Half Tide Rising

I smooth Noah’s damp hair out of his eyes and kiss the freckles spread over his nose. He is asleep in his car seat before we can even pull out of the hospital car park. Emma, only fifteen months old, sucks her dummy. She does not smile.

It is not yet noon.

I navigate our van through the narrow streets of town, feeling edgy until they open up to the vast country roads. We are headed back to the cabin by the shore. My mind spins. I thought coming here might be a chance to regroup, to get my act together. I grew up coming here each summer. My memories of the town, the house itself, were happy ones. Now it all seems to be paper-thin and full of ghosts.

A month ago I got brave and called my father. After a cavernous silence, my father agreed: two months at the shore house, rent-free. I don’t know why he felt the need to specify ‘rent-free.’ The house just sat, practically abandoned, besides my father’s monthly visits to mow the lawn and make sure that nothing had exploded.

The kids and I had arrived just this morning, really in the middle of the night. Something about the shore always made me feel as though I’d arrived on another planet. Like you had to duck down to avoid crashing into the stars.

The air inside the cabin was warm and dark. So was the refrigerator. I could smell the mould in the toilet. A few mouse droppings were scattered on the kitchen floor. But behind the neglect, I could smell an echo of what I remember it being—a whiff of my grandmother’s Avon perfume, mosquito repellent and the spice mix for the crab boil.

I deposited both children on the twin bed that belonged to my grandmother. The matching bed, once for my grandfather, was pushed to the opposite side of the room. I curled onto the bed, promising myself that I will keep my eyes open.

I wake up to the sound of Noah screaming. It’s like having a knife imbedded in my brain. I fall over myself getting out of the bed. Emma begins to scream in solidarity. I sling her over my shoulder and frantically look for my son.

I find him in the mudroom in front of my father’s wall of fishing supplies. His hand is cut, badly. I spy the fishing hook at his feet. Blood is seeping out of his hand.

Noah has gone white. His teeth have begun to chatter.  

I bundle up his hand in a tea towel that smells like mothballs. I hope it will not infect his hand. I tell him it will be okay. He is not convinced. Neither am I.

With all of my heart, all I want is for something to be easy for once. All I want is to know, without a shadow of a doubt, what is the next right thing to do.

I snap Noah and Emma into their car seats and try not to notice that the tea towel is streaked with red.

Now I realise this choice I’ve made is no joke. This is not something to be messed around with or taken for granted. This is a place for adults with mature sensibilities and some semblance of life skills.

I speed down the country roads. There is so much space here but it’s like a giant mouth threatening to swallow us whole. Every problem, the fallout from every decision, will be magnified here. In all this space there is no place to hide.

We are the only patients in the emergency room. I babble at the nurses, babble at the doctors. I know I must look like a wild beast, not fit for human interaction. Someone brings me a paper cup full of black coffee. At one point I burst into tears. Emma follows. I promise an ice cream, a movie and a new toy for each of them.

Noah screams throughout the stitches. I swallow bile.

           We are all exhausted when it’s over. We don’t speak to each other. When we reach the van, I see that I’ve gotten a parking ticket.   

           It is not yet noon.

           We drive back to the shore house only because it’s the only place to go.

            In my heart I know the truth. I was trying to hide in a place that doesn’t exist anymore. The cabin was never about the timber and concrete blocks that built it. It was about the people who once lived within its walls. It was about being a child who swam in its murky waters and believed that pirate loot was just below the surface of the water. 

           Noah and Emma awaken. For the millionth time in twelve hours, I lug them out the car. I sit them at the kitchen table and make honey sandwiches. The kids eat without any joy.

           I slump in a kitchen chair. Nothing has been added or removed from the cabin in forty years. There is a clock in the kitchen that charts not the time but the tides. Right now it says ‘half tide rising.’

           Half tide rising. Something inside of me starts to unlock.

‘Let’s go outside,’ I say to the kids. I stuff a piece of bread in my pocket.

           We walk across the grass that is patchy and coarse. I sit them down on the small stone steps that lead into the water. Brackish grass and reeds crowd in from the sides. 

           Ecosystems of life surround us.

           ‘Periwinkles.’ I point out the tiny snails edging their way across the reeds.

           I show them the oyster beds plastered up against the edge of the stones. I pull the bread out of my pocket, break it in half and hand it to the kids.

           Noah and Emma let the crumbs fall from their sticky hands. A school of minnows swims up to feast.

           The kids stare in wonder.

           So do I.