The Language of Sand (12 page)

Abigail arrived at the laundromat to discover the man with the under-bite folding her sheets.

“Gotta get them while they’re hot or else they wrinkle,” he explained, smoothing the fabric and patting down the creases. “Same goes for towels. I did those too.”

“I don’t know what to say. I mean I
really
don’t know what to say.”

Having him touch her sheets and towels was disconcerting. She had to squelch a grimace.

“Here. I couldn’t remember what brand you preferred.” Abigail had bought a container of detergent and a box of dryer sheets for him at the market.

He blinked at the offering. “These are the fancy kind. Top of the line. You didn’t have to.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Seriously
, she thought.
Don’t mention it.

This experience had gone from bordering on bizarre to flat-out freakish. Abigail was eager to return to the refuge of the lighthouse. She collected her laundry and began to back out the door.

“I’ve got to run. Things to do. People to see.”

“Okeydokey, you have yourself a nice day.”

On the ride home, Abigail replayed the morning’s events, wondering if she should bother unpacking. She could break the lease and pay the difference. Except that would mean admitting defeat.

For months, Abigail had felt defeated. The fire was an ambush, and grief had overpowered her, trouncing her spirits. Some days she would wake up thinking she was in someone else’s body. Other days, she’d pray she was. She would stare at her fingers, unable to recall if her nails had always been so short. Or she’d look at her freckles in a mirror, uncertain as to how long they had been there. Her arms seemed clumsy, her legs gangly, her rib cage too small for her, stuffed tight with her swollen heart. Abigail had been losing the battle to reclaim herself and couldn’t afford to be beaten.

She was passing the meadow, the marker that indicated she was halfway to the lighthouse, when a flicker of color caught her eye, a strand of blue-gray in the sea of vibrant green reeds. A heron was wading through the grass. The sheer beauty of the bird’s slender body made Abigail slow the car. The heron stepped elegantly through the meadow hay, until it strode into a thicket and out of view.

Abigail decided to take the sighting as a sign. Paul had loved Chapel Isle. She was going to love it too.

“You’re staying,” she insisted. “This is exactly what you need.”

Telling herself was one thing. Believing it was another.

 
gam
mon
³
(gam´ən),
Brit. Informal.
—
n.
1.
deceitful nonsense; bosh. —
v.i.
2.
to talk gammon.
3.
to make pretense. —
v.t.
4.
to humbug. [1710–20; perh. special use of
GAMMON
¹
] —
gam´mon
er
,
n.

The noon sun was leering over the top of the lighthouse, casting a wide
shadow that engulfed an entire side of the caretaker’s cottage. Abigail pulled into the gravel drive, intentionally parking outside the scope of the shadow. She leaned into the steering wheel and peered upward at the lighthouse. The once magnificent sight, which had engraved itself in Paul’s heart, had fallen into extreme disrepair. That saddened Abigail deeply.

She unloaded the car, dumping the heavy grocery bags onto the floor and setting the clean laundry on an edge of the table she dusted with her sleeve. The conversation with Merle came racing back to her. Abigail paused, examining the living room for any sort of change.

Everything was as she’d left it.

“What did you expect? A ghost in a white sheet?”

She wasn’t sure what to expect. That was what bugged her.

Though the refrigerator needed cleaning, Abigail had to get the food in before it spoiled. The dry goods could wait, because the cupboard shelves had to be wiped down first. She assembled her
brigade of cleaning products on the counter, saying, “This will be a change for the best.”

Change was part of life and part of language. Abigail’s predecessors in the field of lexicography had dropped superfluous letters from the American dictionary, like the
u
in
honour
or the archaic
k
in
musick
, on the grounds of utility, efficiency, and aesthetics. Her goal today was not nearly as magnanimous; however, utility, efficiency, and aesthetics were her prime objectives as well.

Dealing with the cupboard drawers and shelves would be relatively easy, but the generations-old appliances would be backbreaking. Abigail was especially anxious about the oven. She hadn’t thought to bring a microwave, which she regretted. That would have solved myriad problems. The sole piece of electronic equipment she’d packed was a small combination radio and CD player, a dated model taken from her parents’ garage.

“Some music might make this more palatable,” she said, retrieving the radio from amid the pile of boxes in the living room.

No matter what direction Abigail twisted the antenna, static was all she got, so she grabbed a classical CD from her suitcase and popped it in. As the house filled with the warm melody of a violin concerto, she put on her new rubber dish gloves and advanced toward the cupboards, as if preparing to pull a tooth.

“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit.”

The music did make the work go faster. It didn’t make it any less grimy. Abigail estimated the kitchen hadn’t been given a thorough scrubbing since the last caretaker was there.

“Twenty years. It’s past due.”

She emptied the shelves, raining a cascade of grit onto the counter, and took stock of the contents: cracked plates, warped plastic cups, and crippled cookware.

“Suffice it to say, you’re not quite ready to host a dinner party.”

As she spoke, the CD skipped. Abigail was about to check the player when Merle’s story about Wesley Jasper resurfaced in her mind.

It’s nothing
, she told herself.

The concerto recommenced, and she finished scouring the cupboards inside and out. Next came the refrigerator, where mold in a rainbow of hues had taken up residence, and the freezer, which had an inch-thick layer of ice glazing the interior. Abigail chipped at it with a serving knife while dousing the frost with tap water. Finally, she had to face the oven. Compared to the rest, it got a cursory cleaning. Even handling the range’s knobs made Abigail nervous. She decided to focus on the countertop and backsplash instead.

“This entire kitchen could stand a new coat of paint,” she mused. “And this wallpaper has got to go.”

The CD skipped again, violins halting mid-beat. Abigail swallowed hard and waited. Seconds later, the music restarted.

See.
It was nothing.

Emboldened, she gently picked at the wallpaper, which peeled away obligingly.

“See, the paper is damaged. The glue’s shot. Removing it and putting on fresh paint would be a world of improvement.”

This was part statement, part proposal. She readied herself for the CD to skip. It didn’t.

You’re delirious with hunger.
So delirious you’re making decorating suggestions to a ghost you don’t believe in.

Abigail hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the café, when she’d barely touched her food. She washed a plate and made herself a sandwich. Turkey, tomato, and mayonnaise was hardly haute cuisine, yet the fact that the sandwich would be easy on her burned taste buds made it sound divine.

Having moved the dishware to the dining table in order to clean the cupboards, Abigail had to clear a section so she’d have room to eat. When she sat on the only chair that didn’t look like it would collapse, the cushion released a burst of air as if she’d come down on a whoopee cushion.

“Very attractive.”

Her tongue was still sore from the scalding coffee. She was too
famished to care. Since the fire, she’d been eating purely for sustenance and because her parents forced her. If they hadn’t put meals right in front of her, Abigail would have forgotten to eat altogether. Food no longer seemed necessary. She was constantly full, glutted with feelings nobody would crave.

The chore of eating complete, Abigail picked up where she’d left off. Instead of putting the dry goods in the cupboards, she stored them on the table along with the dishware. Why bother if she was going to paint, she reasoned.

Abigail hated to leave the living room in such a state—cluttered with boxes and grocery bags, the furniture stacked with overflow from the kitchen—but if she was going to do this, she was going to do it right. She started in on the wallpaper, attacking it where the edges had come free. Although the blue and white flower pattern might have had country quaintness when the paper was first applied, the yellowy paste now showed through the white sections, turning them a pallid shade and adding to the sense that the kitchen was permanently dirty.

“
Au revoir
, floral wallpaper.”

Not every sheet came down willingly. Abigail picked at loose corners until she broke both thumbnails. Forced to resort to a butter knife for the stubborn sections as well as the glue that streaked the wall, she redoubled her efforts. A haze of paper shavings drifted in the shafts of sunlight shining through the kitchen windows.

As the afternoon wore on, Abigail caught herself waiting for the CD to falter, yet the music played on uninterrupted. She began to hum, losing herself in the buoyancy of the violins. Paul had favored cello music. They would often debate what they should listen to in the car, vying over symphonies and comparing the virtues of each stringed instrument as if arguing political positions. For Paul, the cello spoke to the soul, with its mellow, sonorous voice. Abigail preferred the lighter, loftier range of the violin. The low tenor of the cello was too melancholy for her taste, well before she knew what true melancholy even felt like.

Strips of wallpaper plopped at her feet in growing mounds, while bits of paste speckled her clothes and the tips of her fingers took on a bluish cast from the cornflower color in the design. Eventually, the butter knife bent under the pressure of scraping the calcified glue. Only belatedly did it occur to Abigail that, as a rental tenant, she had no right to remove the wallpaper. The lighthouse wasn’t her property.