| |
––––––––
I open the car door and step onto the bustling brick side street. Again, I look at the Hyannis marina; rays of sunlight reflecting off the fiberglass bodies of the yachts and sailboats in the bay. At first glance, nothing is actually different. Crowds of people moseying through the shops and restaurants. A child drops their ice cream cone on the sidewalk. There is the series of advertisements along the walkways for wine-tastings, deep sea-fishing, boat tours, and the twenty restaurants boasting New England’s #1 clam chowder. It is all quintessential New England until you notice the old signs. At the marina, under the boat tour schedule all trips to Nantucket are cancelled. The tourist shops put out clearance racks with Nantucket t-shirts. I buy one because I like to collect these archaic things. I ball up the shirt and put it in my back pack before heading down to the dock. I’m meeting Sam, a local fisherman and friend of my father, who kindly offered to lend me his boat for the week.
I find him standing in front of his boat. He’s wearing a long-sleeve thermal with an army-green vest. Despite the blistering July heat, he seems comfortable. His hair, wispy and sun-bleached, moves in the wind. The wrinkles around his eyes make it appear as if he is constantly glaring into the horizon-line or into me.
“Holy shit. You’re the spitting image of your father”
“I get that a lot. Thank you again for all of this.” I say as we shake hands.
“I’m sure you do. Not a bad thing either. Was hard to wrangle your old man for a weekend fishing trip with all those girls chasing after him. Do me a favor and tell him I send my regards.”
“Of course. He’s doing alright.” I was eyeing the boat, trying to remember what did what. My dad had taken me out with him every summer when I was a kid in a boat much like this one. It wasn’t luxurious but with the ceasing of commercial travel to the island this was the best option for getting there.
“You remember Lori don’t you, Isaac?” I stood in shock for a moment, thinking of my mother. “We took you out a few times. Still runs great!” I hadn’t realized that Sam had named his boat after my mother. He was my father’s best man at the wedding so I guess it made sense that they were close. He noticed I was taken back a bit by the mention of her name. “Wish you could have known her better. She loved spending time out on the water as much as your father did”
“I appreciate it. I wish I could have known her better too”
I don’t remember much from the night my mother died. Just the usual things. The red and blue lights ricocheting off the silver of dad’s Camry. The way the front end crumpled like an accordion as it ate into sandbar below the bridge. There was the urgency in the way the EMTs moved dad onto the gurney and into the ambulance and then the pause. That moment of sinking realization that my mother, who had just dropped me off at school that morning, was not being pulled from the sea.
It's been a little over 20 years since that night. Dad is turning over to Alzheimer’s and the lawyers want him to turn his assets over to me. Primarily, the summer home in Nantucket. It was the kind of thing that dad purchased at the end of a long and arduous career in construction. He was the epitome of hard work and grit; all the things you hear about in those cheap motivational career ads. All things that were in contrast to my fairly cushy job as a software engineer. All he ever wanted was to buy a beach house and spend his summers fishing, reading and watching the tide roll in. A sentiment I now share. Having worked hours in corporate America, I was tired from staring at screens all day; always striving for better codes, faster turn-arounds, and endless loop of upgrade after upgrade. One only finds escape by slowing down and spending time alongside the sea.
What Dad didn’t consider when he bought the house is that, while at the time Nantucket was one of the most expensive and sought-after properties on the market, that it was also an eroding island. In fact, not an island at all, just a glorified sandbar like the one mom drove the car into. Over the last few years, the Atlantic has been sweeping more and more of Nantucket away leaving half the acreage above water. It’s been a known fact for decades that the island would become open ocean by 2070. It’s only been the past 10 years or so that the government began mandating evacuation and offering reimbursement for individuals to vacate the premises. The political turmoil was almost worse than the rising tide. But that too evened out and eventually the last of the Nantucketers left. Today, the island, or what’s left of it is, more or less, uninhabited. But there is still the matter of my inheritance which is of course dad’s dream home.
Sam finished giving me a run-down of the boat. Where the flare gun was, how to use the radio, the jib, the top mast, the control panel for the crane, as if I would be dredging up any fish. I recalled a good amount but was thankful for the refresher course. When he finished he shook my hand. A long firm handshake.
“Best be going. Sun down’s in 6 hours.” He helped me to push the boat off the dock as I started the engine he called out “It’s been a pleasure. Charlotte and I wanted to have you over for dinner when you get back”
“Sure thing. Thank you again” I try to call back over the water and rumbling engine.
Within minutes, I feel the stark contrast between the bustling noise of Hyannis and open ocean. As a child, the ferry to Nantucket ran a little less than 2 hours but with Sam’s boat it’ll take four. Sam had given me the coordinates but said to point the bow southeast and I’d make it there well before sunset. I feel the need to sit at the wheel and constantly readjust, like a car on the highway. After a while, I decide I trust ‘Lori’ and recline with my book under the Bimini. This wasn’t my preferred way to spend summer holiday but I was determined to make the best of it. Out of irony, I’m reading Herman Melville, not Moby Dick, in which he described Nantucket in vivid detail without ever having set foot on the island, but his travelogue, Typee, which depicts his time spent in the Southern Pacific on the island of Nuku Hiva. I am not one to romanticize things. So much of what we think is meaningful is really quite mundane though I have this odd habit of reading works that fit with times in my life as a means of making them feel more important, more adventurous, than they actually are.
The silhouette of Nantucket appears on the horizon line. I stand and consider if it seems smaller than it was when I was child. There is a faint flickering light in the distance. It’s frantic with no clear pattern which is foreboding. The ominous flicker was coming from the Brant Point lighthouse or what remained of it. Dad loved lighthouses. He’d plan his sailing trips not by destinations but by what lighthouses he could see along the way. He would reiterate all the different signal patterns until I could recite them from memory too. The Brant Point Light, he’d told me, uttered 1 fog horn every 10 seconds, The flash pattern of the Sankaty head Light, on the Eastern side of the island, was a flashing light every 7.5 seconds, the Chatham Light yields one bright flash every 10, the Great Point light is lit continuously. All of this information is quickly becoming obsolete. Today, most lighthouses are deactivated and serve solely as tourist attractions. Eroding sentinels reminding us of a time where way-finding was not so simple.
I think of this as I guide ‘Lori’ through what is left of the port. The now-abandoned water-front homes lean over their crumbling pile dwellings. A few half-sunken boats spackle the marina. I pass the Brant Point Light. The tide lapping at its rotting shingles. The surrounding beach and boardwalk is entirely submerged. I dock the ship and tie it off to what I think is a mooring but realize is actually a concrete bollard from what was once a parking lot. Miraculous really, how something so slow-moving, roughly 5 feet a year, could creep up so quickly. I grab my pack and begin walking down main street. The old cobblestone streets and brick walkways are bulged and cracked, appearing more rubble than road, due to the sand sifting underneath. The gift shops and restaurants sit idle. Some of them partially collapsing. Paint flakes with colors of brown and grey from once pristine white historic homes. I hear nothing but my own footsteps. I haven’t heard or seen a bird. Perhaps, even the gulls know this place is sinking. I pass the whaling museum and consider how odd it must be inside, how odd any museum must be when all the artifacts are removed leaving only the empty space and immovable placards.
Finally, I come to our house on Hulbery Avenue. If it wasn’t exactly beachfront property when dad bought it, then it certainly was now. The house was relatively intact. Though there was more sand than grass in the yard. The house is reminiscent of Victorian architecture with its pitched roof and wrap-around porch, but it also bore the more idyllic shingle-style that is so common with most coastal properties. When facing the house, you wouldn’t believe anything was awry, not until you turned around to see that the shoreline had crept up to the far side of the street. I didn’t check if it was low or high tide but judging from the wet sand at the property edge, I assume the tide has some ways to go. I fumble for a moment to find the keys in my pocket. They aren’t mine but dad’s and he was not one to label or organize. I try a few that look like the door key until one inserts and the door creaks open. As I open the door, a strange wall of air strikes me coming not from outside but from inside the house.
It wreaks of sea-breeze and mildew. It’s obvious that no one has been here since mom passed. The floorboards creak as I move about. Perhaps out of instinct, I go to the kitchen, looking for a snack like I used to as a kid though there is no food here. There are still pictures on the fridge. One of me, very young, sitting in the cabin of dad’s old schooner before we sold it. There’s one of him and mom. They don’t look any older than 28, the age I am now. They’re on a hiking trail back home in West Virginia. Dad’s got his arm around mom and is saying something in her ear. She’s laughing. I realize I can’t even remember what her laugh sounded like. And I know if I call dad he won’t remember the joke he told her in that moment. As if on cue, I hear laughter coming from behind me in the house. I thought it was coming from upstairs. There shouldn’t be anyone on the island. I’m not really supposed to be here either. Stepping out of the kitchen, I see that it was my phone ringing that I must have mistaken for the laughing sound. It’s my father who I was supposed to call when I got here. I answer.
“Hello”
“Hey Isaac, you haven’t called me for a while. You forget about your old man or something?” This must be one of his good days. He sounds like himself.
“I called you yesterday dad” I sit down on the old couch. I know how exhausted these conversations leave me when they’re done. It’s not something I can multi-task during.
“Are you sure? I’m pretty sure it was at least a week ago.” I don’t want to argue and so I change the subject
“I’m at the summer house. Do you remember where you put mom’s jar of keys?”
“Ahh I think so. Check workbench in the shed. Should be on the shelf on the right”
“Great thanks dad.”
“How’s the weather out that way? A good day for sailing?”
“It’s not bad, overcast, with strong off-shore wind with some decent swell but it’s still a little choppy” I surprise myself with how much terminology I remember from those summers so long ago. It feels like digging up ancient language.
“Nice. Maybe you can make some time and take the board out catch a few waves off Brant Point”
“Maybe I will but if I do I should get going. I’ll call you tomorrow dad”
“Alright Son. Love you”
“Love you too dad” I hung up the phone and lay back on the couch. I told myself that I could do this in a few days. That I had the energy to take the boat back and forth to Hyannis each day but now all of that motivation seemed to evaporate. I did want to go surfing for the evening. I would have the whole beach to myself. I suddenly understood dad’s want for these long days at the beach house. I exhale heavily and sit up then head to the backyard to find the keys in the shed. I realize that I’ll have to call dad again if the shed is locked. I press the handle of the door and, with some resistance, it creaks open. The shed is dark and musty as to be expected. The tractor took up most of the space, alongside some rakes, sledgehammers, shovels, shears, and a small saw, even though there were no trees in our yard. The work bench was the one area that appeared clean. It was organized and light from the singular window overhead threaded in to illuminate the golden hue of the desk surface. The keys were right where dad said they were. It was an old sauce can, some residue from the label still clinging to the bottom edges. Lifting the can, I know there is a lot of work ahead of me. It was abnormally heavy. I look inside and find more keys than I could imagine doors in the entire house. I remember dad told me how, towards the end, mom had become very paranoid. Always wanting to lock every door and even the windows. I took the keys inside. Upstairs, every bedroom door was shut. I try my luck and pull a key from the tin. It doesn’t fit.
I decide to go back to the shed, climb up to the upper loft and grab my old board. The wax is half melted from the heat of the shed and so I spend some time re-waxing it before heading to the beach. It’s nearly dusk now. As a child this was my favorite time to surf. There were less tourists and better waves. Mom was always worried about sharks. Cape Cod and Nantucket were infamous hunting grounds for juvenile Great White and home to the beach where the movie Jaws took place. I never worried about it but this time, in complete isolation, I find myself scanning the water scrupulously; searching for seals or bait balls that would be a fair warning to stay away. As I walk out, I notice the water is only ankle-high and goes for nearly a hundred yards. It is not until I reach until I reach what was once the beach parking lot that the depth increases and I am forced to hop on my board and begin paddling. There is a series of debris, paper cups and cheap toys from the gift shop float around me as I make for the break line. The waves are good. I catch several, long forceful lefts. There is a kind of quiet exhilaration I feel when standing on a wave, giving my momentum up and substituting it for the ocean’s. I keep paddling out, until it’s too dark to discern wave from horizon line. I ride the white water back in, moving far past the parking lot before I need to dismount from my board. I get back to the house and see the water is now, nearly under the deck. It must be high tide now. That means we have about 5 years before our house becomes a part of the beach.
I get inside, tracking sand and water onto the floor. I leave the board leaned in the hall way and try a few more keys with no luck. I find one that opens the bathroom. The water is still on. With the slow evacuation, the government had no choice to most utilities on. Now that everyone has left it’s likely to shut down any week now. So, I take a shower before preparing to sleep on the couch for the night.
Come morning, I wake feeling terribly dehydrated. I realize I never ate dinner and quickly open my pack for a sandwich and a Gatorade. It’s somewhere around 9 am and light is glaring through the thin living room curtains. I go up to the bathroom, debating another shower since I can still feel the sea-salt on my skin and realize the door is locked again. Did I close it behind me last night? Do the doors lock on their own? I go back downstairs to find the key I used last night. It’s still on the end-table but it’s oddly oxidized. When I pick it up it leaves a residue of greenish orange rust on the table. I know seawater can accelerate these things but overnight seems awfully fast for salt and water on titanium. Dad would know exactly how long it’d be before the rust set in. After a shower, I started going through the keys again this time more systematically. I’d try one key on every door in the house, there were 5 bedrooms and three bathrooms so if the key didn’t work on any it was separated into the window/closet door tin. By noon I got into two rooms. Mom and dad’s bedroom and my own. The mildew odor was especially strong in their room. The same rusty residue that I found on the key was collecting en masse on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was hardened and appeared porous almost like coral. The dresser was still decorated with little mementos and framed photos of both of them, their parents, one from their wedding, another of the two of them holding me as a baby at the hospital. I pick up the frame to look more closely then hear a sharp ringing noise. It oscillates in intensity like a singing bowl would but at a much harsher frequency. It’s so loud I have to close my eyes. The moment I do the sound stops. I look around the room. Nothing’s changed. I think about how dad had his bouts of tinnitus from working with the heavy machinery but I never imagined it like this.
I go downstairs and open a Cliff bar from my pack. Only 4 left. 6 sandwiches and a few bottles of water. The water in the house might be drinkable, but I’d rather not test it. Then my phone rings again. No laughter this time. It’s dad.
“Hello”
“Isaac It’s dad. Where you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for a few days now” I resisted my want to sigh.
“I don’t have any missed calls, dad. Called you yesterday. Everything okay back home?”
“All good over here. You sure you’re good? Mom did the same thing before the end. Ya know.”
“Mom did what?”
“Ignored my calls. Got really short with me. I know it’s nothin’. I just miss her. You know that”
“Yeah I know, dad. I miss her too.”
“Alright well I just wanted to check in. Hope you’re enjoying the beach.” I hadn’t told dad about Nantucket disappearing. I don’t think it would have done any good for him to know that his ultimate goal and gift to me was sinking more and more by the year.
“I am, dad. I’ll call you tomorrow okay?”
“Sounds good. love you buddy”
“Love you too, dad” I hang up. Dad’s memory has been unusually strong the last few days. Usually, he can’t recall anything about mom leading up to the accident. I go back upstairs to their room. The dresser is mostly empty. There’s a few old shirts that dad left. In the closet is dad’s old wet suit, a few sundresses. At the bottom of the closet I find an old jewelry box. It’s coated with the same rusty and calciferous residue. Naturally there’s a lock on it. I bring it into my old room and set it on the nightstand. The room has not changed at all since I was here last. The same bedcovers, the same clothes in the same drawers. My old PlayStation sat with a thick film of dust on top of it. I couldn’t imagine staying inside to play video games when the ocean was just a short walk from the front porch. I cringed even more when I thought of the last kids on the island before the evacuation, wearing their VR headsets everywhere they went as if this reality were not enough for them. Perhaps it was too much.
There was the TV that mom and dad argued about allowing me to have in my room as well all my books and even the bin with my old toys that mom had begun packing up after I’d outgrown them. It was like stepping back in time though my presence in the room disturbed it. I feel a small tinge of regret for even opening the door to begin with, as if I revisiting it tampered with the past.
Suddenly, I feel a rush of fatigue. I want to sleep in a bed. The couch has not been good to my back or neck. Instead, I decide to get a workout in to wake myself up. Back to the beach. I grab the board. This time, I begin paddling even sooner. I assume it’s high tide. The breaks are different, more complex. I catch one. Ride it some ways towards the shore. I cut up and down the wave, and then point the nose as the barrel closes. I feel the board accelerate as I squat low. The sun disappears and I feel the change in temperature. Then a bump, not from the front but behind and I roll off. I tumble for a minute or so before coming up for air, knowing that double-overhead waves demand a certain kind of respect. I swim over to my board and look for where I crashed. There’s nothing there, but one of the fins is cracked. So it had to be a rock. I decide, one is enough and paddle back in. I take a few pulls before my hand jams into something rough and hard. I pull it up and see streaks of red. Drips of blood fall into the seawater floating above a great shadow. Definitely coral, which can be razor sharp and sometimes venomous I used to get cut by it all the time as a kid. It makes sense that there’s more coral here now that the island is uninhabited. My hand is bleeding pretty badly, nothing deep but enough to confirm the call to end the session.
Back at the house, I find some gauze in the bathroom and wrap my hand. There’s a loose flap of skin on my palm that I use a Band-Aid to close. It probably needs stiches but I can go back to the mainland tomorrow if it doesn’t close up on its own. I pause at this thought, realizing I sound exactly like my father, and understanding why my mother was always anxious about the doors and keeping the house stocked with medical supplies. I continue going through our old things checking more keys on more doors. I find the corresponding lock for just about every key. It’s nearly 9. I eat a light dinner and get ready for bed. Laying down, my hand throbbing through the bandages. I begin to read more from Typee. Quickly, I grow tired and close the book. Melville’s words still jangling in my head The pain under which I was suffering effectually prevented my sleeping, and I remained distressingly alive to all the fearful circumstances of our present situation. What pain was I suffering? Losing dad? Realizing that this would mean I’d lose any memories of mom too? I turn to my side and see the jewelry box and the can of keys. There are four left. Which I try and the final one opens. More mildew smell. Inside are a series of journals. Black leather bound. The soft-velour pages are in a state of decay but legible. I open one.
Dear Isaac...
I wake up the next morning. My phone is ringing. It’s dad again. I let it go to voicemail this time. I told him I’d call but he probably forgot that. I sit up and look out the window. The tide is ebbing right below the house steps.
Mom’s journals are strewn about the nightstand. Every single entry, addressed to me. Even the ones before I was born. I listen to dad’s voicemail. No surprise.
“Isaac it’s dad, haven’t heard from you in a while. I’m getting worried. Give me a call back when you get a chance. Love you” It's the selectivity of dad’s deteriorating memory that makes it most difficult. I go surf again. My hand hurts but I need to get my mind off things. I get back and finish packing the picture frames and clothes from the bedrooms. The work I came here to do is done yet I do not feel ready to leave. I resolve to stay a few more days reading and surfing and eating my spartan meals. It feels curative. Though I didn’t realize I needed cured.
I now gave up all hopes of recovery, and became prey to the most gloomy thoughts. A deep dejection fell upon me...
Phone rings again. I answer
“Yeah? Dad?”
“Isaac thank god. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you” I realize I didn’t call him yesterday.
“Sorry dad, just been really busy”
“Busy? I’ve been calling you for two weeks. The hell are you doing?”
“It’s only been a few days, dad”
“I know I’m old but I’m not stupid.” Now he sounded like himself again “Check your missed calls. I’ve been calling every day twice a day for two weeks.” I sat up and went to the bathroom. I look in the mirror and see my beard has grown in, my hair is unruly and the hand I am holding the phone is coated in that same hard coral-ly substance as the key.
“I’m really sorry dad. I have to go right now but I’ll call you back later tonight okay?”
“Alright. Just take care of yourself”
“I will” I hang up and check my missed calls. The voicemail box is full. I feel a strange surge in me. How long have I been here? I change quickly and step outside hoping the fresh air will do me some good. As soon as I open the door, my boot squelches in mud and sand that’s pushed up onto the deck. There must have been a storm last night, though I didn’t remember hearing it. The tideline has pushed up past the street and waves are breaking far closer than I remember. I walk back to the port and realize Sam’s boat is gone. In a panic, I check my phone again. No calls from Sam. Did he even have my number? Maybe the boat was farther out than I remember. I wade into the water. It’s frigid, which tells me the current is shifting. My boots feel heavy, if I knew I’d be swimming I would have left them at the house. I paddle out until I find myself eye-level with the Brant Point lighthouse. The water has raised this high this fast? I stare into the Fresnel lens. The light is so weak I can’t tell if it’s on or it’s just the occasional ray of sunlight refracting in the glass. I swim up to it. The waves are still breaking in the distance but appear to be moving closer. In the glass I see a mosaic of images. Like a kaleidoscope but less liquid. There is a frame with mom and dad on the hiking trail. I can hear them talking but I can’t make out the words. In another, I’m fishing with dad while mom reads on the boat. In the center, is the crashed car, dad being hauled out of it by the firefighters and EMTs while the October rain poured down. I am staring at mom through the sunken windshield. Her eyes are closed as bubbles of air seep from her lips. Then her eyes jolt open. I feel a wave crash over me. Hear the cracking of the light and am pinned to the seafloor.
I wake up in my childhood bed. My phone is ringing. It’s dad.