Litany

All morning spent flat, still on the bedroom floor. The seam between the wooden planks is wide enough for a fingernail to clear grime and splinters. Noon chirps, then out to the mailbox. The truck picks its way down the road and rattles to a stop. The mailman stiff-arms a stack of envelopes out the window. Siobhan reaches forward. Carefully, she rehearsed this part for hours, peering at the ceiling. 

The words come fast. It is difficult to remove Walter’s name from some accounts. She needs more time to get things in order. The mailman shrugs. Siobhan rushes out the part about Walter’s bike wobbling and the way he fell to the roadside. His shoulder came down first, she says, then his helmet. Dead before he hit the ground. His heart. There’s a joke in here about a broken heart, but it catches in her throat. 

She’s on the high wire, farther out than she’s been before. A few more words and she’ll have passed steady through the whole thing, eyes dry. She readies to describe the oncoming car that barreled down the hill toward Walter. The mailman finishes up out loud. He’s familiar after all these weeks. “It was an old pickup with rusted panels. It fishtailed sideways then slammed to a stop. It didn’t hit him.” Her fingers close around the letters. The mailtruck trundles on. 

Inside again, Siobhan picks up the phone to call the therapist. For fifty minutes twice a week, they sift her life. She rehearses, “Hi, this is Siobhan. We haven't discussed this yet but you should know I’m hunting the mailman and also my neighbor’s gardener. I practice telling them about Walter. It feels like eating meat.” 

She puts the phone down without dialing. 

Through the kitchen door and out again, all the way across the neighbor’s lawn. It is a beautiful lawn, clipped close, falling away to a terrace with a bench and a view of the water. Below the terrace the gardener keeps the deer away with chicken wire. Siobhan spots their trail. Walter hated walking to the beach this way. 

“We’re trespassing,” he used to say.  Walter preferred to drive around the cove to what he called the livelier side. By which he meant,: full of people. By full of people, he meant better. 

Their first full summer after moving in, Siobhan and Walter raced to the middle of the cove. Siobhan down the deer trails, curving south toward the public access. Walter drove, he was to park the car, run north. Across the midpoint, the tide up quickly, no Walter yet.  All the way around the curve and messy waves splash up under Siobhan’s shorts. On the beach steps, frantic for Walter, she spotted him perched on a picnic table. A half-moon of people clustered around, all laughing. 

He caught her elbow a quarter of a mile back down the road. 

“Don’t be mad,” he said. “I was making us some friends.” His hand trailed down her shorts to the hem, and he wrung a squeeze of seawater onto the pavement. 

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The same cluster of friends are in for the depth of it. It’s natural to be more fond of Walter, but they hang on for Siobhan. Every morning there is a quick look in, a bit of breakfast or a hot coffee to deliver. Even now there’s someone stopping, through the front door without a knock, then banging the kitchen screen and calling out to her. It’ll be one of the women, Siobhan thinks. Just stopping by on a lunch break, they always say. Made up for work, they look innocent, but their doe eyes roam all over her, weighing and measuring for the report back on her hollow cheeks and ragged nails. 

Siobhan turns, ready for a friend with a casserole she’ll leave uneaten. It takes a moment to come together, but there is Walter’s mother, one hand on the screen door handle like she owns the place. 

Siobhan had practiced introducing Walter’s mother to their friends. Tomorrow, they’re to scatter the ashes across the cove. “This is Walter’s mother, Virginia,” she will say to the friends who will gather to celebrate his life. Siobhan plans for Ginnie to say, “Call me Ginnie.” 

Walter’s mother, call me Ginnie, a full day early. Walter’s father must be out front, buying time. 

Up on the half step outside the kitchen door, Ginnie is taller than Siobhan. “You look tired,” Ginnie says. “Come in. Dad and I are here to help.” The minutes Siobhan spent looking for the deer trails had been enough for Ginnie to arrive and settle in. A half dozen vases pulled from under the sink and ready for service. 

“What a horde of flowers you have on the front porch. Some you’ve left outside for weeks. Dad will carry them in. You’ll want to know who sent them.”

There were things to say, of course. Like, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Or, it’s weird to call your husband Dad. Or, why are your eyes dry and clear? Instead she chooses, “What a beautiful sweater.” Ginnie, known for neutrals, is a shock in peacock blue. 

“It’s a bit loud,” she says. Then, “It was Walter’s favorite color.”

Siobhan blinks through nineteen years of marriage for this knowledge. 

 “It was his favorite color when he was a boy. Well before he met you he loved bright blue.”

The door swings open and Walter’s dad hustles flowers in. A grip of white carnations tied with a ribbon in one hand and some drooping lilies tucked under his arm. 

“Put them on the counter, Dad. I’ll sort them. There are dozens more on the porch. We’ll want to know who sent them.”

“Hello, our girl.” Walter’s dad leaves the flowers on the counter and rests his empty hands on Siobhan's shoulders. “It’s a helluva thing.”

“Can you find me something to write with Siobhan? You’ll be wanting to thank people for the flowers.”

After Walter and Siobhan eloped, they called his parents. He put the phone on speaker and made the announcement. It was Walter who caught the hitch in Ginnie’s voice and reached for the receiver but he was too slow to keep her words out of their living room, “A marriage like that means a lifetime of caregiving. I hope you’ve thought this through.” Siobhan only heard Walter’s side of the conversation after that. He agreed to a cocktail reception. After the reception, Ginnie arrayed wedding gifts for Siobhan, “Open them slowly. I’ll take notes. You’ll need to know precisely how to thank our guests.”

Now they catalog condolences, each bouquet recorded. It's worth asking Ginnie how much longer she has to keep the flowers. There’s likely etiquette for that. 

“You know, we’re happy to help with the arrangements, Siobhan. In fact, we brought you something.” She passes Siobhan a vase painted royal blue. The color is more subdued than Ginnie’s sweater. A chestnut lid hinges closed at the top. 

“It was Walter’s grandfather’s. We thought you might like to have it.”

A kitchen full of flowers and none are right for the vase. “It’s an urn.”

“Yes. A resting place.”

“You want Walter and his grandfather to double up?”

“Don’t be silly, Siobhan. We decanted Walter Senior.”

Bang out the kitchen door and back across the neighbor’s lawn. There is no place far enough from this. 

She finds Walter’s father on the neighbor’s terrace, tucked away from view. He twists a long cigarette out underfoot. 

“I tell my doctor I’m a pack a day consumer, but only get two smokes in.” It’s an old joke. Walter’s dad refuses to give up smoking. Ginnie says he’s only allowed three drags. 

Siobhan sits down beside him and holds the urn upright between her feet. She flips the lid. Inside is porcelain white. No trace of Walter Senior.

“I’m sorry about the urn,” he says. “It’s my fault Walter can’t swim.”

 Siobhan tries to remember the call from the hospital. Grateful it wasn’t Ginnie who answered the phone. She spoke in dry facts. Dead before he hit the ground. A bike ride. Nothing to be done. A deeply buried heart defect. Nothing about water.  

“I can swim. Ginnie is a great swimmer. She’s in the pool once a week. We even had a little sailboat when he was a boy. I thought there would be time and then he grew up and now, there’s this.”

“I taught Walter how to swim. Years ago. We got in the cove on calm days and he did okay. He wasn’t swimming when he died.” 

He stands up and taps another cigarette against his palm. “If she comes too hard at you about his ashes, remind her that it was my job to arrange swimming lessons. She’s worried about scattering her boy out in the water and thought the urn would keep him close to home.”

Down the hill from the neighbor’s terrace, there’s a gap through the chicken wire. On days she convinced him to walk with her to the beach, Walter wore hiking boots and filled a knapsack with water bottles. Siobhan makes her way down barefoot, holding the urn by its neck. 

When Walter hit the ground, Siobhan slipped off her bike to poke at loose asphalt with her toes and wait for Walter to get up. It was the driver of the rusted pick-up truck who did the work. He cradled Walter and moved traffic. The ambulance came up fast. 

Since then, she’s overheard all the usual shit about the blessing. Before he hit the ground was a blessing. Doing what he loved was a blessing. Siobhan by his side was a blessing. 

No one thinks to ask but the blessing was the gravel shoulder across the road from Walter, enough space to turn away from medical efficiency and toward the view.   

 “They’re heading out. They might let you ride along?” The rust-truck driver comes along beside to ask. Without an answer he waves away the medics. 

“It’s the clip on shoes,” she says. “He’s not an athlete. He wears those bike shoes like an ass.” There’s no fooling, even then. The irritation is just the gasoline. It’s enough to burn her down the road and through the early months.

“Want to ride down with me instead?”

“Thanks. Yes. My name’s Siobhan. You met Walter.”

They handshake like it’s normal times. “I’m Nick. We can put your bike in the truck.”

He lifts the bike up easy and into the bed. Siobhan slaps her shoes beside it. In the cab, there is no rust. The dash is dusted clean, a faded Pendleton tucked to the bench. 

The work to crank the window down isn’t bad, but she sucks in hard. 

“Too hot?” Nick asks. The sun slants in. 

“Not yet,” she says. The wind pulls the briny smell up from the beach. “It feels like I swallowed a stone. Maybe an egg. Like my throat is stuck.”

“Lift your chin.” Nick's eyes flick away from the road and to her neck. “I’m gonna guess it’s something like a stone. It’ll be in there awhile, maybe forever.”  Siobhan thinks about Walter riding up the hill, tossing back a joke, and peddling hard. 

“In the mornings, I wake up happy. Walter reaches out and finds me in the covers. I think everything depends on that.”

Nick steers the truck away from the scenic tourist roads and into the cracked up edge of town. He weaves into the hospital parking lot and finds the bike rack. The sun pinches high. He lifts the bike from the truck. Siobhan collects her shoes and shrugs off his offer to stay. 

“I saw you checking your watch. You’ve got places to be.”

 She rejects his protest offer and sticks out her hand for another handshake. Nick holds her fingers and traces them up his neck and over his chin.

“I’ve got a stone stuck here, too. It doesn’t get easier, but it helps me sing.”

Siobhan goes inside to wait. Two nurses change shifts. Small talk like any other office. Apologies for being late. I lost track of time. The sun is still so high in the sky, I thought it was earlier. 

The blessing was the quiet when she said goodbye to Walter. 

Close to the beach and the soil turns sandy. Once familiar butterfly bushes have grown tall and full. The neighbor’s gardener might like to know. Siobhan has read that deer keep away from butterfly bushes.

It’s too late now but Walter kept a tide table tacked up in the kitchen. The way the water licks, the best guess is the tide will go way out. It is a long walk south to the livelier side, besides there’s always someone there who’ll want to talk. Not far north the cove fades out at the old jetty. The tide should hold for that.

Walter loved the jetty’s story. The locals say rum runners slipped down the straight in Prohibition, their wooden boats loaded full of booze. The jetty was a halfway point. A place to pull up tight and hidden. Outlaws with names like Cannonball and Legitimate Pete repacked their cargo under piles of blankets and fishing lures. Then they motored down to the city, nonchalant like businessmen. 

There was no persuading Walter to get closer to the jetty than the story. Siobhan explained how to scramble up the bulkhead and step from pier to pier. They could pretend to face down danger, hide from cops, and get home safely. Nothing doing. 

“It’s falling apart, Siobhan. Totally unsafe. I don’t know where you get these ideas.”

“We’ll bring some friends and rum for accuracy. It’ll be so fun.”

“You are not to go onto that jetty.”

“You’re up in it now, Walter. Be careful. I don’t belong to you.”

Most nights they touched glasses, the tiny bell and clink of ice a superstition. That night, Walter left his tumbler on the counter and went to bed. 

Thankfully, he had no use for memory. The next morning he reached for her, like always. That was that. 

As usual, Walter is more right than not. The bulkhead is huge and slanted. She bear crawls up the side. The urn tucked under her arm and pressed against her ribs. The piers are made from trunks thicker than anything growing now. Years of seawater etched the rings in deep and black. 

It is too far to step from pier to pier. She’ll have to jump. If she overshoots, it’s fine. The trunks are wide enough to catch her long. It’s the coming up short that’s unsafe. She touches her neck for luck and pushes off, holding the urn out front for balance. 

At the end of the ruined jetty, farther out than anyone’s been for a hundred years, the tide comes back quickly. The waves slam off the piers and catch her legs. Siobhan unhooks the chestnut lid and tips the urn toward the sea. Then she turns, closes her eyes, and rehearses every step back home. 

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About the Author

Erin Williamson lives and works in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Eureka Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.