The Week At The Gulf

The youngest

That last evening, the sun almost down, I was in the big rocker on the screened porch and the house had finally gone quiet the way a house full of children does all at once, like a switch.

Rosie came out in her nightgown. Four years old. She had decided somewhere that week that I belonged to her.

She climbed up without asking and arranged herself on my chest with her head right under my chin, her hair still smelling of sunscreen and salt and the ocean.

“Grandma,” she said, “I have six cousins.”

“You do,” I said.

“I didn’t used to.”

“You always did, baby. You just hadn’t met them yet.”

She thought about that. The waves came up and went back, up and went back, past the dune.

“Are we gonna come back?” she said.

“Lord willing,” I said.

She did not answer. She had gone heavy on me, the particular heavy of a child letting go into sleep, her breath slowing down to match the water. I could feel her heartbeat through both our shirts.

I sat in the dark with the weight of her and I listened to the Gulf come in and go out, and I did not move for a long time, because you do not move when a sleeping child has decided you are the safest place in the world.

That is what nine thousand dollars bought. That exact minute. I would have paid the whole three hundred and ten for it and called it cheap.

Rick, after

Rick called me about two weeks after we got home.

I let it go to voicemail the first time. I am not proud of that but I did. Then I called him back on the porch with my coffee.

“Mom,” he said. And then nothing for a second.

“Hi, honey.”

“I got your picture.”

“I figured you did.”

There was a long quiet. My son is not a man who cries, and I would not say he was crying, but his voice had gone somewhere it did not usually go.

“They look so big,” he said. “My boys. When did they get so big.”

“June,” I said. “They got big in June. You should’ve seen the oldest with a cast net.”

“I should have been there,” Rick said.

I did not say anything. Sharon would have jumped in. I had learned by then to let a silence do its work.

“The sale closed,” he said. “Three weeks ago. I’m fine. I was always going to be fine. I don’t even know why I” He stopped. “I looked at that picture and I counted them, Mom. All seven. And I realized I couldn’t have told you Rosie’s middle name.”

“It’s Louise,” I said. “After my sister.”

“Louise,” he said, like he was putting it somewhere he would not lose it.

“Jeff drove fourteen hours for four days,” I said. “He stood in the water with her and she wasn’t scared of a thing. You’d have liked to see it.”

“I would have,” Rick said. “I really would have.”