Once the Shore (19 page)

“Goodnight,” Mihna said aloud. She lay down and lifted her knees to her chest. Sleep came to her as she imagined her own hair in snow.

 

The man who had bought the farm returned the following week. As his car climbed the hill, Mihna, who was in the fields, knelt behind Comet and watched his approach from under the pony’s belly. The car, however, didn’t come to the house. It stopped beside the stable at the bottom of the hill, its engine running. It was late in the morning, bright and sharp, the land like glass. The bordering evergreens were heavy and unmoving. Mihna put on her sunglasses, the frames in the shape of stars, and hummed a song, petting each of the animals.

From the house, her father stepped outside and made his way down to the stable. He waved to her but she did not see him, focused on the man below, who got out of the car and stretched. Soon after, two more people exited, a woman and a girl, perhaps Mihna’s age. The closing of the car doors echoed up toward her. They all entered her father’s office, the one he used for lessons, and she knew then that they had come to see the ponies. Her father would show them their papers. They
would see the photographs on the wall of her riding with her mother.

She did not know where they lived. Perhaps her father would want to be close to them or perhaps the man and his family would move here. A view of the sea, her father had suggested. Higher, up on the floors of a hotel, you would be able to see it, she thought, like blue grass in a meadow. The winds were slow today and they carried with them the smell of seawater and when they paused, she heard the low murmur of waves.

“I’m sorry, Comet,” she said, indicating the visitors, and she left him and the others.

It did not take long for her to reach the cliff in the woods. She descended and sat on the boulder, facing the trees and the clearing beyond it. She waited. For how long she wasn’t sure but she must have been daydreaming or looking elsewhere for when she blinked, the woman was there, lying in the clearing, in the same position as she was that first time, staring at the sky. She wore the dress that, Mihna was sure now, was her mother’s. The neckline was deep and the sash was knotted in the same way her mother tied it, too. She knew there were families of peddlers on the island and backpackers that camped illegally. Perhaps she had lost her way, Mihna considered, and was tired.

This time Mihna did not turn and run. She stepped forward and raised her arm and waved, expecting the woman to turn. “Hi,” she called. “You have my mother’s dress.”
The woman ignored her. Her exhalations hovered above her lips. “Aren’t you cold?” Mihna continued, holding her own shoulders, wondering why the woman never turned her head. The longer she stared, the more certain she was that the woman remained perfectly still and she recalled the mannequins in the shop windows when, once a month, her mother took her to the city to shop for clothes. In fact, the only part of the woman that moved, Mihna realized, was her breath, puffing the way she thought a dragon exhaled when it had run out of fire.

“Papa’s selling the house,” she called. “We’ll be leaving. But I’m taking the bed. I’m sorry, but you can’t have it.”

Mihna stepped closer, walking between the trees. From her pocket she took out the photograph of her mother. “Look,” she said. But when she reached the clearing the woman was gone. The winds had stopped; the trees loomed around her. The snow in the clearing was flat and smooth, unbroken by the light of day. She dropped the photograph. The woman had not made a single dent with her body. There were no footprints either.

 

“Very kind of you to do this,” the businessman said, as they walked up the hill to see the ponies. It seemed only fair for his family to try them, the man added, although he knew them to be a first-rate lot. He patted Linn on the shoulder and offered him an envelope filled with money, for the lesson. Linn took it.

His wife was attractive in the way city women were, Linn thought, stylish, with an expensive haircut and smelling of
perfume. She wore makeup although he hadn’t noticed until he helped her mount Comet, seeing the blush on her cheeks. She was light so that Linn held her with ease and she laughed freely. Her daughter had her mother’s face, slender, with fine cheekbones and a high forehead. Her hair was tied back and it swung against the slight wind. She sat atop a dun, much younger than Comet and less prone to mischief.

He had aligned them single file on the field with Comet leading and he stood a few meters away. The riders’ hands were close to their waists, the reins held back, and he corrected them, telling them to push their arms forward, to not pull on the reins. They should allow their weight to fall to their heels, he said, and to imagine themselves as puppets, with strings holding aloft their shoulders. Once the ponies were in motion he told them to open their left arm, shifting the rein away from their bodies. On following this command Comet began to circle Linn, the dun close behind. The businessman stood by Linn’s side, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

All these instructions were a worn language and it came to Linn without thought. The two seemed to be enjoying themselves in their silence, concentrating. The woman led and did not turn around to see how her daughter was faring. How dull for the animals, Linn considered, how patient of them. The sun hung high above the forest and against the snow the ponies’ hoofprints lay scattered around him like a hundred planets.

The man had grown distracted. “Back nine,” he said,
more to himself, and pointed down below. He walked over to the camphor tree and slapped it, pulling a leaf and crushing it with his fingers to inhale. He dropped the remaining bits onto the ground and then set his legs apart, his shoulders squared, and pivoted his hips, practicing his swing. He whistled as the invisible ball soared above them and Linn, not knowing why, followed its imaginary arc as the ponies circled around him.

When he returned his concentration on the riders, he spotted movement at the edge of the woods. It was Mihna, running out from the trees and then slowing as she entered the fields. Rather than passing through the gate, she sat on the fence and rested her feet on the middle rail. She lowered her elbows on her lap, her face tucked into her open hands.

Linn provided further instruction for the mother and daughter, encouraging them. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” He did not notice Mihna approach. She startled him, less than a meter away, her footprints trailing her, dark and crooked. Comet, now distracted, broke away from the circle and drew closer to her. She stepped up to the pony and reached for the reins.

“Mihna,” he said, going to her quickly and bending down to whisper in her ear. “You shouldn’t do that. This is a lesson. You know better.” She smelled of snow and her hair was damp. “Go inside now,” he said. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Sitting on Comet, the woman smiled down at the child and greeted her. “Is he yours?” the woman asked.

“Have you been in the forest?” Mihna asked.

“No,” the woman said, and held her smile. “Should I?”

“The pony’s tired,” Mihna said, pulling the reins. Comet whinnied, jerking his head. “He doesn’t like strangers. You should go home.” She pulled once more and walked away.

Her father called her name. “Come back,” he said, angry now, though the child didn’t listen. He apologized to the woman.

“Children,” she said, laughing, as though about to impart her wisdom. She was interrupted by her husband, who had not witnessed the incident, too intent on his golf swing, but had walked back to them, seeing that his family had paused in their riding. “We’ll keep the tree,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that.” He folded his handkerchief and returned it to his jacket pocket.

Linn waited for the man’s wife to continue with what she was about to say about children. But she clicked her mouth instead, the way he had been doing, and Comet continued with the lesson.

 

The next morning Mihna watched as her father unloaded cardboard boxes from the car and carried them into the house. She had gone with him to the market but upon returning home she had rushed to the ponies. The boxes had been flattened, and he tucked a few under his arm so that from this distance they resembled a single brown wing that had sprouted from the side
of his body. With his free hand, he opened the door and then went back outside to retrieve more from the trunk of the car.

Mihna left when he was indoors, dragging her toes in the snow. In the woods a bird squawked at her and she looked up and placed her finger to her lips. She pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and descended the cliff.

The clearing was empty. The photograph of her mother was still there. The woman hadn’t come. Or she had but didn’t take it. Mihna waited by the boulder. Perhaps she had frightened her. Or perhaps it was the bed the woman wanted all along and she had now gone away, knowing she couldn’t have it.

In her hand Mihna clutched a barrette. It had been a gift from her mother for her seventh birthday. Made of small shells, lined along a bridge of steel, her mother had bought it from a sea woman, who sold them on the beach. Carrying it on the flat of her palm, she walked into the clearing and settled it on the snow beside the photograph.

“You can have this if you want,” she said, toward the trees. She retreated and waited. When nothing happened, she spoke again. She said, “You can keep it in your hair.” She was answered by the winds.

She kneeled beside her unfinished snow house. She resumed building it, using her finger to outline the rooms and the stalls for the ponies. But soon she grew tired of this. She shut her eyes and counted to ten. She lifted her sunglasses and squinted. Her breath paused in the air before parting. In
the sky the forest canopy shivered and formed in the shapes of faces, bending toward her. Leaves brushed against each other. “I’m sorry,” she called. “You can come back now.” She reached down to smooth the footprints she had made and met her shadow.

 

Linn had hardly said a word to her since the riding lesson. Inside, he waited for his daughter to return. He would ask for her help, he decided. They would make boxes together. He found a roll of clear packing tape in the supply closet—leftover, he realized, from when Nara moved in after their marriage. They hadn’t used much of it. She was living closer to the city then, with her own parents. She brought little save for clothes and a box filled with kitchen utensils her mother had given her, her college diploma, and books. Everything else in the house was once his parents’ or what he and his wife had accumulated together. He wouldn’t keep it all. Some of her clothes he would give away, along with the books they hadn’t opened in years. Perhaps, too, some of the furniture, depending on the size of the new house.

Mihna didn’t come. At the door he saw that she had left the tree. He called her name, his voice lost in the fields. She was ignoring him, hiding. He grew irritated and went to the living room where he began to assemble the boxes, taping the cardboard bottoms. He worked with speed, the tape making shredding noises whenever he peeled it away from the roll.
He formed a dozen and went about the rooms of the house, dropping a few in each. With a felt-tip pen he marked the tops. He wrote “Mihna” on one of them and placed the box in the corner of her room.

He started with what they had left untouched for months. In the kitchen he wrapped their spare pots and casserole dishes in newspaper. He took down the topmost shelf of books in the living room. In Mihna’s room, he packed all the dolls she no longer cared for.

When she eventually returned, she went straight to her bedroom; all at once she rushed out and began to rip the tape off all the boxes in each room. Linn stood in the hallway, silent. She took the books out and then she stood on her toes and attempted to place them onto the top shelf. But she couldn’t and so she stacked them against her chest and balanced the pile down the hall and into her bedroom. She shut the door with her foot. Linn followed her. He was about to knock, but stopped. A man’s voice erupted from the radio, startling him. It was an advertisement for trips to the mainland. The hotel fare would be included. “Hurry,” the man shouted. Then his voice was swallowed by static, the switching of stations, and then silence as Linn pressed his ear against the door and listened to his daughter’s calm breathing.

 

It went on like this. The boxes remained empty, Linn unable to pack. They no longer ate together. He brought her meals and
left them in the hallway and only when he was far enough away did she reach for the bowl of soup with a ball of rice placed into the broth. When he asked if she wanted to visit houses for sale, she turned on the radio. He called upon a neighbor to keep Mihna company and he visited the houses alone, some along the beach, ten minutes away from the city, others in the vicinity of the farm.

He spent hours driving, relieved, he admitted, to leave the house. It seemed time had shortened and that Nara had passed away days ago, his daughter once again taciturn, keeping herself in her room. He circled the island, stopping along the coast to watch the surfers in winter. Behind him the tour buses teetered along the winding roads, their windows flashing from the bulbs of cameras. He took off his shoes and felt the snow between his toes. He took in the air of the sea and watched the tides recede.

When he returned, he led the ponies inside before heading to the house, where her bedside lamp cast its light underneath her door. “She hasn’t left,” the neighbor said. “I’m here,” he called after the woman departed, intending to relate to Mihna the places he had visited. He changed his mind and ran water for a bath.

While his daughter slept, he considered the possibility that he did not know her, had never known her, and never would. That his daughter’s love for him was love for a dead mother, unearned. He thought of fatherhood and how it seemed he
had forgotten what it was, as though he had written its secrets on a sheet of paper that he had misplaced and could not now find. Or perhaps he had been too old when the child came. In his fifties now, he began to believe that their desire to have her was a selfish one. He grew afraid and in fear his weariness expanded, throughout his limbs and into his chest. Some nights he heard her open the door to use the bathroom but he did not rise. He held his breath, waiting for her footsteps to cease, the door to shut, the quiet to return to him.