As I head down, the sea calls from the black distance. I cannot see it and it cannot see me, but we seem to be aware of one another. I think of a poem from the notebook, the dying sighs and whispers, the last breaths, and just how long the final days of that great body of water have stretched out. Dying slowly, like my mother. When everyone thought the end would be swift, like it was for my dad.
Thinking of my father, I remember how we used to walk the shoreline near our house after Mom passed away. We carried bags, but not because we thought we’d find more than a stray shell here or there. The shells were rare enough that we only needed our pockets. The bags were for the trash. He and I watched the plastic index creep and climb from summer to summer, the measure of how much had dissolved into the sea. When I was nine, he and my mom took me on an eco-cruise to see the great raft of detritus caught in the swirling gyre of the Pacific. Each cruise scoops up as much as it can and brings home tons of trash to be recycled. Passengers buy tickets to pay for the fuel and the efforts. It’s also a lottery of sorts, with winners catching glimpses of a lone whale, maybe just a spout or the tail fin before a deep dive. From fellow passengers, we heard stories of such sightings. At my age, this was like being near enough to unicorns, just touching the arm of an old couple who’d had such an encounter.
Then I saw the raft of trash for myself. You could walk across it in places, it was so thick and buoyant. The giant scoops from the deck crane barely made a dent. My mother explained where it all came from until I wept. After she passed away, my father and I kept her spirit alive by picking up trash on the beach. We tried to make the world a prettier place. At least until the next tide rolled in.
The sea has this effect on me, this helpless reminiscing. On Ness Wilde’s private beach, I weep. I weep while the ocean whispers a death rattle of sublime beauty, of such grace. Such dying grace. Where I am standing would’ve been hillside generations ago. The old beach is out there somewhere, buried. Gone.
Straining, I can see the white foam of crashing waves lit by the half-moon. The lighthouse sends another ray around, providing me with glimpses of the shimmering sea. But this beach was bought with oil money. With plastic. Some other beach lies out there in the inky depths, drowned and forgotten. Flooded. And suddenly the cool sand is hot beneath the soles of my feet. And I turn my back on the graceful, dying waters and run toward the boardwalk, toward the stairs up and away, before the sea reaches out and takes me as well, before it keeps coming, absorbing all, washing me away.
8
“You weren’t gone long,” Ness says as I slam the door behind me. My shoes are in my hand. I am shaking. I tell him I need to go, maybe come back tomorrow, and Ness asks if I’m okay to drive. I’m not. I tell him I need a minute. I hear myself say that I have too many questions. That it’s too late in the day.
“Have a seat,” Ness tells me. “I’ll put on coffee.”
I sit down and slip my shoes back on, the sand rough between my toes. I find my purse and dig out my key fob. It feels good to hold it, this means of escape. I feel drugged on more than just wine and sad remembrances. It’s the blow of new knowledge. I remember feeling this at times in college, needing days to recover after seeing the world in a different light. If what I’ve glimpsed about his grandfather is true, then Ness was right, and I can’t run my next piece. It doesn’t stop the rest of my story, but it creates quite the hole. One I can’t fill with the truth—for I have signed that right away.
“You understand this doesn’t change what I write about your father. Or you.”
“Of course. Do you take cream or sugar?”
“Black is fine,” I say. Strands of my hair have come loose from my running, from the wind. I tuck these behind my ear and accept a cup of coffee. Ness sits. We are back where we started, except the stars are out and the view of the beach is gone. The lighthouse whirs in the distance.
“Four generations of oil men,” I say. Ness nods. “Help me understand how … how you aren’t all the same.”
He laughs. “Because it’s a better story and much easier to write if we’re the same. But let me start from the beginning.” He glances at the dive watch on his left wrist, possibly wondering how much time he has, what things to leave out.
“Please,” I tell him. I’m sure I won’t hear anything new, but I look forward to what things he chooses to leave out, where he decides to embellish. And I’m in no shape to drive. No shape to confront him with the shells. It might have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to have to take him up on the offer to come back.
“My great-grandfather William built Ocean Oil from scratch,” Ness says. “He worked on deep sea rigs while he was in his teens. Dropped out of high school after ninth grade, ran away from home, and became a roughneck on a Shell Oil platform. By the time he was twenty, he was a shift foreman. At twenty-two, he had his own rig. This was ten years younger than anyone in company history.”