Number 16

The grains of sand crept through Vanessa’s toes. She walked slowly back and forth over the same spot several times. She was caught in the memories of the times that she and Gerald spent their summers at this very beach, on this exact spot. It was almost sublime, beside the rock formation that caught everyone’s eye. Passersby always slowed down to walk across, to take in the view from the rocks. It had spots that were a little slippery, but if you were careful it was a nice place to stroll or sit and take in the world. There was even a tree at the end that seemed to not really belong.

Vanessa would visit the rocks later but for now she stayed in the spot where she and Gerald used to bring a small blanket and a picnic basket of wine and crackers and cheeses, and they would lay out and let the tips of the waves tickle their feet, and the sun would set around them casting them in its descent, creating an orange glow around their love that was already a bright aura on its own.

Vanessa had never been a beach person. She and Gerald met when they were both interning after college. She’d been an inner-city kid, having survived the south side of Chicago miraculously unscathed. Her parents weren’t rich, but they worked hard to keep her and her siblings in one piece. But if Vanessa hadn’t hunkered down and earned the full scholarship to NYU, she’d have never been able to afford college.

She and Gerald bonded working together for a few days on a project. They both hoped to be offered jobs at the media company one day. While they got to know each other, she learned he’d basically lived on the water.

“Who actually lives on a boat?” she asked him one late night when they were wrapping gift baskets in cellophane for the charity function that was coming up. He laughed, failing miserably at tying a bow. “It’s the honest truth, my dad and I would stay on it for weeks at a time when Mom was sick.”

Gerald was her opposite; he had done and seen things Vanessa only saw on TV or read about in the novels she was constantly buried in. He was tall, handsome, and humble, the first white guy she’d ever dated, and he had the richest brown eyes and wore suits like he’d been born in them.

Vanessa pulled her long curls into a quick ponytail as she reached to help him with his red bow disaster. “Well, that must be a crazy large boat. Like a yacht or something?” He smiled revealing perfect teeth. He loosened his tie. “Like a small yacht,” he said with a smirk.

They gathered their work to the large table in the back of the conference room and he gazed out the window. “Do you see the little bits of color hidden behind all these buildings that the sunset left behind?” She peered over his shoulder and shrugged. “Yea so what?”

He looked closely at her and for a second she thought he’d kiss her. But he didn’t. “That’s nothing compared to what the sun looks like on the ocean. When you can see all the colors, every hue, every sparkle. The oranges, the reds fading and glowing all at the same time. Its magical.”

He walked back to the table nonchalantly, as if his velvet voice and the vortex she fell into through his eyes as he spoke hadn’t just happened. Incredulously she watched him and tried to speak normally even though she could barely hear her words over the beating of her heart. “I thought you wanted to be a journalist, but I think you’re a poet.” He laughed as if she was a stand-up comedian having her best night. “Nah, I just play one on TV.”

Years later Vanessa stood on the spot on the beach in Far Rockaway where Gerald took her on their first date. He’d been right; she never did see the sunset quite the same again.

But now she was there alone. She stopped her stroll and glanced at her footprints that made a circle around their spot. The wind was in her hair and the tears were on her cheeks. She held the little black notebook close to her heart, clutched it after a while making sure she wouldn’t drop it. She was on number 16, the last item on Gerald’s list.

The first few were about household things, reminders of the life insurance policy, letters to the kids, the code to the safety deposit box and the passwords to everything in his phone. Towards the end he couldn’t do much but write. He made himself remember everything that was important in case Vanessa would be too distraught to remember the basic things they’d already discussed many times.

The cancer had been slow and painful, so they knew it was coming and had plenty of time to prepare. But he seemed obsessed about making sure his family would be taken care of so Gerald had asked for a small notebook to gather his thoughts. Vanessa picked it up on her way to the hospital one day and handed it to him with a little ball point pen.

She held his hand and watched him sleep; he’d had a bad day. She smoothed his long hair that he had grown out recently after leaving his job as a reporter on Channel 8 and writing full time after getting his diagnosis. She supported them as columnist for the Times.

One day a few months after his diagnosis, she stepped into their shared office at their loft on the Upper West Side. He sat with their son Andrew asleep on his lap as he completed his manuscript. He glanced up at her, his smile as wide as the first day she met him and he shrugged, “Guess I am a poet after all.”

He made it almost two years. Their son wouldn’t remember him, but their daughter Andrea was 7 and drew pictures of her and her dad and told everyone she saw a story about him. It took Vanessa several months before she could follow the instructions for Number 16, the poem. She made herself open the notebook and traced his handwriting with her fingers.

Number 16:

The spot that was ours

Where our love began

Will hold the answers on how to love again

Its not what you want

I know you cannot see

A life with no you and me.

But I want to show you

A world beyond this one

After your tears have dried

After I am long gone

When you are still alive.

I’m with you always love,

This is my promise to you

But please sit where we sat

And take in the view

And when you are ready

I am waiting for you.

After the poem he left a few instructions and Vanessa waited until nightfall when there was no one around. Slowly the crowd scattered, and she was alone. Near where she and Gerald kissed the first time, and on the rocks above the water where he asked her to be his forever. She followed his instructions and reached the section of rock near the lone tree that grew there.

The tree was proud enough to stand alone, its leaves kissing the wind, welcoming her to come closer. She bent over to the ground and dug for a few minutes with the small shovel she had brought with her.

Like a scene to a long-ago movie, she found the dark waterproof box that was buried in the earth above the water. She stroked the top with her hands and after a few moments she uncovered the contents. A small pocket watch that no longer told time but was preserved within a thick red cloth. She held it in her hands, and it was old and beautiful. There was a small note in the box.

Dear Vanessa,

When we met, I told you about the beauty of the sun, and how the colors dance around the sky when you see it from the ocean. I like to believe that heaven is as beautiful. I want you and the kids to have the opportunity to start over. This watch is worth something, maybe not much, but enough so you can get away and rise in the morning to the beauty of the sun on the water and the kids can grow up with sand nearby and the sweet scent of salty air. I know you didn’t want me to know that the insurance money would just about cover my medical bills and I guess my impulsive decision to write and leave my job left us without much. I was so hopeful I’d beat this, I’m sorry, it beat me. But maybe this could lead you to a fresh start, and possibly to a place where finding love again is possible. We always talked about living on the beach and working for ourselves. I’d like to leave this world knowing I at least tried to help you move on. It’s the least I can do now.

Love you forever, and until we meet again.

G.

Vanessa wept into the letter as her hands wrapped around it, not for the watch but for his words for his knowing somehow that she would be left with almost nothing even after trying to hide it from him, that he’d know their home haunted her, that he was in every room, still in her bed, still scented on everything they owned. She couldn’t think of loving again yet but the idea of being able to leave and take the kids and breathe far away from the misery, tempted her to rise and make her way home.

Several weeks later, Vanessa and her children arrived at their little house on the beach in Barbados. It needed work and it would happen in time, but the $20,000 she got for the vintage watch, plus the royalties from the poetry book that Gerald had written, gave her enough to bring her family to their new life.

She did bring some of Gerald’s things, but donated most to charity. She knew her children needed her more than anything and she desperately had to crawl out of the depression that had transformed her into the grieving widow.

Her kids loved the sand, they spent the days building sandcastles and their giggles seemed to carry on for miles. Vanessa sat and watched them, inhaling the salty air, and witnessing the sun change colors around them. She felt closer to Gerald here than she ever had but, in a way, she breathed better and could see light at the end of a darkened lonely tunnel.

One Sunday morning after pancakes and cartoons, there was a knock on her door. She opened it to reveal a slim man with striking dark eyes, long dreadlocks, and a warm smile. There was a toolbox by his feet.

“Hello, Miss, I am William and I own the construction company you wanted to hire, and I wanted to introduce myself before we begin discussing the work.”

She greeted him and shook his hand, the touch creating a warm not unfamiliar feeling all over her body. The sweet and salty breeze entered her home with his arrival. His hair, and her hair sang together through the air, in waves of colors that she wasn’t sure were real or not. They smiled at each other for a long moment before she realized she should let him in.

She didn’t know exactly what she was ready for, but she could start with offering him cup of coffee.