Rockaway (22 page)

She hasn't been out here at night before. She's seen it behind glass, framed from her bedroom, the glints of wrinkling dark water, a ship's lights through fog. But she's in it, now, part of its depthless, toneless scheme. There's the flat white moon and the flat blacks of crumpled trash and the flat gray canvas of sand freckled with broken shells. She sweeps her hand through the dry sand, tries to draw a clean line, but the sand falls in upon itself, obscures her finger-traces among the labyrinth of foot tracks to multiple nowheres. There's a house alight with music and God to her left, and a house filled with photos of laughing, blood-linked people to her right, a house bursting with greens behind her in Connecticut, and far away west there's a house full of what's left of her own blood, facing another ocean, waiting for her. She tries to imagine another place, someplace left for her to go, but all she can picture is a 8' by 7' by 5' vault, a storage space she owns, temporarily,
and only saw once, with wood-slatted sides and concrete floor, where everything left that belongs to her is boxed and blanketed away.

She looks across the moon-bright, swaying strip of wavecrash. She picks out of the mazed sand the singular footprint trail that leads to the sea. She gets to her feet and walks, and the prints fit her step by step, fit each step's heavy leaden weight until water touches her skin and the prints swirl away and she stops.

She pictures plunging in to the wet acid cold. She pictures the water sweeping her out, the firm sand dropping away beneath her. She feels herself letting go, how she might float off and disappear. The stinging jellyfish will burn her to ash, the sharks will shred her flesh, the tides will pull her close, drag her off in their angry embrace and she will let the deep water chill take her, choke off above her the last of air and color and light there is, that she'll ever have to see.

She takes another few steps and the black water teases, brushes against her ankles, her knees, and dances out again. She hesitates. She closes her eyes, smells sun-baked sand and towels, sweet fruit. She used to be able to do this, didn't she? Dive right in, blithe and carefree. The water is warmer now, and she leans, touches its softness, remembers frolic and splashing through waves. All by herself. Then a stumble, a crash, crashing and dizzy and getting back to her feet, looking toward land for assurance and applause and
steadying foothold care to make sure everything was okay. To make sure she was safe in the world.

She turns, looks back toward shore. This time: no one, nothing is there.

She steps forward, deeper, the water rising to her thighs, her waist. A wave-ripple nudges her, lifting her up with gentle tease and catching her breath in her throat, then her feet touch sand again. But the water is insistent, pushing her about and off-balance. She turns her back to the next wave, digs her toes desperately for balance. She scans the deserted beach, the black blind shines of beach house windows, the vacant lifeguard chair. All of it, taunting her, daring her.

She hears a deepening hum, the sound of rising churn, feels the water abruptly pulling away from her, luring and stumbling her, and she turns, too late, to see a moon-glinting dark rise of water surging at and above her and too late to swim away or escape, and she is finally knocked fully off her feet by the crash, flipped and sucked under into the gritty salt cold.

The world blacks out and swirls, and she instinctively reminds herself not to breathe or swallow water. She feels her tumbling body intuitively unclench, uncompass itself, remember not to seek orientation. She feels her heart slowing down, her lungs pacing out the oxygen, her eyes recognizing the salt as ancestor. She feels her body relax and
accept the roiling as truth. She feels herself lifted up again, the roil is sweeping her forward and her body is sailing, skimming, floating along toward shore, and she lets herself sail until she is lying victoriously safe, breathing hard and her cheek pressed against wet sand, the to-and-fro flirt of water still swirling her hair.

She remembers this. She scrambles up to her feet, remembers feeling this moment of alive and real and strong. I am here. That was the victory, she realizes. It was the emerging, the standing there on her own, panting and jelly legs and streaming salt foam, before ever looking for anyone or anything else to save her. It was her faith in the divine spark of her own life inside her little-girl belly and bones, the faith that allowed her to turn from the safe beach and race again and again back toward the chaotic, unpredictable waves. Because she will always reemerge. She will always get to her feet again, always be able to find her own way back to shore. Whatever awaits her or does not await her there. I am here, I am here.

She feels the shadows shifting, sees the sky brighten to a palette of rich pigments, coralline, ochre, aureolin, sees the gray sand around her warming to cream, the driftwood and jellyfish and shells and abandoned mess taking on definition and depth. She looks at the sea, now a rich, faceted green. Emerald, viridian, streaks of malachite. She sees all the clashing, harmonious colors of the world.

She drops to her knees, digs her hands into the sea-crisp sand. She traces a misshapen seahorse, a crooked mermaid. She scribbles them out with her fingers, levels the sand, draws them messily, imperfectly, again. She draws an entire school of joyous, unsymmetrical seahorses, a dancing gathering of clumsy mermaids. She draws a stick-figure little girl frolicking in the water, a mother and father waving from shore. She draws the swooping capital
M
s of flying seagulls. She draws a big childish sun sending out illuminating beams, draws the ocean's peaking, promising waves. She scrapes a castle into being.

I AM SO GRATEFUL for the many forms of assistance I received for this manuscript—the close readings and wise editorial feedback, the supportive shoulders and endless patience during all those crazed phone calls. I'd especially like to thank Bernadette Murphy, Eloise Klein Healy, Emily Rapp, Tina Gauthier, Michelle Nordon, Askoid Melnyczuk, Cyndi Menegaz, Ellen Svaco, Mary Vincent, Rick Moody, Douglas Bauer, David Ryan, and Dylan Landis.

Boundless appreciation to my editor, Dan Smetanka, for his guidance, integrity, and impassioned faith, and to everyone at Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. Enormous gratitude and respect to Michelle Henkin, and Mrs. Sylvia Perelson.

Please support the Rockaway Rescue Alliance and the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, at:
www.rwalliance.org
.

© Michael Phillips

TARA ISON is the author of
A Child out of Alcatraz
, a Finalist for the
LA Times
Book Prize, and
The List
. Her short fiction and essays have been in
Tin House, The Kenyon Review,
Nerve.com
, Publishers Weekly
, and numerous anthologies.