Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [104]
I don’t like Fleur, his girl’s name. I prefer Francesca, Isabel, and Kate. But Flynn I like. Or it might be the sleepy look on his face as he says it.
But all that will happen later. Right now, it’s windy and his arms are around me and I can see in all directions. Which way is east? I say, and he spins me a quarter turn from where I’m guessing. Away from the sea, away from the cliffs, in the direction of Gay Head Light.
…
In the afternoon, the wind dies down, and we take the jeep to the beach. As soon as we cross the uplift of dune, he jumps out, scales the car, and orders me into the driver’s seat.
“Just do it,” he yells when I say I can’t drive.
I hear him laughing on the roof, and I spin the jeep in circles, as tight and as fast as I can.
“Now you!” he says.
“I can’t.” But somehow he gets me up there, camel-hair coat and all. My fingers dig into the sides of the roof as he pushes down the gas. After, I catch my breath from laughing and slide down the driver’s side into his arms, and we walk to the water’s edge. It’s a winter beach, mottled oysters, mussels the size of my thumbnail, threads of papery black and white seaweed, and the dirty foam the surf has left. Billows of it. He kicks it as we walk.
“Don’t you know the story?” I ask.
“What story?”
“Mermaids have no immortal soul—they live three hundred years and then become the foam on the sea.”
“What are you talking about?” He’s picking up small stones and skipping them, a singsong on flat water.
I go on to tell him the Hans Christian Andersen tale, of the red flowers in the garden of the Sea King’s daughter, her desire for a soul, her love of the black-eyed prince she rescues from drowning, the potion that turns her tail into legs. But each step’s a sharp knife, and the cost is her tongue.
“Then what happens?” he asks. His stone skips three times, and we whistle at his prowess.
“He marries someone else and she becomes a spirit of the air.”
He hands me one he likes. It’s freckled, and I save it from skipping.
“You know strange things.”
“It’s not strange,” I reply, slipping the stone into my pocket. “It’s a fairy tale.”
“You’re a funny girl,” he says. He turns to me. He’s thinking of something, and his eyes get smaller.
“Funny,” I say back. I was hoping for something else. Beguiling, maybe. And I imagine myself a butterfly on velvet—pinned, prodded, examined. Denuded of mystery.
“You’re different. Intriguing,” he continues, his voice dispassionate in a way I’ve never heard before.
I look away from him down the beach. The wind dries my eyes, and I fix my gaze on the tender way these shallow waves hit the shore.
After some time, he pulls me toward him, his fingers looped in the belt of my new coat. “Hey,” he says, softly. “I have no doubts about you or what’s happening. I have everything I want here and now. I only think I’m crazy it didn’t happen sooner.”
“You do?”
“I’ve always had a sneaker for you. Always.” His forehead presses mine, and the weight calms me. The longest courtship ever, that’s what he calls it. “I wanted to pounce, but every time you had a boyfriend, and they were all Marlboro men.”
It’s not what I remember, but I like when he says it.
We keep walking. Past a small wooden sign at the top of the high-water mark. POSTED: NO TRESPASSING. Past Zack’s Beach, its bluffs blown back like a wave with a brambled top. Crusts of purple sand crack under our sneakers as we go. And near the dunes, remnants of summer—tall orange buoys speared in the sand, a chapel/fort of driftwood, a child’s shoe. The wind picks up, and I pull the coat around me. He leans into me as we walk, crossing my path. Then he bounds ahead, taking giant steps. I jump between them. Everything’s a game. We switch and he follows my tracks, and wonders out loud why my feet are so small. They’re not. They’re average. Many things about me are. But he keeps saying they’re small. You’re so small. And that winter he has dreams he will break me.
He’s showing me the place he loves. I know this. Every summer his