Normally Special (6 page)

I still hide in the tool shed. It is so very, very useless.

An Unsteady Place

Thirty-three starfish, forty-two seashells, eighteen crabs, fourteen lobsters, ten waves, eight gulls, twelve fish, seven lighthouses, four fishermen, eleven pieces of coral, sixteen sailboats, nine seahorses, and a handful of signs indicating the direction you need to take should you want to go to the beach. In bas-relief on shower tiles, on the edges of towel racks, mounted to drawer pulls, painted on wallpaper, dotted on baseboard tile squares, crowded into baskets on mantels, on wooden steps, in bathrooms, mounted and framed and hung on walls, painted on dishes, decaled on drinkware, the bottoms of bowls, sculpted into the handles of serving utensils, hanging from the ceiling, stitched onto towels, on lamp bases, printed on bed sheets, comforters, pillow cases. A fish skeleton key rack. The beachside vacation rental drove the point home like a mother reminding you of every single thing you needed to be afraid of.

In every cupboard, towels with nautical themes are stacked neatly with labels indicating the size of towel and method of use: hand towel, body towel, beach towel, wash cloth. Tiny laminated instructions with filigree and smiley faces explain how to use each appliance; washer, dryer, microwave, dishwasher. Quiet coaches.

At first it’s charming, but eventually their naggy cheeriness begins to annoy. I know how to use a microwave. I know how to dry my clothes. I know how to wash dishes.

There is no way you can make a mistake here.

***

After two delicate attempts, Frank gives up on begging the children to temper their steps. Their excitement of having stairs and bunk beds overwhelms them and they rampage. I watch him watching them. His face is lit up with something that looks a lot like pride.

Anna gets on her belly and slides down the stairs, taking her little brother with her. Hands clasped around his tiny ankles, they bump
–
scream their way down the stairs. I think about stopping them, but I am unsure. They look like they might bite.

***

Every day I pack a beach bag of every possible thing: suntan lotion, rubber bands, whistles, scissors, a sewing kit, wooden stakes, magazines, floppy hats, Frisbees, throwing stars, kickstands, pencil sharpeners, parachutes, jumping ropes, courage, swizzle sticks, tweezers, and machetes.

I do my best to anticipate.

We bring towels that have been brought before and sandwich them between our bodies and the hot sand, symmetrical. I place the chairs just so. Frank pounds an umbrella into the sand. When he is finished, he stands back with his hands on his hips, surveying our setup. He is breathing heavy and I wait for him to see through me but instead he says, “Alrighty!” and then captures the kids in his arms and runs them toward the sea. I want to ask him how he knew to do that.

Their screams disappear into the waves.

I sit in a chair and watch the sea roll them around in its mouth.

***

At night, we twist loose, fighting silent blanket wars; each of us noiselessly willing the other to shut the windows that bring the cold night air of the sea to freeze our skin.

I, always the cold one, lose. I throw the blanket from his back, stand, stride, and slam the glass closed, faintly remembering just seven hours earlier how delicious the opening of that window was; the cool air quelling the sweat of my brow, the crevasses in my skin. I think about change and how suddenly or how gradual, it can happen, how it makes almost everything unreliable. I shiver.

I slide back in alongside him, surrendered. Fight forgotten, I snake my hands around him, taking his warmth for my own.

***

My son digs for sand crabs where the waves slick the sand dark. His bare feet make tiny tracks that the sea licks away at crooked intervals. It is like he is being tasted and savored.

My daughter plays in the water with her father. He brings her back to me shivering wet, face strangled with a clown’s smile, spread too wide and unsettling. He sets her down and she stumbles into my arms. Her fingertips grip my shoulders like pincers and I swear I can feel the press of shell against my skin.

My husband lies on the bright colored terrycloth, eyes closed to the fight of the sun. He doesn’t see me shudder and wince.

Anna whispers she wants to tell me a secret. She leans in and opens her mouth revealing a black green strip of seaweed. I pull on it and, like a magician’s scarf, it ribbons out into a small clumped pile crawling with tiny sand gnats. The last bit plops and I cringe at the noise. My daughter laughs a gurgle sound and skips down to the wet to help her brother with the crabs. Their heads touch briefly and I cannot see who they are for a moment, their forms black in front of the sun.

I look at the sky knowing that with my attention missing, there is a chance that something bad might happen. I watch a cloud change from a bird into a dragon into a skull.

***

It looks like a home but when you open a drawer it is empty. It looks like a home but anything easily moved is nailed down. It looks like a home but the cabinet under the bathroom sink has individually wrapped toilet paper, the kind you find in hotel bathrooms.

The home of this house is strictly a façade. It’s like I can see bone, blood, and skull through razor cuts in a perfect face: a whore in a habit.

I can feel the house holding heavy, threatening to turn inside out. I flip light switches with wishes and hold countertops as if I could stop them from folding and caving if they so chose. I take careful steps in case the foundation begins to lift, tilt.

***

We have been here weeks, days, months, hours. The roar of the surf is an unrelenting constant that takes away time. Everything is blurred together, spilled paints on a garage floor.

As the days tick by the front entryway fills with sand, plastic toys, and beach towels that never seem to dry. They lump wet in slumped shapes that wait to scare me when it’s dark.

Everything seems to be something else and I am finding it hard to keep track. I have begun counting the starfish on the wallpaper that lines the hallway. I know their number is 33. I pray they stay consistent.

***

Frank doesn’t see, but I do. He turns his head after they change or before. Whites come back to eyes, fins separate back into fingers, gills close and become skin. They continue their coloring, or reckless chasing or stuffed animal playing, looking exactly like our children.

I have given up trying to alert Frank to their changing; before I can finish my words, they revert back. Or never were? No. I see the salt they leave on their seats, in their beds and in the grime resting in the bottom of the bathtub. I can smell the depths they’ve come from. It slithers up from underneath them like fumes. It’s as though they are soaked in sea, bloated with black water that sustains the life of blind things.

Frank has stopped asking me if I am alright. He watches television, drinks a beer, reads the paper. He turns his head after I change or before.

***

I put their sandwiches on plates painted with suns and seashells; when their antennae detect the crusts, they click louder and louder until I cut them off. I use the sharpest knife and do it quickly. I set the knife on the counter. I give them back their plates. I back away. Toward the counter. Toward the knife.

When they growl I feed them grapes or crackers. I toss and run. They scramble, squirm.

I cannot watch them eat.

As soon as they are asleep Frank washes me in the shower. He covers me with soap and then uncovers me, taking his time with my transformation.

There are waves on the walls. The soap dish is a clamshell. Frank calls me his mermaid.

I panic and look down. I relax when I see my legs.

He dries me with a sailboat bath towel.

He says he loves how my new brown skin makes my hidden parts so visible in the dark, how the white triangles make them easy targets for his fingers, his tongue, his cock. Of these things I am sure. They are what they have always been. They are reliable. As he puts each inside of me, I feel them reminding me of how sure the world can be.

***

With the prior day’s sun and surf causing us to sleep until the time that is called brunch, the mornings become afternoons, the afternoons become evenings, and the evenings in-between—a place neither here nor there. It’s an unsteady place and it’s then that I find myself leaving Frank’s side, heading down the staircase to count the starfish in the hallway. I know their number. I know it will not change, should not change. I hold their consistency with a grip that frightens.

Sand sticks to my bare feet when I pass the lip of the entryway. I am careful not to look. I know the beach towels are lurking there, damp in the darkness, waiting to be something that can scare me.

I finish counting and start again.

33.

***

Before we know it the sun gives up on us and we’re back at the entryway which has accumulated a small dune. Frank sighs and says something about a cleaning deposit before placing one foot on its grade and then the other. He asks, “Who’s first?” and they begin to fight for position; claws jab and then lock, jab and lock. The sand shifts and Frank begins to slide towards them. “Break it up, guys!” he orders and their chaos dims and breaks. I step back, and watch them grab and climb; hands now, in his. They slide down the other side and call for me with words bubbling thick and coarse. I know I can run but I don’t.

I climb.

***

At the table, mottled beaks open wide revealing teeth spirals that wind crooked in rows upon rows and I know it’s not food they want. It rots before them piled and stacked hiding sailboats, crabs, and coral. I think it might be me they want, but even that I am not sure of. Nothing tender has come from them. I have not seen it. Have not looked for it. Have not given it.

The children, they are my children, don’t stay awake for their baths anymore. Their forms collapse, a caress on soft surfaces. I make Frank carry them. I say I am too tired. I do not say I am afraid. I do not tell Frank that whenever I try to settle them, they strike back with tentacles telling me NO MOMMY. I do not tell Frank that when I retreat their laughter sounds like the scream of a kite string cutting the wind.

Frank has given up on me knowing anything I used to. I tell Frank I am too tired. I tell Frank I want to be carried. I tell Frank I do not want to be washed and could he please close the windows because, once again, the sun has given up on us. The cold has crept in while we were busy pretending things were the same. His hands reach up, grab the sill and slide it home. The curtains lay flat and Frank slides under the blanket and between my legs. His tongue laps three times, he smacks his lips and says, “Mmm…salty.” He buries himself again and the more he eats the more the sound of the ocean fills my ears. I let it take me, I hold its tongue, I choke on how it is consuming me.

When I come, the scream of gulls.

***

We cannot get into the house. The entryway now contains an entire dune. Beach grasses pop out of the side windows. Frank has to break a bathroom window to get us in.

The children are quiet and dry for once. They won’t eat grapes. They won’t eat crackers. Their skin runs from pinks and reds to greens and brown blacks. The smell is there, but more putrid and infected. It peels my walls even thinner. They look wilted, withered. I want a box big enough to put them in.

This time, I am the one to carry them to their beds. I brave myself and dress them in sleepers soft with puppies and bears—furry, gentle, four-legged things this place has made me forget.

As they wriggle themselves between the sheets, they retract everything that they know frightens me. I run my fingers through their hair and realize I have forgotten so much more.