AN EXCERPT FROM GOODY

Claire Joseph

In the dead of winter, on the edge of the East Coast, in the few fleeting hours of muted sunlight, silence sings like the ever-angry Atlantic waves. The grass here, which only grows out of the soft curves of the cold dunes, continues to bloom. There is no real danger beyond a fox hunting a rabbit, or the magic potential to get lost amongst millions of grains of sand. The buzz of sunscreened families and drunken partiers is long gone and is replaced by the frustrated hums of writers and artists trying to create greatness when all they truly wish to do is pause. They don’t understand how it is possible to rest. It was here, halfway to the peak of erosion, where we had our picnics. I knew of her only in unfinished stories. Her name misspelled in grammatically incorrect fantasy blogs. I only came across her name in a passing conversation about local legends with Mrs. Penton. While there are hundreds of books and pages written about perished women who lived close by (sometimes I wondered if too many), most doubted her existence altogether. Her lore was minimal and her fate choppy. I learned that she mostly liked it that way. She liked being everywhere and anonymous. I spoke to her only those few days. I spoke to her only until the sunset in the late morning. And from our first encounter, I knew she likely had no interest in me. There have been so many versions of me since she’s been here.

“I’m heading out for a bit of fresh air.”

–

“Dad.” (louder)

“Oh, hi dear.”

“Hi, I’m going out for a minute. Do you need anything?”

“Mm?”

“Do you need anything?”

“I don’t believe so. But maybe if you could get more pomegranate jam from that one store that I like?”

“Of course.”

He now slept after every meal he managed to keep down. I wondered if he knew what he was ingesting; if tastes still had distinction, even if he couldn’t see the food that they were a part of. Maybe, the flavors were bolder than ever, though, I never felt it the right moment to ask.

I’d been out here now for four days. Four days that bled together into one greyscale nostalgia trip. The constant racing in my head made me a morning person. It made me a night one too. The crashing presence of experience sang as a continual alarm. I thought I might pick up running. “I think you should get away for a bit,” Fran said last week.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” Elise said two weeks ago.

The city where I live is a grid. Living on a grid means wraparound all-encompassing energy. Energy jets through the sidewalks and the streetlights and the people who generate it generate it hot. Each intersection on the grid, a moving memory. And some now, are always glowing red. Cruelly. What once was a line of homes and of stores, now plays as tunnel-visioned panic. So, I left.

Here, even with my own thoughts buzzing and dancing, I could strive for stillness. The beauty of simplicity is marginally more possible. I stayed up all night listening to the pack of coyotes wailing into the trees. It is beautiful, the fucked-up circle of it all. I pictured her hair flowing and me, reaching through the line separating the living and the dead.

I didn’t leave much time for much sunlight today. And with cold bare feet, I climbed up to where we would meet. She moved around the coastline, watching the landscape change. There were laws against the landscape changing enacted long after her end. It was protected now. She argued to me she always protected it. I liked that idea and so I believed her. I thought of our prior conversation.

“So, did you do it? Did you sink the Whydah?”

She laughed. She went silent. She disappeared back into the evening. “Maria.”

“Why don’t you just stay here, with me. It’d be easy. It’d be silent.”

Now, I laughed and quieted. The idea danced around me, whispering, the intrigue of being memorialized in the sand. I then saw that one particular intersection in the city. I then saw the whole ocean ahead of me become hungrier. So, I left.

Still, I promised her I’d return tomorrow, and there I was. If she asked again today, I knew what I would say. I knew that didn’t want to be paralyzed on that street corner for as long as she’d occupied the Cape tides. An eternity of haunting is not much growth at all. I’d tell her I couldn’t stay forever; I had to go to the market and get pomegranate jam. That’s what I planned on saying.

Sabine Paris

Fairies #8 papier-mâché and paint