The Cottage at Glass Beach (4 page)

“Who did Maggie Scanlon think I was?” Nora asked as they passed a broken fence, the wood weathered gray.

Maire weighed her words before speaking. “Your mother.”

L
ater, after a dinner of thick clam chowder and homemade bread at Maire's house, the girls played on the deck while the women talked in front of the fire over glasses of wine. Maire figured they could use a glass or two after what they'd been through that afternoon.

They sat on the sea green sofa she'd reupholstered herself, the chenille soft and plush, the cushions deep and inviting. A stack of gardening books by Rosemary Verey and Gertrude Jekyll rested on the end table beneath a silk-shaded lamp, favorite passages marked with Post-it notes, a garden journal open to the current date, with jottings of chores to be done that month and records of plantings. Sun filtered through the curtains, dappling the slate blue walls with spots of light and shadow, the doors and windows open to let in what remained of the day.

“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable at the cottage?” Maire asked. “You have enough room? You're welcome to stay here at Cliff House, you know—”

“There's plenty of space, since there's only the three of us,” Nora said, more free to talk now that the girls weren't underfoot. “Malcolm, my husband, is staying in Boston.”

“It's settled, then?”

“No, not exactly. We both needed space to figure things out. Or at least I do. It's for the best. The media seems to follow him everywhere these days.” She fingered a loose thread on her sweater, a green that brought out the color of her eyes. “I wish you could have known us before all this happened. We were good together once.”

“I'm sure you were. You might be again.”

“Maybe,” Nora said. She didn't sound optimistic. “What about your family?” She nodded to the photographs on the mantel.

“Joe and Jamie were lost in a fishing accident three years ago.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize—”

“We've lived whole lives without each other, haven't we?” There was so much about Nora's life she didn't know.

“Yes, we have.” Nora paused. “And after what happened in the shop today, I have a feeling there's a lot I don't know about my mother, too.”

Maire swirled the liquid in her glass, contemplating the whirlpool it made, spiraling down the stem. She'd made it a policy not to talk about Maeve much up to then, though she remained ever-present in her thoughts. Anything could spark a memory of her—the color purple (plum, for the sky at evening, the waves too); the sound of the wind chimes, which she loved to touch as she came in the back door, announcing her arrival; sweet scallops on the half shell . . .

“What was she like?” Nora asked. “You were her sister.”

Sister. A word freighted with shades of meaning. “Maeve had a special way about her. A light.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“She was lovely, yes. But it was more than that. There was something special that came from within. You must have seen pictures. Your father took so many. He was a talented photographer.”

Nora shook her head. “There weren't any. I didn't know he even had a camera until I cleaned out the attic after he passed away last year. It was as if she'd been erased.”

“Oh,” Maire said, startled. “Well, then. I guess that gives us a place to start.” She pulled a photo album from the built-in bookcase and sat next to Nora on the couch. The album had a scarlet cover, worn down at the corners, the images within black and white. “Here are your grandparents with your mother and me on the beach, when we were girls.” The family resemblance was remarkable. Her mother faced the camera, a hand on her hip. “Bold as brass, as your grandmother used to say. Maeve wanted to be a pirate queen when we were little, until she realized it wasn't as romantic a profession as it seemed, even if it had been possible for her to take up arms and sail away.”

Maire flipped the page, the tissued inner leaves crinkling. “This one was taken when she was eighteen.” Maeve stood up to her thighs in the water, seemingly heedless of the waves lapping her dress. Her clothes clung to her curves. “She'd gone swimming in her skivvies that day. She couldn't always be compelled to change into a bathing suit. She jumped in whenever she felt like it, heedless of the temperature, clothes and all. She wasn't bothered by the cold like the rest of us.” In the photograph, Maeve's eyes were dark, her brows too, skin radiant as pearl. Maire peeked from the edge of the scene, as if hoping to be noticed.

“Was it difficult for you, being her younger sister?” Nora asked. “You were close in age.”

Maire paused. “I loved her more than anyone in the world. But yes, I suppose it was hard, sometimes, being in her shadow. She didn't mean to cast it. There it was, all the same, and I probably stood in it too much, when I should have moved and found my own light. That was my own fault, not hers. I was so quiet and hesitant in those years. I didn't have her fire. She made things happen. I waited for them to happen.” And yet there were similarities too, as there are with sisters—the same gestures (they both tended to talk with their hands), the same musical laugh (though Maeve's was heartier), the same brown eyes, courtesy of their father.

She turned the page. “Here's a picture of your mother and father, shortly after he came to the island.”

“How did they meet? He wouldn't tell me anything.”

“Your father arrived by accident,” Maire said. “His boat had been crippled in a storm. He sailed into port for repairs. We didn't get many schooners passing through in those days. He was lucky to be alive. Men died that night. I imagine he thought Maeve was an angel, for he never took his eyes off her from the moment he set eyes on her, though there were other women who sought his attention.”

“Like Maggie Scanlon?”

“Perhaps.”

“And my mother fell in love with him?”

“I believe so. Caused a scandal, her falling for an off-islander. People rarely married anyone from away in those days, now either.”

“Were they happy?”

There were no simple answers, not when it came to Maeve. “Maeve was always something of a restless soul, but she settled down with your father, made a home in the cottage you're staying in now, the cottage that is, by rights, yours.”

“Mine?”

“You're the last surviving McGann, after me.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “I've never seen Maeve as content as she was then. She was delighted when she learned she was pregnant with you.”

“I was born here?”

“On the beach. Maeve had some odd notions as she got close to term. She insisted on giving birth in the ocean. Very nearly did, but we found her just in time.” She'd been pacing in the shallows, talking to herself. Maire hadn't thought much of it at the time—it was a week before the due date, after all—until she heard Maeve cry out.

“She wasn't attempting to—”

“Drown you? Oh, no. It was her peculiar idea of a water birth, I suppose. I doubt she would have considered it if it hadn't been summer. You were a darling little thing. You didn't cry at all. You seemed perfectly at home.” A good-size baby, eight pounds, ten ounces, with a full head of black hair and alert dark eyes. Maire recalled how the infant Nora gazed around her with interest—at the faces of the women, and especially at the waves, creating their own cradle song as they shushed against the shore.

“Maybe that's why I've always felt drawn to the ocean.”

“Do you like to swim? Your mother did too. She won the annual open water race for her age group every year. They're thinking about holding it again this summer. Perhaps you'd like to sign up? The girls could too, for the shorter distances.”

“Maybe we will,” Nora said.

“The sea calls to us, doesn't it?” Maire said. “What was it I read? That we contain the sea within us, made, as we are, of salt and water?”

“Yes, I remember hearing that too.”

The two women turned toward the open window. The sound of the waves carried across the bluffs, the cool breeze stirring the curtains, mixing with the voices of the girls, laughing and squabbling by turns.

“But something happened, didn't it? To my parents?” Nora pressed on. “Did they grow apart after I arrived?”

“They made their lives here, happily so. Your father became the new harbormaster. He'd worked for a shipping company in Boston; we were fortunate to obtain a man of his experience. And your mother, your mother took to wandering again, as she had before she met your father, before she had you. I don't know what got into her. She had that faraway look in her eye.” Maire would come upon her sometimes, arguing with an unseen person behind the rocks, near the point, but when she rounded the corner, there was no one there but Maeve, eyes flashing, revealing nothing.

“Could it have been postpartum depression?”

“It's hard to say,” Maire replied. “She wouldn't tell me what was on her mind. She was never much for confidences.” Maire closed the album. That was enough for one evening. She hadn't anticipated how draining such discussions could be.

The sun slipped toward the horizon, silhouetting the girls and the distant shore of Little Burke against a gold-and-plum-painted sky.

Maire yawned. “I can't hold my wine the way I used to. I'm afraid I'm a little sleepy.”

“You must be tired after such a long night.” It was clear Nora wanted to continue the conversation but was too polite to insist.

“Yes, for the very best reason. There are few greater joys than bringing new life into the world. Babies are such a gift.” She squeezed Nora's hand, a gentle pressure.
Like you
were, too
.

N
ora and the girls walked the beach home, twilight inking the waves. The same beach on which Nora had come into the world, on the changing tide, that long-ago evening. Had her mother given birth there, by the tide pools? There, on that soft patch of sand where the rocks curved into a perfect half-moon?

Piano music drifted across the fields from Maire's open window. The crystalline notes stopped abruptly at times, before she began again. She'd said she often played in the evenings, Debussy primarily, the impressionistic passages filled with a passion she didn't readily express in words, which made Nora wonder about the deep well of memories and feeling she stored within her. Her aunt was clearly talented. Nora wondered if she'd ever yearned to pursue a concert career when she was young.

Ella swatted at a mosquito in time with a particularly strong chord. Nora was surprised that they hadn't seen more of them, but Maire told her the bugs were worse in the spring and that the wind and the swallows tended to keep any malingerers at bay; she rarely bothered with repellent at that time of year. Too bad there wasn't a repellent for straying husbands—and the women who would steal them away—Nora thought.

“What are you thinking about?” Ella asked.

“Insects.” Her husband the lowest form. “Do you have a bite?”

Ella shook her head. “I got him just in time.”

“Her. Biting mosquitoes are female. We learned that in science,” said Annie.

“Good for you.”

Unperturbed, Annie blew into a piece of kelp, marching along as if she were leading a brass band.

“That sounds like a fart,” Ella said.

“Don't be crude, El,” Nora said.

“Well, it did. Are you going to swim in that race Aunt Maire was talking about?” Ella asked. “We overheard you talking about it. We could help you train.”

“You little eavesdroppers. Maybe I will. She said they have shorter races you girls could enter—or maybe you already heard that too.”

Ella was fiercely competitive, whether at cards, academics, or sports. (She'd been known to throw her racquet and stomp off the court after losing at tennis.) “I'm going to swim every day,” she said. Both girls enjoyed the activity, Annie a budding diver, Ella, a sprinter. “Do you think I could win?”

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

Nora bent down and picked up pieces of sea glass. There was still enough light to see by, though there wouldn't be for long. Green, blue, the rare lavender, white, some pieces frosted, some clear. Mermaids' tears, Maire called them. Maeve collected them too. An image flashed in Nora's mind of jars lined up on the windowsill at the cottage, catching the light, of her father hurling them onto the floor in a rage during a fight with her mother—before she disappeared, it must have been—shards scattering across the floor. “Stay back!” her mother had cried, a slender ribbon of blood circling her toe. Nora huddled in the doorway to her room as her father slammed the door and stalked out into the muggy afternoon, thunder threatening. Then no sound but the
hush-hush
of the broom as Maeve swept up the brokenness and threw it away, even the once-beautiful sea glass, except a single piece Nora rescued from the far corner, hiding it under her pillow for safekeeping.

“Why are you collecting sea glass? To put in jars like Aunt Maire does?” Annie asked.

“I was thinking we could make jewelry.” In the Victorian style, perhaps, ornate, not the typical organic creations she'd seen in the beachside shops on the mainland. Designs were already taking shape in her mind. It surprised her, how inspired she felt. After she left her law practice to raise the girls, she'd taken a few art classes at the local institute, and now seemed as good an opportunity as any to put her skills to work again.

“We want to help!” They scooped up handfuls of pieces, some usable, some not. She'd sort through it later.

“Look,” Annie said. “The seals are bodysurfing.”

The sea glass weighed heavy in Nora's pockets, pulling at the seams of her jacket, and yet she couldn't stop searching, always a greater treasure, a more perfect piece to be found. The task required a meditative focus she found calming, one that distracted her from thoughts of Malcolm and Boston and what she would do next. She imagined combing the shore daily, swimming, reading, gardening with Maire. Already she sensed the quiet pattern that would shape their days on the island.