Souvenir
Alice tsks and walks away. She won’t be drawn into this competition of who loved who more. She’s still wearing the red BU sweatshirt. Martha realizes that Alice wears Tim’s clothes for the same reason that she wears their mother’s: because she is on his side. She has never once borrowed anything of Martha’s.
“There is nothing left of them!” Martha calls after her, then realizes it isn’t true: there is the house where she is sitting, the airless, empty shell that she cannot escape. Before Alice can answer, Martha is running away.
Outside the air is cold and wet, skimmed off the top of the ocean and borne inland on a stiff breeze. Martha can taste the salt. She walks along the road’s shoulder, where sand mixes with gravel, and follows the curving white line into town. Empty boats are lined up along the pier like buttresses against the sea. Water laps their sides, sheering off the bright paint layer by layer.
Her father brought her here one morning to see the boats go to sea. He lifted her onto a piling to watch him and his first mate make the boat ready, two dark shadows moving about the boat like ghosts. Martha knew her father by the deliberate way he moved, the same way he ate an apple or mixed her mother’s paints. No wasted movement, no fear of stillness. He undertook the hundred little preparations with the grace and seriousness of a priest.
In the distance, Martha sees a figure slouched against the side of a boat. Tim looks up, as if he has been expecting her. He stands on the gunwale, bracing himself against the Cary Anne’s green cabin.
“You found me.”
“I wasn’t looking.”
Together they sit, dangling their legs over the side of the boat. The water laps at their feet.
“It was her idea.”
“Blaming Alice? That’s grown-up.”
“It’s the truth. She didn’t know how much it would upset you.”
“But you did.”
Tim had no answer. He stared into his hands, so white and uncalloused.
“How could you?”
“I had to try.”
“At my expense?”
“I wasn’t thinking of you. The boat was all that mattered.”
Martha would never admit it, but she understood Tim’s betrayal precisely because she would have done the same thing if her mother’s work were at risk. But this was one time when their similarities couldn’t help them.“If it’s any consolation, he doesn’t want it.”
“He’s retiring?”
“He says it’s time.”
Tim unzipped his jacket and reached for the inside pocket. He pulled out another blue check, the companion to Alice’s.
“Take it. Buy back the painting. Pay off the house. Whatever. It’s no use to me.”
Martha held it between her fingers as if to tear it in half. But she stopped. The painting was gone. She couldn’t look at Alice anymore, let alone live with her. Maybe it was time to take the money and move on.
“I’ve never understood why people only began to appreciate my mother after she was gone.”
Tim reaches for her hand and clutches it tightly. “Nostalgia is easier.”
“But she never got to enjoy her success.”
“You can do it for her.”
Tim smiles and brings the back of her hand to his lips. He places a kiss there that nearly undoes Martha. Why Tim can muster tenderness now, when it is already too late, tells their story. They were not unkind to one another, but not careful either. They were too busy chasing ghosts to take care of each other.
“I’m sorry.” Tim shrugs. But even he isn’t buying his half- hearted attempt to win her back.
Martha remembers that morning, waking up and feeling Tim beside her when he was already gone, when all she had left of him was a sock, the only clothing Alice hadn’t claimed and he hadn’t taken. Martha removes the sock now from her pocket and sees how hopeless it looks. She tosses it in the water. In an instant, it disappears. The ocean is dark and deep. She can see no end to it.