Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

Oh, why can’t time be stopped in those moments. Why is it so hard to understand how fleeting it all is?

Bea climbs into the car, holding a round tin container in her arms. Cookies, she says. What am I to do with three dozen cookies. She’s laughing and crying all at the same moment and then Mother is knocking on the window. Bea rolls it down. The recipe, Mother says, handing her a tattered note card littered with butter stains. But you won’t have it then, Bea says, wiping the tears from her face. Oh, child, Mother says. It’s all in my head. Everything is in there. I don’t need the words anymore. Mother kisses her fingers and blows toward Bea. Safe travels, my dear. Please come back soon.

He returns to the porch and waits for the sun to set. He could never understand Father’s need to do this each evening, to just sit and wait. He didn’t have the patience then. He can see the sun moving closer to the dark mainland, he can actually gauge its movement in the sky. The dark clouds from earlier have blown out to sea. The sky is clear and blue. As the sun disappears, the sky turns shades of pink and purple, for as far as he can see, the colors changing and growing in intensity. He sits, without moving, and takes it all in.

What a gentleman he is. It should make her content to see him like this, so grown up, such a confident man, and it does, but it also, inexplicably, makes her want to cry. Instead, she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him goodbye.

Who would have thought, she thinks again and again, that Gerald would be the one to live the exciting life. William, for all his talk, would never have done something like this. She wonders whether Gerald would have done this if William was still alive. She understands now that death has a way of providing freedom.

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.

We love people for all sorts of different reasons and in all sorts of different ways, she says. Remember that. And it only gets better, the older you get. Young love isn’t necessarily the best love.