Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

When Maureen was ready, Elizabeth and Elsa swiftly moved to catch up with her, until all three of them were in their black swimsuits and gingerly making their way toward the sea. Katherine watched her daughters move like three wading birds pecking at the sand with their spindly legs. A moment later, she turned to her husband.

“George, would you like some tea?”

“Yes, love.”

“Can you take Stephen for me?”

Katherine began to unpack the picnic bag, laying the sandwiches and cups on the blanket.

She poured them both a small cup of black tea, pushing George’s cup into the sand beside him and then taking a quick sup from her own. They both sat silently for a moment. A light breeze shifted a thin whisper of sand around them.

Suddenly, throwing the remains of the tea from her cup into a nearby clump of beard grass, Katherine got up and, lifting her skirt, began to take off her nylons. George released Stephen gently from his hold to see if the child would stand unsupported on the soft sand. He turned and frowned a little at Katherine.

“What are you doing?”

“Going in for a swim.”

“You may want to use one of the blankets to cover yourself,” George said, turning to see if anyone was watching his wife undress.

“There’s nobody looking.”

“Just for your own comfort. .” George’s voice trailed off as he reached out to catch the teetering Stephen, “I’ve got you, buster,” he said, then turned to Katherine again. “Katherine, I think you should —”

But Katherine ignored George. She pulled her white swimsuit quickly up over her body, fixing the straps over her shoulders, and left her clothes on the blanket as though they were the flimsy traces of a delicate skin.

Just a few steps short of the sea, Katherine stopped to look around her. The headland to the east of Groomsport bay narrowed into a slender spindle of rock, which curved in toward the shore like an arm enfolding the belly of sand. Rocky outcrops jutted here and there at its tip, reachable only when the tide was out. To the west, children could be seen searching for stickleback fish or velvet fiddler crabs in the salty pools near the small pier. The children’s backs were bent, their flanks to the sun, their little plastic buckets swinging in the thin breeze.

The sea offered its familiar slide and sway of gray-blue waves, which occasionally slapped together and spurted out pieces of white foam. Mind, sea, and sky seemed all one. Katherine felt slightly revived by the sea breeze and by the quick sup of hot tea from the flask (“Nothing quenches a thirst more than a hot drink on a hot day,” she remembered her father saying).

Katherine heard Stephen calling her and looked back toward him. She watched as George lifted Stephen up into the air, up over his head into the wide blue. Stephen’s limbs became rigid like the spokes of an invisible wheel. George then suddenly relaxed his arms and the child, squealing with excitement, plummeted down onto his father’s chest.

Katherine looked at George and took him in, watched him for a while; then she turned and walked into the sea.

The water sliced into her, cold and invigorating.

She had always been a cautious swimmer, never quite conquering the skill of being able to put her face in under the water as she swam, never quite mastering the backstroke. But now she swam like a young girl, with sprays of seawater flying from her hair as she tossed her head purposefully from side to side. Keeping a keen eye on how far she was traveling from the shore, she soon passed out beyond her daughters as they played amid the salty waves.

A tingling rush surged through her body from the water’s cold, but the impudent sun was a hot fist on her forehead. Seagulls flew above her, one of them holding a whole slice of white bread in its beak. Treading water for a moment, Katherine watched as the seagull with the bread suddenly flapped its wings to change direction, three other seagulls in hot pursuit. Katherine’s eyes followed the birds as they flew toward the rocky outcrops east of the bay, where the spill of sun on the sea was like a big flat pearl.

Katherine decided to swim toward it.

Were they her daughter’s squeals or the call of the seagulls on the wind? She could not tell. She swam on until she was no longer able to hear them nor to see George or Stephen on the shore.

Eventually, exhaustion caught up with Katherine and her breathlessness forced her to stop. She treaded water again, trying to gauge how far she was from the beach. A little too far out for comfort, she thought. Just a little. But look, she said to herself. Look at the sun on the sea. Listen to the lap of the water. The calm of this glassy blueness. A little bowl of paradise. She took it all in.

Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to the sun, cutting herself off. The full, hot, bright sun closing her off from everything else in the world. I am only where the sun touches me, she said to herself , I exist only where the sun touches me. She listened to the sound of the sea as it moved around her. The soft sound of the sea filled her head like music. A slow, infinite rhythm calming her, transporting her.

Then suddenly out of the deep, that great gunmetal gray head appeared beside her.

Now the air is charged with his absence. She cannot see the seal, but she can sense him near her. Her breathing is so sharp, it hurts her chest. She turns her head quickly from side to side. Where is he?

“Katherine! Katherine!” She hears George calling her again from the rocky outcrop. She struggles to swim toward him, making jerky movements in the sea, her breathing now taking on a frantic pace.

She spits out more seawater and tries to find her breath. Her heart thuds in her chest cold and hard, yet a traffic of hot sparks speeds through her body. She thinks of everything under the surface of the water. Just under the surface. Just right there. Any amount of things to pull her down. Ready to rise up and take her at any moment. She tries to blot out that thought, but she can’t — the deep of the swollen sea beneath her opening up, revealing its great height, upon which she now hangs, down from which she might fall. The sea’s great salty depths. It is all she can think about.

She calls out to George, but her fear reduces her voice to a small sound. She feels something against her leg. Is that the seal underneath her? Are they his breathy bubbles beside her?

She emits a cold, sharp shriek. “Wheeeerrrree-is-heeee?”

George hurriedly pulls off his shoes and socks and hastily rolls up the ends of his trousers. “Katherine!” he shouts to her. He slips off his leather belt. He wraps it around his hand, moving gingerly toward the edge of the rocks. The gelatinous sea algae is slippery underfoot. He spreads his toes to secure his step, but the rough, abrasive rocks that pierce the algae dig into the soles of his feet and unsteady him. He kneels down on the rocks and stretches out an arm to Katherine, leaning his upper body forward in order to give him more reach. With his free arm, he throws his belt toward Katherine. It is a thin, miserable length and will not reach her. He needs to move closer. She needs to move closer. But he sees that her panic is tiring her. Briefly, her face slips under the water and the top of her head becomes a smooth brown orb in the blue sea.

George quickly abandons his belt on the rocks. He crouches down, shifting his upper torso farther into the sea, as though he were edging his body through a low tunnel. Katherine’s head appears up out of the water. George leans into the sea to grab her, but she is still too far away for him to reach her.