The Sea is Made of Wind and Unkindness, Part II of II

There was a point at which we didn’t know whether it was day or night. Time became more like storm or calm, and we kept time that way. Was it a metaphor? It certainly seemed so. And with every storm came the ship with the tattered sails and all the water-bloated corpses that came with it. Did it ever get any closer? It certainly seemed so. 

All the while, my husband was something he used to be - who he was before mis mother and the hardships of life cultivated his shortcomings into untamable demons. But the seventh storm set something else in motion.

Hunkered down in the watch room after having failed yet again to light the optic upstairs, he suddenly got up from where he was sitting and headed back towards the lantern room. When I asked him what he was doing, there was no response, or even a reaction indicating he had heard me. So I followed him.

He walked just a bit too slowly up the stairs, up and into the lantern room, and outside onto the gallery. When he opened the door, the wind nearly knocked him off his feet, and it slammed the stair door closed. It didn’t seem to affect him a bit, even though I could feel the sleet and rain-laden wind felt like blades on the skin. 

He walked out onto the catwalk, white knuckling the railing so the wind wouldn’t blow him away. And then he stopped and just stared out over the water. Him, in this absolute deluge, on a rickety balcony 60 ft above the sharp rocks below and a sea so angry nothing could stay afloat.

From the relative safety of the door frame, I followed his eye line out over the water, where I found the ship with the tattered sails. Except it was closer than before, and I was sure of it because I could see that there was a body hanging from a tangled sail, as if they had become trapped when trying to release the sail in the high winds. 

But the body wasn’t new. And neither were the corpses now floating that much closer to the shores. Pieces and parts were missing, flesh was falling away, clothes were torn and decayed. None of this made any sense.

I closed the door and waited in the lantern room for quite awhile. He didn’t come back inside until the storm died down. When he came inside shivering and sopping wet from head to toe, I asked him what he had been doing out there. All he said was,

Doesn’t the sea seem peaceful?

And he walked downstairs and back into the watch room, where I helped him dry off and warm up, setting his clothes near the fire to dry. When I asked him later what he had meant, he said he had no idea what I was talking about.

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This trance became something he did each time there was a storm. I would stay below in the watch room and keep an eye on the water, knowing he was just above me doing the same thing except out in the wind and rain - the noises and textures and sounds of natural destruction. I didn’t understand it. And by the time it became a new normal, he had become almost too peaceful. Almost like he didn’t exist as much anymore.

He became withdrawn and stayed out on the gallery well past when the squalls would stop. When he came inside he would just sit down in his soaking wet clothes, not responding to anything I said or did. Always asking, as if to himself, 

Doesn’t the sea seem peaceful?

I kept checking for the door after every storm, but he didn’t seem to care much about leaving after a while. He wasn’t unkind to me, but he wasn’t present. And like clockwork, every storm he sat outside for, the ship with the tattered sails would appear in the distance, but a shorter distance each time, until the bodies were just feet from the rocks beneath the lighthouse.

And when the 12th storm came, everything changed again.

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Doesn’t the sea seem peaceful?

He’d said almost nothing else for days. For the dozenth time, on the dozenth storm since the doors disappeared and my husband regressed from the rage-filled creature he was back into something that occasionally reminded me of the carpenter’s apprentice I’d pretended not to see as I picked apples at the market. This time would be different.

He wasn’t here; he seemed entranced by the stormy waters and the noontime darkness of a violent sky. He wasn’t there; but he stood on the catwalk as if he hoped the storm would take him wherever there is. And then all of a sudden I realized he was weeping in the rain. Heaving. Sobbing. Screaming a soul-deep loss he couldn’t seem to articulate. And when the wailing died down, he turned his singular attention to me.

I was instantly frightened. I’d seen the switch so many times. Was this the same? No. But the unknown is worse than the known when someone is choking you into unconsciousness. But this time, that zoned-in, presenceless, angry look wasn’t inside his eyes. Instead, it was a deep sadness so grey that it obscured his eyes, and I almost couldn’t recognize him. He walked inside the gallery, soaking wet, and slowly approached me, placing one hand on my arm. Tilting his head - 

There is nothing I could ever say or do to deserve forgiveness for the things I have put you through. I loved you the whole time, but it was all filled with evil. And now there is nothing left of us. Soon, there will be nothing left of you or me. And I know it’s my fault. And I’m sorry.

I stood there, agape, as he gently brushed one hand across my shoulder to tuck my hair behind my ear. Then he promptly turned around, calmly walked back out onto the catwalk without closing the door behind him. And then, as the storm entered the last safe place in the lighthouse, I watched him climb up onto the railing, spread his arms wide and lean forward. And then he was gone.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream for him not to go. I couldn’t tell if I wholly understood what was happening or if I understood nothing at all. As I ran out into the squall to see where his body had gone, there the ship with the tattered sails sat, directly at the base of the lighthouse, surrounded by a sea of bloated corpses. But there was no one and no life. And when I spotted my husband’s distinctive curly red hair bobbing in and out of sight underneath the water, I realized he truly was gone. I was alone in the lighthouse. I was alone in the world. And then, when I looked down again at the jagged rocks and the violent waves of the shore, the ship was gone. And so were the dead, including my husband.

I don’t know what happened then, but something in me said to go downstairs and see if the door was back. As I walked down the spiraled steps, sunlight began to show through the narrow windows. And by the time I reached the bottom, I couldn’t hear the sea anymore. Everything was calm.

And the door was there.

So I opened it and stepped outside into a beautiful morning of light and air and hope. Turning then towards the shore, I looked out over placid water. I thought to myself - 

Doesn’t the sea seem peaceful?