The Pearls Andrea Kovacic

THE PEARLS

Andrew Kovacic Andrew Kovacic

She cut dandelion heads and left them on the doorsteps of her friends’ houses. They found the flowers waiting for them at dawn. It was as if they were left there by some wandering spirit, granting children a magical wake-up call; a full-bloom morning glory. I think about that girl, who was once my friend. Her dandelion has withered at the bottom of my tea-cup vase. I think about her. I think and know that I wish that I was that kind of girl so long ago.

Living in Tingstova is living in a clam shell. A clam shell where the inside is dark, and cold, and the outside is a body of water so deep that the light is way up there in the distance.

Stay inside and you suffocate. Go outside and you drown. Sanctuary and prison. That’s what Tingstova is like. A long way off you can hear the whales; a long, long way off from here. From here, sometimes I walk wide and far and wide. I take the trails up the slopes that surround the town. Along the way, I walk past all the artefacts that have been dumped on the side of the trail. Over there is someone’s junky roulette table, over here is a rust-eaten fridge missing a door, over the hill is about a dozen more. They’ve become great, sunken altars over the years. Kids often leave shells and odd rocks piled around them. They are odd things to worship. The relics of Tingstova are things that have been thrown away. Passing each one feels like passing through some unseen wall, like there are innumerable barriers set up to keep you from straying too far from the town’s centre. Either that or it’s the altitude.

The top of the small mount has been worn into a natural ledge. I sit on it and look down over my clam town. Buildings are the colour of muddy snow. All of the trees left leafless from the harsh scrub of salty winds; shaping this cove into a clay-world tundra. Those winds pulse in from the nearby sea in sharp, billowy drafts. You see, Tingstova is on the lip of the ocean. But it isn’t a beautiful blue, the water is the same dirty grey as the buildings. The horizon is the same unending cloud that stretches out above my head.

On my walk back home, I think about her. She lived in the house beside mine. It is the same squat home as all the rest but somehow her one always seemed nicer, seemed beautiful even. At night, I would see her dancing on her front porch with all the lights on in her house. Lit up like a bonfire in snow. Her parents weren’t home, they never were, and in fact I’m not sure that I ever even saw them. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was living alone, without anyone and without need for anyone. She was ferociously wild. You wouldn’t know it from looking at her. She looked like any average kid, plain and mild. Sure, she was popular, everyone in town was her friend. But no one could actually pinpoint why she was so devastatingly attractive. It wasn’t her looks, they’d say. It wasn’t her humour. But I knew all along what made that girl the brightest pearl Tingstova had ever had and lost. She was born in bloom. She was born with eyes that looked ever onwards. Onwards she looked and onwards she went. It wasn’t surprising to me that she left that day. There was never any other thing that could have happened. She had already left long ago.

My morning routine is an hour of gutting fish. My Pa owned this letterbox fish deli for years before he finally handed the keys over to me. Well, I should add: it wasn’t like my hand was open and waiting for the keys to the fishy business. My hand was pried open, it has been since birth. Now, I spend my mornings gutting fish. This job used to make me squirm, but now it just makes me tired. Sometimes I look into the dull, jelly eyes of a trout and see myself reflected within them. I look like I’m melting in those eyes. Melting into deep, deep, deepening waters. If I could spread my fins, be brave enough to wade into the inkiness, perhaps I’d feel something close to what that girl felt on the day she left us behind.

At night, I spend my hours scrubbing the counters until they foam pink foam. I peel scales from underneath my fingernails. And I rinse gills from my hair. It’s sort of unbecoming. It’s an allnighter. Pa isn’t around anymore. And I can’t afford an extra hand. This is my kingdom of brine. It’s just me and the fishes tonight. I lock up the store without haste; contrary to most people, I find going home the worst part of the day. It’s just a block over. And every night it rises before me like some weathered, unwanted tomb. And every night I see her vacancy beside it. In all the years she’s been gone, nobody has come to claim her house. It sits hollow as a deadened willow in mid-winter. At my front door, I wrangle out my keys from the back pocket of my jeans and I -

I hear something. I turn my ear to the street. There’s nothing but the hum of the old street lamps, and the blitz of dying bugs against a thousand electric suns. But I don’t turn away. I wait.

Because faintly, oh so very far in the distance, there is something making noise. Beyond the blue burbs. Beyond the dumpster mountains. Beyond Tingstova. There it is again. That sound. Like a slowly drawn keening. Echoing like tinnitus. I can hear the whales. And with my head still turned to the side, looking towards her empty house, I see something.

Something rushed across her upstairs window. Something white, the kind of glow white that only appears in amongst pitch blackness. I think I hear my keys drop. I think I feel them hit the doorstep. I’m not too sure because I’m already walking on. And I can still hear the whales. In fact, they become louder and louder as I step onto the porch. At her door, I take a breath. Thinking maybe I should be sorry about this. Maybe I should turn back, again. But my hand is on the door handle. How did it get on the door handle? It’ll be locked. It’s not locked. I walk inside. The door closes behind me and I’m back into silence. I look around the house, my eyes badly readjusting to the dim interior. Everything turns a cool grey, the best my eyes can manage. I try a light but, of course, the electricity must have been cut for years. The moonlight will have to be enough. Squinting around, the house is much less special than I always thought it would be. It is furnished, sparsely at that, with everything left exactly the way it was. There are still cups and saucers scattered messily on the kitchen countertops. Bowls of half-eaten fruit loops, still frighteningly colourful despite the age on them. There’s a blanket strewn across the living room couch, as if chucked off a sleeping body. There are pairs of shoes, all the same size, left piled at the backdoor. Time twiddles and twists around me.

I rise slowly up the staircase; the gloom ahead looks so thick that I helplessly wave my arms in front of me in an attempt to clear it. And suddenly all sound becomes warbled. And there’s that same distant whine from before. A long, lone moan. I can hear the whales. It gets louder and louder as I reach the upstairs hall. As I begin to walk down it, I hear a splashing and then

I feel it. My shoes sink into the damp carpet, squishy mush. Water burbles out beneath a bedroom door. It begins to wash over my ankles as I get closer. Her name is etched on the door, with flowers circling it. My hand betrays me at the handle, it doesn’t want to open it. I want to open it. I do and before me is a wall of water. I stretch out my hand to touch the surface. I touch it. And I’m sucked in. Floating in an underwater bedroom. Can I breathe? I don’t dare to try. I bump against something. A small orca. White belly, white eyes. It opens its mouth and I see pearls on its tongue. …

She went out to the beach. And walked into the water. And kept walking, walking, walking, walking until she couldn’t walk no more. Until her feet no longer touched the seabed. I was standing on top of the sand dunes, holding her dandelion to my chest. I remember the exact moment she vanished under the depths. The water sucked her in. The liquid skin enclosing over her head, over the last strands of her hair. And where she once was, she was no longer.

It’s a wet, sopping wet, trudge back to my house. The keys are still on the doorstep, left as fallen as they were before. I don’t think too much about what has just gone on and what I’ve just seen. I’d think I was dreaming if not for the squidgy sucking of my sodden socks. Maybe, I’ll join her one day. I’m sure she must still be there, under the waves. In a submerged forest, with her blooming eyes no longer looking so ever onward. No longer looking so distant. No longer looking so uncatchable. Like the fragile tune of the whale song that sometimes rises over Tingstova’s horizon. Perhaps, one day. But tomorrow, I’ll be swimming in all the wrong sorts of waters again. The kind of waters where the currents take you round and round and round. Circular motions. Tomorrow, I’ll be gutting fish. In my kitchen, I swallow stolen pearls. I take the wilted dandelion and engulf it my hand. And it reblooms under the spill of the hot, emptying sea breaking through the shell of the clam.