by Annie Cosby
“You were always so curious, putting the strangest things in your pockets. Helicopter leaves and acorns and dandelions and those honeysuckle flowers.”
“Did Joan tell you that?” I said icily.
It wasn’t nice. Downright mean, really, to follow her attempt at discussing Gretel with that sarcastic remark. But we didn’t talk about Gretel. That was the rule. Her own rule. And she had broken it. It was her own fault.
She was quiet for a moment before picking some invisible lint off her skirt, brushing her manicured hands over the wrinkles, and walking briskly out of the room. These days her mere presence left me annoyed and ready to quarrel with an empty room.
Good riddance, I thought. Don’t shrink my clothes.
When she was gone, I got up and retrieved the flute from where she’d left it on the desk. I inspected it as if I was some connoisseur who could read its features. I banged it on the desk to empty the holes of sand and spit on my shirt, rubbing the mouthpiece clean before taking a tentative breath and blowing. It let out a shrill shriek that set Princess to howling downstairs.
“What the hell is that?” was my father’s muffled comment from below.
I hopped down the stairs. “Do you know what this is?” I called.
Dad stopped in the second floor hall. I tossed him the pipe.
“What the hell are you doing making that kind of racket at this time of night?” he was mumbling, as he turned the thing over in his hands. “Looks like a recorder to me. Where did you get it?”
“Found it,” I said.
“Just a piece of junk.”
I trudged back upstairs, already regretting even asking him. I felt as though some of the magic of this little treasure had been rubbed away by revealing it to someone so mundane as my father.
Ceachtanna Snámha
Swimming Lessons
Usually going to bed much earlier than my parents and generally consuming far fewer margaritas, I was up before them in the mornings. I would grab the plastic blue pail and matching shovel from the table on the back porch. I had scoffed at my mother in the middle of the bright store in St. Louis when she had bought the preschool-blue pair in the hopes of early morning family shell hunts. But she had apparently underestimated the nighttime festivities in the old houses, so I usually found myself shoving off down the boardwalk, having emptied the previous day’s finds on the table, with only Princess at my heels.
I would pick my way slowly to the pier, where Princess would sit down resignedly beside me and watch the waves with alert ears, as if squirrels and cats could be found lurking there.
The swimmer, skin wet and shiny, was always there, a few yards away, completely unaware of being watched.
Some days he was slow and gentle with the waves. But others he seemed to move with a renewed vigor, his rigid arms cutting through the waves like the biggest of Joan’s Cutco knives. And I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. Sometimes he ducked under water completely and I looked anxiously around until he would resurface a yard farther on.
I stayed only until he turned in the distance—maybe it was two miles—and came back toward the pier. Then I’d walk back north and start my day.
One such day was marked with a big red circle on the calendar Mom kept on the purple fridge. She had given me careful instructions on what to wear and where to go before nearly pushing me out the back door. She hadn’t offered to come, but I would have denied her that, anyway.
The city pool was a few blocks off Main Street, and as the day was sweltering, the pool was very crowded. I hesitated outside the tall, black, iron fence, seeing what exactly I had to contend with.
It was a giant L-shaped pool with a diving board on one end and several kiddie pools around it. There was a big, twisting water slide on one side, and mothers in lounge chairs lined the fence. Kids ran everywhere and … there they were.
A teenage girl, probably a year younger than me, was standing near a group of chattering kids. She bit her nails and looked bored, glancing at the clock every now and again. Parents showed up in a steady stream, taking towels and shoes from their kids before retreating to the outer ring of spectators. I was the oldest “kid” by about ten years.
It would have been easy to say I was too embarrassed to go. But that wasn’t it. The truth was that I was downright scared. My stomach had taken up a permanent position near my shoes and the thought of getting into the pool made my skin cold.
I would have been a nervous mess, I told myself, as I stared between the rectangles in the fence.
Would have been. Well that settled it. I had already decided that I wasn’t going.
I watched as the teenage girl blew her whistle and tried to get the kids to stop talking before shepherding them toward the shallow end of the pool. It was a scene too familiar for comfort.
The pool in St. Louis where Joan had taken me was eerily similar. Or maybe my memory was playing tricks on me. I had been fairly young, but I knew it was a big, crowded city pool with a flippant, disinterested teenager showing us how to hold our noses underwater. There was a boy named Rufus with red hair who I had a crush on.
It’s the strangest things that a kid’s memory holds onto.
That day so long ago, the first day of what was supposed to be a six-week course, I had been spectacular, or so Joan told me on the way home. We hadn’t done any actual swimming, just holding our breath under water and pool safety. Pool safety. As if that was a point that I, at eight years old, needed to have hammered home one more time.
It wasn’t that pool safety had ever been discussed in our house. Rather, it had not been discussed. Passionately not discussed for eighteen years. Because that was the way my mother dealt with tragedy. Or anything in life, really. If you didn’t talk about it, it certainly had not happened.
So that day Joan took me to swimming lessons had been the first of its kind in my entire life. But when we arrived back at the house that afternoon, my hair stringy and wet, my mother’s car was in the driveway. I didn’t need to see Joan’s flustered face to know that this was not going according to plan.
And when we went inside, I remember my mother unleashing a fury like I had never seen her possess before. Fury like I didn’t think she had in her. She took in my wet, tousled hair and the big fluffy towel wrapped around my swimming suit. She descended on Joan like a vengeful lioness.
I was sent to my room then, but I was old enough to know that Joan had broken the rules. Caroline Manchester’s child did not swim.
Not until this stupid summer at the Pink Palace.
The Pink Palace, some kind of shining beacon to my mother. She had been oddly emotional throughout my entire senior year of high school. And her solution to this premature separation anxiety was apparently to haul us out here to break the morbid fear of water that had been festering in our family since before I was born. The thing was, she wasn’t all that good at facing up to things. And that’s how I found myself standing alone at a public pool, abruptly facing a fear I’d never had to face before—a fear that I’d been encouraged not to face for as long as I could remember.
The swimming lesson at the Oyster Beach Public Pool was already getting into the water. Much too fast, I thought. But I didn’t stick around to see how they fared.
When my mother asked, I told her it went great.
Bua an Dúlra
Victory of Nature
It was unconscious now. The way I walked to my pier in the early mornings. Once there, I would see boats pulling near ports in the distance, fishermen back from early morning rounds.
The swimmer would be there, his arms spinning like windmills, churning the calm water. The waves, still weak from the night’s calm would keep him bobbing ever so softly as he swam, almost like a duck, completely at home atop the waves. Some days the waves were stronger, from windy, stormy nights, and they would lap over the swimmer completely as his arms violently turned, his dark head always coming above the water eventually, shaking like a dog.
But one day I must have been a little late, because as I was approaching, the swimmer was pulling himself onto the wooden slats that sloped into the water at the end of the pier.
I stopped and walked awkwardly away. From a safe distance, I studied him, the first time I’d seen him out of the water. He was tan, with dark hair. He was solid, though not very tall, and seemed almost surreal to me. Maybe because of the way he swam, or maybe because he was soaking wet and the water made his skin gleam.
He was nothing short of gorgeous. Hotter than a Brad Pitt knockoff, indeed.
He breathed deeply, as though thoroughly exhausted, and sat on the edge of the pier with his legs still in the water.
When he went to stand up, I scurried away, only just realizing how awkward an interaction would be.
My dad flew home often to go to the office, so that left just my mother to deceive on the afternoons that I was “attending swimming lessons.” That’s when I found myself meandering back toward the old woman’s house. This time, on purpose.
She would usually be outside, slumped in her rocking chair, and would call out for me to join her. Sometimes she would call to Princess, and I’d follow awkwardly, waiting for her to address me. Which she would usually do with some far-fetched tale or question about my life.
One day she ignored me completely, having summoned Princess to her side and inquiring into the dog’s day. I sat down silently in my designated rocking chair and waited.
“They say a black dog is an omen of death,” the old woman said, whether to myself or Princess, I couldn’t be sure. “And dogs howling at the moon.”
“Good thing Princess has some white and brown, too,” I said, only thinly veiling my sarcasm.
“The dog days of summer are coming quite quickly,” the old woman went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It will be July before we know it, and then everything will be hot and terrible.”
“What are the dog days?” I asked.
“The dog days of summer,” she repeated. “It’s the hottest time of the year, when the dog-star is prominent. Did you know that the sea gets crazy? Everyone is miserable. They say dogs go mad. Do you? Do you all go mad?”
Princess was unaware of being addressed. She chased a fly with loud chomps of her mouth.
“I think it’s already too hot,” I said. “I don’t know how you stand it—being out here all day.”
The old woman tore her eyes from the sea and looked at me as if I’d just tried to explain astrophysics to her. She finally spoke. “Would you find my jacket, dear?”
“You—your jacket?” I stammered.
“Yes, my coat.”
She nodded seriously, so I got up, confused. I went obediently to the door and inside the dark house, wondering for the millionth time if maybe this woman wasn’t completely there, mentally speaking.
It had become something of a routine, her asking me to find her coat or her jacket or her sweater, my pretending to search for it, and then emerging back outside empty-handed. But just after expounding on the heat? The woman wasn’t all right. I went to a bookshelf to make shuffling noises, as I’d grown accustomed to doing. I ran my finger down the spines of a couple ancient-looking books (Confessions of a Sea Maiden and Fairies), waited a few moments for effect, and went back outside.
“I don’t see it,” I said.
“Yes, thank you for looking,” the old woman replied, just like every time before.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
As always, the old woman shook her head and implored me to sit back down.
“You have quite a collection of books,” I said, resuming my seat. “Have you read all those books?”
“Oh, I can’t read,” she said matter-of-factly.
“You—but your house is full of books!” I exclaimed. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of books!
“Yes …” the old woman mumbled.
“Were they your husband’s?” I prodded, wondering why a non-reader would have quite so many tomes.
“What?” she appeared confused. “The-the … yes. I don’t read.”
I was now equally as uncomfortable as the little old woman appeared to be.
“Do you know about the Merrow, dearie?” she said, as if to change the subject.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
She nodded and seemed to deliberate whether to go on. I knew she would. She always did. “The Irish told each other stories about a sea creature much like the mermaid. Only she’s called the Merrow.” She readjusted the scarf on her head as she nodded knowingly. “They’re sweet, sweet creatures. Capable of real love. Well, human love—if that can be said to be real love.”
“Do you believe in them?” I asked skeptically.
The old woman’s eyes remained fixed on a spot on the horizon. I followed her gaze. There was nothing but boats and seagulls, the normal fare of the ocean. She finally seemed to find herself and her eyes continued to rove.
“They say that love cannot overcome nature,” she finally said. “Supposedly the nature of the Merrow always overcomes whatever love they held for their human man. She will always go back to her people under the sea.”
Sounded to me like a cruel comment on female nature made by a bitter man.
“And the merman, oh, there are stories of mermen. Terrible stories. The mermen have cages at the bottom of the ocean in which they keep the souls of our drowned sailors and fishermen.”
A chill ran through me despite my unwillingness to become involved in the story. The pale, bloated body at the pier drifted to the forefront of my mind. Souls, chained to the bottom of the ocean, fighting uselessly, perpetually against their chains, appeared in my imagination. The soul had long been gone from that bloated body when I found it.
I only then became aware of the old woman looking at me. Her eyes were narrowed and she looked at me with an intensity that I had previously only seen her use on the ocean. I felt my cheeks redden.
“They play music, too,” she said. “Do you ever hear music under the water?”
I’ve never been under the water. I shook my head.
The old woman sighed. “I suppose one must listen for it, then. I haven’t listened in a very long time. A very, very … very long time.”
As I walked home that day, I remembered the metal recorder tucked away in my bag. That morning, I had stashed the strange instrument among my things on the off-chance that the old woman could identify it. But her stories had engrossed more than I would have liked, and I had completely forgotten to bring it up.
As it happened Owen Carlton decided to fulfill my mom’s wildest dreams and invited me out with his friends one windy night. I had been sitting on my balcony, watching waves crash over my pier in the distance and recounting the Merrow story in my head (though I would never admit that to anyone). It was annoyingly windy, but it was the only vantage point at the Pink Palace from which I could see my pier. And then Owen had shown up at the back door. I could hear the voices below me but couldn’t ascertain who it was my mom was so thrilled to see.
When she shrieked for me to “gussy up and come downstairs,” I had a fairly good guess.
She nearly pushed me out the door when he invited me to join him and his friends for a bonfire on the beach.
Outside on the boardwalk, my mom probably watching from the window (but me too embarrassed to check), the twilight air was filled with awkwardness. I stumbled along next to him as he loped down the walkway. It was annoyingly close to a swagger.
I noticed with disdain that the collar to his polo shirt was popped again. It couldn’t be an accident. But it was hard not to notice the way his muscled arms nearly popped out of the sleeves, as well.
I felt like I was obliged to say something, but he seemed perfectly at ease, his hands in his pockets, occasionally throwing me a smile.
“Am I dressed okay?” I finally asked, just to break the silence. In my jeans and t-shirt, I could only imagine his tiny girl friends in bikinis and whatever apparel was the standard for beach bonfires.
He grinned at me. “Yeah, you look great.”
Despite my determination to despise this boy, I blushed profusely. Damn cheeks!
As expected, the first girl I saw—who just so happened to be Blondie—was in a tiny jean skirt and a highlighter yellow bikini top. There were sunglasses on her head despite the fact that it was nearly dark. And she was bounding up to me like an eager Labrador puppy.
Well, that part was certainly unexpected.
“Oh my god, Cora, how are you? What’s up?”
“Hi,” I said stupidly.
“You remember Josie?” Owen said. “And Louisa?” The bimbo was right behind her.
I nodded and hoped to God he wouldn’t leave me alone with them.
He didn’t. Instead, he took my hand. My hand! He grabbed it like this was normal and led me deeper into the group, introducing me to more people, all the while clutching my hand in his. I didn’t hear a single name he said, because the throbbing sound of his hand clutching mine was drowning the entire world out. Or maybe that was my heart.
It was just the way I’d imagined Josh Watson would hold my hand. Only he never had. But I didn’t want this Owen to hold my hand. Did I?
“I’m so glad you came out tonight,” Blondie was saying as she trailed behind us. “We’re really excited to have somebody new here.”
“Yeah, Cora, we’re going to go shopping tomorrow, do you wanna come?” the bimbo asked.
“Oh my god, yes!” Blondie exclaimed as if this was the most genius idea of the century.
“Cora, this is my buddy Sean,” Owen pulled gently on my hand to steer my attention away from the girls.
A boy behind the alleged Sean came forward, veering so sharply, I assumed he was drunk. “Well if it isn’t Cora Manchester!” In the light of the fire I recognized him as the formerly reticent Huston boy.