The Book of Speculation

30 JULY 27TH AND AFTER

The sand is hot and riddled with stones, unbearable for a man his age. It would take a lifetime to build feet to walk on this sand — hard feet. His loneliness is unexpected, but it’s been some time since he’s traveled without his wife. Marie is minding the shop under the guise of indulging him. She saw how worried he was; it was kind of her to let him come. He would not have come at all were it not for her gentle push, her patient encouragement of his flights of fancy. He’s been fortunate; true companionship is an elusive type of butterfly. He puts a foot in the water. Good lord, that’s cutting. He misses his wife and the warm blanket that is an Iowa summer. This is the Northeast, he thinks, bitter and cold at the core. He wonders how anyone stands it.

A dilapidated staircase sprawls up the cliff’s edge. A man journeys down it, an older fellow by his pace, though younger than the man on the beach. The descending man is stout, wears a fishing cap, and has the look of a carpenter. He walks past a smattering of rubble, what remains of a house.

“This beach is private. Are you somebody’s guest?” the hatted man calls as he nears.

“Are you by any chance Franklin McAvoy?” the man on the beach asks.

Confusion crosses the hatted man’s face, but is followed by a terse nod.

“I’m Martin Churchwarry, a friend of Simon Watson. He’s spoken of you fondly. Do you know if he’s around?”

At the mention of Simon, Frank McAvoy’s expression shutters.

Churchwarry’s knees wobble, but he soon steadies himself. “Is he all right? I saw the house,” Churchwarry says, motioning to the cliff.

“He’s fine, he’s just not here.” Frank shakes his head slowly. “Damndest thing. That house has been around since the 1700s, then gone in one night. He’s lucky he didn’t go with it.”

“Very.” The relief Churchwarry feels is palpable. It’s odd to feel protective over someone he’s never met, but he’s fond of Simon, almost unaccountably so. Both men put their feet in the water and stand next to each other, neither admitting to the cold.

“Churchwarry, you said?”

“Has he mentioned me?” Churchwarry’s eyebrows snap up.

“Once or twice.” Frank looks at the man beside him — a disheveled figure, pants rolled to the knees, a wild brush of gunmetal-gray hair, a long-ago-broken nose. “How do you know Simon?”

Churchwarry pushes his hands into the pockets of his threadbare trousers. He lets the wind blow at his back and wonders what on earth Simon might have said about him. He settles on something easy. “Our families were once close.”

“You’re the bookseller, aren’t you? The one who sent him that book,” Frank says.

“I thought he’d find it entertaining,” Churchwarry replies. “It had a bit of family history in it. You knew his parents, I believe?”

“Yes,” Frank says. At the mention of Daniel and Paulina, he winces. I killed her. I am a killer.

“Will Simon be back soon, do you think?”

“Doubt it. He left a letter for me to send you. Haven’t gotten around to mailing it.”

“A letter? How wonderful.” Churchwarry nearly stumbles as a wave splashes his shins. The water is cold and of course he’s not as young as he once was.

“I read it,” Frank says.

“Of course you did,” Churchwarry replies. “It’s impossible to leave a letter unopened.” Out in the water a bluefish jumps, twisting and splashing down.

“It’s a thank-you, mostly, and an apology for losing your books. He wants your help on some kind of project. Didn’t make much sense to me. Wasn’t supposed to, I guess.” He shrugs, not the least bit bashful. “It’s back up at the house. You can come in, if you don’t mind a walk up the stairs.” He looks up the steps, thinking perhaps he should have checked with Leah first. He never would have in the past, but now he is learning his wife again, a process not unlike walking barefooted on the rocks.

“That would be fine.” Churchwarry agrees. There’s something pleasant about the idea of sitting down with Frank McAvoy. There’s a familiarity to Frank that’s more than just having one of those faces — a peculiar breed of déjà vu that Churchwarry finds himself reveling in.

“He doesn’t have a phone right now, but he said he’ll be in touch once they’ve settled. He’s with his sister.” The word they has a bitter sound to it.

“Oh, of course. He’s moving. I should have assumed that after seeing the house.” He scratches the back of his neck. “A fresh start can be a very good thing,” Churchwarry says, looking back up at the house. Simon’s sister is alive. A breath that he was unaware of holding escapes. He feels Frank surveying him, trying to puzzle him out. “You have a daughter, yes? I think Simon mentioned her.”

Frank nods. “She left with him. Alice, Simon, Enola, all of them went together.”

Churchwarry smiles. Fitting, he thinks. A small flash of white rolls at the top of a wave. Too far out to reach, Churchwarry waits for it to come in. “Simon’s family, yours, mine, there’s history there.” The rest he does not know how to say. “In a strange way we know each other, Mr. McAvoy. You have grandparents a few generations back who went by the name of Peabody.”

Here a murmur. “I do. And?”

“I was hoping to be able to tell Simon; I think he’d find it important. Does the name Ryzhkov mean anything to you? Ryzhkova, perhaps?”

Franks shakes his head.

“Ah, never mind then. Have you ever wondered why you’re drawn to certain people?”

“Haven’t thought much about it,” Frank says, though he knows it is a lie.

Churchwarry inhales deeply. He’s never understood the uninquisitive; but Frank McAvoy is a boatwright, so there must be a spark of art somewhere in him. A small white rectangle washes in on the tide, swaying with the waves. Churchwarry bends down for a closer look. A wave carries the flash of white close enough for him to snatch it. A bit of paper, soft, ruined. Out in the water another piece rolls in. Churchwarry’s hands shake. A sharp pain runs through his chest, but it is soon chased by elation. He is touching history. His history.

“What’s that?” Frank asks.

“A tarot card, I think,” Churchwarry says. Across its face a blurred image, the faint outline of what was once a man’s leg, with a small dog by its heel. The Fool. He watches the ink bleed and pool around his thumb until the last suggestion of what had been washes away.

“Oh, hell. Those were Paulina’s,” Frank mutters.

Churchwarry looks for cards in the waves. He thinks of all Simon told him and what little he remembers of the book. Of course. It was the tarot cards. There had been something more about the sketches, something outside the pleasure of old paper and fading ink. It makes sense, he thinks, that the family of mermaids would destroy a curse with water, far more sense than burning things. He chuckles. More poetic. He looks at the man next to him, then thinks of the young man he never met. Alive. Churchwarry knows it matters little how much of it he believes, only that Simon believed. And he’d like to as well. For all the wideness of the water, the town he is in feels closed, isolated. Perhaps the book opened a door; books have a way of causing ripples. He watches a card dip and vanish under a whitecap and sees in the water’s spray a hope so bright it blisters.

At the shoreline a dark shape skitters near the sand. Churchwarry can make out the gentle movement of a sharp tail. He leans closer. “Horseshoe crab,” he says softly. He turns to Frank, smiling at the descendant of the book’s original author. “Magnificent creatures.” He thinks on how they grow and shed shells, each new skin a soft and glistening beginning. Millennia of crawling, traveling, and clearing their tracks with swishing tails, patiently correcting. He smiles.

“Mr. McAvoy, I’d like to see that letter now. Then I think we should have a drink if you are so inclined. I suspect that we could become friends.”

* * *

The car is the only noise for a hundred miles, even when passing through the city, as if the world has gone to sleep around them. The toll collectors make no remarks at the dented yellow trailer pulled by a car barely held together by rust.

“It looks like hell, but the engine is still good,” Enola says.

Alice doesn’t know whether to believe her, or whether to care. Being broken down in Delaware would still be preferable to being broken down in Napawset. She feels bad for leaving her mother, but knows that staying would have been worse. Impossible. Her mother needed her to go. It’s not good for children to see a parent grovel, her mother told her on the porch. Go for a while. When you call and both your father and I pick up the phone, come visit. Alice knows her mother, how she can shame someone with a look. Her father will grovel. She almost feels sorry for him, but then it is easier to decide not to think about him at all.

When they drove past the reedy salt marshes and the clam diggers crouching in the loam and muck, she knew it was the last time she’d see them, and that she’d miss them. Now Alice stares down the highway, knowing that what she’ll miss is the rhythm to her days — dawns spent fishing on the pier, looking at the playwright’s house and wondering about the torrid affairs that took place inside it. She glances in the mirror at the two men sleeping in the backseat. Simon’s shaggy black hair is pressed against the cracked vinyl. He sleeps as if making up for years of being awake. No, not beautiful, but hers. Doyle snores softly. Now and then a tiny snap of a blue spark dances off the end of a fingertip when it touches the window.

From the passenger’s seat Enola turns to Alice and whispers, “It’s like licking a penny.” Alice does not reply and so Enola continues. “People wonder what kissing him is like. He’s like a fresh penny.”

Alice stays quiet. Thirty or forty miles of New Jersey later Enola says, “Thank you.” Then much more softly, “I couldn’t get to him. I just couldn’t.”

Alice takes her hand from the wheel. She finds Enola’s thin fingers and squeezes them, because she’s not good at explaining, other than to say that there are things you do for someone you’ve known your whole life, and that pulling them from the water is the very least.

They stop in Maryland. There is a shop with special paper, ragged edged, old feeling, the sort that likes a fountain pen but loves a quill. He wants leather, too, but there’s no money for it. They pay in cash — Enola’s money, crumpled twenties that Doyle had squirreled in one of his duffels, Alice’s own, and the hundred dollars that Frank forced on her when she said they were leaving. The clerk’s eyes bulge at the sum. Doyle has a difficult time lifting the reams.

At night, in scratchy motel beds on the way to Savannah, Simon stays awake to write. When his head starts to nod, Alice bends over him, kissing his arms on the bruises. Dark smudges from where she hung on to him as she dragged him from the Sound. Marks of living, she’d call them, and is grateful for the years of lifting volumes, of fishing, of being practical, for things that made her grip strong. Later, when he curls around her, when her spine curves to his stomach, he whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She hears, “Thank you.”

He is building the book again. As they approach the bearded trees that mark the true Deep South, she wonders if this is just another obsession. She asks him why it matters when they’re starting over, starting new. He answers, “I am this manuscript.” The words hang heavy between them until she catches him drawing a rudimentary sketch of a black-haired child, and knows it is Enola. He’s building his history, the menagerie at its start and everywhere after, all his notes on the forgotten women, the Ryzhkovas, the Peabodys, and her.

“What will you do if you can’t find enough information?”

“Churchwarry will help,” he answers. “Sometimes we’ll make it up. The dirty secret about history is how much of it is conjecture.” He shrugs. “And we’ll fill in spaces. They were good at inventing themselves.” He’s referring to the women, the dead that have preoccupied him, but he means himself, too. He says we now. He didn’t used to.

She knows that her name will find its way into his speculations. So will his. Because there are things you do for people you’ve known your whole life. You let them save you, you put them in your books, and you let each other begin again, clean.