Ellen Block: The Language of Sand

Abigail swung by the Kozy Kettle to ask where she could find a working washer and dryer. The John Deere twins were still at their booth, sitting guard. Ruth glanced up from a newspaper she was perusing.

“Back so soon, hon? Food here ain’t that good.”

“Please tell me there’s a laundromat on Chapel Isle, or I’ll be washing my sheets in the bay.”

“We may be a backwater town, but this isn’t Mayberry. We got a proper laundromat. Go up the street about a block. You can’t miss it.”

Since it was a short distance, Abigail bundled the laundry and decided to hoof it. After repeatedly traipsing past the same set of gift shops, her arms were getting tired and her aggravation was piqued.

“For pity’s sake, where is this place?”

Abigail was ready to wave the white flag—or rather the white pillowcase—when she spotted an alley between two stores. Hanging over the gap in the storefronts was a plank of wood with the word Laundromat routed out in script.

“Of course. Can’t miss it. How silly of me.”

At the end of the alley sat a repurposed garage lined with coin-operated washers and dryers, hidden like a speakeasy for cleaning clothes. Abigail was starting to feel as if Chapel Isle was some sort of private club and she hadn’t been taught the secret knock. She dumped her laundry onto a sorting table and was sifting through the pile, separating the bedclothes from the towels, when she heard somebody behind her announce their presence with a cough.

“Here to do your laundry?”

Standing at the threshold to the laundromat was a man wearing wide-wale corduroy pants pulled high around his stout waist. He had the prominent under-bite of a bulldog and was a whole head shorter than Abigail.

“Um, yes. Yes, I am.”

“Nothing beats clean clothes.”

“Agreed.”

“You’re going to need soap. You have any?”

“No, now that you mention it, I don’t.”

The man cocked his head ruefully. “Can’t do laundry without soap.”

“You’ve got me there.”

“I could lend you some,” he said, emphasis on the word lend .

“Really? I can pay you for it.” Abigail reached for her purse.

“Don’t want the money.” The intimation was that he wanted more soap in return. The man tottered over to a closet and retrieved a hulking container of detergent, which he heaved onto the sorting table.

“Think you have enough?” she quipped.

His brows pinched as he poured the detergent into paper cups for her. Deadpan, he answered, “You can’t have enough soap. Bring some next time you come. That’s all.”

“Will do.”

She went to put the first load of towels into the closest washer, and the man clucked his tongue in disapproval. She tried the next. He did the same. Once Abigail took a step toward the third, he nodded his consent. As she started to put the second load into another washer, the man clucked at her until she picked the correct machine.

“You got quarters?”

Abigail dug through her wallet. She didn’t have enough for both loads. “Isn’t there a change machine?”

“I’ll make change for you.”

He took her singles and fished through his pocket, producing a fistful of quarters.

This was too weird. Abigail couldn’t resist asking, “Are you the owner?”

“Who me?” he replied, flattered. “Nah.”

“You just like laundry?”

“You could say that. If you want, you can go. I’ll mind your wash.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Twenty-five minutes for the cycle. You’ll need to be here to switch the loads into the dryers.”

This was more an order than a suggestion. Giving a final glance to the peculiar man with the under-bite, her defenseless laundry already churning in the machines, she grabbed her purse and left.

Twenty-five minutes wasn’t much time to properly explore, but Abigail could at least take in a bit of the town. Anything would be preferable to staying at the laudromat. The calls of seagulls beckoned her toward the pier. Many of the boats she’d seen the previous day were gone, though some remained. There were no yachts or pleasure cruisers, merely a handful of skiffs and sloops that showed their age, each bobbing serenely. How enviable to be so blithe, Abigail thought, so imperturbable.

She strolled along the pier. The tide was coming in, and the barnacles that clung to the pilings below would soon disappear. The mottled white masses stood out starkly against the dark timbers. Abigail rolled the word barnacle around in her mouth, like a wine connoisseur would to sample the flavor. A bumpy noun, it crowded inside the cheeks, rattling against the teeth. That was the beauty of language. Sound made words, which made meaning. Love wasn’t love without those precise consonants and vowels. The same was true of fear. Abigail was well versed in both. She knew how each made her breath quicken, her skin tingle, and her head swim. Love and fear required just four letters; however, there was a world of difference between them.

Years before Abigail ever set foot on Chapel Isle, she knew how it felt to go rafting in the ocean there, to pick shells from the waterline, to have the pristine sand sifting between her toes. She even knew the color of the sunset as it stained the sky. Paul had told her everything about the island where he’d spent summers during his childhood—this island. His boyhood reminiscences had filled Abigail’s mind as though they were her own. She could almost hear the ocean lapping at the shore. Imagination could take her only so far. They’d planned to spend their honeymoon on Chapel Isle, but Abigail’s parents treated them to a trip to Maui as a wedding present instead. Afterward, Paul promised to take her there on vacation when they had enough money. Once they could afford to go, though, plans were continually diverted by circumstance. The timing wasn’t right.

In the months leading up to the fire, Abigail began to pester Paul about taking a trip to Chapel Isle, citing Justin as incentive. She wanted their son to have the same special childhood experiences he’d had. Despite his busy schedule, Paul put in for two weeks off in August so they could go to the island as a family. Then he could show them the sights he’d loved in his youth. One in particular was the island’s lighthouse, a memory Paul held on to as a treasured souvenir. Every time he spoke of it, a smile would inevitably form on his lips.

“That was the most amazing sight I’d ever seen,” he would say with boyish reverence. “It seemed like there was nothing bigger in the whole world. I would dream that the lighthouse still worked and that I lived there, guiding the boats in through rough seas. Getting the sailors home safely. Those were some of the best dreams I ever had.”

Paul’s dreams became Abigail’s. She would wake up having spent the night with fictional stranded sailors at a lighthouse she’d never seen. It was the same dream she had the night before his funeral. Scant remains of her husband and son could be recovered from the fire, little more than charred bones. Abigail had ordered two caskets for burial anyway, one for an adult, one for a child. In Justin’s coffin, she placed a toy truck he’d accidentally left at preschool. In Paul’s coffin was her wedding band.

The seagulls that had drawn her to the bay were what brought her around from the grip of the past, their cries snapping her into the moment. Abigail found herself standing at the very end of the pier, dangerously close to the edge. She didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Thirty minutes had disappeared, unnoticed.