Ebb Tide
Serene surveyed the bookstore, spotting Harry as he slowly waddled toward the front row. Perfect. The rusty chairs spanning the room were largely empty; turnout was even sparser than the reading she’d held at the tiny library on the island last week. That was okay. What mattered most was that Harry was there.
A few more stragglers sat down. She smiled at Harry and opened the hardback book. “’I was thirty years old and I thought my life was over,’” she began. “’The withdrawals were so horrendous, all I wanted was to die.’” A pause, followed by a tight smile. “’But it was then I realized my life was just beginning.’”
She paused again. Harry, gazing at her in fervent reverence, began to clap. A few others applauded uncertainly. “And tonight, as I stand in front of you, my story is one of success.” She snapped the book shut. “Sure, I’ve had some setbacks. But if you’d told me five years ago that I’d be the author of a successful memoir, and, on a book tour, I’d have plunged the syringe in a vein, laid back and laughed.”
She strolled away from the podium, limbs too long for her spindly body.
“Wait, that’s it?” A woman from the audience jumped up from her chair. “That’s all you’re gonna read? Can I at least get an autograph?” She pounded her book accusatorily.
Harry gripped her arm with a gnarled hand and looked up at her. He seemed diminished, somehow, since she’d seen him yesterday. “Let’s go, Serene. I know how hard this is for you.”
They walked to the motel together in the glittering silence of a mid-January evening. Harry checked them in with his credit card and the clerk handed them each a key. Thank you, Jesus, Serene thought. Separate rooms.
***
It was kind of sweet, Serene thought, as she cleaned her apartment, how Harry followed her around like a puppy dog. A shrunken, wrinkled, half-deaf puppy dog. A recent widower, he lived alone now on the island. Serene passed his tiny cottage on her way to the ferry each day, noting the overgrown bushes, the sagging front steps, the paint peeling from the clapboards in sheets. Her kids called him “old man Carson,” but even so, he got around pretty well, slowly shuffling down to the café for his morning cup of tea.
She kicked a pile of Legos under the bed. Pop Tart wrappers littered the floor. In the living room, the kids yelled over the blare of the television. She stomped her foot loudly. Kids were the last thing she needed right now. “For chrissake, shut the hell up! Both of you!”
She checked her watch, a gift from Harry. Last week, when they had combed through his late wife’s treasured jewelry and antiques, he’d plucked out an exquisite diamond-studded Cartier watch. “You’ll never be late again,” he told her, and slid it on her wrist.
She had less than a half hour before Harry arrived for their dinner date. Ample time to tidy the apartment and warm up the frozen lasagna she’d bought earlier that day. She’d left her hair unbraided for the occasion, glossy red locks cascading down her back. Her tank top showed just the right amount of cleavage. And she’d skipped makeup entirely. Harry loved her freckles.
She’d become adept at reinvention, her skills as a chameleon learned during boarding school. Last night, she’d been Serene Steele, the former addict-turned-writer, published writer, to be exact. Tonight, she’d be the caring neighbor, with just a touch of adoration thrown in. Men. Such one-dimensional creatures. So clueless.
Humming softly, she gathered the stack of unopened mail from its precarious spot on the edge of the coffee table. A pink envelope addressed to Diane Steele fell to the floor. She lit a vanilla spice candle and ripped the envelope into tiny pieces, its PAST DUE stamp and addressee a distant memory.
***
The following morning, Serene had the apartment and kids packed up in a record two hours. As she prepared to leave, she pulled a manuscript from the custom leather briefcase Harry presented to her last night at dinner. “For your writing career,” he’d said. “This way you’ll always remember me.”
Remembering Harry wasn’t going to be a problem. He’d been an easy mark, what her father would have called a “rollover.” She opened the envelope paper-clipped to the manuscript. Twenty-five large. And in a cashier’s check, no less. He had included a note, written in the spiky penmanship of an octogenarian: “Dearest Serene: My deepest thanks for agreeing to edit my memoir. I am deeply honored by your belief in me. Much love and appreciation, H. C.”
She dumped the manuscript – a whopping thousand pages – in the bulging garbage bag and locked the door behind her. Finally, a way off this Godforsaken rock.
****
Harry cradled his tea mug, staring out the café window as the ferry passengers walked down the hill to the island pier. “Any word from Serene?” he asked the woman behind the counter.
She walked over to Harry and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s been almost three weeks, Harry. Three weeks. She’s not coming back.”
With shaking hands, he pulled a small velvet box from his backpack and carefully positioned it on the table. “But I bought -- I thought…” He slumped in the chair; it swallowed his withered frame. Serene had been overjoyed when he’d asked her to marry him, her striking green eyes as radiant as the candles that accompanied the romantic lasagna dinner she’d made especially for him.
Harry collected his backpack and trudged outside toward the pier. The snowbanks were melting now, sidewalks still a dirty mix of snow and ice. “Harry!” the café woman yelled, clutching the jewelry box high in her hand, like Lady Liberty’s torch. “You forgot your ring!”
The sea had begun to sink below the pier. The tide was going out. And Harry kept walking.