Summer By The Sea

He had a sister who was away at horseback riding camp. “Her name’s Madison. She’s fifteen. I’m not allowed to go to camp on account of my asthma.”

“It’s just as nice here,” Rosa declared, though she had no idea whether or not that was true.

“My family’s firm has offices in the city, and my father comes to the beach house only on weekends and holidays,” he said.

She didn’t really get what a firm was, but it seemed to keep his father plenty busy. “Which city?”

“New York City. And Providence, too. Where do you live?”

“In Winslow.”

“You’re lucky. I wish I could live here all year around.”

“I don’t know. It gets pretty cold in the winter. Summers are the best. Do you like swimming or hiking, going out in boats?”

“I don’t do things like that,” he said. “I’m not allowed.”

“That’s too bad.” What an odd boy, she thought. “Pop says when I’m twelve, I can go parasailing.”

“See what I mean? Lucky.”

“I guess. Maybe we could go down to the docks at Galilee and catch a ride on a fishing boat that’s heading out for the day. Mrs. Carmichael’s husband is a lobsterman. Did you know that?”

“No.”

She had a feeling he didn’t do much talking to the housekeeper. “My brothers’ names are Roberto and Salvatore. We call him Sal but never Sally.” She pointed out a firepit with the charred remains of a few logs. “My brothers used to build bonfires that would shoot sparks a mile high.” Just saying it made her miss Rob and Sal, who were so much older than her. Her parents used to call her their last blessing. After the boys, they weren’t really expecting to have a daughter, too, nine years later. Her parents had been older than the parents of her friends, but Rosa never cared about that. She was surrounded by love, she was the last blessing and she used to think she was the luckiest girl in the world.

“Maybe we could build a bonfire,” Alex said.

It was nice, the way he seemed to feel her turning sad, and spoke right up. “Maybe,” she said, and took him past the public beaches and parking lots to the rocky tip of Point Judith. “You have to be careful here,” she warned him. “The rocks are slippery. Sharp, too.”

He took a step and wobbled a little on his skinny white legs, then regained his balance. He looked very small, standing on the sharp-edged black rock with the waves exploding high into the sky.

Rosa put out her hand. “Hang on and watch where you step.”

He grabbed on, and his strong grip surprised her. He studied each move with deliberation, but they made steady progress. When a fount of white foam erupted between the rocks he was straddling, Alex jumped, but not in time to avoid getting his shorts soaked.

“Are you all right?” asked Rosa.

“Yes.” With his free hand, he straightened his glasses. “It’s steep.”

“Don’t worry.” She stepped down to the next rock. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

“What if you fall?” he asked.

“I won’t,” she declared. “I never fall.” Step by unsteady step, she led him down to the placid clear pools that stayed filled at low tide. They studied hand-sized starfish and sea cucumbers, neon-colored algae and clusters of black mussels clinging to the rock. Alex knew what everything was from his reading, but he didn’t know how to make sunburst anemones squirt. Rosa showed him that. Splat, right on his eyeglasses.

Alex laughed aloud as he wiped his face, and the sound made her smile bigger than she’d smiled in weeks. Months, maybe. Crouched by the pool, she felt a slight change, like the wind shifting. They weren’t just two kids anymore. They were friends.

She sat back on her heels and tilted her face up to the clear blue sky. A trio of seagulls swooped over them, and Rosa looked away. Mamma used to have a lot of superstitions. Three seagulls flying together, directly overhead, are a warning of death soon to come.

Until Mamma, Rosa had never known a person who died. She used to think she knew what death was: a bird fallen from the nest. A possum at the side of the road, buzzing with flies. She had grandparents who had died, but since she’d never met them, that didn’t count. They were from a place in Italy called Calabria, which her parents called the Old Country.

One time, she asked Pop why he never went to Italy to see his parents while they were alive. You can’t go back, he’d said dismissively. It’s too much bother.

Rosa didn’t really care. She didn’t want to go to Italy. She liked it right here.

“What school do you go to?” asked Alex.

“St. Mary’s.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think classes are boring, and the cafeteria food makes me gag.” When they had to say the blessing right after Second Bell, she used to give extra thanks for her mother’s sack lunches—chicken salad with capers or provolone with olive loaf, sometimes a slice of cake and a bunch of grapes. There was always a funny little message on the napkin: “Smile!” Or “Only 12 more days to summer!”

“I like sports,” she told Alex, not wanting him to think she was a total loser. “I can run really fast and I like to win. My big brothers taught me everything they know, which is a lot. I play soccer in the fall, swimming in the winter, softball in the spring. Do you play sports?”

“Not allowed,” he said, trailing his hand in the crystal clear water. “Makes me wheeze.” Then he was quiet for several minutes. Rosa watched the way the breeze tossed his shiny white-blond hair. He looked like a picture in a book of fairy tales, maybe Hansel, lost in the woods.

He turned those ocean-blue eyes on her. “Your mom died, didn’t she?”

Rosa felt a quick hitch in her chest. She couldn’t speak, but she nodded her head.

“Mrs. Carmichael told me this morning.”

Rosa drew her knees up to her chest, and as she watched the waves exploding on the rocks, she felt something break apart inside her. “I miss her so much.”

“I was scared to say anything, but…it’s okay if you want to talk about it.”

She started to shake her head, to find a way to change the subject, but this time the subject refused to be changed. Alex had brought it up and now it was like the incoming tide; it wouldn’t go away. And to her surprise, she kind of felt like talking. “Well,” she said. “Well, it’s a long story.”

“The days are long in the summer,” he reminded her. “The sun sets at 8:14 tonight.”

She rested her chin on her knees and gazed out at the blue distance. Usually she tried not to bring up the subject of her mother’s death. It made her brothers all awkward, and Pop sometimes cried, which was scary to Rosa. Now she could feel Alex staring right at her, and it didn’t scare her at all.

“When Mamma first got sick,” she said, “I didn’t worry because she didn’t really act sick. She went for her treatments, and came back and took naps. But after a while, it got hard for her to act like she was okay.” Rosa thought about the day her mother came home from the hospital for the last time. When she took off her bright blue kerchief, she looked as gray and bald as a newborn baby bird. That was when Rosa finally felt afraid. “The nuns came—”

“Like Catholic nuns?” Alex asked.

“I don’t think there’s any other kind.”

“Are you Catholic, then?” he asked.

“Yep. Are you?”

“No. I don’t think I’m anything. I want to hear about the nuns.”

“They used to sit and pray in the bedroom with my mother. My father got really quiet, and his temper was short.” Rosa wasn’t going to say any more about that. Not today, anyway. “My brothers had no idea what to do. Rob went to Mamma’s garden, which she didn’t plant last year because she was too sick, and he mowed down a whole field of brambles using only a machete.” Rosa pictured her brother, sweat mingling with the tears on his face even though it was the middle of winter. “Sal lit so many candles at St. Mary’s that Father Dominic had to tell him to put some of them out to avoid starting a fire.”

None of it helped, of course. Nothing helped.

“Mamma said it was a lucky thing, to be able to say goodbye, but it didn’t feel…lucky.” Rosa pressed the heel of her hand into the rock hard enough to hurt. Her mother had been too weak to prop up a book, so Rosa got on the bed and lay down beside her and read Grandfather Twilight, and it felt strange to be the one reading it.