Before I rethought the wisdom of it, I was all the way up, my feet splayed on either side of a paint-spattered label that still clearly read, Danger! Do not stand on top step. If I fell from here, I’d knock myself silly, and no one would ever find me. I’d become the stuff of local lore and haunted legend —the doofus house cleaner who went where she wasn’t supposed to go, fell to her death, and still walks the floors to this very day.
The idea stirred a giggle, and I snorted softly. “This really . . . is . . . ridiculous, Tandi.”
Taking one hand off the wall, I stretched the broom handle toward the glass box, now dangling overhead. The lid was ajar, its sharp corner burrowing into the plaster, a letter trying to slip through the opening.
“Okay . . . now . . . hold on a . . . minute . . .” The ladder wobbled and squeaked as I shuffled, trying to get into box-catching position. “This is . . . probably not . . . such a good . . .” It crossed my mind that I had a broom in one hand, which meant that I’d be catching the box with one-and-a-half hands, unless I could drop the broom fast enough . . .
The cat growl-meowed from somewhere below, and I jerked back, the weight of the old straw broom pushing me off-balance so that for a moment I thought I was headed down the hard way. Instead, I ended up crouched on the top of the ladder like a monkey on a branch, the broom clamped against my feet. My head swirled. Heights had never been my thing. I’d always hated it when my father did roof repair work. He almost seemed to enjoy the wildness of it, the risk, the fact that I clung to the flashings as I carried tools up and down. I hated being up there with him. If he was in a good mood, he’d grab me and pretend he was going to toss me off, just for the fun of it.
I glanced under my arm, and the cat was in the closet doorway, watching me with a bemused expression. “You’re right.” I let my head fall forward and wiped beads of nervous perspiration from my forehead. “This is nuts. It’s never going to work.” Like it or not, I wouldn’t be getting the glass box off the shelf until I had a taller ladder. “Well, if I can’t get it down, at least I can make sure it stays there, I guess.”
The cat didn’t answer, of course. He just stood watching, his broken ear flicking toward the sound as I moved down a step to get a better balance, then extended the broom handle upward, hoping to hook the lid just under the hinge and push the box back onto the shelf. “If this doesn’t work, you’d better look out,” I said to the cat. At this point, the box had to be hanging more or less by the soldered-lead corner that had carved itself into the wall. It resisted as I moved the broom handle into place and tried to push upward. I applied more pressure, and the corner popped free, knocking me sideways as the lid snapped against the handle and plaster rained down like a sprinkling of pixie dust.
The cat sneezed.
A slip of paper seemed to come from nowhere, sliding off the shelf, from underneath one of the cockeyed boxes, perhaps. It floated downward slowly, zigzagging back and forth like a sailboat tacking against the wind, until it found a vanishing point in the bottom of the closet. Things settled into place on the broken shelf, and I prodded gingerly with the broom handle, just to make sure. The pileup of containers seemed stable enough for now.
By the time I finally set my feet on solid ground again, the cat was sniffing around underneath the fur coat, seemingly looking for the letter, as if he’d caught the scent of his mistress there. A puff of dust wafted out, hanging in the air as I retrieved the slip of paper, then moved to the bed to read it. In a way, it was a good thing that I hadn’t been able to extract the glass box from the shelf. I didn’t need the temptation. After spending the morning in town, I only had a few hours left to work in the kitchen before the kids came home. Double employment meant that I’d have to be more efficient now, but it also meant bringing in some money on top of getting to stay in the cottage. I would work my fingers off if I had to. These jobs could be our way out of desperation.
The letter from the top shelf was new and pliable, the paper seeming recently purchased. Pastel-printed images of sea oats and lighthouses adorned the margins of the page, and along the bottom, in Old English script, the caption read, Lighthouses of the Outer Banks. All the lighthouses were there —Currituck, Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, Roanoke, Ocracoke. Beneath the caption was a quote in soft blue letters that almost seemed a part of the ocean waves: “Inside my empty bottle, I was creating lighthouses while all the others were making ships.” Charles Simic.
The quote reminded me of Pap-pap’s stories of accidents at sea. It was a dangerous life. The ocean floor around here was a graveyard, a watery resting place littered with the bones of ships and men.
I turned my eyes to the familiar handwriting on the page. The words trembled and ran uphill, like those on the final letter left on the desk with the unfinished prayer box.
Dearest Father,
Forgive me for not coming to this sooner, this writing to you. Time goes by in the storm-washed days, unpredictable moment to moment, a pouring in and then a washing away. The ocean is calm today, beautiful, sunlit, and placid all around. How difficult to imagine that it has rushed ashore, washed through buildings and cars, and wrestled boats loose from their mooring lines. But what is left behind tells the tale. Trees down in the yard, mud against the pilings, and driftwood lining the sedges nearby. On television, the news of businesses destroyed and families waiting in line at the Salvation Army canteen trucks. Camping trailers prostrate in the surf, beached like the carcasses of great whales. Rubble on curbs. Houses that sit dark at night. No lights. No air. No families.
Yet amid all this, there is the water of grace. It flows in all directions, seeping into the hidden crevices, the darkest spaces. It comes with the stranger who rows by in a kayak when the water is yet high. “Just checking. Do you need anything?” he asks. The grace water moves in meals from hand to hand, in blankets, in trucks filled with supplies, in young men wearing military uniforms, in old men carrying chain saws, in lamp oil and candles. Light passed from hand to hand.
The water of grace. A sponge to thirsty lips. A trickle and then a flood.
Hope.
The river moves a mountain stone by stone, slowly widening its path, flowing over each of us, cutting into each of us, washing through the places that are hard, that would separate us from one another, from you among us and within us.
After the storm, all are equal. All wanting. All needing. All in need of the water of grace from one another and from you.
I think on these things, and the tides are multiplied. They flow over me, stronger and more potent than the tides of destruction. The debris of anger, of desperation, seeps away, little by little. A tiny stone and then another. A mountain moving. Moved by all that is right.
There is so much good. So much grace. So much pouring into the river. A quiet water, this river of grace. Its work done in ways that do not seek attention. Yet it is there. Always there.
A shrimp boat rests in a parking lot not far away. You have seen this, of course. Such a strange thing. I would ask your help for the shrimper. His home is lost. There is a family to feed, the humiliation of moving children to a public shelter, meals taken from a canteen truck. The starting of a new school year, the holidays just months away, and they have nothing.
You know this man, I am certain, as you know each of us. You are always mindful.
And then I wonder, am I to think of a way to aid this neighbor? Is this why I have seen him today? Can these tired old hands still cup the water, pour it out? This old body that creaks and groans with small efforts, can it yet serve?
I think to myself, What can I do?
Then I look at this bit of paper, the one I have grabbed up because it was close at hand when I set about writing to you. I run a finger over the margins, touch the printed images. What does a lighthouse do? I ask myself. It never moves. It cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear the shoals.
It can only cast light into the darkness. It can only point the way.
Yet, through one lighthouse, you guide many ships.
Show this old lighthouse the way.
Your loving daughter,
Iola Anne
I stared at the page, my finger tracing a path over the lighthouses and back. I skimmed the last words again.
Outside the window, the sun slid behind a cloud. A chill walked through me, and I felt someone over my shoulder, watching as I intruded again on Iola’s private things —thoughts that were never meant to be shared with the world.
I couldn’t imagine her kind of life —the kind in which there was an underground river, the water of grace beneath even the most horrible events. The kind of life in which she saw the divine in everything.