Why did she care so much, if she had no one to leave it to?
If only I’d known, during those first weeks we lived in the cottage, when the cold rains fell endlessly. If I’d had any idea that the tiny old woman here, frail and stooped, had been dealing with all this mess, I could’ve helped.
I would have, wouldn’t I?
I was afraid of the answer, if I looked at it honestly. Maybe I wouldn’t have. I’d been so messed up, chopping the last of the OxyContin into tiny pieces, taking a little less and a little less, trying to come back to earth, to lose the haggard, foggy-eyed look so I could search for jobs. Counting the pennies as they dwindled. Worrying about whether Trammel would find us.
I hadn’t given one thought to the old woman in this house. The trouble with drowning in the mess of your own life is that you’re not in any shape to save anyone else. You can’t be a lighthouse when you’re underwater yourself. If Iola were still alive now, I’d walk across the yard and ask what I could do to help. We’d sit on the porch and share tea and have long talks. She would show me the photo she’d shown the UPS driver —the one of her posing as a pinup girl.
Lightning struck so close that I jumped away from the hallway window. The hurricane glass on the lamp rattled, threatening to fall off. The cat hissed and skittered off. I realized I’d stepped on his tail.
“Be careful.” The breathless words broke the silence that lingered when the noise died. I imagined myself tripping over the cat, dropping the lamp, oil and flames shooting everywhere.
The cat mewed, watching from underneath a bowlegged table as I set down the lamp and emptied buckets. A new drip had started in the hallway. I scavenged a red-and-white kettle and placed it under the leak near the door to the blue room.
“Enough rain already,” I murmured. The cat sidled closer again, standing with me in the doorway, his tail swaying back and forth, a feathery whip against my skin. The thunder had quieted. Hopefully the storm was moving away, headed across Pamlico Sound toward the tidewater marshes on the mainland.
I walked into the blue room —the last one I hadn’t checked for water. So far, the ceiling in there seemed pristine. The room smelled neither of plaster nor of rain. On the east side, the windows and the double glass doors to the balcony rattled gently, glass shivering against fingers of wood. The walls seemed firm and solid as I set the lantern by the Tiffany Magnolia lamp and crept to the closet, slipping past the short stepladder to take the next box in order, to find out what happened to Iola after she wrote the letter I’d read just this morning. With working at Sandy’s, I’d only been able to allow myself one box each day, but after three more years at the orphan school, Iola had ended the prayers of her fifteen-year-old year, 1938, with four words in large, joyful script, a bird in flight sketched beside them.
I am going home.
Home, I’d learned, was Monsieur’s grand house near the French Quarter of New Orleans. Did Iola later move permanently to the Outer Banks with the Benoits? Why the change of heart about letting her return to the Benoit home in New Orleans at fifteen, after so many years of keeping her away?
This box was heavier than the others —made of tin, probably a container for food or cigars originally. It was decorated with faded prints of palm trees and water and dunes, the sort of images that might have come from tourist postcards back when the wonders of the world were represented in artificially pure colors, blended with misty pastoral lighting. Tiny knobbed whelk shells lined the edges of the lid —a mermaid’s necklace, Pap-pap used to call them. When we found the tubular, papery cases on the beach, he’d cut them open with his pocketknife and show us the miniature whelk shells hidden inside their translucent casings like white diamonds.
The hinged lid groaned softly, protesting my opening it, seeming to momentarily consider keeping its secrets. As always, I slid my fingers beneath the stack inside, lifted it out all at once, and turned it over on the bed. Sand sprinkled the quilt, and several tiny shells fell from among the pages, landing soundlessly and rolling into a patchwork valley of sea colors.
The first letter crackled in my hands, the parchment dry and fragile and smelling of age. A piece of pink sea glass slid along the fold and came to rest in the palm of my hand. I brought it into the lamplight. It was thin, perfectly round, with a thicker rim circling the edge. The base of a very old bottle perhaps. I wasn’t surprised that a young girl would pick it up and save it among her most valuable things.
Rubbing the sea-smoothed edges between my fingers, I turned to the letter.
Dearest Father,
Forgive me. Again, it has been long since I have written to you. How strange that when the hours are long with misery, when needs are many and my heart aches, I seek the solace of conversation with you. Yet when the day is sun-drenched and calm, as peaceful as a milk-full foal splayed on the grass, I am silent, my needs quiet in their slumber.
You have brought me one step short of heaven after my years away. If there is a bit of the divine on earth, these pearls of land among endless sea are that place. If ever all the troubles of the world could be left behind, cast away and washed out with the tide, these islands would hold that magic. I feel you everywhere around me now. I see you in all things —in the vastness of the sky, in the endless roll of the sea, in strange and wondrous creatures washed ashore, in treasures and mysteries, and the flight of seabirds over the water. Here at the edge of land and sea, there is no space for denying you.
Only days are left now before Isabelle will leave for her first term at college in Richmond, so we rush to grab the last of this glorious summer by the sea, this summer of only the two of us, here in this island home. We know that soon enough, Isabelle will board the ferry to travel inland, and Maman and Mama Tee will arrive to take over care of this house and keep it for Isabelle to return to during her respites from school.
There will be cleaning and airing out and dusting and scrubbing and laundering and weeding in the gardens, but for now we leave the dust to itself. We walk over sandy floors and let it gather in moats along the creases of carpets. We run to the stable in the early morning, and we climb onto the old horse bareback, a poke slung over our shoulders. We ride to the sea, along the shore, and the old horse snorts and paws in the surf, tossing his head as if he were young again. His lungs fill beneath our thighs, his skin shudders, and he nickers into the wind. Somewhere in the distance, the wild ponies answer, I think. He quickens with the call of freedom, and so do we.
We travel farther than ever before, first riding, then walking together in the surf, the old horse trailing behind us on his lead. We collect shells and bits of sea glass, holding our finds in our palms and admiring their beauty, their magnificence, their perfection. We clutch them tightly as if this will somehow imprison time itself. This day kept still, inside a whelk’s chambers, an iridescent angel-wing clam, a parchment-like casing filled with tiny shells.
We climb among the bones of a shipwreck and imagine its final moments. We find a diving suit washed up along the shore, and together we weave stories of what might have happened to the diver. Isabelle’s mind is fancy with ideas.
When the afternoon has finally spent itself, we stroll along the tide line, leading the old horse. He snorts and cocks an ear as ghost crabs begin to scuttle from their holes. The sun sinks low over the water, kissing the clouds with amber. The day is at its end, and it is one less day, and sadness overwhelms me.
Isabelle notices, and she asks after my mood.
“You’re leaving in six days,” I say. “Just six days. Maman and Mama Tee will be here in three.” This time is almost over, this time of just the two of us with our sandy feet and long walks by the sea. Maman and Mama Tee will arrive to pack Isabelle off to college. Isabelle’s father cannot do it. He is far away, seeking medical treatment for Madame. Mama Tee says she will not recover. Maman has seen the consumption enough to know it.
It seems that it was only yesterday I came from New Orleans with Isabelle. I think for a moment of Sister Marguerite, who wept as she bade me good-bye and sent me off with Monsieur’s driver, Old Rupert. Now I feel as if I am Sister Marguerite, being left behind by someone who is eager to go away.
“I’ll only be across the ferry and a short train ride away,” says Isabelle. “I’ll be home for term breaks and summers. You can come and visit me too.”
“At college?” I imagine the looks I would get. A colored girl, prancing through the halls of that school.
“Why not?” asks Isabelle.
My laugh comes with an angry sound beneath it. “I don’t want to go to school. I’ve had enough of school. I’m finally home.”