The strange thing was, she knew her father had felt it, too. . . . She wouldn't want her father to know this, but since leaving Stevie and Hubbard's Point, her nightmares had changed.

  This time, it wasn't her mother who was dead: it was her father. He was giving up on all the things he loved—his homeland, his sister, his memories. Even, in Nell's dreams, Stevie. Flying away from Stevie, her father had left something that had made him seem alive again. . . .

  She glanced down the beach—her father was still standing with the others, half-watching her.

  He couldn't imagine, looking at her, that inside she felt as horrible as this oil-blackened bird. Just then, her attention was drawn to some other things caught in the clump of seaweed. A snippet of fishing net, covered with the same oil. A tangle of kelp, a small colony of mussels torn from some rocks, still held together by their silken threads. And a bottle . . .

  Nell reached for it. It was clear plastic, had once held soda. Although most of the label had come off, she recognized the brand. It was American . . . maybe it had floated across the ocean, riding the currents. . . .

  And suddenly, Nell had an idea. She unscrewed the cap, wiped her hands on her jeans, reached for her notebook, and pulled the top of her father's fountain pen off. The gulls were circling overhead. Ignoring them, Nell began to write.

  “Stevie,” she wrote. “We need you. My dad and I. We need you. . . .”

  Tearing the paper from the pad, she rolled it up and edged it into the neck of the bottle. She didn't actually believe that the bottle would make it to Hubbard's Point—or even out of this cove. She couldn't let herself imagine the miracles it would take to get her message all the way from Scotland to Stevie.

  But she thought back to those last minutes with Peggy, when they'd wished, wished, with all their might. . . . A message in a bottle was really just a wish . . . a wish pulled from the air, or from a girl's heart, and written down and set upon the sea. It's just a wish, Nell told herself. That's all it is: just a wish.

  Just a wish . . . if it came true, Nell knew that she and her father would go back to Hubbard's Point; her father would work on Aunt Aida's castle; Stevie would be in their lives; and Stevie would make sure Aunt Madeleine was, too. . . .

  “It's just a wish,” Nell whispered out loud.

  Even so, her heart was pounding—in a way that told her the wish was about to become a hope, which was one step closer to becoming real. Stevie, the non-witch, would understand, and so would Tilly. Nell wound up, stepped into the throw, and with a cry let the plastic bottle sail into the air. The glaring sunlight blinded her, so she couldn't even see where it landed.

  There it was—shielding her eyes with one hand, she saw the bottle bobbing out where the birds had been swimming. Was it heading for America, or back onto the beach? Nell stared at it for a long time, feeling her heart beat in her throat. It seemed to be drifting out . . . she watched it go.

  The gulls screeched louder, trying to drive her away from the ravaged duck. Intent and driven, she found a spot above the tide line and dug a hole in the rocky sand as deep as her arms could reach. Then she walked back and picked up the bird. Putting its body in the hole, she felt a terrible tug in her chest. She slowly rubbed her tarry hands in the sand, trying to get them clean. Burying the bird made her think of how beautiful things died. Her mother. And her father's spirit, her own heart.

  They died, and there was nothing Nell could do about it.

  Except send a message in a bottle, and wish and wish, and ask Stevie for help.

  NELL'S WISH flew like an arrow.

  Stevie woke with a start and a spark, fresh from a dream. In it, the room was filled with blinding light, so bright she could hardly see. Through the glare, a black bird sang in a cage. Somehow, the way mysteries in dreams take on strange, crystal-clear meanings, Stevie knew that she had to open the cage door. When she did, the bird flew out. It landed on the windowsill, and Stevie heard it talking, like a parrot. It said, “If you let me go, you may never see me again. But that depends on you . . . because you have wings, too. You can find me and fight for me.” And then it had flown away.

  Stevie had opened her eyes. She didn't really analyze the dream; she wasn't good at such things. But it had created a powerful feeling inside that she wanted to hold on to. The black bird, the cage, the flying away . . . It might have seemed oppressive, hopeless, but instead, the dream spurred Stevie to get out of bed and go for an early swim.

  The sun was up above the trees, but the day was September-chilly. She dove in, swam out to the raft. Resting there, she placed her hand flat on the surface—where she and Jack had lain. The memory came back to her. She closed her eyes and could almost feel his arms around her. As a young woman, that was all she had ever wanted: to have someone hold her and never let go, to be as much a part of her as her own breath.

  Of course such loves were impossible, could never last. She had proved that to herself three times. It was as if some primal, preverbal Stevie had taken command of her adult heart, demanded the closeness she had only ever really known from her parents.

  But now she was a grown-up. She had fallen in love again, and why bother telling herself it didn't matter? It did. She'd been in despair because they had flown away, and she'd felt powerless to do anything except let them go. The dream was still with her, churning inside like crazy.

  By the time she swam back to the beach, walked up the hill, and rinsed off at the outside shower, she felt the fire inside. The scent of late-summer roses filled the air. She toweled off, ran barefoot into the house. She filled Tilly's bowl, didn't even stop to make herself coffee, and hurried up to her studio.

  When she entered the room, it was like
reentering her dream: the room was blazing with sunlight. The light of Hubbard's Point . . . undimmed, luminous, radiant, gleaming, glistening, glittering, scintillating, shimmering, glowing . . . surrounding her with its brilliance, almost blinding her as she approached her easel.

  Stevie had thrown all Nell's postcards in her bedside drawer. She now got them out, thumbtacked them to the wall beside her easel. There were postcards of Inverness Castle, Loch Ness, a puffin in the Orkney Islands, low mountains ringing a sea loch, a baby seal on a rock in Ladapool, and a flock of geese silhouetted by orange sunset on a bay in the Western Highlands—and the newspaper photo from Jack's letter, of the waterfowl killed by the oil spill.

  Stevie stood by her easel now, pulling on clothes. She dressed in jeans and the Trinity College sweatshirt Jack had worn to the beach movie. Tilly lay on the bed's rumpled white sheets, soaking up the sun, watching her mistress. Staring at the gallery of cards and picture, through the incredible brightness, Stevie felt the stirrings of a new book—and so much more.

  Her house was filled with light. She suddenly saw herself—on a journey her whole life, a circuitous and sometimes even tormented route in search of love that could make her whole. . . . All that time, and just this morning, she had finally realized that the journey led to the light inside. Where she was whole: she had her house, her painting, her stories, and her dreams. She had let Jack and Nell go, because they had had to. But she had wings, too.

  She thought of her dream and knew that this was worth fighting for, worth flying after. Mixing paints, she peered at the photo Jack had sent her, of dead and dying oil-soaked birds. Nell's words glimmered above them. Stevie already had a title in mind: The Day the Sea Turned Black.

  She thought of the black bird in her dream, saw the crude-soaked creatures in the news photo. She thought of all the seabirds she could paint: kittiwakes, black guillemots, puffins, razorbills, storm petrels, Manx shearwaters, mallards, teals, widgeons, goldeneyes, oystercatchers, curlews, sandpipers, arctic skuas, gannets, red-breasted mergansers, eider ducks, and great northern divers.

  But, because Nell had asked that the book be about ducks, Stevie decided on mallards. She checked a field guide to confirm their range—yes, they inhabited the Scottish highlands. And then, with swift brushstrokes, Stevie created a pair of waterfowl. Their story was already unfolding in her mind. The book would be set in Scotland—on a small island halfway up the Orkney archipelago. She envisioned the clear northern light, the boreal fire, the dark reflective sea. She saw the mallards—their green neck feathers iridescent. There would be a young girl who walked the beach . . .

  That was all Stevie knew, for now. The story would unfold from her paintbrush and Nell's postcards. She wet her brush, and got to work.

  Chapter 25

  MADELEINE'S WORK WITH DR. MALLORY was arduous, enlightening, exhausting, and illuminating. She was forty-four years old, and she really felt that she was getting to know herself for the first time. She had been stuck in the emotional horror of the accident, living it over and over in nightmares and flashbacks. Facing Jack had broken something open inside, given her so much strength and hope, a desire to get better quickly.

  Gently, Dr. Mallory introduced Maddie to the idea that she was suffering from PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a paradox: she was completely gripped by memories and sensations of the accident, and she also completely blanked it out. Both states were equally real and true to her.

  “I can't feel my body,” Maddie said quietly one day, admitting that it had been months since she and Chris had made love.

  “Tell me about that,” the doctor said.

  “I'm just not there,” she said. “There are days when the only thing I can feel is my scar—throbbing pain. It's as if that's the only part of me that exists. I love my husband, but I can't let him touch me.” She wished she could describe how numb and terrified she always felt.

  She had missed so much work at the Brown Development Office that her boss had suggested she take a leave of absence—or lose her job entirely. So she took the leave.

  After several talk sessions, during which Madeleine found it impossible to access memories—and, in any case, too painful to describe the accident—Dr. Mallory had suggested they try EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It was a treatment so simple, Madeleine couldn't believe it would work.

  But she knew how much her life had changed since the accident. She had become so withdrawn, like a recluse. Chris was patient, but she knew that he wanted his old Madeleine back—and so did she. Maddie missed herself.

  She'd sit on the sofa in the doctor's office, and Dr. Mallory would sit opposite her, in her chair. The lights were dim. The doctor would hold up her hand, two fingers extended, telling Madeleine to focus. And then Dr. Mallory would start to move her hand rapidly, back and forth, while Madeleine stared at her fingers.

  Somehow the rapid eye movement replicated REM sleep. The doctor reminded Madeleine to breathe steadily, pay attention to sensations in her body. Almost immediately, Maddie felt pain in her shoulder, twinges in the side of her head, a sensation of fire in her chest, and the sense of sand draining through her torso. The feelings grew stronger, dissipated, left Madeleine feeling drained—and then, suddenly, revived.

  When she left the office the first time, she felt more alert and alive than she had in longer than she could remember. The second time, she felt the same mysterious twinges and roaring pains, and she ended the session with sobs—and the memory of holding Emma with one arm while her other arm hung by a thread.

  Dr. Mallory told her that trauma is stored in the body's cells and in the deepest regions of the brain, deep, deep inside—beyond thinking and understanding—the more primitive regions.

  EMDR unlocked those places, and enabled Madeleine to bring the memories up and out . . . and in doing so, she began to have new insights into what had happened. As Dr. Mallory's articles said, humans—like all animals—have strongly developed “fight or flight” responses. Their cells are programmed to react—to run, fight, or freeze—when confronted with threats to life or safety.

  When those responses were blocked—with Madeleine unable to stop her own car accident or save Emma's life—the thwarted defensive reactions got stuck inside her nervous system. All this time she'd been physically trapped, paralyzed in a state of physiological readiness to fight or flee from the accident that had happened over a years ago—unable to handle her own life.

  The sessions brought up shocking memories—of the blood, the pain, Emma's screams. They released pent-up rage—at the ambulance crew, for being unable to free Emma for so long, while her blood gushed out—and at Emma herself, for having confessed her secret to Madeleine, and then leaving her behind to deal with it.

  “I'm taking the blame for what she did,” Madeleine said. “She left me to tell my brother, and now he blames me—as if I did it instead of Emma!”

  “And how does that make you feel?” Dr. Mallory asked, as she so often did.

  “Angry . . . at him for blaming me . . . and for keeping me from Nell—over a year has passed without my seeing her! She's moved away. She's grown taller, she's a whole grade ahead in school, she's had a birthday, there's been a holiday season without her . . . she likes music I don't know about . . . books I'm not aware of . . . she has friends I'll never meet . . .”

  “Never?” the doctor asked.

  “I went to see him,” Madeleine said. “And we couldn't even talk to each other.”

  “Well,” the doctor said, her eyes lit from within, as if she knew something wonderful. “It was a start. And that is something to work with.”

  “None of this was my fault,” Madeleine said.

  “No—it wasn't,” Dr. Mallory said.

  “I don't want to blame Emma . . .”

  “Perhaps you don't have to,” Dr. Mallory said gently. “Perhaps the point of all this could be understanding—just that. Instead of the placement of blame.”

  “But my brot
her . . .” Maddie began.

  “You can't change the way he feels,” the doctor said. “But you can change the way you react to what he says and does. You have power over that, Madeleine. His emotions don't have to dictate your responses.”

  “But isn't it true—that it only takes one person in a family to bring about an estrangement?”

  The doctor tilted her head and, after a moment, seemed to smile. “On the other hand,” she said, “It only takes one person to reach out and try to bring the estrangement to an end. And you've already started to do that.”

  The statement was so true, and simple, and pure, that all Madeleine could do was take it in and start to smile back.

  STEVIE'S NEW BOOK was coming out in a white heat. The story, of mallards living in a pristine environment threatened by oil pollution, flowed out—the necessary passion and emotion were there. She'd had a few false starts—should it be one catastrophic spill, like the Exxon Valdez, or just the slow destruction of wildlife due to a series of smaller, less publicized mishaps? Talking to her editor, she decided on the latter. Her readers, although young, loved nature and had always responded to how she dealt with difficult realities, the balancing act between human beings and fragile ecosystems.

  So she painted a series of pages depicting bays and tidal pools, the mallards, a girl combing the beach, an oil refinery in the distance. She had Nell and the ducks down pat, but when it came to the setting, she felt she was coming up short. The landscape looked like Hubbard's Point. The inhabitants of the tidal pools were Hubbard's Point crabs, eels, starfish, and mussels.

  In mid-September, she wrote a letter to Nell, saying, “Now I really need the beach girl reports! I've taken your suggestion to heart, and have started writing a book called The Day the Sea Turned Black, inspired by the news clipping you gave your father. Your notes have been great, but I need them even more than ever, as precise as you can be . . . what exact varieties of shells, shorebirds, seaweed, etc., are there?”