A lamp was on in one of the windows, and as soon as she faced it, the light went out so quickly that she could not determine from which room it had shone. Upstairs, yes, but Jack’s room or her own? Or perhaps it was one of them using the bathroom in the middle of the night. Seat down, fellas. Still, the sudden flicker unnerved her, as if the house itself had been spying, waiting for her to make the next move. The house was cold inside and the air damp against her skin as though the hazy vapors had crept in through the cracks. She turned up the thermostat a few clicks until the heat came on and pumped warm air into the room. During her absence, Tim had arranged the presents below the Christmas tree in a small mountain of many colors and ribbons and bows. She stood before the pile of gifts, admiring the artful care he had shown in placing each one. Just so. In the morning, he would play the elf, dispensing the packages one by one in an order of his own devising.
She tiptoed up the stairs and changed into the nightgown hanging from the back of the bathroom door. As she readied for bed, the lateness of the hour weighed heavily. Other Christmas eves had been spent in last-minute preparations for the morning to come. Once Tim had stayed up till three, assembling a recalcitrant bicycle, now long neglected. The year Jack Peter was born, they spent the night listening through the baby monitor, hoping he might awaken, and nestling together for his midnight feed, all three of them asleep, the baby against her breast, her husband at her side. Or that terrible fight that one Christmas when she could not fully forgive Tim’s transgressions and amends. Ancient history, she thought, and slid into bed, careful not to wake her sleeping husband.
*
Belowdecks the sea poured in through the hole created when the ship struck the rocks. In their quarters, preparing for arrival in the new land, she and Tim were tossed to the floor by the scraping collision. The ship listed to the breach and knocked the feet from under them again as they tried to rise. Their trunk of clothes and goods slid across the room and burst open, and the small loose articles—a brush and hand mirror, a sheaf of paper and pens, a secret flask of rum—fell and scattered pell-mell. Seeping through the oaken decks and streaming beneath the door, the sea stained the wood, slowly at first like spilled milk, and then all at once, a torrent that gushed by inches as they regained their feet. She screamed at Tim to do something, but he simply sucked on the long stem of his clay pipe and considered the situation with a detached, almost amused air. The coldness of the water shocked and then numbed them. Tim sloshed to the cabin door, but he could not open it against the pressure of the incoming sea and he hulloed and called for the captain, but it was instantly apparent that no one could hear them. Holly struggled to his side in a panic as the water girdled her hips and waist, and she beat her fists against the door, hollering for help. Come save us. She drummed and cried out, but the ship rocked and pitched by thirty degrees, and the cold water rose to their shoulders. Tim banged against the ceiling, the sea sweeping them off their feet, so that they were treading water now, and the wooden walls burst ecstatically. They were under, breathing in the sea in one last desperate gesture, the air bubbling from their mouths, a bewildered look frozen on their faces. Suspended in the green sea, the bodies floated toward the cabin walls and then sank, white as fish bellies, dead as dead could be, bobbing in slow motion, and knocking dully against the confines of the little room in the coffin of the Porthleven.
As if she had stopped breathing, Holly choked and gasped for breath. She opened her eyes from the nightmare, and almost reflexively, she sat up in the bed to check on her husband. Tim snored gently into his pillow. She threw off the covers and went to see about her son, gently opening Jack’s door. In the dim light, she made out his figure curled on the bed. He twitched in his sleep and his shoulders jerked as if she had caught him in some erotic throes, but his movements were sporadic, as if he dreamt of wrestling or of running or swimming away from her. The memory of those drowned bodies gave her a chill. She wanted to lay her hands on her son, but she knew that he might jump from her touch or scream or strike her. From the edge of his bed she spoke his name softly, and he rolled over and went still, sighing once. Just as quietly, she inched off the mattress and stood, watching him a moment longer.
Tim was still sleeping when she crawled into bed, but he woke as soon as her cold feet grazed the warmth of his calves. He rolled over to her, and she could feel his gaze upon her.
“You’re back,” he whispered. “How was church?”
Midnight Mass seemed a lifetime ago. “Just fine,” she said. “Beautiful, really, but it’s been a strange night. On the way home, I could have sworn there was a group of people out there. A ship at sea, drowning. It’s so foggy, I couldn’t see a thing.”
The hinge of his jaw made a snapping sound when he yawned. “Try to get some sleep. Who knows when our little boy will be up in the morning? Could be the crack of dawn. Just like when he was a baby.”
Neither one of them spoke again, and soon her husband was asleep and snoring. She stared at the ceiling for a while and then at the gap between the window and the shade, that small space where in a few short hours the rising sun would slice through the darkness to announce another morning.