She Blamed It on the Air

The air made her feel restless. Unconsciously, she would take up the edge of whatever loose fabric happened to be in her reach (a blanket, the end of her shirt, a curtain) and she would rub it between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. When she caught herself doing this, she knew something was not right. Although she rarely knew what. So she blamed it on the air.

Alice Berkley Chaste had spent July with her grandfather on the island for the past seventeen years.  She always looked forward to coming. Her grandfather’s weathered, low-lying cottage, overtaken by runaway bushes of Black Eyed Susan's and Rosa Rugosas, had, what she eventually decided was, “a quaint kind of charm.” The house had a kitchen, a sitting room, a bathroom, her grandfather’s bedroom, and a guest bedroom with twin-beds. For many years, Alice’s mother and father would come and stay in the guest bedroom with Alice sleeping in a collapsable crib, and when she grew too big, a makeshift bed of pillows and comforters on the floor. One year, Alice grandfather surprised her with an air mattress, although it ultimately went to waste since the following year, Alice’s father demanded a divorce. From then on, Alice spent her July’s with her grandfather alone.

This particular July (her seventeenth), Alice felt particularly restless. One evening, after the dinner dishes had been washed and the leftovers stored in the fridge, Alice grabbed an old knitted blanket out of the trunk in her bedroom. She sat on the wooden rocking chair on the front porch with her feet pulled up, draping the blanket over her knees, and began to rub her fingers along the fringed edges. Despite the air, the sunsets never failed to disappoint Alice. From her vantage point, over the thick brush in the yard and above the gray roofs across the street and up the hill, she watched the sky slowly pull apart the lingering clouds, illuminating their edges with gold. After a while, she heard the muffled boom, and she knew that, somewhere, the sun had sunk under the horizon. When she was a little girl, her grandfather told her the boom was the gun of a soldier on the beach, paying homage to the sun as she underwent her temporary death. But today Alice knew it was nothing more but a boy in kaki shorts at the yacht club downtown setting off a small canyon.

She loved this time of day. This was the time of day where she felt the most free, although, as she would willingly admit, she often failed to embrace it’s potential.

Alice heard the screen door screech open and she turned her head to see her grandfather stepping out onto the porch. She quickly put her feet down and began to stand up to offer him the chair (the porch being so small, the chair was the only real piece of furniture and took up about half of the area) but he just as quickly motioned for her to sit back down, pressing his eyebrows down, never making eye contact. He sat down on the top step of the porch in front of the rocking chair. The soft hum of bicycle tires passed by on the other side of the brush.

As the colors in the sky began to fade into hazy dusk, Alice watched her grandfather.  She often did this, forcing herself to memorize his features.

He was a bit taller than most men and, over the past several years, had grown a bit of belly. His hair, a mixture of white and gray strands, was bushy around his head and fell down to a short beard around his chin. He was wearing his green pants, the ones with a stripe of white paint stained on the left leg, and a navy tee shirt that was frayed along the edges of the sleeves. Whenever he went outside, he would put on his Nantucket red baseball cap. He held it in his hands now.

Alice’s grandmother, although she never met her, used to say his eye’s were the shade of the still water of the harbor and held the power to calm any storm.

Two dragonflies sped  along the front hedges, swerving in and out along the flowers. Alice sunk deeper into the chair, pulling the blanket higher up to her chin.

Something had not felt right inside Alice for a what felt like a very long time. It was as if her perspective had shifted overtime so that everything in her view stood on an angle. Nothing felt normal, whatever normal means. Every night, Alice would go to sleep with a prayer that in the morning she would wake up and feel okay again, but the morning never brought anything new.

Time after time she flipped through her memories, desperately trying to pinpoint what could have possibly triggered this unbalance. She found no clarity. She wanted to give up looking, but she couldn’t. So she blamed it on the air.

Alice loved this island.  She loved how it stood on a history of independence and self sufficiency, and how these morals carried through the centuries. She loved the way the people who lived there year round were devoted to some trade that helped the island function, whether that means upholding the role of the head of the fire department, or running the corner bakery downtown where fisherman and school children alike would buy a doughnut for a dollar just as the sun was rising. She loved its physical beauty, the vast moors that stretched for miles, the patterns of sandbars along the Northern shore that shifted with the tides, the driveways made of white shells, the hydrangeas that flowed over white fences. On nights that follow sunny days, the stars were as distinct as strings of Christmas lights.

Strolling along the docks, watching the sailboats tack back and forth around the bend with the lighthouse, she would think to herself “I am happy.” But the next morning she would wake up and before she even swung her feet onto the floor, she would force herself to admit that this found sense of happiness was only a lie she told herself to try and move a step forward. In admitting to this lie, she knew that she was taking a step back.

Alice’s grandfather was a year rounder, a local (although not a native). After dropping out of college, he joined the crew of a massive sailboat named The Essex owned by a young, wealthy couple. For three years, he tied ropes, hauled sails, and slept in the bottom drawer or a dresser when it rained. He learned how to read a barometer to detect approaching storms, navigate the sea with only a map and a compass, and make even the limpest fish come to life with flavor. Every summer, The Essex would make its way to the docks of Nantucket Island. There she would rest, sails down and stored away, for a week or two. Alice’s grandfather would spend a small sum of money to rent a bicycle and would explore the far reaches of the island, biking through the rocky paths in the moors, around small ponds, along the sand that the ocean waves had flattened hard and smooth. At night, he would drift in and out of the local bars like the way the fog rolls over the gray rooftops most evenings. He fell in love with the island. One summer, he decided to stay and become an apprentice for an old ship builder at the tiny marina on the outskirts of town. Many long winters and blissful summers down the line, he came to inherit the marina and has been the been there ever since.

“You have to learn to love your own company,” he would tell his family and tourists alike who asked him how he ever survived those endless, empty winter months. He never regretted his choice to stay.

Alice and her grandfather both loved the island. The object of their love was the same. Although sea and wind and sand may erode the sensuous curves of her land, the island hardly ever changes. But their love was different. The island was the home of Alice’s grandfather. He felt as if he belonged to her shore and sea just as much as she belonged to him. Alice could not yet fully understand her relationship with the island. She desperately longed to belong, to fall into the hills of her bodice like a warm friend, but she did not feel that comfortable quite yet. They were still learning about each other. It felt awkward, and Alice, loving from afar, disliked it.

Oh how she wished she could come to the island on her own, keeping nothing but a backpack with her necessities (a few dresses, her straw hat, a Bible, some paper and postcards, a ballpoint pen, a leather pouch of cash) and a rusted bike. Like her grandfather did before her, she longed to explore the depths and crevices of the island on her own. To go beyond what meets the eye of the ones who only stay to simply see what they had seen on the posters hung in travel agents’ offices. She fantasized of working on one of the island’s many farms, helping to weed flower beds and sell vegetables off the back of a trucks in town. The land of the island produced vegetables, fruits, and fish- what more could a man need?

One night, Alice dreamt of carrying a canoe from her grandfather’s house over her head. She walked on the side of the deserted roads under a full moon until she reached a familiar opening in the brush. There she turned and crept down through the moors until she came to a cranberry bog, the moon’s reflection cratered with thousands of floating, dark bodies. Carefully, she shifted the canoe off of her head and placed it into the black sea. Climbing in, she began to row through the black water, parting the berries as she went. When she awoke, still trapped in that foggy purgatory between sleep and waking, tears began to drip from her eyes, for her dream had broken apart before she was able to reach the end of the world.