The Harbor Town

    Her mother told her things she must never tell anyone else. She would tell you, but she made a promise, and a promise she keeps.

    She lives beneath a lighthouse. Her house is two rooms on another two rooms; she owns the top, and other people own the bottom, and it’s like a bunk bed for grown-ups. Sometimes they throw pebbles at her windows, and she peeks her head out of her window to see them standing there on the street. They smile, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “We’re making dinner!” they call, beckoning her down, and she waves a hand like there’s a handkerchief at the end of it: “At midnight?” she asks.

    There’s an old man who lives in the lighthouse—his wife was the one who ran it, throwing the light over the waves like skipping rocks. But she’s dead now and he carries a portrait of her in his pocket, pocket-sized, and he’ll show it to the barista as he orders his coffee. She doesn’t mind him. She thinks he might like a home-cooked meal now and then; it’s a shame she’s a terrible cook. But he’s not the only one around. There are lots of people around: seventy-two, to be exact. They live in the crooks of the cliffs and then around, along the grooves of the sloping hills, all the way down to the sand, where cerulean waves lap; lanterns hanging in doorways, curtains closed in windows. It was a harbor town but now it’s just a town, a town where seventy-two people live like shells on the beach, cool and shadowed beneath the moon, hidden in the swaying grass.

    A funny thing happened the day she was born. Five people died. They were all dying, or at least in the process of dying (she thinks, sometimes, that the word ‘dying’ is silly, because everyone is dying. There is becoming alive, there is dying, and there is death. There is birth and there is a slow plod to death. But when she said this to her fifth grade teacher, her mother was given a call and she went home for an early lunch), and it wasn’t such a shock that the deaths in fact happened, but rather it was the way they fell into seamless tandem with her squalling cries; as she came alive it was like she needed so much life that she sucked the rest of it from their wrinkled skin. She lies awake at night and wonders if she is those five people instead of herself—if she is a polyglot of their existences, if her birth was so tainted that it could not have handled her bursting of life. Or she wonders if perhaps she was never alive in the first place, that she came alive and died in the first breath taken, and those five people, so close to death, surrendered what they had left to give her a chance. She lies awake at night and wonders about these things. Sometimes she looks in the mirror and presses her fingers to her skin; to the softness of her cheeks and the hard bones above her eyes, looking for the hearts that beat below the surface, five hearts in total, unbelonging but beating besides.

    But as she grows, roots pressing into the ground, she thinks most everyone has forgotten. Or they at least don’t care. When her mother died, they brought her food, and her fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Marcine, came and stayed the night. “We can’t have you getting lonely, now,” she’d said warmly, hair twisted up in a towel, shoulders wet from the shower.

    It doesn’t usually get cold until October, but today (September 13th) there’s a morning chill. She steps out onto the street in shorts and a sweater; wind off the waves hits her legs like a frosty kiss. She can’t help but smile. There’s a freshness by the ocean. It’s like the rising and the tipping and the inevitable crash is an introduction, a smiling, a waving hand, to something new, a smoothing over of both good and bad. Like water smooths the stone, so does the ocean try to soothe her soul. It’s a personal thing and sometimes she speaks to it like a friend.

   So she walks down the narrow street, cradled between hills both rocky and green.

After she gets her coffee, she sits on the rocks and listens to the waves. It’s a very easy existence when she lets it be. If she closes her eyes and concentrates on the coffee settling on her tongue, filling her throat, warming her chest before pooling in her stomach… it’s very easy. When she listens to the water rise and crash, all in a simple tandem of this way and that, she feels pulled with it, smoothed, massaged. The sound presses onto her shoulders and the slope of her neck. If she holds out her hand, the wind fills it, like water rushing over a pebble.

​

    “Anyway, he’s been having a very rough time of it lately.” Mrs. Ulrich shifts her purse in her lap and crosses her legs. She wears an expression of mild distaste—although she realizes it is only discomfort. Mrs. Ulrich is a hard, imperious kind of woman; her son is a sweet thing who packs his lunch every day. She clears her throat. “I’m hoping you’ll be able to take that into account. You know,” she goes on, looking down, “take care of him.”

Mrs. Ulrich does not like that she can’t do what she herself is asking. Mrs. Ulrich is about as good a mother as she is herself.

    Seeing children all day, peering into their little faces—it becomes easy to know these things.

    But teaching is not only about the children, and she smiles, saying, “Of course, Mrs. Ulrich,” in that kind way she knows. The woman is consoled by this. “He’s a wonderful student usually. I’d be happy to keep an eye on him.”

She nods assuringly, like punctuation at the end of a line, and their meeting ends.

    Tucking her bag over her shoulder, she makes her way down to the bar. They’re used to her on Tuesday nights. She goes to the bar, and she sits at the bar, and she hooks her heels over the bar in the stool and orders a couple of drinks. Sometimes someone sits next to her, but she’s always alone. Any words they say she stirs into her glass. Any questions they ask she swallows. Outside of the classroom, she has a reputation for being bad company. Well-earned, she’d say.

    “Happy Tuesday,” says the bartender. He gives her a jaunty smile. “How are we feeling? What are we drinking?”

    “Orange juice,” she says moodily.

    Back at home, she kicks off her heels and shrugs off her coat. It’s been getting cold at night—when the sun loses motivation, they all suffer for it. Ice comes off of the waves in flecks. She’ll be avoiding the beach until spring.

    “I can’t believe that woman,” she mutters, dragging the curtains closed.

    She can sympathize with Mrs. Ulrich during school hours but her patience stays firmly within those lines. If they were to run into each other anywhere else, then it would be a different conversation; beginning begrudgingly and ending quickly. Max is too quiet, too composed. She doesn’t necessarily like it when they fight, but when they’re so quiet they melt, dripping silently off the table, she becomes worried. And she doesn’t like being worried, either.

    She can easily remember his first day. He’s the spitting image of his mother. He’s soft-spoken, light-footed. He calls her ‘Ms. Maralis,’ but stumbles on the ‘l.’ She could tell he hadn’t read very much; he was far behind the rest of the class, and horrifically embarrassed about it. First-graders are too young to be embarrassed about these things, she thinks. First-graders are too young to be anything but happy, running on the sands, begging their parents for puppies. Their world is open, and the skies are folded back like cardboard flaps.

    She squeezes her eyes shut, groaning.

    When she finally sleeps, she has a dream:

    She is standing where the water rushes over her toes, flooding her ankles. She can feel herself sinking into the sand. It’s blisteringly hot; she wants to wipe her forehead, but her hands are stayed to her sides. It’s not that she can’t move them, or that someone is holding them, but rather they stay where they are, like they have separated themselves and are released from whatever she might ask of them.

    In the dream, this is a normal, understandable thing. She often has dreams like this.

    Elise Wainwright is standing beside her. She was a short woman while she was alive. Her hair is wiry and thick, tied back at her neck.

    “You can’t even feel the water, can you,” says Elise, and without looking, she knows the four others are standing behind her. She can hear their hearts beating. Her body is still, anchored; she could not convince it to move if she tried.

    When she finally wakes, she has the distinct sense that she is going to die today.

​

    “I’m going to die today,” she says to her reflection, face dripping with water. She pats it dry with a towel and brushes wet strands of hair away. “I’m going to die.”

    The crosswalk blares and she walks. Neena is standing on the curb, waiting.

    “You’re not going to die,” says Neena, coffee in hand. She takes it from her and drinks it. “All you have to worry about is what’s-his-name.”

    “Max.”

    “Yeah,” Neena nods. “Max.”

    She grimaces. “He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”

    First-graders require patience and charm, happy voices and open faces. They’re surprisingly observant; they’re reflective, empathetic. Before age beats it out of them, they’re chock full of wisdom. That’s partly why she teaches elementary. It sucks the life out of her, but when she can give them half a day of ‘good job’ and ‘you’ve got it,’ she feels full of potential, too.

    “Ms. Maralis,” calls Max.

    She goes over to him. He’s got his picture book laid out on the table; they’re doing some individual reading to finish off the day. “Yes, Max?”

    He reads it to her—slow, plodding, each word a sinking stone. When he finishes, she beams, giving him a thorough round of applause.

    “Wonderful!”

    “Really?”

    When night falls, the town almost feels like a harbor town again.

    The stars on the horizon look like approaching fishing boats; the moon reflects a glassy, cold light onto the water, and through tired eyes, it sometimes looks like the long-forgotten glow of the lighthouse. Everything is quiet, everything is sleeping. When she’s restless, she’ll pull on a coat and socks, and tip-toe around the town, unseen and unheard. She’ll wander the hills and the cliffs and walk the thin path encircling the lighthouse; she’ll hum songs to herself and warm her hands in her pockets, untie her hair and let it blow in the night breeze. She likes those nights. She likes the way they hold her; the way the air embraces her in soft arms, like it’s putting her in the inside pocket of its coat.

    She rarely goes into the town center. That’s for the day. Places meant for people when they’re devoid of people leave a sick feeling in her throat. She can’t help the sensation of wrongness—painted onto the street, reflected in the store windows, sunken in the alarms of abandoned, derelict cars, parked by ghosts on the curb. That’s what this place is—a ghost town.

She can almost see them floating with the wind as she passes through.

    She’s wearing shoes tonight, because during autumn, her toes get cold. She hits the button by the crosswalk and she waits for the green.

    She checks her watch: 11:47. Thirteen more minutes and she’s not going to die today anymore. Smiling to herself, she steps out into the street, stepping into the silence; and her ears clog with quiet, and the water rushes in, and then, funnily, by fate’s funny hand, a light floods her vision. It’s an unnatural light. It’s moonlight laced with metal. It hits her skin, hot—she turns, eyes large and looming, and headlights flash, and brakes are screeching, and her body is stayed to the ground. Somehow she understands she isn’t dreaming. Somehow she understands she’s never dreamt at all. Somehow she understands this car didn’t exist while she stood on the curb, because she made it, she formed it; she made it alive the moment she stepped out, the moment she hit the button, she moment she left the house, the moment she decided to get out of bed, the moment her mother took her by the hand and taught her how to walk.

    Somehow all she can think is:

    I’m going to die today.

​

    She doesn’t quite know where she went.

    She went somewhere far away. She closed her eyes and did not open them for what felt like years. For what felt like years, she was blissfully dead, buried in the ghost-town street, finally given back to what she was made for.

    “Come on,” lugs a voice, irritated. “Let’s go, get up.”

    There’s a tug on her arm; then another, sharper.

    “Open your eyes, please. That will make this easier for both of us.”

    She groans. Her head is killing her. Her mind is dark, occasionally bursting with ear-splitting colors, like fireworks. Hiss… crack. It sounds like her bones, she thinks, cracking.

    Slowly she comes awake, although her eyes refuse to open. She can feel him and hear him and sense his closeness; he’s surrounding her, the smell thick and heavy and hot, and she’s aware of him in every way except sight.

    She reaches out with her hand, groping the air. “Where are you,” she murmurs, voice squeezing through her throat, “I can’t see you.”

    There’s a sigh; a hand curls around her own. Warm fingers grab hers. “I’m right here. Come on, Meg. Let’s go.”

    She tries to clear her throat.

    “Open your eyes.”

    “I can’t.” Her body jolts, over and over again, and she has the distinct sense of decomposing, parts of herself drifting away—her body is melting into the ground. Weeds sprout from her veins. The shock of it, the fear—seeing herself dying, dying, dead—quickens her breath. Blood flows like warm water; the ocean rushes once again over her toes, flooding her ankles.

    His wrist presses to hers, and in his there is a heart, beating.

    “There,” he says. “A heart for you.”

    “Thank you,” she says, and, coming alive, opens her eyes.

    Much time passes, during which she blinks once, closing her eyes and opening them again like an instrument, fingers slipping messily over the strings. He passes before her eyes like one of those bursting colors. He is a person made of a lack of a person. His hair is white and his eyes are black.

    He is a crow, heralding the dead.

    Or he is a buzzard, hungry for it.

    She wakes from what feels like surgery. Her body pulls her thickly from the haze.

    They’re sitting in the middle of the street—his legs are folded beneath him, his hands resting contentedly on his knees. She is curled up like a fetus on the concrete. Cars whir past every now and then; no wind whips her hair, no heat from their engines warms her face. She flinches as a tire almost rolls over her toes.

    “Don’t worry. They can’t touch you.”

    She tries to clear her throat. “Why not?”

    “I put us into a pocket,” he says, like it’s the most understandable thing he could say. He watches the street with sharp eyes. “You know. I carved out a hole and put us in it.”

    She doesn’t have the energy to question it. Bracing her arms on the ground, she sits up.

    “Good. Ready to go?”

    “Am I dead?”

    He laughs—a stopping, short sound. “Do you feel dead?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “Think about it. That’s half of being alive.”

    It’s a relief her mind is still soft and buzzing, because with rational thought, she’s sure her sanity would be quickly slipping away. Nothing makes sense. It itches at her neck, along her collarbones.

    A heart for you, he’d said. She presses two fingers to her wrist and feels a heart beating.

    “Is this yours?”

    “It was mine.”

    “But it’s mine?”

    “It’s ours.” He shrugs. “It’s on loan. Use it until you don’t need to anymore.”

    She doesn’t want a sixth heart. She has too many that belong to other people—she wants one to be her own, one of her own birth, one of her own essence. She’d do away with the rest if she could only have one. That way, she wouldn’t have all these ugly days filled with the “I’m going to die today” kinds of thoughts.

    When she can stand, they make their way to the sidewalk; she clutches his forearm and with surprising consideration, he walks slowly for her to keep up. Many times she thinks a car is going to slam into them. Each time, she closes her eyes and they slow down even more.

    As he ushers her through the door of a café, he leans close and says in her ear, “Don’t throw up.”

    She balks. “What—”

    A wave of vertigo hits her, and she sways, like she’s standing at the toes of the clouds and looking all the way down.

    Her face, hot from a mysterious sun, cools with air. Eyes turn to them; it becomes clear to her that these eyes were not seeing them before. Eyes from everyone find them as if in happenstance, unconcerned with their sudden existence, unbothered by their intrusion into everyday reality.

    She frowns, mouth agape. “Have we… ?”

    “Don’t think about it.” He gives a friendly nod to the barista, a smile softening his harsher face. “Hungry? Breakfast’s on me.”

    “This is ridiculous,” she states, standing very still. Her knuckles are white around his arm. “This isn’t real. I died, didn’t I? I died on that street.”

    He turns to her; he looks into her. His eyes are blacker than night. They are desolate and cold, unfeeling and hawkish. In their apathy there is a strange comfort, she thinks.

    He twists her tight fingers into a grip around his. “You believed in fairytales, Meg. Believe in them now.”

    “Are you a fairytale?”

    “No, but I’m fairly close.”

She blinks, and when she opens her eyes—

​

She is lying in bed, awake, and the alarm is going off. It is six fifteen, October 2nd, the day she is going to die today.

Neena meets her at the curb; Max meets her with his words. She stumbles through the hours wondering if she needs to check herself into the hospital. Today, she thinks, today is the day I will die. She convinces herself it was all a dream, that her mother is still whispering those words in her ear, and that the man with the white hair and the black eyes was nothing more than a figure from the throes of her imagination. That is—until she sees him sitting at a restaurant across the street, heel resting on his knee, sunglasses low on the bridge of his nose. She stands rooted at the crosswalk. He looks at her and raises a hand in greeting.

Briskly she turns, deciding to take the long way home.