She sat back against the couch, adorned with pillows, and pondered her new book. She’d waited 3 months for this; waited for the end of her favorite author’s island series. Something was on the television, but she couldn’t remember what she put on-her thoughts were on her husband sitting back in his lounge chair to her right. Feet up on the ottoman, he was leisurely scribbling in his notebook. Scribbling she thought—though she knew better. He was writing, cataloging, working something out. He’d figured something out. He had notebooks full of figures, quotes, meaningful anecdotes and lines he’d churned out to try to explain how he lived. Though one of his favorite topics was her; love poems, letters, songs lined his book. Proofs of text for birthday cards, anniversary stories and Christmas greetings…you name it. When inspiration struck him, he would “scribble”.

“What are you writing anyway?” she inquired almost sarcastically. Half playfully, and the other half in her persnickety way of trying to question him into a state of self-doubt (it never worked).

He was amused by the question and loved that she noticed him. Noticed him doing something that made her wild enough to wonder.

“Oh, I don’t know, this and that.”

“What’s this and that?” she said in a smarmy tone.

“Well it’s very little of this”, as he pointed and lightly touched the side of his head to mean his mind. And in one smooth motion and a slow grin, he pointed slowly over toward her and said, “and a little bit of that”.

His grin grew into a smile and she furrowed her brow, trying to look suspiciously offended, but amusement glowed slightly through the furrowed brow, squinted eyes and the harrumphing of her lips.

He let her expression warm him, and coolly went back to his work.

After a few more minutes in relative silence, an awkward, still pause that was like waiting while the universe aged; the hum of whatever was on the television, and the dogs’ heavy breathing from the slumber of their beds on the floor, the curiosity was too much for her to bear…”OK, I give, what’s a little bit of that mean?”

He finished scrawling his pen across the page with the finality of finishing the thought exactly on time.  “Are you sure?” he questioned as if baiting her slightly.

She shrugged lightly and nodded nonchalantly to indicate that she was never going to allow her interest to rest until he read to her what he’d been crafting.

“Ok, then…” he said, flipped back a page in the soft leatherbound book, and began reading with a serious sincerity.

“I almost felt like crying as I watched her lightly scrub the light blue dust cover of her new book. She had asked, sincerely, from across the living room, if I would help remove the Women’s Book Club Choice sticker that adorned the upper right hand side of Swan Song by Elin Hildebrand.  

She had long enjoyed the writings of this particular author; her glorification of the elite beach community and easy breezy life on the island that is Nantucket. She had fallen in love with the idea that life could be so simple…rise in a sunlight drenched bedroom with far too many windows, the temperature just right to be comfortable under a down comforter in June, and the cool sea winds whipping through the broken curtains that softly batter against the aged panes with every blow. And after the slow ritual of comfortably easing into the day like casually merging from a long sloping onramp, there would be large cups of perfectly brewed coffee, grasped with two hands while wearing a bathrobe and looking through some breakfast nook windows out over the seagrass peppered dunes to the misty blue gray of the crashing Atlantic Ocean.

Dressing for the day in light flowing clothes and riding an old Schwin bicycle (basket in front of course; housing a bottle of wine, insulated cup and a copy of the newest bestseller) into the quaint island town where an eclectic book store awaits, just kitty-corner from a park near the shore with glistening white gazebo and benches in the shade where she’ll spend the day sipping wine responsibly and getting lost in the tales of who or whatsit and their personal conquest of some emotional struggle. At night, by candlelight, she’ll dine on a piece of seafood she heroically grilled herself, finishing off her bottle of park wine; she calmly dries the dishes she just made and settles into bed, windows cracked, the waves crashing from the distant shore…fade to black, rinse and repeat until her days run out.  

This long running daydream of hers has translated itself into a desire to hold on to this fabricated projection, this story, her story…someday. All of it now wrapped up and fatalistically enclosed in the pages of Elin’s last Nantucket novel; wrapped up in the perfectly designed and marketed arms of the hardcover dust jacket she’s been gently wiping to erase the last of the removed sticker’s adhesive…it has to be perfect, it needs to stay pristine, she needs to protect it and nurture it, like the dream she’s been coveting, and growing. So much depends on this detail for her; like the continued belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny…so much depends on the red wheelbarrow, glistening with sea rain, on the shores of her own personal dream of Nantucket!

She cleans the cover tentatively, knowing that if she stops cleaning she has to read it, and it all has to end…I’ve scarcely seen anything so fatalistic, a longing to hold on in the face of the inevitable; I think I could almost cry.”

*

Amelia opened her eyes one last time, she saw the bookcase near her bed swept with the early morning sunlight through the window. The hardcovers stood obediently, front to back in their pristine dustcovers.  Her sight caught the brilliance of the light ocean blue overfold of Swan Song, glowing back at her through the clean golden air.

She remembered back to the night in the living room, when he’d helped her peel the sticker away from the front face, how she wiped it clean like a baptism, and how he spoke of what he saw in her at that moment.  He’d been gone for years now, but that memory, that memory in particular…always projected from that book, like a rerun of her favorite show.

The muscles around her mouth twitched, her eyes became small with the surrender of sadness. The dustcover of her eyes closed lightly and pressed a tear down her cheek as she lay comfortable and small in her bed.

And the sound of the distant ocean waves drew easily through the cracked window.