Ellen Block - The Language of Sand

“A first-rate job, if I do say so myself,” she pronounced, touring the space from corner to corner.

The living room had been rejuvenated. Abigail, on the other hand, was spent. She’d been painting for hours, and the smell was giving her a headache. Being cooped up inside made her long to be outdoors. She was also starving.

Choosing a picnic on the beach rather than a meal at the now footprint-splotched dining room table, Abigail packed a sandwich and grabbed her keys, which she’d placed on an end table beside the house’s old rotary-model telephone. Seeing the phone set off a spasm of guilt. Abigail had promised to contact her parents once she was settled. She’d been avoiding the call. The conversation would undoubtedly be fraught with staged questions about the island and the lighthouse, each intended to gauge her mental state, to determine if she was in immediate need of rescue. Abigail gave the big black rotary phone a final glance, opened the door, then locked it behind her.

The sun was leaning low by the time she reached the strip of shore she’d passed the day she arrived on Chapel Isle. She parked next to the boarded-up snack stand, hiked over the dune ridge, and took a seat on a sandy crest above the tide line. From her perch, Abigail ate her sandwich and watched the waves slide up the beach languidly. The island was magnificent. She understood why Paul had loved it here. She could picture him walking along the water, holding Justin’s hand. She could almost hear the splashing of their footsteps, Justin giggling as water sloshed over his tiny legs. The images were palpable. They felt real. Abigail could see Paul and Justin anywhere if she let herself. They could appear across from her in a room, riding in the car with her, beside her in bed, everywhere and nowhere at once.

As dusk descended on the coast, it grew too cold to stay by the water. Abigail had been crying and unconsciously churning her hands through the sand, as if to dig herself out of her misery. When she stood and brushed herself off, she thought of how similar sand was to language. A single grain or a single word meant little compared to the effect it had in concert with its own kind. Millions of granules made a beach; millions of combinations of words, a language. The whole would cease to exist without its parts. Grief was a word, a grain, Abigail wished she could separate from the whole, but that wasn’t an option.

She wiped the sand from her hands and returned to her car.

jer e mi ad(jer′ə mi′əd, –ad) n. a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint. [1770–80; JEREM (AH) + –AD, in reference to Jeremiah’s Lamentations ]

In the absence of streetlights or porch lamps or the glow from a neighbor’s window, the night was overwhelmingly dark. So was the caretaker’s house. Abigail had forgotten to leave any lights on. She fumbled for the front door. Inside, she groped at the switch. The living room looked better than she remembered, and the smell of paint had faded.

“That’s because you left the windows open, genius,” she scolded. “Didn’t Sheriff Larner tell you to be ‘cautious’?”

The thought of criminals prowling the island for empty houses to plunder was unsettling. Apart from Abigail’s presence and her car in the drive, the caretaker’s cottage could definitely be mistaken for vacant. It was an easy mark.

“On the bright side, the paint does look excellent. You, on the other hand, must look atrocious. You smell atrocious too.”

Abigail hadn’t bathed since she arrived. She’d been putting off cleaning the bathroom and had run out of excuses. Stepping over the radio on the staircase, a bucket of cleansers in hand, she said, “If you want to get clean, it’s got to get clean.”

A single swipe with a paper towel revealed that the bathtub was covered in a patina of dust. Though the tub could be wiped with minimal effort, the rust on the sink was less cooperative. The toilet put up a fight too, but the floor was the most intractable. Deeply ingrained, the dirt refused to be roused from between the tiles, until Abigail assailed it with a caustic soup of products that made her eyes water. Only then did the grime finally relent.

The mirror was last to be cleaned, and Abigail’s reflection made her gasp.

Drops of white paint—some crusted with sand—dotted her face, and her hair was matted with sweat and flecked with yellow. Her clothes were splattered from shoulder to shoe. She hardly recognized her own visage. Abigail ran the bathwater, letting the tub fill almost to the top.

“Too bad you don’t have any bubbles. Or steel wool. Because that’s what it’s going to take to get this stuff off you.”

An image of Justin in the bathtub, clapping bubbles between his hands, floated into her mind, unbidden. Abigail closed her eyes, shutting the emotional door as a barrage of memories rattled the hinges.

Nolo, nolle, non vis, non vult.

Celo, celare, celari, cela.

Steam rose from the hot water waiting in the tub. She hadn’t taken a bath in years. Showering was faster, simpler. Before, she didn’t have time for a bath. Now Abigail had no choice in the matter and more time than she knew what to do with. If the claw-foot tub had been in better shape, it would have been quite grand. In its current state, the tub was ready for the salvage yard. Abigail felt the same way.

As she lowered herself into the bath, the water went spilling over the sides onto the floor. Out of practice, she had filled the tub too high.

“It appears you’ll have to clean the floor again .”

Despite a bumpy start, the steaming water soothed her aching muscles. A pass with a soapy washcloth had her feeling clean and, at least, somewhat human.

“This whole bath concept is actually really pleasant.”

Her words bounced between the bathroom tiles, interposed by a staccato thump. Abigail sat up, covering herself with her arms. After seconds of silence, she made an announcement.

“If that was…somebody, I’m in the bathtub. I’m kind of naked. Could we do this whole banging and bumping act later?”

The house was still. Was that her answer? If not, Abigail didn’t plan to wait around for another reply.

Scrambling from the tub, she grabbed a towel, scurried into the bedroom, and slammed the door. Wet, shivering, she addressed the ceiling: “I’m, um, going to leave for a while. Give you a little private time. You can have the place to yourself.”

She threw on clean clothes and tore down the stairs, then stumbled over the radio. Abigail sailed through the air, missing the last three steps and landing on her hands and knees. Her palms stung from the impact. Her legs were wobbly.

“Ouch,” she groaned, more in shock than in pain.

Abigail hobbled out the front door to her Volvo and sat there deliberating what to do. Her hair was dripping, soaking her shirt. She had nowhere to go.

“There’s bingo,” she sighed. “Why not? This night couldn’t get much worse.”

To find the local fire station, all Abigail had to do was follow the line of parked cars that trailed from the center of town along a side street. She tied her wet hair into a bun and tucked in her shirt as an effort to appear more presentable. Having left in such a hurry, she’d forgotten to put on socks, and her shoes squished when she walked.