Lynn Strong - Hold Still

It was messier than this: He kept trying sometimes. He took Ellie for walks, gave her books, cooked her favorite dinners. He took care of Maya so that she could take care of their girl. He was busy trying to be the consistent, steady parent — organizing, scheduling, keeping their lives going — while Maya flailed and grasped for whatever might finally save Ellie.

“Ma?” says Ben.

“Yeah, Benny.”

“You’re a mess, you know?”

She drops the comforter and smooths the front of it over her lap. “I know, Benny.” She laughs, swinging her legs out of the bed and walking toward him. “I know,” she says.

It’s Annie’s one day off and Jeffrey is still down the street with clients. Ellie comes back from the beach and walks barefoot into the kitchen. Her feet are speckled with sand and her ears are still half clogged. Her head feels blurry and the skin along her cheeks smarts from the sun. She hasn’t eaten since the morning. She went to swim before anyone else had risen and stayed at the beach until after five. There’s no one in the kitchen and Ellie thinks the place is empty. She’s wearing a T-shirt over her bathing suit, but she’s left her shorts in the car. She makes a sandwich, slathering hummus on the bread and cutting big pieces of the cheddar cheese Jack likes. She’s taken on many of his eating habits as her own. She’s not sure how she knows to do it or what about Annie’s voice signals to her that she’s on the phone with Ellie’s mom. She might have picked up the phone only because she hears Annie on the other end in her bedroom and her fascination with Annie has no end. Because she’s not used to landlines any more. It’s jarring, though, suddenly hearing her mother laughing. She’s someone else when not talking to Ellie. There’s none of the worry, none of the terror muddying up her words. She seems so young and comfortable, talking to Annie about her classes. They chat a while longer. Annie complains about one of the busboys who always comes in stoned. Ellie listens to her mom get quiet. She knows now she’s begun to think of her.

“How is she?” her mom asks; Annie gets quiet. Ellie wonders for the millionth time how much Annie knows.

“She’s such a sweet girl, Maya. She’s really good with Jack.”

Her mom’s silent again and Ellie sees her sitting in her study with her feet up on the desk, holding a book in one hand, the phone held to her ear with her shoulder, rifling through the pages with her other hand as she talks. “Is she?”

“She seems good. I’m not sure what else there is to say. She doesn’t say much about herself and I don’t want to push.”

“Of course,” her mom says. Annie said she didn’t want to tell her mom about the sailing. She didn’t want Maya to worry when there was no need.

“I’d tell you, you know, if there was anything else. But she seems all right. She swims every morning. She’s a sweet girl, Maya.” Ellie thinks she hears her mom set her book down.

“I don’t know who she is.” This is her mom again. Ellie cups the phone more tightly. “When I think about her down there, I can’t think of a person so much as a reason to be afraid.”

Annie whispers something inaudible to Jack.

“I mean, I remember her as a child. And then I remember all these years of never knowing what to expect. She was always so unpredictable. When I think of missing her, I always think of the little girl I miss. But I’m not sure who she is now. I’m not sure I’d even know what to do with her besides be afraid.”

Ellie still has hold of her sandwich. She’s squeezed the hummus out of the bread and it’s now smeared along her palm.

Her mom continues: “I can’t say that out loud too much. I hate how it feels, even thinking it. But I’ve been relieved since she went to you.”

Ellie stays very still and waits for Annie’s response.

“She’s figuring it out. I really think she is.”

There’s a noise behind her and Ellie almost drops the phone; she sees Jeffrey standing in the kitchen, watching her.

He holds a finger up to his lips and shakes his head. Ellie’s been crying and she hopes that he can’t see it. She has her fist held tightly over the phone’s receiver and she knows that he must know that she’s been listening in. He’s wearing what he wears to work, jeans and a button-down shirt that he usually keeps untucked. He has hold of his hair behind his ear and nods reassuringly at Ellie as she carefully places the phone back in its cradle and walks past him to her room.

The next morning Jeff and Jack come to her door together, early. Ellie’s still in bed. “Nor,” she hears through the slats. It’s the two of them calling her in unison. She’s quick out of the bed. She pulls on shorts and ties her hair up. “Hey, guys,” she says. She comes out the door instead of opening it to them. She thinks Annie must be somewhere close.

“We’re going on a picnic,” Jack says. His hand is wrapped around his dad’s shoulder, he’s high up in his dad’s arms as he talks. “To the beach, Nor,” says Jack. “You have to come.”

Ellie looks down at her bare feet, eyes Jeff’s ankles, then his shins.

“We already made your sandwich,” Jack says.

Ellie feels Jeff smile.

“Sure,” she says.

“I told you we could get her,” Jeff says to his son.

They bring sand toys for Jack, a surfboard, towels, an umbrella under which only Annie sits. Made sloppily by Jack and Jeffrey, wrapped in tinfoil that’s too loose, all the sandwiches are soggy and wet from melted ice that’s leaked through by the time they unwrap them. Jeff takes Jack out on the surfboard, paddling behind him like Cooper’s done the few times they’ve gone out with him. Jeffrey’s easy with his son, strong and confident in the water. Ellie watches Annie, who is smiling, watching them. Annie wears a simple orange one-piece. She’s pulled her hair back and has sunglasses perched atop her head. She has a dimple in her left cheek, but not her right one. She has freckles on her nose and three along her jaw up to her chin.

The waves don’t so much break as roll steadily to shore. Some of them get white and frothy before they trickle in, but mostly the water’s calm. The beach is almost empty. There’s a man fishing by himself about five hundred yards from where they sit, but otherwise they have this space of sand and water to themselves.

“I never thought. .” she says to Ellie. She turns toward her briefly, then faces the boys again. “I never thought all this was an option for me, you know?” Her face is almost never bare. She wears a little lipstick, some sort of concealer underneath her eyes, mascara, or a thin line of black at the tips of her lids. Ellie loves the look of her like this, though, completely clean. She squints into the sun. “That’s absurd, right?” Annie says. She pulls down her sunglasses.

Ellie stretches her legs out and buries her feet into the sand, her hands dig in as well. She keeps her eyes fixed on the water. The sand is warm and heavy over her toes and fingers, and she wishes she could do the same with her whole body, straight up to her head.

The surfboard flips out in the water and Jack and Jeffrey fall. Annie leans forward, her knees up by her shoulders, her hands grabbing her ankles, then reaching up to place her sunglasses back atop her head. Dad and son are up as quickly as they went under. Jeff holds Jack up over his head, then sits him back on the board. They both wave to Annie before turning out to start paddling again.

“Should we join them?” Annie says. She’s put her glasses on the towel and stands, holding out her hand to El.