Ghost of a Memory

Ghost of a Memory

The dinner bell rang and I rowed in. Great blue herons were constant visitors to the pond, but this was the first year two had nested. It’s warm in June. Hard to believe two weeks ago I hadn’t even thought of warm weather. It was spring then. I wore an old Army jacket the last time I was on the pond photographing the herons. Some thought it funny for a girl to wear an Army jacket, but then I never cared what they thought of me. I had left the Army jacket and my camera in the cabin this day; it was a day for enjoying the newborn chicks. I would photograph them another day.

The herons honk all night. Their pond used to be only a slight depression, but my uncle had it deepened when my grandfather helped him build the outhouse before the first cabin. Hearts Ease. My uncle dubbed it. Fifty acres in all. Five of it being the pond. Some would say it is a lake. I counted three babies raising their heads, wobbly and squawking for their Mother to feed them. The chicks are the ones who honk after the stars appear over Sunset Hill high above the pond.

A brilliant green dragonfly on gleaming wings lit next to me on the silver rim of the johnboat. It took to flight as soon as my oar came near. Water disturbed by rowing also moved away in swirls—smaller when droplets fell from the resting paddle between strokes.

The dinner bell rang but not for dinner, as it was still early. Uncle Barton had invited a student over for the evening and I didn’t want him to see me with pond all over my clothes and face. My aunt Jo rang the bell early for me to get prepared.

The soft peat at the edge of the pond gave in with a squish to my sneaker. I pulled the boat up and turned it over in the same position I had found it. A family of voles lived under it and they scurried off in separate directions when I first took the boat out this morning. Cute rodents with short tails. Like tiny cocker spaniels. I wanted them to return to their disturbed shelter. I liked this particular family. Couldn’t tell Uncle Bart as he’d surely kill them. They won’t let his vegetables grow more than an inch out of the soil before they snip off the top and run away with it into the grass. It’s only a small garden, anyway, and untended. I think in truth he likes to watch their thieving antics but doesn’t let on. He watches from the living room window above the garden and snickers. If he sees me see him, he stops. The voles used to be kept in check by wolves and foxes, but there aren’t any left. Hunted as vermin with a bounty on their heads and for their pelts.

I once had a dream about a black fox. Then after the sun rose and I went to school, I learned from a friend whose mother claims to be of Ottawa descent that the black fox came only in the shadow of death. The grim reaper of Indian folklore. This frightened me and I never forgot it. I feared for my uncle since he was overweight and, to me at the time, getting old.

I waved goodnight to the heron family on the highest tree in the deadstand, across the pond where newts are plentiful. I have to run from the goose up the hill and around the lilies. The goose likes Uncle Barton and hates everyone else. I like Uncle too, but hate the goose. The air smells of country and manure. A milk farm next door.

I showered and then bathed as I didn’t like, I don’t like to sit in my own dirty water. I had plenty of time and felt like a bubble bath. The water from the tap was cold, very cold, as I think back about it now, and took minutes for the heated water to warm the pipes. In Florida, everyone keeps gallon jugs of water in the fridge as the tap usually runs about eighty degrees or better. When I first moved to Florida I couldn’t imagine why anyone owned a water heater. We drank water directly from the tap at Heart’s Ease. The water was cool and from a good well. Hardly any good wells left in Florida. All have turned to salt, except inland quite a ways.

I felt my skin softening and felt the edge taken off my nerves though it wasn’t a hectic day. It had been a good day. Most of it spent on the pond, like most Saturdays, observing the fauna. My uncle however was more interested in the flora although he enjoyed bird watching and could recite his life’s list from memory. My poor uncle couldn’t enjoy most Saturdays the way I could as he traveled to Akron to see his ailing father. I remember feeling he should have relaxed around home a little more. I often rode with him to Akron when Aunt Jo couldn’t because she was working that Saturday. I’d read scripture to him as he drove or listen to him practice his sermon. He had a small country church that was meant to be part-time but seemed to be more fulltime. He was a wonderful speaker possessing a deep resonation tone; the way men in Shakespearean plays project their voice and speak as if it were coming from their very rounded bellies. I think he really enjoyed preaching because he worked all day in the quiet library at Cornell U. All the children of the church loved my uncle’s uncanny ability to coin an anecdote for every situation instantaneously. He’d make them laugh and they would skip off to play in the churchyard screaming tag or you’re it.

He often used this ability to cheer me. One time he told me on an evening of sadness after my mother had died how he traded her to a farmer for a duck when she was only two months old. I laughed through the tears and then cried on his shoulder as he held me tight and I clutched the heart-shaped locket my mother had given me.

I toweled off and dashed across the hall and put on my best summer dress to meet our guest. The mirror didn’t lie; it was full length. I was plain. I knew it. The mirror had said this many times. The girls from the city used to tease me in school. I wore my hiking shoes to class. Jeans. T-shirts. No makeup. Some girls wore lots of makeup and lace. Had their hair up. Chewed gum. Some girls paraded the jocks and would walk arm-in-arm down the halls. They bragged of being more intimate with these men, something I couldn’t understand at the time. Looking back now, I’m happy to have been what I was as I wore white when I said my wedding vows.

The thin white curtains held full on the cool breeze smelling of moist evening air. I heard the herons honking and walked to the window and raised the binoculars from the sill. The mother heron had returned to feed her chicks who muscled-out each other for a chance at the prize. The mother returned every forty-five minutes to her awaiting chicks from the nearby ponds she visited. The goose was not in sight although I heard him honking. The goose never left the pond. I wished to see the goose sometimes, or the herons. As I look back now, anyway. I often feel melancholy these days.

These days. Days; we need a new word now that there is no reference of time.

As a little girl my mom and dad brought me to Uncle’s mountain often. I remember the pond and how I thought it must be ocean-size. So large, it seemed at the time. I danced in my white cotton summer dress in the meadow with the wild flowers near the pond. I picked some and placed them behind my ears. I picked as many as would fit behind my ears. My father would come out and kiss my forehead and tell me how I reminded him of Mother, whose beauty, he said, put any flower to shame. I’d twirl and twirl in my white Sunday stockings with my arms spread out in joy, gripping my black purse. That was before the goose. The goose is dead now. My husband, also. Everyone is dead. Earth now a wasteland.

I remember the first time I saw the ocean. Actually, it was the Gulf. It was on my honeymoon. I was in St. Pete. I looked down the beach to the left and up the beach to the right. All along there were motels and people. Just off the beach there was nothing but water. Water from horizon to horizon (They say there is only one. I say there are two.) forming a triangle in front of me out as far as I could see. This was indeed larger than my father’s pond. Did I say Father? I meant my uncle. It’s hard to distinguish between the two now. I hardly remember: my father’s face will replace Uncle’s face and vice versa.

I looked down at my feet because they were sinking with every wave. Then I discovered I was not standing on beach sand at all. The beach was of tiny crushed shells, a coral color. I knelt and scooped up handfuls of the mix and found tiny living clams. They frantically burrowed back into the sterile soil and tickled the palm of my hand. I raced back to the blanket to show Noah, my groom in the sun on the blanket, on the real beach sand littered with footprints and beach towels with bodies on them. A big pink hotel was behind my groom where he lay. People danced to live music on the terrace. I glanced at them as I approached my husband’s long legs that extended provocatively from his shorts.

I approached. His chest rose and fell slowly. His chest lacked hair but a thin line extended from his beltline to his navel where it mushroomed. His ribcage rose, leaving his stomach behind. His muscular arms lay still beside his body. His head turned slightly to one side. As I think back it faced away from me. My shadow blocked the sun and woke him. He stirred, opened his eyes and smiled. His teeth were perfect. I felt self-conscious of my plain lines and my so-so smile but he loved me, I knew it. I knelt and showed him the tiny clams in my hand. He looked at them and said they were coquina and there is so much he will show me about the ocean. Then he kissed my cheek and pulled me to the blanket.

I replaced the binoculars on the windowsill and felt the cool evening breeze roll up from the pond and into my room. I inhaled deeply and felt the cleansing moist air bathe my lungs. I raised my arms and tried to reach the ceiling as I stretched. I felt that evening as I had as a child spinning cartwheels in my summer dress in the meadow. I felt a pang in the midsection as my father’s face flashed before me. I looked out the window again and saw the small girl spinning cartwheels in her white summer dress with wildflowers behind each ear. She stopped and waved goodbye. A tear of sweet sadness swelled and found its way into the flesh of my cheek and washed my soul. I raised my hand and waved goodbye to the small girl in the white summer dress. I did not know that the person I would meet over dinner this evening would become my future husband.