Beach House

“The place looks great,” Charles said, “Everything you’ve done.”

“You think?

A breeze came in and rippled the lace curtains, a gift he’d given her years before. Beyond the warbled window panes was the marsh grass that lined the inlet and beyond that, the bay.

“Right after Dad died Paul came in and painted the place. Top to bottom. It made a huge difference.”

Charles turned to the ocean side of the house. He was calm, distant. It was August.

“The mildew smell is gone,” he said.

“Finally.”

“I liked it. The way it mixed with the breeze off the marsh. First thing Dad did, run in from the car and open up all the windows.”

Charles wandered out to the screen porch to look at the ocean, while his sister unloaded the groceries in the kitchen. He stepped back into the house.

“You want a beer?” she said.

“No thanks.”

“So how long do you think you’ll stay? Paul’s coming down with the boys on Wednesday.”

“Next Wednesday? I’ll probably have to go before then.”

“Oh,” she pursed her lips and created a frown, “you’ll miss them. The boys will be so disappointed. They haven’t seen their Uncle Charlie in...what’s it been? A year?”

“And a half,” he said.

Eighteen months was a third of his oldest nephew’s life. Charles wondered how the boy held on to fondness through such gaps and he thought of the friends he’d lost during last third of his own life.

“What do you hear from Mom,” he asked.

“Not much. She seems well enough. She said a publisher is interested in her manuscript. In Akron of all places.”

“College Press. A tiny liberal arts school, I’m sure.”

He walked to the mantle and studied the knick-knacks his sister had placed among the family photographs: a carved wooden mallard, a blue power line insulator and a starfish with one spur missing propped against the white-washed wood paneling.

“Have you ever read her poetry?” he asked.

Katie shuddered. “No way. It creeps me out. Feels like looking at her naked. She’s sends them with her letters but I never read them.”

“It’s shit, honestly. It’s terrible stuff.”

Charles’s sister giggled as she stuffed a head of celery into the crisper, “Yeah, well, if someone likes it—”

“God help them.”

Charles sat down at the bar that divided the kitchen from the living room. The ceilings were high and fans lazily pulled the warm air into the void overhead. His sister folded the last of the grocery bags and wedged it between the ice box and the wall.
“What about you? How’s your work coming?” she said.

“It’s shit.”

Katie threw her head to the side and waited for an honest answer.

“I’m my mother’s son,” he said.

Katie relented, knowing Charles was not going to talk about his work. And that he was anything but his mother’s son. She placed a beer on the counter and started searching the cupboards for a mug. “I can never remember where anything is in this place.” Charles picked up his sister’s beer, opened it and took a long drink. He put the twist-cap in his breast pocket and walked to the porch with the beer.

A bench swing hung at one end, positioned so you could see the sunset along the western curve of the beach. He walked to the swing and yanked at the rusty chains then took a seat and watched the dune grass sway. With a toe he pushed against the floorboards and kept the shallow sweeps of the swing in rhythm with the rolling grass.

His sister came out of the house. He scooted aside to make room. She had another beer, no mug.

“Hardly looks any different, when you sit here. It could be twenty years ago,” she said, and gave the swing a hearty push, knocking it out of time with the dune grass.

“Doesn’t feel the same,” he said, his eyes squinting on the horizon. “There’s no magic in it anymore. Do you remember the charge we’d get when we made it to the causeway and the drawbridge was up. We had to wait with this . . . this paradise just on the other side.”

A smile flickered in Charles’s eyes.

His sister looked at her bottle. She was catching up the corners of the label with her unpainted fingernails.
“Charles, what is it you’re after?” Katie looked at her brother and there was a longing in her eyes. “How long do you think you’ll keep this up?”

“Keep what up?”

“The moving around. From place to place. We hardly see you anymore.”

“It’s nothing I think about. It’s my life. I guess I’ll keep it up until I don’t keep it up anymore.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How am I supposed to answer that?”

Katie pulled one of her legs to her lap and turned to face her brother, resting her beer bottle in the cradle between her legs. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just . . . you seem so melancholy whenever we see you.”

“It’s not like I walk around brooding all the time.”

Katie cocked her head to the side, waited.

“Being back here just kind of puts me in that place. It’s not a bad thing.” he said. He was looking across her to the water. “It’s not you.”

“I hope not.”

“Don’t you ever think about everything this place used to be?”

“Honestly, Charles? I don’t. Hardly, anyway.”

“How could you not?”

“It’s different for me too, but somehow it’s better. It’s what I imagine it was like for Mom and Dad when we were kids.”

Charles took a long sip from his beer and looked far down the beach like he was trying to recognize a distant jogger. He dragged a foot to bring his side of the swing in time with his sister’s. He was silent for a long while and Katie was silent to. A gull cried.

“You remember when we went out to Hog Island,” he said. “It was you, me, Mom and Dad, Gramps and a couple other people. When we got out of the boat Mom asked if I wanted to wear my bathing suit or if I just wanted to run around naked. I remember thinking I would go like everyone else must be going, naked. Then when we got a few hundred yards down the beach and I realized everyone else had swimsuits on, I threw a fit.”

Another dim smile. “I could still see the boat way down the beach but Mom wouldn’t go back for my suit. I must have been about three, or four.”

“I kinda remember. Was it fourth of July?” she said.

“No idea,” Charles was still looking down the beach. “So after we moved—this was four or five years later—I came across a box of old photographs and I found one of you and me, taken that day sitting on the steps of the old watchtower out on the island. And I was naked. I stared at it for a minute, and I got sick.”

“You threw up?”

“Yeah. I made it to the bathroom, but I threw up. Confused the hell out of me.”

“That’s weird.”

“Isn’t it?” Charles put his beer on the floor of the porch. He noticed the light blue paint was flaking off along the joints of the floorboards. “Paul missed the porch.”

“It rained the whole time he was down.”

Charles flicked off a flake of paint with his big toe. “I like it like this.”

“Yeah? Maybe we’ll leave it.”

Charles stood up, sending the swing into a wobble. “I think I’ll lie down for a while.”

“What time do you want to eat?”

“Whenever, later,” he said. “We’ll see.”

Katie watched her little brother walk into the house. Her brow was furrowed and she was sad, opened up by his loneliness. Charles popped his head back out of the doorway.

“Katie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” he said, “for everything,” and he disappeared into the house.

Katie picked up her beer and scooted into the middle of the swing. With one last push, she pulled her other leg up and watched the waves breaking in one-four time to the sweeps of the swing.

Charles climbed the narrow, hidden stairs from kitchen to what had always been his own private room in the back of the house. From his cot he could hear the goings-on in the kitchen, the living room, and in his parents room. Only the beachside rooms up front were out of ear-shot. There was a single bed where his cot used to be, with a four-leaf clover cut into the headboard.

Charles laid on the top cover, curled into a ball on his side. His breathing came shallow and sharp. He lay with his hands clamped prayer-style and wedged between his thighs and all he could hear was the sound of the breakers and a banner plane buzzing up the beach.