NIm
I never thought about how I would want my body prepared after death. I didn’t think my husband did either, but upon reading his will, I realized that I didn’t truly know him at all. Sure, we have always loved our beach house, but I didn’t think Desmond loved it enough to have me spread his ashes there.
My son, Sam, and I haven’t been back to Cape Cod since the accident, and we’ve been delaying my late husband’s wishes for far too long. It’s been years since his death, and his urn has traded places with every lamp on every decorative side table and shelf in the house. He has no place there anymore, so my son says.
He’s long gone.
Sam graduated High School 3 days ago, and instead of flying down to Miami with his friends, he decided to drive with me to the beach house one last time.
“Mom, you’ve been quiet, I know you’re not exactly excited to go back, but is it bad that I am?” He said calmly, his eyes fixated on the highway but his white knuckled grip on the steering wheel contradicted his coolness.
“No, no! Not at all,” I over enunciated, scrunching my eyebrows and dramatically shaking my head for him to see from the corner of his eye. “I’m glad the beach house isn’t ruined for you. I wouldn’t trade those memories for the world.”
“But mom,” Sam started.
“Samuel, I said I’m fine. Now pay attention to the road,” I finished, cradling my purse on my lap as he signaled towards our exit.
The town has stayed exactly the same. The same cobblestones were absent from the already deteriorating main road, and the docks reeked of the same brackish erosion. The same fisherman slapped the new generations of the same wriggling fish families upon their chopping blocks, and the same gaggles of birds squealed towards open water.
Cape Cod had remained stagnant, like the still bay our house resides upon. And as our car wobbled against the unpaved driveway of our old beach house, I could feel my late husband’s presence. If I waited in the car any longer, I would expect him to pop up by the trunk, slamming our luggage onto the mud as he always did. As if I was waiting for him to scold me for packing a luggage instead of a backpack like he did. As if he was still here, itching for a cigar and to be out on his boat by our private dock.
I realized my son was also frozen in the driver’s seat, staring up at the ever-greening white panels on the house, the wooden balcony i used to shake his sandy swim trunks onto before entering through the victorian double doors, the rocking chair i used to read my smut novels on while the two men in my life caught dinner on the bay side.
“You ready, Sam?”
I knew he was ready, more than I was. His memories of his father were still seen through rose colored glasses. His recollection was still bubbly and sweet. Mine have rotted, like the first fish Sam ever dragged back onto the porch.
I remember him trying to convince us that he had caught it, even as the flies burrowed into the half eaten fish’s gills. Desmond laughed, taking the fish, humoring Sam, and hacking it up to use as bait.
My memories are just as moldy, just as fly infested. And I promised that I would never let Sam’s spoil as mine have. Our last night here has burned a hole into my brain, and I can remember every detail without trying.
. . .
Desmond had been missing all day, leaving me to make a sad butter pasta for dinner and send Sam up to bed after his bath and without a bedtime story. Desmond had promised us a feast that morning. He promised clams and cod and mussels fresh from the bay. But he returned empty handed. He failed to make himself known as the front door shook from his rusted key, and the moment the door creaked open, my hand gripped the base of a map in the darkness. His boots squeaked on the wooden planked floor, following the dim path of light from the front door’s lamp shade to the overhead light above the kitchen’s center island. I had been sleeping on the couch, waiting for him to catch him red handed. But he didn’t even see me. Didn’t notice that I was standing 3 feet away from his face. Instead he hit the fridge.
He slipped his pocket knife beneath the beer bottle’s cap and swiped it off. After it clanged against the floor, I waited. Still nothing.
“You’re not gonna pick that up?” I said, readjusting my robe as I appeared out of the unlit living room.
“Clara, not now,” his eyes were avoiding mine.
“Des, this is our vacation. Not my ideal one, but this is the place you choose every year, and I never argue against it. So the least you can do is return home on time. The very least, Desmond.”
We continued on like that, bickering in sharp whispers as to not wake Sam. I pushed him, egging him on until he finally told me what had been on his mind.
“There’s a woman, Clara,” he said. And I froze, just like the dead fish in Sam’s grasp. Just like I am now in the passenger seat of my late husband’s car.
I remember how I couldn’t find the words, only specific, unhelpful ones, “What’s her name.”
He hesitated, shocked by my coolness, “Clara, I…”
“Her name, Desmond!”
“Nim. Her name is Nim.”
I nodded, my hands adjusting and readjusting the tie on my robe, “So that’s what you’ve been up to. You’ve been at this woman's house? I don’t see any fish with you, so you’ve lied about everything I see."
“Clara,” he over-enunciated, his hands up and his words careful. “I met her at the docks…”
“When?”
“Today?” he asked stupidly.
“No, when did you decide to tear apart this family?”
He didn’t need to answer, his hesitation responded faster.
I remember turning to the closet, grabbing my luggage and Sam’s, “Leave your keys on the counter. We don’t need you here. Serena can drive you back home.”
He stuttered, tipsily fumbling around the kitchen island, “But, she can’t drive…”
“That’s all you can say to me?” I laughed, cutting off his reel of excuses before I could take his bait. “My God, how old is she?”
My question was rhetorical, meant only to twist the knife he stabbed into his own gut.
And just like that, he left. I had always assumed he had gone to find his skank, but by morning, the entire sheriff's department stomped onto the porch. Desmond had drowned in the bay, bites lined his face and arms. And I was never able to enjoy a grilled sea bass again, not without imagining his dead gray eyes and green, clammy skin.
. . .
The house, like the town, was, you guessed it, the same. As if no one had stayed in it since our last visit, which, now that I think of it, sounds accurate. Mildew perfumed the nautical wallpaper, and dust blanketed every surface, including the pull out couch.
Sam stomped up the carpeted stairs to the master bedroom, I followed. He gripped the knob to the closet, but before he could push the luggages inside, he was hit with a reminder. A fire truck red flag in my head, but a rose red tackle box through Sam’s eyes. He dropped to his knees, prying open the rust locked flaps of the tool kit, exposing them to oxygen for the first time since Desmond had fished. Leaning on the walls were his four prized fishing rods and staining the carpet beside them was his tatted waders. The closet smelled rank, but as Sam pulled out a few of Desmond’s hidden gems, I knew it wasn’t the hooks that were emitting the smell.
“...Mom?” Sam said, raising a bag of pre-rolled joints. I grabbed them and stuffed them in the pocket of my cardigan. I’ve had many talks with Sam over the years about things a father should have probably taken over, but the fact that my late husband had an indulgence I was unaware of was not open to discussion.
The custom reels and hooks were pulled out next, which definitely caught Sam’s attention. They were beautiful, otherworldly. As if a fish had divulged the secret of how to catch his kind with minimal effort. And now they were passed down to Sam. The hooks were labeled; the first being striped bass, the next was catfish, then mackerel, tuna, bluefish, but the last?
The last was labeled “Nim.”
Hidden beneath his other junk was another bag. A bag full of fish scales. They glimmered an iridescent green with hints of angelic purple from the rusting bottom of the tackle box, and as I pulled them out, I couldn't tear my eyes away. They were massive compared to the fish I’ve gutted and cleaned in the past. Never once has Desmond brought a fish back to me that resembled the beauty I held in my hands. Labeled on the corner of the bag was the letter “N.” And I stuffed it into the same pocket with the joints.
Sam has been in the bedroom for over an hour now, but I was in the living room, staring at the door, my hands fidgeting with the scales the size of guitar picks. But then I heard a familiar thump against the ceiling. It traveled down until I knew exactly where it was coming from. Sam came waddling down the stairs in Desmond’s hunting gear, and my God, he’s his father’s son. His hair curled up against the green bucket hat I got for our first wedding anniversary, and the boots finally made it right below his knees. He wore his father’s yellow raincoat, and firmly gripped in his hand was his tackle box, and in the other, his famous lightning rod. He used to say that the water yields to no man, that is, until his rod casts upon it.
We said no words, instead, he made his way over to me on the couch, kissing my cheek, before slamming the door in my face. Just as Desmond had all those years ago.
The moon was full that night, not a single cloud dared to interfere with its hold on the tides. Desmond’s joint was stronger than she remembered it to be in college, but it was clairvoyant nonetheless. Sam was still out, but I couldn't call him back, not when his eyes were as lit as they were earlier, when his childhood was wrapped and packaged and waiting for him in that closet. Instead, I decided to enjoy myself on my rocking chair on my much under appreciated porch, amongst the dancing waves and the chirping crickets. The frogs burped nearby as the wind whipped through the tall blades of grass.
But then, the crickets paused. The frogs croaked their last ribbet. Even the wind slowed its pace.
Then, it happened.
It could've been half a mile out into the bay, but my eyes, even as swollen and bloodshot as they were, never fail me. A flash of purple peaked through the water’s stillness. Then again, but in a glimmer of impossible green. The fish was almost bioluminescent, glowing like the Aurora Borealis took a vacation to Cape Cod.
“Desmond,” a voice sang, a beautiful melody, except it sounded like a mistake. It had to be. Perhaps the wind whistled through a hollow log. But then I heard it again. And again. Until I saw its glow heading towards the private dock.
It was all in my head. It had to be. But I couldn't bring myself to leave this porch until Sam returned home.
“Mom?” Sam’s voice startled me, but not as much as the condition he was in. Just like his father, soaking wet at the crack of dawn. The sun peeked through the gray clouds, and my nose was as red as it was ice cold.
“What the hell were you up to! You know you can’t worry me like that, Sam!”
“It’s fine, mom, I wasn’t alone.”
That was enough to wake me up, but when I saw Desmond’s empty urn in his grip, I couldn’t be trusted to speak or think logically.
“Without me? You didn’t think I would want to say my goodbyes?”
“He didn’t want to be dumped in the bay, mom. He wanted to be set free by the docks, and I know nothing could get you to bring yourself down there. Can we please not ruin a beautiful morning?”
Sam tried to move around me, but I blocked his way.
“You just dumped your father’s ashes, and yet the day is beautiful?”
He just looked so damn close to his father, so close that I decided to egg him on the same way his father hated. I kept going. Kept asking uncomfortable questions. Kept accusing him of smoking or drinking, or even ending up like his father.
“I…I met someone. Someone who knew Dad.”
Sam was never one to wear jewelry. But this morning, a glimmer of green and royal purple was hanging around his neck. My eyes were glued to the fish scale pendant, and I knew exactly what I had to ask next.
“What’s her name, Sam.”
He seemed shocked, both that I knew it wasn’t an old fishing buddy, and that I was able to pull it out of him this fast. It couldn’t be true. I knew it. I was waiting for him to say something generic like “Carly” or “Anna.” Then I could take a deep breath. Then I could take these nightmares of mermaids and sirens and chalk it all up to bad weed and an overactive imagination. But, he just looked so much like his damn father.
“Her name is Nim.”