Girls Like Us(4)

I pour myself a stiff glass of Dad’s Macallan and retire to the porch with a wool blanket. I drink quietly and alone, as I imagine he did most nights, until the last streaks of sunset fade and stars light up the sky. I listen to the roar of the ocean and the faint shudder of music from one of the bars across the bay.

It’s over. I will never feel a gravitational pull back here, back home. Not for holidays or for birthdays or for weddings of people I once considered friends but no longer think about. I won’t feel obligated to call my father and I won’t feel guilty when I don’t. I can burn his things; sell this house; never return to Suffolk County again. For the first time in years, I don’t need to medicate myself to sleep. I lie back on the deck couch, put my feet up on the driftwood coffee table. I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.





2.



The cry of a seagull rouses me. My eyes open. It’s light. For a few seconds, I’m disoriented. I sit up, startled, and take in my surroundings. The faded wood decking. The openness around me. I’d forgotten the singular pleasure of waking up to clouds overhead.

The air has an edge to it that it didn’t a few days ago. I pick up the smell of salt and peat and, for the first time, something else: firewood. There is smoke coming from a chimney a few doors down. I get up and watch it rise in tufts and then dissipate into the slate-colored sky.

Fall has arrived. My favorite season on the island. The colors fade from vibrant greens and blues to gentler shades of brown and gray. Light dapples the marsh. Just beyond the deck, a snowy egret stands stock-still in a sea of sumac and switchgrass. In a flash, the bird dips its beak into the water and swallows a killifish whole. Then it morphs back into a statue, lying in wait for its next victim. I used to watch the egrets for hours when I was little. I admired their pure white feathers and long, graceful necks. I thought they looked like ballerinas. Pop told me that they almost died out years ago because women so admired their plumage that they killed them and turned them into hats. It broke my little heart to hear that.

Egrets are ruthless killers, too. They know how to extend their wings out while hiding their beaks, fooling small fish into seeking refuge from the sun beneath their shadow. Sometimes you can see them moving their reed-thin legs in the water in a rhythmic, hypnotic way. It looks as though they are dancing. But really, they are shaking up prey from sediment around their feet. When something moves, they pounce. Knowing this made me feel better. We kill them. They kill small fish in return.

Soon, the waters here will grow cold. The egrets, like the plover and the gulls, will be forced to move farther south in order to survive. The change will happen overnight. One day, I’ll wake up and they’ll be gone. As a child, I always mourned the day they left. The migration marked the end of the outdoor season, and the beginning of a long winter cooped up in the house with Dad. Winters on Long Island are cold and dark. Most of the folks who stay for it drink more during those hard months, and my father was no exception. I wonder if I’ll still be here when the birds leave this year, or if I, too, will have headed south by then. It’s probably time I start thinking about packing up and moving on. The bite in the air is a good reminder.

I open the sliding door and go back into the house. In the bathroom, I turn on the tap and splash cold water on my face. I fill a glass to the brim and drink it down, trying to offset the effects of drinking too much scotch on an empty stomach the night before. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve lost weight. My cheekbones protrude. The hollows around my hazel eyes seem more pronounced. I’ve stopped preparing proper meals. I can’t remember the last time I showered. It’s hard to do it with my shoulder. I fatigue easily, even when washing my hair. The bandaging gets wet and needs to be changed, and that seems like a lot of effort for me these days. It isn’t as though I’m expecting much in the way of company. Still, I am startled by my appearance. I’m not caring for myself. It shows.

I flick on the shower. I need to pull myself together before Howard Kidd stops by this afternoon. There are papers to sign, bank accounts to close. A house to sell and bills to pay. My clothes drop to the tile floor. The tap rumbles and then sputters out water the color of bourbon. Rust. The pipes need replacing. So does the roof, the deck, the dented screen doors. One of the windows blew out in the last hurricane and no one bothered to replace it. My father used to hammer boards over the windows when hurricane season came. Nail marks mar the wood frames. Any broker will tell me to paint over them when I’m ready to sell the house. But I love those marks. As a child, I used to run my hands over them, my fingers feeling out each bump and rivet. They are scars from battles this house has fought and won.

The whole house needs replacing, really. I know that. Maybe there’s no point in painting walls and putting in new screens when, more likely than not, a buyer will tear it down. Maybe all I need to do is tidy things up so that it looks presentable. Put away personal effects. Remove my father’s hunting trophies: the stag’s head with its glistening, dead eyes. The needle-nosed sailfish arched over the front door. I need to ensure that the air conditioner doesn’t leak and that the fridge stops making that strange, rattling sound. I have to clear out my father’s clothes from his bureau. His office door is locked. So is his gun closet. The guns need to go. So does his toothbrush, its frayed bristles hanging downward off the edge of his sink. My mother’s ashes are probably still stashed in the back of the office closet, in the brass-necked urn that has long since dulled from neglect. I don’t know for sure that the urn is still there, but I bet it is. I haven’t had the heart to check.