SHORT STORY: Where the rocks meet the sea

 Where the rocks meet the sea

by Rae A. Costa

 

The sand is warm.

She wiggles her toes deeper, until she feels the dampness of the sea. A spray of salty mist blows off cresting waves and stings her eyes. Tiny grains of sand scratch her skin as she wipes her face with the back of her slender wrist. Sand is everywhere. It irritates her sunburnt skin and chafes her raw when she walks. It’s in places it shouldn’t be. She hates it here.

Rolling waves crash against the shore, one after the other, bringing with them mounds of briny kelp torn loose by their turbulence. Kelp flies swarm over the decaying piles left stranded by the high tide. Tom once told her that the female flies, Diptera, he called them, will lay their eggs in the seaweed, and the larvae will feed upon it when they hatch. She doesn’t care about the flies or the seaweed. It smells. She hates it here.

She lies back under the hot early afternoon sun and lifts a hand to shield her eyes. Sand falls into her face, and she blinks furiously against the onslaught. When she has wiped it away, she flops her arm across her face and naps. Her breathing is uneven, coming in tiny gasps. Her chest heaves, and she shivers.

He is in her dreams again, like she knew he would be.

Fresh from the ocean, his eyes shine, and she calls him Oceanus. Saltwater drips from his bronze, muscular body, and his red swim trunks sag under its weight. Rivulets cascade down his tanned legs and over defined calves. He shakes the water from his blond hair, playfully spraying her with droplets. She squeals with delight. She likes it here with him.

He dances freely along the water’s edge, keeping rhythm to the crashing of the waves. He leaps over the incoming surge as it slides towards him, and then kicks at it as it recedes. Tiny drops of water splash into the air and glimmer like diamonds. He searches for flat rocks and skims them across the water’s surface. They bounce once, twice, sometimes three times, and then are swallowed by the waves.

She stops to watch the setting sun. It dazzles with its display of colors, swirling together like a kaleidoscope. The hues shift from pale yellow, orange, and pink to deeper, richer tones of purple, red, and indigo. She’s mesmerized by its enchanting and ethereal display.

 She turns to Tom to ask him if he sees the dolphin leaping out of the sparkling surf. Like an acrobat, it flies into the brilliant evening air, flipping and spinning, before splashing again into the gleaming waters. But he is not there.

She spins wildly in every direction but cannot find him. She screams his name over and over, and then she hears him. His voice is faint, dying on the wind. Far down the beach, he is standing where the rocks meet the sea. He beckons to her and points to the ocean, out towards the horizon where the light has faded. She wants to run to him, but her legs are heavy and sluggish. She struggles and is swallowed by the shifting sands.  

She watches, helpless and afraid, as he climbs down off the rocks and strides to the water’s edge. It playfully laps at his ankles, tugging and teasing, and then rises above his knees. Now, he stands waist deep. He looks sadly out to sea, and she follows his gaze but sees only an empty horizon. The sun has fallen over the edge of the world. The last rays of light have left, and the water shimmers black.

Tom is gone.

She awakens gasping for breath as she always does. She has dreamed this dream every day for the past three months. Her suffering is as excruciating in her dreams as it is in life. Images of Tom move painfully behind her closed eyelids. She lies quietly in the sand, waiting for her heart to calm and for the last traces of her dream to dissipate.

The sun is lower now, but not by much. She has dozed for only a short time. She stands, brushing away tiny sand particles clinging to the moisture on her skin. She runs her hands through her hair, and grains shower down upon her bare feet.

The waves continue to roar, but less fervently. They have retreated even further during her nap, but the tide will soon turn. In the meantime, she walks the shore, inspecting every clump of seaweed, every shell, every rock, begging them to reveal their secrets. She listens carefully but hears nothing. She breathes in the ocean air, whispering her pleas and forgiveness, but still, the ocean remains mute.

Painstakingly, she combs the beach until she reaches the jetty. Once, the jumble of rocks was a place of love and lust. A place where she said yes when Tom proposed. A place where they made fervent love under the stars and a place where they planned their future, but now it has become a place of grief. A place of shattered dreams and a place of eternal sadness.

It is the place where Tom leapt into the sea.

The rocks are wet and smooth as she climbs up on them. Her foot slips on their polished surface, and she lands hard on one knee. It is not the first time she has fallen. Her knees and elbows are tinged with the yellowish browns of fading bruises. She should know to be careful, but perhaps the pain of stone meeting bone is her penitence, her punishment for not being able to save her husband.

Tiny crabs scurry away as she scrambles higher. She searches, examining every crevice as she zigzags her way towards the end of the rocks, but she finds nothing.

Out on the point, she stares out to sea and is consumed by sorrow. Goosebumps prick her skin, and she wraps her arms around herself. She wonders what it would feel like if she were to keep walking, past the rocks, past the space where nothing begins. She wonders what it would feel like to jump into the ocean’s waters and never return. She wonders what it felt like for Tom.

The sound of laughter drifts to her upon the chilly breeze. Behind her, children clamor onto the rocks, screeching in delight when they find a crab, snail, or other crustacean.

“Hey, lady!” the older girl shouts. “You’re too far out.”

She knows this.

She saw the sign cautioning visitors of the dangers of being out on the jetty and warning them to go no further than the sign, but she ignored it. The waves have returned, colliding against the tip of the jetty, spraying funnels of water high into the air. She spreads her arms and lets the cool mist rain down upon her face.

As the laughter and tiny voices grow louder, she reluctantly turns around. She returns to a safe distance far from the point and smiles at the children as they frolic among the rocks, but she feels no happiness. She had always wanted to be a mother. They had made plans to start a family. Let’s have two, a boy and a girl! Tom had declared, but that was before her miscarriage and before they knew she would never be able to carry a baby to term. She rubs a hand lightly over her empty belly and wonders if a baby would have been enough to save him.

Waves crash hard against the rocks and within her heart. She retraces her steps, across the rocks and back onto the flat beach, searching as she goes. She walks on, past the spot where she slept. The indentation from her body is already full of windblown sand. She walks farther and farther until the sun has disappeared below the horizon. The sunset is glorious, but she does not notice. She is spent.

The evening air is cold and blustery, and there is nothing more to be seen this night. She turns away from the vast and selfish ocean that refuses to relinquish her husband and trudges across the still-warm dunes towards home.

💔

Living at the beach was Tom’s dream. His excitement, so pure and contagious that it soon became her dream too. How soothing it would be to fall asleep to the sound of real waves and not those from a sound machine, he’d exclaim. How pleasant to hear the gulls in the mornings as they gather on the beach right outside our front door. How refreshing is the sea breeze against our skin! And how radiant are the colors of the setting sun reflecting in the suncatcher in the window!

But she no longer finds joy in any of that. Screeching gulls and the incessant pounding of surf are a constant source of irritation. The ocean winds bring only dampness and the rotten fishy smell of seaweed. During the last storm, the suncatcher shattered, and she only notices the sunsets because they signal the ending of another awful day.

Day after day, week after week, her routine is the same.

She awakens heartsick and bitter, with legs tangled in sand-filled sheets. His side of the bed is cold, and her tears moisten his pillow. She wears his sweatshirt, but his scent has faded, and her eyes are red and puffy from a night of bad dreams. Angst and despair linger long after she crawls out of bed, slips into her robe, and slides her feet into her furry slippers.

On her way to the kitchen, she pauses at the mantel and straightens the picture frames. Smiling faces of her and Tom. A contented and happy life together once upon a time, but now a life tainted by grief. It's a life she can neither forget nor one she wants to remember. 

Tom’s ghost follows her into the kitchen. He sits across from her at the kitchen table, but she cannot bear to look at his empty chair. She stares out the window into the darkness but sees only the reflection of a desperate woman in the dirty pane of glass.

When she finishes eating her oatmeal, she leaves the bowl in the sink and goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She showers, but no matter how much she lathers, the sand refuses to be washed away. She stands in front of the mirror and finds another new wrinkle, another frown line. She is only 26 years old, but her face deceives her.

Together, she and Tom had made this house into their home. A safe space where they shared their love, hopes, and dreams, but there is nothing here now that brings her warmth. Wooden chimes hanging on the porch clack incessantly, while fine specks of swirling sand pelt the windows. She draws the curtains and waits in the dark, numb and abandoned, until the sun begins its journey skyward.

She hates it here, but she cannot leave. Not while Tom is lost at sea.

Outside, the morning air is damp and briny. She pleads with the sea to give her back her love, prays that it will somehow make her whole again. Maybe today will be the day it hears her. Maybe today will be the day it finally releases its grip on her husband, and she can bring him home. Maybe today she will finally find closure.

On the beach, however, nothing has changed. Waves continue to roll in, dumping beach sediment along the shore and then taking it away as the tide recedes. Nonstop ebb and flow.

She reaches down and picks up a small, white shell like the one Tom had given her during their first beach walk together. To commemorate the moment, he said, as he pulled it from the sand and handed it to her. She reaches up and touches the shell hanging from a string around her neck and tosses the look-alike one back into the sand to be taken away by the tide.

The buzzing of flies. Diptera. She stomps her way through the mounds of seaweed, and the flies rise agitated into the air. They swarm around her, and angrily, she swats them away.

The smell, the flies, and the frigid sea air assault her senses. She cannot stand it any longer and shakes her fists, striking out at the sky, the wind, the dunes, and the entire world around her. She shrieks her fury. The ocean she once loved, the ocean that held so much hope and promise, now taunts and torments her. She rages against the forces that move it, demanding they relinquish her husband. She screams and screams until her throat is raw, but nothing changes.

For hours, she combs the beach but finds nothing. She’s exhausted, and her heart aches. She curls into the sand, overwhelmed by despair, and falls into a fitful sleep.

Tom is in her dreams again, like she knew he would be.

His tattered swim trunks drip water as he trudges through the sand in front of her. A piece of seaweed is knotted in his wet hair, and jagged cuts crisscross his back. The tide laps at his ankles, but he doesn’t notice. He no longer frolics, but limps, along the shoreline.

Ring-billed gulls, noisy and selfish, circle overhead, riding the wind currents far out to sea and then back again. Tom plows through a pile of kelp, and he is lost in a swarming black mass of flies. When he emerges, he is much further down the beach and climbing onto the rocks of the jetty. He moves past the sign and to the very tip.

A sense of urgency propels her forward. Her feet barely touch the sand. She runs and runs, but he is still so far away. The wind picks her up and she soars through the salty air with arms wide like the wings of the gulls beside her. Tom is calling. She hears him now.

“I am here!” he screams.

She awakens to the sound of her own scream, but already the wind has carried it away. She staggers to her feet, lightheaded and feverish, under the late afternoon sun. It is low in the sky, brilliant and blinding, but through its golden rays, she sees him. He is standing where the rocks meet the sea, shimmering like a mirage, and staring into the great expanse of ocean.

She follows his gaze, and there, just past the end of the jetty, past the point where the waves begin to surge, she sees him. It isn’t her imagination. He is real. His red swim trunks lie bright against the brackish water as his bloated and lifeless body bobs in the current.  

            She sprints down the beach, and sand sprays out behind her churning feet. When she reaches the rocks, she splashes into the water and fights against the waves. They propel her backwards and pull her feet out from under her. She is yanked under the surface and tumbles across the hard sand as the waves wash over her. They deposit her in a heap back onto the beach.

The ocean is against her, but she is determined. It will not take her husband from her a second time. She will not lose him again.

She climbs up onto the jetty, slipping and falling. The barnacled rocks scrape against her skin and draw blood, but she does not notice. Nor does she notice the warning sign. She rushes past it to the end of the rocks, where just beyond, Tom drifts away.

“Tom!” she cries.

Fierce and powerful waves hurl themselves against the point. A split-second of indecision, and then she dives into the foaming sea. The ocean seizes her and quickly smashes her into the rocks. The churning current tosses her about, and then abruptly she is thrust upwards. Her head breaks the surface, rises above the horizon, above the dunes, and, for a moment, she sees her life as it once was.  

Smiling and with arms wrapped around one another, she and Tom stand on the front porch of their dream home. The sky is brilliant with the colors of the setting sun, and the suncatcher sparkles behind them. Magical and surreal. Such a beautiful memory. Her eyes gleam with salty tears, but then the current sucks her under and she’s slammed into the rocks again.

She gasps, but there is no air, only saltwater, and it floods her lungs. She fights against the darkness in the water and in her head. The waves are relentless, thrashing her against the rocks until there is nothing left of her.

She wonders if this is what it felt like for Tom.

Then something brushes against her cheek. Soothing, tender, and familiar. She opens her eyes, and Tom is there, like she knew he would be. He takes her hands, entwining his fingers with hers, soft, like lovers do. Gently he pulls her away from the battering waves, away from the sharp rocks, and into his arms.

“I am here, my love,” he whispers.

She holds him tight, and together they sink beneath the roiling waves, deeper still until their tangled and broken bodies float just above the ocean floor. It is peaceful here. The water is warm and blue, like his eyes. Oceanus. He caresses her face, and they kiss sweetly.

She likes it here with him.

And here they’ll stay, just beyond where the rocks meet the sea.