A Swirl of Ocean

by Melissa Sarno

  Before I know what I’m doing, I plunge my hand into the jar, fishing for pickles. I jump up on a plastic beach chair to get my aim right, then I toss a fistful of pickles at the window. They slap against the glass like oversized coins. As they slip down, there’s something that makes me feel good about what I’m doing, something that makes me feel like I’m saying, Come out, quit hiding, come and get your turtles and go.

  Until I watch the shadow behind the screen shift.

  Turtle Lady is on the move.

  I stop just as Jeremiah slams another pickle at the sticky, wet windowpane.

  The curtain falls.

  “Stop,” I say out loud. “She’s coming.”

  Jeremiah sets his jar on the ground. Pickle juice sloshes over onto the dirt. He steps up on my chair, and we’re both eye level with the tip of the fence, waiting.

  We hear the side door slam before we see her. Black clogs bang at the pebbled steps. She’s got thick, busting calves. A housedress that matches her curtains. And snow-white hair stuck at the top of her head like a gauzy ball of yarn. There’s that dough face again and two stink-eyes stuffed in her face like raisins.

  I think she’s about to say something. Then I see the long garden hose dangling from her hand like a snake. Before I can react, water’s gushing at my face and I can’t see a thing.

  Jeremiah squeals and jumps from the chair, knocking me straight off. Water sprays at my back as I try to stand up from the grass, then it gets in my eyes again.

  Jeremiah and I run like mad, my hair sopping, flip-flops slipping from my feet, running to the Pitch & Putt hut and out of this lady’s way.

  Our shoes slap against the floor of the wooden hut, and we duck under the hanging baskets, into the game room, where I throw myself on the old velvet couch.

  “What in the heck?” Jeremiah grumbles, chest heaving as he leans against a foosball table.

  “What are you throwing pickles for?” I scold.

  “You did it, too!”

  “She’s totally nutters,” I say.

  I squish deeper into the couch. It looks like someone threw up flowers on it, that’s how ugly and splotchy and weird it is. Everything in the room feels basement-old, made up of things you want to forget you have.

  Jeremiah’s Gramzy charges a dollar a day to get into the game room. In the summer, when it rains, parents dump their kids out here like a box of crayons, everybody spilling out all over the floor, fighting over old games like Hungry Hungry Hippos and the missing pieces of Candy Land. Off-season, it looks like everything in Barnes Bluff Bay: used, empty, and left behind.

  I slow my breath, flip my wet hair, and kick my dirty bare feet on the arm of the couch. “She’s up to something,” I warn. “But what?”

  He shrugs. “Dunno. We’re gonna find out, though, right?”

  “Course.”

  “She’s reeeeal defensive.” Jeremiah sloshes around in his Converse sneakers, fishhooks jangling from his jeans. “I mean, we’re just kids. She could’ve drowned us.”

  I roll my eyes. “Well, I don’t know about that.” I pull the leg of my shorts up. “But she made me skin my knee.”

  “She’s a menace to society.”

  “Nutters,” I repeat.

  “A hose-spraying, reptile-killing, knee-skinning, house-crazy Turtle Lady.”

  I sit up fast. “Four seven three,” I remember out loud. “Did you grab the box?”

  Jeremiah shakes his head. “No, did you?”

  “Shoot.”

  Then we put our fingers to our noses.

  “Not it!” we call out at the same time.

  We both look to the door of the hut, like Turtle Lady’s going to come barging in with her fat calves and her clogs.

  “We can’t just leave the poor thing there,” I say.

  “But what if we get hosed again?”

  I think of that tossed-aside turtle. The only one we’ve found alive. I sigh. “I’ll do it. Lindy’s expecting me home, anyway.”

  “Puzzle time?” Jeremiah asks.

  I nod. Lindy and I have a thousand-piece puzzle we’re making our way through. It’s an ocean jumble. Waves, coral, and all the fish you can imagine. They’re glossy and rainbow-colored, soaked in a big bright sun from up above. It looks like the word ocean. What you might picture in your head. Not like it really is, cloudy, dark, and unknowable.

  I stand up to leave, flipping my wet hair over my shoulder.

  Jeremiah says, “See ya.” He doesn’t even have to say tomorrow. That’s just the way it goes.

  I swing open the door to the hut. The spring’s so loose, it hangs in midair. Might never close. So I kick it, like always, and walk around the flag-waving Pitch & Putt to hole number nine.

  I keep my eye on Turtle Lady’s side door, those wrinkled, old steps, where she stood with her hand poised on the silver handle, ready to hose us. But she’s gone. And when I make my way to the shoebox, I see that 47–3 is, too. The box is on its side, and 47–3 is nowhere in sight, which is saying a lot for a turtle who can’t get too far too fast.

  I wander the course for a little bit, watching where I step. I stop at the beach chair. The butt of the seat is all droopy from Jeremiah and me standing on it. But I stand on it again, because I can’t do the chair more harm than I’ve already done, and I watch the stained window, which has been rained on by sticky, wet pickles. I feel a little bad until my ripped-up knee stings again.

  Beyond the window it’s dark and screened in, and the curtain is still. But I see the silver shine of her ring on the windowsill, her big old sausage fingers, and I jump from the chair and take off running.

  I don’t stop until I get to our place, which is stilted, peeling, and faded. The beach grass sways as I climb up the tall stairs to the rickety porch. It ribbons around the house with stairs to the beach.

  The bungalow looks like one big old wooden square, with a tiny triangle sitting on top like a sailor’s cap. Inside, the wallpaper’s flowered and the tablecloth’s covered in cherries, with curtains stained by the sun. It’s mismatched and cluttered, all my stuff tripping over itself. Lindy’s always hounding me to get rid of things, because I hold on to everything. She thinks a roof over our heads and a steady diet of cigarettes and coffee are enough to survive. But everything here has its place. If I lift a thing, it leaves a ring of dust to remember it by.

  I set the empty shoebox on the table and peek at my stale bread. Nothing. Not one single fuzz. But it sits there like it’s pleased with itself.

  Lindy calls out, “Summer, that you?”

  All I can think is, Who else would it be?

  “We’re out on the back porch!” she calls.

  We. Elder must be here.

  I slap the screen door open. My flip-flops thump the rattling wood planks as I loop around.

  I hear the yapping first.

  Elder’s dog, Elsa, is squawking like a sick bird, growling and barking her head off as she hops from her leash, which, as she sets off, snaps her back in place and only makes the little gremlin yip louder.

  I smell the quick whiff of fish, which means Elder must have showered after work. If he hadn’t, it would be much worse. He shoots up from a wicker patio chair, trying to shush Elsa. She’s baring her teeth. This tiny furball with cartoon Dumbo ears thinks she can take us. She must have what my history teacher, Miss Dillweather, calls a Napoleon complex. A shorty-pants who’s got to prove she’s a giant.

  Elder is the opposite. Giraffe-tall. He bends over like a sheet folding itself in half, and I’m afraid he’ll snap at the waist.

  “Summer, hey.” He laughs nervously, yanking at the jumpy dog, who is still growling, all low and rumbly.

  I nod a hey, thinking, if I ignore him, he’ll disappear. I have no idea what Lindy sees in him. She’s bunched up in a mismatched chair, an ocean
-wave tattoo swirling up her arm, while he’s straightening his smudged glasses and a crooked necktie.

  Lindy’s legs are curled under her. She’s got a cigarette, and smoke rises up as the evening sky tries to push its way into view.

  When she sees me, she smashes the cigarette butt into an old ashtray and wafts the smoke away. She’s been trying to quit forever. She always says this pack’s her last. So I sneak cigarettes away and hide them at the soggy wet bottom of the outdoor trash until the pack empties. But, instead of quitting, she buys another from the Citgo at the wharf, and we play the game all over again.

  Her chin rests at her knee. “How’s Jeremiah?”

  “Same as always. Wandering around poking at things.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Turtle Lady hosed us,” I say, straight, because news in Barnes Bluff leaks fast.

  “Miss Ellis hosed you?” Lindy asks.

  Lindy’s always been weird about Turtle Lady. She’s the only one I know who even calls her Miss Ellis. “Yes. Actually hosed us. Like, took a hose to my face.” I display my wet clothes and shake my damp hair.

  Lindy looks concerned. She knows me too well. “What’d you do?”

  “Threw pickles at her window.”

  Her eyes get large.

  “Jeremiah started it. Plus. She deserves it. She’s killing turtles.”

  Elder stands up straight. “Turtle Lady is a fine—”

  “She’s killing turtles,” I repeat to Lindy. “She’s got to take responsibility.”

  “I hate to tell you, but I don’t think throwing pickles at her is the answer.”

  “At her window,” I correct. “Not her.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Same difference.”

  “Well, one’s a person and one’s a pane of gl—”

  Lindy interrupts, her voice rising. “Same. Difference. Don’t mess with Miss Ellis,” she scolds. She gazes over in the direction of her house. “Just leave her alone.”

  I slump into a striped chair and kick my feet up on the table. Lindy’s got saltines and a hunk of bright yellow cheese out, so I dig right in. We both think cheese and crackers is a totally acceptable dinner. There’s also a jug of something called CARLO ROSSI and waxy little paper cups, like you gargle mouthwash with, but, instead of Listerine, they’re filled with whatever red stuff’s in the jug. Pretty sure it’s wine, which Lindy doesn’t drink. But I watch her take a sip and purse her lips like she’s tasted something sour.

  Elder stands, holding on tight to the leash, watching Lindy, and his face breaks out into a giant grin. Then he swirls the red stuff in his paper cup, takes a big sniff with his nose, and gives a thumbs-up while he sips.

  He’s always finding ways to impress me less.

  “Have you heard of a Spirula shell?” he asks. Elder knows I’ve got my shell collecting, so he loves to start in, trying to be all friendly. He thinks we’ve got something in common, just because he works with fish. Shells are not fish.

  “No,” I force myself to say.

  “It’s not like your gastropods, ya know, your snails and your slugs and all that. It’s from a ram’s horn squid. The coils don’t touch.” He circles his finger on the table in a spiral motion.

  It bugs me that I’m a little bit curious. “Where can you find it?”

  “Not here. In tropical waters. It’s the only species of its kind. Most people haven’t seen them. They’ve only seen what washes up. The shell.” He spirals his finger on the table and grins, again, like he’s about to laugh. But he doesn’t.

  It sounds pretty amazing, but I don’t want to make too big a deal of it, so I just nod and say, “Cool.”

  “Nerd,” Lindy teases.

  He smirks.

  I watch them, their pink cheeks, their matching smiles, the way they’re looking at each other like the space between them is all that matters.

  I stand up fast and make a clanking at the table when I do. It feels a little like I’m trying to break a spell that’s already done its magic. “I’m going swimming,” I say, waiting for Lindy to stop and scold me and remind me that night swimming’s against the rules.

  Instead, she nods. “Uh-huh, okay.” Then she untangles her legs, rocks forward, and offers Elder a hunk of plasticky cheese.

  It’s a clear evening as I walk to the shore. There’s still some time before the sun sets, but it’s cold, which means the ocean will feel warmer, even if the fall season is picking up speed. I wear my too-small bikini, with the bottoms bunching up and the back strap digging into my flesh. I march in fast, my knees above the surface. Then I wade in, and the coolness shocks my bare stomach. My whole body shivers in goose pimples, but I know the faster you get in, the faster you get used to being cold, until your body warms right up.

  I swim out to where the sandbar drops away. I can tell by the way the water darkens, and I let my feet slip over the line. Some people hate knowing they can’t touch the bottom, but I love the feeling of emptiness beneath my toes. It feels like a world of beginnings with no end.

  It was Lindy who taught me to swim. We practiced for weeks in the calm of the bay. She held her arms underneath my belly and I floated there, kicking and kicking, keeping my chin above the surf. One day, she let go, without me even knowing. Instead of sinking, I soared ahead, skimming the water like a shark. Even now, I feel the memory of the way she held me. It makes me feel strong.

  I float on my back and watch an entire blue sky melt toward yellow and orange and dark.

  Before I know it, I’m tossed.

  Rip current.

  A tide torn in half. One piece of ocean curling toward the other in a straight line instead of toward the shore.

  There aren’t even warnings for this kind of ocean trick. You could know the sea better than anything, like I do, and still get stuck toeing the line, just trying to keep your chin up toward the sky.

  I hear Lindy’s voice in my head: Stay calm. Don’t fight it. You won’t win.

  But I’m chest-deep and I can’t even feel the bottom. I can’t walk my way out. The shore’s right there and, at the same time, it’s a zillion miles away. I keep my eye on it.

  I try to move forward. I bring one arm up and over the water, let it tickle the surface, then push the rest of the ocean away. I breathe. I lift the other arm and do the same. I try to force myself forward, but I’m completely and totally stuck.

  Most people think you should swim parallel to the shore when you’re caught in a riptide, but Lindy says you have to stay put. You have to tread water and wait it out until the ocean decides to carry you in.

  I close my eyes and stay in one place, moving my arms and legs until my muscles ache. I remember Lindy’s arms at my waist.

  I put my faith in surrender.

  Take me, I want to say. Go right ahead.

  Then I swallow a ton of ocean. I’m so full, I could burst. Lungs exploding. Eyes stinging.

  I cough up what I can and let the rest take me.

  I don’t know how it happens. But I end up at the shore, seaweed choking my wrists. Lindy’s hunched at my side in seconds. She’s got this way of always having her eye out for me in the ocean, even when I think she’s busying herself somewhere else.

  She wraps her arms around my waist, and I feel safe. “What happened?” she asks.

  “It’s okay,” I sputter. “It’s fine. I wasn’t drowning or anything. I knew what I was doing. I—”

  “You know the rip currents are bad this time of year,” she interrupts.

  “I—”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I told you where I was going. You seemed to think it was okay just a few minutes ago.”

  She shushes me. Then she grabs my hand and pulls me up. “Let’s get you inside.”

  I breathe in, my lungs wet with sea, as Lindy le
ads me toward the house.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold.” She shakes her head, tossing a towel on my shoulders.

  “Death isn’t catchable,” I argue as the towel slips.

  “Oh, it isn’t, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, you tell that to death sometime. The rest of us’ll be laughing six feet under.” She lifts the towel back to my shoulders.

  I stand up straighter, my cheeks hot with windburn, my body deciding between warm and cold.

  “You know I don’t like you swimming this late in the day,” she says. “You could drown, kiddo.”

  “I know how to swim!” I strike back. I can swim forever. Born swimming, Lindy says. I slip the towel up to my chin.

  “Just…be careful, Summer. You’re all I’ve got.”

  “Well, I’ve got homework,” I say. “Loads of it. You can have some if you want.”

  She laughs, and I try to smile. But it isn’t even true, me being all she has. I mean, now she’s got Elder, too.

  The way they look at each other. They’re in like. Or whatever. Fine. In love. That’s what she’s been saying, anyway.

  I look around the deck. The cheese is crusty from sitting out. The saltines pack is empty. “Where’s Elder?”

  “Home.”

  I think of Lindy and me living in this house on stilts all these years. We have always felt like a special secret, the two of us, chanting imaginary ice cream flavors and laughing at corny T-shirts. Lindy might only tolerate the beach during the day, but we’ve always loved it together at night. We used to walk to the edge of the point and sit side by side, our legs dangling from the tall rocks as the water rushed below. It seems silly now, but we’d close our eyes at the same time and send our wishes to the stars. I’d let my heart ask for longer summers. When I wondered what Lindy wished for, she didn’t keep it secret, the way I did; she’d say something that would always surprise me, like how she wanted a sailboat.

  For a long time, I didn’t need any kids my own age. It was Jeremiah who marched up to our back porch one summer when I was eight, fishhooks jangling from his jeans like wind chimes, asking me if I wanted to see something. The first day he showed me a lost crab’s leg. The next he took me to a swarm of minnows at the shallow end of the ocean. And it became part of every day from then on, one of us wandering over to the other, with something to show or see or do.