Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

Katherine looked at her nine-year-old daughter, Elsa. Elsa was the only one of her children who looked like her. Maureen, Elizabeth, and Stephen all carried their father’s swarthier complexion and his hair’s blue-black sheen. To Katherine, in the squat, shadowy light of the car’s interior, Elsa looked translucent, a child starved of sunlight, her creamy skin melting into the gold of her hair, and all of her features — eyes, nose, and mouth — as gently placed as butter into warm milk.

“George!” Katherine called to her husband in the front of the car, “We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”

“Yes, love, another few minutes,” George addressed the clear rectangular slice of his wife in the rearview mirror, then shifted his gaze back to the road.

Katherine and Elsa gave each other a wide smile, as though they had secretly known the answer all along, and then Elsa turned quickly to stick her tongue out at Elizabeth.

“No, that wasn’t a brown car.” Elizabeth shook her head.

“It was so!” Elsa replied.

“It was dark gray, or maybe purple, but it wasn’t brown.”

“Mummy, wasn’t that car brown?” Elsa looked to her mother, but Katherine was careful not to take sides.

“I didn’t see what color it was, pet.”

“It was brown,” Elsa insisted.

“It-wasn’t-brown,” Elizabeth pronounced her words very precisely to indicate to Elsa that she was putting an end to the argument. Then with a regal glide, she turned to look out of the window again. Elsa stuck her tongue out at the back of Elizabeth’s head.

As they approached the town, the car passed a long iron railing fronting a factory. Fast, fat slices of sun fell across Katherine’s face, making her feel nauseous. She breathed deeply and squinted in the glare of the sunlight. “Oh look,” she said quietly, turning her head away from the sun, “there’s a brown car!”

But no one paid any attention to her remark. Maureen and George were still chatting in the front of the car and Elsa and Elizabeth were now both engrossed in reading Nurse Nancy and the Forgotten Parcel from a Twinkle comic.

As though, all along, he had simply been pretending to be asleep, Stephen stirred, already pointing at something. His eyes were barely open, but he had caught sight of trees and rooftops and people, all of them worthy of his regard. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then, pointing into the air again, he said to his mother “Mama, mooon.”

“Where’s the moon, darling? There’s no moon!”

“Mooon dere,” he said emphatically, and, standing shakily on his mother’s lap, pointed out of the car window.

“Does Stephen think that the moon is out, Mummy?” Elsa smiled, amused at her little brother.

“It’s been all the talk of the moon landing in the house over the past few weeks.” Katherine kissed him. “Can you see the man on the moon, my pet?” she teased Stephen affectionately. “Is he still there?” Stephen clapped his hands gleefully against Katherine’s forehead. Katherine hugged her darling boy and, rubbing her lips against his cheek, she spoke into his skin. “And are you going to be an astronaut when you grow up and fly in a rocket to the moon?”

Stephen squealed with delight.

“No, he’ll get a proper job like his father!” George remarked quickly, lifting his head to smile at Katherine in the rearview mirror.

Katherine laughed and turned back to Stephen, settling him once more on her lap.

“And will you take me to the moon with you when you go?” she whispered.

“Mooon dere!” Stephen said with a deeply earnest expression on his face. He pointed to the air again.

Elsa bent her body over toward Stephen and, moving her face close to his, said in a high, baby voice, “There’s no moon in the daytime, silly billy.” She shook her head at Stephen. “No moon in the daytime.”

The way she pulled a face at Stephen made him laugh; his eyes became wide with delight and his laughter rippled like a warbling bird inside the car. He loved Elsa. He loved her. He wanted her to pull that face again. Elsa pulled that face. He threw his head back this time as he laughed, and Elsa laughed, too.

Maureen turned her head around from the front seat of the car to see what was going on. She couldn’t help but smile.

George parked the car under a large ancient sycamore in a small concrete enclave just off the main Groomsport Road. The shade was welcome relief to Katherine.

She swung her legs out of the car and lowered Stephen onto the tarmac of the car park, where he immediately staggered into a little circular jig of excited anticipation. The three girls barreled out of the car behind them and grabbed the bags and towels from the boot.

Groomsport — a small town of tidy streets, neat gardens, and well-scrubbed telegraph poles — was full of Union Jacks that day, for it was still the Protestant marching season in Northern Ireland. The flags hung languidly outside the shops and houses, however, as the breeze was too light to lift them. On the corner of the concrete enclave were a cluster of modest souvenir shops, the doorways of which were decorated with buckets and spades and plastic windmills tied with colored string.

George, Katherine, and the four children followed the dusty brown path from the car park down to the beach. Banked high on either side of the path were mounds of dry marram grass, which brushed gently against their shoulders and arms as they walked.

Other digressions wound off the main path, like snail trails in a morning garden, created by eager day-trippers in their search for a private spot. A young man with untidy fairish hair moved briskly toward them along one of these smaller paths, looking down at his watch as though he were timing himself on his journey. He gently bumped against Katherine as he passed.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” muttered George behind Katherine. But Katherine just smiled — it was too nice a day to complain about anything or anyone — and turned to watch the young man until he reached the car park and was gone.

From where they stood at the top of the sandbanks, the sea stretched before them like a cloth of blue jewels. Below them, a dirty spray of stones and shells echoed the gentle curve of the beach. Bunches of dank seaweed were caught between the rocks that jutted out into the sea from the flat yellow sand. The blue sky was dotted with a trail of pearly clouds that moved across it like floats in a slow parade.

Katherine had packed a flask of tea, some ham sandwiches for herself and George, and raspberry jam pieces for the children. There were also some chocolate biscuits, a small bunch of bananas, and four packets of Perri crisps. There was a bottle of diluted orange squash and some plastic cups.

George carried a bundle of blankets and towels to a spot on the beach sheltered by a modest sand dune. There were already several families farther down on the western side of the shore. A young girl in a red polka-dot swimsuit could be heard screaming “Tom! Tom!” as she ran after a boy who was flying a blue kite. Katherine stopped to look at the two children for a moment, taking in the full sweep of the bay.

“We’ll sit here, shall we? We’ll get a lovely view of the bay if we sit here.”

George responded by spreading the blankets out. Katherine sat down with Stephen, who began to squirm, unsettled by the feel of the sinking soft, dry sand giving way beneath his feet.

“Get changed and go for a swim,” she said to the girls; “then you can eat.”

Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa looked at the other children on the beach, who were skipping excitedly at the edge of the waves, but seemed reluctant to make a move themselves.

“Go on!” Katherine urged them.

Maureen was the first to organize herself and change into her swimsuit beneath one of the towels, slipping off her slacks and blouse, making sure no one could catch a glimpse of her underwear. Elizabeth and Elsa stood watching Maureen, as though they might glean some secret meaning or girlish code by the manner in which she undressed beneath the towel.