Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “Can you at least tell me if she wrote more?”

  “Of course she did. Ava’s life doesn’t end there. You’re looking at her daughter, you know. Why don’t you make up your mind, and then stop by in the morning, and I’ll give you the next set of pages.”

  I felt like throwing my arms around her, for Marlena was more precious to me than ever. She was Ava’s daughter! “I’m glad there’s more to read.”

  “Ava loved to write. It’s hard to keep a girl from doing what she loves to do. Now drink up. It’s comforting, isn’t it? And there’s more, although I’m thinking of deleting brandy and returning it to the original recipe with the cinnamon. What do you think?”

  “Keep the brandy,” I said with a grin.

  XXIX

  LYDIA

  MARLENA WAS OUT FRONT gardening when I stopped by the next morning. She put her hose down, walked over to the steps, and picked up a bag filled with cookies and biscotti and the next set of pages.

  Neither of us said “hello” to one another, and I imagined it was because no one likes to say a simple hello when they’re about to say a big farewell. Besides, there was something weighing heavily on my mind.

  “Why me?” I asked when she handed the goodies and pages to me. “Why did you tell me all that stuff on the beach that day? The day we made the snowwoman?”

  “I said a lot of things that day. What exactly are you referring to?”

  “The part about you believing in me.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You remember my words well.”

  “Of course. You were the only one who had ever said anything like that to me.”

  “I said it because when I was a little girl, someone spoke similar words to me. And to this day, whenever I feel as if my dreams are starting to drown, I grab onto the words that woman spoke to me. She was just a stranger, but her words were powerful. When I saw you on the beach that day, you were around the age I was when that woman approached me. I’ve always been grateful for the way she came up to me and told me I’d be significant one day, and I wanted to pass that on. When I saw you sitting there all alone writing, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, but enough with the sentimental stuff. Did I mention I got a call from my agent and she’s hooked me up with an independent film company over in London?”

  “Marlena, that’s wonderful!”

  “Yes, I’ll be playing supporting actress, and they start filming in three months.”

  “In England?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  I threw my arms around her, and she spun around like we had both been smoking something bad, or good maybe. “Congratulations,” I shouted. “I knew you’d do it.”

  “I guess so. I wondered at times.”

  Then, when we stopped spinning like tops and released our grips, but for our hands, I grew serious. “Do you still believe in me?” I asked. “Do you think I can do all that I want to do?”

  “Of course I do, darling,” she said. “But that no longer matters. What matters is that you believe in yourself. A magical transformation occurs when someone tells you they believe in you. All of a sudden, you start believing in yourself. And soon, you start expecting and no longer need others believing in you because belief in yourself becomes enough.”

  She pulled me close to her and we hugged as I had watched mothers and daughters hug throughout the years. “Write me,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Tell me all about the filming. I want to go see it when it comes out.”

  “If they show it in this country,” she said with a laugh. “But, yes, we’ll keep in touch. Send those pages back to me when you’re done, and I’ll send you more.”

  “There’s still more after this?”

  “Yes, but you’re not ready for those just yet. Soon you’ll be entering the summer of your life, dear. I’ll give them to you then.”

  An hour later I took my seat on the ferry, and as it pulled away from Sanibel Island, I pulled out the journal and began to read what Ava had decided to do.

  Ava

  “Ava,” my mother’s voice was bouncing up and down like a buoy. “Take your seat. We’re not going to ask you again.”

  I looked at Abigail’s pale face, then back at the green island. The boat was far offshore now, too far for me to safely swim back, but I wondered whether I should do it anyway, jump overboard and risk whatever came my way. The further the boat drew from shore, the stronger my love for Jaden grew, and could hardly stand the thought of living without him.

  “Ava,” Abigail cried. “I’m feeling faint. I need you, darling.”

  I glanced down at the water, to see if it had suddenly turned into a chop, but it hadn’t. It was smooth as a sheet of glass and there was nothing to explain why I felt the boat rocking or why I stumbled across the deck, stopping midway with my legs wobbling and my heart tumbling about inside me. I tried taking hold of my heart, securing it down, but it palpitated about like a flapping fish and slipped through my hands and into the air, landing smack down in the water.

  I obediently took my seat next to Abigail, and my Grandmalia sat next to me. I could hear her faintly uttering a prayer of appreciation to the Lord God Almighty, specifically praising Him in detail for the good times she had on the island, for skinny-dipping and not dying from the infection due to that stingray sting on her ass and for sea grape jelly and coconut milk and much more. I could hardly listen and didn’t want to join her in prayer. I didn’t want to thank God for anything.

  As Sanibel grew smaller, I noticed Abigail’s eyes also shrinking and looking beady, like those of a hermit crab forced to abandon its home.

  Then I saw a gold object glistening like a treasure in the water behind the boat. It bobbed up and down for a moment, a beautiful piece of gold. And when it disappeared beneath the surface of the water, I knew it was my heart.

  I was leaving it behind. It was a solid heart and would surely sink. But first it would struggle as long as it could to remain just under the surface of the water, in that layer where the sun still penetrates, and soon it would travel down to the dimmer twilight zone, passing by strange and bizarre fish, and from there, maybe around midnight, it might turn a deeper red or even black as it entered the deep ocean layer where no light goes.

  I don’t know how long it might take for my heart to reach the pitch-black bottom layer, where the water is nearly freezing and its pressure immense. And it probably wouldn’t stop there. My heart would continue downward to the forbidding trench at the very bottom, and I could only hope that there it might dwell comfortably beside a starfish or a friendly tubeworm.

  Despite such depths, my heart was strong and would go on beating in that deep dark underworld. But I have no idea what happens to a woman when her heart sinks to that portion of the sea.

  “Mama, did you know that periwinkles are adaptable flowers?” I asked when the boat was about halfway across the bay. She didn’t answer. “They like the full sun, but they also do well in shade. I think you’ll do fine in the shade, too.”

  “Read to me, Ava,” she said. “I like when you read to me.”

  I took out a book I had once borrowed from Tootie’s library but never returned, and I opened it randomly. It was Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott, and I had kept it knowing that one day my mama might need to hear about flowers. As the boat made its way toward Punta Rassa, I began reading the words in front of me:

  “But while I eat, tell me, dear Violet, why are you all so sad? I have scarce seen a happy face since my return from Rose Land; dear friend, what means it?”

  I didn’t mean to take and never return the book to Tootie, but instinctively I must have known the day would come when my mama would need it like a dose of medicine.

  Abigail lay down and rested her head in my lap, and I continued to read:

  “I will tell you,” replied little Violet, the tears gathering in her soft eyes. “Our good Queen is ever striving to keep the dear flowers fr
om the power of the cruel Frost-King; many ways she tried, but all have failed. She has sent messengers to his court with costly gifts; but all have returned sick for want of sunlight, weary and sad; we have watched over them, heedless of sun or shower, but still his dark spirits do their work, and we are left to weep over our blighted blossoms.”

  I stopped reading just long enough to wipe a tear from Abigail’s face. I looked over at Dahlia, who finally stopped telling everyone on the boat about Milton’s agitated side and how nothing but a hot salty bath used to calm him down. When our eyes met, she signaled me over to her with a jerk of her head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m worried about Abby,” she whispered in my ear. “I think she has reached her wits’ end. If you know anything about ends, it’s close to the grand finale of all ends, dear.”

  I stood up and slowly walked back to my mother and opened the Alcott book and continued to read. She needed another dose of medicine.

  XXX

  CHICAGO

  1959

  Lydia

  UNLIKE AVA, I STILL owned my heart when I returned to Chicago. I was too stubborn a woman to leave a vital organ behind. And I was a strong woman and strong women drag their hearts along, no matter how heavy. Mine, stuffed and bursting at the seams with feelings for Josh, weighed a ton.

  When the doors of Northwestern opened in the fall, I gave my heart permission to continue loving him as long as it didn’t disturb the studies my mind had to do. Occasionally, I’d set my books down and hold my hand over my left chest and feel for its beat. My heart was still there within its private chambers, and it was more than beating. It was spinning, dipping, and double-stepping within. Maybe it was rehearsing for when I might see him again. That’s what a woman’s heart does when she loves a man—it dances all the time.

  I dated here and there, nothing serious, and I wondered whether Josh was doing the same. I feared it would only be a matter of time before he found a new girl or no longer remembered me but there was nothing I could do about it, so I tried the best I could to keep my mind busy learning the fundamentals to reporting—accuracy, fairness, and balance. I was achieving a perfect grade-point average at Northwestern University’s Me-dill School of Journalism, where, once, Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Me-dill had said, students learn to “write boldly and tell the truth fearlessly.”

  My second year of college, I could stand it no longer, so I sent Josh a letter and waited months for him to return one to me. And when he did, I found his words a breath of warm, comforting fresh air, so I wrote back immediately, and in a few weeks I received another. Our letters continued, and each got longer and more detailed. And by my third year of college, we were exchanging letters once a month, and in my fourth year, twice a month. I told him all about my classes and professors, and he told me about the seasons on Sanibel and the fish and the novels he was reading. He enjoyed Hemingway most. I had no time for pleasure reading, but it sounded nice to be on a boat with a coffee in one hand and a novel in the other and nothing but Florida’s dramatic sky above.

  His was a world away, and yet it felt so close. His letters made me feel like I was sitting there beside him, going through those seasons on Sanibel, with the love bugs in the spring and the afternoon thunderstorms of summer and the migrating songbirds lining the trees in the fall and the passing cold fronts of winter. We never mentioned in any of our letters whether or not we were seeing anyone else, which I wasn’t, except for dinners or movies here and there with guys that came and went. We also never wrote about the feelings we had for each other. Mine were growing stronger with each letter of his that I read.

  I wanted many times to tell my father how deeply I had fallen and through letters was still falling for that boy on the island, but that would rob me of the financial support I needed to attend such a prestigious, private university. So, instead, I privately savored his letters, much the same way I once reread over and over all the things written about my mother in my journal. Reading Josh’s letters brought me comfort much like reading about my mother once did. But then, in my fourth year of college, something happened. Our letters dwindled down to two the entire year, and I was too busy to realize it until looking back. I don’t know how time fooled me like that, but the year flew by, and I hardly had time to wash my hair daily, let alone write any letters. And I was so focused on my goals and graduation, both fast approaching. That is not to say my interest in Josh faded, but that things that were geographically in my face took on precedence that last year of college. I knew in my mind that was normal. It was the way it ought to be.

  And Lloyd was proud, I think, the day I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and he set me up in an apartment downtown with new furniture. He no longer questioned why his only daughter had no fiancé, marriage proposals, or boyfriend.

  I landed a job at the Windy City Press, thanks to the good coffee I made while working there in high school. The journalist who wrote about the opening of McDonald’s that day remembered me and pulled strings, and I got hired to write obituaries. Actually, I was offered a job working on the women’s news section, writing about shoes and clothes, but I’d rather die than write about that kind of stuff, and when I said just that to the hiring editor, I was sent down to obituaries.

  I wrote to Josh, giving him my new address and telling him about my new job, but I didn’t hear back. Naturally, he moved on as well, I assumed. Marlena and I wrote several letters back and forth through the years, and she filled me in on all the juicy details of the English films she was starring in and the producers and directors she had dated and the roles that were getting bigger and better. She was flying from London to Florida to Hollywood, where she was still auditioning for major motion pictures, but not getting those roles. She was most upset for not getting a part in some movie about pillow talking. I wrote her back and told her a movie about pillow talking would never make it and that she was better off without a movie like that on her portfolio.

  I had just finished hanging up the last of my brand-new career wardrobe when there was a knock at the door. A package from Sanibel, for me! I sat down on my new sofa that faced the window that overlooked Chicago and I tore open the package. The letter inside read:

  Dear Lydia,

  Congratulations on your new job. Remember a first job is only a steppingstone to something else, but how fortunate you are to be writing obituaries, which are like sacred summaries. A person’s life and what they did with it while here on earth are sacred, indeed. It will be the most inspiring job, I’m sure.

  I’ve enclosed the next set of pages that Ava wrote. I think you’re ready for them. You’re at a critical point in your life, dear. You have many choices yet to make. Hope you enjoy your visit with Ava. I know you mean as much to her as she does to you. She always wanted one special reader, someone to appreciate what she wrote.

  Sincerely,

  Marlena

  I didn’t know for sure what Marlena was referring to. At twenty-one years old, I felt I had already made the major choices of my life. I chose not to get married and not to move to the suburbs. In the back of my mind, I knew that one day I might choose to reconnect with Josh, but for now, I liked exactly where I was. I was working for a newspaper, another choice of mine. Maybe it was Ava who regretted the choices she had made.

  I felt mine were good ones and they weren’t strange, as Lloyd and the rest of the country had me believing. I was glad to have chosen print journalism since it already had a long history of women working in it, whereas television news was a new frontier with a new group of groundbreaking women. I appreciated women who paved the way.

  I tucked Ava’s latest journal entries into my briefcase and walked out my door. I took the elevator to the lobby, then walked to Michigan Avenue and sat down on a shady bench. I pulled out her journal, eager to know how my poor old friend had fared after leaving the island a heartless woman. How could any woman survive without a heart? I had to read quickly for it was my first day of wo
rk and there was no way I was going to be late.

  KENTUCKY

  1899

  Ava

  There is a reason why so many women look back on their lives and regret the things they’ve done or haven’t done. It’s because they didn’t notice the options and choices arriving on the shore until it was too late and those options and choices floated back out to sea. Rarely do the important options in life smack us in the face like a cold wave. Often those are the ones that come and go quietly with the tide and blending with our lives so that we didn’t pay them any attention.

  I arrived in Kentucky a heartless woman, and, off and on throughout the next year, I wondered whether I was losing my mind. There are certain circumstances, when put together all at the same time, that make any woman lose her mind, even those who haven’t any history of mindlessness in their families.

  While Stewart was off in Key West rolling cigars, Abigail’s days of rolling happily on the ground with the flowers were gone for good. She was overtaken once more by the spell of sadness, and I cried out each night with prayerful pleas that a prince might come along to kiss and wake her from the spell.

  My mama looked like a dead person as she’d lie in the bed in the middle of the afternoon, her eyes open, but not looking, and her lips pressed together softly, but not saying anything. With the tips of my fingers, I’d touch her lips and try shaping them into the beautiful smile that my daddy once fell in love with.

  Our first year back in Kentucky, I tried many things. And so did the doctors. We all did. Even Abigail herself did. But when a flower is picked from the ground where it wants to be, its days are numbered, and she lost all desire and eventually her ability to take in and keep down food or water.