Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

Beatrix is not like any other girl William knows. She’s smart, for one thing, and serious, except when she laughs at Gerald’s stupid jokes. But as much as she shouldn’t be encouraging Gerald, William looks forward to those moments because something seems to lift off her, a bird taking flight. Her face relaxes and almost seems to bloom.

She likes him, even as she’s scared of him, often preferring his company to that of Mrs. G, who always means well but whose energy can be exhausting.

Why, she wonders, does he get to make all the rules?

He’s desperate to break away, to start something new.

to see it with older eyes. Will it be at all familiar? Or will it be so changed that it will be new, a different place entirely?

everything is written on his face. She knows when he’s upset or angry or happy. Nothing is ever hidden.

And yet, like with so many dreams, the reality flickered. The William in her dreams was not the one who was here. The one in her dreams was the one from six years earlier. Unpredictable. Angry. Sweet. Pushing at boundaries. Crashing into walls. This William was different. He seemed to have settled, to have taken on the mantle of a life that didn’t quite fit.

Then the letters began to come less frequently and when they did arrive, it was as though he didn’t know what to write about anymore. She didn’t want to hear about old friends or parties or new bars. In a way, she had been relieved when he stopped writing.

Together, they would always be fifteen and seventeen, on the cusp of something. How sweet that moment is, that moment of before. When anticipation is everything.

“No,” he said. “I’m not. It’s a boring job. But it suits me. For now.” “Does it? What about what you wanted? To live in New York? To travel? The way your face lit up when you talked about Paris. I don’t believe for one moment that you’re happy to be in Boston. It’s the story you’ve created, out of the bits and pieces. To make you feel as though you’ve made the right decisions. To make you feel as though you’re heading in the right direction.”

This time in London, he decided, was to be a secret, one never to be shared. Not with anyone. He would keep it all to himself. He could be with Bea in that moment, for those days, for the rest of his life. Some secrets are weights to be borne. Others are gifts, little bits of warmth, to be revisited again and again. No one else ever needed to know. No one else had the right to know. It was theirs and theirs alone.

How wonderful it is to be a child. To be so troubled and then to have those cares lifted off a moment later. A magic trick of sorts.

Once, on a beautiful summer day, he took a tourist boat around Boston Harbor, just to be on the water. He felt odd, in his suit and tie, surrounded by teenagers in shorts and T-shirts, ignoring their parents, hardly looking at the ocean, sneaking smokes back by the engine. He wanted to shake them, to shake the boy he once was, lying on a floating dock off the coast of Maine. Enjoy this, he wanted to say. Try to stay in the moment. He wished he could be one of them, to still be in that place where everything seemed possible.

She’s trying to be more up-front with her, to say what she thinks. Well, she’s always said what she thought. But she wants to have a more open relationship. How difficult it is, though, with your own child. To change the patterns that have been set, to create a new way of being together.

And, Beatrix says, in that tone that Millie recognizes. It’s a tone she uses as well. A way of pretending you’re not interested when, in fact, you care so awfully much.

Chris looks up at the sky. What a beautiful day, he says. I can never decide. Is it better or worse when the world looks like this? Does it mitigate the loss when the world is so insistent on being beautiful?

Someone can cover for you at school. You’re important, my dear, but you can disappear for a bit. You need to disappear for a bit.

I’m just getting it all out of my system now. So I can behave tomorrow. When they start swinging that ridiculous incense.

Pulling ashore on the beach, Gerald heads into the forest. The trails they made and followed so long ago are still there. Desire lines, his father called them. The quickest way from here to there.

When you look back, it’s so easy to see the path that you’ve traveled. But looking forward, there are only dreams and fears.

So many things she would have done differently. Regret, she has found, is the loud thing that’s left.

I think a little of each of them is in me, in some way or another.

Dead or alive, we carry these people with us.