A Swirl of Ocean

by Melissa Sarno

  “Most people I know, my age, anyway, they don’t have twelve-year-olds,” he says. “I mean, I don’t know a lot of twelve-year-olds. I mean, it’s fine. It’s just. Different.”

  “Okay…”

  “I guess I don’t really understand…why…” He’s looking for words. “Why she’d do something like that. You were so…little. And she was only twenty. It seems, I don’t know, hard. Unnecessarily hard.”

  He watches my reaction, but I’m not sure what he wants me to say. That it would have been easier without me? That she should have left me behind, gone her own way, so we wouldn’t end up here today?

  It’s not like I don’t know. I’m hers, but I’m not. Not really. And I know that will never change.

  I remember when Elder and I first met, before Lindy told him I was adopted. He stood at the doorway, looking behind me, to Lindy, who stood with her hands on my shoulders, presenting me like I was an open gift he would have to return. He looked from Lindy to me and back again, and I could tell he couldn’t understand how we were related. Everybody else in Barnes Bluff knows about me landing here, but Elder didn’t. He couldn’t. The way he looked back and forth, confused, it made me wish that Lindy and I looked more alike so he didn’t have to question it. It made me wish that anyone who didn’t know us wouldn’t have to wonder.

  I tell him what he wants to hear. “I guess she should have left me there.”

  “Oh. Oh. No. That’s not what I meant. Of course not.”

  “I guess that’s what you would have done,” I continue.

  “I don’t…I mean…” He speaks slow, deliberate. “You’re right, but—”

  The back door slams, and Lindy asks, “Right about what?”

  Elder’s eyes are big and confused. I spring up from my bike, and it falls backward.

  I scramble to pick up my bike while she looks between us. “So serious.” Then she laughs. She holds a plastic tray with cardboard plates of oysters, peel-and-eat shrimp, and, my favorite, clam strips with tartar sauce.

  I figure I might as well lay it bare. “We were talking about me—”

  “And shells,” Elder chimes in, fast. “Their variety.”

  “Her collection is solid. A little out of control. But beautiful.” She holds the tray out to me. “Right?”

  I nod and grab my clam strips, then take up my post against my bike. When I take a bite of a clam strip, I nearly gag. My belly feels sick with the seawater I swallowed.

  Lindy slips onto the bench next to Elder. Not across from him, the way two people are supposed to sit when they eat a meal together, but squeezing as close as possible, leaving nothing but an empty space on the other side.

  She hands him the oysters. “Your favorite. Montauk Pearls.”

  He grins his goofy grin, and his bony knees hit the table. I watch him, knowing now, at least, where he stands.

  On the side of not wanting anything to do with me.

  Later that night, I stretch the sleeves of my hoodie to the tips of my fingers and rest my head against a wooden lounge chair on the back porch, listening for the sound of Elder’s truck. I try to savor the last nights of summer, but it’s already too cold. The air smells salty and wet. The stars stay hidden behind the clouds. I can barely hear the ocean over the blowing wind.

  Elder’s truck roars, and the lights from his high beams swish across the beach grass. I hear the motor run and a door slam. The lights linger a few moments too long, while Lindy’s boots clamor up the front steps. As soon as the screen door bangs closed, I clutch the ends of my sweatshirt and watch the lights back away.

  Lindy calls my name.

  I mumble, “Out here!”

  Soon she’s a blurred outline behind the screen. “What are you doing out there in the dark?” She flicks the porch light on.

  Then she joins me, pulling a deck chair up. She doesn’t look cold, not with her leather bomber jacket zipped tight and her knitted fingerless gloves scrunched at her wrists.

  She should stick out like a sore thumb in Barnes Bluff, but instead, she’s woven tight to the thread of this place. We both are.

  I curl up in my chair, trying to stay warm. Before I know it, the leaves will fall, they’ll harvest pumpkins on the North Fork, and winter will nose its way in.

  “How was the rest of your shift?” I ask.

  “Uneventful.”

  “Elder stayed?” I ask.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  It comes out harsher than I want it to. “I like Sundays being our day at the Shaky.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I watch the recognition race through her. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  It bothers me that it didn’t even occur to her I’d want to keep it that way. Then more things start gnawing at me. I sit up quick. “Why’d you leave it up to me, anyhow?” I ask.

  “Leave what up to you?”

  “The whole Elder-moving-in thing.”

  “I want you to be comfortable with it, Summer. I thought you should have a say.”

  “So if I say no, you’ll change your mind?” I ask.

  She hesitates.

  I fall back into my chair. “Didn’t think so.”

  I can’t think of a time when Lindy and I weren’t on the same page. Why is it happening now?

  “I thought we could ease into it,” she says. “I thought we’d start with Sundays at the Shaky first. I don’t know. I’m new at this.”

  She edges closer to me, tugs at the paws of my sweatshirt covering my palms. “I don’t want you to feel left out,” she says. “I know what that’s like.”

  “You do?”

  “I was always the one left behind. Always the third wheel. Blech.”

  “In school?” I wonder.

  “Just…in life.” She goes vague, what Mrs. Grady says when we’re not specific enough in our convictions.

  She rests her hand at my wrist and says, “Sundays at the Shaky are ours.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  But it doesn’t feel like enough. I want all of Lindy, not one place or one day.

  She stands up, pulling my hand with her. “Come on. It’s late. And it’s freezing out here.”

  I trudge behind her. She flicks the porch light out, and we’re left in darkness, feeling our way through the house I’ve lived in ever since I can remember. When she found me, when she let me into her life, I wonder if she knew she’d have to break us open someday to let others in.

  Lindy leaves me at the foot of my unmade bed. She kisses my forehead with a whispered good night, and I collapse onto the crumpled sheets, my arms sore from kayaking, my stomach aching with salt and seawater and clam strips. I bunch my hands underneath me because even if they get tingly and fall asleep themselves, it makes me feel safe.

  I leave the window open, holding on to the last gasps of summer breeze. I shut my eyes and drift closer to sleep.

  Tink squirted mustard on her hot dog. She eyed Kimmy, who was scooting her deck chair closer to Len. Tink hated the fact that it used to be the three of them together and now it was all disjointed and weird.

  Tink’s mom slid past her, leaving the musky waft of her perfume behind. She wrapped one arm around Kimmy’s shoulders as she reached over her to grab a bun from a flimsy plastic platter. She was affectionate like that, always pressing wet kisses on Tink’s cheeks, crushing her in suffocating hugs, and Tink secretly liked it even if she knew she wasn’t supposed to. She was supposed to roll her eyes and Mo-om her.

  But Kimmy didn’t brush her aside the way she would her own mother. In fact, she seemed kind of happy in the embrace even as Tink’s mom lingered too long in it. “What’re you all doing today?” her mom asked. “I heard about this new go-kart place.”

  “Sounds cool,” Tink said.

  Kimmy frowned. “I’d rather go to the beach.”

  Tink
held back a groan. She didn’t want to go to the beach again and lie out on towels the way Kimmy did, making sure she tanned evenly as she read celebrity gossip magazines.

  “What about you, Len?” Tink’s mom asked.

  “Sure,” he said, shoving a hot dog in his mouth. “Go-karting sounds fun.”

  “Well, maybe I’d check it out,” Kimmy said quickly.

  As soon as she agreed, Tink lost interest. “Maybe tomorrow,” she murmured.

  Tink’s mom looked between them, suspicious, and Tink wondered how she always knew when something was up.

  “Didn’t you all talk about doing that sandcastle competition again this year?” her mom asked. “Isn’t that coming up?”

  Tink brightened. “Oh yeah!”

  “I don’t know. It was kind of lame,” Kimmy said.

  Tink didn’t know what she wanted—for Kimmy to want to do the same things Tink did or for her to not want to do them. It seemed whichever way it went, it made her angry.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” Tink said, holding on to her hot dog.

  “A walk where?” Len called, and maybe there was a little desperation in his tone, if she thought about it?

  Her mom followed as Tink skipped down the first set of deck steps. “What’s up with you and Kimmy?”

  “Nothing,” Tink said, her voice as flat as possible, making her way, fast, across the wraparound porch, in between bites of her hot dog.

  But then she stopped. She was tired of holding everything in. “We’re just not into the same things anymore.”

  “Mmm. I worried that would happen.”

  Tink swallowed hard. “You did?”

  “I don’t know. Kimmy’s always been more advanced. Your sister was like that. It was exhausting. It still is.”

  Tink nodded. It was exhausting.

  “You’re a late bloomer, like I was.”

  Tink flushed. “God, Mom.”

  “It’s true! But it all evens out, eventually.”

  Tink nodded, wishing it would even out faster. It felt like everyone—her family, her friends, the kids at school—they were all out of sync. “I’m walking to the bay side,” Tink said, and her mom grazed her lips across Tink’s forehead in a fast kiss. “Be careful.”

  Tink climbed down the tall wooden steps toward the front of the house, skipping along the sandy dirt road, kicking up dust like a wild horse.

  By the time she turned the corner, crossing closer to the bay side of Barnes Bluff, Len was huffing and puffing right next to her, wiping sweat from his upper lip. “Where ya going?” he asked.

  She got herself ready for Kimmy’s inevitable giggling behind them. But, when she turned around, it was just the road, lined with beach grass, and Len shuffling his giant bare feet beside her.

  “I’m—” Sick of Kimmy, she thought to say but held it at her tongue. She stuffed the last bit of hot dog in her mouth and spoke all garbled. “I’m bored.”

  “Me too,” Len agreed.

  She stopped. “Where’s Kimmy?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Took off before she could catch up, I guess.”

  Tink smirked.

  Len let a little laugh bubble from his lips and caught himself.

  “It’s hot,” she went on. “But I don’t even feel like swimming.”

  “We could hang out where Alexis works, maybe?” Len suggested.

  “Alexis doesn’t want me there,” she murmured.

  “So? Who died and left her queen?”

  Tink almost smiled.

  “We could hang with Coop?” he said. “He’s always at the marsh.”

  She scrunched her nose. “Coop?”

  “What? He’s cool.”

  She had to admit she was curious about this kid that Alexis was spending all her time with, who stood at Alexis’s side and said not much more than hey.

  “All right.”

  They walked to the line of trees that stretched along the narrow waterway toward the marsh, where a collection of old canoes and boats sat soaking in leftover rain.

  “Hey, Coop!” Len called, sloshing through the mud. Tink followed. She listened to the slopping sound and eyed the mess of paddles, ropes, and discarded boats.

  Coop didn’t look up. He sat hunched over the underside of a canoe. She could see paints and spray bottles nestled on the ground.

  Len marched up to him, and Tink ran her gaze across the entire length of the canoe. It was covered in delicate, purposeful brushstrokes, a jumbled but detailed painting of an enormous menagerie. The creatures were so vivid, it looked like a photo.

  Tink stood gaping. “You did this?”

  Coop finally looked up, his eyes sharper than she’d seen them all summer, like he was in his element for once. “No one uses the boats, so I thought, why not?”

  Tink stared at the animalscape. Birds in flight. A tiger. A kangaroo with a lopsided, wicked smile. There were mythical creatures, centaurs and three-eyed dogs and fish-tailed lions. Falling flower petals covered the spaces in between. It looked like a lot of work, and he seemed to be filling in every inch of blank space.

  “Wow,” Len chimed in.

  Coop rested his paintbrush against the side of the boat and reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Cigarette?”

  Tink shook her head no, real fast.

  Len sat down beside him. “Sure.”

  Tink’s eyes grew wide, watching as Coop patted his pocket. He handed over a cigarette and lighter to Len.

  Len handled the lighter with two hands, like he was swinging a tennis racket. Somehow, he got it going, the cigarette kind of drooping from his lips as the lighter twitched and lit a flame.

  Tink leaned against a tree.

  “We’re bored,” Len confessed.

  “That’s Barnes Bluff for you.” Coop’s voice was soft. “Where’s Kimmy?”

  Len shrugged. “At the house, I guess.”

  “She still crazy over you?” Coop asked.

  “Yeah,” Len said, like it was nothing.

  Tink couldn’t believe it, with the way Kimmy had made her crush on Len into the biggest of all big deals, making her promise and swear on imaginary Bibles that she’d take it to her grave and never tell a living soul.

  Now here they were in the middle of the marsh, Coop and Len blowing smoke into the air like it didn’t matter at all.

  She slid down the tree and curled her bare legs under her butt.

  It must be nice, she thought, to be a boy.

  “So what’s with the animals?” she asked Coop.

  “Just painting as many as I can think of.”

  “They’d destroy one another,” she said. “If it were real.”

  Coop looked at her, maybe for the first time ever, and smiled for the slightest second. “Yeah, well it’s not.”

  She scanned the rainbow of color. “Do you have a turtle?” she wondered out loud. It was the first animal she thought of. One lucky enough to be able to hide inside of itself.

  Coop took a long drag of the cigarette and looked down at his own work. “I guess not.”

  The ocean sweeps up and over me. Seaweed slithers across my arms, and I feel the fish nip at my toes. My chest stiffens and stings. I can’t breathe, but I can see the water swirling all around. It fills my lungs and loses itself inside me. Then I hit the sand with a thud.

  I wake with a start. I’m not in the ocean. I’m not at the marsh. I’m nestled with the old flowered sheets, and my hair is sliding down a lumpy pillow, and Coop and Tink and Len are all gone.

  Or I am.

  It’s hard to tell which is true.

  I feel for the dream inside me. Instead of pulsing in my memory, it feels as if it’s trapped in my gut, and I hold my belly, feeling sick and strange. What’s there? I wonder. That leads me he
re?

  I don’t know.

  But I know something about this dream. Something about it feels like it’s a part of me. I sit up and bunch the sheets to the bottom of the bed. Through the window, I can see the pink of the morning, just rising up.

  I know that marsh. And I need to get to it.

  If I leave now, I can get there and back before school.

  I leave a note for Lindy and slip out the door, as quiet as I can. The morning takes big, wide yawns in the hazy sky. I lift my bike from where it’s sprawled out on the front lawn and take off, pedaling fast. My tires trail through the loose sand.

  With nobody out, Barnes Bluff looks like a skeleton of itself. Nothing but tickly beach grass, the salty smell of the ocean, and a stale whiff of bay. All the houses blend into the white sky, and I cross over Main Street, past the church, the post office, and Quigley’s Pub, which has the best cheeseburgers in town. It’s not like the fried fish at the Shaky, but it’s as good as it gets around here.

  I cross to the bay side and feel the dream start to drift from my memory. I don’t remember Tink’s and Len’s footsteps anymore. The sound of their voices is gone. But I know the marshland that leads to the landing. I know where everyone leaves their old paddleboats. It’s the kind of place that’s just on the way to somewhere else.

  I take a curve onto the main road.

  When I see the marsh ahead, I have to get over the metal railing, so I toss my bike first, then I hop over and step through the pools of water and sand.

  The boats are there. Some of them collect water in their hulls, and, I realize, if I’m going to find what I’m looking for, I’m going to have to overturn them all.

  There are about two dozen or so boats, and as the dream fades, I can’t remember the exact kind or color I saw.

  I send the boats toppling over and scan their deep-welled bottoms. Then I find it, next to some old soda cans.

  The boat.

  Coop’s boat.

  Round-bottomed and covered in faded paint.

  I run my fingers across the smooth wood. There’s a date carved into it: July 31st, 2001. There’s a painted turtle, with its little head poking out. I smile.