Sea Glass

Bonnie stumbles in the moonlight as she bends over to look for sea glass. I’m certain she can’t make out trash from treasure in this dark, but sure enough, I hear her laugh a few moments later. When she skips back from the pebbles and waves, towards my Muskoka chair, her purse of beach finds bulges. Her sundress catches around her legs and sand trickles from her hips. I light a joint and offer her a drag.

She takes it, as well as the beer in my hand, before jutting her hip out toward me.

“Look,” she says. Her mouth is still wrapped around the spliff.

I peer in, pushing my dark hair back so as not to obstruct the view. Even in the night, I can make out the different shapes of glass. I’ll have to wait for the morning to catch their colour; but the unique frames and folds of forgotten trinkets still promise a wealth of stories. Sometimes the moonlight catches itself on grains of sand and they glitter like diamonds from Bonnie’s cotton purse. It shines against her upper thigh, and when I lean into her, she smells like salt and hydrangeas. Her hair curls in the wind.

“Nell?”

It takes me a moment to realize Bonnie is passing the joint to me. I take a hit and lean back. Bonnie sits on my lap, still holding my beer. Her fingers play with the hem of my shorts. The ring I gave her only a few months before gleams in the dark. She leans further into me.

She asks, “What’s your favourite part about living in Canada?”

I laugh and hold up the joint. Bonnie smiles, but she doesn’t join in my laughter.

I put my hand over hers. I ask, “What’s on your mind, Sea Girl?”

She sighs. Her eyes drift over to the horizon, as she thinks about her answer. After a moment, she says, “I think I would have liked to experience the seasons growing up.”

I give her hand a squeeze, “You didn’t like the constant summer in Florida?”

Bonnie shakes her head, “I mean, it still gets cold there. We just don’t have the changing seasons the same way you guys do.”

She shrugs, “It’s just different. I think kid-me would have liked fall. Or winter, even. I always wanted to build a snowman.”

I kiss her shoulder. “I’ll build a snowman with you this winter.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

I can tell I’m missing some point she isn’t ready to spell out for me, yet. She doesn’t turn her face away from the crashing waves. Instead, she nests the beer in the crux of her lap and wraps her arms around her middle. I open up my windbreaker and pull it around her, but it doesn’t seem to help.

I try again.

I pluck a piece of sea glass from her purse, “Tell me this one’s story.”

Finally, she laughs.

She says, “It’s too dark. I can’t make anything out about it, yet.”

I poke her ribs, “Make something up.”

Again, I can’t read her face. Her expression is caught between disapproval and play. She snatches the joint back and returns to nursing the rest of my beer.

Bonnie’s always taken the history of lost things seriously. With every piece of sea glass found, she would spend hours delicately cleaning them with cotton swabs, hunched over them with a magnifying glass and search engine at the ready.

Tabs upon tabs would remain open, each detailing a different logo, sometimes as far back as the 1920s, or information about types and colours of glass bottles; their rarities and histories explained, their former owners, hypothesized.

Often, in the middle of the night, Bonnie would run to our bed and lean into my ear while I was between sleep and awake. She would whisper that she thought a piece of glass might be from an old poison bottle, maybe one that belonged to a woman escaping her husband at sea, or perhaps pirates used to intimidate their hostages. Other times, the glass might be the medicine bottle of an old witchy apothecary, the kind lined with dried rosemary along the walls, and a tincture for every ailment.

Last month, it was a milk bottle, abandoned by some unnamed mother after dropping her child off at boarding school. Bonnie said she could tell because the brand of milk was international. I didn’t ask how she knew the part about the mother or the boarding school, or how a bottle of milk could travel that far overseas back then.

Bonnie didn’t offer.

The hard evidence about the bottles, whether they were in fact, poison bottles, medicine bottles, beer, brandy, or milk bottles, remained constant; but the possibilities of who these items belonged to sprawled in dazzling and shrouded mystery.

Bonnie lived for that mystery. To her, each shard of glass was an important piece of someone else’s past life, meant to live on in a new someone’s current chapter.

When Bonnie finally finishes her joint and beer, she stands up and holds out her hand for me. I let her pull me up from the chair. She looks over at the beach house down the strip.

She says, “Meryl is probably waiting up for us.”

Back at the beach house, I can see the little window on the second floor glowing with lamplight. I know Bonnie is right. Aunt Meryl never goes to sleep before we come home. It’s a habit left over from when I was a kid.

Every July since I can remember, my parents would pack me up and ship me off from my home in Ontario to live with my Aunt in Prince Edward Island. During the summer, I would help Aunt Meryl around our family’s beachside gift store, arranging little displays and chatting with tourists. Aunt Meryl used to collect the glass for our store, but I never got into collecting it with her. All the sunburns and long hours in the heat were too much for my small body, and I don’t think my Aunt Meryl was really ever prepared to look after a child. She loved me and took caring for me very seriously, but there were times she lapsed in judgment.

When Aunt Meryl started to struggle with her arthritis, she stopped looking for glass along the beach. I tried to help fill the gap, but I just couldn’t gather the gusto for it that pushed a person to search the shoreline for hours on end with a sharp eye. I usually got bored and missed pieces, or gave up after only an hour.

Then, Bonnie stumbled into our shop one day with her suitcase of glass jewelry.

Now, Bonnie and I take care of the shop and live with Aunt Meryl in exchange. Still, Aunt Meryl waits for us to crash through the door after a long shift and a quick night on the beach, before turning off the light.

Tonight, though, something is different when we clamber through the swinging patio door.

Meryl is not reading in bed, with a tea by her side, as usual. Instead, she is standing by the old dining room table with one hand on her cane, and one on her hip. Her rimless glasses sit on the perch of her nose, and her lips purse. She asks tightly, “How was your night, girls?”

“Beautiful night out. Bonnie found lots of glass.”

Meryl nods, wasting no time.

She begins, “About that,”

I feel Bonnie stiffen next to me. Meryl continues, “I was looking over the numbers this evening. The shop is doing great, but I noticed something… do you think maybe you’ve been overcharging a little for the glass?”

She doesn’t wait for a response, “Because I’ve heard a few complaints. And then there was that Google review. And the numbers. Well, they just don’t make sense. We’re making too much money. Our regulars don’t come around as much anymore. Tourists are buying from shops up the strip.”

Meryl looks at Bonnie sternly, “It’s no good.”

I interject, “Bonnie’s sea glass has stories to them. She does hours of research on every piece!”

Meryl shakes her head, “A good story doesn’t change its worth. Customers can smell when they’re being conned. Once, they might forgive. But after the second time, they simply don’t come back.”

She softens. She reaches a papery hand out to Bonnie’s shoulder. “I know you might not think of it as scamming, honey. But that’s what it is. Plain and simple. The glass isn’t worth that much. It wouldn’t be worth that much if Marty up the beach found it one night instead of you. That’s the truth.”

Bonnie hasn’t looked up from her feet this whole time. I wrap my arm around her and squeeze. I wish she would say something. Even just a quick apology. But suddenly it seems like Bonnie’s mouth has been sewn shut.

I answer on her behalf, “We’re sorry, Aunt Meryl.”

That was the only way out. Until I could talk to Bonnie, at least. Bonnie was the Sea Glass Girl, not me.

Meryl offers up a half-smile. She leans in and kisses us both firmly on the cheek before sending us off.

Bonnie doesn’t come with me to bed, though. Right before entering our room in the loft, she hangs back. Her feet remain firmly on the hardwood outside the bathroom door. She still hasn’t looked up from the ground since Meryl began her speech downstairs.

I’ve never seen her like this.

I try to hold her, but she squirms away.

Her voice comes out in an unfamiliar, thin squeak, “I think I just need to take a couple of minutes.”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer before locking herself in the bathroom.

In bed, I wait for her to come back, but she never does. The space beside me remains barren and the wind outside our home is louder without the sounds of her breathing next to me. Once, I get up to check on her, but something about the hollow tin of her quiet weeping tells me to stay back.

I can’t understand why she’s so wounded by Meryl’s comment. I want to understand.

But I’m on one side of the door, and Bonnie is on the other.

And neither of us knows how to cross the space between us.

X

By the time 1pm rolls around, it’s clear that it will be a slow day at the shop. Outside, rain comes down in heavy sheets. Not a soul strolls the shoreline on afternoons like this. But still, we keep the shop open just in case.

The Beach Shack hasn’t changed much over the years that Meryl’s owned it. A fresh coat of paint every decade and some regular maintenance, sure. But the bones remain true to form. Meryl insists: nothing too flashy. She says that’s not why people come to the Shack.

“People want to feel like they’re coming home. They think they want something new. What they really want, is something familiar.”

Bonnie hated this way of thinking. She didn’t understand why Meryl wouldn’t want to try and bring in new customers by changing things up. Every time the subject came up, though, Meryl would shake her head and reply simply, “That’s not what we do here.”

I could see both sides of it. Meryl had lived in the shop since she herself was a young girl with my mother. I trusted both women’s perspectives, but there was something to be said for the truth lying somewhere in the middle. I wasn’t the person to locate where that middle was, though.

For the most part, things stayed the same after Bonnie started working here. The biggest change was bringing in her jewelry.

Before, Meryl would sell the glass she found on the beach as it was.

Bonnie began wrapping them with wire and lobster clasps, though, and suddenly we sold necklaces and bracelets.

Meryl didn’t object. She didn’t jump for joy, either. And I think the latter hurts Bonnie’s feelings, sometimes. So I try to make up for it in support. For some reason, though, it never seems to fill that void of validation.

Bonnie comes out with more elaborate designs every week, now.

Meryl hardly visits the shop, anymore.

I keep making my little displays.

I fidget with the knick knacks and kitschy finds around the store until they look like a scene that might appeal to someone. A cottage display with wooden signs and loopy calligraphy, neatly lined up against a pyramid of sandalwood-scented soy candles; a tourist display with key ring stanchions and a basketful of beach umbrellas adorned with cartoon fruit; a section for kids where we keep a shelf of stuffed toy lobsters, mermaids, and seashells. Some picture books featuring seamen or starfish. A pool noodle.

I focus on what I can combine with what we have in the store in order to make the products make sense to the visitors who wander on in. With tourists, it’s important that you leave a good impression.

You know that when they leave, you’ll probably never see them again.

You can only hope to be “That cute little shop on the beach we went to that one summer.”

For me, that’s enough, though.

Some of my favourite memories have been made in places I’ve never returned to.

I watch Bonnie as she looks out the window, her eyes following the course of wind and rain outside our shack. She looks so far away, I wonder what stories are swirling in the back of her mind.

The past hour has been quiet enough that she jumps when I speak.

I ask, “Any good stories brewing with that storm, Sea Girl?”

She shakes her head, “I don’t understand why you call me that.”

She wrinkles her nose. “I mean, I haven’t even been to the sea.”

“What do you mean?”

She turns around, “I mean just that.”

Bonnie snaps, “What sea would I have gone to?”

She throws her hand out towards her display of glass jewelry, “This isn’t even technically sea glass.”

I gawk, “What do you mean?”

“There is no sea. This is just a beach. This is all just beach glass. It’s always been beach glass.”

I shake my head. I pick up a dark green pendant, its body warped and contorted by the elements until it’s bent over itself in buttery folds.

I ask, “Does it matter? It’s beautiful either way.”

She nods brusquely. She doesn’t turn away from the window at first.

I watch her, confused. I ask, “Right?”

Bonnie hesitates before I see her shoulders reluctantly slacken.

She sighs, “I guess you’re right. Glass is glass.”

I feel my eyebrows knit together.

I don’t want a placating answer, though. I want to actually know:

Is there a difference?

But Bonnie is off as suddenly as she had started her rant, puttering away after some new distraction. I hear our first pair of customers by the door and Bonnie’s customary greeting. There is the obligatory commentary about the wretched weather, and by the time the elderly couple has wandered over to the sea glass display, I know I’ve lost her.

Sea glass, beach glass.

I listen to her tell the couple about shipwrecks and shoreline treasures.

Broken old bottles, whipped by years of waves.

X

By the time the storm clears, we’ve already closed the Shack early. The rain has finally ceased, but still, electricity crackles through the air. The clouds hang heavy, like dark boulders in the sky; they threaten to crack down on us at any moment. I lean my face up towards the rocky clouds and close my eyes, waiting for any hint of moisture to break through the unseasonal cold.

I look over to share this moment with Bonnie, but she is already halfway home. Her back is a solid plank of orange-red t-shirt as it recedes into the charcoal horizon.

Thunder rumbles over the beach.

When I catch up to her in the loft, it feels as though the thunder has followed us inside.

I call after her, hoping my voice might stop her from slamming the bathroom door shut, “I don’t know what I did wrong, Bon. Please tell me. I can fix it at least, then. Or try to.”

Bonnie stops outside the bathroom. Her face is far away again, her eyes searching along the shoreline of some other parallel universe, her cheeks flushed and fervent. I don’t dare move in case she suddenly returns to earth and bolts away.

I wait for her to speak, but she doesn’t.

Instead, she kneels down and slowly removes the panel of hardwood from the slot in front of the door. Underneath it is a trove of worn and dusty folds of paper. It takes me a moment before I realize, they’re letters.

I bend down closer and more comes into focus: photographs of a man and a young girl, no older than four. Postcards from Disneyworld, a velvet baggy with “baby’s first haircut” stitched on the front. A hand-drawn Mother’s Day card.

My mouth is dry. I try to speak, but nothing comes out.

Bonnie stands up, “My family… back in Florida.”

My tongue tastes like metal.

I ask, “You have a family back in Florida?”

She starts to walk towards me but I back away. I don’t want her to touch me. I don’t want to know anymore, and at the same time, everything inside me fights not to lurch my hands beneath the floorboards and scour over every detail I somehow didn’t know.

Bonnie shakes her head no, then nods yes, then closes her eyes.

She bites her lip, “I was so young. I thought I was in love.”

It becomes clear to me then, neither of us wants this other family to exist. Not Bonnie and certainly not me. It would be easier to pretend they didn’t, that this dreamy bubble on the beach we’ve been living in for the past two years has been reality.

And yet there Bonnie’s family is: existing.

There they existed, sending her letters and postcards from another country, on the other end of the East Coast.

The photo of Bonnie’s daughter glistens from flat against the worn-down hardwood floor. The boards creek with Bonnie’s shifting weight as she bends down to collect the picture from the empty space.

She looks up at me, “I do miss her sometimes, you know.”

She smiles softly, “But not as much as I love my life here with you.”

My heart sinks to the floor beside Bonnie’s photograph.

I imagine her saying the same thing to a new stranger five years from now.

I think about her tucking my letters away under different floorboards.

I wonder if I am just another piece of sea glass to her; another story to collect...

Until she finds the next interesting shard.

As if all the pieces aren’t scattered around her, waiting to be put back together.

As if it wasn’t her hands that broke them in the first place.

Part of me wants to grab the photograph, as if somehow that would be scooping up the little girl and saving her from her mother’s disaster heart. Instead, I blink.

I ask, “What’s her name?”

Bonnie looks down. She whispers, “Marina.”

I sit down beside her. Despite myself, I run my fingers through her hair. My palm meets her face. Her cheeks are so soft and warm, it’s hard to imagine a life without kissing them.

I picture Marina’s face, so similar to her mother's, yet never knowing it.

Bonnie’s eyes search mine and I don’t know what she will find there.

So I close them.

I place my wedding band beside her on the floor where the picture of Marina once was.

I hear myself whisper before I register the words leave my lips.

“I think it’s time to go home, Sea girl.”