Love Like Air

The family didn't live in the house by the sea, but when they were there, everything else fell away. Mother and Father bought the house when their first child was born, so that they could have a place to go when they needed to be away from the city. It's a little yellow house with an enclosed porch stretching all the way around the outside, and they called it the Love Shack, because they thought it was funny. It was meant to be a place where Love came first. Over the years, they came as often as they could, but only when they could put aside work and concerns. Mother didn't want there to be anything in the air around the house but Love. Three years after they bought the house, another child was born, and then the family spent the longest visit yet at the house. Mother was Jackie and Father was Max, and their two little girls were Anna and Marie. One humid summer at the house, Anna told Mother of her love for flowers. In the years after that, flowers started to bloom, mysteriously, from odd places in the ground all around the house. Anna put bouquets of daisies in vases around the house, and wore tiger lilies in her long, dark hair. When Marie was old enough to talk to, Anna would take her to the end of the long wooden dock so they could lie on their stomachs and contemplate the sea with the hot sun on their backs in the daytime, or backlit by a sapphire sky at night.

In the mornings, Mother can pour orange juice into tall, clear glasses to serve to the whole family. Father pained the walls of the kitchen soft yellow when Mother asked him to, and when Anna asked to help, Father handed her a paintbrush. Anna sits by the wall she painted every morning, where she sits in a pool of sunshine coming in the wide windows. She says people live in her orange juice. Mother tells her the orange juice has pulp, and then asks her daughter how the orange juice people live. Anna says they are happy people.

The two daughters try to make breakfast for Mother and Father early one morning. Marie is making coffee, because she knows how and Anna doesn't. The house smells of amaretto as Anna wanders into her parents' room to see if they're awake yet. Mother and Father both look up at her from the bed when she opens the door a little, so Anna goes in. Anna doesn't think anyone has ever been as beautiful as Mother is right at that moment, and she tells her mother so. Her mother smiles and Anna sees that Father is combing his fingers through Mother's soft chestnut curls. "Your father just reminded me that he loves me," Mother says.

Anna draws pictures of her mother, trying to make things look the way she remembers. Marie tells her sister to try drawing something else for awhile, so Anna draws Marie with her flowers. Marie takes up piano, and Anna starts drawing with charcoals. Father makes a frame for Anna's picture of Marie and Mother at the piano. It hangs in the room where the piano is and shivers if the piano is played too loud. Some nights, Marie plays a sonata, and Anna slips out of bed just so she can stand barefoot on the white sand in her filmy blue nightgown. On the night Marie was playing Fuer Elise, it rained. Anna stayed in bed with her stuffed dinosaur and Mother and Father danced on the front porch with the screens open.

The family doesn't come to the house unless they can come together. Marie often arrives with dark eyes and wearing a suit with high-heeled boots that she puts in the back of the closet. She trades her red lipstick for a scarlet robe and sits with Anna on the beach without talking until Mother brings out cherry vanilla ice cream. Later, Anna works on the murals she's painting on the walls inside the porch and Marie helps Father clean the sailboat. When they sail, they all go. Father wears his purple shirt unbuttoned and Mother wears a hat. When Marie smiles, her teeth are white and her gums show. Anna calls everyone "mate" in a crisp British accent. They call the boat Zephyr, for that's what its use is. The girls were both taught to sail it when they felt the wind pushing them forward. On windy days, they all wear windbreakers and stand the cold for as long as they can before Mother brings out the hot chocolate in a thermos, and watching the waves break over each other would have been lonely if they hadn't been sitting so close together. When they get back to shore, Mother knew her family's noses would be stinging and she'd offer them chicken noodle soup. She serves it with crackers and toasted tuna sandwiches.

Mother drinks black coffee with her two daughters now and they all sit on the front steps so they can hear the seagulls. They all wear sarong skirts and let their long hair blow in the wind. Marie teases Anna with an iridescent lizard, and Anna sketches another picture. Marie puts thongs on her feet so she can take a walk with her father. Her lips are glossed the color of pink bubblegum, because she borrows from her sister while she's here.

Anna brings her dog with her when she can and it makes Jackie remember her own childhood when she runs with the dog, tossing a worn out sneaker down the seashore in play. From where she's at on the beach, she can turn and see her two daughters with their Father at the end of the dock. Marie hangs her legs over the edge and Max eats a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Anne sits cross-legged out where the sea turns pure aquamarine, but she's too content to paint the picture.

Sometimes and usually in the fall, the three women alternate solitary mornings sitting at the kitchen table eating fresh fruit with the cool crisp breeze coming in the open windows. The sheer white window curtains billow in like sails on the Zephyr and sometimes the feeling is better for being alone.

On truly cold mornings, Dad says he's forgotten to cut firewood and everyone runs out in a hurry to warm up. There's frost on the dry grass and four axes waiting to be used. By the time everyone has chopped enough to be sweaty, the family is too busy comparing muscles to notice. Mother's laugh sounds like the tide washing up the beach carrying colorful seashells.

The four of them sleep on the porch on hot nights. The silence is true quiet here. Marie asks her sister if she misses the house when she's gone. Anna thinks about the time she spends on different things and says, "It's not the journey, it's the destination." And Marie knows she means what she says.