Prologue
Maybe it's the stark brilliance of the pale moon suspended in a hard black sky that somehow makes everything about this night feel harsher, uglier; failing to soften what now seems especially unconscionable.
But, still, I pretend not to notice, cautiously opening the door of Ash's old blue Buick and sliding into the drivers' seat, shoving away the fact that all at once arrives with the insistence of knuckles rapping against a glass pane, that I haven't paused to consider what I'll do if the car doesn't start. As it is, every movement feels sharply critical, almost painful, my insides tightly clenched around the fear that Ash will wake before I'm gone.
Over these past months I have become intimately versed to his sleep patterns and the varying depths of his slumber. But even so, the acrid taste of unease clings like sour bile inside my mouth as I release the brake and the behemoth slowly drifts backward.
The movement proves inconsequential, the car stubbornly halting after only a few feet. I push two fingers into the breast pocket of my cotton blouse, feeling for the sharp edges of the single key I've slipped from Ash's key ring, a thick knot of anxiety immediately rising at the back of my throat with the understanding that there is no other recourse then to start the engine.
My heart clatters like a galloping horse inside my chest as the worn-out car chokes once… twice…then sputters to life. And the swell of my breathing – raspy and tight – throbs a passionate rhythm against my eardrums as I swing the vehicle around in the driveway; the sound of tires crunching over gravel striking against the jangled edges of my exposed nerves like gunshots.
I nose the car out toward the highway, drawn if by the taught threads of an imminent slow torture, daring only one final glance in the rearview mirror as the tires edge onto pavement, watching just long enough to see the dark silhouette of the house swallowed up by the night – only an instant before it is fully gone.
There is nothing stirring. Nothing reminiscent of the living beyond the grunts emanating from the tired engine as the car passes slowly along the nodding streets. And despite my screaming urgency to be away from this place, I hold firm against the impulse to slam my foot down on the gas pedal, knowing it is essential that I not risk drawing attention to my leaving.
On Main Street, the only interruption to the ominous veil of darkness draped over the shadowy buildings is the harsh glare of artificial light spilling over the sidewalk outside Tootie's all-night diner, and beyond that, the constant yellow blink of the traffic light suspended over the intersection like a fallen moon.
Beneath the smoky film of a descending mirage, the compacted residential streets have all but melted away into the darkness, and all at once a vast green sea of corn is rolling past in waves. The farmlands spreading out to eclipse the landscape in every direction beyond the flat ribbon of concrete roadway; neatly quilted squares of fenced pasture held motionless in the soft drape of moonlight.
The openness of the interstate unfurls before me, unraveled like twine across what has always been an impenetrable barrier. And the world lying beyond looks immense, the earth itself rising up to meet me.
It isn't long in coming that my immediate sense of elation cedes to the superior press of guilt and shame. How can I do this? Ash has done nothing to mark himself deserving of such callous betrayal. His one mortal fault has been to love me, and maybe that is his sin. This single crime running parallel with the fatal flaw that resides here, within me, poisonously tangled inside; deep enough that no means exists for grasping it and wrenching it away.
And while I am aware that this cowardly act of desertion will mark me as wholly unforgivable, I just as clearly understand that there is no going back; altogether certain, that my determined choice to carve myself free from my life, slicing away both past and present, insures that there can be no prodigal return.
I can feel the tension gradually slipping away as the distance between Callicoon and my eventual destination lengthens, my fingers at last relaxing their tight knuckled grip on the steering wheel. I've left. Done the unthinkable and relinquished my life. Where I go doesn't matter, my only concern is that it be distant. Further than the past might ever dare seek to reclaim me.
I wonder where I am. A soft peachy glow is rising in the east and the subtle coming of morning's light has altogether erased the sensation of reckless adventure that has successfully carried me through the night.
Fatigue pulls heavily at my eyelids. There are so many decisions to be made, yet my mind hangs suspended in a thick paste of confusion that refuses to dissipate, and I am all at once struggling for breath, frantic to squelch the panic rising like seawater into my throat. Where am I going? Do I even know what I'm doing? Do I even have a plan?
The insistent blare of an automobile horn startles me back to full conscious, slapping me sober to the realization that I've drifted into the wrong lane of traffic, an oncoming car wildly swerving to avoid collision.
Again the car's engine has overheated and I find myself stranded alongside the roadway, a flock of motorists blowing past (an occasional craned neck or fleeting glimpse in a rearview mirror the only indication of fleeting interest), as I wait for the geyser of steam jetting from the radiator to subside. Not for the first time, I consider deserting the worthless hunk of tires and metal. Yet, despite my wildly floundering state, thankfully or not, reason prevails and I impatiently wait for the chance to move on.
Stopping to fill the radiator at a gas station, I consider calling Ash from the payphone. I stand inside the dirty, glass-walled booth at the edge of the parking lot without pulling the accordion door shut behind me, imagining the sequence of numbers required to place the call – see my fingers dialing – though in the end returning the receiver to its cradle without depositing the necessary coins, knowing there is really nothing I might say now that will explain any of this.
Another night is gone.
The afternoon has turned stormy, and after traveling for much of the day in a heedless driving rain, I pull into the near empty parking lot of a motel somewhere in Iowa.
The stale air inside the room holds tightly to the pungent odor of mothballs and mustiness, but I hardly care. All I desire is a shower and sleep. After three days on the road, I feel like a soiled garment balled up and forgotten at the bottom of a laundry hamper. And when I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror I am oddly frightened by the reflection of the stranger staring back at me: an expressionless, hollow-eyed entity watching from behind the glass.
The plain cotton sheets dressing the bed have absorbed the clammy dampness of the room. It is almost painfully cold and I curl into a tight ball beneath the thin blanket and wildly patterned bedspread, attempting to radiate the deadening chill from my limbs.
Outside the rain continues to pound against the roof and windows like an angry fist. From somewhere in the room comes the distinct sound of dripping water, but I don't care to investigate. It is of little consequence to me whether this room, or even the entire earth, should wash away.
I squeeze my eyes tight against the dark, grasping at sleep. But my mind resists the command – the sheets tangling around me like determined arms as I pitch and roll uselessly.
For no reason in particular I all at once remember the small plastic radio I'd noticed earlier on a scratched veneer table opposite the bed. I drop my bare feet to the cold linoleum floor and stumble forward in the darkness.
The channels crackle and hiss as I turn the dial and listen for intelligible sounds, my fingers hesitating over recognizable tones: a polka station, gospel music, a local news program...Until all at once, my body stiffens in mid-search. Wavering…fading…then clearing as I attempt to adjust the tuning, is a voice at once recognizable – Elvis Presley singing "Love Me Tender."
A whirlwind of undetermined emotions stir and rise to the surface like a surging crowd, but the song is over quickly and another voice immediately leaps out from the tiny speaker. "Hold tight and we'll be right back after these announcements, bringing you another hit, this one from 1957, when we continue in just a moment with more classic, golden oldies."
Golden oldie? Since when have the remembrances of my life become oldies? It was only twelve years ago that I'd been a gangly fourteen-year-old with a ponytail and a poodle skirt. Is it possible that such an extraordinary chunk of time has found a way to slip away across the sill and out of reach? Could all of it have passed so long ago? Become so far away?
Waves of emotion wash over me, deepening in intensity as they invade my heart and mind with a precise edge of sharpened clarity. Those days have shaped my life; never quite forgotten days I've purposely packed away, trying hard to forget, even now, as they swell and swirl upwards in memories that break like the sea against the rocks.
The sea. That was where it began and ended. The whole of my existence. All of it molded and shrewdly defined by the hand of the beautiful, but insatiably hostile sea.
Chapter One
"You look like a slimy old reptile sunning itself," I said to my sister Eleanor as she rubbed tanning oil onto her already slick limbs.
"Still better then a pale white pile of seagull shit."
"Ha ha, so hilarious," I sneered, rolling over onto my stomach to fidget with the dial on the transistor radio we were forced to share.
"Hey, I was listening to something," Eleanor turned her head, glaring daggers from her beach towel.
"Big deal, it's my turn now."
"Baloney. It hasn't been an hour yet."
"Yeah – more like two."
"You're so full of crap, Stevie."
I ignored her, twisting the dial to WRR, my favorite station. (The RR stood for rock and roll and played more Elvis Presley records than any other station.) I closed my eyes, wiggling my toes in the sand bordering the bottom edge of my painstakingly smoothed out beach towel, impossibly content there beside the rolling sea, the sun caressing my skin, Elvis gyrating behind my lids; a scene almost painful in its perfection.
"I don't see what's so great about that guy. He always look's like he's smelling something rotten."
"You're such a dope Eleanor. Elvis is a sensual person. That's the way sensual people look."
"Oh perfect – words from an expert. I think it's more like gas pains."
I bit back my retort, rolling over to bake my front side as if I hadn't heard. It was the same transparent ruse whenever Eleanor grew bored with sunbathing, baiting me into some stupid argument for the sole purpose of entertaining herself with my indignation. Despite my awareness of her tactics, there were still plenty of occasions when I leapt right in anyway, as eager and willing as she was to spar insults. It all depended on my mood of course, since I could just as easily ignore her, in which case she'd eventually give-up and pack herself up to the house where she'd spend the rest of the afternoon engrossed in the worn-out copies of Confidential magazine she kept under her mattress.
And while many of Eleanor's habits remained accustomed and familiar, there were subtle changes as well. Most obvious, the marked change in her behavior once we arrived at the beach, namely her settlement on a plateau notably heightened from the one she generally occupied whenever we were away from home. She now preferred to be by herself much of the time and was annoyingly distracted when she wasn't, as if the company of anyone other then herself was inconvenient as it was boring. I easily assumed her newborn attitude mostly had to do with her having grown breasts. They'd been a long time in coming and now that they'd emerged I figured she felt there was a lot for her to meditate over.
We'd been spending our summers with Aunt Smyrna and Uncle Calvin ever since Eleanor was twelve and I ten. As soon as school let out in June we were ready and eager to leave behind the family farm in Callicoon, Pennsylvania, traveling by train all the way to Long Island where our aunt and uncle spent the season in their great old summer house; a wondrous relic from another era, settled high on the rocks extending up from the sandy shoreline to stare out defiantly over the North Atlantic.
As often as we'd mulled over it privately, Eleanor and I had never quite figured out how it was that our consistently cautious parents surrendered to releasing us from Callicoon each summer (afraid that asking our parents directly might inevitably result in their questioning and rethinking the trip onto the side of permanent denial). Increasingly in recent years, we'd found ourselves shamelessly ease-dropping on their quiet conversations, eager for some insight into their motivations. Yet we'd detected no obvious links between our vacations away from home and those private anxieties passed between them; concern for the Callicoon boys who'd gone off to fight the war in Korea; dismay over the ugly scenes of desegregation unfolding in the South and shockingly reeled into our living room via the nightly news once our father finally conceded to buying a television set – images of black school children harangued by white parents seeming all but impossible in a civilized world. And now, their increasing unease as a Senator by the name of McCarthy unleashed a formidable attack against the "dangerous threat" of Communists living and working amongst us – devious persons expert in their portrayal of ordinary citizens, whether it be someone's mailman, favorite movie star, or a neighbor's eighty-year old grandmother. (And while neither of us were especially clear as to the actual nature of Communists or the particular threats such persons wielded, Eleanor and I nevertheless agreed that Callicoon was ripe with suspicious characters, and had thus spent considerable hours composing lists of names to send on to Senator McCarthy for investigation.)
Not until some years later would I find myself pausing to consider over the possibility that our mother and father's purpose in allowing us to leave home every summer might've been intended as something other then simple merciful release from the tedium of everyday life on our farm. That maybe the trip had been permitted as a concession of another sort, allowing my sister and me to savor the last visages of youthful innocence before we'd grown too old to ignore the rather messy world churning out beyond Callicoon.
Nevertheless, whatever their reasoning, in the final weeks before school let out Eleanor and I diligently held ourselves to twin images of saintliness; both of us unanimous in the agreement that no chance be taken which might jeopardize our leaving. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – our indispensable commandments for the month of June.
Mom always cried when we left with Daddy for the train station, both Eleanor and me working up a sprinkling of dutiful tears in return. As much as Mom worried about our making the trip alone, we couldn't have been more excited or fearless ourselves.
Eleanor would immediately move to another seat away from the one we'd shared at departure as soon as the train had safely left the station. While Daddy insisted we stick together for the duration of the trip, Eleanor was of the opinion that my presence was a crippling hindrance to her successful portrayal of whichever persona it was she'd chosen to affect for the length of our journey. (An international spy on one occasion, an orphaned heiress, a famous actress the year after that…) Rather then being insulted, I mostly just thought her amusing, having no reasonable inkling as to who she expected to deceive with her silly performances. Since from where I was sitting, she still looked like a dopey kid with far too many freckles.
Until shockingly, the year she turned fourteen, Eleanor actually managed to garner the attentions of a pimply faced boy sporting a swept back duck-tail and a rather ridiculous looking pink shirt. I immediately launched into my own best efforts to annoy her – snickering and rolling my eyes whenever I succeeded in catching the corner of her eye – so that by the time we'd reached Long Island station she was refusing to speak to me.
Now, Eleanor stood, picking up her bottle of tanning oil and propping her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. "Don't use up the batteries." She nudged my outstretched arm with her toe.
"Go away," I said without opening my eyes.
Eleanor bent to retrieve her towel, deliberately shaking a shower of sand over my oil coated figure as she yanked it up and balled it under her arm.
"Drop dead twice, jerk," I shouted after her retreating figure, the oath bringing little satisfaction whatsoever.
While I undoubtedly loved my uncle as much as I ever had, I was nevertheless relieved now that he was only at the house on weekends. Unlike the summers previous when he'd commuted daily to his job in New York City, this year Uncle Cal had settled on a routine where he stayed the week at the apartment he and Aunt Smyrna kept in the city, not returning to the beach until late on Friday evenings.
Tonight Uncle Cal had drunk too much wine with supper again, the certitude of his inebriation readily apparent as his conversation became increasingly animated and jovial, his gestures broadly exaggerated.
He continued to fill his glass, his words growing a little too loud, his comments a little too sharp. A menacing undercurrent began to surface in his remarks to Aunt Smyrna as the meal dragged on, her countenance visibly stiffening with a ripening expression of embarrassment – or insult – though I had no certainty of which it might be. I'd never witnessed such bold animosity between them in previous years and I found it both puzzling and increasingly unnerving now.
Supper at last concluded, we retreated outside to sit amongst the comfortable collection of old wicker chairs scattered about on the wide porch that jutted out from the front of the house like a toothy grin.
Aunt Smyrna handed each of us a soft worn blanket to wrap ourselves against the damp chill rolling up from the crashing sea. The North Atlantic was frigid yet, and although Eleanor and me had darted in and out of the water when we'd gone down to the beach that morning – high-pitched squeals punctuating the dash from chilly ocean back to warm sand – we'd spent the majority of our time stretched out in the sun.
Uncle Cal grumbled under his breath as he attempted to light his pipe. Despite the protective cup of his hand, the far reaching breeze waving up from the ocean teasingly whisked away each weak flame birthed by his succession of angry match strikes, until finally, a subtle orange glow appeared successful in the bowl of packed tobacco.
"Why don't you live here in the winter, too, Aunt Smyrna?" I asked, after a while.
"The same reason nobody else does. This place is positively arctic in the winter months."
"But isn't it sort of beautiful too? The ocean's never really ugly, is it?"
"Well yes, I suppose it's still pretty – but lonely. By the end of September all the summer people are gone and I'm ready to leave too. I've never been one for isolation."
"You're such a ninny, Stevie," Eleanor scoffed. "Who'd want to stay out here wrapped-up like an Eskimo when they can spend the entire winter in New York shopping and going to parties?"
"How about you mind your own business, El."
"If you didn't say such stu –"
Uncle Cal reached out and rapped his pipe sharply against the porch railing, a signal we received as a distinct motion to cease our bickering, although it was just as likely he was simply emptying the spent remains of tobacco from the bowl.
Eleanor curled a corner of her lip, glared at me, the lopsided smirk lending an especially menacingly air to her expression. I quickly stuck out my tongue before glancing away.
Our uncle stood, carelessly laying aside his pipe on a table strewn with magazines. He'd remained clearly detached from the rest of us all evening, so that I'd nearly forgotten his presence, easily assuming that his mental seclusion was nothing more complicated then the effects of all he'd had to drink before, during, and after our meal.
"I'm going for a walk," he said, turning his back on Aunt Smyrna. "Don't bother to leave the light on for me, it'll attract moths."
She didn't answer, the three of us watching in silence as he moved down the weathered flight of steps leading to the empty beach below.
"El? Why do you think he doesn't love her anymore?" I whispered hoarsely through the darkness, hours later, after we'd gone upstairs to bed.
We'd shared the same spacious room for each of the summers we'd spent here. Eleanor always insisting on sleeping in the twin bed located on the far side of the room where two large windows looked out over the ocean, relegating me to accept the matching bed positioned opposite, on the windowless, less desirable side of the room.
"What are you talking about?"
"Aunt Smyrna and Uncle Cal…he doesn't love her anymore."
"What makes you think he doesn't love her?"
"He isn't very nice to her. Not like he used to be."
"Well married people get like that sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."
"No, it's different than that," I persisted. "Something's changed."
She didn't reply and I wondered if she'd gone to sleep.
"El-"
She rolled over, offering her back in a delayed response to my statement.
"Don't insist on looking for things that aren't there, Stevie."
It seemed I'd only just fallen asleep when my lids vaulted open. From outside came the dull sound of footsteps treading across the porch, followed by the careless slam of the screen door, and I knew it would be Uncle Cal finally returned from his walk on the beach.
I tipped my head toward the round-faced clock on Eleanor's night table. It was nearly midnight. In a few more hours he'd be leaving again to catch the train back to New York and the solace of untroubled tranquility would once more be returned to our daily routine. Excepting of course, that Eleanor would still be here in the morning.
I can't say I knew what to expect with any certainly since I've never had a book published before now. Still, I did read, research, take notes, make lists, and plan plans. I didn't fall into anything blindly, but even so, there were, and continue to be, plenty of surprises.
