Cost

Satisfaction rose in him at the sight of the scarlet light, the golden water. He'd wanted to arrive first, unaided, and he had. He could hear his own breathing, deep and strong. He folded his arms on his chest. The wind blew against his bare head. He felt the spaciousness of the red-gold air, the soft lapping of the water against the ragged shore. Something rose in his throat, as though the spaciousness were entering him.

His life lay stretched behind him like a path, reaching neatly, like his shadow, exactly to his feet. Ahead of him lay the shifting blue water, cold and radiant.

“Almost there.” He heard Julia behind him. “You're doing great, Mum.”

“Just let me take it slowly,” said Katharine. “You know I used to run up Mount Washington, with my brothers.”

“We know that,” Julia said. “We know you raced them.”

“‘And won, she said modestly,’” added Katharine.

She moved carefully, poking with the tip of her cane among the grasses. She leaned forward, one arm linked in Julia's. She took a slow step, Julia taking a half-step beside her.

“Great!” Julia said again. “We're here.”

The three of them stood together at the shoreline. Katharine felt the sea breeze against her face. “Lovely.” She turned her head, looking at the red sunset light, the running of the tide.

Katharine thought of Mount Washington and her brothers. She remembered climbing the rocky part, near the summit, the empty sky beyond the peak. Being out of breath, and her oldest brother behind her, laughing, pretending he couldn't keep up with her. She'd been the youngest and the only girl, much petted by her brothers, by the whole family.

Julia pointed across the cove. “Great blue heron,” she said. “Do you see it?”

“Lovely,” Katharine said, peering. She couldn't make it out, but she knew how it looked, those long, skinny, lordly legs, the coiled serpentine neck, the needlelike beak. The slow, meditative steps.

It was her father who'd taught her to know the birds. She remembered him taking her hand, walking across a field, early spring. He crouched down quietly to point out a bird's nest on the ground.

“Kill deer,” he said in a low voice, and Katharine looked into his face, confused. She'd been young, four or five. “A killdeer's nest,” he said, and then she understood: it was a name.

There was the neat clutch of tiny speckled eggs nestled in a shallow concavity in the furrow. The eggs, flecked with the same colors and patterns as the broken stubble, were nearly impossible to see, coming magically into focus only once you understood how to look. Nearby, the frantic mother ran back and forth, dragging her wing as if it were broken, crying her own name over and over, trying to lure them away from the eggs.

“We must leave,” her father said quietly, in her ear. “We're causing the mother distress.” He was almost whispering. Katharine had tiptoed out of the field, her hand still in her father's. She'd turned her head, discreetly, so as not to cause more distress, watching the tiny mother bird skimming along the furrows, her narrow legs flickering as she ran.

Now Julia spoke. “I love this view. It's one reason we bought the house.”

“It's a good view,” Edward said, not as though he were agreeing but as though he were pronouncing her correct.

“Do you remember my father?” Katharine asked Julia. Had they just been talking about him?

“A bit,” Julia said. “He wore a waistcoat and gold-rimmed glasses. He took silver dollars out of my nose.”

“Silver dollars? Out of your nose?” Katharine repeated. “It was a magic trick. I kept the dollars for years. I still have some, in a little wooden box.”

“Can that motorboat get out of here at low tide?” asked Edward.

“He knows every rock on this coast,” Julia said. “He grew up here.”

“Who is it?” Edward asked.

“Dan Ellsworth,” Julia said.

“He a neighbor?” Edward asked.

“The local contractor,” said Julia. “He built a house up the cove last year. He's a nice guy. He came over when I arrived this summer and offered any help I might need.”

“Nice for you to have a neighbor,” Katharine said. “I worry about you, all alone here.”

“I'm all right,” Julia said.

Though it was true she was alone. Last week, slicing cheese, she'd cut her finger. The bright blood had startled her. She'd thought of the Plath poem: What a thrill! My thumb instead of an onion. Somethingsomething … then all that red plush. It was a shock that her body could do something so dangerous, gush with such arterial splendor. Dizzied by the sight, she'd been oddly slow to react. It had taken her long moments to remember what to do: hold the finger beneath cold running water, find something to bind it. There was no one to help her, she'd understood suddenly: she was alone now with her body. It was her task to protect it.

“Do you ever think of living here full-time?” asked Edward. “When you retire?”

“Oh, that's too far off to think of. And I don't even have tenure yet, I may have nothing to retire from,” she said cheerfully. “I may have to go on working my whole life.”

Julia had thought vaguely about her future, but only vaguely, and only up to a certain point. Everything was meant to get better, wasn't it? That was how you planned your life, looking ahead, toward improvement. It was easy to imagine yourself older: white-haired, spry, entertainingly outspoken, freed from convention. But not really old— incapacitated, mind gone, body failing, unable to care for yourself. How were you to plan for that? No one wanted to reach that place.

She didn't want to, and she didn't want her parents to, either. She wanted them to be no older than they were here, right now, on this sunset point of land, the three of them watching the reddening, waning light as it flooded across the liquid surge of the tide.

“Just don't put us in a nursing home,” Katharine said, out of nowhere.

Turning back, Julia saw a man standing on the porch. He raised his arm, calling against the wind and stepping down into the meadow.

“Who is it?” Katharine asked.

What she feared was not recognizing someone she knew. Worse, someone in her own family. Would it come to that? How long would it go on, this slow tide eating at the edges of her mind? She felt the deep shame of illness, the need for secrecy; she wanted no one to know. “I can't see against the sun,” she said.

“It's Stevo!” Julia said, her face alight. “He must have gotten a ride from the bus station.”

Steven headed down the path toward them, his strides loose and long, his face ruddy and gilded in the setting sun. The others began the trek back, Edward shuffling determinedly in the lead, Katharine and Julia following, arm in arm. It's a procession, Julia thought. The elders, greeting the young monarch. She wondered if Steven saw himself as the future of the family.

Walking down through the meadow toward them, Steven was struck by the sight of his grandparents in the wide landscape. They seemed suddenly small and insubstantial against the billowing grass, the moving blue water. All three were smiling at him, irradiated by the raking light. His grandparents seemed suddenly, shockingly, old: Edward's pale face lined and papery, Katharine's thin hair blowing in wisps. And his mother's face, polished by the setting sun, looked worn—was she becoming old, too?

They met in the middle of the field; around them the long grass was blown in smooth flattening swaths by the evening wind. Steven leaned over to hug them. He was taller than his father, he was taller than everyone else in the family, and Julia liked this. Julia thought it proper that Steven should be so tall. She thought he should have whatever he wanted.

“You're back,” Julia said.

“Hey, Ma,” Steven said, putting his arms around her.

She hugged him, clasping his young man's body, strange and familiar. She patted his sweatered back: it was odd how much the body meant, how it reassured. And how odd—wonderful—to feel your son taller and stronger than you; to understand, in your own body, that he had passed beyond you in certain ways, that he was carrying himself forward into the world without your help. It was reassuring, too: this body would protect yours, care for it.

“Let me look at you,” she said, standing back. “Have you changed into a West Coaster?” The question was only a pretext to hold him longer, to gaze into the beloved face. What she wanted was to eat him whole. “No,” she announced, “you still seem like Stevo.”

Steven waited, smiling, allowing himself to be hugged, gazed at, discussed. Adored. As a teenager, her embraces had embarrassed him and he'd resisted them, but after the divorce things changed. He became patient and indulgent, protective of his mother.

One night, up here, he'd wakened to hear Julia walking around in the room she had shared with his father. The house was silent—it was very late—and in that absence of sound the creak of the floorboards seemed loud. It was strange to think of his mother waking up alone in that double bed; he wondered what she was doing, in the middle of the night. His mother, in her worn white nightgown—was she getting a blanket? Was she cold? Steven lay in his own bed, listening. He could not hear separate footsteps, only the creak of the floorboards. Was she lonely? What was she thinking? When it was quiet again, he went on listening, imagining her alone in the room.

After that it was not possible to think of his mother as oppressive, her embrace intrusive. After that he thought of her as alone, vulnerable.

Now Steven moved close to Katharine and put his arm out for her, taking Julia's place.