Читать книгу Cumberland - Megan Gannon - Страница 14

Seven

Monday, July 8, 1974

30 days

“Don’t move.” The early sun tilts into my eyes so all I can see is someone standing close over me. There’s a click, click and the person drops a camera from the dark outline of his face and crouches down to root around in a canvas bag. I’m freezing, curled up on my side in the cold sand. Sun-spots swim across my vision and when I turn my head I see the person is a girl, skinny as a colt, crouched in khaki pants and a black tank-top. “Damn. Didn’t you hear me?”

“I haven’t moved,” I say, shivering, and although my eyes burn with salt and sand, I don’t lift a hand to rub them.

“Your hair. I wanted the swirl of it on the sand.”

“Oh.” I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. “Sorry.”

She shrugs, and even though she’s almost as small as me, she’s older than I first thought—a grown woman, the corners of her eyes radiating faint lines.

She twists a dark filter off the end of her lens then slots it into a plastic box, all of her movements quick and efficient. “I was pretty much finished for the morning anyway. The kids seem to have picked this beach clean.”

“You mean shells? There are never any out here. You have to go up that way.” I point back down the beach towards the house. My teeth are chattering, and she turns her dark eyes to look at me, then pulls a windbreaker out of her bag and tosses it over. “Hey,” I say, her accent registering. “You’re an out-of-towner.”

“Hardly the only one.” She points with her chin towards the windbreaker and I slide my arms in, pull it over my knees, and the shivers stop. She digs in her bag, pulls out a little brush with a bulb on the end, and starts swiping at the lens.

“Yeah, but you’re a yankee.”

She lets out a loud, quick “ha!” and grins, sitting down next to me and peering at me from behind a shoulder-length curtain of shaggy brown hair. “What’s your name?”

“Ansel.”

“After the photographer?”

“After my grandfather.”

“I’m Lee. But just call me The Yankee.”

I get up, dust the sand from my legs, and my whole face blazes when I realize I’m only wearing a bra and underwear underneath the windbreaker. “I bet I’m not the first person to call you that,” I mumble as I scoop my clothes against my body, then scramble behind some big rocks back against the cliff. I strip off my still-damp undies and hastily pull my shirt and shorts on over my raw skin, then shove my damp bra in one back pocket and my panties in the other.

“Maybe not, but you’re the first to call me that to my face.” She’s standing beside the rock now and I see the dark eyelid of her camera blink back at me before I can say anything. I shove the windbreaker at her as I push past and the camera winks at me again.

“Well, I…” but nothing I can think of would sound mature, cool, so I turn and walk slowly away from her. She snorts and starts to laugh as I take off running, up the beach away from her, my feet light on the cold sand.

The clock at the diner says 7:15 and Pauline makes me a hot chocolate, on the house. We’re the only two there so she settles on a stool, pulls the ashtray over and smokes, watching me.

“Everything okay at home, Ansel?”

I don’t think of Izzy when I shrug and wrap my hands around the cup, the heat not seeping deep enough to warm my bones.

“You look like hell, is all.” I stare into my mug and blow and sip as Pauline shakes her head. She looks tired as always, her dyed-red hair faded to a carroty orange, her green eyeliner flakey and smudged into her wrinkles like it’s weeks old. “Goddamn small towns,” she mutters.

“What do you mean?”

She takes a deep drag and exhales slowly, saying, “I mean the way no one—” but the door jingles open as a trucker in a plaid shirt and suspenders slouches in. Pauline stubs out her cigarette and walks back behind the counter, grabs a mug and fills it with coffee before smacking down a menu in front of the trucker. He asks her what’s the forecast, she flicks on the radio, a young couple in bright polos and crisp matching khakis slides into a booth, and Pauline stays busy the rest of the morning. I hold myself in my seat against the dark pull of the house and Izzy anchored there, smoldering with fever, and make a mental list of all the countries and capital cities I can think of. At ten I leave my empty mug on the counter and cross the street.

The library has one coverless paperback on Matisse, a coffee table book on Picasso, and nothing on the rest of them. I spend a few hours sorting through cardboard boxes stacked against the back wall that are full of garage-sale National Geographics and cast-off Redbooks. Brown veins of crusted dirt branch across the covers where bugs have eaten. I keep digging until I find one Art Today with an address for a place that sells art posters and postcards. I tear it out and shove the slip of paper into my sand-filled pocket behind my damp panties.

“You look like crap.” Everett Lloyd is standing behind me, not smiling, his light eyes distant, like he’s looking out at me from behind dingy glass.

“I—yeah. So I hear. I slept on the beach,” I say. He nods quickly—he hasn’t even heard me—and shifts his eyes to the door leading back to the bathroom.

“Watch out for that.” His shoulders are cinched up, and as he turns towards the front door I realize these might be the last words he’ll say to me all summer.

“Am I covered in sand or what,” I call after him, then remember I took my wet bra and underwear off before pulling on my shorts and t-shirt. The air slips inside my clothes so easily my face starts to burn and when I rub my arms sand sprinkles the floor around me.

“Yeah,” he says, focusing on me, a tiny smile curling the corners of his lips. “You’re a real mess.”

“Ansel Mackenzie,” Mrs. Hammond calls from the circulation desk. “I hope you’re planning on sweeping that up.”

We both snort and Everett says, “I’ve got it, Mrs. Hammond.”

“Oh sure,” I say, “Make me look like some irresponsible—”

“Well, it’s not hard.”

“You.” I swat his arm and he laughs.

Once I’ve checked out Izzy’s books and we’re outside, I’m edgy with thinking of things to say and it’s hard to breathe enough to say anything. I scrape the sand off the back of one leg with my other foot and shift the books from one hip to the other. We’re both standing very tall on the sidewalk, watching the parked cars. Everett clears his throat.

“Hungry?” He nods across the street to Pauline’s.

“I should be getting home,” I say, and suddenly all the sun and worry and water and wind of early morning wash over me and I feel thick-headed and wrung out.

“I’ll get my bike and give you a ride,” Everett says.

“No, it’s okay. The road’s really sandy and I—”

“To the end of the street, then. You gotta give me that at least.” He tilts his chin down so he’s aiming his eyes straight at me. My stomach flutters and I swallow.

“Okay.” I’m dizzy watching his long frame dash across the street to the meter where his bike is leaning. He wheels across to me and takes the books from my arms, smiling and nodding to himself as he reads the titles, then slots them in one of the messenger bags over his back tire. “How do I...” I say.

“I don’t think the seat’s big enough for both of us.” He gets on and straightens the front wheel, then pats the handlebars. “Try here.”

Shakily I boost myself up and try to balance. I can feel the bones in his chest beneath the thin t-shirt as I lean back and his arms make a basket around me. He’s very still, his breath hot and shallow in my hair. “Hold on,” he says into my ear, then stands up and pushes hard on the pedals as I shut my eyes against the light.

The day my father borrowed a twenty-foot sailboat, Izzy and I stood by the front window in Grand’s bedroom, watching how the pelicans floated on the ocean air before tilting and dropping like darts to the water. They came up shaking fish into their beaks, choking them down in thick gulps. Grand and mother were in the kitchen, their hips wrapped in aprons, their voices clipped and polite, walking quickly past the kitchen door when I turned back to look: Grand carrying a plate of cookies from the laundry closet where she kept them out of reach, mother selecting the serrated knife from the rack in the back pantry.

Izzy had her face pressed against the glass, so she was first to see the big green “C” of the hotel insignia on the sail as father’s boat drifted into view. “He’s here! I see him! He’s here!” she shrieked, running into the kitchen and leaping at mother as she wiped her hands, quick to catch Izzy. She propped her on one hip and stood next to me at the window, laughing as father wrestled all the sails and ropes and pulleys. “My mariner.” She turned and called over her shoulder, “Ailene, come see.”

Grand came to the window and peered over our shoulders, saying, “Well, he is half Calvert. There’s nothing a Calvert can’t do.” Then mother’s hands tightened on my shoulders, and when I turned to look her lips had flattened to a thin line.

When we got to the beach mother was still quiet, holding each of us loosely on a hip and staring out at father. He must have liked the idea of riding up to the house like a knight on his steed, but now mother was standing in her nice shorts and tennis shoes helplessly waving and calling to him.

“What about the dinghy?” he called back to her.

“Oh, Adam, we’ll get wet,” she said, setting us down to shield her eyes from the sun. He smiled, stood on the edge of the boat and tugged the collar of his t-shirt over his head, then dropped head-first into the water.

Izzy and I shrieked. I ran to the tide line screaming, Daddy! and mother laughed, caught me before I ran into the waves.

“Annie, baby, he’s coming. He’s swimming in, see?” Father’s head suddenly emerged where she pointed, his sandy hair horribly matted, his obvious struggle against the waves doing little to calm the frantic fluttering of my caught-bird heart. Izzy was sitting on the sand crying, her face slick and red as a beach ball when he dragged himself out of the water, slogging through the tide and wet sand towards us. He scooped mother and me into a big hug and mother screeched and wriggled as father buried his face in her neck and whispered, “You’ll dry.” When he kissed her, she stopped struggling and loosened her hold on me so I slid to the sand. Izzy was still sniffling, so I patted her head and said, “There, there,” like Grand always did when she babysat and we cried.

Once father had the dinghy from the garage, he blew into it a few more breaths to make sure it was nice and tight, then floated it on the shallow shifting water and carried first mother, then Izzy, in. Izzy was big-eyed and pale, clinging like a dying starfish as mother talked into her ear and father swam, pushing the dinghy in front of him out to the boat. Mother slid her sunglasses on, and when she tilted her face to the sun she glinted, her sharp laugh caught by gusts of wind. I waited on the beach with the picnic basket, telling myself over and over what he had said. “Right back, Ansel. Sit tight.”

When they got to the boat, mother lifted Izzy in, then flopped awkwardly one leg at a time over the edge. Izzy grabbed onto her again and she stood and waved to me. For the flash of a second I imagined my whole family getting into the boat and sailing away without me. I held on tight to the picnic basket handle until father turned the dinghy and swam back. He lifted me with one arm and the basket with the other, then settled us both inside before wading into the water and kicking towards the boat. Suddenly his head went under, and I screamed, reaching for him. He came up laughing, spitting an arc of water like a statue in a fountain.

And then Izzy and I were fussed into Hotel life preservers, picnic things were shuffled and stowed, father pulled up the anchor as the wind caught us with a sudden jerk and we were all sailing away together, the wind in my hair and in Izzy’s, tendrils flapping like tattered flags.

I learned adding and subtracting before counting. Later, when she tried to teach me the rightful names of numbers, it took two months to set them straight in my head. One bead on my needle was a little girl, eyes closed, sitting in sunlight. Two were streamside under a low-branched blossoming, tearing petals and tossing into water gossamer canoes. Three beads were watching the baby, taking turns. Four were each on a blanket corner playing tea and crawling towards petit fours. Five, the baby in the middle, the color of cakes. I added girls and stories up to ten, then took away. Ten, the day cresting into fading, torn dress turns towards home. Nine catches a glint of her father’s boat coming in. Eight drifts farther into dusk, grass where she sat bent and singed.